Amussen stayed in the room, listening.
“Any chance he could be our rapist?”
“Naw. I don’t think so. His liver’s bad.”
“On surface examination?”
“Don’t be so damn stupid, Charleston. The man has liver hands.”
“Liver hands?”
“Red palms and fingers. That indicates cirrhosis, and a victim of cirrhosis is dead as a eunuch.”
“Sit down, Doc, and answer a question.”
Doc sat. “What else have I been doing?”
“Another one, then. Would a man realize in the act that he was violating a virgin?”
Doc settled back, his head drawn in, and I knew we wouldn’t get an immediate answer. He could be short-spoken or he could pontificate. He was voting for the latter. “The hymen,” he told us, “is by way of being a vestigial growth. One theory is that it developed before our ancestors came out of the surf, the purpose being to keep sand from penetrating the vaginal canal. You can shoot that theory full of holes, but it remains a theory.”
“Thanks.”
“Now the hymen varies from female to female. More often than not, I would say, it is quite frail. Girls break it through exercise, through bike or horseback riding or skating or other vigorous pursuits. But it can be so tough that a bit of surgery is required before a marriage can be consummated.”
Charleston interrupted to say, “None of that answers my question.”
“Would a rapist realize he was deflowering a virgin?” Doc stuck his head out and snapped, “Jesus Christ, Charleston, I’m a man of medicine, not a psychic. You expect me to answer for a rapist? Nuts. Rapists are crazy with the heat, an apt expression by the way, and may be unconscious of everything except their own satisfaction.”
“Both the victims bled?”
“And both were bruised.”
“But the bleeding?”
“Any woman would bleed, virgin or not, if attacked brutally. The Stuart girl bled a lot more than Smitson, as you would expect. Penetrating her might not have been easy. That’s an informed guess, but it doesn’t mean anything beyond that. I say you’re barking up the wrong tree, Sherlock.”
“I’m not barking. Just sniffing around for a scent.”
“Go ahead. Sniff your nose off.” Doc managed a smile. “Good luck, all the same.”
After Doc had gone, Charleston turned to Amussen, who had been standing still as a post while he listened. “Back to you, Halvor. Good work you did. Go tell Bob Studebaker, taking the bottles you found.”
Amussen grinned. “Might be a bottle of good booze as a reward.”
“Forget it. We’ll buy our own drinks.”
Cole interrupted us from the board. I couldn’t hear all that he said. “Get Doolittle,” Charleston told him and turned to us. “A shooting at the Fairdale corner bar. Doolittle will handle it. Jase, a break-in at the Stillwater house up the Rose river. His brother, Henry, just reported. Get on it.”
“Gewald?”
“Let him simmer.”
I knew the Stillwater place. A two-story house at the mouth of the canyon, it was the most ambitious dwelling along the Rocky Mountain front. Charles Stillwater, a wealthy easterner, had built it after a visit to Montana, planning to stay in it most of the year. But a couple of Montana winters had convinced him that prime weather in Montana was assured only in July and August. He closed it up for the remaining months, leaving his retired brother to keep an eye on it.
I drove along what once had been called a rocky-assed road. Since then it had been paved, and the going was better, though I didn’t hurry. Break-ins, unlike murders, could wait. A couple of deer, grazing in an open field, looked up unafraid as I passed, and a porcupine lumbered into the borrow pit. I might see a black bear, even a grizzly, for June was a likely time. The day hadn’t turned hot. It was just right with a soft breeze blowing.
The Stillwater house stood out from almost a mile away. With no flower planters around, no green stuff, and with the shades drawn, it seemed gaunt and closed-eyed and unwelcoming. I opened the gate, drove the car through, and tried the front door. It was locked. I went around to the back door. The latch there had been broken, and the door tightened shut with matchbook covers. Inside I met my high school self.
Feathers lay and fluttered in every room. Awkward drawings in soap—stick men with erections and what was meant to be a nude female likeness—adorned the mirrors.
