by Ed Gorman
“McCain?”
“I think so.”
“Very funny.”
“What time is it?”
“Four thirty-seven. You should be up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you have any idea why I’m calling?”
“Do I win a prize if I guess right?”
“I’m calling because I figured that you hadn’t heard the news yet.”
“What news?”
And then she told me and I abruptly came awake.
“I want you to get over there before
Cliffie mucks everything up.”
“I’m on my way, Judge.”
“When you get done over there, call me.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“I keep a police radio on very low next to my bed. If anything important happens, the dispatcher begins to screech. That wakes me up.”
There was something very lonely about that but then the lady’d had four-or was it five?-husbands so I guessed she was lonely by choice.
I jerked on some clothes and ran downstairs to my ragtop.
Part II
Nine
The way I got all this-mostly from an auxiliary cop named Coggins who had a thermos full of wonderful-smelling coffee-was that around midnight Iris Courtney started worrying about her husband. She told Cliffie (coggins apparently being present) that shortly after that time she got a strange call from her husband. He said that she was not to worry but that he was involved in something and would explain when he got home. She said he’d sounded anxious but not afraid. At three a.m., frightened now, she walked out to the garage to see if something might have happened to him.
She recalled hearing a story on the radio about a man who pulled his car into the garage, had a heart attack, slumped over on the seat, and was not discovered until morning when it was too late.
She didn’t want this to happen to her husband.
She went out and checked the garage. She saw that his car was there and immediately began to panic. She began to frantically search the alley. And that’s when she looked between her garage and the one belonging to their neighbors. He was lying on his back, staring up at the quarter-moon that looked so fresh after the rain. She saw that he’d been stabbed many times in the chest. His yellow shirt was soaked dark with blood. A neighbor’s dog was crouched nearby -a rather stupid-looking beagle, she noted-staring at the corpse as if it could not understand what was going on here. Usually, the minister was so friendly and playful with the dog. She immediately went in and called the police station.
She was inside the rectory with Cliffie now.
Dawn was still an hour away but neighbors were beginning to drift into the alley where Doc Novotony was looking over the corpse.
Everybody looked well turned-out given the time of day. Most of them had put on street clothes.
Few wore robes.
Coggins kept them away from the strip of grass between the garages by waving the beam of his red-capped flashlight to the right. “Nothing to see, folks.
Don’t get in the doc’s way now.”
Dick Coggins was the best of the auxiliary cops. In fact, he was smarter than any of the cops on the regular force. But because he wasn’t a member of the Sykes clan, and despite scoring high on all the state tests for peace officers, he was kept on reserve status. In the meantime, he drove a panel truck for an office-supply company and played a lot of softball. He could throw a softball about as fast as anybody I’d ever seen. He was tall, trim, wore his dark hair in a crew-cut and spoke with a faint Virginia drawl. He’d spent his first eleven years there.
“I should’ve figured you’d be here, Sam,” he said. “I could’ve brought your book back.”
He borrowed my textbooks on criminology and police procedure. He knew all about crime scenes and how to set them up.
“You able to beat Cliffie to the punch tonight?”
He smiled. “Well, I got here before he trampled all over everything. I’ll give all the evidence to Theresa at the hospital, same as I did with Muldaur’s stuff.”
Theresa was a lab tech and a girl he dated.
Since Cliffie hated to send anything to the state lab-feeling apparently that it robbed him of his authority as el comandante-Theresa was the best we could do locally.
“I’ll call her.”
“Sure.”
The press was here now. A rumpled, sleepy reporter with a microphone and a heavy tape recorder slung over his shoulder wandered from one neighbor to the other asking all the usual obvious, stupid questions. I’m waiting for the wife of a recently murdered man to say to a reporter, “How does it feel to have your husband murdered?
I’ll tell you, It feels great. He was an arrogant, overbearing jerk and I want to thank whoever killed him. I can finally live like a normal human being now that old Ralph is gone.” Just once.
The crowd grew. The ambulance team took the body away. Doc Novotony yawned a lot.
Cliffie gave the radio guy one of his Dick Tracy Crime Fighter speeches-th case was going to be wrapped up within forty-eight hours and you had his word on it-and then said (honest), “Some people thought that Reverend Courtney was sort of a snob and thought he was better than the rest of us because he was from back east, but I felt that deep down he was just a regular guy. Let’s not forget that he was a Cubs fan.”
Maybe they’d let him give the graveside remarks.
I had to appear before Judge Ronald D.
K. M. Sullivan that morning. Don’t ask what the initials stand for. Local lawyers insist that they translate to Duly Krazy Mick. And that would certainly apply. D.K.M. has two modes-ccfused and very, very, which is to say extremely, pissed off. He has been known to hum, whittle an apple and eat it, do deep breathing exercises, and flip coins while you’re making your case before his bench. He berates you for the color, cut, and cleanliness of your suit. He reminds you when you need a haircut. He has advised young women to wear more uplifting bras and young men to wear toupees because the sunlight streaming through his courtroom windows is brilliant when bounced off a bald pate. His nose runs, his eyes collect pounds of green stuff in the corners, and the last time he brushed his teeth we were bombing Berlin. He is, as near as anyone can guess, somewhere between two hundred and four hundred years old. Like those turtles.
