A Blind Eye

by G. M. Ford

  “A shark’s just being a shark,” Dougherty said.

  “So’s she,” Corso countered.

  They got to their feet and started for the cash register.

  “A shark’s not evil, though.”

  “He is if it’s your leg in his mouth.”

  Nine dollars and seventy-five cents, including a 20 percent gratuity, got them out into what passed for a beautiful late-November morning in Wisconsin. Bright, white, and cold as hell under an acrylic blue sky. Corso was in a full squint, still patting himself down, trying to locate his sunglasses, when a pair of hands grabbed him by the elbows, spun him in a half circle, and plastered him face-first against the front window of the restaurant.

  Corso kicked back hard with his right foot. Officer Caruth grunted as Corso’s heel made contact with his shin. Caruth’s grip loosened completely when Corso threw back his head and made contact with his chin. Had it not been for Deputy Duckett’s timely intervention, the outcome might have gone the other way. As it was, it took them the better part of a minute to get the bracelets around Corso’s wrists, which settle things down. Inside the restaurant, everyone had deserted their seats and pressed against the inside of the glass, watching the melee outside.

  Deputy Caruth’s cowboy hat had become dislodged in the scuffle and fallen to the sidewalk. Deputy Duckett retrieved it. “Mr. Frank Corso,” Duckett drawled, “you are under arrest on a material-witness warrant issued in Dallas County, Texas. It is your right to…”

  27

  Corso tried to dig in with his heels, but the pressure on his hands kept forcing him forward. “Come on, guys, give it a rest,” Corso said. “It’s less than fourteen hours until the grand jury’s term expires. No way you can get me back to Texas in time.”

  “Law says all we gotta do is make the collar in time,” Caruth said.

  “It’s just a misunderstanding between me and the DA’s office, for pity’s sake. You guys are treating this like it’s a murder warrant or something. What’s the deal here? They don’t have any real crime in Texas?”

  “Guy makes us look bad as many times as you have…”

  “Makes us look like a pair a dummies,” Caruth said.

  “Guy like that…we like to put in a little extra effort, if you know what I mean,” Duckett added with a wink to his partner.

  Deputy Caruth held on to the handcuff chain as they marched Corso along the street. The first clear day since the storm had brought people into town. Most of the parking spaces were full of dirty pickup trucks. The shoveled sidewalks buzzed with bundled-up humanity, carrying packages and pausing to chat. As Corso and the lawmen approached, the good citizens of Avalon, Wisconsin, stepped aside in wonder, slack-jawed at the incongruity of the scene unfolding before them.

  Corso heard somebody say, “That’s that writer guy.”

  “I thought he snuck off,” a woman said.

  “He did,” said a third voice.

  Caruth and Duckett kept nodding and grinning and touching the brims of their hats as they walked along. Corso twisted his head and looked back over his shoulder. They’d picked up an entourage of a dozen kids, who skipped along the sidewalk in their wake playing cops and robbers, bobbing and weaving and blasting away at one another with imaginary guns. Behind the children, a crowd of adults had begun to follow along at a respectful distance.

  They stood at the corner of Broad and Main, waiting for the light to change. Traffic crawled along the snow-covered street, the clink of tire chains announcing the passing of car after car. Caruth pushed the button for the third time, but the traffic light paid him no notice. The muted sound of tires on snow pulled Corso’s eyes to the curb. A blue Cadillac Seville slid to a halt. The door swung open so hard the big car rocked on its springs.

  The first thing out the door was blue steel, cocked and loaded. Clint Richardson’s hand shook so badly he brought the other one up to steady himself. Caruth started to reach for his hip. “Don’t!” Richardson screamed. “I don’t want to hurt anybody else. Get away from him.” His face was ashen. His eyes bulging and rimmed with red. “He killed my boy!” he screamed. “He killed my boy!”

  “Take it easy now, mister,” Duckett said in a low voice. “No need to get excited here.” He raised a calming hand. Richardson aimed the revolver at Duckett’s head. Duckett held his breath and slowly lowered the hand to his side.