And I was back in another time, when a friend and I had broken into an empty house for warmth and, warmed up, had taken to fighting with pillows, chasing and banging each other, upstairs and down, until the coverings split and feathers danced in the air. And we had drawn our own pictures, expressing our awakened and uninformed interest in sex. It all had been thoughtless and in a way innocent. It was as if we never expected the place to be visited again by anybody, and so we had fun.
On the floor I found one of those beaked, light caps that some workmen, and some boys, like to wear. It bore the initials J. W. I knew the cap. It belonged to Johnny Wilson, pal of Pat Lenihan. Johnny was the son of Will Wilson, mechanic at the Ford garage. I took the cap with me.
Driving back to town, I wished that I could simply call the boys aside and talk to them. But that would not have satisfied Henry Stillwater, and, since the boys were minors, I had to approach their fathers, a chore I didn’t welcome.
I reported to Charleston, wrote a quick report and, with Charleston’s approval, called Judge Joe Bolser, who was only a j.p. but liked to be elevated. He set a tentative date for ten o’clock the next morning, saying unless he heard further from me he would regard the time as fixed. Then, citing the cap as my bit of evidence, I notified the fathers. They wanted to know more than I told them. Just a boyish prank, I said, but still a break-in. I said I thought the boys would confess, though they might have to be pressed a bit. To that last Ted Lenihan, a lawyer who was father to Pat, replied, “My son will tell the truth when I ask him.”
I was hanging up the receiver when Gewald entered, again without announcement. He was carrying the folder he had borrowed. “Few questions,” he said as if he had a lot of them.
He didn’t get to ask them because Doolittle came in with a man in tow. “Be with you in a few minutes,” Charleston said to Gewald.
Gewald tossed the reports on the desk, grunting. “See you at eight o’clock in the morning, sharp.”
“Make it seven-thirty,” Charleston answered evenly. “I don’t like to waste the forenoon.”
Gewald gave him the “Humph” again and went out.
To the man with Doolittle Charleston said, “Well, Gus, what have you been up to?” He indicated I was to take notes. Speaking to me, he said for the record, “This is Mr. August Alstedt, resident rancher of the county.”
The man smiled uncertainly. “Well, Chick, all I can say is I lost my head.”
Charleston’s eyes questioned Doolittle, who answered, “He shot a man named Pendergast. ’Fessed up to it.”
“Serious injury?”
“Nope. Flesh wound in the arm. The wife of the barman is a practical nurse. She bound it up.”
“Let’s hear from you, Gus.”
“Happy to tell you. Can I sit down?”
“Sure. Excuse me.”
Alstedt, a rather small man, was dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, and he wore cowpuncher boots and a wide-brimmed hat. These trappings remained from the old cowboy days. Even the lowliest sodbuster, in preparation for town, put them on though his closest acquaintance with a horse was a tractor.
Alstedt fingered the hat and went on to explain, “It was this way. It was the end of the day, and I had been working in the fields and thought I’d drop in to the Fairdale Bar for a bracer before going home. Pendergast was in there. He tries to bully everybody and mostly gets away with it. He started picking on me and finally gave me a hard push that knocked me over a chair. I got a quick temper, in particular when I got a drink in me, and I shot him. I can’t say I’m awful sor
ry.”
“You didn’t mean to kill him?”
“Hell, no. I’m a good shot.”
“What makes it look worse is the fact that you were packing a revolver.”
“I can explain that. Good many rattlers in my part of the county. The heat is bringing the snakes out. I carry a gun to shoot them with.”
“Gus,” Charleston said, stretching in his chair, “you know you’ll have to face trial. I think you can probably beat the charge, but that’s no matter right now. I’m going to recommend to the county attorney that you be released on your own recognizance. I’ll call him now.” He lifted the phone, got an outside line and made his recommendation. “You’ll have to see him before you take off. Doolittle will go with you.”
“Much obliged, Chick.”
With them gone, I remembered to tell Charleston of my vague suspicions of the oil-field workers.
