by John Bloom
“No, that’s all right, I’ll call the neighbors.”
“Well, okay, but let me know if I can do anything.”
They hung up, and Pat asked Candy what was wrong. She repeated the conversation and then retold her entire day, including the fact that her watch had stopped when she went to Target. As she went on about it, Pat dug into the tacos.
A few minutes later, the phone in Allan’s hotel room rang. Allan reached for it quickly, but it was only Tom, asking if Allan was ready for dinner. A few minutes later, Allan, Tom, and Sid all met downstairs in the motel restaurant, but not before Allan had stopped at the desk to leave instructions for his calls to be forwarded to the restaurant.
By this time Allan was so nervous that he had lost his appetite. He ordered cheesecake but immediately got up from the table to find a pay phone. When he got back to the table, Tom and Sid both tried to help by suggesting that Allan call Betty’s friends. But Allan dismissed the suggestion; there weren’t any friends close enough to call. Betty never left the house at night. Period. Allan nibbled at the cheesecake and then returned to his room. By now it was close to ten o’clock, well past Betty’s normal bedtime, and the phone still rang endlessly.
Allan redialed Richard Parker’s number.
“Richard, I still haven’t been able to reach Betty. Would you run out back and look in the garage and see if her car is there?”
Cynthia was still at her bridge party, but Richard detected the growing desperation in Allan’s voice, so he quickly agreed. He asked Allan to hold and left by the back door this time. On Dogwood, all the garages opened onto the alley, eliminating the need for street-front driveways. Richard went as far as the chain link fence that runs between the two houses and peered into the garage. Then he went back to the phone and said, “Yeah, Allan, there’s only one car there, and the garage is open and the lights are on.”
“That’s strange,” said Allan.
He considered the possibilities: it had to be some kind of emergency. Perhaps the baby was sick.
“Give me the numbers for Plano Hospital and the Wylie police,” said Allan.
As Richard was looking up the numbers, Allan tried to think of people Betty might tell if she was going to the hospital. He couldn’t think of any. He wrote down the numbers as Richard dictated them, thanked him, and hung up.
He called the hospital and the police. They had never heard of Betty Gore. He had run out of names. He felt helpless. He needed to talk to someone, someone who could help him figure this out. Nothing added up. He needed a calm, level head and a sympathetic ear.
He picked up the phone and called Candy Montgomery.
“One car is gone, the garage door is open, and the lights are on,” said Allan. “She never leaves that garage door open. Has she called there or anything?”
“Oh, Allan, no, she hasn’t. Let me go down there and check the house. Or let me check the hospitals for you.”
“Why would a car be gone this late?”
“Allan, let me do something.”
“No, no, I just wanted to make sure you couldn’t remember anything else. I’ll get the neighbors to check again.”
“Don’t worry about Alisa, Allan, we have her and she’s fine.”
“Okay. I’ll call you later.”
Allan hung up and felt sick. Why didn’t the phone ring? Why didn’t anyone know anything? Why couldn’t he make the one phone call that would suddenly make everything all right?
For the third time he dialed Richard Parker’s house, but this time he didn’t waste words.
“Richard, I’m really worried about her. Please go back over there and check all the doors and the garage again. If she had to leave in a hurry, maybe she left a note somewhere.”
Richard sighed—he didn’t like the responsibility and was a little frightened by Allan’s panic—but this time he went all the way around the back fence, into the alley, and back up the Gore driveway. He was startled to see that there were two cars in the garage. The smaller one, a Volkswagen Rabbit, was pulled up so far that when he had looked over the fence, he hadn’t been able to see it. Richard walked into the garage and tried to open the door that leads directly into the utility room. He could see a light under the door, but it was locked. Something about the house—the burning lights, the open garage, the silence—vaguely disturbed him. He left the way he had come and picked up the phone again.
“Something’s wrong, Allan. I don’t know what, but something’s wrong. Both cars are there and the lights are on, but nobody answers.”
