Gathering String

by Mimi Johnson

  “And you have this document?”

  “No, the doc wouldn’t …”

  “But he says he’s seen it, and it clearly names Webster?”

  “Well, it’s his initials …”

  Dodson gave him a sour look and sat up, anxious now to wrap up. “You

  shot your wad and didn’t hit anything solid, Waterman. Jesus, if I didn’t know you so well, even I’d be wondering if you were grinding an ax to get back in your wife’s good graces. It’s time for you to sit back and let Ev’alyn take a crack at Erickson. There are plenty of other stories for you that won’t muddy our reputation.”

  Sam sat silently, the grim lines around his mouth deep. Watching his simmering anger, Johnson knew his friend was within a breath of saying something that would cross the line with their boss, and he didn’t want to watch Sam die on this hill. He spoke up quickly. “You know, Mike, I think it's fishy too, the way Erickson made a point of shutting us out with the Fuller thing. Normally, we wouldn’t let a pol get away with running a reporter off. I think Sam’s got a point. Maybe there is something scaring Erickson.”

  “Well?” Johnson’s calm opened the door for Dodson to keep listening.

  “We can keep Sam home until the convention, but what does it hurt to let him work up his research from here? He can cover other things too. And if he keeps gathering string, in a quiet, confidential kind of way, he might drag something in.”

  Dodson’s look was freezing cold when he turned to Sam and asked, “Think you can do that without getting me on the phone with any more judges?” Sam knew his friend had just hung his butt out for him, and didn't risk fucking it up by opening his mouth. He nodded. “OK, but I want this real low key. Not your usual loose-cannon approach, you got that? Because so far the only mark of distinction your reporting has brought us is a shitload of trouble.” It wasn't easy, but Sam stayed silent.

  They were very careful around each other. “Tentative,” would have been Jack’s word, Tess would have chosen “grim.” But each was aware that even when the music was playing, their house was awfully quiet. When they talked, it was about practical things, each carefully polite. There was no arguing, no barbed comments. There was no laughter. At night in their big bed, he’d lean close for a soft, quick kiss goodnight, roll over on his side, and fall instantly asleep.

  But somehow in his sleep, he always found his way back to her and, as it had been from their first night together, she’d wake held close in his arms. It was that more than anything else that held her straining patience with him in check.

  As he had in the past, Jack turned to work, allowing it to consume his time and thoughts. He always knew of more stories than he could work, and in the days following Waterman’s last visit, he made a hardy effort, going in early and staying late.

  It was well into the afternoon, almost two weeks later, when the phone on Jack’s roll-top rang, and Tyson McDonald’s voice came down the line. “Sorry Jack, I had some other stuff come up so it took me a little longer than I thought. But I finally got the rundown on that insurance claim for The Corner Grocery Store in Sheffield.”

  The press was running on the lower floor, and Jack had been editing a story for the next day’s paper, but he quickly saved what he had, and started typing notes. “No problem, Ty. What can you tell me?”

  “Well, since it was a criminal case, it was all pretty dicey. Arson always is. In the end, the insurance company paid through the nose to Erickson’s corporation. Since the perp was a juvenile from a stone-poor family, there wasn’t any way to recoup the loss. The kid served his time, the insurance paid.”

  “Could you find any information on the store’s finances before the fire?”

  “Some. I can tell you that of the entire chain, it was the only one losing money. Every other store hit its projected revenue, and most of them went over. This one seemed heavy on stock. Looked to me like the manager overbought when prices were low, but then couldn’t turn the goods over. Of course, with the fire, the insurance paid for all that overstock too. Jack?” In the quiet from the other end of the line, McDonald thought for a moment his phone had dropped the connection. “Jack, are you there?”

  “Yeah,” Tyson heard him clear his throat. “I’m here. Ty, just between you and me, if the kid who started the fire hadn’t been in custody from the start … I mean, it was obvious it was arson, but if it hadn’t been clear who was responsible, would they have paid out? Would they have …”

  “Suspected the fire was set as a way to bail from a foundering business? I suppose they well might have. They sure would have brought in someone like me, their own investigator, to check it out. Erickson, and whoever the manager was, would have been grilled pretty hard.”