He answered, “Can’t hurt. Just might work out.”
Charleston was stuck with that seven-thirty A.M. date and so, for that matter, was I. Gewald, as expected, was waiting at the door. Inside, he asked almost before we were seated, “How hard did you lean on these characters?”
“Hard enough.”
“No special persuasion?”
Gewald was dressed all in black except for a white shirt—black suit, black tie, black shoes—an outfit, I thought, that suited an avenging angel. His black hat rested on his knee. In the hollow of his left shoulder was a bulge, no doubt a shoulder holster.
“We don’t beat up suspects, not in my county,” Charleston answered.
“Humph. Now this man Mefford. I would have given him the business.”
“He’s out under bond. The trial probably will be postponed until next term of court. His lawyer has asked for a continuance.”
“Not my point. How about Fenner? Did you follow up on him?”
Gewald’s tone and manner were accusatory. He might have been a prosecution attorney on cross-examination. A bar of sunlight shone through the window on Charleston’s hands. The fingers were interlaced, the knuckles white. “You’ve read the report,” he said. “Beard was satisfied.”
“I don’t know that I am. We come to this so-called Madame Simone, the nookie bookie.” His voice condemned her. “She seems like a slick article. She’s holding back. That’s my hunch. I want to talk to her.”
“No one’s standing in your way.”
“I should hope not. Now I’m going to poke around. In your reports I see some loose ends.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to tie them up.”
The irony was lost on Gewald. He didn’t know that Charleston was seething.
Gewald picked his hat from his knee, rose, and said, “See you later.”
As the door closed Charleston rasped out a breath, then shook his head. “We have to put up with that knucklehead,” he said. “A shame, but we don’t want a hassle with the state. Lucky for him. Otherwise, who knows? I might shoot him.”
I fooled away the time until the hour for the boys’ hearing before Judge Bolser, then went downstairs to the courtroom.
The boys were there, in Bolser’s small hearing room, their fathers with them. Also present were Henry Stillwater and Silas Wade, county attorney, who had run for attorney general and been defeated in the primary.
Judge Bolser came in, hitching his pants up on his paunch. He always assumed a severe manner at hearings, or usually did, but I knew that amusement lay behind the manner.
“Court’s in session,” he announced once he had got comfortably arranged in his seat. At the side of his bench stood a witness chair and before it accommodations for attorneys. A few of the curious had dropped in and taken seats. Wade took charge. His first witness was Stillwater, who described what I had seen for myself. Then it was my turn. The boys hadn’t looked at Stillwater, and they didn’t look at me. Their eyes were on the floor.
“Do you substantiate what Mr. Stillwater has testified?” Wade asked me.
“Yes, sir. He was accurate. He might have added that little damage was done, aside from inconvenience.”
“You saw the soap drawings on the mirrors?”
“I did.”
“They were pornographic?”
“I suppose you could call them that.”
“Showing men and women in the act?”
“No, sir. Just singly.”
The boys still looked at the floor. My gaze went to the adults, and my thoughts to appearances and hypocrisy. Here they were, these grown men, males of flesh and blood and impulse and sometimes no doubt of forbidden indulgence—here they were, stiff as sculptured saints, as if no thoughts of theirs went below the belt.
Wade was asking, “The lock on the door was broken?”
“It was a flimsy latch.”
I had done what I could for the boys. I saw myself in them, shamed and guilt-stricken as I had been in that year gone by.
Wade called on Johnny Wilson to testify. Johnny answered in monosyllables, speaking down his front, saying just yes or no. When Wade asked him if they had broken in, Johnny hesitated and replied he didn’t think so. He couldn’t remember.
When Pat Lenihan was called and asked the same question, he answered, “We may have. I guess so.” I knew he was trying to be truthful while covering for his partner.
At the conclusion Judge Bolser gave the boys a stiff lecture, mostly about the offense of breaking and entering. He tended to shy away from the pictures, maybe not wanting to act the utter hypocrite.
