“Okay. Let’s start over. Why did he come out west?”
“What?”
“Why did he come to Meriwether?”
“I told you before,” she said, irritated now. “To take a degree in Western history. He was quite a good student. He had finished his course work and was a graduate teaching assistant; he was writing his thesis when he dropped out of school. I know because I checked.”
“Did you think he might have been lying?”
“I doubted him, yes, but I shouldn’t have. Raymond would never lie to me. Not even about the money— Oh…”
“What money?” It was normal; my clients usually lied as often and as badly as politicians.
“What money?” she echoed.
“Come on, lady.”
“Oh, all right. The last time he wrote, he asked me for money…”
“Why not your parents?”
“Because I was sending him to school.”
“Why?” I asked, knowing we were back into family history.
“After the trouble his senior year, my mother threw him out of the house. His clothes, his books, his guns, everything. Told him to never come back. She sold his horse and tack, she drove him away from the front door. She—she can be a hard woman. She didn’t mean to be cruel; she just couldn’t stand any more—any more grief and trouble. She even said she regretted adopting him. That was the—cruelest thing of all…she regretted being his—mother.”
“Raymond was adopted? I didn’t know.”
“There’s no need to be nasty. After the other boys had—had died, my parents adopted Raymond.”
“Others? How many?”
“Three.”
“I’m sorry. How?”
“One of the twins was killed in an automobile accident when he was four. My father hit a bridge abutment on the way to Chicago. My mother miscarried with a male child in the wreck. The next baby choked to death on a button. The other twin drowned in our pond when he was nine,” she said so matter-of-factly that I expected her to count them off on her raw fingers, but her eyes had found their way to my north view again, hoping perhaps to see lightning in the hills.
“I am sorry. I didn’t need to know that.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Let’s go back to Raymond. You were sending him to school. But he wasn’t in school, yet he wrote asking for more money?”
“Yes. He did that sometimes. Unexpected expenses,” she said.
“What was it this time?”
“He wanted to buy—some papers—or something…”
“What?”
“Some historical papers, letters and diaries that some old man had. I think he was one of those who died in the hotel fire. Raymond had become his friend, and the old man told him that he wasn’t really the son of the outlaw he said he was…Something…The old man claimed in public to be the bastard son of that bandit the vigilante hanged in Montana, the leader—”
“Henry Plummer?”
“That’s the one,” she said hurriedly. “But it wasn’t true, it was just a way to get people to buy him drinks. He was really the son of a less famous bandit, here in this state, a Dalton—something-or-other. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten the name.”
“Dalton Kimbrough.”
“That’s it. Raymond said nothing had been published on this Kimbrough and that anything he did with the old man’s papers would surely be published. Publication is very important in an academic career.”
“How much money did he ask for?”
“Five thousand dollars. Two thousand for the papers, three to live on while he checked their authenticity and worked on the thesis.”
“Did you send it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Where did you get that sort of money?”
Her face said that was none of my business, but then she remembered and answered, “I have quite a bit in savings—I live at home.”
“And you believed this story?”
“Absolutely. I told you: Raymond wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Maybe he needed the money to support his drug habit? Or maybe for a deal? Sometimes addicts deal too?”
“He was not a heroin addict,” she said.
There didn’t seem to be any room for argument, so I paused, then said, “You see that old bastard in the Cossack uniform hanging there on the wall?”
She turned so quickly that her chair nearly fell over, as if she expected to see a man swinging from a gibbet.
“That’s my great-grandfather. He’s the man who killed Dalton Kimbrough.”
“Oh, really,” she said. She didn’t seem to share her little brother’s interest in outlaws.
How fleeting is fame, I thought, laughing to myself. My great-grandfather had parlayed the death of Dalton Kimbrough into a fortune, and if he hadn’t started wearing that damned phony Cossack uniform and carrying a knout, he would have been the first governor of the state. I knew how quickly they forget too, how fleet the foot of fame, how easily it tramples. Five months after I became a deputy sheriff, I had become momentarily famous. I captured a mass-murderer. A soft, fat honor student who had killed his mother, his grandmother, his aunt, and the four other women in the beauty shop his mother owned. All the law enforcement officers in Meriwether County surrounded the shop with shotguns and bull horns. I knew the kid and thought he had probably killed all the people he wanted to. Besides, I wasn’t a woman. So I went through the rear of the house, through the jungle of doilies and knickknacks, and brought him out the front of the shop, cuffed and leaning heavily on my shoulder. The picture made the wire services and newsmagazines: intrepid young deputy captures mad-dog killer. Time even mentioned my splendid combat record.
What nobody knew except the two of us was that when I’d walked into the shop, he had stamped his foot petulantly, chunked his .22 pistol to the tile floor, then burst into tears. He nearly knocked me down, trying to get his head on my shoulder. I cuffed his wrists while they were around my neck. By the time we went outside, my shirt was wet with his tears. In the news photo, it looked like a bloodstain. The angry crowd outside was much more dangerous than the sad, fat kid. My great-grandfather had made a fortune off the hero role, but I didn’t even get a raise.