  Jack sat back in his leather chair and sighed. “OK, Ty, this helps a lot. Could you just send me the bill?”

  “I’ll send it out today. Anything else you need?”

  “No. This pretty much seals it.”

  Dismissing the things he’d intended to do before the end of the day, Jack turned instead to a Nexis search for the Record’s accounts of the Sheffield fire. Then he picked up his phone and called Clint Delavan, who told him the three people he most wanted to talk to were still living in Sheffield, and where to find them. He reached two of them, and lined up interviews for the following day. When Tom started to leave for the day, Jack stopped him and told him to get the paper out on his own tomorrow.

  That night, Swede Erickson took the California primary. The nomination was his.

  Jack wasn’t very familiar with Sheffield, but when he arrived the next morning, he remembered it was like any typical Iowa town. He decided to try to connect with the person he hadn’t been able to reach by phone first. The grain elevator was easy to find, down next to the railroad track, with the inevitable row of round aluminum storage bins trailing out behind.

  Going up the plain, cement block steps into the squat, bunker-like building, Jack ran over again in his mind the information he needed to find. At the counter, he said to the woman in thick, horn-rimmed spectacles behind it, “I understand that Lawrence Brubaker works here. I was hoping to talk to him.”

  “Larry? What would anyone want him for?” The woman made him think of Thelma, and Jack wondered suddenly if she was just as much a busybody.

  “Look, if he’s busy I can come back around lunch. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes,” he said, not answering her question. He didn’t want half the people in town knowing a reporter had been snooping around.

  She swept him with a curious stare and then shrugged. “He’s out on the dock, loading a pickup. If you can talk while he’s working, go on back. Otherwise, he usually works through lunch and heads up to the tavern about five.” She shook her head with an oily smile. “If you’re a bill collector, you’d better catch him before he gets to the bar. But if you really want to talk to him, you might do better after he’s had a few. I don’t know that he ever has anything to say when he’s sober.” Jack nodded his thanks and headed out back. “Owes you money, does he?” He heard the woman laugh behind him.

  On the cement-slab loading dock, Jack found a small, muscular man, silently hoisting 75-pound bags and tossing them into the bed of a pickup. In spite of the cool morning breeze, he was wearing a yellowed, sleeveless T-shirt, already streaked and clinging with sweat. He looked old, his face deeply lined and stubbled with a few days’ growth of grey beard. His hair was grey too, although it was cut so short he seemed at first glance to be bald.

  “Mr. Brubaker?” Jack called, jumping from the ground up onto the loading dock. The only response was a quick glance from the man, who didn’t pause in his work. Stepping closer, Jack tried again. “Mr. Brubaker, my name’s Jack Westphal. Could I talk with you a minute?”

  “I’m busy.” Brubaker grunted the words.

  “I see that. I don’t want to take up much of your time.” Stepping up to the huge stack of bags, Jack picked up one himself and facing Brubaker, began tossing as well. “I run the
Journal over in …”

  “I know who you are,” Brubaker’s voice was a rough, raspy sound coming from wet lungs. “You’re that basketball player whose family got killed.”

  Jack nodded. “Right. It’s always nice to meet a fan.”

  “You haven’t,” the old man muttered.

  “Look, I’ll keep helping you here if I can just ask you a few questions about your son, Andy, while we work.”

  For several moments there was no response, the pickup rocking from side to side, the heavy bags landing rhythmically. But when Jack suddenly stopped, and straightened, as if to walk away, a small, grim smile touched the man’s mouth, and he asked, “What trouble is the little shit in now?”

  “None that I know of. I’m just hoping you can tell me where to find him.” Jack picked up another bag and started tossing again.

  “Right where he belongs, that’s where he’s at,” the old man said cryptically, not elaborating for a few minutes, just continuing to hoist and toss, hoist and toss. Then with a snort that passed for a laugh he added, “For a newsman, you don’t know much if you can’t find him. He can’t go nowhere no more.” Brubaker’s voice came in puffs from the exertion. “He’s locked up in the Fort.”

