But my father-in-law talked about blood and water and their relative viscosities. “Don’t they teach you about family in Chicago?” he says. Well, yes, they do, but not that you throw the truth out the window for them. That’s what I thought but of course I didn’t say it. When a Morton starts in on that theme he is not to be gainsaid. So I called you and we made our arrangement to go up the hill and reenact the crime. And Ken somehow talked Laurie into not knifing me for it. He also told her no, he wasn’t going to go to Captain Skyler and have you pulled off the case, since you’re the only detective on the force.
Next morning I got a call from my boss who said take the day off and do what Ken wants. And so you and I went up the hill yesterday morning and learned pretty much nothing.
Then you said I could go off on my own in the afternoon, hit the bars and see if there were any questions you’d neglected to ask.
- - - KATE - - -
I kept on with the joke. “As you know, Frank, when we were in the cabin, we talked about your daughter Brianna. Don’t leave that part out.”
His face went all, I don’t know what. Sad? Hard? Lost? He looked at a spot on the dash, yet he wasn’t looking at it but somewhere miles beyond.
In his long long backstory he didn’t review what had passed between us at Kraut’s place, so I’ll do it here. Forgive me, but it’s important.
The corpse was gone but otherwise the place was as I’d left it on Tuesday. There was still blood on the floor and elsewhere. Blood and brains and the occasional hair on the doorjamb and the wall adjacent. Frank looked the place over, and Frank saw some things I’d noticed but hadn’t mentioned. He would have made a decent detective, if he hadn’t been too soft—sensitive is the word, I guess—to survive police work. He saw there were traces of blood in the open cabinets and one of the drawers, meaning the place had been rifled before the shooting. Also, the doorjamb was a mess but the inside of the door was clean. Another point in favor of Shiny. The most plausible scenario if she’d been the killer would have been that they argued, she grabbed the gun, shot Kraut, then pulled the place apart to make it look like robbery. But it appeared more like Kraut had come in when someone was ransacking the cabin and was shot right away, with the door still open. There’s even some mess on the ground outside. So in all likelihood, Shiny is not only Shiny but clean.
Frank said, “You looked this place over for hairs, dandruff, bootprints, right? Signs of Doug or Cliff?”
“Found a hair that’s still at the lab. Looked like Doug Block’s,” I said. “But he already told us he’d been in here last weekend making the car deal.”
Next Frank and I walked through the likely shooting. He played Kraut, I played the shooter. We figured where that person would have been standing. Kraut walks in, steps forward threatening. Gun up, brains out. All interesting, but none of it new.
I said “What kind of price are you going to pay at home for being up here with me?”
“God knows.”
“Frank, how did you ever get here? To Coneyville, I mean.”
He said there had to be a more pleasant place for that conversation. There were a couple of lawn chairs under an awning outside, and we sat in them.
“I majored in English. You know I write. You know how hard it is to make it as a fiction writer, screenwriter. Any of the things I was interested in. Laurie said she’d give me her full support for as long as it took. Laurie is not much for truth-telling.”
I knew.
“But when she suggested we move from Chicago to Coneyville, it made sense. I got the job at Flair before we moved out, and that covered health insurance. Beyond that it costs next to nothing to live here.”
“Especially if you garden and hunt.”
“And fish. I garden. Thought I’d learn the others but it seems I’m not allowed out of the house that much.”
“Your wife is a pip.”
He didn’t answer. I said “Last week Larry at the grocery told me when Brianna and Laurie came in, the girl looked like she’d been crying. Larry said he wondered if mom had been slapping her.”
Frank shook his head. “She doesn’t even do that at home, much. When she does and I’m home she tells me to get the brat away and I walk her around the block. Brianna I mean. She wouldn’t slap her in public. She’s off the wall but she’s also very controlled. Berate the kid, scream at her in the car if nobody’s nearby. That she’d do.”
“Frank, why don’t you get out?”
“I can’t.”
“Divorce her.”
