Riders on the Storm

11

Jamie was just telling me that Chief Foster had called wanting to talk to me when Foster himself walked through the doorway and said, “I was headed to the courthouse but when I saw your car I thought I’d stop in.”

In order to see my car Foster would have to pull into an alley and check the space allotted for three cars. Not quite as casual as he made it sound.

“Think I could get a few minutes of your time?”

“Sure.”

He glanced at the back of Jamie’s head. “Kind of stuffy in here. How about we go sit on the steps.”

“Who wants to be in air conditioning when you can soak in the ninety-degree temperature?”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

I went down the hall and dragged a couple of Pepsis out of the vending machine and then followed him out the door. Nothing more comfortable than concrete steps.

“You want to go first, Sam?”

“Oh, the working together thing.”

“You have the edge. You know this town a lot better than I do.”

“Well, one thing I’ve found out is that I think Lon Anders and Steve Donovan may have had a falling-out over business.”

“And why would you think that?”

“I talked to Donovan’s old business partner. He said that Anders wanted the business all to himself. That being the case, maybe Anders killed Donovan.”

Two kids with Dracula T-shirts came strolling down the alley toward us. I’d seen them many times before. They liked to sit on a nearby deserted loading platform and smoke cigarettes. Foster’s black hard-ass Mercury with its whip antenna said police. The kids glared at us as they passed by. They had squatters’ rights on the loading platform. This was summer vacation. Kids were supposed to do what they wanted with no adult interference.

“Guess I’d need some more evidence than that. The way Anders tells it, Carmichael almost ruined the company.”

“Then there’s a guy named Teddy Byrnes.”

“Donovan’s cousin?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why would Byrnes kill his meal ticket?”

“Because he’s insane. Maybe Donovan pissed him off. You don’t piss off Teddy Byrnes.”

Then it was his turn. He was so laid back he probably didn’t need Valium for his colonoscopy. No problem, man. Just shove it right in there. I’m fine.

Everything he’d learned pointed to Will being the killer. He’d interviewed Anders (“By the way, he told me that he’d like to set you on fire and then drown you; I have to admit that the boy has a temper.”) and Anders was home from seven o’clock to six thirty this morning when he woke up. His lady friend would testify to that. “That isn’t necessarily a great alibi but nobody seems to have seen him in or around the crime scene. And believe me, with that car of his just about everybody would’ve noticed him.”

“Maybe he drove a different car.”

“Maybe. But the difference between Anders and Cullen is that people can place Cullen at the crime scene. And then there’s the matter of motive. Donovan had humiliated him.”

“Cullen went looking for him to make things right. To apologize.”

The pipe came out again. He filled it, tamped it, lighted it. Some men look so damned comfortable with themselves when they smoke their pipes. Cigarettes are for nervous, uptight people. Like me most of the time.

“And there he sits, Sam. He can’t help me and he can’t help you. And he can’t help himself. He just sits there or lies there and he’s beyond reaching.”

The pipe smoke was almost exhilarating. I wanted to run right down to the tobacco shop and buy myself one. A good one. One that would make me look serious and contemplative. People whispering behind your back, “That little bastard is a genius.”

“So you’re fixated on Will.”

“Sam, give me somebody else to be fixated on and I’ll jump right across.”

I slapped a mosquito with so much force against my cheek that I could feel pain in my forehead. A mistake. I didn’t want one of those military hospital headaches.

“Bring me what I need and Will’s a free man.”

“You don’t really believe he’s guilty, do you?”

“Now you don’t really think I’d give you an honest opinion on that, do you? I’m not very bright but I’m not dumb enough to say that to his lawyer. We go to trial and you put me on the stand and make me say that I told you I didn’t think he was guilty—”

“Then you do think he’s innocent.”

“He could be but right now I’d have to say that he looks guilty. I keep telling you to look at the evidence. You keep denying any possibility that he’s guilty. But if you could be even a bit objective—”

“I think I can be. I think I am.”

“Well, I hope for your sake you’re right. Because otherwise I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

And with that he stood up with his pipe and his skeptical police eye and reached out and offered me his hand.

“If you come up with something new—”

“I’ll let you know.” I almost said “Paul” but I was not going to give in to that.

I watched him walk to his car and then we exchanged a wave and I went back inside to the civilizing effects of air conditioning.

Kate was the star. You couldn’t not watch her. She was four and dressed in a blue sweatshirt with a cartoon cat on it. Presumably the cat was from a Saturday morning show sponsored by one cereal or another. She was possessed of amused blue eyes and blond hair that looked so soft it would probably disintegrate if you touched it.

Nicole was five and intensely serious. Her dark hair and dark eyes were almost perfect matches for her mother’s. Every once in a while as we ate she would fix her eyes on the wonderfully childish Kate with a disdain befitting royalty.

Maybe it was because of the green linen tablecloth and all the darker green dishes and coffee cups and cloth napkins that I had second helpings of roast beef and mashed potatoes. It had been quite a while since I’d had a family meal.

Then as the sky in the dining room windows turned into violet night, Mary announced that it was time for the girls to take their baths and get ready for bed.

I got kisses from both the girls. Kate’s was earnest and a little sloppy. Nicole’s was dry and quick

And just then I realized that in her quiet and proper way there was something like sorrow in those dark eyes of hers. And then I thought — I catch on quick — of what she’d been through with her parents these past few years. The rancor and anger. Maybe Kate wasn’t old enough yet to completely understand what was happening. Certainly she would have understood the rage of both parents. That would have been terrifying. But Nicole was old enough — and certainly bright enough — to know the implications of all the torment. Her father would never live with them again. The people who had comprised her family would never be her family again. I gave her a hug.

Kate said she wanted to show me her cat drawing but Mary said some other time. “Kate’s a genius at thinking up reasons not to take her bath.”

Then she hustled them off with Kate throwing “’Night” over her shoulder.

After Mary came back, I said, “You remember that job I had in high school washing dishes over at Romano’s Pizza?”

“You’re going to tell me that you miss washing dishes.”

“Not washing them, drying them.”

“I see. Well, I’m certainly not going to stop you.”

For the first five minutes in the kitchen we made out. My hands were all over her and she was all over me.

Then Kate called out for her and we had to give up those ferocious high school sex moments.

When she came back she said, “Kate couldn’t find her walrus.”

“That sounds bad.”

“We were at the dime store one day and she saw this cheap little stuffed walrus and begged me to buy it for her. She was two. It’s like some kind of lucky charm or something. Somehow it had fallen behind her bed. I got it for her and she gave me one of those hugs you can never forget.”

“You’re a good mother.”

“I could be a lot better, believe me.”

“Oh, right, I forgot what a terrible woman you really are.”

“You’ve always kind of idealized me, Sam. I’ve always wanted to say that to you but the right time never came around. This is the right time. You boys in high school and college always said ‘She’s the kind of girl you marry’ or something like that. I think that’s how you’ve always thought of me. I don’t literally mean marrying me but that I was the ‘good’ girl or something like that and Pamela was the bad one. But Pamela wasn’t bad; she was just confused about her real feelings. And I wasn’t all good, either. I lost my virginity when I was sixteen. I lied because I knew you’d lose respect for me if I didn’t.”

Well, there you go. She’d told me that I was the first lover she’d ever had. And that was when we were out of high school.

This was the seventies. I indulged in liquor, grass and sex. I’d lost my religious faith, I’d lost most of my faith in the political system and I knew how corrupt our system of justice was. And if I had to sit down and count up the number of lies I’d told in my life, a fair share to women I’d cared about, I would be one hundred and thirty-four before I could stand up again.

But this hurt me, what she said.

“I’m sorry I lied to you, Sam.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

“Sam, I’m standing right here and I can see that it’s not all right. I lied and I’m sorry. And it was only once and the next time I slept with anybody it was you.”

I proudly kept a book on feminism on my coffee table to show the young ladies I tried to charm that I was no Cro-Magnon macho moron. But here I was trapped in that old virgin trap. I’d always thought I was the first with Mary.

“Slap me.”

“What?”

“Slap me.”

“Sam, are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right. I’m thinking like morons think.”

“And how would that be?”

“I don’t want to say. That’s why I want you to slap me. Bring me to my senses.”

“Either you’re mad at me for lying to you or you’re mad at me because you weren’t the first.”

“The first.”

“The lying?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“And a little because of the second.”

“Because I wasn’t a virgin when we finally slept together?”

“Yeah, a little bit of that.”

“Sam, please don’t be like my brother.”

“Stan?”

“Yes.”

“What about him?”

“He has this wonderful girlfriend. And she really is wonderful. And he loves her. I’ve never seen him like this, but he won’t marry her.”

“Because she’s not a virgin?”

“Exactly.”

“He lost his virginity when he was fourteen.”

“He told you that, Sam?”

“No, my dad caught him in the back of his old panel truck.”

“God, I can’t believe how he’s been about this whole thing. About not being able to marry her. This is the seventies. Girls have as much right to have sex as boys. I know how it’s killing him. One night he started crying about it. I just held him the way I did when he was little and he got hurt or somebody had said something mean to him. He’d never admit it but he’s pretty sensitive. And then it wasn’t funny or even ridiculous anymore because I could see it was tearing him apart. How much he loved her and wanted to marry her but couldn’t because of this stupid idea he had in his head.”

“So is he ever going to marry her?”

“October fifth.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. He finally came to his senses.”

I took her arms and pulled her to me. Good Mary, bad Pamela. All good uncomplicated Mary and bad complicated Pamela. Reliable Mary and exciting Pamela.

But just as I was about to kiss this brand-new Mary, she stopped me. “One more thing, Sam. I know you think I kind of hover around you too much and I probably do. But you are sort of needy and that brings it out in me.”

“I’m needy?” My voice went up an octave.

“Sorta, sometimes, you know in little ways. But that’s part of why I love you. You’ve helped me so many times, too. I’m just as needy as you are.”

Anger flushed my face — I could feel it — and then without realizing it I started laughing. “You weren’t a virgin and you lied about it and now I’m ‘needy’? Whatever happened to that perfect little Mary I knew?”

“I’m right here, the real Mary, Sam. That other one was just in your imagination. And part of that was my fault, with the lie and all. But please, Sam, I don’t want to be ‘good Mary’ anymore. All right?”

Bad Mary was great.

If you couldn’t get laid in 1971, you couldn’t get laid at all.

This was according to just about every magazine, newspaper, and newscast you consulted for information on how the luckier half was living.

This was the era of free love, though that phrase had faded.

In the big cities they had sex clubs. You went in and had sex in your choice of many rooms. Sometimes you went alone and sometimes you brought your spouse. You could have sex by twos, threes, fours and just about any other number you wanted. And this was hetero sex or gay sex.

Swinging was also big. Suburban neighborhoods became the site of serious orgies. Marriages broke up, venereal disease ramped higher, and one prominent bestselling shrink said that if you wanted to have an affair it was none of your spouse’s business. The thing was to please yourself. It took a while before someone pointed out that this was what you might call — if you wanted to hurt the shrink’s feelings, the dear — sociopathic.

In Black River Falls we had one dance club/singles bar and that was The Retreat. A standard-issue bar had been gutted, a sparkling ball had been mounted on the ceiling, and a dance floor had been built. There was even a long mahogany bar perfect for leaning against if you thought you were cool enough for that particular pose.

Singles rejoiced and were still filling the place. The hopeless were soon banished by shunning. If you were too old, too nerdy, too unfashionably dressed, too dull by reputation, or too feckless with pickup lines — out.

What you have to understand here is that most of the popular people at The Retreat had been the popular ones in school. So what you had were the cheerleaders, the sports stars, the rich kids, the prom queens, and the just plain good-lookers of the past ten years from the town’s two high schools.

In other words, you were back in tenth grade when you didn’t get invited to any of the really groovy parties.

I never went there often enough to get shunned. I had dates from time to time who insisted we go but I always managed to get us gone early.

Tonight I was here on assignment.

The Retreat was crowded. That sparkling, revolving dance ball limned the heads and shoulders of all the dancers while other couples sat in shadow groping each other.

Cathy Vance sat at the bar sideways, her long, slim legs almost as enticing as that wild mane of dark hair and that vivid theatrical face of hers. She was always number one or two on the who’dya like to fuck list in high school. Tonight she treated us to a silver summer blouse and a skirt that could break your heart.

I was surprised that there were only two guys putting the moves on her. I stood to her left so eventually she’d have to see me. When she did, she said, “Who let you in, McCain?”

Her would-be suitors — all unbuttoned shirts and bell-bottomed plaid trousers — glared at me. The yellow-haired one said — actually said — “You want him gone, babe?”

Even as a little girl her smile had been wan, even sad.

“No, I’m going to give him a few minutes and if he tries to stay longer then I’ll want him gone.”