“Richard,” said Allan, “I want you to go and get in that house any way you can.”
Richard didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Okay, Allan, I guess so, but Cynthia’s not back and I’m still keeping the kids, so I can’t spend much time over there.”
“I’ve got to find out what’s wrong.”
“Okay.”
“Call me back when you find out something. Here, write down my number.”
“Okay.”
Richard took down the number and hung up and took a deep breath. Then he dialed the phone again and asked for his wife.
“Did you see Betty Gore today?” he asked her.
“No.”
He explained what was happening. “Come on home and keep the girls while I go over to check on Betty.”
She agreed and hung up. Richard went to find his realtor’s keys, hoping he had one that fit the Gore house.
Meanwhile, Allan was growing skeptical of Richard’s resolve. He had sounded so tentative when Allan asked him to break into the house, and he had already given a false report on the cars. So Allan called directory assistance again and asked for Jerry McMahan’s number. Jerry was a computer analyst at Texas Instruments who lived directly across the alley from the Gores. Allan dialed the number, and Jerry’s wife answered.
“Tommie, this is Allan Gore and I need to talk to Jerry; it’s important.”
“Just a minute.” Jerry had gone to bed and was already sleeping. When he came to the phone, his speech was thick.
“Jerry, something is wrong over at my house. I’ve been trying to get Betty but nobody answers. The lights are on and the doors are locked. Would you get a flashlight and go over there and see what you can find out?”
“Sure, Allan.”
“I’ll hold the line while you go over there.”
“Okay, I’ll be back in a minute.”
Jerry stepped into a jumpsuit and put on his houseshoes and padded down his back driveway with a flashlight. He walked up into Allan’s garage and knocked loudly on the utility room door but got no answer. Then he walked into the back yard and tried to force open a sliding glass door, but it wouldn’t budge either. He continued on around to the front of the house, peering in windows as he went, and rang the doorbell, but still there was no sign of life from inside the house. He walked back over to his own house and picked up the phone.
“Allan, the lights are on in there, but I can’t see anything wrong.”
“Jerry, there is something very definitely wrong.”
“She’s probably just out with friends, Allan.”
“No, she’s not with friends. I’ve already tried that.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get in that house and see what’s wrong. Take the windows off, force the doors, whatever it takes.”
“Okay, but give me your number. I’ll have to call you back.”
He took the number and hung up. But as soon as he told Tommie what was happening, she grew frightened and insisted that Jerry not go over there alone. So Jerry called Lester Gayler, a barber who lived next door to the Gores on the other side from Richard Parker. Lester’s wife answered the phone and roused her husband out of bed. He quickly agreed to meet Jerry in the alley.
Two minutes later, the two friends met behind the Gore house just as Cynthia Parker passed down the alley, returning from her birthday party. From the house, Richard could hear his wife speaking to s
omeone, so he walked out into the yard carrying a big silver ring full of house keys. He was startled to see Jerry and Lester there before him.
“What the hell’s going on?” asked Jerry.
“I don’t know,” said Richard. “Gore just called and said to get in the house. I’ve got these realtor’s keys. Let’s try ’em on the doors.”
Lester, who hardly even knew Allan Gore, said, “Might as well.” Jerry shrugged.
The three neighbors walked together up the Gore driveway. While Richard tried his keys on the utility door, one by one, Jerry and Lester went around to the back patio and tried to force open the sliding glass door again. This was the fifth time the house had been checked that night, but something about doing it as a group invested the procedure with a kind of seriousness that made them all uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much the idea of foul play—although that had occurred to them all—as it was the sense of violation. A house is, after all, a very personal possession. If there was something wrong inside, they weren’t sure they wanted to see it.
None of Richard’s keys worked, so someone suggested they try the front windows. Together they walked around to the street side of the house, and Jerry and Lester started inspecting a large window that opens into the Gore dining room to see if it could be pried open. While they were busy discussing that, Richard went to the front door, thinking he would try all his realtor’s keys again. He selected the first key, placed it in the lock, and caught his breath as an icy chill ran down his spine.
