The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

28

Half an hour after Morgan was booked into the Rome jail, Jimson returned, moving in through the heavy outer door, looking in through the bars at Morgan. “Becky’s on her way. I couldn’t get her at home, she was at Caroline’s.” Morgan was surprised Jimson had bothered to call her. But he knew that wasn’t fair, Jimson was only doing his job, and when Morgan looked up at him now, some of the old warmth had returned.

“She’s been out all night looking for you,” Jimson said, “looking for your car. She started to cry when she knew you were all right, that you weren’t lying dead somewhere.” The officer paused, a frown touching his round, smooth face. “She said to tell you she wasn’t bringing Sammie, said Sammie has a cold, she’s left her with Caroline.” The officer colored a little. “She said to tell you she loves you.” Quickly he turned away again, locking the outer door behind him.

Morgan stared after him. Of course she wouldn’t bring Sammie, not here to see him locked behind bars just as in her nightmare. What had Becky told Sammie when he hadn’t come all night, when Sammie didn’t hear him get up and shower this morning, when he didn’t appear at the breakfast table?

What would she tell Sammie if he didn’t come home at all, if this couldn’t be straightened out, if he was kept in jail and was arraigned and even tried, a prisoner escorted back and forth to the courtroom? Thinking about what might lie ahead of him turned him shaky, cold and despondent again. How could he be charged with murder? He had killed no one. Not even if he’d been drugged would he kill a man—except in the war, he thought, bitterly.

There was only one explanation for his long lapse of memory, his long and debilitating sleep, and that was that Falon had given him some drug. Easy enough for Falon to get drugs, maybe some kind of prescription that was passed around among Falon’s sleazy friends. Opium, maybe, that was easy enough to get, it was prescribed for colds and the flu. Dover’s Powder, he thought it was called, something like that. He supposed, unless they found the Coke bottle, there was no way to tell. He doubted the Rome cops would go looking for Coke bottles, as surly as they’d been. And even then, could a chemist or pharmacist find such a thing?

Sitting on the sagging bunk, he put his face in his hands, sick and cold with fear. No matter what Becky told Sammie about why he wasn’t home, at some point Sammie would have to learn the truth, and what would that do to her? They’d tried never to lie to Sammie, even when she was very small; only those few times that, because she was so young, the truth would have been inexplicable to her. Now, this morning, would Becky lie, so that Sammie wouldn’t know so soon that her worst nightmare had come true? He couldn’t bear to think of his little girl’s terror. Or of Becky’s own pain, when she heard the inexplicable charge of murder. What could he have done last night—what could Falon have done—to make this happen, to hurt the two people in the world whom Morgan loved more than life itself?

He and Becky had been sweethearts since before high school, they had married the week after they graduated, just a small wedding in her mother’s garden. He lay thinking about their honeymoon at Carter Lake, how happy they had been, how perfect life had been then. They had stayed in a cabin borrowed from a friend of Becky’s mother’s, had spent most of that week in bed, a little of it walking the woods or in leisurely twilight swims. They didn’t give a damn that they had little money and would have to live with Becky’s mother at first, in the bedroom behind the bakery kitchen. He liked Caroline, had always liked her, though they had had their moments when, in high school, he still wouldn’t stop running with Falon. That week on Carter Lake they would lie in bed spent from loving each other, planning how soon they could buy their own business and maybe even buy a house, planning how many children they would have, planning the beginning of their real lives as if they had only just been born.

The next week after their honeymoon he went to work as a mechanic at one of the three local gas stations, and Becky found a job with an accountant. When she’d learned enough, she left to start her own freelance accounts, to build her own new business. She had the same drive and stamina that had helped her mother succeed alone in the bakery business after Becky’s father died.

Becky had taken only a little time out to have Sammie, balancing her customers’ books while caring for the baby. When war was declared, he’d joined the navy rather than being drafted. During his absence, their need for each other, their passion had built intolerably. All the time he’d been gone his dreams had been only of Becky and of their baby girl, of the business they would build together and the large family they planned, of a rich, long life together.

