by Arthur Day
Buckmaster put on his hat and nodded to Julia Pease. “If you think of anything else please give the sheriff’s department a call,” he said.
As he turned and drove slowly up the little dirt drive leading to the road around the lake, Buckmaster went over what she had said. It was interesting that someone had gone through Pam’s belongings, but she said nothing had been missing. Michael? An old male friend? Another friend? Where was she when this happened? Did someone think that she had something of value? Could it have anything to do with the trip she had just completed? Lots of questions and, like this point in other investigations, few if any answers.
McCAAL
After the dinner with Dianne I went back to my house and tried to get a full night’s sleep. Everything would be clearer in the morning without the effect of food and wine and liquor. My bed, though, felt as if I was sleeping in the bed of a stranger. My back ached in one position. My side ached in another. When I finally drifted off to sleep I dreamt of a woman dressed in purple robes and with a black baseball cap on her head and a face of carved of Barre granite towered above me as I tried to run down a long corridor and, no sooner had I reached an end and turned onto a different path than she appeared before me laughing silently at a joke I did not know. The harder I ran the louder she laughed until I stopped running and she caught up with me and I woke up sweating and breathing as if I had just run one hundred yards. I did not need a shrink to tell me the meaning of that dream. As I sat there in the darkness with dawn still an hour away, I realized that I needed to go back to Paul Coloni and have another chat. He had been with her most recently and might know of any problem she was stressing over. Maybe Coloni was the problem. It all had to start there. Who would be in a better position to make Pam disappear if not him? It wouldn’t be unusual for the person who commits a crime to stick around and watch the cops chasing their tails. I could not simply take his protestations of innocence at face value. Besides, he was a ratty little man who I instinctively disliked. I told myself that my instinctive dislike had nothing to do with anything, but I could not help how I felt.
The door to the cabin was wide open but there did not appear to be anybody there when I walked into the hall. The living room was empty and so was the kitchen when I ducked in there for a quick look. “Paul?” I called.
“On the back porch,” he replied.
I walked down the central hallway and out onto a pleasant covered porch sprinkled with canvas chairs, little plastic tables and a larger round table in the center under a light fixture fixed with one of those yellow bug lights. Summer living Compton style I thought remembering those years when I had been up here with Pam. Paul was dressed in old shorts and a white T shirt and was sitting in one of the chairs turned to face the lake. “Hi MJ.” He raised a hand in a sort of greeting and then let it fall into his lap as if the effort had been all that he could muster. “Wanna beer?” He pointed to the can of Heineken on the table beside him.
“I shook my head and sat down in the chair next to him. “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” I told him.
Paul waved one hand as if to wave away flies. “You have as much right to be here as I do,” he replied. “maybe more even if you and Pam are divorced. I understood from what she said that there was no bitterness or malice but only the realization that your life and hers were slowly unwinding in different directions. She still likes you, maybe even loves you.” He shrugged slightly as if to say that he did not take one side or the other. “How goes the search? I called the sheriff’s office earlier today and they are putting a call out for volunteers to search that big patch of forest just north of the lake. Other than that, though, they had nothing to report. I took some vacation time to stay here in case she showed up, but she hasn’t called or appeared.” He took a sip of his beer and sighed. “I had hoped you were the bearer of glad tidings, but I see from your expression that you aren’t. What can I do for you?”
He seemed as if he really wanted to help in any way he could. I looked at the man and, not for the first time, wondered how he and Pam could be friends with or without benefits. Paul was small and hairy with simian features and thick glasses. He had nice eyes though, large and brown and magnified somewhat by the glasses They shone with intelligence. Maybe that was the connection that they made. Could Paul be playing me and Buckmaster? It seemed unlikely that he was behind Pam’s disappearance, but I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. “You and Pam lived separately except when you were up here?”
“Right. I know it sounds a bit strange after all these years, but we were both happier this way. We tried sharing her apartment right after we got together, and it was a disaster. I don’t think either of us was prepared for the compromises that such an arrangement entails. Pam probably had some idea because of her marriage to you but we found ourselves at each other’s throat almost from the gitgo. Little shit like leaving the toothpaste tube open or underwear drying on the towel rack in the bathroom. Up here neither of us was working and so there was no stress, no conflicts of schedule, no coming home exhausted and still having to deal with dinner and someone else in the place. Up here it worked but back in the working world it didn’t.”
“So you wouldn’t know if she had other friends or family with whom she might have talked or anyone who might have contacted her.?”
Paul smiled. “It’s not quite as draconian as that. We saw each other two or three times a week, spent some nights over when one or both of us had the following day off and coordinated our vacations up here of course. She talked with her mother occasionally. She had a friend named Sally Bennett and another she called Jake but would say nothing further about it when I asked if Jake was a close friend. We were, after all, not married and it was none of my business if she chose not to tell me something. I think we both tried to respect such boundaries if you know what I mean.”
