Fatal Flaw

by William Lashner

  “Getting through his death.”

  “And other things, yes.”

  “I heard she won a church scholarship for her education.”

  “That’s right,” said Henson, beaming. “She was a very smart girl, and I was glad to get it for her. She deserved it.”

  “You mentioned a spiritual crisis.”

  “I did, didn’t I, but I can’t really talk about it now, can I? That was between Hailey and her God.”

  “You know I’ve been asking not only about Hailey but about the death of Jesse Sterrett.”

  “You believe there may be some connection?”

  “I think there must be, yes. What do you think happened to Jesse in that quarry, Reverend?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Carl. The police said it was an accident. Jesse’s father has other ideas. All I know is that it was a terrible tragedy. I don’t think it’s my place to go around assigning blame.”

  “Do you think Grady Pritchett was involved?”

  “No,” he said quickly, with a sureness I hadn’t expected. “No, he was not involved. And if there is anything you bring back from our conversation, I want you to know that.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  There was a pause while Reverend Henson reached down and pulled out a weed that was sprouting next to one of the headstones. “He had an alibi.”

  “Hailey was his alibi.”

  “That’s right,” said the reverend. “And she wouldn’t have lied to protect Grady if he had been involved.”

  “No, maybe not. I’ve been looking for Hailey’s sister, what was her name?”

  “Is. Roylynn. A very sweet girl, smart as a whip, smarter than anyone, maybe even than Hailey, but she was never as strong as her sister. I’ve tried to help her, too, but her problems proved to be beyond my talents.”

  “Do you know where I could find her?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you mind telling us?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because, Mr. Carl, you are bringing trouble that she doesn’t need. We’re a strong town, we handled the deaths and we can handle your questions, but Roylynn has always been a fragile girl. We watch out for our own, even the weakest, and we tried to take care of her as best we could, but she was always very tender, too tender. She had pretty much slipped out of the world anyway when word came about Hailey. I fear its effect upon her.”

  “You don’t know? You haven’t spoken with her?”

  “I have, yes, but the answers are not always clear. She is being well taken care of, that I know. She is in a place that’s more home to her than here.”

  “Where?”

  “Mr. Carl, I know you have your job to do, and I respect that. I have no opinion about who did what up there in Philadelphia, whether the man you represent really killed Hailey. I have faith in the workings of our legal system, and I’ll leave it to that. And I don’t mind you coming here and stirring pots, acting all self-righteous as if you’re the only one interested in pursuing justice in a case fifteen years old, chasing after ghosts. We all do what we need to do. But I’m not going to send you on to that poor girl. I’m not. You’ll break her in two without even knowing what you’re doing, and then you’ll leave and go back to Philadelphia, and who would be left to pick up the pieces? Leave her alone and let her heal.”

  I was about to tell Reverend Henson that I understood his concern, I was about to apologize for our intrusion and rudeness. He was right, I had been going on my little hunt without concern for whom it might have affected. And the news about Hailey’s sister had thrown me. Why hadn’t I been concerned for her? Why hadn’t it ever crossed my mind how hard it must have been for a twin to lose her sister? He had succinctly put me in my place, shamed me, actually, and I was about to slink away like the worm under the rock I felt myself just then to be when Skink spoke up.

  “You play cards, Padre?” asked Skink from the center of the graveyard. He had wandered away during my questioning, sauntered from grave to grave as if totally uninterested in what I was doing, but now here came his question, so simple and yet so sharply pointed: Do you play cards?

  “I know how.”

  “I’m not talking crazy eights here,” said Skink. “I’m talking poker. Seven stud, Texas hold ’em, Maltese cross. You ever play poker for money?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “But you used to, didn’t you, Padre? You played in that game, didn’t you, with that fellow Edmonds, and old Doc Robinson, and Larry Cutlip, and this Pritchett, the rich one we been hearing so much about?”

  “I sat in once or twice, yes.”

  “How’d you do?”

