“How did he contact Bagley, do you know?”
“A young woman brought him here sometime in the last week or so. She’d visited Bagley before. I believe she had some kind of family connection.”
“With Bagley or with Harold?”
“With Bagley. Her connection with Harold was obvious enough. She was crazy about him.”
“Can you describe her, Doctor?”
Lampson raised his eyes to a corner of the ceiling. “A rather large girl, quite nice-looking, brunette—age, I’d say, close to thirty.”
“Is her name Gloria?”
“Yes, it is. I never did get her last name.”
The dim air of the place oppressed me. I felt as if I was lost in the catacombs under a city where no one could be trusted or believed.
“Flaherty. I know the woman,” I said. “She’s on the run with Harold now.”
“I’m surprised to hear that, frankly. She seemed to be quite a decent girl.”
Brokaw raised his head. “She is. I saw her—”
He stopped, his mouth open like a red wound in his beard. His eyes shifted from Lampson’s face to mine. Then he hung his head again, hiding his face under the thatch of his hair.
Lampson looked at me and raised his eyebrows questioningly. I shook my head in answer. As if he had heard the inaudible interchange, Brokaw got up and walked away. He looked back once before he reached the door, but made no gesture of farewell.
“What’s the matter with him?” Lampson asked me. “I’m not sure. I think he bought a large piece of Harold Sherry, and now he’s embarrassed by it.”
“He acts as if he’s guiltily involved.”
“No. I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”
“What was he going to say about seeing the girl? Do you know?”
“No.”
I was surprised to find myself fronting for Brokaw. Perhaps I owed him that. He had been painfully honest with me. But his departure left questions hanging in the room.
“Did you say you knew Gloria, Mr. Archer?”
“I’ve talked to her a couple of times. I got the same impression of her as you did—that she was well-intentioned and reasonably honest. She may be, at that. She wouldn’t be the first nice girl that’s taken up with a sociopath.”
“Is that what Harold is?”
“He has some of the earmarks.”
“What’s this about a kidnapping?”
I told him, omitting Laurel’s name. Lampson screwed his face up as I spoke, and smoothed it out with his hand. He repeated the gesture several times.
“It hurts me to think that I let my patient leave the hospital with Sherry.”
“Why did you?”
“I didn’t see how any harm could come to him with Gloria involved. And Harold Sherry seemed genuinely interested in him. It was the first invitation of the kind that Nelson had had in the time I’ve been working with him. When I became his doctor, he was very nearly catatonic, completely uncommunicative, oblivious to the world. I’d been trying to bring him out of that, and succeeding. At the same time, his physical health had improved. I thought he was ready to do a little socializing. Anyway, I could see no harm in trying it.” He showed his teeth in an unsmiling grin. “How wrong can a man be? When I signed him out of here, I signed his death warrant.”
There was grief in his voice. Though Lampson kept his feelings under firm control, I was reminded of Ellis’s wild outburst in the morgue. Neither the doctor nor the avgas man had killed Nelson Bagley, but both of them felt guilty in his death. I said:
“You’re not the only one who feels responsible for what happened to Nelson Bagley. This afternoon in the Pacific Point morgue, I talked to a man named Ellis who believed that he had killed him. He had been an avgas officer on the Canaan Sound, Nelson’s ship, and he told me he made the mistake that burned the ship. Ellis was pretty distraught, close to hallucination. He thought, or said he thought, that Nelson’s body had been in the ocean for over twenty-five years—that he had floated in all the way from Okinawa.”
“He might as well have,” Lampson said. “He didn’t have much life in those years. Did this officer—Ellis?”
“Ellis.”
“Did this Ellis explain what he did that caused the fire on the Canaan Sound?”
“He said he made a mistake in pressure which ruptured one of the gas tanks.”
“Really?”
“I’m not lying. I don’t think Ellis was either.”
“No. He wasn’t lying.”
“Have you talked to Ellis, Doctor?”
“I talked to Nelson.” His mouth was twisted in a complex smile. “It doesn’t matter now—now that he’s dead—but his memory was gradually returning. Just last week, he told me about the ruptured gasoline tank on his carrier. It was the last thing he remembered about the Canaan Sound—the last thing he remembered for many years.”
“What brought his memory back, Doctor?”
“I’d like to attribute it to my art.” He pinched his nose as if to punish his pride, and looked at me over his fingers with black intent eyes. “But the truth is, I’m not that good. I’m not even a trained psychiatrist. I have to admit that Nelson got more of a charge from Gloria’s visits than he ever got from mine. You can understand why I encouraged her to take an interest in him. I felt that between the two of us we were bringing him back to life. I could sense forgotten material coming up to the surface, or near the surface, of his mind. Even his poor body seemed to be responding. But all I succeeded in doing was to set him up for death.”
His voice was harsh, full of the general anger which young men often turn against themselves. He closed his eyes, and his face became vulnerable.
“Nelson Bagley was quite important to you, Doctor.”
“He was my Lazarus.” He spoke with irony and regret. “I thought that I could raise him from the dead. But I should have let him lie.”