  In the street, a blue Chevy pickup crunched to a halt. The driver stepped out, keeping his hands in sight. “Clint,” he said, “come on now, man…”

  Richardson threw a glance at the sound. “Get out of here, Charlie,” he sobbed. “Get back in the damn truck and go home.”

  The guy took a step forward. “Come on, Clint—” was as far as he got before Richardson swung the wavering gun his way. He froze. Holding his breath. Squeezing his eyes closed. Waiting for the bang.

  “Might be best if you got back in the truck,” Duck-ett suggested.

  Charlie didn’t need to be told twice. Eyes wide, he backed into the driver’s seat, dropped the truck into gear, and went rolling down the street with his foot hanging out the open door.

  While Richardson’s attention was diverted, Officer Caruth used his hip to bump Corso closer to the steel streetlight pole. The movement caught Clint Richard-son’s attention. The gun swung back. Waving in a wide arc now.

  “Get away from him!” Richardson yelled again.

  Nobody moved. Richardson steadied the gun on Caruth.

  “Step away!” he screamed.

  Caruth raised his hands in surrender. Freed from the officer’s grasp, Corso rolled around the light pole, putting the steel standard between Richardson and himself.

  “You don’t want to be doing this,” Duckett said. “Nobody’ll blame you for how you feel. Not after what you been through. Man loses a son’s got a right to feel bad. Just put the gun away, mister, and we’ll all just forget about this whole thing.”

  Richardson was beginning to sob. “Shut up!” he screamed. Tears had begun to leak from the corners of his eyes, and his nose had begun to run. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. Aimed at Caruth. “Get away from him!” he shouted.

  Deputy Caruth squared his shoulders. The cords in his neck trembled like cables. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. Mr. Corso is in my custody. I can’t—”

  Richardson took two quick strides forward and pressed the barrel against the young deputy’s forehead. “I warned you…. I didn’t want to hurt…”His trigger finger began to quiver. Caruth’s Adam’s apple bounced up and down like a tennis ball. Duckett was inching his hand toward the front of his jacket, when Corso stepped out from behind the pole and ambled over to Richardson.

  “Don’t,” Corso said. “You want to shoot somebody…shoot me. I’m the one you want. No point in anybody else getting hurt, now is there?”

  Richardson took the barrel of the gun and jammed it up under Corso’s chin. “I’m gonna kill you, you son of a bitch!” he shouted. “Just like you killed my boy!”

  Corso looked into the man’s bloodshot eyes. “I didn’t kill your son,” he said.

  “You lying son of a bitch,” Richardson hissed.

  Corso watched as the finger began to tighten on the trigger. He held his breath.

  “Beg!” Richardson screamed in Corso’s face. “You cowardly bastard…go on, beg for your miserable life!”

  Corso’s gaze was unwavering. “I told you. I didn’t kill your son,” he said. “So why don’t you just go fuck yourself.”

  Caruth reached for his hip. Duckett for his breast pocket. Corso closed his eyes.

  “Kerpow! Kerpow! Kerpow!” came the noise.

  Hands stopped in midair. Breath froze in throats. Corso’s eyes popped open.

  The kid was about five. A fat little guy with a runny nose, wearing a blue snowsuit and red galoshes. He moved around the sidewalk at an awkward skip, pretending he was riding a horse. His brown mittens were attached to the bottom of his sleeves with safety pins. He pointed a mitten at Corso
and dropped the imaginary hammer three times. “Kerpow! Kerpow! Kerpow!” Clint Richardson began to shake so hard the gun barrel bounced under Corso’s chin.

  The kid looked up at Richardson and smiled. “Kerpow!” he said.

  Richardson’s thumb curled around the hammer. He hesitated for a moment before easing it down and dropping his hand to his side. He began to sob. The gun slipped from his fingers and fell to the sidewalk.