  Henson laughed. “Not so well, I’m afraid.”

  “How about the others?”

  “Gus Pritchett knew how to handle himself, and Larry, well, he took it seriously.”

  “It sounds like a tough game, it does. Sounds like one I’m glad I missed. But here’s the thing, Padre, did all you chums, you poker buddies, ever get together over a nice friendly hand of five-card draw, jacks to open, trips to win, ever get together and talk about Jesse Sterrett being murdered and Grady Pritchett being a murderer and what you all was going to do about it?”

  “No, of course not. I told you that Grady did nothing.”

  “You sure? Because something here, it seems funny to me. You got Edmonds and Robinson deep in poker debt to Cutlip, a man who likes to get paid. And then this Jesse Sterrett gets his head smashed and he falls into the lake at the quarry. Edmonds said he looked like some pale German banger when they pulled him out. And it’s after they pull him out that all the strange happenings, they happen. Like first Cutlip falls into money and leaves. And Edmonds and Robinson, their foul-tempered creditor suddenly gone from town, call the whole thing an accident. And then you tell us you know it’s not Grady, like you know it for sure, and I begin to wonder how you could know it for sure, and then I begin to wonder how high was your gambling debts from that friendly little game. And to get me even more curious, I learn that Hailey stands up and alibis this Grady Pritchett. Grady Pritchett, who had just been put into the hospital by our friend Jesse, probably because of Hailey in the first place. See, I knew her, too, and she had that effect on men. Grady Pritchett, whose dad is the richest man in town. Grady Pritchett. Now, why would Hailey make up an alibi for Grady Pritchett if he killed her friend Jesse? She wouldn’t, would she? Of course not, except after she alibis Grady, she ends up winning a church scholarship. How does that happen? How does a bare-arsed small-town congregation like this one happen to get its hands on enough money to give a girl like Hailey a scholarship? You don’t even gots enough money to mow the lawn of your damn graveyard, and yet there you are stuffing enough cash in her pockets to put her through college and law school. How does that happen, Padre? Tell us that.”

  Henson stared at him for a long time. “You’ve gotten it wrong.”

  “Maybe,” said Skink, smiling broadly with his pearly teeth, a look of triumph on his scarred face. “But not all wrong, did I?”

  Reverend Henson stood there for a moment more, rubbing his hands, and then said, “Well, now. This was a fine little chat, but I must be off. Pressing obligations. ’Twas nice to have met you both. Come again.” And then, before we could respond, he turned and hurried out of the graveyard.

  I walked over to Skink and looked down at the gravestone. In big letters carved into the marble was the name Sterrett.

  “Quite a performance,” I said.

  “It’s not the lying that gets to me—lying I can take, who lies better than myself? But I hate to be played for the fool.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Who the hell knows? But I’d sure as hell like to learn who the padre is ringing up on the parish phone right about now.”

  34

  THE LOG Cabin was a rough-looking roadhouse on the way to Clarksburg, just a gray shack off the side of an empty two-lane highway. The windows w
ere dark, so you couldn’t see whether or not there was anyone inside, but the sign advertising LEGAL BEVERAGES was lit, as was the neon MAC’S LIGHT sign. A few scattered vehicles were parked willy-nilly on the gravel parking lot that spilled out to the side of the building. I walked from my car, across the gravel, and patted the dented front wheel well of a black Chevy pickup. Then I loosened my tie, rubbed my eyes, mussed my hair, and headed inside.

  The place smelled of sawdust and old smoke, of spilt beer and too many long nights that should have ended early. When I entered into the smoky red darkness, heads swiveled to get a look and then swiveled away with a distinct lack of interest. There was a couple drinking quietly in the corner, there was an old man at the bar hunched over an empty shot glass, there were two kids in a booth in the back, baseball caps drawn low, long legs stretched out arrogantly on the wooden seats. And then there was the man I had come looking for, sitting in the middle of the bar, sinking softly into middle age, a cloud of despair about his head. I had dismissed him as a possibility the first time I glanced his way, thought maybe my man was one of the kids in the corner, but then I realized those kids were not long out of high school. In my mind that’s what Grady Pritchett still looked like, young and arrogant in jeans and baseball cap, full of piss and vinegar, even if with his family’s money the vinegar was balsamic, but time works its black magic on us all. I eliminated one by one the other possibilities and was left with my man at the bar. I hitched up my pants and sauntered over to a stool one away from him.