I did indeed, and we had been married. Pam could be a very private person at times, a character trait that I had not always appreciated. She had been so secretive that I became paranoid and took an opportunity to check the numbers on her cell. Most I knew but one I did not. When I dialed it, I got a computer that put me directly into email. When I asked her about it, she flew into a rage that I should check her phone. I think we both knew our marriage was in trouble by then but neither of us could admit it. She told me that if her calls had anything to do with us she would have told me. If she was cheating she could have called from her office and so on. There had been a certain logic to that, but it left me emotionally hung out to dry. All she would say was that the number was none of my business. I wondered if the number belonged to this Jake person. “Did you ever go out with her and join others or have others over either to your place or hers?”
Paul shrugged as if to say such gatherings and parties happen to everybody. “Sure. We had parties, but I can’t think of anyone who wasn’t from our work or people from the apartments around us or family on the big holidays like Thanksgiving. I don’t even remember any of their names. No incident or arguments that I remember. We are pretty boring people. We don’t know any secrets that would interest anyone. We shuffle paper five days a week and all of it would put you to sleep inside five minutes. You seem like a man who has endured his share of such social situations.”
I had indeed and the Marine Corps before that and I knew full well that some socializing was expected and, when that happened, it was expected to be of a certain form and structure. Marines were supposed to be manly men so if you were gay you had to keep your mouth shut or some liquored up marine would try to shut it for you. Wall street was far more liberal but there you had to talk about the market, global economies, or the latest play off Broadway and, of course who was banging who on their way to the top and who had fallen off that ladder and why. Financial services people make an art form out of gossip. We never spoke of things that actually concerned us like the increasing inability to achieve and hold an erection or the reason that out spouse treated us as
strangers after years of eighteen-hour days.
“Yes, I have but mundane daily tasks can often mask complicated feelings and being congenial at a cocktail party doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t want to cut your heart out figuratively speaking, or at least ruin your reputation and career in order to further their own.”
Paul nodded in agreement. “True. I guess everybody who goes to work each day has experienced some form of social homicide, but I honestly don’t remember anyone who hated Pam or me. I’m not saying it wasn’t there but I can’t think of any specific person or act.” His face set into an expression of memory and concentration. “Except”
“Except?” If Paul needed a little push I would be more than glad to supply it.
“There was one guy. I think his name was Ronald Geyer. He worked with Pam and apparently was in love with her. She did not return the feeling. We had just started dating so I didn’t feel I could criticize Ron or Pam for that matter. I thought it was something she would have to deal with without my help and that she was perfectly capable of verbally cutting his balls off if he became too insistent.”
“Was there a fight or argument of some sort?”
“Probably more than one but only one that I was witness to and, like I said, it was quite a while back so don’t hold me to the details. We were in her apartment in Rockmarsh having s drink and watching Fox News on the tube. Her buzzer went off and it turned out to be Ron who wanted to come up and talk to Pam. She told him to buzz off, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. A few minutes later someone pounded on her door and it turned out to be Ron who must have pushed apartment buttons until some idiot let him in without finding out who it was. So much for the security system in that building. Anyway, to make the story short and bitter, she refused to open the door. Ron shouted that he would pound on every door on the floor and tell whoever answered that Pam was a whore and that was how she paid her rent. She apparently knew some of her neighbors but not all of them. She opened the door and there he stood drunk as a skunk and weaving back and forth in the doorway. I called the police as he pushed his way in and started yelling that she was a cunt and a bitch, and he was the only one who would put up with her and if it wasn’t for him she would have been fired long before and all that he got for his efforts was the brush-off from her. He was a big man with a big belly and a big face and little piggy eyes like raisins in suet and legs that were bowed and seemed too small for the rest of him.
He staggered into the room and almost stumbled and fell across the coffee table next to which we were sitting. Pam grabbed him by his shirt sleeve and kept him upright. I got off the couch and went to the far end of the room where I called the police again. By this time both Ron and Pam were screaming at each other with enough noise to wake the dead. One of the neighbors stuck his head through the open doorway and withdrew it just as quickly.
“You’re fuckin’ drunk,” Pam screamed. “Get out of here. NOW.”
“Fuckin’ bitch,” he screamed back. “I’m going to cut your fuckin’ tits off and stuff them in your lying cheating mouth.”
“Big talking for someone who can barely stand up,” she replied and pushed him towards the door.
Ron stumbled back into the door frame, fumbled in his pocket and came up with the biggest goddammed knife I had ever seen. I was so scared I peed myself and didn’t even know it until after it was all over. He looked as if he was about to lunge at her when the police finally arrived, kicked his legs out from underneath him and arrested him on various charges including assault with a deadly weapon.”
Paul looked at me and tried smiling but it didn’t really come off. “Anyway, that was the only incident that I know of and for sure I don’t want to witness anything like that ever again.”
I nodded in agreement. Guns are usually fired at a distance and the results are not always immediately apparent. Knives are always weapons for close-in fighting. There is usually a lot of blood and much of it gets sprayed around the crime scene. Knives rip and tear, cut and stab. Much of the time they are weapons of opportunity in a fit of passion. “So, he is now in jail?”