The door swung open. He had not even turned the key.
“This door,” he said, turning to Jerry and Lester and stepping back away from it, “this door is not locked.”
The two men moved away from the dining-room window and joined Richard on the porch, but for a moment no one made a move. Richard stuck his head in the crack the open door had made.
“Betty?” he said. Then louder: “Betty!”
Finally Lester pushed open the door, and the three men entered the foyer, illuminated from both directions by the lights burning in the den to the right and the hall bathroom to the left. Lester started to the left, toward the three bedrooms, and Richard followed. All the hall doors were closed. Lester stopped at the first one, opened it, and flipped on the light inside.
Richard looked over Lester’s shoulder: a child’s bedroom. Nothing unusual. They continued down the hall to the next room. Meanwhile, Jerry peered into the front bathroom, which opened onto the hallway near the front door, and on the tile he saw a dark, caked substance.
“Oh no,” he said, “something bad is wrong.”
Richard and Lester arrived at the second bedroom. Lester opened the door and flipped on the light. As soon as he did, Richard heard the terrible hacking wail of an abandoned child and the simultaneous exclamation of Lester.
“Oh my God, the baby.”
Richard moved into the doorway and saw Bethany in her crib, half sitting, half lying, her legs folded under her, her face blotchy and red, her hair tangled and dirty. Her skin was stained with her own excrement. Her poignantly hoarse crying curdled the blood. She had obviously been there a long time.
“Get her out of here,” barked Lester. “Something is very wrong.”
Richard quickly reached into the crib and gathered up the baby. Cradling her head against his shoulder, he hurried back down the hall and out the front door just as Jerry was joining Lester at the entrance to the second bedroom. As Richard left, the two neighbors continued together to the master bedroom, but once there, they found nothing.
That left the other half of the house. Jerry and Lester split apart as they entered the living area, Jerry going to the right and into the dining room, Lester left and into the kitchen. They walked slowly, turning on available lights as they went. Both of them were increasingly aware of a pungent odor that seemed to follow them through the house. They spoke only fitfully.
“Nothing here.”
“I’ll look in here.”
Meanwhile, Richard had left the baby with his wife next door and instructed her to call the police immediately. He searched through a drawer for his handgun and told her to stay inside with the kids until they had figured out what was wrong at the Gore house.
Finally Lester made his way through the kitchen and reached the door to the utility room, between the kitchen and garage. At the same moment that Lester opened that door, Richard appeared back at the front of the house with his gun drawn.
“Oh my God don’t go any further!”
Lester shut the door quickly without even entering the utility room, and in the stunned silence of the moment it was difficult to tell whether he was talking to Jerry, to himself, or to someone on the other side of the door.
“She’s dead.”
Lester had not seen a body. He hadn’t seen anything but blood—thick, congealed reddish-brown oceans of blood, glistening on the tile of the utility room floor—and something had told him not to look any farther than that. Some sixth sense took over and told him that the sight on that floor was something too private for him to see. He instinctively moved away from the door.
From the dining room, some fifteen feet away, Jerry saw the look on Lester’s face and heard the shock in his voice and moved tentatively toward the utility room. As Lester moved away, Jerry cracked the door open and, without moving any closer, looked in. He got only a glimpse, but it was enough. He shut the door.
“She’s blown her head off,” said Jerry.
Lester moved toward the telephone on the kitchen counter, thinking he would call the police, but just as he reached for the receiver, the phone rang. Everyone in the room froze.
Lester picked it up.
“Hello.”
“This is Allan.” He had called because he couldn’t wait any longer.
Lester hesitated. “I’ve got to make a decision,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” asked Allan.
“I don’t know.”
Jerry quickly sensed what was happening and strode across the kitchen. “Is that Allan?” he asked. Lester meekly handed him the phone.