“Really,” I said to Helen Duffy. “He killed Dalton Kimbrough with a rock in the winter of 1866.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What made you come looking for your brother after only three weeks without word?”
“I’m not sure—I just felt that he might be in trouble…”
I had let her sit too long while my mind dabbled in my own past, so I said, “It’s been fun talking to you, Miss Duffy.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that if you won’t talk to me, there’s no sense in going on. Save your money, I won’t find out anything. Hell, I can’t even find out anything from you.”
“Well—dammit, it’s hard answering all these questions. Can’t you understand that?” Grief had become anger; I was glad.
“Sure. But that doesn’t tell me where to begin.”
“You’re supposed to know that.”
“I do. I begin with you. Why did you come looking for him?”
“Oh—because—because my mother made me,” she answered impatiently, throwing her head back like an angry little girl. “That’s why. She found out I’d sent him that much money and she insisted that I come out to see what he was doing with it. She didn’t believe him, she didn’t believe me, and she made me come, and when I got here the damned old hotel was burned down. Can’t you understand how frightened I was? I walked down the street checking numbers and looking for the sign and there was this gaping hole full of scorched bricks and twisted pipe and I didn’t know what had happened or what to do…So I called Dick because he’s the only person I know in this whole damned state and he suggested that you might help.”
“Okay. Take it easy.”
“Sometimes—sometimes I get damned tired of taking it e
asy.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I do.”
“Okay.”
“Raymond had been in that trouble before, and it hurt him so, and I was afraid he was in trouble again, this time with nobody to help him, and I was afraid to go to the police—”
“Why?”
“You know—how they treat—people like Raymond.”
“Did your mother make you come back?”
“What?” She was the most beautifully confused woman I had ever seen. “What?”
“Your mother. Did she make you come back this time?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“You’ve never loved anybody, have you?”
“What the hell difference does that make?” I asked.
“Then you wouldn’t understand what I felt when I saw Raymond’s face, when that man pulled back the sheet and showed me Raymond’s face…Oh, I know you don’t believe me, I know you had a fight with that terrible man Raymond was—seeing, I know you don’t believe me, but it’s all true…When I saw his face…” She paused, then gave me a helpless look. “Why did they have to cut his hair and shave his beard? Why? He had such lovely black hair, and his beard was so full and fine, and in the sunlight sometimes it would look almost red, sometimes I could—”
“Almost believe that he was your natural brother?”
“What?”
“The red in his beard—it made you think he was your natural brother.”
“Oh, I don’t know. He was such a lovely child, such a fine young man. Nobody knew him like I did. Nobody.”
“Okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“No you don’t.”
“Okay, I don’t.”
“Then don’t say you do.”
“Jesus Christ, all right!” I shouted. It took two tries to get the cork out of the bottle, but I made it and had me a long drink.
“Is that really necessary?” she asked, as snottily as she could.
“Asking you questions is hard,” I said. “Can’t you understand that?”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
I reached across the desk, placed my hand against her cheek. She leaned her face into my hand, holding it against her shoulder. Her skin was warm and slightly damp. With forgiveness instead of grief.
“You’re a troublesome woman.”
“I don’t mean to be. Besides, you’re a troublesome man.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t mean to be,” she said. In that soft way that good mothers forgive their children, letting them know that they are better children than they know. “Dick told me all about you. He’s really fond of you, you know?”
“We were good friends,” I said, withdrawing my hand.
“Were? And now you won’t be anymore? Because of me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I am truly sorry,” she said gently, then reached and took my hand back. And I understood what I had only sensed before. The woman behind the fluster, the dread and sorrow, the fog of tears and pink tissues—the woman that Dick had called something special—bloomed, blossomed forth like a nightflower under the new moon. The compassion, fine and lovely; the forgiveness, eternal. A woman so strong that she could believe in hope and trust and families and love, a woman who had survived without luck.
“I can understand,” she whispered, “how you could think Raymond was on drugs, why you think he might have killed himself, but believe me, he didn’t. And if you can find out anything at all about his death, I would greatly appreciate it.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you.” She had become as placid as a night pond, patient and calm. She needed to care as much as I needed to be cared for. “Thank you very much.” Then she released my hand and took out the sheaf of traveler’s checks.
“That’s not necessary,” I said as she began signing them.
“Don’t you want a retainer?”
“You watch too much television.”
“There isn’t much else to do in Storm Lake,” she said lightly, scribbling at the checks. “And if your other offer is still open, I’d like to take you up on that.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, you know,” she answered, perky now.
“No.”
“Your days in exchange for my nights,” she said, very business-like about it, then she ripped out five one-hundred-dollar checks and laid them on the desk. “Is that enough?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Don’t be coy.”
“Sometimes it’s fun.”
“Not now. Please.”
