The Ragman's memory

26

“Bring the time line into my office,” I told Sammie as I passed her desk.

She did as requested, surprised at my tone of voice.

She sat down opposite me and opened a file folder on her lap. “This is as much as I have so far.”

“What’ve you got on Tom Chambers?”

“Specifically? Nothing. There are three dates we know for sure-when the PCB was dumped in Keene, when Mary Wallis disappeared, and when Adele Sawyer was murdered. Tom Chambers was in Montpelier on the first, at home on the second, and at an all-night poker game on the third.”

“Who’s vouching for him being at home? His brother?”

“Yeah.”

“So that one’s up in the air.”

Sammie continued. “We’re pretty sure Hennessy did the PCB. Neither his mistress nor his wife can give him an alibi, and the meeting he claimed he was at in Albany never took place. Also, just for the hell of it, we had Keene PD check their records for that night. Hennessy was given a ticket for burning a red light at two in the morning. He was driving a Carroll Construction pickup with an oil drum in the back. He was also so hyper they gave him a breath test. He passed.”

I thought a moment, my apprehension growing. “Did J.P. hear back on the raccoon carcass?”

“Ten minutes ago-there was too much damage to the brain to do a test, so we can’t categorically say it was rabid. Not only that, but he checked the ricer and the wood samples he removed from the worktable. He couldn’t find a trace of anything except bleach.”

“And the phenobarbital?”

Her expression lightened. “There we might have something. The prescription was filled by an out-of-town pharmacist, which is why we missed it the first time around. J.P. got a warrant based on what we found in Shawna’s hair and took a look at the pharmacy’s records. Tom Chambers has a standard prescription there-has had for the past five years, for difficulty sleeping and nerves, and there was a spike in the purchase pattern at about the right time, as if he’d had to replace a bottle. ’Course, that’s pretty circumstantial-he could say he dropped them down the drain by mistake.”

I tossed the pencil I’d been holding across my desk. “Shit. Without Hennessy, Wallis, or Fallows, we don’t have a goddamn thing, do we?”

“We will,” she said softly.

“What about Ben Chambers?” I asked suddenly.

She shrugged. “Nothing-and nothing to use as leverage, either. He’s a loner who keeps to himself. BTC is a privately held company, so its records are closed without a warrant. We have been asking around, but where NeverTom goes everywhere and sees everybody, Ben either stays at home or visits the office. He doesn’t date any women, go out to restaurants, travel anywhere, belong to any clubs. At business meetings, he either phones in or shows up late and leaves early so no one can chitchat. He’s not a recluse, but he comes close.”

I had moved my chair while she was talking and was now staring out the window at the cobalt-blue sky.

“We’ve got a problem, don’t we?” she said quietly.

I shifted my gaze to her. “Yeah. We focused on NeverTom fast and early. He’s a loud-mouthed creep, he obviously deals dirty, and we had people like Fallows and Eddy Knox to help prejudice us. But I’m worried we missed the boat… Still, how can you dig up as much as we have and still wind up with nothing? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless you’re digging in the wrong direction.”

“You mean Ben Chambers?” I asked. “Where’re the connections? Aside from buying the convention project, he never comes up.”

“Maybe Ben’s using Tom as a front.”

“So why can’t we nail Tom then? It should work out that if we can get one, we get the other. My God-with three dead bodies and a possible fourth, and a fifteen-million-dollar con game going on right under our noses, you’d think we could come up with some solid evidence. What the hell’re we missing?”

Ted McDonald filled his tiny studio. A truly huge man, planted on an all-but-invisible swivel chair, he could reach every knob, switch, and button on his various pieces of equipment without having to do more than bend forward slightly. Ted was WBRT’s news director, not a DJ who read the news, so the two of us were on our own until the top of the hour, when the rock-’n’-roll diet was regularly interrupted for a five-minute informational update.

