Murder in the Wings

by Ed Gorman

  I introduced myself and Donna, and then he introduced himself as B. J. Anderson. "Mr. Anderson," I said, "we're looking for a man named Lockhart."

  He smiled with his gold tooth. "Well, you've come to the right place, but unfortunately you've come at the wrong time. I'm afraid Mr. Lockhart has gone and got himself grounded."

  "Do you mind if I ask what for?"

  He kept on smiling. "Not if you don't mind if I ask why you're so interested in Mr. Lockhart."

  I decided to tell him the truth. "He may know something about a murder."

  The smile went back into mothballs. "Lockhart? Murder?"

  I explained our association with Wade, and how Stan, the janitor at the theater, had said that Lockhart had come over to look through Reeves's office.

  "So that's where he went," B. J. Anderson said. "Pardon?"

  "The other night Lockhart went out past his curfew. When he got back he looked kinda shook up but he wouldn't tell me nothing. Not a goddamn thing. So I put him up in the attic." He raised his black eyes toward the upstairs. "That's where I keep 'em when they've been bad." The smile played on his lips. "This is the only halfway house in the state that hasn't had a man involved in a felony. And you know why? 'Cause I just put the bad apples upstairs and let them cool their heels a little bit."

  Donna said, "We'd really like to talk to him if we could."

  For the first time he seemed to recognize her. But he was past sex; he had his institution, and that was more fulfilling than any woman had ever been. "I'm not sure that'd be good idea, miss."

  "It's very important."

  He turned back to me. "You say you used to be a police officer?"

  "Yes."

  "You mind if I check that out."

  "Not at all." I gave him Edelman's name and extension.

  "Be right back."

  "Spooky guy," she whispered when he was gone. "No wonder so many men go back to prison. They'd probably do anything to get away from him."

  He came back maybe five minutes later and said, "Edelman damned you with faint praise."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Oh, he said you had been a detective all right, and a decent one, and that you were a trustworthy type, but he didn't seem all that happy that you were spending your time working on this Wade thing." He looked at us and tucked a sour little expression into the corner of his mouth. "Hell, I read all about that Wade character. Alcoholic personality, violent tendencies when he's juiced; hell, folks, our prisons are filled with people like that. Why should some TV star be any exception?"

  Donna said, "We'd really like to see Lockhart, Mr. Anderson."

  He sighed and pushed his hands deep into his OshKoshes. "If I tell you five minutes then I mean five minutes, you understand?"

  We both nodded like good little children.

  He took us up a flight of stairs narrow and twisting enough to be part of one of those horror houses for kids that appear around Halloween. The stairs smelled of dust and disinfectant. When we reached the second floor we saw a large open area with bunk beds. Though there was another TV set and old posters of Farah Fawcett and Raquel Welch in their prime, there was no mistaking what this was. The place smelled of piss and jism and troubled sleep and grief. It was a different kind of prison than the ones the men had been in previously, but it was a prison nonetheless. The gray sky pressed at the window as if to signify as much. Everything in the open area seemed gray.

  "It's the next floor we want," Anderson said, and we continued our way up.

  By the time we reached the third floor, Anderson, whose fingers were stained mahogany from smoking too many unfiltered cigarettes down too low, had to fall back against the wall to catch his breath.

  "I kinda hate puttin' myself through this walk for somebody like that Reeves fella," he said.

  "You didn't like him?" I asked.

  "Like him?" Anderson said, trying to catch his breath. He looked to be fifty, maybe older. "I hated him. He was a con artist."

  "I'm not sure what you mean?"

  "Those acting classes he came in here and gave for the fellas? Hell, none of them could be actors."

  "Keech has done all right," I said. Much as he irritated me sometimes, Keech, the ex-con who played Edmund in Long Day's Journey Into Night, was a very good actor.

  "Keech might be an exception, yeah."

  "You don't like him?"

  "He's kind of a pantywaist for my taste."