When he got home, they had saved enough for a nice down payment on the old abandoned gas station. His mother would have scraped to send him to college but he’d never wanted that, he had no use for that kind of learning. He loved machines, he loved cars and trucks, anything mechanical, and he had gotten further education for that, for the learning he really wanted, in the navy.

All the time he was gone, Becky sent him pictures of Sammie. She had his pale Irish coloring, but Becky’s dark eyes and turned-up nose, she was the spirit of their spirits, she was proof of the eternity of their union, her existence filled him with an even deeper love of being alive in God’s world. At six years old Sammie had handled her bicycle like a pro, she knew how to make her own bed and how to mix and cut out cookies for her mother—but the minute he got home she became Daddy’s helper, his gamin-faced grease monkey.

Becky had already taught her the names and uses of most of his automotive tools and where they belonged in the pocketed black cloth wrapper where he kept them, and Sammie soon loved working on cars. And why not? A little training in mechanics wouldn’t hurt; when she grew older, she could do anything she wanted with her life. Becky kept her dressed in jeans and hoped, just as Morgan did, that the child would develop some other loves besides pretty clothes. Becky said frills would come soon enough without encouragement. Sammie made her mother laugh aloud when Morgan brought her home at night dirty faced, grease-stained clothes, dog tired, and so deeply happy with having helped her daddy.

Now, this morning, Sammie would be asking for him, she would want to know why he had left so early, even before he’d had breakfast. Maybe Becky would tell her he’d gotten home late and left early to work on a special car for one of his longtime customers. But Sammie was only a little girl. When she did at last learn the truth, how would she cope with this? How could she ever sleep again, knowing that any nightmare, any terrible dream, would be sure to come true?

He had turned away from the bars, was smearing tears away with the back of his hand, when the barred door clanged open behind him. Morgan turned, ashamed of crying, looking up at Jimson. The officer motioned Morgan out, walking behind him. “Becky’s in the visiting room.”

“She’s alone?” Morgan asked.

“She’s alone,” Jimson said. Sergeant Trevis met them halfway down the hall and the tall, lean officer gestured Morgan toward the little visiting room, standing behind him as he entered.

Becky stood on the far side of the table that occupied the center of the room, her knuckles white where she gripped its edge, her face drawn and pale. The room was hot and stuffy, the one small, barred window behind her was open but admitted only hot, humid air laced with gas fumes from the street, the traffic noise loud and distracting. Morgan approached the table, stopping at Trevis’s direction. He and Becky stood looking across at each other, separated as if they were strangers.

“Did they tell you what happened?” Morgan said. “Do you know what the charges are about?”

Behind him, Trevis stepped on in and closed the door. When Morgan turned to look at him, Trevis looked politely away. Morgan wished they could be alone. He knew Trevis would record in memory their every stilted word. James Trevis, thin and rangy, had played basketball in high school two years ahead of Morgan, then had served a hitch in the marines, had returned home to continue with the law enforcement he had learned as a military policeman. Morgan glanced at him again, and moved on around the table. Trevis looked away, and didn’t stop him. Morgan put his arms around Becky, they stood for a long time in silence, desperately holding each other.

When Becky spoke at last, her voice was muffled against him. “They told me nothing. Sergeant Trevis only told me the charges.” She took a step back, her hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. He reached to gently touch the smudges under her eyes. The look in her dark eyes told him she knew more about what had happened than she wanted to say, that she didn’t want to talk in front of Trevis. If a man had been killed last night, no matter what the circumstances, by now it would be all over town.

She said, “I called Mama’s attorney. I know he’s an estate attorney, that he doesn’t do this kind of work, but he gave me a couple of names. I’ve made appointments with both.

“And they did tell me,” she said, “that you were drunk. When Sergeant Trevis told me that,” she said, glancing up, “I asked Dr. Bates if he would come and talk with you. I know you weren’t drinking, I thought maybe some kind of drug. Has he been here yet?”