  Deputy Duckett took one careful step forward and picked up the revolver. By that time Caruth had his black automatic in his hand, but Duckett waved him off. He took Richardson by the arm. “Come on now, mister,” he said. “We’ll get you somebody you can talk to here. Somebody to give you a little help with the way you been feeling.”

  Richardson sobbed in silence. His shoulders shook uncontrollably, but he uttered no sound. A woman, her hair half in rollers, wearing only a woolly pink sweater and a pair of jeans, rushed forward, scooped up the little boy, and carried him back to the safety of the crowd. Duckett turned their way. “Anybody here help this man get home?”

  There was no shortage of volunteers. After a little conversation, a pair of men stepped forward and led Clint Richardson back up the street. Another got behind the wheel of the Caddy, swung a U-turn in the middle of the street, and drove it off.

  As the crowd receded, Duckett eyed Corso with renewed interest. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” He walked a circle around Corso, taking him in, as if for the first time. “I was thinkin’ you were either real brave or real stupid, Mr. Corso. But nobody as slippery as you is that stupid, so I’m gonna have to figure you’re either a genuine hero or you don’t much give a damn whether you live or die.” He wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “Which is it?”

  “I ever figure that out, I’ll let you know,” Corso said.

  Corso turned away and watched the crowd around Clint Richardson as it retreated down the street.

  “He was gonna shoot Ray, for sure,” Duckett said, nodding at his partner. “You hadn’t stepped in when you did we were gonna have brains all over the place, sure as I’m standing here.”

  “Sometimes they feel like they’ve just gotta do something crazy,” Corso said. “So people will know how bad it hurts. They feel like the only thing that will convey their pain is to ruin their own lives in some incredible act of contrition.”

  “I can’t imagine outliving either of my children,” Duckett said. “Can’t imagine what would get me out of bed in the morning after that.”

  He looked to his partner. “This old boy saved your bacon, son,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Caruth said.

  “I believe the great state of Texas is going to have to do without Mr. Corso here, don’t you?”

  “Seems like it wouldn’t be right to arrest him now.”

  “Why don’t you take those cuffs offa him, then?” Duckett said. “Seems like the least we can do.”

  “Before you do that,” Corso said. “How about answering a question?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How’d you find me this time? As far as you knew, I was still wanted for murder in this town. Way I figure it, that makes this burg the last place on earth I was likely to be found. How’d you boys know to come here for me?”

  Duckett thought it over and then told him.

  “That’s what I thought,” Corso said. “Why don’t we leave the cuffs on for a while? See if maybe we can’t stir up a little trouble.”

  28

  Meg Dougherty hugged herself as she watched the cowboy cops march Corso up to the corner and then disappear from sight. Somebody bumped against the inside of the restaurant window, which shimmied and shimmered in the cold sunlight. Feeling the eyes on her, she turned away from the collage of faces plastered against the glass and started up the street toward the Timber Inn Motel.

  The toot of a horn scraped her eyes from the sidewalk and drew them to the white van parked across the street. Warren had the window rolled down. He was polishing his glasses with a white paper towel. “You okay?” he hollered.

  Dougherty stepped off the curb and crossed the street to the van.

  “What was that about?” Warren asked. She gave him the Reader’s Digest version, hundred words or less. Across the street the restaurant crowd had begun to spill out onto the sidewalk as the patrons milled about relating their stories to one another in a ritual of repetition, the words and phrases of which floated heaven-ward on wisps of warm breath.

  “You need a ride someplace?” Warren asked.

  She thought about it. “Yeah. I think I do,” she said. “I guess packing up and getting myself a plane back to Seattle is the next order of business.”

  Warren tried to keep the smile off his face. “I’m headed up to Madison,” he said. “Why don’t I help you pack up and then drive you to the airport?”

  “Oh…I couldn’t,” Dougherty said. “I’ll get a limo to come and—”

  “It would be my honor,” Warren insisted. “Besides, I’m going that way anyway.” He reached over and opened the passenger door.

  “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than drive me around,” she said.

  “Maybe we could have lunch,” he countered.

  “On me,” Dougherty insisted.

  “Deal,” he said.