Not that all he did was sit and wait. He got out quite a bit, sniffing around for material, often filing his reports by remote. Less obviously, he kept in touch with probably a thousand informants, from street cleaners to selectmen to state legislators, all of whom he treated with the same generous equanimity. Although restricted to five minutes every hour, McDonald had enough in his brain to monopolize the air all day.

“So… You did a Deep Throat with Katz,” he said, smiling.

I didn’t bother denying it. On such matters, he was a listener, not a talker. “Hope you didn’t mind.”

“Mind? Christ, no-made perfect sense. I’m a headline service. You needed something in depth to shove under NeverTom’s nose. Did it work?”

“I don’t know. We’re pushing pretty hard, and we’ve got nothing to show for it. I was hoping you could expand on that portrait you drew for me at the construction site.”

“Of the Chambers boys? What do you want to know? I’ve only met Junior a couple of times.”

“What about when they were younger, when the old man was still alive? You said Tom had the balls and Ben had the brains, and that Tom got his kicks putting Ben down all the time. Can you build on that a little? Seems like everyone else we talk to either doesn’t know or is too scared to say.”

McDonald smiled cherubically. “Works that way a lot, doesn’t it? All right, I suppose I could do that. Keep in mind, though, this is all rumor, okay? Quote me and I’ll play dumb.”

I merely nodded.

“The old man was a traditionalist parent, and since his wife died when Tom was born, he was free to do what he wanted. So, traditionally the elder son gets the inheritance, and the younger one gets to screw around and become a drunk, and that’s the way things started out. Except neither son cooperated. Ben was a slow learner-retiring, intimidated by his overbearing father, who was a real tyrant. The more the old man pushed, the less Junior was able to achieve.”

“NeverTom, on the other hand, blossomed. Ignored by his father, a witness to what was happening with his brother, he took all the old man’s lessons to heart, without the old man knowing he was even there. Tom became the athlete, the socialite, the popular one-and a son of a bitch-until his father finally took notice. Then, typically enough, Benjamin dropped Junior like a hot rock, and turned all his attention to Tom, who ate it up. Conversely, Junior was able to get up from under the heat lamp, sorted himself out, and became the scholar of the two boys.”

“He turned into a bookworm, almost an intellectual, even though his brother got the higher grades. You seen that library they have at home? I doubt Tom’s read a single book in it. That’s Junior’s room-his sanctum.”

“Isn’t Ben the one who really runs things? You implied he’s the reason they still have all that money.”

Ted laughed and gave me a Machiavellian look. “I may have misled you slightly the other day-rumor is there isn’t as much money as people think. From what I heard, Junior’s taking the gamble of a lifetime with this convention center.”

I scowled at him. “Wouldn’t the bank know that? They had to have checked Junior’s books when he came riding in as the white knight.”

I could tell Ted was enjoying being the source for once, instead of the mouthpiece. “Harold Matson looked at the books, sure.”

I stared in stunned silence. How many times had we talked around the same subject-a single item lost among dozens-without seeing it in just this way? “Matson cooked the information and then sold it to his board and the other banks?”

McDonald shook his head. “I said no such thing. For all the proof I have, this might as well be a fairy tale.”

“All right, all right,” I retreated. “Let’s go back. So Junior may not be such a hot businessman after all. What’re the rumors specifically?”

“That while he’s been a wheeler-dealer, he’s lost more than he’s made. He’s still got money-both of them do-but it’s less than what the old man left them. That brings up one of the weird wrinkles about the relationship between the two brothers, in fact. Despite the old man’s disenchantment with Junior, he insisted on keeping the eldest son at the helm of the business. That’s Junior’s hold over NeverTom-he controls the cash flow. That’s one of the reasons all of this was kept quiet-politically, Tom couldn’t afford to appear dependent on a recluse loser of a brother, so they’ve both worked well together at hushing up the truth and making Junior look like a winner.”