  “Fort Madison? The state penitentiary?” Brubaker didn’t answer, just kept swinging the bags. “He can’t be there because of the grocery store fire. He was a juvenile then.”

  “Jesus,” the old man stopped for a minute and drew an arm over his sweaty forehead. “You really don’t know shit. Andy only did a few years at the Eldora reform school for that. They reformed him alright, taught him armed robbery. He’s serving a 25-year stretch.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jack straightened again. He thought he saw Brubaker shrug before he lifted another bag. “Andy pleaded guilty, but others have told me he’s said he didn’t set that fire. And I’m wondering if maybe he was telling the truth. You’re his father. What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” Brubaker’s mouth curled into a snarl. “I think that boy ain’t worth piss. The little bastard’s been in trouble from the day he was born, and the worst night’s work I ever done was to plant him.” Jack winced at the words. “Now, if you ain’t gonna help me no more, get the hell off this dock.”

  “No problem,” Jack muttered. He couldn’t get away from the sweating man fast enough.

  His next drive was a short one, but the contrast couldn't have been greater. The house was just a few blocks from the Sheffield town square, a perfect, freshly painted white, the yard as carefully tended as a golf course. On the front step, he admired the robust, cheerful Gerbera daisies and deep purple pansies spilling out of the box under the long window.

  The door swung open almost as soon as he rang the bell. Jack smiled at the woman in response to her pleasant grin. Ann Fowler was slightly plump, wearing a bright pink athletic suit, her dark hair showing just a few strands of pure white. Even in solid middle age she was pretty, her fair skin smooth except where her happy brown eyes crinkled with her smile. Before he could introduce himself, she opened the screen door, saying, “Jack Westphal. Our oldest daughter started at Iowa State your junior year. I was in the stands at your last game. It was in Kansas City, during the Final Four.”

  Jack felt the flush come to his face. “Well then, I’m sorry you didn’t see a better game. Those Blue Devils were awful damn good.”

  “Nonsense, you only lost by ten,” she said, swinging the door wide to let him come in. “I burst into tears when you fouled out at the end. That was a bad call; you were charged.”

  Jack laughed. “God knows I did my best to hit the floor hard enough for the ref to think so. I was mighty desperate to get that ball.”

  Her eyes widened at his honesty, and then she laughed with him as he glanced around the big, sunlit living room. It was full of well-worn furniture, none of which matched in style or color but all of it neat and clean and welcoming. Ranged across the wall nearest him were seven eight-by-tens of four boys and three girls, all professionally done. Stuck into the corners of most of the frames were smaller, candid snapshots, obviously more current.

  Following his eyes, she said, “Yes, those are all my children.” Her grin grew even bigger with pride, and she pointed to the one of a young boy. “Nate’s our youngest. He’ll finish his first year at Drake in just a week.”

  Jack studied the faces, especially one picture, older than the rest, of a teen-age boy, dark-haired like his mother, and said truthfully, “You’ve got a handsome family, Mrs. Fowler.”

  “I think so.” Again she noted his interest and added, “That’s Bobby. You said last night you wanted to talk about the fire?”

  His eyes came back to her, glad of her directness. “I know it must be painful …”

  “Yes, it is. And it’s very personal too.” Her smile faded, but her expression remained warm. “So please call me Annie. I can’t be comfortable if you treat me like a stranger.” He nodded, and she turned toward the hall, saying, “Let’s get some iced tea. Do you mind sitting at the kitchen table?”

  An hour later, Jack sat at the huge oval table that took up most of the kitchen floor space, eating a bowl of homemade soup, his tiny tape recorder in front of him as Annie Fowler nodded her head, saying, “I always knew Clint had his doubts about what happened that night. What he told you doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  Jack, however, was surprised. She’d wanted to know all the reasons Delavan had given him for questioning how the fire happened, listening calmly, although the somberness of her dark eyes betrayed the pain it cost her. “From the very beginning, we were told that Andy had started the fire. The prosecuting attorney made it sound like they had an open-and-shut case. It was just so hard to accept.”