Morgan shook his head. As for an attorney, Morgan had never had need of one, and there were only a few lawyers in their small town, two with reputations that he and Becky didn’t like. He couldn’t think who would handle charges like this, someone they could trust. Becky’s dark eyes hadn’t left him, she looked at him a long time then pressed against him again, holding him tight. “Someone has to tell you what happened,” she said. “It isn’t fair for you not to know.”

Trevis moved to the table beside them. “As soon as you’re questioned, Morgan, we’ll lay it out for you.”

Morgan nodded. That made sense, so he couldn’t make up some story to fit whatever had occurred. Trevis moved again, as if to separate them, but then he let them be.

“It’s some kind of mix-up,” Becky said. “We’ll find out the truth.” She looked up at Trevis. “The police will find out, they’re our friends, Morgan, they’ll find out, they’ll make it all right again.”

Morgan wished he could believe that. “You went looking for me last night, you borrowed a car, you and Sammie . . .”

“When you didn’t come home, I went to the shop, before I took Sammie to Mama’s, she wasn’t feeling well. The shop was locked up tight, the new mechanic was gone. I didn’t know where he lived, and the operator had no phone number for an Albert Weiss.”

She held Morgan away, letting her anger center on the mechanic. “Yesterday when you left, when you weren’t back by closing time, did he just go on working? Didn’t he wonder where you were, didn’t he worry when you weren’t back to close out the cash register and lock up? Why didn’t he call the house? At five o’clock he just locked up and went home? How ironic. You hired Albert because he was calm and didn’t get ruffled, because he didn’t fuss about things. He was calm, all right,” she said bitterly. “He didn’t wonder—because he didn’t care.”

Morgan could say nothing. She was right. That was Albert’s way, he was a silent man, not the least interested in others’ business, focused solely on the cars he repaired.

“Where did he think you’d gone! And then this morning he just—he just opened the shop and got to work?” she said incredulously. “He might be a good mechanic, but his brain stops there. He could have come over to the house last night to see if you were all right, see if you’d come home.” Her voice broke, she took a minute to get control. “You could have died out there last night, died in the car, all alone.”

“You just kept driving,” he said, “driving around looking for me?”

“I drove all over Rome and then out around the farms, over on the Berry campus. At last I called the station, talked with Officer Regan. He told me the patrols would keep an eye out, he said he was sure you’d turn up, that it was too soon to file a missing report. I drove down every back road, some of them twice, but I didn’t see the car. Later, when Jimson found you, he said it was parked way back among the trees, that it was easy to miss.” The muscles in her jaw were clenched. “Parked out near lovers’ hollow,” she said, and it didn’t occur to him until that moment that she might have thought, last night, that he was with another woman.

But Becky knew there wasn’t anyone else, there was no woman in the world he’d look at except her. Holding her close to him, needing her steadiness, he tried to tell her what he could remember, tried to bring the fractured scenes from yesterday clearer, tried to make sense of them. Trevis stood intently listening. Morgan knew he would write it all down the moment Becky left, that Morgan’s words would be compared with the formal questioning that he would soon face. The police had to know, early last night, about the robbery and murder, but of course it would be policy not to mention it to Becky. Morgan had no idea whether they thought, at that point, the two events might be connected. Both cases were police business, and the officers kept conjecture to themselves.

Morgan told Becky how Falon had wanted him to look at his car, that he hadn’t wanted to go, told her what Falon had said about her mother’s property out on the Dixie Highway. Slowly, talking it out, he was able to put those moments together more clearly—until the moment when everything went hazy and the afternoon fell apart into a wavering and senseless haze.

“When Falon spilled his Coke, I wiped up the spill and then pulled into Robert’s gas station to get some wet paper towels. I came out, finished my Coke while I was cleaning the seat. I remember the Coke tasted kind of funny, but I didn’t pay much attention. When I had the seat pretty clean, and dried off, we headed for the Graystone Apartments, I remember that. I’d driven a couple of blocks when the street started to look fuzzy, the cars and buildings blurred, the distances all warped. I remember pulling over, dizzy and sick. After that, nothing’s very clear. Everything looked strange, twisted and unreal.”