“So all that stuff that was leaked during NeverTom’s run for the select board, about how Junior’ll do anything to pave his brother’s political future, is bullshit?”

“I don’t know,” Ted answered. “But I don’t think there’s any love lost between them.”

“How does NeverTom treat him?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, but Tom could be pretty awful when they were young. Word was he tortured pets, pulled cruel jokes on people, and once ‘accidentally’ broke the arm of a rival football player so he could play first string. Pretty sociopathic behavior, all in all. I wouldn’t guess he’s a great guy to live with.”

Ted smiled at my expression. “You seem disappointed.”

I stood up in the small room and ran my fingers through my hair. “I am. We’ve been getting nowhere trying to nail this on NeverTom. I was hoping you could give me something on Junior.”

Ted gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry. From everything I know about them, Junior’s just your classic repressed nerd.”

Beverly Hillstrom was uncharacteristically jubilant. “Congratulations, Lieutenant, your hunch was correct. We located an injection site at the base of Milo Douglas’s skull, just above the hairline. He was definitely exposed to rabies artificially. You can rule his death a homicide.”

“Thanks, Doctor. I appreciate all the hard work.”

But she sensed the flatness in my voice. “Is this not good news?”

“It is. I’m sorry. I’m just not sure how to use it anymore. Things have been unraveling a bit down here. We’re trying to regroup.”

She tried to fill the awkward pause that followed. “I hope it’s not a major setback.”

Painfully aware of the effort she’d made, I tried to lighten up a bit. “It’s not. We’ll get this nailed down, and what you just gave me will be a big help. I’ll keep you updated.”

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and checked my watch for the fourth time.

“Don’t tell me,” Gail smiled at me. “He’s still late.”

I gave her a sour stare. “Typical doctor-and he even chose the time.”

She returned to the law book she’d brought along, and I began another tour of the lobby’s paintings and citations. We were waiting at the Skyview Nursing Home for Bernie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Andrews, who’d finally called to schedule “our little experiment,” as he phrased it.

With a sudden bang of the front door, a tall young man, athletic and wild-haired, came striding in from the night. He was carrying a briefcase in one hand and a sheaf of loose papers in the other. A wide smile split his face at the sight of us, defusing my irritation.

He marched by without pause, talking as he went. “I’m so sorry-had somebody on a bender, couldn’t pull out before she landed. Let’s duck into one of these offices here. I want to bring you up to snuff on a little of Bernie’s history.”

Gail and I exchanged glances, both of us struck by his congenial energy, and fell into step behind him. He stopped at a door about halfway down the hall, fumbled in his pocket for a key, and ushered us into an office whose blandness suggested a large number of short-term tenants.

There were three armchairs grouped around a low coffee table, across the room from a more formal arrangement of a desk and three ladder-backs. Andrews chose the former, dumping his paperwork on the coffee table.

“Sit, sit,” he urged and took his own advice, not bothering to remove his coat. “What did you do to your head?”

I unconsciously fingered the bandage. “Just a cut.”

He absorbed that with a nod, enigmatically adding, “Might come in handy tonight. Okay-I’ll make this fast so I won’t waste any more of our time. I visited Bernie this afternoon, just to make a quick appraisal, and found that the recent snowfall has set him back a little, which could be to our advantage. Fresh snow reminds him of the war and therefore throws him into his soldier mode, as I call it, but since that’s the mode in which he chooses to reflect on Mrs. Sawyer’s death, that may be good news.” He looked intensely at Gail, his smile broadening. “You’re Gail Zigman? Thank you for all the time you’ve spent with him. It’s had a great impact. He keeps talking about the cat. You have it with you?”

“Harry’s got it upstairs. Seemed easier to let him keep her.”

“Right. Well, the ‘lady with the cat’ is a big hit. He can’t place you in time-keeps thinking you’re either his daughter or wife or an old girlfriend-but I like the fact that he’s taken a current image-you-and placed it back in the historical time frame he’s comfortable with. It shows he might’ve done the same thing with Mrs. Sawyer’s murder.”

