Cry for the Strangers

by John Saul

  Chip felt baffled: it didn’t make sense—none of it made sense. As if he had heard Chip’s unspoken thought, Whalen began explaining:

  “He was the last person to talk to her. She was saying strange things. Probably acting crazy, like she was when she came in here the day before, and she scared him. Hell, maybe she even attacked him. How the hell do I know? But it happened on his property, and he was the last person to talk to her, and I can’t see that anybody else in town would do something like that.”

  “But that certainly doesn’t mean Glen Palmer did it,” Chip protested. “It doesn’t even mean that anybody did it!” Now he spoke his earlier thought out loud. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, and if you’ll notice, I haven’t charged him with anything, have I? I didn’t say it makes sense, Chip. Hell, I didn’t even say he did it. All I said is that if Miriam was murdered, a stranger did it. Palmer’s a stranger, and he could have done it.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Chip asked, confused by Whalen’s logic, but curious.

  “Same thing you’re going to do. Keep my ears open, my mouth shut, and my eye on Glen Palmer.”

  “I don’t know,” Chip said, shaking his head doubtfully. “I just don’t think Palmer could have done it. He just doesn’t seem to me like the type who would do a thing like that.”

  “But you don’t know,” Whalen replied. “And until we do know I think Palmer’s a damned good suspect.”

  Chip wanted to protest that there was no need for any suspect at all, but Whalen was too caught up in his “hunch” to be dissuaded now. So instead of protesting he tried to defend Glen Palmer.

  “I think we ought to be a little bit careful of him,” Chip said reluctantly.

  “Careful? What do you mean?”

  “He’s pretty upset right now. In fact, he almost refused to answer my questions. Claimed I didn’t have any right to ask them.”

  Harney Whalen’s face paled and his hands twitched slightly. “Did he now?” he growled. “And what did you have to say to that?”

  “I told him I didn’t have any right to question him but that I thought he ought to cooperate with me. With us,” he corrected himself. Then his face twisted into a wry grimace. “That’s when he suggested maybe the town could cooperate with him. His gallery hasn’t been going very well.”

  “Nobody ever thought it would. He’s mad because nobody’s buying his junk?”

  “No,” Chip said mildly. “He just thinks that everybody in town’s been trying to make it difficult for him. Thinks people are holding up on deliveries and delivering bad goods—that sort of thing.”

  “Tough,” Whalen replied. “Everything takes time out here, and everybody gets damaged goods now and then. What makes him think he’s special?”

  “He doesn’t think he’s special,” Chip said. He could feel his patience wearing thin and wondered why Harn was so hostile toward Palmer. “Anyway, he’s almost got the place finished. In fact, he’s displaying some of his stuff outside the building this morning. You ought to go take a look. Some of it isn’t half-bad. In fact, there’s a picture of the old Baron place that I bet you’d like.”

  But Harney Whalen was no longer listening. He was glaring at Chip. “Did I say something wrong?” Chip asked.

  “He’s displaying his merchandise outside?” Whalen said.

  “Yeah,” Chip replied, wondering what could be wrong. “He’s got maybe fifteen or twenty canvases lined up against the building so you can see them as you drive by.”

  “And you didn’t cite him?” Whalen demanded.

  “Cite him?” Chip was totally baffled now. “For what, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Peddling,” Whalen snapped. “We have an ordinance here against peddling without a license. If he’s displaying stuff outside he’s peddling.”

  “Oh, come on,” Chip said. “That’s ridiculous. Even if there is such an ordinance, when did we ever enforce it?”

  “That’s not the point,” Whalen said stubbornly.

  “Well, it seems to me that if you’re going to enforce it against Glen Palmer, you’d better be ready to enforce it against anybody in town who violates it, because I’ll bet Palmer will start watching.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet he just would at that,” Whalen agreed. Then a slow smile came over his face. “So I won’t cite him. But I’ll get those pictures off the highway, just the same.”

  Chip frowned and stared suspiciously at the chief. “What are you going to do?”

  “Come along and find out.”