“You drank all your Coke?”

He nodded. “Falon handed it to me, I drank what was left in the bottle, tucked the bottle in the side pocket so it wouldn’t drip on the floor. I drove until things began to reel, then I pulled over.”

Becky looked up at Sergeant Trevis. “Have you picked up Brad Falon?”

Trevis’s face went closed, his look ungiving. “We questioned him.” Trevis searched Morgan’s face, and turned to glance at the door. “I shouldn’t tell you this much, until after you’re interviewed.”

Morgan waited. He didn’t see what difference it could make, as long as he told the truth.

“Falon said he was with his girlfriend from one-thirty yesterday afternoon until this morning.” Trevis looked more kindly, with perhaps a touch of regret. “We talked with her, she swore Falon was there in her apartment. At this point,” he said, “we haven’t enough to bring him in.”

“What girlfriend?” Becky said.

“That’s all I can say,” Trevis said.

Neither Becky nor Morgan had heard anything about what women Falon might be seeing; they’d had no reason to know or to care. But now, from the look in Becky’s eyes, Morgan knew she meant to find out. He wanted to say, Be careful. But she would do that, he let only his look warn her: Take care, Falon can be vicious. He said, “What did you tell Sammie?”

“That you worked late, got home late, had to get up real early to fix a special car.”

He smiled. “Did she believe you?”

“She might not have, except she was so disoriented herself. She has a cold or the flu, something . . . Dr. Bates came out, to Mother’s. He said the usual, keep Sammie warm, lots of liquids and rest, half an aspirin every four hours. She doesn’t have a fever, and she isn’t coughing, she’s just very dull, so sleepy she can hardly stay awake.”

“How long?” Morgan said. “How long has she been like that?”

“From around noon yesterday,” Becky said. “So sleepy she couldn’t stay awake. If I woke her, she’d just drift off again, she just wanted to lie there on the couch and sleep, she slept most of the afternoon.” Her description struck a chill of fear through Morgan.

“Once when I woke her, she said she felt dizzy, that every time she went to sleep she dropped down, deep down into darkness. So dark, she said, falling down into darkness.”

Morgan went ice-cold. “That . . . That’s how I felt, when I woke in the car. As if I were trapped deep down in some heavy darkness. Even in the patrol car, and here in the cell, moments when I could hardly keep awake, so dull, wiped out.”

They looked at each other, frightened. Filled with Sammie’s perceptions, with her sure and specific cognition. As if Sammie had experienced exactly what Morgan had felt, Morgan’s confusion and dullness, her daddy’s helpless lethargy. Becky shivered and clung to him, a coldness reaching deep inside her like an icy hand.

She said at last, “I called Dr. Bates again, though still Sammie had no fever, no pain. He wanted to put her in the hospital, but I didn’t want that. I wanted her with Mother, I knew she’d take her to the hospital if she needed to. Once she was settled at Mother’s and sound asleep, I went looking for you. I feel sick that I must have passed our car twice and never seen it. The last time, it was just getting light, I must have just missed the police.

“But then,” she said, “the strangest thing. When I got back to Mama’s, Sammie was awake, sitting up and more alert. Mama said she woke cranky, that Sammie complained that her head hurt. Mama gave her another aspirin and called the doctor again. She was ready to take her to the hospital when Sammie came awake, sat up, and looked around her, surprised she was at Mother’s.

“Mama got her to drink some juice and eat a little hot cereal.” Becky looked at him, frowning. “That was . . . That was when Jimson found you. Early this morning, just after sunup? That was when Sammie woke.”

“The sun was in my eyes,” Morgan said. “I thought it was sunset, but then figured out the sun was coming up, that I must have slept all night in the car, I was trying to figure that out when Jimson jerked the door open and dragged me out.”