He picked up the papers and settled them in his lap. “Right. Either of you know much about the Battle of the Bulge?”

“Hitler’s last-ditch effort to stall the Allied invasion of Germany in December, 1944,” I answered, feeling like I was back in school.

“Right-that’s the big picture. From Bernie’s perspective, it was an eighty-mile-wide patch of dense forestland, flat up against the German border, where green troops were supposed to get a gentle introduction to being on the front. They called it the ‘Phantom Front,’ because everyone knew the Germans were basically whipped, and that even if they did put up a fight, it wouldn’t be in a thick forest with a few narrow roads.”

“Bernie was a seventeen-year-old PFC, attached to the Hundred-and-Sixth Division. He’d been in place five days, had only fired his rifle on the range, and was part of a combat group that was way under-strength. When the Germans attacked, they did so with a massive one-hour artillery barrage-complete with batteries of searchlights to both blind and light up the American positions. For the GIs, the result was instant bedlam-not only because of the incredible noise, but because the shells knocked out many of the telephone cables they depended on for communications. Before they knew what was going on-or could figure out if this was a ‘spoiling attack’ versus an all-out counteroffensive-German tanks and troops were suddenly mixed in with their own. Inexperienced American officers found themselves giving orders to German soldiers and getting shot at for their trouble. Infantrymen ran for cover behind tanks from the wrong side.”

“Bernie was a part of all this.”

“Unfortunately for his mental health,” Andrews continued, “he didn’t get captured along with most of his buddies. Somehow, he slipped through and ended up as part of the retreat, without a unit, without leadership-lost, confused, and pardon my French, scared shitless. This was when the roots of his PTSD took hold.

“Needless to say, no one knows the exact details of his life for the next two weeks. There were more American casualties in that battle than in any other we’ve been in before or since, including both sides at Gettysburg. So Bernie was swept along like a snowball in an avalanche-cold, abandoned, terrified, not knowing who to trust, not knowing the local language or geography. The weather was terrible-freezing and snowing hard. Artillery or tank shells exploded in villages and among the trees making shrapnel out of bricks and wood. Frozen body parts were found for weeks afterward, tossed about like confetti. Some soldiers used stiff enemy corpses as benches when they sat down to eat.

“In the end, after the Americans had gained the upper hand and were pushing the German bulge back to the border, they started finding people like Bernie-wide-eyed, shell-shocked ghosts of their former selves, walking around like robots. They called them ‘ragmen,’ which may be the best description I’ve ever heard. Many were brought back to some form of mental stability, others were less lucky. Bernie was a mixture of both-long-term hospitalization, a few years of supposed normalcy, during which he hid his symptoms in booze, and a final surrender to his condition, where he is to this day. We have a bunch of fancy-sounding terms for what may or may not be ailing him, from PTSD to Korsakoff’s to alcohol-induced dementia-and they may all be right-but the final result is as unique as his own personality.”

Andrews stood up abruptly. “Anyway, that’s his history in a nutshell. I’m hoping it might help you follow some of his references if he takes that path. The soldier mode is sometimes acted out, sometimes loud, but I’ve never heard of him doing anyone harm. Even that pseudo-strangling scene the other night was mostly hysteria on the other guy’s part. Bernie’s war is inside-he was a nonviolent boy then, and he’s the same now. Okay-let’s go.”

He moved quickly toward the door and then stopped. “You bring the pictures of your suspects?” he asked me.

I patted my breast pocket.

“Good. I’ll let you know when to pull them out.”

Upstairs, we met Harry beyond the double doors separating Bernie’s ward from the rest of the home. He was holding the cat in his arms.

Andrews, who apparently never saw a detail he didn’t take an interest in, leaned forward and thrust his face into the cat’s. She peered back at him with a sleepy, almost drugged expression, purring loudly. “She’s great. What’s her name?”