  “What’ll it be?” said the bartender, a stocky gray man with a dented nose, who looked like he had seen trouble in his life and pounded it into submission.

  “A draft,” I said, pulling out a twenty from my wallet, “and keep ’em coming.”

  The barkeep nodded, and a moment later a coaster was spun in front of me, a full glass set atop the coaster, and the twenty changed into a pile of lesser bills and coins.

  “Tough day?” said the bartender.

  “They’re all tough.” I took a long draught and kept draining until the glass was emptied. I dropped it down upon the coaster. It wasn’t a moment before the glass was filled again.

  The bartender drifted to the end of the bar with the television turned to some lurid local news. The kids in the booth laughed out loud. I turned to the man next to me and said, “You know any good places to eat around here?”

  “Where you headed?” said Grady Pritchett.

  “Clarksburg.”

  “The Rib-Eye up the road a ways. They make a steak almost worth eating.”

  “Thanks,” I said and took a long drink of my beer.

  When the bartender came over to refill the beer, I gestured him to give the man next to me whatever he was drinking.

  Grady Pritchett had a paunch and his hair was going. You could see he had once maybe been good-looking, but his face was now all bloated and shiny. He wore gray dress pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a tie, and there was a ring on his finger, but he was in no hurry to get home to the wifey-poo. Life had happened to Grady Pritchett in the worst way.

  “Thanks, man,” he said to me when a fresh Scotch and soda was placed before him. “Where you from?”

  “Chicago.”

  “You come down this ways much?”

  “First time.”

  Grady Pritchett raised his glass. “Welcome to paradise.”

  I was an investigator, working for a Chicago law firm that specialized in trusts and estates, seeking out missing heirs. That was the story. Generally we could do what we needed over the phone or on the Internet, but sometimes you just had get out there yourself and check the records that needed to be checked or, more important, meet up with the heirs and review with them their options. I dreaded these trips, the long roads and cheap hotels, the dust in the old county record rooms, the local lawyers who started sticking their noses in something that was none of their business. I didn’t tell him all this in one swoop of words, that’s not the way it’s done. But it was there, the whole story, there in the sighs, the silences, the weary slump of my back. In Charleston I found the death certificate I was looking for. In a few small towns along the way I had talked to some people who needed talking to. In Clarksburg there was a lady who refused to tell me over the phone the whereabouts of another lady who was up for a pretty nifty sum. In Gettysburg I needed to check on a old man who’d disappeared from his nursing home six months ago. And then in Philadelphia I had the lovely task of trying to sift through three generations of Olaffsons to find the one that really mattered. I had been putting it off, this trip, letting the work pile up until I could put it off no longer. There were deadlines looming and commissions due, if certain parties that I found signed certain documents. So here I was on Route 19, making my way from Charleston to Clarksburg and thinking for the thousandth time I should find myself a more congenial line of work, like slaughtering pigs.

  “You know any places to eat in Clarksburg?” I asked.

  “The Holiday Inn ain’t all bad.”

  “How about Gettysburg.”

  “Never been. They got that Civil War battlefield there.”

  “Yes they do. I’ll be taking pictures for the kiddies. What about Philadelphia, you ever been in Philadelphia?”

  “Sure. Lots of times.”

  “Business?”

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s the best kind, isn’t it? I used to have a girl from Philadelphia with a mouth like wet velvet. I never been there, but it got so every time I heard the name Philadelphia I popped a woody.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Who, the girl from Philadelphia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dead.”