“You got it, babe,” said the dark-haired one.

They gave me their best TV bad-guy stares, then moved down the bar.

“Hey, babe,” I said.

“Go fuck yourself, McCain.”

“One of them could be husband number three if I’m not mistaken?”

She waved her empty glass at the bartender. “I’m worried about Will. I still care about him.”

“That’s why I’m here. I’m wondering if you care about him so much that you send him threatening letters in the mail.”

“Does that sound like something I’d do?”

With a fresh drink in her hand, she said, “He didn’t kill Steve Donovan.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, I did. I asked you if that sounded like me.”

For all her audacious sexuality the one man she’d loved had deserted and humiliated her. She and Will had gone together through most of college but the summer he met Karen he dropped her with no warning. Two marriages and numerous men later, she’d never recovered.

“I think you were sleeping with him again.”

“I don’t do married men.”

“And you don’t send threatening letters in the mail.”

Their official relationship had ended many years ago. Will told me over the years that she’d sent birthday cards and Christmas cards to him at his veterinary clinic. Her interest in him had never waned. What if they’d had an affair and then he’d ended it again? What if she saw an opportunity to punish him by killing Donovan and letting Will be blamed?

“Somebody made it look as if Will killed Donovan. You knew Donovan, didn’t you?”

“Now and then.” Coy. I hate coy.

“I thought you didn’t do married men.”

“There are exceptions to every rule.” Still coy but then angry. “I’m sick of talking about this. I don’t appreciate you hounding me when I’m trying to relax. You always were a pain in the ass, McCain.”

“You going to sic your boyfriends on me?”

“I will unless you walk out of here right now.”

“I’m pretty sure you had an affair with him and I’m pretty sure you mailed him those things.”

“You sound desperate, McCain. Now leave me alone.”

A single glance from her started the boyfriends walking toward me. Fists at their sides.

“This isn’t over, Cathy. Believe me.”

Then I made myself gone.

12

“Do you think count Chocula is real?” Kate asked me with professorial seriousness while she was eating some. I’d dropped by for breakfast.

If there was an Olympic event for eye-rolling, Nicole would win outright.

“Well, some say he’s real and some say he’s not,” I said.

“Now, there’s a politician,” Mary laughed.

“Of course he’s not real.” Nicole would also win the Gold for scoffing.

“But we saw him in that movie.”

“That was an actor playing him, sweetie.”

She eyed her sister with grumpy spite. “Well, I can believe in him if I want.”

As breakfast went on I had the same conflicted feelings I’d had the night before. Family life was enjoyable and comforting; family life was confining. Mary came as part of a package deal.

“Can we go to the parade now, Mommy?” Kate said.

“It’ll be a little while, honey.”

“I want to be in the band when I’m old enough,” Nicole said. “The uniforms are cool.”

“Her music teacher said that she’s really got talent,” Mary said. “Right now she plays the piano. This coming school year she’ll be part of a recital.”

“I want to play in a band and be a rock star.”

“Somehow, Kate, that doesn’t surprise me.”

She blessed me with one of her baby smiles.

I was just thinking about repairing to the john — the house was nice enough to have three, believe it or not; main floor, second floor, and basement (pot and shower), perfect for a new man of the house — when the phone rang.

There was a yellow extension phone on the kitchen wall. The table where we ate put me closest to it so I jumped up and got it.

“We’re trying to reach Mr. Sam McCain.” A serious-sounding woman.

“This is he.”

“This is St. Mark’s hospital. A man named Gordon Niven listed you as next of kin.”

“He did?” The shock in my voice alerted Mary. She’d been interested in somebody calling me here but now she was even more interested because of my tone. “I’m not really his kin.”

“Well, he listed you, Mr. McCain. You do know him, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I guess. Slightly, I mean.”

“I have to admit this is strange. We were going to call his residence in Des Moines — that’s where his driver’s license says he lives — but in his wallet he put a card that reads: In case of emergency call Sam McCain. We tried your home phone and there was no answer. A woman here knows Mary and said to try you at her number.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He was severely beaten sometime last night. He was found this morning in a parking lot adjacent to the Royale Hotel, which is where he was registered. We checked. Whoever beat him jammed him behind a dumpster. He has a concussion, two broken ribs, and a broken jaw. He can’t talk because his jaw is wired shut. Right now he’s sleeping. Do you know anything about the incident?”

“Not right now. You’re aware that he’s a private investigator? He’s in town because of a case. I’d like to see him as soon as I can.”

“My guess is that it will be much later in the day and maybe not even then. You’ll just have to call and check on his condition. He’s understandably exhausted and very weak.”

“Yes, of course. Well, I’ll check later today. Thanks for calling.”

“Thank you for your help, Mr. McCain.”

The girls had skittered off. Mary had watched and listened to me with the fervor she brought to her soap operas. Even in high school she was known as the soap queen.

“That sounded ominous,” she said as I sat down.

“It is.” I explained to her who Niven was. “I suppose Foster has already tried to interview him. I hope he didn’t have any luck. Niven might not be able to talk but maybe he could write things down.”

“I thought you liked Foster.”

“Pretty much I do. But I’m not sure he’ll be making the connections I am. I saw a photo of Valerie Donovan in Niven’s back seat with some file folders. I’m assuming he’s been hired to investigate her.”

“Investigate her for what?”

“I’m not sure yet. But Foster needs proof that Will didn’t kill her husband. So I have to come up with some believable alternative to what Foster believes happened. I’d planned on visiting Niven’s hotel room when he was out.”

“That has to be illegal.”

“It is. But even if he caught me he wouldn’t call Foster because that would get Foster interested in him. And Niven likes glory. He wouldn’t want to share it with a cop.”

“Do you like Niven?”

I told her about the image I’d had of him — the legend — and how he turned out to be. “There’s an old Hollywood saying, ‘Never meet your heroes.’ You know, because you’ll be disappointed in some way. And that sure was true about meeting him. But there’s something sort of sad about him, too. He’s just sort of this dumpy guy who obviously has a great brain for this business.”

She touched her napkin to her perfect lips. “Well, I need to get the girls ready for the parade. It starts at nine thirty. I don’t suppose you’re going.”

“I doubt I’ll have time. I’m going to Niven’s hotel. I want to check on some things.”

She came over to me and tilted my head up and kissed me with erotic tenderness on my mouth. “Needless to say, I had a great time last night.”

“Needless to say, I did, too.”

“The girls really like you. Especially Kate.”

“She’s better than any show on the tube.”

Then I pulled her to me and pushed the side of my head into her breasts. She laid her hand on the side of my head and embraced me even tighter.

We stayed exactly like that until Kate ran in and said, “Mommy, can I wear my red socks? Nicole says my yellow ones’d look better.”

Home life; home life.

The Royale boasts that such presidents as Herbert Hoover, FDR, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower all stayed there when they came here to campaign. True enough, but there was no alternative. The somewhat artistic but talentless son of a hotel magnate thought he’d show the old man how he could duplicate a New York or Chicago hotel right here in Iowa. He had impregnated a freshman girl at the university and wanted to be near her.

You want splendor, he gave you splendor, right down to the giant sculpture of a giant male archangel swooping up a female archangel right in the lobby. Neither happened to be clothed. You want classical music, he gave you classical music by busing in musicians from Iowa City four nights a week. You want gourmet dining, he gave you chefs from the major American cities and one from Paris. Their cuisine was fine but I always wondered how the locals took to it.

In 1952, after being spurned by his third wife, the somewhat artistic son of the magnate hurled himself off the sixth-floor veranda of his hotel apartment. The magnate took over the hotel, stripped it of its too, too finery and ran it, for the first time, at a profit.

This morning I walked into the lobby with two tens and two twenties in my pocket. I went immediately to the head bellboy. He had a very bald head, a rangy body, and eyes that appeared to have knowledge of every sin ever committed by mankind. His nametag, hanging on the breast pocket of his blue-and-white uniform, read: CHARLES.

“Help you, sir?”

“You didn’t happen to work last night, by any chance?”

We stood to one side of the main desk. Two female clerks in blazers were saying how much they’d wanted to watch the parade, which was starting in less than an hour.

Charles said, “Yesterday was my long day. I worked until about eleven last night.”

“You see anything odd going on? Maybe somebody who looked like he might be trouble?”

“Well, I saw the guy who had some drinks with Mr. Niven in the bar. If that’s what you’re wondering about.”

“What time was this?”

“Later on. Nine thirtyish. He didn’t look right to me.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“The way he looked. A lot of our traffic is salespeople. We have a nice-sized ballroom for small conventions. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. Suits, ties, suitcases, briefcases. Business guys. This guy — six-two, maybe up to six-four. Tan suede suit coat which is two hundred a pop easy. Brown sports shirt under it. Brown slacks. West Coast kinda look, if you know what I mean. And he walks in and the look he gives me. I’m a piece of shit. You ever get a look like that?”

“Maybe once or twice.” Or three or four hundred times.

“He walks like he’s gonna attack somebody.”

“Lot of black curly hair?”

“How’dya guess?”

“Lucky, I guess. So then what happened?”

“He goes in the bar and maybe an hour later he comes out with Niven. They walk over to the elevator and that’s the last I see of them.”

“You remember Niven’s room number?”

“Three twenty-six.”

I gave him one of the tens.

I rode to the third floor with a pair of older salesmen who were blaming the decline in their business on hippies. From what I could tell they sold shoes wholesale.

“They don’t even take baths that often. Why are they going to give a shit about shoes that really support their feet?”

“I just wish I was getting as much sex as those bastards get.”

“I just wish they were wearing out shoes when they were getting it.”

When the doors opened to the third floor a man smiled at me and I smiled at him. It was Chief You-Can-Call-Me-Paul Foster.

As soon as the doors closed behind me, he said, “Let me see if my psychic powers are working today. You’re here to check out the room of a man named Niven. I believe the first name is Gordon.”

“A legend in my business.”

“Would that business be lawyer or investigator?”

“I’m sure you already know the answer to that.”

“The hospital tells me that he’d suffered a stroke a while back. This sure as hell couldn’t be any good for him.”

“He’s a nice guy. And I wasn’t exaggerating about him being a legend.”

“I see. I’m told that Mr. Niven has been in town for two days. I assume you ran into him?”

“Excuse me.” A man approached, checking his watch, his sweaty face suggesting that he’d overslept. He moved us aside and then practically dove onto the elevator when it opened up.

After the doors closed again, I said, “Yeah, I did run into him.”

“A prominent private investigator comes to our little community at the same time one of our most prominent citizens is murdered. Am I wrong in seeing a possible connection?”

“He was here before Donovan was murdered.”

Then he struck. “You really piss me off.” The anger came on like summer heat lightning; a flare in the eyes and now pure hot fury in the voice. “You should have called me and told me about Niven. I’ve given you some leeway here because I expect you to keep me informed.”

He was cop with all cops’ privileges and powers. I told him most of the truth. “He wouldn’t tell me why he’s in town but it is peculiar that he got here right before Donovan got murdered.”

“You’ve got quite a vocabulary, McCain. ‘Peculiar’ doesn’t cover it and you know it.”

Niven could still have been tailing Valerie Donovan for reasons having nothing to do with her husband’s murder. I didn’t believe that and Foster wouldn’t either. But I wanted to keep the photograph to myself.

“He was supposed to die. Niven. The way he was worked over.”

We stood aside for more folks in need of the elevator.

When we were alone again, he said, “We now have two people in the hospital.”

“I thought of that myself.”

“According to you, two people who are completely unrelated to Donovan’s murder.”

“I didn’t say that. Exactly.”

“He’s coming around. Your friend Cullen.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Chiefs of police they keep informed. Not private investigators.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“The shrink is saying possibly later this afternoon. He emphasizes ‘possibly.’”

“As his lawyer, I’d like to be there if you interview him.”

“Comes in handy, doesn’t it? The P.I. gets to sit in on the interrogation because he’s a lawyer. But I don’t have to allow it.”

“Are you really that pissed off at me?”

But he said nothing. Just pressed the button for the elevator.

When the doors opened he stepped aboard.

The doors closed.

Senator O’Shay, even though he might hopefully be on his way out, still had undeniable power.

He had managed to commandeer the city council, the police department, and one of our high schools to make certain that his cynical parade came off.

I had all sorts of principled reasons not to go have a look — I’m rarely happier than when I feel principled — but I walked over four blocks to the large Presbyterian church that the parade was just now passing by.

Marching band music has always embarrassed me for some reason. It’s so damned big. But along with the embarrassment is a thrill I hate admitting to.

Heat and clamor and mothers hanging on to their little ones so they wouldn’t burst into the street and dads with kids’ legs wrapped around their shoulders and young couples wooing to the enormous tinny music as if it was a love song.