  "Keech?"

  "Yeah. He reads too much."

  "You don't think reading's good for you?"

  "Some reading's very good for you. But Reeves turned him on to all kind of weird psychology books. Hypnosis, stuff like that. And that's what I mean: that kind of crap shouldn't be made available to cons."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it just confuses the good ones and they're confused enough. They get a lot of pressure from the bad ones already, believe me." The compassion in his voice surprised me, as did the air of protectiveness. For the first time I found myself liking B. J. Anderson.

  "I don't understand where Lockhart fits into all this. Was he in the acting course?" I asked.

  "Yeah, unfortunately, he was. He's kind of a pretty-boy type. Easy to flatter. Soon as he met up with Reeves, he became Reeves's errand boy. He'd do anything Reeves asked him. Like in those 'truth' sessions that Reeves liked so much. Lockhart would get real savage with the other guys. He'd force men to admit things about themselves that damn near tore them apart." I could see Reeves doing this. He directed plays in much the same way, keeping his actors hurt and off guard so he could control them absolutely. Being a director was for him a compensation, a substitute for something much darker.

  "Well, let's go see Lockhart," Anderson said.

  The rest of the walk was down a long, wide corridor. The walls were swollen from moisture. Up this high you could hear the wind. Through a window I saw a greening maple tree.

  Anderson went to a door that was padlocked from the outside. The padlock was so big it looked comic, like something a circus clown might have.

  "Shit," he said.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Listen."

  We listened. "I'm afraid I don't hear anything."

  "That's the point. Should be some kind of noise in there."

  He took the key, inserted it in the lock, and let us into the room. It was bigger than a prison cell, but less adorned. It had once been a bathroom, apparently. There was a stool, but where the sink had been there were now just two gaping plumbing holes. There was a plastic air mattress on the floor.

  "I'll be goddamned and go to hell," B. J. Anderson said as the three of us stared at the floor. The room was empty.

  Above was a window with two bars. It was an old story, one that happens in ten jails somewhere in the country every day. The window was smashed. One of the bars had been hacked through with something sharp.

  B. J. Anderson said, "Doesn't look like you're going to talk to Mr. Lockhart, after all."

  Chapter 9

  We ate at Denny's. "I could never do that," Donna said over her fish sandwich and fries.

  "What?"

  "Climb down a three-story wall the way Lockhart did."

  "You could if you were desperate enough to get out."

  "He must have been very desperate."

  "He was."

  "He really used a hacksaw?"

  "Probably."

  "I thought that was only in Heckel and Jeckel cartoons."

  "Heckel and Jeckel?"

  "Yeah, they were always on the tube when I was a girl. They were always getting out of jail with hacksaws people would bring them inside birthday cakes."

  "Gosh," I said, "I'm sorry I missed all those laughs."

  "Well, what cartoons did you watch?" She was getting mad.

  "The Warner stuff. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and all those guys. Sylvester."

  She said something, but she mumbled it intentionally so I wouldn't hear.

  "What?"

  Sh
e looked as if I'd just beaten her at bridge. "I said, 'Yes, the Warner stuff is better than Heckel and Jeckel."'

  "So what're you so pissed about?"

  "It just seems weird to me that everything you do is innately superior to everything I do."

  "Uh-oh."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Just that I was right."

  "About what?"

  "About what time of month it is."

  "God, you keep track?"

  "You bet. For reasons of self-defense."

  She frowned. "Don't say it, Dwyer. My personality doesn't change when I get my period."

  "I couldn't agree more," I said, wanting to avoid our usual argument. I stood up.

  "Where are we going?"

  "The Bridges Theater. There's something I want to check."

  "What?"

  "If our friend Keech has ever spent much time with Anne Stewart."

  David Ashton was wearing bib overalls with a paint-spotted T-shirt underneath. He was standing on a ladder painting with a wide brush and humming along to a beautiful-music radio station.