  Something inside Chip told him that whatever Whalen was planning, it wasn’t something he wanted any part of. He shook his head. “No thanks. I’ll hang around here.”

  “Suit yourself,” Whalen said. “But if you change your mind, drive on up to the highway in about ten minutes. Just pull off the road and wait.” He put on his hat, glanced at himself in the mirror on the inside of the door, and left. A moment later Chip saw him leave the building and get into the police car.

  Chip picked up the file on Whalen’s desk, glanced at it, then closed it and put it in the file cabinet, locking the drawer after he slid it shut. He wandered around the office for several minutes, looking for something to do.

  “Ah, shit,” he muttered to himself finally. He put his own hat on, closed the office door behind him, and went to his car. A few seconds later he was on his way up Harbor Road. When he got to the intersection with the highway, he pulled off the road, parked where he would have a good view of the Palmers’ gallery, and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long. In the distance behind him, Chip heard the faint wailing of the siren on Harn Whalen’s car. As it grew louder he began to think that Whalen must be pursuing a speeder. The car would be coming into sight any minute.

  But no speeding car appeared. Instead, the wail only increased, and suddenly Chip saw the police car roar around the bend, lights flashing, siren screaming. As the car charged into the stretch of straight roadway, it seemed to accelerate, and Chip tore his eyes away from it to look ahead, almost expecting to see Whalen’s prey disappear around the next curve. But all he saw was Glen Palmer coming out of the gallery, a puzzled look on his face.

  Chip realized then what was about to happen. He leaned on his own horn, hoping to warn Glen, but it was too late. Whalen, in the speeding black-and-white, roared by him, and the sound of Chip’s horn was drowned in the shriek of the siren. Then, just as he was about to pass the gallery, Whalen swerved to the right, slightly off the pavement.

  Glen Palmer jumped back before he realized that the car had not been aimed at him. Indeed, he wasn’t even sure that it had been aimed at all, the swerve had been so slight and so quick. But the right tires of the police car hit a long, narrow puddle, and the muddy water cascaded over Glen, soaking him to the skin. Almost before he realized what had happened he thought of the pictures.

  They lay in the mud, most of them knocked over by the force of the cascading water. Without even looking at them, Glen was sure they were ruined. He stared at them, rooted to the spot, seeing weeks of work destroyed in an instant.

  He was still standing there when Chip Connor raced by him and began grabbing the paintings, snatching them out of the mud, taking them inside the gallery, then coming back for more.

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, don’t just stand there,” Chip cried. “Help me get these things inside.”

  * * *

  Harney Whalen glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see the last of the cascading water pour over the pictures, then put his eyes back on the road. He moved his foot from the accelerator to the brake, slowing the speeding squad car enough to keep it on the road as he went into the curve that would cut the gallery off from his view. He left the siren on for a moment, enjoying the wailing sound that poured from the roof of the car, then reached up to snap it off: Palmer had gotten the message. Not, Whalen reflected, that he really cared—if he hadn’t, Whalen could always repeat the performance.

  Cl
ose to Sod Beach, he decided to stop and have a look at the Baron house. He turned the police car into the nearly invisible lane that cut through the woods toward the beach and parked it when he could drive no farther.

  From outside the house looked no different than it had ever looked, and Whalen didn’t bother to inspect the porch that ran almost all the way around it. Instead he let himself in through the kitchen door, closing the door behind him.

  He made a mental note to hire a couple of the local kids to clean the place up. It wouldn’t cost much to have the rotting garbage removed and the dishes washed and put away. If the sink wasn’t scoured, the ancient wood stove not cleaned, and the floor still badly stained, it wouldn’t matter—nobody was living there, and Whalen had no intention of having anybody live there.

  A faint memory stirred at the back of his mind. Something about the Randalls. They had wanted to rent the place but he had refused.

  Again the faint stirring. Whalen shook his head, trying to catch the elusive memory, then dismissed it. He had refused to rent the house to them. He was sure of it.