“She’d destroy me. She’s got her parents here and a dozen others who’d tell any lie Ken asked them to. Blood and water. Start divorcing a daughter, you’re not blood any more. Or rather, you learn you never were. Ken and Alice have even said as much, ’cause they know I must think about it now and then. Laurie says crazy things and I can’t even know if she believes them. But even if she does, if you prove her wrong she’ll invent evidence.”
I stayed quiet. I wanted him to say this, not me.
“We had Tom and Tracy over for dinner about a year ago, before she made me quit the writing group. She wants everybody in town to know who’s the alpha, so she put on the Ritz. The good china, the sterling. Her parents kept a hope chest for her for twenty-two years.”
This wasn’t the story I thought he’d tell. It seems he didn’t know the other.
“A day or so later I dropped by their house. Tom had asked for a pumpkin so when the rains let up I picked one and took it over. Tracy stayed in her room, wouldn’t come out and talk to me. Tom told me she was upset. He said Laurie had called her and accused her of stealing a silver fork. I went home and mentioned it. Laurie said Tracy did steal the fork even if she denied it. I counted the forks and none were missing.”
I shook my head. Dear God, what this man lives with.
“Next day Laurie told me I counted wrong. I counted again and now there’s a fork missing. Next time she was in the bath I found it in her sock drawer.”
He looked over at me. “See how much trouble I’m in?”
I had to tell him. “It’s worse than you know, Frank.”
“Really? Tell me.”
I told him.
“Remember at Christmas you went to that concert at the Lutheran church?”
“Yes?”
“They offered child care. You walked Brianna down to the nursery while Laurie held your seats.”
“How do you know this?”
“Somebody told me. I’ll get to that. You were walking back to the sanctuary. Right at the door, Shiny Larson tripped because she was drunk. You caught her. The noise must have made Laurie turn around. She saw Shiny give you a hug. Next day Laurie called a PI and said you were cheating and she needed a divorce.”
“PI? Who?”
“I won’t say. Unless you really need it. This guy keeps an office in Bradford, although he spends enough time here you might’ve seen his face. He tailed you for four days. Ken Morton paid the bill. Laurie said show me some pictures and the guy said there weren’t any. In four days you were never by yourself, let alone with Shiny.”
“Kate… I pee sitting down to get a minute to myself.”
I looked out at the woods around Kraut’s place and let that sink in. Weekends I spend whole days alone, home or outdoors, and I eat up solitude but take it for granted. Frank has to steal it by the gram.
“It figures. Anyway, when this guy said there weren’t any pictures, she asked if he could fake some.”
It had to hurt a lot more than a silver fork. Frank’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, dear God.”
I reached over and touched his hand. He winced and pulled it away.
“Kate, please.”
“Sorry.”
“Not offended, but… but that only hurts.”
“Okay. Frank, I wasn’t moving on you. I just… I just want you to know I feel for you.”
He looked over at me. “Thanks.”
“For your daughter, too.”
I think we were quiet for a bit. He had to be aching, so I said, “I think you’re a really good dad. I think you’d do anything for Brianna.”
“Only anything that wouldn’t get me killed or jailed. A kid four years old needs a father.”
“Especially this one. So you go on living in hell because you love your daughter so much.”
“Nietzsche said we are best punished for our virtues.”
“Nietzsche was a jerk but he got that one right.”
Frank thought a while.
“Kate, let’s make believe for a minute.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s say when you touched my hand you were moving on me. Let’s say you were in love with me. Really deeply in love. Would you frame Laurie to get me free? Manufacture some evidence?”
I shook my head. “No. No. I once told you I came here because I like small towns and I like to hunt. I also moved because playing by the rules is deep in my bones. I figured it would be easier here than in New York.”
“I was pretty sure. I asked you so you’d know how stuck I am. She plays by rules I’d rather die than…”
We went quiet again.
“Why’d you marry her?”
“Rules. Where I was brought up, you knock a woman up you marry her.”
