Flashpoint

by Ed Gorman

  They liked the way he’d handled himself but sensibly enough didn’t make any claims about his innocence. I gave them points for that. I also gave them points for having some fun with some of the nastier comments made by the other side, comments I hadn’t caught up with until now.

  ‘My favorite,’ said the attractive blonde, ‘was when Sheila St Germaine said that Senator Logan should have to hand over his passport because he’s a flight risk.’

  ‘Yeah and then Lawrence Todd said Logan would head for Cuba where Castro would let him stay.’ The man had everybody laughing with this; even a crew member or two could be heard chortling.

  ‘And don’t forget,’ the always-breathless host said, ‘the body language expert who said that Logan reminded him of Ted Bundy based on how his right shoulder moves when he changes the subject.’

  Even Elise, not the most demonstrative of people, was laughing. She had to lean against Maddy in order to keep from falling off the divan. Maddy had switched to coffee, which was probably a good idea. With her mother finishing an entire wine cooler by herself, somebody had to protect her from destroying the known world with that sweet-sad smile and that small Monet face. If she had another wine cooler she’d probably sign up to be a NASCAR driver or enter a tractor pull. A drinker she was not.

  Soon enough an angel appeared in the person of Mrs Weiderman with a tray of hot deli-style sandwiches and two pots of coffee that she rolled in on a hotel-style cart. I wasn’t hungry for food but I was for coffee.

  I enjoyed sitting on one of the couches next to Jane and watching Robert and Ben and Maddy making all the smart-ass remarks about the various jabs and counter-jabs going on in television land. None of it mattered, of course. That kind of speculative talk vaporized as soon as it was uttered. But sometimes it was fun, as it was tonight.

  Jane sighed and whispered, ‘I could put my head on your shoulder and go to sleep.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? I don’t see how you can sleep with all this noise going on but if you can, do it.’

  ‘I can sleep anywhere.’

  I doubted it but I was wrong. Within ten minutes she was gently snoring on my right shoulder. I was a bit muzzy now so I held her hand, and if anyone found that smarmy I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

  James’ official job was to glower. He hit the bar three or four times to get more of the devil juice then moved back to an armchair where he disappeared inside his iPad. Porno, probably.

  Elise had eaten half a sandwich and consumed two cups of coffee, and her earlier ebullience was now slipping into the melancholy we were all familiar with. Ben and Robert had gone to the billiard room and Maddy had disappeared somewhere. Jane, who was obviously not any more of a drinker than Elise, still slept soundly. I eased her into a corner of the divan, slid a throw pillow under her head and stretched her legs out. I pulled my V-neck sweater over my head and laid it across her chest. Better than nothing.

  Behind me I heard Elise say, ‘Oh, God.’

  I went over to her and sat down. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘You— That was so touching. Robert and I haven’t had a moment like that in years.’

  ‘Young love, I guess.’

  ‘You really care for her, Dev. You have to be manly and make a joke of it.’

  ‘All right, Mom. I like her quite a bit. Is that enough?’

  She had that fragile smile. ‘It is for now.’ Then she put her head back. Her neck was a masterpiece. ‘I shouldn’t drink. I’ve got a headache already. But maybe I’ll sleep better tonight. I’ve started having dreams again about Gretchen Cain. I was up every two hours. I’m so sick of the sleeping pills I take – I’m always so groggy the next day – that I didn’t take them yesterday, and so last night it was good old Gretchen again. And I suppose it will be again tonight. You remember Gretchen, of course.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘You should. Robert made you tell me about her.’

  ‘That’s a little overstated. I just said that Robert had confided in me that he’d done something stupid.’

  She yawned and that brought her head down. The wan child in her looked at me through a rainy March window. ‘You did his dirty work. I’m naïve sometimes but rarely outright dumb, Dev. When you said he’d been “stupid,” I knew what you were really saying. That there’d been a woman. What else could it have been? And in this case it was Gretchen Cain. Her husband and I commiserated. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We even talked about sleeping together to pay them back. There’s a term for that.’

