After thirteen years Rita Scarne’s revulsion for Ethan Pearson was still as intense as if he’d just insulted her the day before. I figured that that kind of hatred had to be mutually felt, which made Ethan’s apparent desire to get in touch with the woman inexplicable. Unless he and Kirsty felt that they had no choice—that Rita Scarne knew something that no one else could tell them.
I said, “Do you remember another patient of yours from the mid-seventies. A man named Herbert Talmadge?”
Rita Scarne’s blue eyes went dead. “Herbert Talmadge?”
“He was a patient at Rollman’s when you were head nurse there. Ethan has been looking for him for years now. It could be that was why he contacted you. He may have thought you knew how to find Talmadge.”
“That’s ridiculous!” The woman’s face filled with high spots of color. “I don’t even remember this man. Why would I know where he is? What do I have to do with it?”
She brushed her cheeks with the palms of her hands as if she was trying to wipe the blush away. “I think you better leave,” she said angrily. “I don’t care to talk about this. I don’t care to be reassociated with that family’s problems. I’m not guilty of anything.”
But she certainly didn’t act that way. She acted as if she were guilty as sin—and Herbert Talmadge was part of it.
I got up from the chair. “I may want to talk to you again, Ms. Scarne.”
“Souls in hell want ice water, too.” This time she did pick up the bottle and took a swig. “Get out of my house before I call the cops.”
I walked up the hall and out the front door.
As I got in the car I thought about the blond nurse that Talmadge had been seen with—the one that Thelma Jackson had mentioned. On the surface of it I couldn’t see why a woman like Rita Scarne would have toyed with a brutal, dangerous man like Talmadge. But if she had it would certainly bring a blush to her cheeks, even after thirteen years. It was something worth looking into.
******
I drove away from the house but I didn’t go far—just a few blocks north on Ridge to a convenience store with a phone booth on its side wall. I parked by the booth, got out, and started to make calls, looking for someone who could confirm a connection between Rita Scarne and Herbert Talmadge.
I dialed Thelma Jackson first—to see if Rita’s name rang a bell. But it didn’t.
“Wish I could tell you she was the right one,” Thelma said apologetically. “But I don’t remember nothing ‘bout that nurse, ‘cept her blond hair. Can’t find nobody else who does, neither. I been asking though.”
I told her to keep trying, hung up, and dialed Rollman’s.
Nurse Rostow was still on duty. “Could you do me one more favor?” I asked her.
“Again, Mr. Stoner?” she said in a long-suffering voice.
“Do you still have Rita Scarne’s employment record from back in the mid-seventies?”
“Mr. Stoner,” the woman said. “That’s not something I can show you, and you know it.”
“I don’t want you to show it to me. I just want to find out where Rita was living in 1976.”
“I guess the address would be all right,” she said after thinking about it. “I mean an address from that long ago would hardly be restricted information.”
She went off the line for a second. “Two thirty-four Terrace Avenue. There’s also an address for her family in Dayton, Ohio—516 Minton. I believe she was from Dayton originally.”
I jotted both addresses down.
“The Terrace residence is in Clifton?”
The woman said, yes.
I had to call long-distance information to make my last call—to Creve Coeur, Missouri. Luckily, Dr. Isaac Goldman had a published number for his psychiatric clinic on Westmoreland Boulevard. I got a secretary who wasn’t about to put me through until I told her I was a cop, working on a life-and-death matter.
Goldman came on the line huffily, as if life-and-death matters didn’t much impress him unless someone was paying for his time.
“I’m with a patient so please make this brief.”
“You were an intern at Rollman’s Hospital, here in Cincinnati in 1976. One of your patients was a black man named Herbert Talmadge.”
“Yes,” he said after a long moment. “I vaguely remember Talmadge. I think I recommended that he be sent to Longview for further treatment.”
“As a matter of fact you authorized his release.”
“You must be wrong about that. Talmadge had a severe psychosis.”