I looked at the faces. The faces of war. Just about everybody was in this war, either by participating directly or having a family member, near or distant, over there. You could tell the people who had soldiers over there, especially the women. Some of them cried and some of them held up their children as if to be blessed by all the people in the parade. They needed to be bound up in the swaddling clothes of what devious politicians called patriotism. Patriotism could calm your anxiety sometimes; patriotism could rock you to sleep at night; and most importantly, patriotism could quell your doubts about the worthiness of this war. My kind of patriotism — the patriotism of my generation — probably didn’t count because we had as many questions as we had answers.

There weren’t any floats. There hadn’t been time for that. But there was a band in bright yellow uniforms, the drumline, the pomp or pomposity (your choice) of the plumed drum major. And there were convertibles, new and shiny ones on loan from the most important local dealers, and there was the mayor riding on the back of one of them followed by two uniformed soldiers on the back of another, and then a flatbed truck with a few soldiers in wheelchairs and a few more missing arms or legs. Seeing them paraded this way infuriated me and then when I saw the maroon Caddy convertible with O’Shay on the back of it I thought of what those men on the flatbed had suffered at the hands of this man and I had that fleeting Lee Harvey Oswald thought that was so much in the air these days — bang bang bang and no more O’Shay. But there were thousands and thousands more of him in our government. Ike called it the military-industrial complex but nobody had paid him much attention. And I was just a three-beer fantasy killer anyway. There were millions of us these days. With the murder of JFK, assassination was a popular game with many political daydreamers.

And then I saw him. Directly across the street.

Teddy Byrnes.

If he saw me he didn’t let on. The crowd was alive as one, this great joyous animal seduced by the white-haired wizard who waved at them with papal authority.

The only satisfaction I could take was that O’Shay must have known that he was going to lose; that he would have to suffer what was for men like him a disgrace. A slender hope on my part.

And when I looked again Teddy Byrnes was gone.

I wondered if Foster was right. I wondered if Byrnes really had meant to kill Gordon Niven.

13

I sat alone in the office and called zoom and talked to Tim Duffy. He said he’d been discreetly asking questions of the gang that Teddy Byrnes was part of but they didn’t seem to have any news about him.

I called Lindsey Shepard and lucked out. I got an answering machine for the psych clinic but when I started to leave a message she picked up herself.

“I was talking to Chief Foster this morning and he said that Will seems to be somewhat responsive now.”

“That’s what Dr. Rattigan told me, too. I talked to him late last night. I called this morning and was told that the chief hopes to talk with Will later this afternoon. I’m sure he wants me to tell him that it’s all right but I have my doubts and so does my husband. In fact we were discussing it when you called.”

“Can you stop him from interrogating Will?”

“No. I can tell him that I think this could be very harmful. If it’s too intense it could send Will right back inside and then we wouldn’t be able to reach him again. I’m going to call him — and Randall’s going to be on an extension phone in case the chief thinks I’m just a nervous female — and give him our opinion and hope he takes it.”

I heard another phone come on the line. “Maybe you could back us up on this. Give him a call yourself. Tell him you’ve talked with us and you hope he’ll take us seriously. You seem to have a strong relationship with him.”

“So do you and Lindsey.”

Lindsey said, “But a call from you wouldn’t hurt.”

“I’m afraid right now he wouldn’t be very happy to hear from me. We’ve had a disagreement about something and he’s not too happy.”

“Oh,” Randall said, “that’s too bad. Well, after we hang up here, we’re going to call him ourselves.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me posted.”

“We certainly will,” Randall said.

On impulse I next called Mary.

“The Lindstrom residence. Nicole speaking.”

“Hi, Nicole. You do a great job of answering the phone.”

“Mom trained me.” I noticed Mary was “Mom” to her while to Kate she was “Mommy.”

“Is your mom handy, honey?”

“I’ll go get her for you, Sam. Are you coming over tonight?”

“I hope so. If I don’t get too busy.”

“On Saturday night Mom always makes tacos.”

“I’ll bet they’re good.”

“Thanks, honey.” Mary was on the line now from the kitchen.

“I told Sam that if he came over tonight he could have tacos.”

Laughing, Mary said, “I believe the legal term for that is bribery.”

“I’m going to finish my book now. It’s due at the library today. Bye, Sam.”

“Bye, sweetie.”

“It’s official now. They both like you.”

“And they say they’ll give me tacos.”

We spent several minutes talking about last night and then I asked her if I’d gotten any calls.

“Just one. Whoever you talked to at the hospital gave you a courtesy call back saying that Will’s doctor would like you to call him.”

I wrote the number down and read it back to her to be sure.

“So do I make extra tacos tonight for a certain visitor?”

“Muy tacos. Muy.”

“I was in your Spanish class, remember? I’m trying to think — which one of us got the A and which one got the C?”

“Yeah, I felt sorry for you when we saw our report cards. And you’d studied so hard.”

“Uh-huh.”

That was when Kevin Maines walked in. His uniform today was short sleeves and walking shorts, necessary when you’re dragging your ass through high eighties, high humidity as a U.S. mailman. He also wore the postal service’s version of the pith helmet.

“I’ll call you later, Mary.”

Usually on Saturdays Kevin just shoves the mail underneath the door. Today he set three number-ten envelopes and a small manila envelope on my desk.

His light blue shirt was soaked darker blue under his pits. “Anything new on that Donovan thing?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“I know two people who used to work for Donovan. One said he was a great guy and one said he was a giant asshole.”

“I suppose we’ve all got some of both in us.”

“Yeah, my boss is like that. You never know who you’re gonna meet when you show up in the morning. I could live without that kinda crap.”

The number-ten envelopes contained two bills and a check from a client paying off his entire eight-hundred-dollar fee. Very nice.

The manila envelope contained three photographs and a short note. After I’d read the latter and studied the photographs, I got up and walked down the hall and got myself a Pepsi. Then I came back and went through the photos and note again.

I lined up the three small color photos on my desk. Each depicted the same couple in three different settings. One in a back yard in bright afternoon, judging by the shadows where they were making out. The second was in a small river pavilion just at dusk. And the third was entering a motel room. In the one in a back yard he had his hand on her ass.

They had one of those relationships where enough was never enough. Valerie Donovan and Lon Anders.

I wondered what Chief Foster, aka “Paul,” would make of these.

Sometimes the obvious conclusion was the correct conclusion. They’re having an affair. Lon has always wanted the business to himself anyway. Like just about everybody else, he’s seen Double Indemnity or one of its dozens and dozens of knockoffs. He knows how this sort of thing works. But he’s smarter than the people in the James M. Cain novel or movie. He waits until he has the chance to make it look like a murder by someone else who seemed to have a motive. The argument between Will and Donovan was well known. So was the fight they had at the party.

What better time to murder Donovan?

This time I called Kenny.

“You ever hear anything about Valerie Donovan?”

“I heard she got it on with the tennis instructor at the country club.”

“Those tennis instructors sure get a lot of ass. Anything else?”

“The marriage was pretty rocky for quite a while. He couldn’t have kids and he wouldn’t let her adopt. He was also very possessive. He slept around himself. By the way, I’m looking into every single person involved in this. Anders doesn’t publicize this but he’s been married three times. He also went on a long weekend to Chicago with Teddy Byrnes two weeks ago.”

“Isn’t he on parole?”

“Not so’s you’d notice.”

“That Chicago weekend is what interests me most. I doubt Donovan knew about it. He wouldn’t have liked it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Byrnes is a real loyal guy. Donovan’s the one who helps him try to turn his life around and he throws in with the other guy.”

“But Donovan got something out of helping him. He had to or he wouldn’t have done it.”

“What a cynical man you are, Sam McCain.”

“Realistic. I know a lot of Steve Donovans.”

“Well, I’ll keep working. I tried you about twenty minutes ago but there wasn’t any answer.”

“I’ve had a busy morning. I watched the parade for a few minutes.”

“Did O’Shay ascend into heaven in glowing robes?”

“Damn near.”

“He’s still going to lose. That poll in the newspaper last week really surprised me.”

Five hundred Black River Fallsians were asked their opinion on the war. Sixty-five percent wanted to withdraw within a year. My town, like most of America, had had enough. It was the politicians who hadn’t.

“I’ll be in touch.”

I spent ten minutes getting ready. I went in the john and washed my face and combed my hair and then I turned to my emergency closet. Spare sport coat, spare necktie, spare Old Spice. I always wore trousers that would look all right with the emergency sport coat if the need arose.

I stood next to my desk for a few minutes trying to plan what would be the most effective presentation. The problem was that I had no idea what I was walking into. The only thing I could count on was that it likely would not be civil. In fact it could get downright ugly. Everyone involved was under great stress and stress doesn’t make for civil, rational conversations.

I knew I was putting it off because it was not anything I would even have considered if Will’s future wasn’t involved. I went through the photographs trying to put them in proper order for dramatic effect.

Probably the one in the back yard where they were making out. And he had his hand on her ass.

Yeah, that one would probably get her attention.

14

I was worried about mourners, family, and friends visiting or even staying overnight. Getting to her would be difficult. The best possibility was that Valerie Donovan would stay alone so Anders could slither in after dark. Or maybe even figure a way to get in during daylight.

The home was old-money gentry. A two-story brick with three-stall garage and enough chimneys to wear out Santa Claus and three gables to confuse him on a dark night. A full-size swimming pool in back as well as a screened-in porch that ran the width of the long house. This was a notable house because it had been built during the depth of the Depression by a banker who had wisely withdrawn all his cash from his place of work a month and a half before the crash. He was not exactly beloved and when he died at thirty-nine not even an O’Shay parade could have saved his reputation.

This was one of the rich people’s homes my folks had driven by after Mass on Sundays. My mother had read all about it in the paper and gave us details of the interior that only a smart guide could.

No cars in the long, wide driveway. I parked and then walked to an imposing front door of intricately carved wood. The brass knocker was half the size of a basketball. I used the doorbell.

The home was isolated because of a ravine on the west side and a steep hill on the other. I tried the knocker now. Twice and then once more for luck.

She might not be home. She might be sleeping. She might be on the phone. She might not want visitors of any kind except for Anders.

I decided to try the back porch.

On my way around, a fat, cute, little brown-and-white puppy showed up to accompany me on my journey. I had to slow down because those tiny legs were churning too fast already. I stopped a couple of times to pet him. He smelled doggy good.

The porch was as advertised, an immense stone screened monument to good times for people who could afford it. The furnishings ran to expensive couches, chairs, and divans more appropriate to the interior. But there wasn’t a great deal of it. Given the spaciousness of it and the flagstone floor it was easy to guess that intimate parties of fifteen to twenty privileged souls could be held here. There were small bars at both ends of the porch.

Valerie — at least I assumed it was Valerie — had her back to me as she stood talking to somebody on a phone that had a cord that would stretch the length of the place.

“No, of course I don’t want to see you. I never want to see you.” Then, “Well, you had that coming. Just because I’m trying to be cautious you tell me I don’t want to see you. I’m supposed to be the bereaved widow, remember? And in fact I am feeling terrible about it.” Listening. Then, “Well, you’ve been married three times and had sex with seventy percent of the women in this town so you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about. When we were first married I loved Steve, loved him deeply. And I made a total commitment to him. So I miss him. Is that all right? And I hope that bastard who killed him doesn’t get off with some kind of insanity defense. And it really does piss me off, Lon, that you don’t understand a single fucking thing about making a commitment.” Then, “This conversation isn’t doing either one of us any good. Let’s talk later.”

She slammed the phone and then turned to set it on a mahogany table and that was when she saw me.

Hands on hips. “And just who the hell would you be?” A gray skirt that loved every inch of her lower body as the turquoise blouse loved the upper.

“My name’s Sam McCain. We’ve met a few times socially.”

“Must have been memorable. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was hoping I could talk to you for a little while.”

“Wait. You’re Esme’s investigator. Sam McCain; I thought that was familiar. I like Esme. She’s one of the few people I can really talk to in this whole town. I’m sorry if I was abrupt. But I really don’t want to talk right now.”

“It’s kind of important.”

A queenly sigh. There was a cool grandness to her beauty that intimidated me. I waved the manila envelope at her and felt, for the first time, in control.

“You really should see these, Mrs. Donovan.”

Hands on her hips again. “I think I’ll call Esme and tell her that her little investigator is a pest. How would that be?”

I took her pause as permission to mount the three stone steps and join her on the back porch.

I waved the envelope at her again. “What I have here, Mrs. Donovan, is three photographs of you with Lon Anders. In one of them you’re going into a motel room and in another he’s kissing you and he has his hand on your ass.”

She had a wonderful strong fuck-you laugh. “So Steve finally hired you to follow me around. Lon said he was too stupid to know what was going on. That’s Lon’s ego. He thinks everybody except him is stupid. So when did he hire you?”