  "David?"

  He looked down from the flat he was painting and nodded to us. "Give me a minute."

  Donna walked around and looked at the set for Long Day's Journey. It was very well done, as were most things at the Bridges Theater.

  By the time David came down from the ladder, it was apparent from his gaze that he still remembered being humiliated in front of me by his mother-in-law.

  "That was quite a little scene last night," he said. "You looked really distressed by it. I just wanted to tell you that I'm used to it by now."

  "I told her what I thought about it."

  "I wish I could say it would do some good. She still sees me as the interloper. Connived to win myself a fortune and succeeded."

  I smiled. "Seems the painting helps you forget. I heard you humming."

  "Oh, yes. My two brothers are painters." He looked melancholy for a moment. "The closer I get to fifty, the more I wonder if I shouldn't have spent my life as a laboring man. I mean, after acting didn't work out." He glanced at Donna. "Well, you look beautiful as ever."

  "Thanks."

  "You two come to take me to lunch?" he laughed.

  "Afraid not. I needed to ask you a question."

  "Oh? There isn't any more news on Wade, is there?"

  "None that I know of."

  "The poor bastard. Michael really was insufferable."

  "I wanted to ask you about Anne."

  "Anne?" He went over and turned the radio off. He looked like a blue-collar man ready for a big lunch. That sort of life seemed to make him happier than running the theater, where he always looked tense. "Nothing's happened to her, has it?"

  "No, but something did happen to a man named Lockhart."

  "The man who was here the other day?"

  "Yes."

  I explained what had happened at the halfway house.

  "My God. You think it has any connection to Michael's death?"

  "I do," I said. "But I'm not sure the police will. At least not at this point." I had decided against telling him why I was suspicious of Anne, so I said, "Have you ever seen Keech and Anne spending any time together?"

  He thought a moment. "No, not really. Except during rehearsals they might have had a cup of coffee together. You know how Keech is. If there's a woman, he has to flirt with her. I know he tried coming on to Evelyn right in front of Michael. Michael got very upset."

  I thought of Keech trying to hit Michael the other night in the parking lot. Could that have been over Evelyn?

  "But nothing between Anne and Keech, no," David said.

  We were standing just behind a flat. We couldn't see the east wing, so when somebody bumped against a chair, I couldn't see who it was. But I had a feeling that somebody might have been standing there listening for some time.

  I walked around the flat. It was Evelyn.

  "Sorry to interrupt you," she said.

  David and Donna came around.

  "Hello, hon," David said. She came over and let him kiss her. Apparently they'd made up from last night. But maybe not entirely. As usual, David handled his daughter with a certain unease.

  "I just wondered if I could borrow your car," she said.

  "Sure," David said. "The keys are in my sport coat in the office."

  "Thanks." She stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.

  Then she turned to me. "They haven't found Wade, have they?"

  "Not yet," I said.

  She looked at me frankly. "I hope they take him without hurting him."

  Her attitude puzzled me. Wade had supposedly killed her lover. For the first time I began to wonder about Evelyn.

  "Well," she said, "see you." She nodded and was gone.

  Quickly, I said to Ashton, "Well, David, thanks for the information."

  "Afraid I wasn't much help."

  "Thanks again."

  I took Donna by the elbow. We were in the parking lot within two minutes. I fired up the Honda, whipped around the corner of the lot, and sat there with the engine running.

  "I feel confident that you're going to tell me what the fuck is going on, Dwyer."

  "Evelyn."

  "Gee, that's a good clue. 'Evelyn.' What about Evelyn?"

  Ordinarily, Donna would accept the mystery a bit more gracefully than this. I dropped all the coy stuff.

  "Say somebody shot me. Wouldn't you be pretty angry with him?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "Very funny."

  "So what's that got to do with Evelyn?"

  "Well, she's very bland when the subject of Wade comes up—yet he's the one who everybody thinks killed her lover, Michael."