I let that much pass and asked him about Nurse Rita Scarne. “Did she work with Talmadge while you were treating him?”
“Yes. She worked with all the patients on the ward.”
“Would she have participated in interviews or tests?”
“Probably. I really don’t recall.”
“She had no special relationship with Talmadge?”
“Not that I knew of. Anything else?”
“No,” I said, letting the disappointment sour my voice.
The man hung up as if he couldn’t care less about my disappointments.
I’d accomplished next to nothing with the phone calls, except for worming Rita’s old addresses out of Nurse Rostow. And that was a long shot. But it was the best shot I had at the moment. So I got back in the car and headed for 234 Terrace Avenue—looking to find somebody who’d lived there a long while, someone who was a bit of a gossip and a bit of a snoop. Someone who might have seen young, round-heels Rita with a solemn, ferret-faced black man with a terrible kink in his psyche.
21
TERRACE AVENUE was a short, narrow side street off Clifton Avenue, full of old yellow-brick apartment houses and redbrick duplexes. Like most of the side streets in that neighborhood it was sedate, proper, and a little decrepit-looking—a home for students who could afford high rents and for older couples who couldn’t. Two thirty-four was the first duplex on the south side of the street, a two-story bungalow with a bricked-in front porch and a cracked driveway on its side. A fat old man with a square-jawed face and short iron-grey hair was sitting in a rusty lawnchair in the partial shade of the porch overhang. He was wearing a lumberjack shirt, chinos, and a Reds baseball cap. The setting sun lit his face from below like a monument.
“Howdy,” I said as I came up the walk. “You know the owner of this place?”
The man nodded. “Sure do. I’m the owner. Owned it for the last twenty-three years. Why? You looking to rent?”
“No, I’m trying to find an old friend of mine who used to live here.”
“Now who would that be?”
“A nurse named Rita Scarne.”
The man laughed hoarsely, falling forward over his gut and grasping his legs as if that was a real knee-slapper. I laughed, too, to make him feel at home.
“Christ, son, where’ve you been?” he said, still laughing. “That girl, Rita, hasn’t lived here since . . . oh, hell, must’ve been ‘76 or ‘77.”
“I moved out of town,” I told him. “This was the last place she lived before I went away. I sure would like to find her.”
“Rita was a hot ticket, all right. She and her roommate. You know them nurses—had men coming and going.”
He waved his right hand as if he’d burned it on Rita Scarne’s ass. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had. Up close he was a bit disreputable-looking. Shirt misbuttoned, salt-and-pepper beard on his chin, a nose that was a little too red even for that kind of weather.
“Couldn’t begin to count the visitors Rita had,” he said, rubbing it in.
“Guess I was just one of a crowd.”
“You were, son.”
“Come to think of it, I do remember one other guy that Rita ran with. I think his name was Talmadge, Herb Talmadge. Feisty little black fella with a goatee?”
The man shook his head decisively. “Nope. No niggers. Not in this house.”
“Maybe I got it confused.”
“Most like.”
He stared at me s
uspiciously, as if I was that odd breed of animal—a white man who palled with blacks. Or maybe he was wondering whether Rita had actually pirated a black man into the house, like a puppy or a hot plate.
“Well, I don’t know where the girl’s gone to,” he said, still eyeing me. “Christ, we must have rented that upstairs apartment ten or fifteen times since then. Me and the missus.”
The man nodded at the stout, iron-bound door to the house as if it were a portrait of the wife. He raised up and sat down again like an automatic pin-setter. I assumed that was my cue to leave.
“You know I’d completely forgotten Rita had a roommate,” I said, trying a new tack.
“How could you forget that one?” He pursed his thin lips and made a silent whistle. “Man, she was pretty. Only lived here a few months, back in ‘75. But I never forgot her.”
“You don’t remember her name do you?”
“Carla Chaney,” he said nostalgically. “She wasn’t real fast or flashy like Rita. But she was a beauty. She and Rita were both beauties.”