“He didn’t hire me, he hired an investigator from Des Moines. A very good one.”

“So why isn’t he here instead of you?”

“Somebody tried to kill him last night. He’s in the hospital in bad shape.”

“I suppose you want me to feel sorry for someone who was spying on me.”

“I wouldn’t want you to put yourself out.”

“I suppose you’re considered a wit.”

“Just by my mom.”

“I just may call Esme.” The bluff was one thing she wasn’t good at.

“Good. Then I’ll feel free to show her these photos.”

She slapped me across the ear. For all the delicacy of her face, neck, arms, and wrists, she had a slap that was three-quarters of the way to being a punch. “Sit down on the couch and let’s get this over with.”

My ear smarting, I obeyed her Majesty and took a seat on a peach-colored couch. She sat close but not too close. There was no way she was going to let me put my hand on her ass.

“Let’s get this straight. You’re not going to get very much money from me. I’ll tell you that right now.”

“I’m not here to blackmail you, Mrs. Donovan. I want to prove that Will Cullen didn’t kill your husband.”

“Well of course Cullen killed him. Who else would have?”

“Possibly Anders.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“He wanted you and he wanted the business.”

An amused noise. “You have it backwards. He wanted the business and he wanted me.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

The same amused noise. “I forgot. You overheard me on the phone just now. Well, what you heard was me salving a very pretty man’s ego. He’s fun. He thinks because I’ve been sleeping with him — and he’s very skilled at that — that I’m one of those stupid little girls he’s used to. He expects me to swoon every time he calls me. He’s also deluded himself into believing that I want to marry him. I don’t want to marry him any more than he wants to marry me. What’s funny is that he’s a romantic. He likes convincing himself that he’s in love with certain women who just happen to have something he wants besides the love story nonsense.”

“Do you think he understands that you don’t love him?”

The smile of conquest. “Not right now. He’s still in the romance phase. He still wants the business and me as a bonus.”

“Well, he’s got one of them, anyway.”

“Not necessarily. With Steve gone I’ve now got fifty percent of everything.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Steve. With Will and Steve fighting, Anders saw the chance to lay the murder on Will.”

“I don’t believe that. I just keep thinking of poor Steve lying in that parking lot all night. And I mean ‘poor’ in case you think I didn’t care for him. Loved him madly for a number of years, but that all got lost because he cheated on me so much. I begged him and I warned him but he wouldn’t listen. So I started sleeping around myself. I could’ve kept a private investigator busy for years.”

Then from on high: “You’re a pesky little prick. I suppose some women find you cute.”

“I’m too modest to comment.”

An actual smile. “So if you’re not going to blackmail me, what’ll you do with the photographs?”

“I haven’t decided. I might try them on Anders.”

“Do you usually get this obsessed? I told you Lon had nothing to do with Steve’s death.”

“Then if you believe that, help me.”

“How?”

“Don’t tell him we talked. Let me try these photos on him.”

“It’s a waste of time but I suppose I could go along with it.”

“One more thing — what did your husband think of Anders as a business partner?”

“That’s the only interesting question you’ve asked me.”

“How so?”

She sat back on the couch. The azure eyes were reflective. Her looks would not let go of me. “He loved Al like a little brother.”

“Al Carmichael, his former business partner.”

“Yes. They were like a couple of college boys together. The first years of the business were so successful they had plans to get as much as thirty percent of the market. Then one of their competitors invented a new spin on the basic product and Steve and Al lost market share instead of gaining it. The friendship suffered to the point that even Amanda — Al’s wife — and I were cool to each other. And then Lon came along. I understand why so many people dislike him but he’s a fantastic sales manager. He got profits up almost from the start. And he also made it clear that he wanted Al out and that he planned to be Steve’s partner. I felt sorry for Al and Amanda and I didn’t like Lon at all. But Steve did and Al was out. Just like that. Lon made things so uncomfortable for him there that one day he walked out and never came back.”

“But eventually you took to Lon.”

A subtle exquisite smile. “I told you he was a fantastic salesman.”

She moved with instinctive grace and offered a slender hand. “I’ve never been in a conspiracy before.”

“You’re betraying Anders, you know.”

“How many times do you think he’s betrayed me? Sometimes I worry that he’s going to give me one of those diseases he might get from all the stupid little girls he sleeps with. I was very careful in the days when I was sleeping around. Lon’s never careful about anything. Part of his charm is his recklessness.”

“He might have been reckless enough to kill your husband.”

“I still don’t believe you, but you’ve managed to plant a very tiny seed of doubt in my mind.”

“And if I prove that he did it?”

She hesitated. Closed her eyes. And when she opened them she looked at me directly. “I’ll do everything I can to see that he never leaves prison. I’ll go on the stand and admit to having an affair with him and not worry about my reputation at all.”

That was when the chubby, cute little dog barked. “That’s Ivanhoe. Steve got him from the pound about six weeks ago. I prefer cats myself. But I have to admit Ivanhoe has ingratiated himself with me. A bit like you have with me, McCain. Even though I think you’re way, way wrong about Lon.”

On the way back to my car I played with Ivanhoe for a few minutes. He liked to ram headfirst into my leg as if he was trying to topple a statue.

The way I was trying to topple Lon Anders.

15

From Valerie’s I drove out to Cherie’s, the roadhouse where Donovan had been drinking the night he was killed. Saturday was the only day they served lunch here so the packed parking lot didn’t surprise me.

I took a stool and surveyed the dining area that spread out below the raised bar. Customers generally dressed up some when they came here at night but this afternoon summer clothes, even beach clothes, were the standard.

I ordered a Hamm’s draught and then asked if I could speak to Mr. Hobart, the manager.

“Something wrong, sir?”

“No, no, this is a very nice place. No complaints. This is a private matter.”

“I’ll need a name.”

“Sam McCain.”

He was mid-twenties with Beatles hair and a jaunty way of mixing drinks. He also had a good bartender’s innate suspicion for anything untoward a customer might say.

“Just a second.”

He stepped over to the phone next to the cash register, punched in three numbers, and then started talking in a quiet voice. He nodded and hung up and came back to me.

There were four booths in the west corner of the bar. He pointed to them and said, “Neil said to wait in one of the booths over there and he’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” I picked up my draught.

A few minutes turned out to be sixteen or seventeen minutes according to my watch. The bar got more and more crowded. Most of the men along it were now watching the Cubs game on the elevated twenty-seven-inch screen.

I knew Neil Hobart from the downtown group that perpetually tried to have its way with the city council. The group was the new Establishment but they wouldn’t have full power until the present group retired or passed on.

Very cool, very expensive fawn-colored collarless shirt, flowing white trousers with fawn-colored belt yet. Rimless glasses and thinning blond hair in a ponytail. How cool is too cool?

No handshake. He sat down across from me and said, “You’re wasting your time, McCain.”

“I hear that a lot.”

“Everything I know I told to that new police chief.” I wanted to give him a quarter tip for not calling him “Paul.”

“So I suppose you think Will Cullen is guilty?”

“I have a friend in the department. He laid it all out for me. Of course he’s guilty. And if that isn’t enough, I was at the luncheon for Senator O’Shay this noon. He’s convinced it’s an airtight case. That kind of says it all, doesn’t it?”

“When Donovan was out here drinking the other night did you talk to him much?”

“Some. I felt sorry for the guy. This is a bullshit war and he’s one of the people who paid for it. I tried to be as nice as I could but he was getting way too drunk. I did everything I could to get him to take a cab. I even offered to drive him home myself if he’d just wait till closing time.”

“How was Will?”

“Sort of pathetic. He just kept drinking and saying that he wanted to be friends again with Donovan. But Donovan just kept pushing him away.”

“Physically, you mean?”

“Yeah. Will’d get close and Donovan would tell him to shut up and go away. And a couple of times he gave him a little push. No big deal. I finally got Will to go into the dining room and do his drinking.”

“Was Lon Anders here that night?”

“I had a dinner that night so I didn’t get out here until around nine. He wasn’t here while I was. Why’re you asking about Anders?”

“Just doing my job.”

“Anders is a friend of mine.”

“All I said was that I was doing my job and that is all I’m doing. How about Teddy Byrnes?”

A sneer as cool as his shirt. “Yeah. He was here for an hour before I got here. Then he left when I got my friend Heinrich to help me. He’s one of our chefs and I had to pay a lot of money for him to come here from Chicago. Eight years ago he was still in Hamburg and he wasn’t working as a chef. Have you ever heard of Sankt Georg?”

“No.”

“You’re taking your life in your hands to walk around there at night. Heinrich grew up there and pulled two years as a bouncer in a club where he claims there were at least two murders a month. I need any help with some psycho bastard like Byrnes, I just walk back and sic Heinrich on him. As soon as Heinrich got Byrnes in a hammerlock and then jammed his thumb in Byrnes’s eye, I assumed the fight was over. And then Byrnes slipped the hold and knocked Heinrich out in one punch. And he was out for almost ten minutes. I got scared he wasn’t going to wake up.”

“What happened to Byrnes?”

“He took a long look at how unconscious Heinrich looked and split.”

“But he was here and I assume you’ll testify to that.”

“Of course I will. But that’s a long haul to prove that he had anything to do with Steve’s death. I admired Steve for serving the country, by the way, but he was totally full of shit about the war. You didn’t do so well by it yourself, McCain, and you didn’t even get over there. That was one hell of an accident.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t fun.”

“I lucked out. Heart palpitations since I was young. They’ve never really bothered me that much but they were my ticket out so I have developed a fondness for them.”

He was out of the booth and this time his hand was out.

As we shook, he said, “For what it’s worth, I know Will from the times he’s been out here. I like him and I feel sorry for him.”

“But he’s still guilty, huh?”

“I’m sorry, man,” he said, “but he’s still guilty.”

The psych ward. I had called Lindsey Shepard but was told that she and her husband were probably on the ward now visiting with Will Cullen. I assumed I could persuade them to let me speak to Will.

I stepped off the elevator and was confronted by a long desk and two thick-looking doors to the left and right. Both bore signs: ONLY PEOPLE WITH PASSES ALLOWED. The air was somehow different here. Confined, claustrophobic.

A man in a blue security guard uniform laid his paperback down on the desk and said, “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I’d like to talk to Will Cullen but to do that I need to speak to Lindsey Shepard first. Are she and her husband here?”

The guard checked his clipboard list. “Yes, she’s still here. Her husband left.”

“Would you get her on the phone? I’m sure she’ll say it’s all right.”

“I’ll have to ask you for your driver’s license.”

“Of course.” I handed my billfold over.

He studied the photo and then studied me and then handed the billfold back.

“That’s Lindsey Shepard you’d like to see?”

“Yes.”

“Nice lady.”

“Yes, she is.”

He shook his hand as if it had been asleep and punched numbers on his phone. Then, “Kay, would you tell Mrs. Shepard that there’s a man named Sam McCain who’d like to come back and see her?” Listening. “Sure, I’ll hang on.” Cupping the phone and to me, “Still as hot out there?”

“Feels worse than ever.”

“I don’t want to leave work. The air conditioning. All we’ve got at home are three fans. I could probably pull an extra shift if I wanted to but I’d feel guilty. I sorta feel guilty already. Here I’m sittin’ in air conditioning and the wife and my three kids are sweatin’ it out at home.”

I heard a voice through his muffling hand.

“Yeah. Fine. I’ll buzz him in right now. Thanks, Kay.” After hanging up, he said, “There’s a small reception area. That’s what you’ll be standing in when you go in there. Just wait and a nurse will come to meet you. She’ll bring Mrs. Shepard to you.”

Why couldn’t the nurse just take me back to Will’s room? What the hell was going on?

The buzz that let me in was quick and quiet. The waiting area was plastic flowers, uncomfortable-looking chairs, two tables piled with magazines, and the kind of framed paintings you can buy on the highway sometimes from trucks and people who look like stereotypical Gypsies.

I stood and waited.

Most hospital floors are busy and noisy during the day. Two corridors stretched in front of me and in the center of them was the nurses’ station. I could hear conversations working their way down the halls but they were subdued; the only familiar sound was the occasional squeak of a nurse’s shoe on a polished floor.

This afternoon Lindsey Shepard had shed her casual look for a summer suit of ivory-colored linen. Her hair was combed back somewhat dramatically. This more conventional Lindsey lost the appeal of her former self.

“I’ve tried calling you several times, Sam.”

“Out and about. I just decided to run up here in case Will had started talking.”

“I wish he was. I think Dr. Rattigan got a little overexcited when Will started showing signs that he was at least understanding what people were saying to him. Doctor Rattigan asked me to come over right away. I was getting my photograph taken for a brochure we’re doing. He saved me from that but I’ve been sitting with Will for two hours now and not getting anywhere. Chief Foster has been here twice and he’s called twice. But there’s nothing to report.” Then, “Would you be willing to spend a little time with him?”