  “Why?” He sat back and pulled his notebook closer.

  “Because,” she paused groping for the words, “I knew those boys so well. Something like that just wasn’t in any of them. Oh, they weren’t angels. My Bobby could be very impetuous, and Jeff Madson, the other boy who died, was a little hothead. His father had died of cancer just a year before, and I think Jeff had a lot of anger over it. His poor mother just left town shortly after Jeff’s funeral. I don’t even know where she’s living, poor thing. I guess she just couldn’t bear all the memories here. Of the three of them, Andy was the shy one, the quiet one.”

  “I, ah, talked to his father before I came up here,” Jack said. “Brubaker said Andy was always in trouble.”

  Her brown eyes came flashing up at that. “He would. That, that,” she struggled to find another word than the one she was thinking, “drunk ran his wife off, and never gave Andy anything but fresh bruises every Saturday night. That poor boy just soaked up attention wherever he could get it. Yes, he had trouble in school, and when he got older, he tried to act like he didn’t want anyone to care for him. But he never turned down an offer for a meal or to spend the night here. I know in my heart that boy wished we were his family. He spent every Christmas day with us. His only presents were the ones we gave him.” Her eyes filled with tears, and Jack felt a deep constricting in his chest, knowing too well how a boy feels when he has no family. “He wasn’t a bad boy, just an unloved, abused one.”

  She dashed a hand across her cheeks and saw that her sadness was mirrored in Jack’s eyes. “Andy lost everything in that fire. Jeff and Bobby were his only friends, and Andy loved them.” She drew a deep breath and spoke through the tremor in her voice. “I saw him several times after the fire, before they sent him to Eldora. He swore to me that he didn’t do it. He pleaded guilty because he didn’t want to be tried as an adult for murder. Murder! Of his best friends.”

  “And you believed him?” In spite of what he already knew Jack still hoped to hear a question in her words, a chink of doubt.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. I think he told me everything. I knew Andy from when he was little; I believe I’d have known if he was lying. He admitted that they were up to trouble. And he was devastated, eaten up with guilt. I honestly thi
nk he wanted to be convicted, wanted to be punished.” She sighed, and gave Jack a very faint smile. “I expect most people would say that I’m a soft-hearted fool, to still care for someone who got my boy killed. It looks like a clear case of teen-age arson, doesn’t it?”

  Jack didn’t answer, saying instead, “Andy’s in Fort Madison now. Did you know that?”

  “Yes. I tried to visit him several times, but he wouldn’t see me. I imagine it must hurt too much to remember what he lost. If he sees me, he has to remember those times when he was a little bit happy. I suppose he fell in with some real hardened, tough kids while he was at Eldora. He didn’t come back to Sheffield, and he was with a couple of them when they did that robbery. You know, if you don’t feel like you’re worth anything, it’s pretty easy to just give up and act the way people think you’re going to. Poor Andy. Nobody ever gave him credit for being anything good.”

  “You did,” Jack said softly. “I expected you to hate him, considering what happened.”

  She shook her head, the tears falling now unheeded down her cheeks though she looked quite calm. “No. I can’t hate him. They shouldn’t have been in that store that night. Vandalism is no small thing. It was terribly wrong, what they were doing. But when things went bad, Andy did his best to save them. He wasn’t running away. He was running for help.” She took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her face. “I’ll tell you this much, I might have to hate whoever did set that fire that night. Whoever it was didn’t just kill Jeff and Bobby. They destroyed Andy Brubaker too.”

  She rose, picked up the empty soup bowl, and took it to the sink while Jack sat in silence. After a few minutes, he heard her sigh. “I hope, since I’ve been so open with you, you’ll be the same with me, Jack.” He looked over at her, his eyes guarded. “Clint Delavan told me you were working on a story about the fire marshal. But Ralph Miller’s name has hardly come up. Why, exactly, are you here?”