“Didn’t you have a sixth anniversary last year? Brianna’s only four.”
“Laurie had a miscarriage. By then we were married. And she did a good job of acting decent until Brianna.”
“Kids change things.”
“You have no idea. First time I touched that little baby hand, it was like an electric shock. Except what flowed into me wasn’t a spark. It was… It was meaning. It was purpose. It was a way the world just might make a little sense. I’d never known that, purpose. I only knew rules.”
“Please may I hold your hand? Just for a minute?”
He gave me his hand. It was only for a minute, maybe less. Then I felt how I might be hurting him, so I let him go and said, “We’d better lock up and get to town. We’ve done enough work here to serve for an alibi, but not if we stay any longer.”
We got in my car. I drove into town, and Frank wouldn’t look at me all the way down.
Back to Saturday. My car again, in front of Frank’s house. Him telling me backstory. Except now he finally got to some new material.
- - - FRANK - - -
You told me I could question people on my own, and I did. And there was somebody in Eddie’s you hadn’t talked to. Tony Mazzetti. What a punk. A punk you might be locking up. You decide. He asked if he thought telling me some news about Kraut’s murder would win him any points with the police. I told him I’m not police and I can’t say. He decided to talk anyway, just to spite Cliff Morton. Or because he’s an idiot.
He told me Cliff had come to him for some help. Cliff had shot Kraut Ehrmann and hid the money in the woods. Then back in town, he got drunk at Eddie’s and wrecked his car leaving. He needed to get back up the hill to get the cash and he needed a ride. It was a lot of cash and he’d be glad to give Mazzetti some of it for a lift.
“So,” says Mazzetti, “I gave him a ride up and back. And I saw the cash and it was a crapton of money. And you know what that son of a bitch did? When I dropped him off at the motel he gave me twenty-five dollars. I just abetted him in a crime I could go up for ten years for… I know this stuff, I’m not a moron. And he gives me twenty-five bucks. Can you believe that shit?”
I asked Tony if he knew anything else. He said, “The weapon is still up the hill. Like I said, Cliff told me about the robbery. He talks too much. Like me I guess. So, he tells me that when he was stealing the cash he looked around the cabin to see if there was more. He found Kraut’s sweet new Glock and some clips. Heard a car coming and he loaded the gun real quick. He let Kraut no more than get in the door and he blew the bastard’s brains out. On his way to his car he hears some squawking like a walkie-talkie, so he turns around and heads uphill. He dropped the gun in a blackberry patch, deep in, and then he ran up to a little half-rotten shed up there, where they used to keep empty buckets when it was sugarbush. That was where him and me took the dough out of later. He said he saw he had blood on him so he went into some more blackberries and scratched up his hand for camelflage.”
Yes, Tony pronounces it camelflage.
“He picked some ginseng—weird but it worked—and went down to his car. Sweet-talked the lady cop and got away.”
- - - KATE - - -
I interrupted Frank. “So the gun is still up the hill?”
“I’m getting to that.”
“Okay, get there.”
- - - FRANK - - -
I told Tony he might get off easier if he did me a favor. Again, I was clear I couldn’t promise anything. But he said “tell me what favor and we’ll see.” I asked him if he knew where Cliff was now and he said he was probably back at the motel, but he’d bought a junker from Doug Block that afternoon so he might be as far as Johnstown by now. We asked around in the bar if anyone knew what Cliff’s new car was, and somebody not only told us but said he’d seen it at the motel twenty minutes before. It seems Cliff was confident he was off the hook and he could stay in Coneyville.
- - - KATE - - -
I interrupted again. “I told him on Tuesday not to leave town. Maybe for once he listened to something other than his voices.”
“Oh, maybe that’s it,” said Frank. He stopped to look at his watch. It occurred to me he’d been doing a lot of that, but it didn’t occur to me to wonder why or to look at my own. Trust me on that; I really lost track of time that morning. If I’d been more aware of it I might have figured out what Frank was up to, I might have known how to handle what happened. I might have figured out ahead of time how I’d feel about it. And maybe I wouldn’t have let Frank get away. I especially lost track of time right at this point, because he looked over at me. Held my eyes for quite a long time. He looked so sad. I asked him to go on and he started to, but then he digressed.