“Of course.”

“He’s sitting in a chair next to the window. The nurse said that when she first came in around seven o’clock this morning he’d gotten up out of bed and moved a chair around so he could look out. We’ve cut back on two of his meds to see if that might make him less groggy.”

“I’ll just sit there and try to talk to him.”

“Hopefully he’ll recognize you. And hopefully he’ll trust you more than he does us. You two have been friends for years.”

“A quarter century.”

She hadn’t lost that gamine smile. “Perfect.”

Once I got to the center of the psych ward I saw that it wasn’t as quiet as I’d thought. There was a group room with a large-screen TV, a ping pong table, smaller tables where both checkers and chess were being played, an exercise bike, and a tall bookcase stacked full with paperbacks. I noticed that there was a small square device in the wall near a snack table. When patients wanted to light a cigarette they went there, pressed the cigarette in what appeared to be a hole in the device and got their smoke going.

“It’s a heating coil for smoking,” Lindsey said. “This is the only place they’re allowed to light up.”

“Are you afraid of fire?”

“That’s the first concern. Falling asleep with a cigarette going. But there are also patients we wouldn’t be comfortable with having matches or a lighter.”

A pair of the men playing chess waved to Lindsey. None of the others here took notice of her. Or me.

The patient rooms were small and functional. Bed, bureau, shower, TV, closet. Soft blue colored walls. The room had no particular odor, certainly not a hospital one. The only window was large relative to the size of the room and at a glance looked over the far east side of the town where housing developments and a sprawling mall were under construction. If there was solace in the view it would be in the distant piney hills where horses and short-haul trains still ran.

Will had angled the chair so that he could easily turn to see somebody come into his room. He must have heard us enter but he showed no interest in identifying who we were. He wore a handsome wine-colored robe. His hair was mussed. You could see that he — or more likely a nurse — had worked with a comb or brush to give it some shape but it hadn’t worked.

“Will, guess who’s here? This’ll make you very happy.”

She spoke to him as if he would respond with jovial interest. She took both sides of his chair and said, “Why don’t we move you around so you two can have a nice talk?”

“Here,” I said, “I can do it.”

I got behind him and slid the chair around so that it faced the plain wooden chair against the west wall. His chair had thick cushions and wide wooden arms.

I stepped back then and got my first good look at him.

Though I knew this was impossible, he seemed to have lost some serious weight. Maybe ten pounds or more. Impossible. But he was so gaunt, his cheekbones sharper than they’d ever been and the flesh around his dark eyes so bruised from exhaustion they looked as if someone had punched him. He peered out at me from another realm, an unimaginable space that only he inhabited. Not the world we normally shared.

I thought of all the stories I’d heard from the vets. How wounds and grief alike would send soldiers into the kind of shock that sometimes nobody could bring them back from. They just died in that realm.

Or maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe in Will’s realm he wasn’t alone. Maybe the ghost of the little girl he’d killed was with him. Maybe this retreat from reality didn’t have much if anything to do with Steve Donovan. Maybe it was the little girl who’d drawn him irretrievably back into himself.

“Say something to him, Sam.”

I picked up the wooden chair and moved it closer to him. After I sat down, I said, “I’ve been thinking about you, Will. I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing.”

I felt silly. When I was very small I had a plastic Roy Rogers figure that I probably got for a box top and a quarter from whatever cereal sponsored him. It was probably six, seven inches tall and showed Roy all decked out in his fancy cowboy attire. He was then the most popular cowboy on radio and in comic books. My dad used to laugh about me talking to Roy before I went to sleep at night. Dad said I carried on a lot of one-way conversations.

Will wasn’t any more responsive than Roy had been all those long years ago.

He scratched his nose, he blinked a few times, he sneezed, he sighed and he shifted in his chair trying to get more comfortable. What he didn’t do was show any recognition of me in his vacant gaze.

“Remember when we beat Taylor school in softball, Will?”

Over the next twenty minutes I tried a number of those memory shakers. None worked. Lindsey had left soon after I’d started in on them. She popped back in every few minutes.

I had the feeling I was talking to an alien life form. One of those invaders who look exactly like us but are unable to pass because they don’t react the way they should.

Poor Karen; even worse, poor Peggy Ann.

He narrowed his eyes once. He was assessing me, that was what it felt like anyway. He could talk but he chose not to. I was sure of it.

On her reappearance Lindsey said, “You’ve certainly done your best, Sam.”

“I think he sort of acknowledged me at least. In his eyes. And a couple of times when I mentioned something we’d done together I saw his lips tug at the corners as if he might be trying to smile.”

“That’s very good news.”

“So now what?”

“Doctor Rattigan has another drug he’d like to try.”

“You think he knows what he’s doing? Shouldn’t you be in the lead here? You’re a shrink.”

“I should hire you to do my publicity. Doctor Rattigan is both a neurosurgeon and a psychiatrist. He’d be in a major hospital except he had a falling-out with his superior. He said, ‘I’m the undisputed star here and I don’t have to have fools trying to second-guess everything I do.’”

“Remind me to kiss his ring when I finally meet him.”

She led me out of the room, closing the door almost silently behind her. “Randall’s on his way now. We do shifts and then take breaks. He went home to take a nap. We have four other patients here so we keep busy. We quit around nine and then go home for a late supper. I finally broke down — I’m cheap — and hired a woman to cook all our dinners for us. They’re there waiting in the fridge. I just pop them in the oven and we have some delicious food.”

Then we were back in the waiting area.

“If there’s any change I’ll let you know, Sam. But as you can see, Dr. Rattigan got pretty excited for nothing.”

“Are you going to point that out to him?”

The eyes were briefly winsome.

“Why, I thought you were going to do that for me.”

“If I even knew what he looked like I just might do it, the mood I’m in.”

“He’s tall, dark, and handsome.” Then, “Just ask him.”

”I take it you’re not a fan.”

“No, not especially. But if you’ve been around many surgeons you know he’s pretty much par for the course.”

And with that she left me.

I rode down in the elevator, depressed about Will. That gaze; even when he got better I’d never forget it. The gaze was an open wound. I didn’t know how Karen handled seeing him. She had to wonder if he’d ever be the same. Along with wondering if he’d ever be judged as innocent.

I stepped out of the air conditioning and into the long, hot day. The heat aggravated me.

On the drive out to Mary’s I once again tried to puzzle through it all. If I could count on Valerie Donovan keeping her promise about not telling Anders that I had the photos — then confronting Anders was the likeliest move to make. He wouldn’t be easy to intimidate but maybe knowing that he’d been under surveillance would damage his ego to the extent that he would make a mistake.

A long shot but everything available to me was a long shot now.

Then as I drove I started hearing the girls in my head. Their laughter. Crazy Kate and Serious Nicole. I’d enjoyed spending time with my sister’s kids when I’d visited my mother in Chicago after leaving the military hospital. But they were in their early teens so they weren’t as much spontaneous fun as Mary’s girls.

And then I was pulling into her drive. And then Kate and Nicole were running out to meet me. And then Mary was standing on the porch in jeans, blouse, and apron waving at me with a big wooden spoon.

The girls grabbed my hands and Kate said, “I helped Mommy make the tacos.”

“That means they’ll be extra good, I bet.”

Kate nodded and grinned and clutched my hand tighter.

I was so tired and so down, I just let them rescue me.

16

After the tacos, after the girls told me what they’d done during the day, after the one scoop of Rocky Road ice cream we each got, after Kate showed me the drawing of me she’d done, after Nicole showed me the drawing of me she’d done (I loved them both, even if Nicole’s more resembled a human being though not necessarily me), after they were trotted in to take their baths, after they trotted out themselves in their nightshirts, after I read them Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, after they took a turn at drama protesting bedtime, after they told Mommy that it was me who should put them to bed, after they persuaded me to tell them a story (not half bad if I do say so myself), after I turned their light out, after they peppered me with more questions as I made my way to their door, after I made a pit stop and after I wandered back to the living room, I said, “I’m really happy they like me as much as they do, but I guess I don’t quite understand why.”

“I’m so tired by the end of the day I’m not always a lot of fun. And they love playing with you. Plus you’re sweet with them. And it got so bitter by the time of our divorce. They really appreciate a man who is nice to their mom. Poor Nicole saw her father kissing the woman he was cheating with. He’d taken her along with him to pick up some things at the store. Then he apparently couldn’t control himself and drove over to see the woman. He went inside her house and stayed longer than he apparently realized. Nicole had to go to the bathroom very badly. So she just followed where he’d gone. The house had a side door, a glass one, and when Nicole got up to it there was her dad and this woman really making out. She’s never gotten over it. I sent her to a counselor. The counselor said she’s making progress. I guess I’ve talked about you so much in the last year or so the kids couldn’t wait to meet you. You’re fun and easygoing, Sam. You know how my ex is. Control freaks don’t have much fun in life. They’re always worrying that there’s somebody who’s doing something they wouldn’t approve of. Then one night he hit me very hard in the face.”

“What? He hit you?”

“With his full fist. I had a big bruise on my left cheek. He knocked me to the floor and I think I was unconscious for a minute or so. I remember Nicole kissing me and kissing me and screaming for me to wake up. Kate was just sobbing. They really turned against him after that. But I feel so sorry for them; they’re conflicted. As much as they think they hate him they still love him. That’s what’s so terrible about divorce. All the conflicts kids develop.”

“Remind me to deck that bastard the next time I see him.”

“That’s what we need, Sam. More violence.”

I laughed. “Well, he sure as hell has it coming.”

“How about you shut up and we just watch TV?”

We were on the couch. She was in my arms. We were idly watching The Glen Campbell Show. Enjoying it at one remove as we necked and vaguely fooled around. I liked her looks, her flesh, her scents and most especially I liked her.

When the phone rang we had to untangle and she grabbed it with a thumb and two fingers from the table next to the couch.

“Hello.” Then, “Yes, he’s right here.”

She handed me the receiver and then stood up to smooth down her Levi’s and straighten her blouse. Without a bra she had become my goddess.

“Hello.”

Lindsey Shepard. “Randall and Chief Foster are in with Will now. He’s talking semi-coherently.”

“What changed since this afternoon?”

“There’s no way of knowing. I need to tell you something that you won’t like. Chief Foster was very gentle with him but he did ask the questions he normally would in an interrogation. And when he talked about Donovan dying Will broke down. Sobbing. He just kept saying he didn’t mean to kill Donovan. Chief Foster took that as a confession but I’m not sure it is. Will is so confused we had to remind him of his name a few times.”

“He didn’t kill Donovan.”

“I know, Sam, I’m on your side. I’m trying to help Will but Foster’s trying to put him in prison. I was against allowing Foster in here until we’d spent more time with Will but he insisted and finally Randall gave in and said all right.”

“I wish Randall had held out longer.”

“Foster puts on a good front. He pretends he’s so easygoing and understanding, but when I watched him with Will this afternoon I saw the predator side of him. He stayed calm and he even apologized to Will a few times. But it was all part of his act. He’s a master at head games. He led Will right into saying that he didn’t mean to kill Donovan. You should have heard him. He started talking about the girl Will had killed in Vietnam and then he asked Will how he would feel if he knew that some people thought he’d also killed Donovan. Very clever. He kept working that until Will broke down and said what he said.” Fatigue was her tone of voice now. She’d been there most of the day and what a day it had been. Getting nowhere and then Will suddenly speaking only to implicate himself in the killing.

“I’d better go now, Sam. Randall and I need to go home. Doctor Rattigan gave Will a heavy-duty sleeping pill.”

“I hope someday Will’ll be able to realize all you’ve done for him, Lindsey.”

“How about you, Sam? Look what you’re doing for him.”

“Right now that feels like very little.”

“All we can do is keep working, hoping.”

We said our good-nights.

Mary, who was standing over me, watched me replace the receiver and then handed me a cold bottle of Hamm’s. “So Will is talking?”

“Not making a lot of sense sometimes. And when he made a little bit of sense he implicated himself in Donovan’s killing.” The beer was magical elixir. I put the chilled bottle next to my forehead. I flashed on the military hospital, the headaches. If the mystical power of the icy glass against my head couldn’t stave one off, what could?

“Feel like messing around?”

“I hate to say it, but I’m wasted.”

She took my hand. “That’s fine, Sam. You’re not my gigolo.”

The image was so comic my groin responded faintly. “Well, for now let’s say that my last statement may be subject to revision.”

“I’m tired myself so either way is good for me. I enjoy just sitting here with you.”