  Grady Pritchett’s face paled for an instant, and his mouth quivered.

  “Cancer,” I said. “It just ate through her insides like it had teeth, but she was married to someone else, so I was glad to let him hold her hand through it to the end. Still, when I hear Philadephia…”

  There was a long silence, where Grady and I just sat and drank. Maybe he was thinking about an old girlfriend in Philly who now was dead. Maybe he was thinking about how it was that he had caused it. See, I had come up with a theory about Grady Pritchett. What if Hailey Prouix, in her youth, had concocted an alibi for Grady Pritchett in exchange for a college and graduate school education from his wealthy father? And what if, later, when pressed by Guy Forrest for some missing cash, Hailey Prouix had gone back to the source that had worked so well before, the Pritchetts, to fill her empty accounts? And what if Hailey Prouix had told Grady she needed the money and would recant the alibi if he refused, and what if Grady had decided that enough was enough, and what if he had gone to Philadelphia himself to finish the job? They say after the first killing it gets easier, and it seemed to me that maybe Jesse Sterrett was the first for Grady Pritchett, and so killing Hailey Prouix might not have been so hard after that. It was just a theory, sure, but I had to contain my anger as I sat beside the man who might have murdered Hailey Prouix.

  “You from around here?” I said.

  “You won’t find too many tourists in this place. I live in Weston.”

  “Born there?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “Pierce.”

  “Pierce? Pierce, West Viriginia? Now, how did I hear about Pierce?”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No, I did, I did.”

  “No one ever has.”

  “Let me see. Pierce. I think I heard about some family there up for a small inheritance. Is that possible? Nothing much, but it turned out one of the kids I was looking for died in a quarry.”

  Grady didn’t say anything, he just stared straight ahead.

  “He got his head smashed in and fell into the water there. You ever hear anything like that?”

  “I think you’re asking too many questions.”

  “Just trying to be friendly,” I said, showing him my palms. “No need to come at me like a block of
stone.”

  Grady gripped his drink and narrowed his eyes.

  “I suppose that was an unfortunate term to use,” I said, “considering the circumstances.”

  “I had heard there were two of you asking questions.”

  “Yeah, well, tonight I’m solo. So tell me something, Grady, which of your pals was worried enough to give you the warning?”

  “Leave me the hell alone, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

  Just then the bartender leaned in between us, staring at me with his gray eyes even as he spoke to Grady. “Is there a problem here, Mr. Pritchett?”

  “No, Jimmy, I was just leaving, thanks,” said Grady, sliding off his stool and dumping some cash on the bar before turning to me. “This is what I’ll tell you, same thing I told them fifteen years ago. I had nothing to do with what happened to Jesse Sterrett. Not a thing. There was bad blood, yeah, but still, I didn’t have nothing to do with what happened. What happened to him destroyed me as bad as it did him, worse, because I had to keep living with all the doubts, but I had nothing to do with it. Believe me or not, I don’t give a damn, but leave me the hell alone.”

  He wasn’t halfway to the door before I jumped off my stool and started after him. He glanced back, saw me coming after him, spun around and punched me in the face.

  The blow sent me reeling to the floor. The pain exploded from a dot beneath my eye to cover the whole of my face. I turned over onto my back, sprawled backward, and watched as the door slammed shut.

  “Damn it,” I said out loud. As fast as I could scramble to my feet, I followed him out the door. It had grown dark while I was inside, and the artificial light in the lot was feeble, but I could still see the front door slamming on the black pickup truck and Grady Pritchett’s silhouette in the front seat.

  I ran straight at it.

  Grady was leaning forward, fighting to jab his key into the slot beneath the steering wheel.

  I dashed at the truck, grabbed the handle, pulled. The door flew open and threw me off balance.

  The engine turned over and shook to life.

  I lunged at the open door, grabbed Grady Pritchett’s collar, pulled him right out of the front seat until his face slammed into the gravel.