“Laurie said she ‘knew’ I was sleeping with Shiny. I told you that, didn’t I? I told her it was nonsense. But she likes to say ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire.’ She likes to say it even where there’s no smoke.”
He was looking at me and I was looking at him. And we were leaning toward each other. And leaning. I caught myself.
“Any smoke here, Frank?”
“My eyes are tearing up a little. So maybe?”
He kept leaning and I kept leaning and our lips touched. Just brushed. It was luscious, just brushing. I tend to attract men who press pretty hard before they’ve got your name memorized. And I guess I’m attracted to them as well. Not to the softer kind. The kind who brush and it’s enough. The kind who get themselves trapped by a Laurie. But all those library nights, and his voice reading to his child…
His hand touched my cheek, moved to my neck. Moved inside my coat, over to my shoulder. It was a feather-light touch and it almost killed me. From my shoulder to my side and down. Down to where his hand touched the grip of my gun and we came to our senses.
He went on.
- - - FRANK - - -
I coached Mazzetti on what to say and he called the motel. Cliff was there. Tony told him he didn’t owe him any favors but for another five hundred, he’d keep his ass out of prison. Cliff said come over and talk about it. Tony went to the motel and I guess he told Cliff what I’d told him to say. Which was: You better get up that hill and find the gun. Because the lady cop is going up there tomorrow with a whole crew, with bush hogs and machetes and metal detectors. And if they find that gun with your prints on it you’re hosed.
I sent another guy over from Eddie’s who did a song and dance about how sad and unjust it was that Cliff was a suspect. This stalled Cliff just long enough for me to get a head start up the hill. I hid my car and waited. Before long I saw Cliff come up and thrash around in some blackberry canes and come out with the Glock.
- - - KATE - - -
“Frank!” I said, “
You let him walk off that hill armed and you didn’t call me? Till this morning? And you’re taking your sweet time telling me even now?”
“Come on, Kate. Why should we believe he wasn’t armed before he went up for the Glock?”
“Okay, Frank, maybe you don’t know this. But one of the things he’s been in for is gun running. Carrying is a given in this state, but Clifford Morton is under a judge’s order not to ever touch a firearm. And everybody from here to Pittsburgh knows it’s worth their life to sell him or lend him a gun.”
“True, I didn’t know that. But I’m not a complete idiot, Kate. I told Tony that Cliff might come down the hill with a weapon. And having shaken him down for more money, Tony should hide out for a while.”
I put my coffee on the dash. I was pretty exasperated. This wasn’t about lousy exposition in a bad screenplay any more. Frank had turned a monster loose in town with a Glock. I tried to stay calm, though, and asked him if he knew where we’d find Cliff.
“I’ll get to that,” he said.
“Frank! This is serious.”
“I know, Kate. And believe me, I’m doing my best. Let me tell you what happened to me when I came back into town.”
“Please do, tell me, and try to do it a little faster than you’ve been doing.”
“Okay. Okay. More coffee?”
“FRANK!”
He heaved a great sigh and looked at his watch again. By this time I was so confused I could barely see straight.
- - - FRANK - - -
I came home. Laurie demanded to know where I’d been. I told her I was working on the case her father had put me on and I didn’t want to talk about it. But she has this way of making you feel like impalement would be a relief. So I told her. About going up to the cabin with you. How I hit the bars in the afternoon. About Tony and the gun. I told her about my seeing Cliff fetch the gun.
And I told her I needed to go talk to her father right away. I needed to explain to him: there’s no way I can protect Cliff. And then, I told her, I need to go tell Kate.
- - - KATE - - -
Frank looked at his watch again and I thought he was going to cry.
Kzine Issue 20 Page 2