“Why do you say that?”
He leaned toward me, the plastic chair complaining under his weight. “I’m wondering—at least it’s possible that Nelson was killed because his memory was coming back. Some pretty explosive material came up the last time I talked to him.”
“What kind of material?”
“Some of it had to do with the death of a woman. He talked about her as if she was his wife. But I checked his records, and there was no indication that Nelson had ever been married.”
“What happened to the woman?”
“Apparently she was murdered a long time ago. It may have been in the same year that the gas tank ruptured and sent him into the sea. The dead woman and the ruptured gas tank came up together in the same interview.”
“Just last week?”
“That’s right.”
“How was the woman killed?”
“She was shot. Nelson may have shot her himself, though he didn’t say so.”
“You think Nelson was murdered because he remembered the murder of the woman?”
As if he had made himself more vulnerable, Lampson raised his fist to his mouth and spoke behind it. “I’m not offering it as a theory, exactly. But the possibility did occur to me. There aren’t too many conceivable motives for killing a poor little man like Nelson Bagley. He had no money and no connections that I know of.” He dropped his fist.
“You said he might have shot her himself. There’s a possible motive in that for killing him. Have you made any attempt to find out who the woman was?”
“No. I intended to, but I’ve been too busy.”
“What was her name?”
“Nelson called her Allie, I believe.”
“What makes you think he shot her?”
“He blamed himself.”
“Exactly what did he say?”
Lampson brooded over the question. “I don’t recall his exact words, and exact words are important. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sure if he was talking about killing a woman or making love to her, or possibly both.” He looked up at me with a certain resentment.
“I didn’t mean to tell you this.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“What good can it possibly do? The woman is dead, and so is Nelson.”
“You want to know who killed him,” I said, “and why. Unless we do find out, his death is meaningless, and maybe his life is, too.”
Lampson nodded quickly, once. “You’re right. It’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?—to find some meaning. That’s what Nelson was trying to do. He lived like a vegetable for over twenty-five years. But towards the end he was coming back to life, struggling for meaning. And I was trying to help him.”
Lampson was opening up. I liked what I saw in him, and I asked him:
“What got you interested in Nelson?”
“He seemed so utterly hopeless, physically and mentally. I gave him quite a lot of my time—more than I should have, perhaps. I’m afraid I stole some time from my other patients.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. Yes, I do. Nelson reminded me a little of my father.” Lampson’s eyes focused as if he were looking down a dark mine. “My father was killed on Guadalcanal when I was quite young.”
“And that’s why you’re here?”
“In this hospital, you mean? I’m sure it’s one reason. But you’re not here to investigate me. Or are you?” He was getting nervous again, and closing up.
“I need your help, Doctor. I’m trying to find a woman who was abducted last night. This afternoon, Harold Sherry collected a hundred thousand dollars ransom for her and shot her father. The way to the missing woman seems to lead through here.”
Lampson peered out across the lobby as if he might catch a glimpse of the woman, or see some trace she had left. The room was almost empty now. Many of the visitors had gone, and the patients were drifting back into the interior of the hospital like ghosts at cockcrow.
“What is the woman’s name?”
“Laurel Russo.”
Lampson reached out and took hold of my wrist. “Russo?”
“That’s correct.”
His grip on my wrist tightened. “That was the name of the dead woman.”
“The one that Nelson was talking about?”
“Yes. Her name was Allie Russo.”
We sat facing each other like linked mirror images. I rotated my wrist to remind him that he was holding on to it. He dropped it as if it was hot.
“Did you keep any record of your conversation with Nelson?”
“I made a few notes.”
“May I see them, Doctor?”
“I’m afraid they’re private.”
“So am I. I don’t intend to take them away with me. I simply want to have a look at them.” He hesitated. I said:
“There’s a woman missing, remember. Apparently she’s in the hands of a dangerous man. That should override a dead patient’s right to privacy.”
Lampson gave me his quick nod of assent. “Come into my office.”
I followed him down a corridor, the hospital atmosphere thickening around me. The scarred metal desk in Lampson’s office was piled with papers, which he shuffled through. He handed me a sheet of yellow foolscap on which he had written in pencil:
Name was Allie Russo I wanted to marry her but she turned against me I used to follow her around saw the life she led. One night I watched through the Venetian blinds they were doing it and I blew my top and I did a terrible thing to her. I asked the Lord to forgive me but he didn’t. He busted the gas tank and set us on fire and I been living in hell here ever since then.
Lampson and I sat in silence for a minute. The small office seemed crowded with past life.
“What do you think he did to her?” I said.
“He seemed to feel responsible for her death. But he may not have done what he thought he did. Sometimes a man like Nelson feels terribly guilty simply because he’s been punished so terribly.”
chapter 32
There was a light in Tom Russo’s house. I knocked on the front door, and after a while I heard slow footsteps behind it. The door opened slightly.
I thought at the first uncertain glance that the face that appeared in the opening belonged to Tom, and that it had been deeply marked by grief. Then I saw that it was the face of an older man who resembled him. I said:
“Is Tom at home?”
“What do you want with him?”