He said, “And what offense against humanity has Mr. Larkin committed today, Mr.
McCain?”
“He’s been charged with obstructing justice.”
“Obstructing justice?” He made it sound as if he’d never heard the words before.
“He is alleged to have struck an officer who was trying to arrest Mr. Larkin’s lady friend.”
“And why was the officer trying to arrest Mr.
Larkin’s lady friend?”
“Because allegedly his lady friend had kicked the officer in the crotch area.”
“And for what reason had his lady friend kicked the officer in the crotchtal area?”
The crotchtal area? Crotchtal? D.K. More always tried to make things sound a little more dignified than they are. Hence, crotchtal area. And by the way, all the things he makes me explain?
Most judges read the charges before they have you address the bench. But D.K.M. saves time by having you do all his prep for him.
“She kicked him in the crotchtal area because he called her a name.”
“And what name would that be, Mr. McCain?”
“He called her a hooker.”
“A what?”
“A hooker. It’s slang for prostitute.”
“Ah, a strumpet.”
“Something like that.”
“So the officer of the law calls the lady friend of Mr. Larkin a strumpet and she kicks him in the crotchtal area and when the officer of the law tries to arrest her Mr. Larkin steps in and strikes the officer of the law in the face?”
“That’s correct, Your Honor.”
“Good. Now I understand. And by the way, Mr.
McCain, you really need a haircut.”
I wanted to kick him in the crotchtal area.
I didn’t get in to see Judge Whitney until much later that morning. And when I did get to her chambers, I found two men and two women I’d never seen before. They had the taint of fussiness about them, a certain archness that stamped them as her kind of folk, not mine. One of the women was a nice-looking redhead. Which reminded me of Kylie Burke. I wondered how she was doing.
Her world had to be coming apart. No matter that she was too good for him. She’d always been so clearly gaga over him that it was painful to watch.
The Judge was giving orders like a field commander. “Then, Rick, you know how I want the tent set up. And Randy you know how I wanted the cake to be made-eight tiers. And Darla I want the food to be as colorfully arranged as Michele’s flowers-in fact, you two should get together and see if there’s some way you could coordinate some things.”
Maybe a gardenia sandwich, I thought.
All this was for Richard Milhous Nixon, of course.
I had seen the Judge a-flutter and a-twitter before but these had been on separate occasions. But I’d never seen her both a-flutter and a-twitter at the same time. This was something to behold.
Oleg Cassini had become her designer of choice and so on her four-trips-a-year to New York City she stocked up on Cassini duds the way factory workers stocked up on Monkey Wards work clothes. Today, she wore a handsome tan linen suit with matching pumps. Her short hair looked freshly washed and combed. And she strode the length of her office with runway elegance. She was all crazed, nervous energy, terrified that she’d make less than a good impression on old Milhous.
That’s why you have to be careful about being a-flutter and a-twitter at the same time. It can really make you crazy-y’re like an engine with the idle running too fast.
“Now, does everybody know what they need to do?”
Cowed, terrified, they glanced at each other and then looked back at the Judge. They nodded like frightened puppies who’d just pooped on the new carpeting.
“Good, because I don’t need to tell you, there’ll be hell to pay for anybody who screws up.”
I felt sorry for them. God, I felt sorry for them.
She waved them dismissively away. They left with great hurried relief.
“So,” she said when the last of them had closed the door, “this thing is getting worse and worse.”
She went over to her desk, poured herself some brandy, plucked a Gauloise from her cigarette case and lighted it with a small aluminum box that somehow produced fire.
“They’re connected,” she said, exhaling a gulf stream of blue smoke. “Muldaur and Reverend Courtney.”
“I sure think so.”
“But how?”
“Not a clue. Not so far.”
“I don’t want these ridiculous murders hanging over our heads when Dick gets here.”
A chic sip. She was a damned good-looking woman and knew it. “You have one of your famous lists?”
“I have one of my famous lists.”
My crime instructor at the university said that a good detective always writes down names and incidents and then begins to connect them, like children’s puzzles where eventually the connected lines draw a picture. In this case, the picture of a killer.
“The night Muldaur was murdered, both Sara Hall and the now-deceased Reverend Courtney just happened to show up. I find that strange. I mean, why would they be way out in the boonies like that?
That’s the first thing on my list. The second thing is that when I went out to Muldaur’s trailer the day after the murder the daughter said she knew who’d killed her father but then her mother told her to shut up. Also, there was a crazy hillbilly there named Ned. He was exchanging bullets with the Muldaurs, which they explained to me was just a mountain tradition and not anything to worry about. He claims that Muldaur owes him money for collecting snakes. He’s worth following up on and so is the daughter, Ella. Item three on my list is Sara Hall again. I know you told me not to bother her but I just happened to run into her out at the shopping mall.”