We filed out, no one speaking. The fathers looked stiff and chagrined. The boys went off in different directions, away from the adults and away from each other.
So it had been with me. Disgrace. The end of everything. Lasting shame. And then Charleston had put a hand on my shoulder.
I hurried after Pat. My hand went to his shoulder, and Charleston’s words came back to me. “I understand, Pat. It’s almighty hard, being a kid.”
The boy shot one glance at me, saying nothing, and walked on. But I thought his shoulders were a little straighter.
14
The drunk who had broken into the Bar Star was led in the next morning. Just before his arrival I had asked Charleston, “Wonder where Gewald is?” He had answered, “Not hard to guess. He’s snooping on the trail we left, quizzing everybody.”
The drunk, brought in by Doolittle, could walk but that was about all. He looked at us with inflamed eyes while his face twitched. He licked his lips with a tongue like a chow dog’s. His hands and arms shook as if attached to a jackhammer. He took a chair uncertainly. He might have posed as the ultimate example of excess in alcohol.
Charleston gave him the choice of a lawyer or of standing mute, with the warning that whatever he said could be used against him. The man kept nodding, though I doubted that the words got through to him. He did say his name was Tom Burke. Home? Just around, here and there. Charleston told him he was charged with breaking and entering as well as theft. “What do you have to say about that?”
Burke licked his lips again. “Thirsty is all.”
“Thirsty now or thirsty then?”
Burke looked up with a sudden despairing hopefulness. “You got a drink, friend?”
“Hold on. You don’t deny the charges? You did break in and steal the whiskey?”
“Anything you say.” His shaking was making me twitchy. “Jesus, have a heart.”
Charleston reached into his desk, got out a bottle and glass and poured three fingers. “This is just for a bracer,” he said. “The doctor will be in later with more medicine.”
Burke’s trembling hand was reaching out. Doolittle put in, “Better use both hands, partner. It’s not the floor that wants a drink.”
Burke took the glass in both hands, but, even so, the glass clinked against his teeth and some whiskey ran down his chin.
“Take him back,” Charleston said, talking to Doolittle.
On his return Doolittle said, “A case of wet brain or close to it.”
&nbs
p; The phrase was new to me. Doolittle added, “Booze, too much of it, kills the brain cells.”
“District court sits here tomorrow,” Charleston said. “I’ll try to get his trial advanced.”
“He’ll get maybe six years and be out sooner than that,” Doolittle said. “Out and free to follow his chosen career.”
I filled in at the board for a while, read through my reports, went out on one trifling call, and had dinner with Mother.
The night’s business at the Bar Star had barely begun at seven o’clock, but three young fellows already had seated themselves in a booth and were drinking beer. From their dress and the wild shags of hair on two of the faces I gathered they were oil-field workers. The third man was smooth-shaven and appeared maybe a little older than the others. I bought a beer and took a booth next to theirs.
As I walked to it, they looked at me casually. Without my uniform or badge I would pass as a mere civilian.
I didn’t have to wait for the talk to veer to the subject I was interested in. They were already on it—which wasn’t too strange since it was the common concern in town. “Eight to five they’ll never catch him,” one of the men was saying.
“It’s too damn bad that he wasted her,” another said.
“Yeah, a pretty little piece like that. You’ve seen her?”
“Just once or twice, flittin’ around after school or sometime. What about you, Mr. Bill?”
I peeked over the back of the booth and saw that Mr. Bill was the smooth-shaven one. He said, “I knew her to speak to her.”
“Lucky you. I bet that put a tent in your pants.”
“She was jail bait, wasn’t she?” one of his companions asked.
“Sixteen, the paper said, but what the hell? She was big enough and ripe enough. A neat piece of ass.”
“I wish you guys would shut up, you, Les, and you too, Frank.” I knew from the voice that it was Mr. Bill speaking. “Here a nice young girl has been murdered, but you don’t give a damn about that. You’re just wishing you had got to her first.”
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