“We have some business.”
“What kind of business?”
In a younger man, his abrupt questions would have been rude or even hostile. But I sensed the anxiety behind them, the old man’s vulnerability.
“I’m a private detective, and I’ve been helping Tom to look for his wife. Do you happen to know where he is?”
“He had to give his cousin a lift someplace.”
“Redondo Beach?”
“I think he mentioned Redondo. He asked me to stay here in case anything came up. But he should have been back long ago.”
“Are you his father?”
“That’s right.” His dark eyes showed some pleasure. “There always was a resemblance between he and I. A lot of people make a comment about it. Do you want to come in? Tom should be home any time.”
“I’ll wait. I have some information for Tom.”
He took me into the front room and we sat facing each other. He was a fairly good-looking man of seventy or so, with a lot of wavy iron-gray hair. He wore a dark suit which had recently been pressed.
“Information about his wife?” he asked me after a long polite pause.
“About his wife,” I said, “and about his mother.”
He flinched and looked down at his hands, which were slightly misshapen and lined with ineradicable grime. “I was married to Tom’s mother.”
“What happened to her, Mr. Russo?”
“She was shot to death in this house when Tom was a little boy.” He looked up anxiously. “Has Tom been asking questions about his mother?”
“He was dreaming about her this morning.”
Russo leaned forward stiffly from the waist. “What did he say?”
I avoided answering his question. “Nothing that made much sense. Does he know what happened to her, Mr. Russo?”
The old man shook his head. “He knew at the time, all right, but then he forgot about it. I let him forget. Maybe I made a mistake. I was thinking tonight that maybe I made a mistake. When he picked me up at the home today, I hardly knew my boy. He wasn’t the happy, cheerful boy I raised. But if I made a mistake I had my reasons. He was so young when it happened—no more than five—I didn’t think it would leave any mark on him. I thought we could move back here, him and I, and start together with a clean slate.” His voice and eyes were profoundly disappointed.
“Move back here from where, Mr. Russo?”
“Bremerton, in the state of Washington. It all started during the war, when I went to Bremerton to work in the shipyards. I rented this house to some people and took Allie and little Tom along with me. But they didn’t stay. Allie made up her mind to leave me. She brought little Tom back here and they lived in this house for a year while I stayed on in Bremerton by myself.”
“When did you come back?”
“Not until after Allie was dead. They brought me down here when they found her body. Somebody shot her. I guess I told you that.”
“Where did they find her body, Mr. Russo?”
“On the floor in the back bedroom.” He flung out a heavy careless arm toward the room where Tom had been dreaming that morning, dreaming as if he had fallen asleep as a child and had never fully awakened.
“And where was Tom?”
“He was here in the house with her. He must have been here alone with her for a while. The police said she was dead for several days already when they found her.” Sudden tears brightened his eyes. “Tom went to the neighbors when he finally ran out of anything to eat. Don’t ask me why he didn’t go before. I think he was scared to. You know how little kids are. They think they’ll get blamed for everything that happens.”
“Did you talk to him about it?”
“Not very much. I let the sleeping dogs lie.” He dashed his tears away with his fingers, first from one eye, then the other. “Maybe you think I made a mistake when I stayed on in this house with Tom. But it was my house, and I had a right to live here. It was the only house I ever owned. I got a real good buy on it when I married Tom’s mother in 1937. Tom has his reasons to be grateful for this house. I borrowed on it to send him to pharmacy school. He makes good money as a pharmacist, and now he’s buying the place from me. With Social Security, it’s what I’m living on at the home. I don’t know where I’d be without this house.”
“Nobody’s criticizing you, Mr. Russo.”
“That’s what you think. His mother’s people criticized me plenty for living here with Tom. I thought me and him could live it all down, you know?” But he glanced around the room as if the past had surrounded him and closed ranks. “What did Tom say to you this morning? Did he remember his mother and what happened to her?”
“I think he was trying to.”
“Did he name any names?”
“Not to me,” I said. “Did he name any names to you?” The old man shook his head. I studied his face, which was lined and segmented like a puzzle.
“Do you have any idea who killed her?”
He gave me an evasive look. “The way the police talked at first, they thought I killed her myself. But I could prove I was in Bremerton. I hadn’t even seen Allie for a year. More than a year.”
“Why did they suspect you?”
He made an explanatory movement with his open hands. “You know how they are. The husband is always the first one that they look for. And by the time they finished with me, the man that done it—the man that did it was halfway around the world.”
“Halfway around the world?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Do you have somebody definite in mind?”
“Yes, sir, I do.” He leaned toward me. His large-knuckled fingers closed on my knee. “I’m pretty sure who killed Allie. It all hangs together, see? She met him in Bremerton—he was in the skeleton crew of one of the escort carriers I helped to build. The Canaan Sound. He was the reason she left me in the first place. We had a fight about him and she walked out. She only stayed in Bremerton as long as the Canaan Sound was there, with Bagley aboard her—his name was Nelson Bagley. And when Bagley’s ship moved out of there, Allie moved out, too, and took my boy along with her.”
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