“I’ll bet you just happened to run into her.”
“She looked very rocky. Scared, angry, confused. Take your pick. Or maybe all three. Anyway, after she left me she met the good Reverend Courtney. They went into The House of Beef together.”
“I wonder what that was all about.”
“So do I.”
Her face twisted with displeasure. “She wasn’t having an affair with him, was she?”
“She’s your friend, Judge. You’d know better than I would.”
She walked over to the long, leaded window that overlooked the courthouse lawn. She loved to pose dramatically in front of it. Maybe she was practicing for Milhous.
“Did she ever mention Courtney to you?” I said. “Did she say why he was counseling Dierdre?”
“Not really. But Dierdre’s always had problems. Depression. She saw her father drown.”
The story was well-known locally. Extremely wealthy man trying out his brand-new Chris-Craft one late Fourth of July on the river when a speedboat being driven by a monumentally drunken local playboy smashed into him. The wealthy man-Art Hall-drowned after rescuing his wife and daughter.
Dierdre went back in the water after her father.
Bystanders had to restrain her from doing it again. She spent a fair amount of time in a mental hospital shortly after that. She was thirteen years old at the time, probably seventeen now.
The playboy had some good lawyers. He quickly moved to California and had not been heard from since.
You saw Dierdre walking around town. One of her doctors had apparently told her that exercise was good for combating depression. So she walked. Everywhere. Day and night. She had yet to finish high school. She hadn’t attended the previous semester. Depression. She had a prim, Victorian beauty except for the troubled eyes. She favored heavy sweaters, jeans, white Keds. Even in the summer, when other people wore the least the law would allow, there would be Dierdre in her cable-knit sweater. Walking.
“You want to talk to Sara?”
She shook her head. “I’ll have you do it. I value her friendship too much. She’ll resent it coming from me.”
“She’ll resent it coming from me, too.”
She smiled. “Yes, but I don’t really give a damn about that, do I? Now get out there and find out what’s going on, McCain. When my people ran this town, we didn’t have any unsolved murders, believe me.”
The thing was, for all the puffery, the statement was probably true. If nothing else, the Whitneys are bright and tidy and efficient civil servants.
At the door, she said, “Muldaur being killed did one good thing, anyway.”
“What?”
“No more of those damned anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic flyers he was putting out. And I say that as a Protestant, McCain. You know I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body. I’m very happy that all you people came over here on your little boats.”
I could tell she wanted some sort of Nobel peace prize for saying what she’d just said.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have one on me to give her.
Ten
I heard girlish giggling as I walked through my office door. Kylie was parked with great poise upon the edge of my desk and Jamie was sitting behind her typewriter stand. They both were smoking filtered cigarettes and drinking Pepsi from bottles.
“God,” Kylie was saying, “so how did you get your clothes back?”
“That’s the thing,” Jamie was saying. “We didn’t. The dog dragged them off. We never found them again.”
“Then how’d you get home?”
“We drove back on dirt roads and then we had to take alleys all the way to my house.
I had to get a blanket from the garage and sneak into the house. I was afraid my dad was gonna wake up and see me in my birthday suit.”
Giggling again. They were as drunk as they could get on Pe
psi. There was something sweet about it.
Kylie was a city girl with a brain and Jamie was a small-town girl with a body. And yet here they were fast friends, at least for this small inconsequential moment in this backwoods town in this backwoods state on this backwoods planet in the vast, indifferent universe. Every once in a while, I try to put things into perspective. It was those damned philosophy courses I took.
I went behind my desk and sat down. Kylie, cautiously erotic in a prim white blouse and tight royal blue skirt, pushed her Pepsi at me and said, “Jamie’s been telling me about the night she and Turk went skinny-dipping.”
“Good old Turk,” I said.
“Mr. C’s never met Turk,” Jamie said.
“And I’m the poorer for it, no doubt,” I said.
“Turk sounds sort of cool, actually,”
Kylie said, relishing the effect her words would have on me.
“Oh, yes, very cool,” I said.
“As opposed to short, mouthy guys who aren’t cool.”
Jamie giggled. “I think she’s talking about you, Mr. C.”
At which point a horn sounded.
“Turk!” Jamie said. “He’s picking me up for lunch!”
“I hope he’s got clothes on,” Kylie laughed.
“She’d make you a great girlfriend,” Jamie said of Kylie. “I mean, if you weren’t all hung up on that snob Pam Forrest. And if Kylie wasn’t married.”
“You have a succinct way of stating a problem,”
Kylie said.
“I don’t know what succinct means but it sounds sort of dirty.”
The horn again.
“He’ll have to come in sometime so I can meet him,” I said.
“He doesn’t like lawyers.”
“Oh? How come?”
“That time he ran over that nun? This lawyer his dad got really didn’t have any respect for Turk. I mean, the nun wasn’t even hurt much. It wasn’t his fault she was so short. He just couldn’t see her behind the dump truck he was backing up.”