Becky glanced at Sergeant Trevis. She didn’t like talking about Sammie in front of him, she had no notion what he would make of the conversation. Trevis let them stay close together, let them talk. He was more eager to listen, apparently, than to take Morgan back and separate them.

“By the time I got home to Mama’s and sat down to eat some breakfast, Sammie was brighter, she came to the table and shared some scrambled eggs and toast with me. When the station called to tell me you were here, that you were in jail, it was all I could do not to panic. I asked if you were all right, I didn’t want to say much in front of Sammie, but the minute I got my purse, ready to leave, she had pulled on her sweater and meant to go with me, she was so tense, fidgeting with impatience to be with you, so out of control, so determined and stubborn I had a hard time making her stay behind with Mama. She said she had to talk to you, she had to tell you what she’d dreamed while she was sick. You remember that old man she talked about when she was playing with the airplane she made? The man she called the cowboy.”

“Yes, she’s talked to me about him.”

“She said she had to tell you about him. Somehow, in her mind that dream was connected to your being here. As little as I said, she figured out where you were, she figured out that the prison dream had come true.” Becky looked at Morgan helplessly. “She said this dream of the cowboy was part of what was happening to you, said she had to tell you.” She looked uncomfortably at Sergeant Trevis then turned away, muffling her face against Morgan’s shoulder.

“When I left, she clung to me,” Becky said, “she tried to come with me, she wept and wept, and all I could do was hold her.” Becky was weeping, too. He held her as she had held their child, seeking to heal her, wondering if anything could ever heal her, or heal Sammie, if any power could heal the three of them.

Morgan was hardly aware when Trevis turned and nodded to him, letting him know he must go back to his cell. Becky stepped back, freeing Morgan, wiping at tears again. “Do you have our car keys?” But then she realized the booking officer would have taken everything from Morgan, everything in his pockets.

Trevis said, “We have them, we’ve impounded the car for evidence.”

“Oh. Of course.” She looked at Morgan. “I still have the Parkers’ car. If it’s very long, I’ll use Mama’s old Plymouth. I need to see the attorneys. I want to see Mama’s attorney, too, before I see the others, I want advice from someone we trust.”

“I didn’t rob any bank, Becky. You know I didn’t kill anyone.”

“I know that. But even if the police want to believe you, they have to do it their way.” She looked at Trevis. “I know you’ll find out what happened. Did you find the Coke bottles?”

“No Coke bottles in the car,” Trevis said. “McAffee’s out searching the woods.”

Morgan felt stupidly grateful that they would take the trouble. He’d felt so betrayed by the police, abandoned by the men who were supposed to be his friends. He knew that was foolish, that they had a job to do, but now those few kind words, knowing they were trying to help, lifted his spirits some. He prayed they’d find the bottles, both of them. Only one bottle would have a trace of drugs, if that was what had happened. He knew no other way to explain the yawning cavern of emptiness he’d experienced, that had left his whole being hollow.

“If you find the bottles,” Becky said, “you’ll fingerprint them?”

Trevis nodded, looking put out that she would ask such a dumb question. He cleared his throat, turned, and opened the closed door. Becky hugged Morgan once more, kissed him and then turned away. As Trevis ushered Morgan back to his cell, she was met in the hall by another officer and escorted on out to the front. Morgan glanced back at her once, then was through the door of the lockup, through his barred cell door and locked in again. He lay down on the bunk, sick and grieving. He’d gotten himself into a mess, out of pure stupidity, had brought their lives shattering down around them. Had left Becky to fight, alone, a battle that terrified and perplexed him.

And Becky, outside the courthouse getting in the borrowed car, left the Rome jail wondering how she could keep Sammie from coming with her on her next visit. The child was so stubbornly determined. What would it do to their little girl to see her daddy in jail, after the terror of her nightmare? Yet she knew she couldn’t keep Sammie away, not when she burned with such an urgent need to see Morgan, with what seemed, to Becky, might in fact be a critical part of the wall that fate had built around them.