“Allan?” said Jerry.
“What did you find?” Allan’s voice was tense and shaky.
“I’m afraid it’s not good,” said Jerry, finding no words to describe what he had just seen. “But don’t worry—the little one is okay.”
“The baby is okay?”
“Yes.”
“What about Betty?”
“I’m sorry, Allan.”
“What happened?”
Jerry had to say something. “I don’t know for sure.”
“What do you think?”
“It looks like she’s been shot.”
“How? We don’t even have a gun.”
“I’m sorry, Allan. I wish I had another way to say it.”
“Have the police been called?” Now it was Allan who was fighting for the right words.
“Yes, Richard called them.”
After a silence, Jerry said, “What about Alisa, Allan? Do you know where she is?”
“Yeah, she’s fine, she’s fine.”
“Allan, I’m sorry. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Do you have someone there with you?”
“Yeah, I have friends here, I’m okay.”
“I wish there was something else I could say, Allan. We’ll stay here and explain everything to the police.”
“Okay, thanks, Jerry.”
Allan hung up the phone. He was stunned and confused and so disoriented that he temporarily forgot where he was. He dialed the room of Tom Tansil; Tom should know. It was as though, after so many hours of dialing and redialing the phone, he couldn’t deal with Betty’s death any other way. So he called Tom and told him what had happened, and Tom asked whether he wanted company, and Allan said yes, but not for a few minutes. And then, not knowing what else to do, Allan called Candy Montgomery again.
Pat Montgomery was a little peeved when the call came around 11:30, be
cause he and Candy had just gone to bed and were starting to make love.
“What timing,” he said as Candy reached immediately for the phone.
“Candy.” Allan’s voice was distant and flat. “I have some bad news. Betty’s dead.”
“Oh Allan.” Candy’s voice broke. “What happened?”
“It looks like she’s been shot. The neighbors found her.”
“What about Bethany?”
Allan didn’t even hear the question. “I know that there have been some things that are bothering her lately,” he said, “and I know she’s been upset, and she was two weeks late with her period. But I never thought that she would—”
Allan stopped, and Pat noticed tears forming in Candy’s eyes.
“But we don’t even own a gun,” said Allan.
“What can I say, Allan?” Candy was almost whimpering.
“Please keep Alisa for a while and don’t tell her what happened. I want to tell her.”
“Oh Allan, are you going to be all right?”
“Yes, I’m okay. I’ve got to go.”
Candy hung up and began to sob. Pat put his arm around her shoulders.
“Is she dead?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask. How can you ask something like that? But she must have been, because the neighbors found her.”
A gun, she thought. A suicide. It’s all right now because it happened with a gun.
Allan Gore put down the phone and wondered whom he should call next. He stared at the wall and his mind went blank for a moment. Then he saw Betty, as he had seen her for the last time that morning, as he would see her for months to come. After their argument, she had walked out onto the driveway with Bethany in her arms. Then, as Allan pulled away, she had raised Bethany’s little hand and waved it at him, and for the first time that day she had smiled, really smiled, as broadly as she ever had.
5 Betty and Allan
Betty was the pretty one. It was not just her mother and father who said so, but a verdict rendered in 1953 by popular ballot at the general store of Norwich, Kansas—Betty was three when she became Most Popular Baby—and then again in later years by the combined young manhood of Kingman and Harper counties. Betty had an innocence about her then, and a wide Hollywood smile that for a while made hers the most coveted female lips in the junior class. Hers was not classic beauty. Her face tended toward thickness and had a dark cast to it; her huge eyes were almost black, her eyebrows narrow and straight, and for most of her childhood she wore harlequin glasses, which remained fashionable in parts of rural Kansas after the rest of the country had moved on to designer frames. But by the eighth grade she had developed the full figure of a woman, long before most of her girlfriends needed grownup bras, and thereafter she would never spend a Saturday night alone.