  ‘Grudge fucking.’

  ‘Oh, right. We got very drunk one night and made out like ninth graders but then gave it up.’ Mischief in her smile. ‘He was a very good kisser, I might add. I shouldn’t say this but he was a much better kisser than Robert, and I would appreciate it if you’d never tell Robert that.’

  I drew an imaginary zipper across my mouth.

  ‘But she still comes back to me, Gretchen does. I always catch them in bed. Our bed. I can even smell her somehow. She wore the most God-awful cologne. I thought she did, anyway. We had several dinners with them. That’s how it started. I plead with her to leave him alone but she just sits up in my bed covering herself with my sheets and smirking at me. Robert, at least, is nice enough to look embarrassed. But she’s very blunt. She speaks for him – for them. She says that Robert will be moving out – that in fact he’ll go with her tonight and he’ll send for some of his clothes in the morning. And by then I’m sobbing and pleading. And by the time I wake up I’m afraid they’ll put me back in the psych hospital again. I hate it there so much, Dev. I can’t tell you.’

  No tears. Just talk. Just sorrow and fear.

  The sound of my cell phone affected Elise physically. She frowned as if it were a person who’d interrupted us.

  ‘Excuse me, Elise.’ Then, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Do you know where my bedroom is?’ Maddy. Sounding sober now.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m out on the little porch. I’d appreciate it if you’d come up here now.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Anything serious?’ Elise said.

  ‘My office telling me to check out an internal poll they just sent me. Excuse me. I think I’ll go in the kitchen and have a cup of coffee while I read it. Bring you back anything?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Thanks for listening to me. You’re not only less expensive than a shrink, you’re a lot better.’ She squeezed my hand.

  Maddy’s bedroom was next to the guest room in which I’d spent some restless nights. I generally didn’t stay over unless there was trouble. It was such a comfortable and decorous room I wanted to stay in it once when I could enjoy it.

  When I opened Maddy’s door I wished I’d worn my snowsuit with the snowmen and Santa Clauses decorating it. Given the winds tonight and that the door leading to the tiny porch was wide open, the room was cold enough to make snowballs out of gin.

  ‘You like it a little nippy, huh?’ I said, shivering for effect.

  ‘I thought it would help get me sober faster.’ She’d made no concession to the temperature. No extra sweater, no jacket, no hat. Then, ‘Hardy pioneer stock.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same,’ I said. ‘Brr.’

  She hadn’t faced me yet. She stared out at the forest and the glowing half-moon above it. You could taste and feel and smell the snow that would soon be here. Her small hands were wrapped tight around the black iron porch railing. The only item on the porch was a rattan chair.

  And it was kind of funny. As soon as she started talking I no longer noticed how plugged-up I was already feeling. I was too engrossed.

  ‘The afternoon before she was killed I rode my bike to the cabin. I had no idea anybody would be there. I recognized her right away. I asked her as politely as I could – which probably wasn’t all that politely, I’ll admit – how she’d gotten in and exactly what she was doing there
. She said she was a friend of my dad’s. But the way she said it – very smirky. You know, implying they were a lot more than friends. And I got mad and I started yelling at her. All I could think of was how my mother would react if she knew that bitch was at our family’s cabin.

  ‘She started yelling right back at me. Told me to grow up. I told her to leave but she said she was there at my father’s invitation and didn’t care whether I liked it or not. I was so angry I decided the best thing to do was get out of there, find my father and confront him about this. So I left.

  ‘But I wasn’t able to find Dad until after dinner, and even then I had to wait until late because we were never alone. When we finally had our talk he told me everything and told me how sorry he was and assured me that there had been nothing between them. And then, when the news came about her being found dead, he was afraid the police would bring my name into it and I’d be implicated. He begged me not to tell anybody. But I think you deserve to know.’