I’d been involved three or four times in what I’d imagined were serious relationships but more and more I realized that this one was different. There was a comfort, an ease with Mary the other affairs had lacked. I’d always been afraid they would leave me, an anxiety that never quite disappeared. It wasn’t that I took Mary for granted — she could always leave me, too — but that I trusted her. I’d known her as a friend, even as a buddy sometimes, and as a substitute girlfriend to carry me through the worst patches with Pamela Forrest, and finally as a lover. I was just more relaxed now.

So we ended up in bed about twenty minutes later. There are numerous types of lovemaking. That night we created a new kind, exhausted sex. Short and sweet, followed with her spooning me and deep, deep sleep.

Anders had built his glass-and-wood faux manse on a hill overlooking a long stretch of meadow on the north end of town. Like a good detective, I’d brought along my binoculars so I could see if his Porsche was there. And it was.

I was parked on the gravel road that ran past his place. I knew an investigator who claimed that the only way to get through a stakeout was to jerk off. He liked to tell the story that one night he had three sessions with himself he was so bored. My stakeout was less rewarding. I thought about Gordon Niven, how he was doing. I’d lost sight of him in all the pressure of other things.

But Niven didn’t last long in my thoughts. I concentrated on Anders. The concrete driveway from his house to the road was narrow enough to play a trick on him. A trick that would rattle and piss him off enough to take me seriously. Laying the photos on him, I would at least become dangerous.

It took a while. Sunday morning is when the respectable ministers hit the radio. Their version of things is reasonable, compassionate. I rate everybody on my fantasy Snore-o-Meter. It goes from one to ten. Ten is when, in terms of radio, you not only turn it off, you spit at it. They were cruising along at about seven. I missed the weekday crew who had everything but rubbers to sell you in the name of Jesus and who wanted you to shoot your neighbors if you just happened to suspect they might be Satan disguised in a golfing outfit.

And then, thanks to my binoculars, he was walking out his door and heading to the double garage separate from the house.

Oh but wait... Who is that woman leaving his house now?

Why it’s none other than...Valerie Donovan.

So much for being careful and endangering her reputation as suffering widow.

He backed the gleaming Porsche out of the garage and then she got in.

My plan could misfire if I was late or early by even five seconds. I was in place, my foot was on the gas and I was ready. It helped that I disliked him as much as I did. I had no doubt that he’d sicced Byrnes on Gordon Niven. Damn right I was ready.

He fired down the drive three times faster than was sensible and when he saw me he started leaning on his horn. The sound perfectly captured the rage he had for some rodent who was parked horizontally across his driveway, blocking him almost entirely. The next part wasn’t pretty at all. The screech of his tires, the horn still blasting and even with the windows closed, Valerie’s screams.

For the first time I realized that he might not be able to stop. He could smash into me at a good clip and all three of us would suffer for it.

But screeching, fishtailing, still using his horn, he came to a stop about five feet from my car.

Then he was out of his car with a pistol in his hand. His face was heart-attack red and his eyes deranged.

And then I was out of my car with my dad’s forty-five in my right hand and the manila envelope in my left.

Valerie was still in the car. She was crying.

Anders and I faced off.

“You shoot me, Anders, copies of these photos get mailed by my secretary to the chief of police. He should be interested in you and Valerie having an affair.”

“For what it’s worth, I could kill you right now, you little pissant, and get away with it. You were trespassing.”

“I’m on county property, you stupid fuck.”

Valerie was out of the car. In a light blue dress, her dark hair catching the sunlight, she was more stunning than the day itself.

“Will you two dumb bastards put your guns away? Aren’t we all having enough trouble already?”

“I want to kill this little piece of shit.”

“Good for you, Lon. There’ve been plenty of times I’ve wanted to kill you but I didn’t because I’m what you might call civilized. Now give me your gun.”

“You don’t know how to handle a gun.”

“I know not to pull one on somebody.” To me, “We could’ve cut you in half with Lon’s car, you dipshit. And that’s what you are, McCain. A pure and simple dipshit. I couldn’t think of the right word yesterday. But seeing you standing there with a gun and that manila envelope the right word just came to me.”

“The guy you had Byrnes put in the hospital. Byrnes figured out he was following you but he didn’t figure out that Niven already had some photos of you. Niven sent these to me because he was scared.”

“Byrnes should’ve killed that bastard.” Anders.

“You may get your wish. Niven’s in bad shape.”

“Wait a minute,” Valerie said. She’d been standing close to Anders but now she backed away as if she’d discovered he was toxic. Which he was, of course. “You had that pig Teddy Byrnes put somebody in the hospital?”

“Oh, for shit’s sake, Valerie, don’t get into one of your sanctimonious moods as usual. I did what I needed to. He was following me around. And now I learn he got photos of us. He would’ve blackmailed us.”

“He wouldn’t have blackmailed either one of you. He’s a decent guy.” Me.

“How many times have I told you that I don’t want you hanging around Teddy Byrnes? He’s a psychopath. When he looks at me I get terrified.”

“It’s all in your head.”

“Will you say that after he rapes and kills me some night when you’re not around? And give me that damned gun.”

He sighed like a diva, then handed it over.

“You too, dipshit. Bring it here.”

She was proving my suspicion that she was a one-woman liberation movement.

I walked over and handed it to her. She went to my car and opened the door and dropped them on the front seat.

“What the hell’re you doing?” Anders snapped.

“I’m riding back with him.”

“What the hell’re you talking about?”

“You may’ve had Byrnes kill a man.”

“He isn’t dead. He’s just hurt.”

“My God, listen to yourself, Lon. ‘He’s not dead. He’s just hurt.’ And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Maybe you had him kill Steve, too.” The idea that she might have been sleeping with the man who would go on to murder her husband — hiring it or doing it himself — broke her. She put both of her hands over her face and began weeping.

I reached out to touch her arm but Anders snarled at me.

“Don’t you ever touch that woman. She’s going to be my wife.”

Her weeping became cackling. “Did you hear him?” she said to me, her mascara running slivers of black down her cheeks. “He thinks I’m going to marry him after all this?”

Then came my marching orders, albeit teary ones. “C’mon. I want you to hide me someplace where this pig can’t ever find me.”

“I don’t believe this!” Anders was walking around in circles, throwing his hands up to the sky. “He parks in front of us and damn near kills us and you’re going off with him? And he has my gun! He has my gun! This is insane! Insane!”

He was still yelling at the innocent sky when she seated herself regally in my very unregal car, the handguns in her lap.

“I can’t believe I had an affair with him. I’m not stupid, am I?”

“No, you’re hardly stupid.”

“And I’m not a whore, am I?”

“No, I don’t think you’re a whore.”

“Then what am I?”

“You’re a woman who made a mistake is all.”

“I slept with the man who may have murdered my husband. That’s one hell of a big mistake.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess I’d have to agree with you there.”

Three minutes later:

“Are you going to turn him in?”

“I can’t prove he hired Byrnes to beat up Niven.”

“I heard him admit it. And so did you.”

“I don’t know if it’s enough.”

“And he also may have killed Steve.”

“That one he didn’t admit to.”

“I think he did it.”

“I think so, too. But there’s something I need to check out before I can be sure.” Then, “No offense, but Steve could be a jerk. Beating up Will and all.”

“I hate to say that with him gone and everything.”

“But he could be a jerk.”

“Yes; I guess I’d have to go along with that. But only sometimes. Sometimes he was the most loving man I ever knew. But then he started cheating on me — and it took its toll. It’s almost as if he’d forgotten how to woo me and love me. He must’ve been thinking of his girlfriend all the time. And it broke my heart.”

“But even though he was a jerk sometimes he was sort of a Boy Scout at the same time. John Wayne and all that stuff.”

“I never told him how stupid I thought the war was. But he was an Eagle Scout when he was in high school. And at the top of his ROTC class in college. So this war — he was all my country right or wrong. What Cullen did infuriated him.” Then, “Where are you going to hide me?”

“I have some friends I was thinking about. They’d be happy to make you comfortable and keep you safe.”

“That sounds perfect.”

But as we rolled closer to town...

“Do you mind if I ask where your friends live?”

“Over on Fourteenth Street and B Avenue.”

“On the southwest side, then?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm” being her last word for at least two minutes....

“I really hate imposing on people.”

“Of course you do.”

“And on that side of town the houses are pretty small.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Why thank you. I was thinking maybe it would be easier to take a suite at the Royale.”

“Register under a false name.”

“I didn’t even think of that. Perfect.” Then, “Could I hire you to stand guard?”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“You know, like a bodyguard.”

“I don’t think you need a bodyguard.”

“He could always bring in Teddy Byrnes.”

She was quite a female. So lost in herself she could insult you without even knowing it. But I admired her for mourning her husband. There I’d been wrong about her. And so I might be wrong about her fear of Anders. He really had looked insane back there at the bottom of his driveway.

“I know a couple of cops who’d sit in your room and keep you safe when they’re off-duty. You’d have to pay them of course.”

“But they’re police officers. Why would I have to pay them?”

“Off-duty, I said.”

“Well how much would it be?”

“Say five bucks an hour.”

“That could turn into a lot of money.”

“That’s what supermarkets pay them to direct traffic on weekends.”

“When you have money people are always trying to take advantage of you.”

“Those bastards,” I said. “Those dirty bastards.”

I guess my humor wasn’t to her taste. She didn’t laugh.

17

They wouldn’t let me talk to Will, so since Gordon Niven was in the same hospital I visited him.

He looked like most of the cartoons I’ve seen depicting some badly injured person in the hospital. Bandaged enough to make a passing reference to Boris Karloff as “The Mummy.”

“Remember now,” the nurse said as she left, “he can’t talk. The doctor put him in a coma.”

I pulled up a chair and sat next to him. I had a brief fantasy of taking a machete and dividing Byrnes into five slices.

The room was a single and even for a single a small one. Someone had placed a black rosary on his bandaged white hand. He was so gauze-wrapped it was hard to see any breaks or bruises. He slept. He was a mummy.

“I’m going to get that bastard for doing this to you.”

I looked around the room. Painting of Jesus on the west wall. For once he wasn’t pretty. Niven’s travel bag sat under the elevated TV set. He mumbled something and I instantly snapped my head around. Was he waking up?

I sat very still and listened. More mumbling but I had no idea if he was trying to say something or these were just noises inspired by things going on in his mind. I sat there for maybe ten minutes, then I decided to check out his travel bag.

Socks, underwear, shaving supplies, two folded golf shirts yellow and green, two small photo albums of Niven and a woman who was presumably his wife and their kids and grandkids, a paperback edition of The High Window by Chandler (I smiled when I remembered the discussion we’d had about Chandler), and then — the surprise — the same kind of back-pocket notebooks I used. Four of them lay on top of a tape recorder not much larger than the paperback.

I lifted the notebooks out and started reading them.

Like most of us in the business he datelined everything. 8/11/71. And then writing that was largely in code. Since the words were meant only for him, he didn’t care if anybody else could read them. Hell, he didn’t want anybody else to read them.

One day he had trailed Anders for nine hours. There was one sentence that made me wonder if Anders was cheating on Valerie. He’d gone into a new “Singles Only” apartment house and stayed for three hours.

That same night he followed Anders back to his business. Anders was inside about forty-five minutes and then he appeared in the parking lot with Donovan. “Anders shoved him; Donovan swung on him.” But he couldn’t pick up what the two men were arguing about.

Then I found a page that was a backgrounder on Anders.

“I hope you find those notebooks more useful than I did. He’s never let me look through them.”

I turned to find a woman of about sixty who was svelte and knowing but with charitable blue eyes and a hint of a smile. The gray chignon, the elegant cut of the gray dress were a perfect match for the slight air of superiority that celebrated the fact that she was still a stunner at her age.

I set the notebooks down. “I apologize. I’m nosy by profession. I’m a private investigator, too. My name’s Sam McCain.”

“I should have introduced myself.” She stepped smartly to me and took my hand. “I’m Gordon’s wife. Are you a friend of his?”

“I just met him. But I’ve been hearing about him for years.”

“Well, take some advice from me. Don’t ever try to figure him out. I’ve been married to him for thirty-three years and I never could find out what he’s all about. Our children say the same thing. You can never tell what he’s going to do next. I don’t think he even knows what he’s going to do next.” Another glance at him. The voice wan now. “There’s a good chance he won’t make it.” Then, “I drove down as soon as the hospital called me. I could barely concentrate on my driving. I didn’t want him to die before I could at least kiss him one more time.” Then, “He should’ve quit six or seven years ago. I begged him.” Then, “Do you know who did this to him?”

“I think I do.”

“Can you prove it?”

“No, not yet.”

“Is that person still in town?”

“Yes. He’s a psychopath. But I just promised Gordon that I was going to get the man who did this to him. One way or another.”

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“I am.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Do I look afraid?”

“Well,” she said, “since you brought up the subject, you actually do.”

I laughed. “You’re a very perceptive woman.”