  She circled the front of the van and got in. Three right turns later they were back at the Timber Inn. Took them just under an hour to pack up Corso’s and Dougherty’s gear, come up with a plane reservation to Seattle, and check out of the motel. Warren threw Corso’s bag into the back of the van and closed the door. “I guess Mr. Corso won’t be needing this for a while,” he said.

  “With him, you never know,” Dougherty said, buckling her seat belt. “He keeps a truckload of high-priced lawyers on retainer. Knowing him as I do, he’ll find some way to weasel out of it. Probably beat me back to Seattle.”

  “You work with him much?” Warren asked as the van bounced out of the motel driveway into the street.

  “For years,” she said. “Whenever he’s got a book coming out, I do the pictures and help with the research.” She shrugged. “He pays me way more than I deserve, and I put up with his bullshit.”

  Something in her bravado caught Warren’s attention. “So then you and him aren’t…you know…” He colored slightly.

  “Not anymore,” she said. “We used to be an item. Years ago. But that’s over. These days Corso and I are strictly business.”

  Dougherty could see his brain working up another question, so she changed the subject. “You think the Madison field office is going to follow up on this Holmes family thing?” she asked.

  “Only if it shows up on America’s Most Wanted.”

  Warren turned right at the courthouse, nosing the van down a wide, tree-lined street bordered on either side by stout Prairie Style homes, their square columns and insistent horizontal planes rooting them inexorably to the dark earth. No attic, no basement; no heaven, no hell. Just a broad overhanging roof to protect it from evil.

  “Your friend Mr. Corso,” Warren began, “he really the recluse the press makes him out to be?”

  “Frank likes to bill himself as an artist in reticence.”

  “That’s good,” Warren said, chuckling. “Artist in reticence.”

  At the end of the street the van turned left, running due north and parallel to Main Street. On the right, the wooden sign read “McCauley Park.” What looked to be about twenty acres of America’s rural past rolled by, snow-covered grass beneath an ancient grove of trees, its benches empty, its playground deserted and silent as the stark white gazebo out in the middle of the park, where Dougherty imagined a military band playing before a packed house on summer nights. She could almost see the women, sitting in the humid evening air, fanning themselves with the program, while children, wild with summer, ran willy-nilly about the grass.

  The Avalon Parks Department Building, with its neat piles of sand and grav
el, separated McCauley Park from Avalon Gardens, the town cemetery. Another well-tended, tree-shaded twenty acres whose level ground, dappled by sunlight and shadow, ran away from the eye and disappeared over the brow of a narrow hill.

  “Lately, I always seem to end up at the graveyard,” Dougherty said. “I hope to god it’s not an omen.”

  Warren was horrified and assured her that no such portent was likely in her immediate future.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “I’ve just got a feeling,” he said with a grin.

  “Corso’s got a feeling that all these women and girls are the same person, and you guys assure me he’s wrong. How do I know you’re not wrong too?”

  “I’m just a technician, not an investigator or anything, but it’s the lack of a consistent modus that bothers everybody,” he said. “Contrary to what you see on television, criminals aren’t generally the brightest people in the world. They find something that works, they stick with it. That’s why modus is such an important part of the protocol in a homicide investigation. It’s individual, like a signature, or a fingerprint. For Corso to be correct, I’d have to be able to accept the fact that a multiple murderer used a different modus every time out the gate. Poisoned her first family and then set them on fire, used a knife on a couple of johns, pushed a nun down a flight of stairs, chopped holes in the heads of her second family…” He took one hand off the wheel. “It just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “If it ain’t broke, you don’t fix it.”

  “It’s possible, though.”

  “I guess,” he said. “Something like that would demand a completely new investigation protocol and a completely new psychological profile. Neither of which is very darn likely.”

  Dougherty reached out and put a hand on Warren’s arm. “What did you just say?”

  “I said it wasn’t very darn likely that—”

  “Before that.”

  “I said…if something works for a perpetrator, they tend to repeat it because there’s no reason to change something that already works.”