by David Stout
“Who buys what in here is no one’s business. Now get the hell out of here.”
Will had never been much of a poker player: He couldn’t bluff. Now he had to bluff. “I’m a newspaper editor, and if you don’t help me I promise there’ll be a team of reporters looking into how you managed to keep your license. Trust me on that.”
The man’s eyes hardened again.
“Look,” Will went on, “I’m not trying to hurt you. Now, if a man came in here to buy schnapps and beer the night before Thanksgiving, you’d remember. Wouldn’t you?”
“He was here just before closing.”
“Ah. And what time was that?”
“Couple minutes before seven.”
“You’re sure?”
“Told you, didn’t I? Night before Thanksgiving, I was closing early. Not many people get a bottle of schnapps and a six-pack, unless they’re planning to tie one on. Which he was.”
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
The man snorted contemptuously. “I been selling booze a long time. I asked him if he needed any cups. He said no and acted like it never crossed his mind.”
“But you think it did?”
“Told you, I been selling booze a long time. Face like that, it’s easy to tell. My guess is, he was gonna give himself a jolt as soon as he could find some privacy.”
“And you still—” Will bit off his words. He wanted to call the man every name he could think of for selling liquor to someone he thought was an alcoholic. But what was the point in that? He needed information. “So my friend would have left here just about seven?”
“He was my last customer. I about shit when I heard about the wreck. You gotta understand.…”
“Yeah, I understand.” Will turned to go, then stopped. His instinct told him to leave this man with some pride. “Look, I’ll trade you promises. I’ll keep quiet about this, and maybe I can keep your name out of the paper someday. And you forget I was ever here.”
“Deal.”
To seal it, Will bought a pint of scotch, which he probably wouldn’t drink, put down a twenty, and left the change.
He drove back toward Long Creek. The accident report said the wreck had happened at 7:30. Will drove at the speed limit, then slowed down a little. Maybe Fran had slowed for a time because of the darkness? The weather? The unfamiliarity?
Sure enough, before many minutes passed, Will came to the top of the hill down which Fran Spicer had driven to his doom. It was clearly marked with a diamond-shaped yellow sign and an arrow indicating the direction of the curve. Will slowed a little more, took the hill curve without trouble, came to a stop on the shoulder at the bottom. It had taken Will less than ten minutes to travel from the liquor store to the accident site. And he hadn’t been speeding at all, not like Frannie had been, at least at the end.
What happened, Frannie? What happened in the other twenty minutes? Was the police report that far off?
On the way back to Long Creek, he saw a small, low building with the windows covered with plywood; it was one of a dozen or more boarded-up buildings he’d seen around Long Creek. The sight depressed him; what was happening here could happen in Bessemer (hell, it was happening in spots), although his home city at least had a state university branch and a couple of fledgling high-tech companies going for it.
He thought of Suzanne Glover’s shabby house. He hoped the insurance company would treat her all right. He’d check when he got back to Bessemer. Then something else occurred to him; he had a reason to see her again.
“Hello, remember me? Will Shafer.”
“Yes, hi,” Suzanne Glover said. “I’m sorry my mother was so rude to you.”
“Oh, no. That’s okay.” Shivering on the porch, Will was pleased at his good luck: the mother must not be home.
“It isn’t, really,” Suzanne Glover went on. “She’s just protective, is all.”
“I understand.”
“Would you like to come in?”
“Oh no, thanks. What I wanted to ask you, you’re sure the accident happened near seven-thirty? Not closer to seven, maybe? Or perhaps later?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, possibly.”
Before Will was forced to improvise, Suzanne Glover went on: “Anyhow, I-am sure. I was watching the seven o’clock news with my mother before going out to the store for a couple of things. You know how the news ends like at seven twenty-six or so? I left right after that.”
“I see. Thank you again.”
“It shouldn’t matter, should it? The time?”
“No.”
But it does, Will thought. He turned to go, then thought of something else. “And you’re sure you don’t know the police officer who helped you that night?”
“No. I told you before.”
“I know. I just thought, small town and all…”
“I might have seen him around, and I might not. He was just a cop.”
One last thing occurred to him. “Did you say something before about a second set of headlights the night of the wreck?”
“I, I don’t know. Don’t remember. I was dazed. I was almost killed, for God’s sake.”
Even before she shut the door, Will knew from Suzanne Glover’s face that he probably wouldn’t be welcome again.
Back in his room, Will called Tom Ryan on the Gazette city desk and told him he expected to file a fairly routine story on the kidnapping, saying in effect that there was nothing new to report. Then he got to what was really on his mind.
“Ry, what time did Frannie leave the office to head for Long Creek? Do you remember approximately?”
“Late afternoon sometime. Things were winding down here. It was getting toward dark.”
“And did he seem eager to go?”
“I guess.”
Will had a hunch. “Switch me back to the coffee shop, Ry.… Yes, the coffee shop.”
Will’s hunch turned out to be a good one. After talking for no more than a minute to the counterman in the Gazette’s coffee shop, Will had himself switched upstairs, to the medical department. He was lucky again: Doc Quick, the Gazette’s company physician and about the only good internist in Bessemer, was in.