Colgan Air Services was set right on the edge of the city limits. It was standard for the kind of business you usually saw attached to larger airports. Here you could rent aircraft, take flight instruction, fuel up, use a hangar, tie down your craft, or even take a nap in a small room Billy Colgan made available.

Billy was a short and short-fused Irisher who had enough hair on his arms to make an ape envious. I’d never seen him in long-sleeved shirts. Maybe all that hair needed to be aired out.

You walked past a row of tied-down small craft to reach a round yellow metal building that housed the office as well as one of two hangars. Billy’s wife Mara was one of the fastest typists I’ve ever seen. She was plain until she smiled. Then she was striking. She paused in her assault on her typewriter keys to see me and smile. Like Billy and all his employees she wore a tan short-sleeved shirt with Colgan Air above the breast pocket.

“Hi, Sam. Billy’ll be glad to see you. He wants his chance to win back that forty dollars he lost last time you and Thibodeau and Father Brogan played poker. But I guess Brogan won even more than you did.”

“He cheated.”

She had a cheerful, bawdy laugh. “Right, Sam. A priest who cheats at poker.”

“He does.”

I’d been trying to convince our revolving group of players that Father Brogan was a cheater since he’d joined us a year ago. They refused to believe it but it was true.

“That’s the kind of talk that’ll send you to hell for sure.”

“I’ve already booked passage.”

She was still smiling. “A priest who cheats at poker,” she said as she raised Billy on the intercom.

Billy came around his desk as if he was going to grab me and throw me to the ground. He was best known to the boys of Catholic school as the all-time arm-wrestling champion. This had started in third grade when he’d beaten a fifth-grader. You didn’t want to be around him when he was drunk because the fun would stop at some point while he insisted that every male in the room arm-wrestle him. Arm-wrestling is interesting for about one minute and four seconds.

“Great t’see ya, Sam. Siddown.”

The flying he’d picked up in high school. It had been called Parker Air then. Billy had convinced old man Parker to let him work here and in between moving planes around, scrubbing toilets, and watching Parker give flying lessons — sometimes to comely young women — he got the fever. No college for him. He got his pilot’s license and started flying cargo out of St. Paul and then when old man Parker decided to retire, Billy managed to get enough of a bank loan to make a serious down payment on the place. Old man Parker had let him pay off the rest from profits.

After we were seated, Billy said, “Poor Will, huh?”

“He didn’t do it.”

Genuine surprise played on his broad face. “You might be the only one who thinks so.”

“There’re some others.”

“I’m getting the sense that this isn’t a social visit.”

“Afraid it isn’t, Billy. I want to know a few things about Lon Anders.”

“You think Anders had something to do with this?”

“I can’t say yes and I can’t say no at this point. That’s why I need to ask you some questions.”

“Before you start, Sam, Anders is a good customer.”

“I just want to ask a couple of simple questions.”

He shrugged. “As long as I don’t think I’m violating a confidence.”

“Fair enough. How often does he fly?”

“About average for my business. Two, three times a month.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Half and half or so. He loves taking his ladies up and scaring the shit out of them. Getting into dives and pretending he’s stalled. Things like that.”

“He ever get in trouble showing off like that?”

“No. But I’ve warned him plenty of times. He’s a good pilot but not a great one. One of these days he’s going to be clowning around like that and not be able to get control back.”

“Ever see him take up Valerie Donovan?”

“Bad question.”

“Cathy Vance?”

“Another bad question.”

“How about where he goes?”

“He’s got a thing about Denver. Shacks up there a lot.”

“Ever leave the country?”

“You sure ask a lot of bad questions.”

“So he does leave the country.”

“You said that, I didn’t. And you’re only guessing.”

“I’m trying to save Will here, Billy.”

Now he waited me out. “Will’s our friend, Billy.”

“Not mine.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He’s never been especially friendly to me, Sam. And I’m talking way, way back. I think it was because of my old man.”

Billy’s old man, along with two other of his Navy buddies from the big war, had stuck up a bank. Even in the Hills that had marked the family as outsiders.

“He ever say anything directly?”

“He didn’t have to, Sam. I’m not exactly an idiot, man. I can tell.”

“So you won’t help him even though he’s innocent.”

“You have to be careful about people saying they’re innocent, Sam. Just before he started doing time my old man told me he was innocent, too. No offense, but I gotta get back to work here.”

I joked a little with Mara on my way out. I should’ve gone straight to the parking area but I veered right and went to the stand-alone hangar.

Marv Serbosek was working on a newer model vintage Piper Cub. He stood on a three-step ladder. An ear-numbing version of Proud Mary with Ike and Tina Turner was keeping him entertained. The noise bounced off the metal walls.

I had to yell twice to catch his attention.

Marv had been in a beard-growing contest at the county fair last summer. He had yet to unburden himself of the gray-flecked reddish thing that reached the upper pockets of his overalls.

“Hey, McCain. How’s it goin’?”

“I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“Sure. If I can.” His mother and my mother had been longtime members of the local Catholic church. It was the only connection Marv and I had but I hoped it was enough.

“You know Lon Anders, right?”

“Mr. Anders? Sure. What about him?”

“He ever fly out of the country?”

“Oh, yeah. Two, three times a year he goes to Mexico. Guess a friend of his has a house down there. Why?”

“Well, I was talking to Billy and he didn’t want to give me any information about Anders.”

The long, narrow face grew taut and the brown eyes showed fear. “Hell, I might be in trouble now. You shoulda told me that, Sam.”

“I won’t say anything to Billy if you don’t. I wasn’t trying to get you into any trouble, Marv. And I’m sure you won’t be in any trouble if we keep this between ourselves.”

He managed to mumble agreement but I could see that now we didn’t have any connection at all. He felt betrayed and even if I was pretty sure Billy would never find out I didn’t blame Marv at all for feeling used.

18

That afternoon we took the girls to a movie.

There was only one we were under sacred obligation to see and that was Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. On the way to the theater Kate was so rhapsodic about seeing it that Nicole finally started singing to shut her up.

Twenty minutes into the movie Kate climbed up on my lap and went to sleep.

The movie was only one of the subjects we discussed when we used the outdoor grill in the back yard to make burgers. I even made a couple burgers myself and nobody died.

In the long twilight everything slowed down and quieted down and for once the melancholy I usually felt at dusk eluded me. It was touching to hear the girls slowly slip into exhaustion. To hear Kate this subdued was a revelation. She asked her sister to tell her the rest of the movie when they went to bed that night. Mary was quiet as usual. She always joked that who needed TV when you had the two girls. She loved watching them together. So did I.

I had to carry Kate inside. She was out. Mary revived her for the bath and the good-nights and the prayers and then the lights-out.

“I am so lucky to have them,” she said when she came back and sat next to me.

“You sure are.”

I got a bottle of Hamm’s from the fridge and went into the living room and we watched a rerun of an old Jackie Gleason series, The Honeymooners. Gleason was always good but the woman who played his loving and lovely wife and the guy who played his bumbling buddy were just as good. The desperation of their lives reminded me of growing up in the Hills. All those men back from the big war trying to work their way out of poverty while their wives cut every corner they could while trying to raise their kids right. The show was sad fun but fun nonetheless.

I grabbed the phone when it rang.

“I’m trying to reach Sam McCain.”

“That’s me. Help you with something?”

“My name’s Cliff Donlon. Tim Duffy’s a friend of mine from bowling league. I was talking to him and he gave me this number and said I should call you. I worked for Steve Donovan. I did not work for Anders.”

“That’s an interesting distinction since they were full partners.”

“I was with Steve from the beginning. He changed a lot when Anders came along. I almost quit when Al Carmichael left. Al was a great guy. Anders ran him out and Steve let it happen. But I stayed. Since Steve is gone I want to talk to somebody about something that’s been going on there ever since Anders came.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’d rather meet for an early breakfast. I need to be at work by eight so how about meeting me at McDonald’s at seven? The one on the east side.”

“I’ll be there, Mr. Donlon. And thank you very much for calling.”

19

McDonald’s was still something of a novelty for our town.

A local land baron had a young daughter who’d made him drive her to Iowa City every week to pick up a huge sack of burgers and fries which would be stored in the family fridge and then heated up whenever the teenager desired. The local land baron decided it would not only save him from driving into Iowa City for the stuff, it would be downright profitable if he owned the franchise himself. Instant McDonald’s.

Donlon waved me over, a redhead of forty or so in a gray worker’s uniform, a long, wiry body and a pair of savvy blue eyes that were street-smart and withholding of judgment on everything that passed before them. He had a quick, iron handshake.

I set my thousand calories down across from his and sat down. We had to speak up to be heard above the packed house.

“The wife says this stuff puts the weight on me. But you can’t prove it by my scale. I weigh about what I did when I was in high school. She also says it’s a lot cheaper to eat breakfast at home. But I’m addicted to this stuff.”

“It’s pretty good.”

“I’m kinda in a hurry to get to work so I’ll get right to it.” Quick sip of coffee. “I was one of Steve’s first employees. His dad had been in the Navy and so had I. Steve liked that and so we got along very well. Till Anders came into the picture. He got rid of Al first of all and Al had been just as nice to all of us as Steve had been. Steve gradually got to be pretty much like Anders. And Anders was making most of the decisions. You could tell that, everybody could. Steve’d start to say something and Anders’d just interrupt him. Sometimes Steve would just take it but sometimes they’d argue right in front of everybody. Or they’d go into one of their offices and then they’d really argue. I missed the old Steve and so did everybody else who worked there. Then Anders made me start making these runs for him.”

“What kind of runs?”

“To this cabin he had that nobody was supposed to know about. He said he’d fire me if I ever told anybody about what I was doing.”

“Doing?”

“Yeah, loading up maybe twenty of our shipping boxes — the medium-sized ones — and then running them out to the cabin. I also took along packing material for shipping. I thought it was strange. We have our own shipping department and those women are damned good at what they do. So I was always kinda curious about it. Then Steve gets killed.”

“You’re making some kind of connection?”

“I’m just saying the way those two have been going at it lately — well, Tim Duffy told me that this Will Cullen is a friend of yours and you don’t think he did it, so I thought I’d let you know about these runs I make for Anders.”

“How often would you say?”

Between the milling people waiting in line, the tables and booths swollen with people and the speaker announcing orders that were ready every few minutes, the noise had risen even higher. A relaxing, cordial atmosphere setting just the right ambience for dining on the exquisite cuisine. I’d always prefer the mom-and-pop diners I’d grown up with.

“Three, four times a year.”

“Tell me about the cabin.”

“Pretty fancy.” He then went into detail.

“Where’s it located?”

He slid a clear pencil-drawn map on a sheet of plain white paper across the table to me.

“You did a hell of a good job with this.”

“Thanks.”

“When’s the last time you went out there?”

“Two weeks ago. And when I did, Steve was waiting for me when I got back. He told me I was never to do this again. And that was when Anders shows up and the two get into this shouting match. It was right near the loading docks in the middle of the day.”

“What happened after that?”

“I just went back to work. I saw Steve get in his car and drive off. He peeled out pretty fast. I felt sorry for him. A lot of people didn’t like him but I did. He was a hard worker and a good boss. Anders is a lazy sonofabitch. I already put my application into two factories yesterday. I won’t work for him under any conditions. Steve and Al built that business, he didn’t.”

“You have any idea what your trips were about?”

“Not really. But I don’t figure it was anything legal.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“I guess we pretty much agree that Anders had something to do with Steve’s death.”

“Now I have to prove it.”

“Anything I can do, just let me know.” He checked his watch. “Guess I’d better hurry up and eat. I hate to go back there with Steve dead and all but I need to make sure I get all the money that’s due me so I’d better be on time.”

He finished his food and then did away with his coffee. “Wish I didn’t like this stuff so much.” His one and only smile.

“Like I said,” he said as he grabbed his gray lunch pail, “anything I can do, you keep me in mind.”

The Wentworth apartments were the first in town to offer a swimming pool, a game and dance room, and owner-sponsored parties in said game and dance room once a month. They’d been built three years earlier, four three-story buildings of stucco and wood treated to look like driftwood. A singles place but, unlike its competition for the singles crowd, they didn’t make a point of it in their advertising.

As I walked to the manager’s office — Tom Wentworth had small real estate offices all over town; Cathy Vance’s was right here where she lived — I passed along the pool where eight young women (I counted them) lay in lounge chairs. They wore bikinis of various colors and hairstyles of even more variety. A speaker hidden somewhere above the office played Me and Bobby McGee. Janis sounded as wasted as I felt. I had no doubt that Will was innocent, I had no doubt that he was worth every second I put toward proving him innocent, I had no doubt that we’d be good friends for the rest of our lives.