“Oh, all right. I need to get over Dick. I’ve needed to get over Dick for an awfully long time. I must have been mad to let it start again. Although I’ve ended it—that’s why he was so angry earlier—I’m not over it. If I hadn’t been so frightened the first time, I would have taken your offer then. You did look so desperate, and I was such a…so nasty to ignore you completely, and I know it’s terribly unkind to ask—to use you like this, but I think you’re probably a kind man, and perhaps as frightened of all this as I am. Well?”
Her smile was only partially strained, the rest happy and willing, and her face was solidly determined. She was serious. She wasn’t exactly desperate, but she would do it. But I wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. And I didn’t think about why.
“I’ll work day and night.”
“Oh,” she said, the smile limned with white as she held it gaily on her face. “You mean no, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“See? I told you that you were a kind man, that you weren’t as bad as you thought.”
“Who is?”
“Oh, anybody who really wants to be,” she answered, chattering as brightly as a hysterical squirrel, lonesome upon the high limb where I had left her. She didn’t hate me for the rejection, but she didn’t like the rejection either. We were back to business again.
“Do you have a picture of your little brother?”
“Yes,” she said, dipping back into the purse. “I had these made up the first time I came out here.” She handed me a stack of three-by-fives. “They’re copies of his graduation pictures.”
The young man in the photograph had a narrow face with sullen eyes and full lips arched in a sly smile, longish hair but not to his shoulders, and the beard was only a shadowy potential. He didn’t look like a young outlaw, but there were hints of arrogance and bravado about the eyes and mouth; my great-grandfather might have called him a back-shooter, but to me he looked like an unhappy punk.
“Of course he didn’t look like that when he was living here,” she said.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I saw him around the bars a few times.”
“You did? Why didn’t you…” But she didn’t finish. Whatever it was that I had failed to do, she blamed me for it now.
“Did he look like this when he came to Meriwether?”
“Yes—no.”
“Which?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then how did you know about the long hair and the beard?” I asked, not interrogating, just curious in an aimless way.
“I didn’t,” she blurted out, then covered her mouth with both hands and her purse. “I did…I don’t know anymore.”
“How did you know about the long hair and the beard, lady?”
“I—ah—Raymond sent a picture.” The lie stood between us like a wall.
“And don’t tell me you’d rather not say if I don’t goddamned mind.”
“Oh.”
I handed her back the checks. As she stared at them blankly I had another drink, this one more necessary than the last, the whiskey doing its job, flowing in, washing out the bad taste of my life.
“He did,” she said meekly.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
She stood up, tried to look shocked as she grabbed the checks and headed for the door
. There she paused, slapped the checks against her thigh, then came back, hissing: “All right. I came out last summer too. I live at home, and nothing ever happens at home, nothing. My mother still switches on the floodlights when a man brings me home, and nothing ever happens. So I came out last summer to see Raymond, and to see Dick, I hoped I’d see Dick, and, oh, damn you and your questions. Are you happy now?”
“Damn right. What happened last summer?”
She slammed the checks on the desk.
“What happened?”
“Nothing that has anything to do with this.”
“I’ll decide that.”
“Really,” she pleaded, “nothing.”
“What?”
“Oh, damn, if you must know. Raymond was living with a young history professor, who had left his wife for Raymond, and she kept coming around, dropping by or calling at all hours, threatening to sic the law on Raymond, and it was just awful. I never had a chance to call Dick. Really. And one afternoon she caught me coming out of the apartment and followed me down the street, screaming obscenities at me, holding this tiny baby out at me like a club and shouting about who was going to provide for her children, and suggesting that—that I was somehow involved, somehow to blame—sexually involved—and she got right in my face and screamed that she was going to take a needle and thread and fix my—faggot brother so he couldn’t—couldn’t—I can’t say it.”
“You want me to?”
“No! Damn you, no!”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know!” she screamed, then fled the office, her shoes ringing down the hall, all the way down the stairs, oddly confident in flight.
I didn’t know what I was mad about. Her handwriting on the checks was as sorry as mine. I needed the name of the errant history professor and of Helen Duffy’s motel, but that I could handle without her. Unlike my life. I needed Simon to drift into the office to tell me what a fool I was. I had a drink instead, toasting the heroic form of my great-grandfather. His dark eyes glittered above his large, defiant nose; his huge mustache shadowed what must have been an arrogant mouth. He seemed to be smiling, but I didn’t like it.
Six
The lady was gone, but the money was still on my desk. Thinking the money small recompense and wondering what I thought I was doing, I endorsed the checks and filled out a deposit slip. She hadn’t signed a contract, but money had changed hands, so I had a client. I started a file and an expense sheet. My expenses were already immense but, unfortunately, unclaimable: my auto insurance had lapsed, so all the gear stolen out of my rig was just another lost cause; the two bruises Reese gave me had faded into large yellow stains, but the indignity hadn’t eased at all; I’d lost an old friend and handball partner; and I had a feeling that Helen Duffy wasn’t going to be a fond memory. I left the expense sheet blank and printed her brother’s name at the top of a new legal pad, but the information I had about him was both vague and confusing. Praying that ignorance wasn’t going to be a fatal handicap, I left the legal pad blank too.
The Wrong Case Page 9