“You don’t know where Carla went, do you? Maybe I could get in touch with Rita through her.”
The man lifted his cap and raked his hair with the tips of his fingers. “I think she moved back to Albuquerque,” he said, pulling the hat back down over his forehead smartly. “Leastways that’s where she was from. Albuquerque, New Mexico.”
I thanked the man and started back to the street. About halfway down the walk I looked back at him and said, “You know I think I remember Carla after all. She was a blond girl, wasn’t she?”
“Blond and blue-eyed,” the man called out. “Just like Rita.”
******
I drove half a block to a Steak N’ Egg on Clifton and phoned Albuquerque information from a booth in the corner. They had no listing for a Carla Chaney. But there was a listing for a Nola Chaney on Mesa Drive. I dialed it and had to wait ten rings before a woman answered. It was hard to tell over the phone, but she sounded drunk. Her voice was slurred and brassy, like a muted horn.
“Yes? What is it?” she said irritably.
“Mrs. Chaney?”
“Yeah. This is Nola Chaney.”
“I’m an old friend of Carla’s, Mrs. Chaney, calling from Cincinnati, Ohio. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Carla, but I don’t know where she’s living now. I was hoping you could tell me.”
The woman laughed bitterly. “That’s a rich one.” She laughed again, stretching it out for effect. “Mister, I haven’t seen Carla in sixteen years.”
“You haven’t seen her since 1973?”
“How about that?” Nola Chaney said as if it was even more preposterous when I said it. “Hasn’t even called me on the phone. Her own mother. Her own flesh and blood.”
“She was doing some nursing the last time I saw her.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” the woman said. “Carla was a smart girl—maybe she did become a nurse. I always thought she’d end up in L.A. Become a model or something. Had her take tap lessons and elocution and everything.”
The woman sighed heavily.
“But she pissed it away getting married so young. Just like me. I fell for a no-good one when I was no more than seventeen. Carla saw what happened. Lord knows, she saw what happened when a girl makes that kind of mistake. So what does she go and do when she’s just barely out of high school? Runs off with another pissant son of a bitch no better than her dad Paul was. Not a dime in his pocket. Mean as a snake. But Bobby had the looks all right—and I guess that’s all that counts when you’re young.”
“I didn’t realize Carla was married.”
“Might not be anymore, if I know my own blood.”
“Her husband’s name was Bobby?”
“Bobby Tallwood. Airman at the air force base out here.” The woman’s brassy voice mellowed slightly, as if she was reliving the distant past. “She and Bobby lived in a nice little house out near the base for a couple, three years. Had a kid named Joey. Cute little kid. Bobby didn’t treat him right though, and I told him so. Hell, when he got drunk Bob was just as mean as Paul—always used his fists, you know? Don’t know how many times Carla come running on home with the baby after Bobby gone on a rampage. But she always went back to him after a day or two. When you’re getting it that good, I guess you go back no matter what. Anyway Bobby got transferred to Wright-Patterson in Dayton in ‘73. Moved down there to Ohio. And that’s the last goddamn thing I heard from either one of them.”
“Maybe I’ll try up in Dayton,” I said. “Could be she’s still living there?”
“If you find her let me know, huh?” But she’d hung before I could say that I would.
******
I called Dayton information, asked for listings for Bobby Tallwood or Carla Chaney, and drew a blank. I tried Cincinnati information on the same two names and didn’t do any better. Wherever Carla Chaney was, it didn’t look as if I was going to find her easily.
It was close to six when I got off the phone. I hadn’t touched base with Louise Pearson in several hours, so I decided to drive to the hospital before going home. In the back of my mind I was thinking that Shelley Sacks might still be in the Bethesda emergency room. Since the Scarne woman had admitted to looking after Estelle Pearson in 1976, Sacks would certainly have known her at that time. And there was an off chance that Louise knew something about her too.