When Heather Casey finished her shift, Will was waiting for her in the lobby. She had agreed to talk to him again.
“Have you been waiting long?” she said.
“Hi. Just a few minutes.” Will felt as awkward as a teen-ager—and almost as eager. “So, how are you today, um…?”
“Just call me Heather. Fine, thank you.”
They went to the same dingy-looking diner they’d visited the first time. This time, the man behind the grill was noticeably more pleasant. The nurse let Will buy her coffee, and he ordered a hamburger and a soft drink.
“You said you wanted to talk about your friend, Mr. Shafer.”
“I said you could call me Will. Remember?” For God’s sake, he thought, I kissed you.
“I’m sorry. Will. How can I help you?”
“I paid a visit to Carmine. Not a friendly visit.”
“And where was that?”
“Right at the hospital. I waited for him in the little room with the food and drink machines. And I asked him about the blood test on Fran Spicer.”
“What did he tell you, Will?” The nurse’s voice had gone flat and cold.
“Not much. It’s what he didn’t tell me, actually.”
“And why do you persist in this?”
Will was doubly dismayed the way the conversation was going. She seemed so guarded, he wondered how much information he could expect. Worse, she was cool to him personally. “I’m persisting because it isn’t right,” Will said. “Before he fell apart, Fran had real good newsman’s instincts. ‘Trust your instincts,’ he told me a long time ago. My instincts say something is wrong here. I mean, what happened to Fran.”
“And you’re a newsman, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m that, all right. Not the world’s best, but far from the worst.
But see, this is more than a story. Something terrible happened to a friend of mine, someone who worked for me. Someone I feel responsible for. He’s dead. And I don’t like the label that’s being pasted on his corpse.”
“A label?”
“Here lies a drunk. He couldn’t kick the bottle, and he died a drunk. Carmine said something like that. ‘Your friend was a drunk,’ or some such.”
“Carmine said that?” Heather Casey shook her head in dismay. “What else did he say?”
“Oh, a few things that were pretty hostile. Especially after I told him of my suspicions. Told him I thought the blood sample had been phonied up. Or switched outright.”
“Did you say you suspected him?”
“Yes. That was the unmistakable message.” Will chewed on his hamburger while Heather Casey slowly stirred her coffee.
“Did you give him a reason for suspecting him?”
“I sort of implied he’d done it for someone else. For money, perhaps. Or…”
“For drugs?”
“Well, yes. I guess I leaned on him. I don’t have to guess. I did lean on him. I made some remark about his being tempted by working so close to drugs and all.”
“And you think the police would have put him up to it?”
“That’s one inference. I’ve already had one big fight with the police chief, and the cops generally don’t seem that friendly.”
“And you don’t know whom to trust.”
“No. I know the FBI man who’s in town because of the kidnapping. We go way back, in fact. But I’m reluctant to bother him about Fran Spicer when he’s got a life-or-death case on his hands. Anyhow, back to Carmine. Have you known him a long time?”
“Oh, a few years. He does decent work, cares about what he does, although he can be moody. He’s absent a little more than he should be. And I’ve wondered about his personal life.”
“About whether he has a habit?”
“That and…”
“Whether he might be gay.”
“Yes. I hate stereotypes, I really do. But he does have a manner about him.”
“When I was leaning on him, I mentioned something about what happens in prison. I think that got under his skin.”
“Newspaper people don’t mess around when they want something, do they?” She had never sounded less friendly.
“I’m not like that—normally. And after I leaned on Carmine, I had second thoughts about it.” Will deliberately avoided mentioning that it was his wife who had given him the second thoughts. “Heather, listen. I wouldn’t have gone to Carmine and talked to him like that…”
“You didn’t mention my name?”
“No. I wouldn’t have gone to him like that, except I have reason to believe there’s something awfully wrong with Fran Spicer’s death.”
“Just because of that schnapps thing? That’s no reason…”
“Fran Spicer did buy a bottle of schnapps. And a six-pack. I found the liquor store that sold the stuff to him.”
“Well, then. He probably threw the schnapps bottle into a ditch when he was done with it.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think he had time to drink that much before the accident. The liquor store was closing at seven, and Fran came in just before closing. The guy in the store remembers that.”
She sipped her coffee and waited for him to go on.
“Now, this is crucial. The accident happened just about seven-thirty on the nose. I talked to the young woman who was hurt, and she’s positive. Could Fran have gotten that drunk between seven and seven-thirty? And if he could have, which I doubt, what happened to the schnapps bottle?”
She frowned skeptically. “I can tell you that one person’s body doesn’t behave like another’s. Your friend wasn’t in the best of health. People have different tolerances. You know yourself what happens if you drink on an empty stomach, for instance.”
Now Will could not help but smile in self-satisfaction. “I don’t think Fran drank on an empty stomach—if he drank at all. I checked the coffee shop at my newspaper. When Fran rushed out of the office Wednesday afternoon, heading for Long Creek, he stopped and bought a couple of sandwiches for the road.”
“Perhaps he hadn’t eaten them.”
“My guess is that he had. It’s close to three hours from Bessemer to Long Creek, and Fran was almost done with the trip when he had the accident.”