  So this was what Robert had been hiding from me.

  She raised her head, looked up at the stingy moon and laughed abruptly. ‘I just kept thinking how intimidated I would be if I were in her position. But she wasn’t at all. She was just such a bitch …’

  And then she went on to give me another example of Cabot’s nastiness, and in so doing reminded me of somebody I should have been thinking about all along.

  Ben and Robert came charging in excited as two teenage boys on their first drunken spree. Robert grabbed the remote and shouted with grand and outright glee, ‘I hope he’s still on!’ Ben and Robert stood in front of the giant plasma screen as if they were worshipping a false god.

  The first image on the screen was of a plutocrat who’d once accused our sitting president of secretly planning for another 9/11 just so his numbers would go up when he got his best chance to ‘look presidential.’

  But the plutocrat’s words tonight surprised me. ‘Susan, Susan, all we know is that at worst all Senator Logan did was maybe have a brief fling. And even that hasn’t been established for sure. I say that as someone who despises everything Logan and his socialist cohorts stand for. But I think it’s time that we let the law do its work before we make any judgments about his guilt or innocence.’

  It was Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July afternoon simultaneously, and this was Empire News channel, for God’s sake. The way Ben and Robert dove for the bar foretold just how hammered they planned to get tonight.

  Jane pulled herself up into a sitting position and sleepily rubbed a small hand across her right eye. I went over and she said, ‘This is really embarrassing. God, did I snore?’

  ‘You shattered glass.’

  ‘Everybody will think I was drunk.’

  ‘I think they probably know better than that.’

  Now those sleepy eyes were narrowing and focusing on me. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘It will be, I hope.’ Then, ‘I need to get going.’

  ‘You won’t forget I’m waiting here for you, will you?’

  I smiled. ‘Probably not.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Moonlight on the ground frost contrasted with the shadows of the windbreak, the line of pine that overpowered the small house and made it seem even more isolated and lonesome. Smoke coiled from the chimney and a large gray cat squatted on the small porch feigning feline indifference when he got a look at me. From inside the bungalow a voice spoke much too loudly.

  After knocking, I looked around the yard. A car was in the drive. The voice inside continued to pound away.

  I knocked again, this time with more force. I had to compete with the diatribe. I was surprised that the door was opened with no precautions of any kind. Even though this was the country, meth had changed everything from the good old days when people left their doors unlocked and offered to help strangers. Drug dealers carried guns now and traveled the gravel roads of rural America. It no longer made much news when a body or two was found in a ditch, fortunes of a drug deal gone wrong. In Missouri a few years back two nineteen-year-old males were found in a ditch with their hands tied behind their backs and their heads missing. Apparently Mexican drug cartels had made instructional videos of how to deal with drug enemies.

  ‘This better be good. I’m missing my show. So what the hell do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to speak with Mark if I could, Mrs Coleman.’

  ‘He isn’t here.’

  ‘His car is in the driveway.’

  She pulled her dark terrycloth bathrobe tighter around her. A long, light-blue nightie showed beneath the bottom of the robe. ‘You ever hear of somebody going for a walk?’

  The man on the radio was bellering now. ‘Why hasn’t the American Congress – and I emphasize the word “American” – why hasn’t the American Congress started impeachment proceedings against the only president we’ve ever had who wrote a secret letter to the head of the United Nations saying that his ultimate goal was to have the UN take over the governance of our nation? And have you noticed that our so-called president – who wasn’t born here, not that that seems to bother anybody in the so-called American press – in his arrogance wouldn’t even speak about this when a reporter from this show asked him about it?’

  A cruel, mad smile crossed her crone lips. ‘Are you hearing that?’

  ‘Oh, I’m hearing it all right, Mrs Coleman.’