  He wandered through the lower floor and picked up a stray sweater that lay haphazardly on one of the worn-looking chairs. Then he saw a fire neatly laid in the fireplace and felt vaguely annoyed. Before he could define his annoyance a chill suddenly came over him and he impulsively lit the fire. The chill stayed with him. He pulled one of the old chairs close to the hearth and sat in it, huddling his bulk far back in the chair. As the fire blazed into life and began to spread its warmth through the room, a light rain began to fall, streaking the windows of the old house and blurring the view of the ocean.

  Harney Whalen sat alone, watching the flames and listening to the rain. He could feel a storm building.

  Glen Palmer stood up, tossed the muddy rag into a corner, and surveyed the painting carefully.

  “Well, it isn’t ruined anyway,” he said. The seventeen canvases were scattered over the floor of the gallery, and Chip Connor knelt by one—the one of the Baron house on Sod Beach—carefully wiping away the flecks of mud that clung to its frame. There were streaks of brown across the surface where he had clumsily tried to blot up the muddy water. “Let me do that,” Glen said. “It isn’t nearly as fragile as it looks.”

  “Sorry,” Chip mumbled. “I was only trying to help …”

  “You already helped,” Glen said. “If you hadn’t been there I probably would have stood there like a dummy all day.” He glanced up at Chip and thought he saw a flash of embarrassment on the young deputy’s face. He concentrated his attention on the picture in front of him then, and tried to keep his voice level. “What the hell was that all about, Connor?”

  “I guess Harney must have lost control of the car for a second,” Chip offered. He knew it wasn’t true, knew he should tell Palmer what had happened: that Harney Whalen had deliberately tried to destroy the paintings. And yet, he knew he wouldn’t. Harney Whalen was his boss and his uncle. He’d grown up with Whalen, and trusted him. He didn’t understand why Harn had done what he’d done, but Chip knew he wouldn’t tell Palmer the truth about it. Yet even as he told Glen Palmer the lie he was sure that Palmer knew. He wondered what would happen if the artist pushed him.

  For his own part, Glen Palmer forced himself to keep working steadily on the canvas. Connor was lying. He had an urge to turn on the deputy and force the truth out of him, but he had, that morning, established some kind of truce with Connor and he didn’t want to disturb it. So he concentrated on cleaning away the ugly stains on the painting, and forced himself to calm down. When he was sure he could face Chip Connor with a steady expression he stood up, turned, and offered his hand.

  “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter exactly what happened, does it? It’s over and there isn’t much either one of us can do now.”

  Chip felt a knot of tension in his stomach suddenly relax, a knot he hadn’t even realized was there. He had a sudden urge to tell Palmer the truth and opened his mouth. But he couldn’t say the words. Instead his mouth worked a moment, then dosed again. He took Palmer’s extended hand and shook it.

  “Are they all ruined?” he asked.

  Glen farced a smile and tried to reassure the deputy with a lie of his own. “I don’t think it’s so bad. Oil paints are pretty waterproof. The damage would have been a lot worse if I’d had the pictures facing the wall. The water would have hit the bare canvas, and it would have been a hell of a mess.” He glanced at his watch. “Jesus, did you know we’ve been working for almost an hour? What do you say we have some lunch?”

  “Lunch?” Chip repeated the word tonelessly, as if it had no meaning.

  “Yes, lunch. You know, a sandwich and a beer? I have some in the back if you’re hungry.”

  “I don’t think—” Chip began, but Glen cut him off.

  “Look, it’s the least I can do. Unless there’s something you have to do.”

  Chip chuckled. “Most of my job is just sitting around the station keeping Harn company. Except on weekends, when we usually have to break up a fight or two. Otherwise, not much ever happens around here.”

  “So you might as well have a sandwich and a beer,” Glen urged. Then: “If you don’t stay I’ll just spend the rest of the day getting pissed off at your boss.”

  “Well, I guess I couldn’t blame you,” Chip said, his smile fading into an expression of concern. “I know it was an accident, but still—”

  “So do Whalen a favor and keep a citizen from getting mad at him. Besides, I could use the company.”