“Georgia,” Gail answered. “Named after Georgia O’Keeffe.”

Andrews straightened back up. “Perfect-she looks half-dead. How’s he doing, Harry?”

Harry showed his gentle smile. “Pretty quiet, doc. He killed the lights in his room to see the snow better. He’s been sitting by the window for an hour, talking to himself.”

Andrews patted the other man’s arm. “Good. The mood sounds about right.” He turned to face Gail and me. “Dark room, his focus on what’s outside-let’s lead in with Gail and Georgia, then me. Joe, if you could stay in the shadows at first, that might be best, until we can gauge what he’s thinking. Don’t hide-just don’t make a big deal of being there.”

Given what we knew of this man-a traveler lost in time, using stray, unrelated signposts as references, his faulty memory damaged by disease-the setting he’d created for himself was downright eerie. The snow outside the darkened room had taken on the glow of the streetlights and was reflecting it back with an energy all its own, lighting the ceiling and walls with a ghostly iridescence, and backlighting Bernie with a thin, shifting corona.

Quietly, as if entering a church, the three of us filed in, Gail going directly to the window and taking the chair opposite Bernie’s. She placed Georgia in his lap without a word.

He took his eyes off the snow and looked down at the cat, smiling. “Hello, Ginger-where did you come from?”

“I thought you’d like some company,” Gail said softly.

Andrews quietly lifted a chair and placed it nearby. Bernie glanced at him but otherwise kept his attention on Gail.

“I always love your company, Lou. You know that.”

I moved within his sight, so he knew I was there, but settled on the bed across the room-a mere shadow in his peripheral vision.

Gail took her cue from the name he’d given her. “How are you doing, Dad?”

His hands began to unconsciously stroke the cat. He went back to gazing out the window. “Too many dreams.”

“Bad dreams?”

“Uh-huh.”

She waited for more, got nothing, and so prodded him with, “What are you looking at?”

“Anything-anybody.”

I could almost feel her trying to follow, remembering what Andrews had told us. “Are they out there?”

“You bet. They wear white uniforms, so we can’t see ’em.” Georgia stretched in his lap. He looked at Gail. “Is Lou here?”

After a split-second hesitation, she said, “She’ll be here soon.”

Very gently, Andrews leaned forward and removed the cat from Bernie’s hands, placing her on the floor, where she wandered off in my direction, her job done. The psychiatrist took a short, blunt, smooth stick from his pocket, and placed it across Bernie’s palm. The old man’s fingers curled around it and he lifted it to his cheek, his expression darkening.

“Gotta have a gun,” he murmured. “Gotta keep alive.”

“When did you last sleep, Private?” Andrews asked.

Bernie snorted gently.

“Who knows?” He shivered.

“Cold?”

Bernie nodded. The shivering intensified. He stamped his feet. “Wish I could feel my feet.”

“And you’re hungry,” Andrews stated. “And scared.”

Bernie’s voice was pitiable. “I want to go home.”

“Gotta keep alive to get home.”

“Right-keep alive.” Bernie’s eyes were now glued to the view outside. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, the stick gripped in his hand like the butt of a pistol. Instinctively, we all looked outside and saw a dog cut across the snowy ground, just at the edge of the light.

“What was that?” Andrews asked. “Was it them?”

Bernie slipped off his chair and crouched by the windowsill, barely peering over the top. “Yeah.”

“But they’re dressed like us.”

He placed his finger against his lips. “Listen.”

Andrews got down next to him, in front of Gail’s knees. I noticed her face was frozen, her eyes intense-almost fearful. “That’s German they’re speaking,” he said.

“Right,” Bernie agreed. “The spies.”

“Who’re ‘Dem Bums’?” Andrews asked in a whisper.

“Brooklyn Dodgers,” was the quick reply.

“Where’s L’il Abner live?”