“Yes as far as I know. Pam was hesitant but I convinced her that even if Ron did not come back at her he would surely hurt some other woman, so she testified against him and that combined with my testimony and that of the policeman at the scene sealed his fate.” Paul took a slug of his beer and sighed. “Other than that one time, I cannot think of any incident or any person that would want to do her harm.”
I had a couple of people to check out and a hint of someone named Jake, but I was no further in finding Pam than I had been several hours before and time was working against me and the sheriff as well. I wondered what Buckmaster knew and whether he’d be willing to combine our efforts and results. Then it occurred to me that the only timeline we had for Pam’s disappearance was Paul’s account of showing up at the cabin to find nobody there and still no one the following morning. If he were involved somehow then she could have been missing far longer than a couple of days. I looked across the table at the man and wondered what made him tick? He seemed friendly, intelligent and in love with Pam. I should talk with Pam’s neighbors. They might give me a different picture of Paul and I still didn’t know who the last person had been to see her alive.
BUCKMASTER
Pam’s neighbor in Rockmarsh had Medusa’s face and if her hair wasn’t composed of writhing snakes it was because they had all left for a more attractive home. “Whaddya want?” she said with a mouth full of Marlboro and mean.
Buckmaster showed her his badge. “Do you know Pam Pease?”
“No”. The woman tried to slam the door but Buckmaster’s foot got in the way. “You live right next door to her and have been since before she moved in. I just have a few questions and it won’t take long or I could say you’re obstructing justice and take you to the station for questioning there. Your choice.”
She tried to out stare him but that didn’t work. His eyes had stared at far worse over the years. “I don’t know nothing, and I don’t want to get involved. Just leave me the fuck alone,” she spat.
Buckmaster pushed the door open and moved his face to within an inch of hers. “You listen to me lady. If everybody in this building is like you this must be a really fun place to live. Now do you want to take a few minutes to answer questions or do we get in my car and go for a drive?” He backed off slightly and took his notebook from his pocket. Turning to a blank page he recited from memory. “Let’s see. Ethel Cloot, age sixty-nine, no recent arrests but was arrested for prostitution many years ago. Your husband died of apparent heart attack and left you enough to live on in luxury. Since then minor shit like petty theft but you are on Rockmarsh police radar so what’s it going to be?”
Ethel took a drag from her cigarette and blew smoke into Buckmaster’s face, but she stood back and let the door swing open all the way. She was dressed in some type of blue cotton robe with white snakes coiling upwards from the bottom.
Almost immediately Buckmaster wished that he’d pulled the old bag into the corridor and questioned her there. The short hallway led into a living room and the whole place stank of cigarettes and some other smell that was even worse. The living room was a shamble. Books, magazines, papers and plates and bowls of long past meals some with rotten or moldy food still in them. The walls were filthy grey and must have at one time been white or maybe cream. There was a couch along one wall with a couple of decrepit-looking chairs in front of it. Had it been the room belonging to one of his daughters back when they were teens he would have thrown a fit. Now it looked as if Ethel Cloot had simply given up and was standing around (hard to find a place to sit there) waiting for the devil to claim one of his own.
“Just push that shit to one side, have a seat and ask your questions.”
Buckmaster wasn’t certain what disease he might contact by sitting on the couch. He remained standing. “When was the last time
you saw your neighbor?”
“Two or three days ago. She was going into her place as I was leaving to get some smokes.” Ethel ground out her butt in an overflowing ashtray on a small table by one of the chairs.
“Did you ever talk with her?”
“Nope. I keep to myself and I like it that way. Always have since Stan died, may God rest his soul.”
This seemed so incongruous that Buckmaster had to turn towards the couch and pretend to cough into his sleeve. He doubted that Ethel had ever been a spiritual person.
The envelope was lying on top of other junk with specks of brown matter that he hoped was not what it looked like. “Are you sure? Maybe you did, and it simply slipped your mind. Happens as we get older. It’s happened to me.” He picked up the envelope with the tips of two fingers, turned away from the couch and held it out to her.
Ethel lit another cigarette and squinted through the haze of a fresh cloud of smoke. “What’s that. I aint got my glasses with me and I can’t see shit without them.”
“A letter addressed to your neighbor. No return address.”
“She probably dropped it going into her place and I picked it up and was going to give it to her.”
“Stop lying. The envelope is open and empty.” He walked over to her and held up the empty envelope for her to see. “It’s postmarked ten days ago. Are you saying that you don’t’ remember the contents? Wouldn’t have been a check would it? You wouldn’t be opening other peoples’ mail and stealing their checks would you? That would put you in a smoke free place for a long time.”
She puffed nervously. “I didn’t do nothing. Really. The envelope was lying in the hall outside her door. I just picked it up and checked it to make sure it wasn’t just junk mail that she would have thrown away anyway.”
“Right. Buckmaster let the sarcastic disbelief show in his voice. “How would you know what she considered junk mail if you never talked with her?”