  Chip started to refuse, then changed his mind. There was a quality to Glen’s voice that reached inside him, and he realized that it was the same quality he’d heard in Harn Whalen’s voice now and then—not often, but on nights when Whalen seemed to be lonely and wanted Chip to hang around late, not because he had anything on his mind, but because he needed company.

  “Let me pull the car up,” he said. “So I’ll be able to hear the radio if Harn calls me.”

  Chip spent most of the afternoon at the gallery. He and Glen split the lunch that Rebecca had packed and polished off the best part of a six-pack.

  As he ate, Chip wandered around the gallery asking questions about the remodeling.

  “Deciding what to do was easy,” Glen said. They were standing under a large window that Glen was cutting. It was an odd shape, but it appeared to fit into the space Glen had allocated for it. “For instance, that window. It was just a matter of extending the line from that beam over there, carrying the ledge over the door on across, and then duplicating the pitch of the roof. Bingo—an interesting window that seems to have been part of the original design.” He grinned ruefully. “The only problem is, I can’t figure out how I’m going to keep the roof up. I cut a support post out to make the window.”

  “No problem,” Chip said. “Cut another foot off the support, then build a lintel between the posts to support the one you cut. That way you have plenty of support for the roof and it doesn’t ruin the shape of the window.”

  Glen studied the wall for a minute, then shook his head. “You’d better show me,” he said finally. “I can see what I want as an artist, but as a carpenter I’m pretty much of a loss.”

  Chip found a ladder, dragged it over, and climbed up, explaining as he did so. Then, seeing the baffled look still on Glen’s face, he climbed down and stripped off the jacket of his uniform.

  “Got a saw? It won’t take me more than an hour to put it in for you.”

  For a while Glen tried to help, but soon realized the deputy didn’t need any help. He went back to the soiled pictures and began the tedious work of cleaning the stains from them. He moved slowly and methodically, using tiny brushes, picks, pieces of straw, anything he could find to lift off the bits of mud without disturbing the colors beneath. The cleaning went better than he had hoped; only a few of the canvases would even need a touch-up. By the time he had repaired the worst of the damage Chip had finished the lintel and was in the process of pulling down the shelves
Glen had worked so hard to put up.

  “What are you doing?” Glen cried. “Those things took me almost a week to build.”

  Chip nonchalantly continued to pry the shelves loose from the wall. “Were you planning to use these shelves?”

  “They’re display shelves for my wife’s pottery.”

  “Didn’t you ever hear of a toggle bolt? These nails will hold the shelves up, but the shelves won’t hold anything. Look.”

  He grabbed one of them with his left hand and pulled it off the wall. “What’s your wife going to say when all her pottery falls on the floor? Have you got any toggle bolts?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll run down to Blake’s and pick some up. Do you have an account there?”

  Glen gaped at the deputy. “An account? Are you serious? Didn’t I tell you this morning what happened to my wife down there?”

  Chip suddenly looked embarrassed, and Glen wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.

  “Will this be enough?” he asked, handing Chip a five-dollar bill.

  “That’ll be plenty,” Chip said. “Why don’t you finish pulling those shelves down while I’m gone.” He picked up his coat and started for the door, but Glen stopped him.

  “Chip?”

  The deputy stopped at the door and turned around.

  “I don’t know exactly why you’re doing all this for me, but thanks.”

  Again Chip looked embarrassed, but then he grinned. “Well, if we’re going to have an art gallery in town we might as well have one that won’t fall down the first week.” His face reddened slightly. “Besides, I guess I sort of owe it to you.” Before Glen could reply Chip pulled the door open and stepped out into the rain.

  Neither Glen nor Chip noticed that all afternoon the police radio in Chip’s car had remained silent.

  The light rain that had been falling all afternoon grew heavier as the storm moved relentlessly toward the coast; the wind picked up, and the tide turned. Sod Beach took on a foreboding gloom, and Robby and Missy, their slickers already dripping wet, started toward the forest.