“You’ve really tried to piece this together, haven’t you?”
“Yes. I talked to a doctor today. My newspaper’s doctor. A pretty decent internist. He thought it highly unlikely that Fran could have been sober at seven and legally drunk at seven-thirty, assuming that there was anything at all in his stomach. I bet you don’t disagree with that.”
“But you don’t know if he was sober when he stopped at the liquor store just before seven, do you?”
“He must have been. If he’d stopped anywhere else before that to drink…”
“He never would have left. Yes, that sounds familiar from my own childhood.” A cloud came over her face. “Not just my childhood. Well, then.”
“It doesn’t add up, what happened to Fran.”
“It’s intriguing, I’ll say that. And I understand your concern for your friend.”
“Frannie didn’t have a lot going for him the last few years. Now he’s dead. He has a son.”
“I see. How could I possibly help you? Would you want my help?”
“I’d welcome your help. And your company.” Will waited, but she seemed not to hear that last. “Tell me where Carmine lives. I need to talk to him some more.”
“Perhaps it would help if I went with you.”
“That’s very kind. I’d like that.”
“As I said, I’ve usually gotten along okay with Carmine.”
“And he tends to be absent a lot?”
“He called in sick today, in fact. Let’s pay him a call.”
“Wonderful.”
Eighteen
“Jason,” the hermit whispered. “Can I call you Jason for a little while?”
He sat in a chair sipping his whiskey, listening to the light snoring of the child. The hermit was being careful not to swallow too much whiskey. The man he’d seen at the burial place might come back, and the hermit wanted to be ready. He was: His lever-action .30-30 lay across his lap.
The hermit reached down and patted Wolf on the head. The dog liked Jason; it wasn’t jealous at all. Good.
The hermit kept his rifle clean. Every so often, he killed a deer, even though he hated to do it. Over the years (he had been in the woods a long time), he had learned to cook the deer and store it so it lasted.
No matter how hard he thought about it, the hermit could not understand how the boy had come to be put in the ground like that. Had someone meant to keep him there for a long time? Like some kind of pet?
Did the boy belong to the man the hermit had seen in the woods? No, that made no sense.
Sometimes it was hard to separate what was memory and what was nightmare, what was real and what was wish.
The hermit took a long, hard gulp of whiskey, then reached up to touch his face. He could still remember the pain from the fire all those years ago. Yes, that was real. Jo and the unborn baby had died; that was real, too. The fire had been real. He ran his fingers over the stretched, shiny skin of his cheeks, then over the ridges of scar on his forehead and where his eyebrows had been.
The boy was stirring.
“Jason,” the hermit whispered to the sleeping child. “I’ll call you Jason.”
Jamie’s feet were warm and dry. That was the first thing he felt as he came up from a deep sleep. He wiggled his toes, then moved his feet. They didn’t bang into metal anymore; his back didn’t ache anymore.
He opened his eyes and looked into flames on top of flat gray stones. A fireplace, he thought. But not the fireplace in his father’s house.
Oh! His father must be coming to get him. He tried to make words, but before he could even open his
mouth his eyes were closed again.
When Jamie’s mind bubbled up from sleep the next time, it didn’t go back down. He moved his arms and legs. Good. It felt soft and warm around his arms and legs, not cold and hard like in the metal place. The blankets around him felt good on his skin.
Oh! He didn’t have any clothes on. Jamie felt a rush of shame to think that someone had taken off his clothes and looked at him. But the shame was hot on his skin now, and he felt like crying. He looked all around the cabin again. Where were his clothes?
“Dad-dy. Dad-DY!”
Jamie started to cry, and, as he did, he felt a big cough in his throat. He coughed, which only made him cough harder. The cough seemed to come from way down in his chest, and it hurt. Now, even with the shame, Jamie suddenly felt cold. He started to shiver. Where was his father?
The hermit laid the rifle on his bed, got up and poured a little whiskey into a cup. He added some sugar, then some warm water from the kettle on the wood stove.
The hermit stirred the whiskey drink. Was it too strong for the boy? No. It would put him back to sleep, which would probably be good for him.
Jamie coughed. His chest hurt, and his throat was sore. Where was his father? Where was he? Jamie thought of all the times he’d had colds, and he’d coughed at night and felt bad, and then his father had been there, sitting on the bed, and one of his father’s strong hands had patted his back and held him up and patted his back.… There, there. There, there. His mother had whispered that to him, softly in the night, before she’d gotten mad and taken him away. There, there.… And his father, with his strong hand gentle on Jamie’s back, had given him something in a teaspoon that was strong and sweet in his throat, something magic that made him go back to sleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow again.
Jamie wanted his father (and his mother!) more than ever. He sobbed hard, and his chest and throat felt worse than ever.
Something cold and wet touched Jamie’s ear. Jamie lifted his head and looked into the eyes of the biggest dog he had ever seen. The flames from the fireplace shone in the dog’s eyes. Jamie remembered there had been a dog when the man got him out of the metal place. The dog opened its mouth to pant; Jamie smelled the strong, wild breath, saw the teeth. Was he dreaming this? The teeth were yellow and unbelievably long, like the teeth of a…