“Dogpatch, USA.”

“They don’t know any of the answers.”

“Damn Krauts-why do they have to dress like us?”

“’Cause they’re out to get us, Private-just like they got Johnnie.”

I stretched my own memory back to when I first met Bernie, right after he’d attacked the other patient. “They got Johnnie,” he’d said at the time. I was impressed Andrews, with all his other patients, had remembered that small detail from Bernie’s file.

An important detail, too. Bernie grabbed Andrews’s sleeve. “God damn you, Johnnie. I told you not to sleep there. You gotta hide. They look for you where it’s warmer. They know where we’ll be.”

“I’m tired,” Andrews said in a sagging voice.

“You die, I’m all alone, you bastard… ” Bernie’s hand dropped, and his gaze shifted to me, far across the room. “I’m all alone.”

Andrews gestured to me to come forward slowly. “But you saw the man who killed Johnnie, right?”

Tears were flowing down Bernie’s face. “I was so close, I could’ve touched him. I was scared… So scared. I didn’t want to die.”

Andrews pulled Gail off her chair so she would be kneeling with them in a tight group. “Johnnie’s mom needs to know, Bernie, so she can get some peace. She needs to know who killed Johnnie. We all need some peace. We all want to sleep.”

Andrews motioned to me to crouch before Bernie, who stared at the bandage on my head with wide eyes. Andrews nodded, and I silently removed a stack of pictures from my breast pocket and handed them to Bernie.

“Krauts, Bernie,” the doctor suggested. “Which one of them killed Johnnie?”

Bernie looked at the stack in his hand, hesitating. The light from the street lamps was strong enough to see the pictures, but I worried the leap from memories to reality might prove too wide. In his mind, Bernie had transformed a stick into a gun, and Gail into three completely different women. What would he do with what I’d handed him?

Andrews seemed intent on the same problem. He gently removed the top picture from the pile-one of Eddy Knox. “This him? The one who killed Johnnie?”

Bernie touched the photo with his finger.

“No.”

Andrews replaced it with another, this one of Willy Kunkle.

“No.”

A third came up. Bernie shook his head.

Andrews put the whole stack in his hands, his voice firm. “Look through them, Private. Find Johnnie’s killer-the man who strangled him as he slept.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Bernie did as he’d been told, peeling off pictures one after the other, moving faster, shifting his position so I could no longer see which ones he was looking at.

And then he stopped, one picture held out before him, crying openly now. “Johnnie… God damn it… ” He took the photo and placed it, facedown, against Gail’s breast. Her hands closed on his and he bent over, his cheek against her stomach.

Andrews began rubbing Bernie’s back, mouthing instructions soundlessly at Gail, who by now was crying also, a victim of her own nightmares. “Thank you,” she said with difficulty. “Thank you for helping me. Thank you for letting me sleep again.”

She raised his head in her hand and kissed him on the cheek. Andrews rose and helped Bernie to stand, and then escorted him to the bed. “Lie down. Your job is done. You’ve brought peace to yourself and others-peace and quiet. The war is over, Bernie. Time to sleep.”

He helped Bernie stretch out, smoothed his bathrobe and arranged his pillow. Bernie looked up at us all for a moment and smiled. “My friends,” he said quietly and shut his eyes, sighing deeply.

Georgia, who’d been curled up at the foot of the bed, rose, stretched, and resettled into the crook of Bernie’s arm. Instinctively, his fingers lost themselves in her fur.

We crept out, followed by the sound of her purring.

In the hallway, squinting in the glare of the overhead lights, we stood a moment in a tight circle, emotionally spent. Then, without comment, I extended my hand to Gail. She gave me the photograph.

I looked at it for a moment, trying to untangle the emotions it stimulated-the questions, the arguments, the doubts, and finally the acceptance that it might all be starting to make sense.

The picture was of Junior Chambers, NeverTom’s reclusive brother.