  "Yeah, I guess that sort of makes sense. But I still don't understand why we're parked here."

  "We're going to follow her."

  "Evelyn."

  "Right."

  "God, Dwyer, if I didn't have to think about poor Stephen out there somewhere, this would be a lot of fun. It really would."

  I patted her hand. "I'm happy for you."

  Chapter 10

  Ten minutes later, Donna said, "Aren't you supposed to stay a few blocks back?"

  "Where'd you get that idea?"

  "I saw it on 'Magnum P.I.' one night."

  "Oh, right, 'Magnum P.I. '"

  "Is there something wrong with that show?"

  "Not at all," I said. "As a matter of fact, in order to become a policeman in this city you have to watch a minimum of thirty-two episodes."

  "Har-de-har-har."

  Not that I had any idea where Evelyn Ashton was taking us. In fact, I got the impression after twenty minutes that she might have caught on to us and just be leading us around in circles to frustrate us.

  By now Donna was curled up next to the door, asleep. Her period, all jokes aside, came hard and was very difficult for her. I reached over and touched her hip. At times such as these I loved her so much and so purely that it scared my ass off.

  Ahead, Evelyn Ashton stayed on her inexplicable course. We went past the city's largest and most exclusive country club; past three blocks of new condos; past a city park where ducks walked around in the mist, looking cute and solemn at the same time; past a burgeoning new area of plastic Holiday Inns and Motel 8s; and then past innumerable FOR SALE signs as we headed for the city limits and wide open spaces.

  Finally, I figured out where she was taking us. Out of town, of course. I looked at my gas gauge. Given my usual state of finances, and because I never really left high school, I normally put in five bucks at a time. Fortunately, I'd only recently put in my latest geyser so the Honda could go for many miles.

  You could see the spring coming up, even in the rain, which was increasing. There were corn and sorghum and oats and barley in the fields. In the murk, the foliage on the hills ringing the city was dark gray. A farmer on a tractor with bug-eyed headlights waved to us from the other lane. Now that she was on a two-lane hig
hway, Evelyn Ashton seemed not only to know exactly where she was going but also to be in a hell of a hurry to get there.

  We went deeper into the country, which was all right with me. I don't like country music, hunting, horseshoes, or barn dances, but I do like living in a city that's no more than twenty minutes away from the countryside. There's a sanity in nature you could never find in the city.

  The downpour continued, banging against the roof like bullets.

  Donna woke up, reached over, and touched me affectionately on the arm. "How you doing, hon?"

  "Fine."

  "We still following Evelyn?"

  "Yeah." The sleep had mellowed her out.

  "We know where she's going yet?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Donna rubbed some of the steam off the window. "Boy, look at those poor cows."

  About a dozen milk cows stood on the side of a bare hill in the rain.

  "Yeah," I said, knowing what she meant. I wanted to buy a bunch of rain ponchos and go out there and cover them up.

  "Can I turn on the radio?"

  "Sure."

  "All right if I play Top Forty?"

  "Fine." Sometimes jazz bummed her out. Today she didn't need any help being bummed out. A happy tune came on, bright, quick, empty. It was fine with me.

  We had now gone maybe twenty miles. Ahead was a small town. Back at the turn of the century there'd been a railroad watering stop here, just big enough for a hamlet of a couple of thousand to spring up. It was named Brackett.

  Evelyn turned off the highway on to an asphalt road that led to the town. From there I could see a billboard touting a restaurant that specialized in roast beef dinners. I could also see a DX gasoline sign, a church steeple, and a water tower.

  "Damn," I said.

  "What?"

  "She just turned but I'm not sure where."

  Ahead of me, Evelyn had followed the curving road into town. I'd made the mistake of thinking that she would follow the asphalt directly into Brackett. But now that I looked I didn't see her. There were two gravel roads on either side of the asphalt, but they were mostly hidden by blooming trees. She could have turned onto either one.