But I sensed his relationship with Cathy Vance had been much more serious than either of them had let on. Right now all I knew was that he’d badly damaged his wife. His daughter would be next. She wouldn’t understand it now but three or four years down the line she’d begin to know what had, in all likelihood, driven her parents apart. The stats on divorces on returning vets were so bad that Congress had done what they always did, ordered a committee to study it.

I could see Cathy through the front window marked Wentworth Real Estate. In a tight black skirt and red blouse, her Ava Gardner hair flung back with contrived abandon, she perched on the corner of her desk, a receiver between ear and shoulder, the long fingers holding a cigarette that coiled blue smoke into the office air.

She watched me walk into her office with those wary silver-blue eyes of hers. The terrible thing that had happened to her that night in the Hills would always deny her the cachet of a true femme fatale. She’d been raped by two older men who’d been drunkenly stumbling home. That they served long prison terms didn’t matter much to a girl of twelve. Her cynicism was the product of pain, not arrogance. She broke too easily.

“You asked for my opinion, Nick, and I gave it to you. I think they’re asking way too much for that land. I’m halfway convinced he’s even making up those rumors about a big office building being planned for there.” There was no smile for me but she did point to the small buff-colored leather couch in the far corner. “Nick, we’re friends. I’m not saying you don’t know what you’re doing.

“We all misjudge things. I’m right about three out of four times at best. So you shouldn’t take what I say personally. All right?” Then, “Nick, a customer just came in. Just think about what I said. I could always be wrong about this and you could always be right, all right?”

She hung up. “I don’t care what they say. You boys are way more vain than us girls. The guy calls me for an opinion and I give him an honest answer and he’s hurt. I offended his manliness somehow.” The showgirl smile. “But then I guess I can’t blame him. He doesn’t have much manliness to spare.”

Four desks, walls covered with photos of homes and businesses and properties for sale. The furnishings and the carpeting ran to variations on brown.

“I imagine you’re here to pester me about Will some more. And by the way, I see you’ve done a fine job of proving how innocent he is.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“I’m sure that’s a great comfort to him.”

“Did he ever write you any letters?”

“Yes, he did as a matter of fact. Before she stole him from me that summer in college. I used to think that maybe he was going to be a writer.”

“More recently, I mean. When you were having an affair with him.”

“You’re still on that.”

“His wife found some letters he wrote to you but apparently never mailed. Recent letters.”

“I imagine she had a fine time reading them. The same fine time I had reading his letter that he was breaking off our engagement.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Maybe for you. Not for me. I still remember basically going to bed for a month and not being able to get up. I started thinking that the shock had paralyzed me. I was that nuts. I got over that part of it but there was a part that stayed with me. And it’s with me now. Two husbands and two shrinks later and it’s still with me.”

“So you had an affair with him.”

She was leaning against the desk facing me. In her languid, enigmatic way her sexual powers were undeniable. But the silver-blue eyes never quite gave you any hint of what she might be thinking. There was even a possibility that she did not understand her own erotic force.

“Yeah, Sam, we had an affair. And yes, he wrote me some letters. It’s nice to know that he wrote some that he didn’t even mail. Which makes me wonder why he broke it off.”

“Well, it could always be that he was married.”

“I know you think that’s a smart remark but that’s not why he broke it off. He didn’t love Karen anymore. He made that plain. I wanted him to leave her and marry me. For me the affair was like being in college again. I even let some of my work go, which I never do. But I didn’t care. We got together every chance we had. We even used to meet at seven thirty in the morning sometimes. He always joked how good morning sex was in a sleazy motel. Then it ended. And he broke it off the same way he’d broken it off the first time. No explanation. Just ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ No warning whatsoever. I’d had to find out about Karen by myself. And it’s the same this time. No idea.”

She walked around behind her desk and sat down. She helped herself to a cigarette. “So you got what you wanted, Sam. I admitted that we had an affair.”

“When did he tell you that it was off?”

“Lunch. 5/29/71. 12:30-1:39 p.m. I put it on my calendar when I got back just the way I would any other business meeting. Because that’s how he was. All business. We could have been closing on a house the way he was. He has a cold side, you know.”

“Yeah, every once in a while it comes out. You rarely see it. That’s what makes it so strange when you do see it. You can’t equate it with this big, lumbering, smiling guy.”

“But it’s there. I’ve seen it twice now. The first time was when I started following him places when I learned about Karen that summer. He wasn’t just cold. He was so hostile. It was like we’d never been in love. I was just a nuisance to him.”

“I’m sorry, Cathy.”

The Vegas smile. “You are? The last time you saw me I didn’t pick up on any great sympathy.”

“Then I apologize.”

She knew how to exhale cigarette smoke dramatically. “I hear you’re seeing Mary Lindstrom.”

“Right.”

“I always envied her. She’s so beautiful but it never went to her head. In fact in high school the popular girls thought she was such a loser. And I know she didn’t date much because she had this thing for you. And you had it for Pamela. God, talk about a girl who was stuck on herself. You’re lucky to be with Mary now.”

“I realize that more every day.”

Then she said it and I wasn’t prepared for it and maybe she wasn’t either.

“Since I’m going to confession here I may as well lay it all out for you. You were right: I sent Will those threatening letters.”

“Wow.”

“I told you I went a little crazy.”

“That’s more than a little crazy.”

“He deserved it for what he did to me.”

“I have to ask you, Cathy, what were you doing the night Steve Donovan was murdered?”

“God, I’m sick of talking to you, Sam. I really don’t like you anymore.”

“I’m sorry for that, Cathy. I really am. But I need to know where you were the night Donovan was killed.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with Donovan’s murder. Period.”

“You’re not making my work any easier. I’ll have to tell Foster that you sent those letters.”

“Paul?” Amused. “Paul’s taken me to dinner twice. Very nice guy. His wife dumped him for a younger man last year. He knows a little about the subject so he’s easy to talk to.”

“We’ve all been dumped, Cathy. And most of us survive and get past it.”

“I never understood why you held on to Pamela so long. She led you around like a little dog. All those years you wasted on her. She was never going to fall in love with you and everybody could see that except you.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“No, I’m not. I’m just tired of you trying to make me sound like I’m the only one who held on too long. You don’t think that there are a lot of married people who are still in love with somebody from their past who broke their hearts?”

I eased up from the couch. “It bothers me that you sent Will those letters.”

“There isn’t anything I can do about that.”

“The county attorney could file charges against you.”

“You’re going to tell him, of course.”

“I have to. I should also tell Foster. But since you’re such good friends, I’ll let you do the honors.”

“I don’t care,” she said, torment faint but real in her tone. “I should leave this town anyway. Every place I look I see bad memories. It’s no place for me anymore.”

She might have murdered Donovan, I thought. Those long-ago men and my confusing friend Will had stolen all her kindness and tenderness and compassion. She just might have framed Will. Bitterness and rage were the only things they’d left her with.

The only things.

20

The whisper war started while I was setting the table for supper.

Kate and Nicole sat hypnotized by the TV in the other room and I was tending to plates, glasses, cups, silverware, and napkins when Mary came in with a spoonful of pasta sauce for me to taste.

“Delicious.”

She poked me. “You’d say that even if it was terrible, wouldn’t you?”

I poked her back. “Probably.”

I slung my arm over her shoulder and strolled back into the kitchen with her.

“I met that man this morning.”

“Donlon? The one you told me about last night?”

“Um-hm. Nice guy and very helpful.”

“Anything the police should know about?”

“Not quite yet. I want to do something before I call Chief Foster.”

In the kitchen window long pre-dusk shadows. The first stars; a large passenger plane soaring toward the half-moon; a TV tower in the distance blinking red signals into the half-night. Mixed with this were the aromas of the kitchen — the scents of pasta, sauce, coffee, and the fresh bread Mary loved to bake.

She was in the process of using a fork to test the progress of the pasta boiling in the metal stockpot on the gas stove. “What is it you want to do?”

“Donlon says that over the years Lon Anders has had him deliver shipping materials to this cabin he owns. Donlon thinks there’s something illegal going on. So do I. I thought I’d check it out tonight.”

She went back to pulling strands of pasta from the boiling stockpot and then nibbling on them. “Sounds like something Foster should be doing. Since he’s the law and everything.”

“I probably won’t have much trouble getting inside.”

She set down the fork she’d been using to waggle pasta strands from the stockpot and faced me. Workday weariness and apprehension and an anger she was trying not to give in to — all of these played across her face. “Have you given any thought to what you’ll do for a living?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“When Foster finds out he’ll undoubtedly ask for your license to be lifted. And what will the state board think about a lawyer breaking and entering? You always liked that job you had in high school, bagging groceries. Maybe you could get that back.”

“I’m hungry!” Kate announced as she raced into the kitchen.

“Honey, go get your sister and you both sit down and by then I’ll be bringing out supper.”

“Nicole said you brought home ice cream. She saw it.”

Mary swept her up. “Your sister is a very good spy. But it’s not ice cream. It’s sherbet.”

“What’s sherbet?”

“You’ll just have to find out. But you’ll love it. Now go get your sister.”

She set Kate down. Kate said to me, “Do you like sherbet, Sam?”

I patted my stomach. “I love it.”

And then she was running away in that awkward, endearing way of hers, shouting, “Nicole, we’re having sherbet tonight!”

This was when the whispering started. The girls would be near us now.

“I thought you cared about us.”

“You know damned well I do. Don’t pull this on me.”

“All right. Then I’ll just say Please don’t do this, Sam. You know what kind of guy Anders is. Think of us.”

Nicole said, “Is everything all right, Mom?”

She’d caught us gritting whispers back and forth.

“Everything’s fine, honey. Please go get your plate and tell Kate to get hers, too. I’ll dish you up some pasta.”

“I’m not sure I like sherbet.”

“Oh, you’ll like this.”

“Eve had it one night for dinner. I didn’t like the taste.”

Easy for Mary to take a cheap shot here, but she declined. Bad woman Eve, the one who stole your dad from me, of course her sherbet would taste bad. “There’re a lot of different flavors of sherbet, sweetie. This one is peach. Remember how much you like peaches?”

That satisfied Nicole and off she went to supper.

For the next half hour not even the whisper war was allowed. Only angry looks from Mary and me trying to appear misunderstood and innocent.

The girls were put to bed early — under much protest from Kate who insisted it was “still light out” — with Mary staying with them at least twenty minutes.

A beer would’ve tasted good; I hadn’t had any alcohol all day. But I knew about the cabin now and I needed to be sober when I got inside.

When Mary came back I said, “I need to do this for Will.”

“Then at least call Foster.”

“I don’t have the faith in Foster you do. He’s like too many cops I’ve known.”

Significantly, she sat in the armchair across from me. “Everybody I know likes him.”

“Oh, he’s likable and all that. But he’s still the kind of cop who gets fixated on one suspect and won’t consider anyone else.”

“I know how much you care about Will, Sam. And so do I. But you have to agree that things look bad for him.”

“I know how bad they look, Mary. But that still doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”

“Oh, God, Sam.”

She came over and drew her legs up on the couch and put her head on my shoulder.

“Not fair.” Her warmth, her flesh, the scent of her hair. I wanted to forget the cabin.

“Of course it’s not fair. Look what I’m up against. An obsessed man who’s too stubborn to ask the police for help.”

Then she really got not fair. She sat up and took my face in her hands and gave me the kind of savage kiss that was more redolent of desperation and fear than sex.

I had to push away and stand up.

“Then you’re really going?”

“I’m really going.”

I went into the bathroom and closed the door. Usually about this time I went upstairs and peeked in on the girls from the doorway. Their soft snoring and their Big Bird night-light and the dolls and stuffed animals they both slept with. My attachment to the three of them grew tighter every day. The girls would be as terrified as their mother if they could understand what I was going to do. As Mary had pointed out, the real danger was in the legal ramifications of what I proposed to do. I could indeed find myself out of a job. An unemployed step-dad was a real drag.

But searching the cabin was the logical end result of my entire investigation. There was no guarantee that I would find anything incriminating there but I still needed to do it.

I stopped in the kitchen and drew a quick but precise map to the cabin for Mary. When I got back to the living room I handed it to her. She glanced at it.

“I wish you were Batman. Then I wouldn’t be worried so much.”

“I wish I was Batman, too. This would be easy for him.”

She’d been waiting right outside the bathroom door the way Kate did sometimes when she just couldn’t get enough of me.

“Do I get a kiss, Sam?”

“Let’s see now — a kiss—”

If we’d gotten any more passionate we would have ended up on the floor. But once again I eased out of the embrace.

“I’m going to say some prayers.”

“It couldn’t hurt.” And then right there as I moved toward the side door I felt a ridiculous sadness. I even had a moment when I resented Will a bit. My life would be so easy if I didn’t have to worry that he’d be sent to a mental hospital and then to prison.

For life.