  ‘Probably scares you, doesn’t it? To know we’re on to you. Your Senator Logan’s a Communist and that makes you one, too, since you work for him. I told that to my Mark. He said he’s pretty sure neither you or Logan are Commies. But people have seen that letter, the one to the UN. He wrote it longhand, which was a mistake because Stan on the radio had a handwriting expert on the show and the expert said that once he got a chance to see the letter he’d know if it was the president or not. Stan told him he’d heard of two people who’d seen it and they both said it looked just like the president’s handwriting.’

  ‘Kind of made it official, huh?’

  ‘Go ahead and make fun – you’ll be in prison soon enough. You and your kind.’ And with that she started to shut the door.

  But I put my hand on it and stopped her. She wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it. ‘You take your hand away right now or I’ll call the sheriff.’

  ‘I just want to ask you a question.’

  ‘I don’t answer your questions. I know what you are.’

  ‘When I was here before you said you could smell perfume on Mark the other night. You said it belonged to his wife.’

  ‘She’s a whore. All she wants is to get her hands on this house and then get rid of me so she can live here the rest of her life and not have to pay any rent.’

  Of course. Now it was clear to me. The ex-wife was driven by her overpowering desire to steal this ramshackle bungalow and spend decades living in rural luxury. Providing the septic tank held fast.

  ‘Did you really smell perfume on him?’

  ‘On who?’

  ‘On Mark.’

  ‘I said I did, didn’t I? It was enough to make me sick.’

  ‘What did Mark say?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything. He just went in and washed up. Like he was in a hurry. I was hopin’ he was ashamed of himself for givin’ into her. That’s how she’ll get him back – sex. Whores always know how to handle men. Now take your hand off the door.’

  I stepped back. She slammed it so fast and so hard I was surprised by the fury of it. Such a tiny woman.

  I stayed on the small slab of porch for a couple of minutes. The problem I had was her state of mind. She was clearly suffering from some form of dementia so it was difficult to know what was fantasy and what was real. But to the scent of perfume on her son, she’d added that he seemed to be in a hurry to wash up. Maybe because I wanted to believe those two details I decided that they confirmed my suspicions.

  Maddy had told me – following our initial conversation on the subject – that Tracy Cabot said that
some ‘creep’ had been hanging around the cabin and that he made her nervous. Maddy knew she meant Mark Coleman and said he wasn’t a creep; just a confused vet whose wife had left him. Maddy said she considered that one more reason to despise the Cabot woman. Maddy then told me she’d had a number of conversations with Mark over the past year and liked him very much and that he was just a lost and lonely man searching for the solace of a woman. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the scene if he ever came into any kind of contact with somebody like Tracy Cabot.

  I started to walk back to my car. I’d known she wouldn’t let me in the house where I suspected Mark was hiding. Now I’d pretend to leave, park down the road and then sneak back here. There was a chance that he would do me the favor of packing a bag, tossing it in his trunk and trying to flee. And I’d be waiting for him.

  As I began to open my door, I heard, ‘Put your hands up in the air. I’ve got a rifle pointed right at you.’

  Movies and TV have taught us that when you say things like that you’re supposed to snarl the words if you want to keep working in La La Land. But Mark had probably never taken any acting classes so when he said it, it was pierced with the same weariness I’d heard on my previous visit. And I knew the eyes would be the same, too. The ineluctable sorrow and frenzy of men and women who’d died psychically and spiritually on the battlefield who came home to trudge through their nightmare days.

  ‘You won’t shoot me, Mark.’

  ‘I don’t have much to lose.’

  ‘You’d just make things a lot worse for yourself. And this would be first-degree. I imagine the Cabot woman was on impulse. She say something ugly to you?’

  My back was still to him but I hadn’t put my hands up.

  ‘I know I’m a freak. I could see it in her face. I was stupid enough to go in the cabin in the first place. I couldn’t help it. She was so beautiful. I thought that was all finished for me after my wife left, that I wouldn’t ever want another woman again. I wasn’t going to rape her or anything. I just wanted to look at her, was all. Not even touch her.’