I knew it was a terrible day for the Pearsons—family and friends—and I hated to pester them with questions. But until I was certain that Kirsty was dead I was going to continue to track her. Even if she was dead in the river I knew I’d stay with it. I owed the girl that chance.
22
IT WAS almost six when I pulled into the Bethesda North lot. By then the sun was setting in earnest in high bands of color across the western sky. It made me think of the sunrise that morning, hours earlier. Of the cold desolate clearing with the river running beneath it. They’d been dragging that river all day—Parker and his men—looking to catch something paler than fish belly, puffed up like risen dough.
I went down to the emergency room and was told that Phil Pearson had been transferred to ECU on the top floor. I took the elevator back up.
Shelley Sacks was sitting with Cora Pearson in a white shoebox of a waiting room, just outside the ECU door. Through the picture window on the far wall you could see the parking lot, dotted with mercury lamps that had begun to burn like little torches in the sunset. High on the right wall a television set flashed pictures of a game show.
The woman didn’t see me as I came into the room, but Sacks did. He stood up with effort and walked over to where I was standing.
“Hello, Stoner,” he said. His round face was grey with fatigue. His voice spiritless.
“How is he?” I asked.
Sacks shook his head. “Not good. He’s in a coma, just barely clinging to life.”
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded sadly. “So am I. Terribly sorry for all of this.” He glanced at the mother, sitting glassy-eyed and still in a far corner of the room. “Cora is going to need a great deal of support before this is through.”
“How’s Louise doing?”
“A rock,” he said admiringly. “As always. She’s in with Phil. Did you want to see her?”
He gave me a funny look that almost made me blush.
“No,” I said, feeling guilty because I did want to see the woman—and a little paranoid because I thought Sacks knew why. Louise was fairly open about her love affairs, and I felt as if he’d somehow guessed that I was standing next in line. “I don’t need to disturb them right now. You could relay a couple of messages for me, if you would.”
“Certainly.”
“The police need to know Kirsty’s blood type.” I thought of the cryptic message on the crumpled notepaper and added: “They need to know her blouse and dress size, too.”
Sacks grimaced. “Louise told me about the car and the clothing. The police think that Ethan and Kirsty may b
e . . . ?”
“Nobody’s sure, yet.”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t suppose there’s any good news?”
“I’m afraid not. I have learned that Kirsty and Ethan stopped at Ethan’s motel room yesterday. Apparently Ethan tried to get in touch with a psychiatric nurse named Rita Scarne.”
“Rita Scarne?” Sacks said with mild surprise. “She was the nurse who took care of Estelle.”
“So I understand. I talked to her this afternoon. She seemed to feel a lot of bitterness toward the Pearsons—especially Ethan.”
“That’s not entirely surprising. Part of Rita’s job was to keep Ethan apart from his mother for a few hours every day. In fact I suggested that she do that.”
“Why?”
“Because he was smothering his mother with attention—and making Rita’s life miserable. Estelle was simply too weak to say no to Ethan, so I instructed Rita to say no for her. Ethan became quite upset with Rita because of that—and with me, too, I think. When Stelle died he blamed both of us.”
“Was she in any way to blame for the woman’s suicide?”
“Of course not. In fact, she wasn’t even at the house on the day it happened. She’d called in sick with flu early that morning.”
Sacks’ round blue eyes clouded up, and his voice caught in his throat. I knew the excess of emotion wasn’t just because of the past—it was partly because his friend was dying a few feet away from us. But it was also because of the woman, Estelle Pearson. He must have cared a great deal for her.
“I thought Stelle would be all right without supervision for one day, especially since she was scheduled to see me that afternoon. I phoned her twice that morning, once right before she was getting ready to leave for the appointment.” He raised an arm as if he were reaching out to guide the dead woman through his office door, then dropped his hand heavily against his side. “As you know, she never made it to the office. She drove to the river instead.”
He took a deep breath and brushed at his wet eyes. “Her VW was found very near the place where Ethan’s car was found. They didn’t find her body until several days later.”
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