by Ed Gorman
During the past four or five years, bomb shelters had become popular. Most people couldn’t afford anything fancy. They’d find a spot in their basement that could be walled off with brick or concrete block or some other fortification and then just kind of hope for the best. Most of these homemade shelters were worthless. When the nukes hit, you needed to be in some place deep and well protected.
People like Ross Murdoch, who had the wherewithal to have their shelters professionally built, just might survive for a time in their shelters. They’d been designed by architects who followed government guidelines, and they’d been built by construction men and carpenters who knew what they were doing.
The day was warm, bright, smoky with autumn haze in the piney hills. Hard to believe that all the houses, stores, schools, roads and so on could be turned into ash and rubble in an hour or two. The older you get, I’m told, the more the idea of your own extinction becomes easier to grasp, if not make your peace with. But the extinction of virtually everybody and everything you’ve grown up with? Now that was a tough one. A damned tough one. I found myself saying little fragments of prayers, something I hadn’t done in a while.
Ross Murdoch lived in a brick house that was half-hidden behind huge fir trees. I parked my red ’51 Ford ragtop in front of the front steps, got out and walked up the steps to the door.
I looked out over the land surrounding the house. Pine trees and carefully landscaped grass. A high meadow with horses, the color of chestnuts; a green John Deere in a distant field that was hauling a wagon full of new trees to be planted; and a leg of river that looked silver-blue in the sunlight. The aromas of autumn were every bit as alluring as the colors of autumn. It was one of those sweet soft days when you wished you were a bird. Or at least somebody who didn’t have to work.
I heard a voice say “Hello? May I help you?” and when I turned around I saw a young woman in a white blouse and black slacks leaning against the doorframe. She was watching me with obvious amusement. Then, “Oh. Hi. We almost met at the hospital.” Then, “You’re easily distracted, I take it?”
“Distracted?” She was the young woman who’d been talking to volunteer Peggy Leigh. She certainly got your attention.
“You knock on the door and then turn around and get so caught up in the sights that you forget all about the knock.”
“Guilty as charged.”
A gamin grin. She put forth a slender but strong hand. “I’m Deirdre Murdoch.”
“Sam McCain.”
“C’mon in, Sam. Dad’s in the den.” Then: “Oh, how do you like my car?”
I’d noticed the sleek new yellow foreign machine as I’d wheeled into the driveway. “Italian?”
“British.”
“I’m not up on my foreign cars but it’s a beaut, that’s for sure.”
The interior of the house had the feel of a museum about it. Everything fought for your attention and approval. The number of rooms seemed countless. Each room I glimpsed on the way down the parqueted main corridor looked like a furniture display in an expensive Chicago store.
“I’m not sure why he wants you here. He’s just very—” She looked troubled herself. “Did you ever see Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
“One of my three all-time favorite movies.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, Dad’s been like one of the pod people lately. And today—I’d swear he wasn’t my father at all.”
She was a beauty, I suppose, but there was a freckled, young-girl vividness about that sweet little face and that great gleaming gash of a smile that overwhelmed you when she glanced over at you.
“Mom’s very upset, too. Whatever’s bothering him, he’s keeping it to himself. At first I thought it might be the bomb shelter. You know how it is when you get things built. It’s never very smooth. And a lot of things went wrong with the shelter. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, really. It’s just that Dad’s a perfectionist. He wanted to make the shelter into a place he could go to be absolutely alone. Drink a beer or two and watch some TV. Or play some of his old Louie Armstrong records. He loves Dixieland jazz. It just got finished a couple of days ago. Mom and I were hoping that that would make him happy. But it didn’t. He’s just kept on—brooding. That’s the only word I can think of.”
“The campaign’s got to be taking its toll on him by now.”
“I know. But—but this is like a personality change. Like a pod person.” We walked up to the door of the den. She knocked once and then opened the door.
The den was a sanctuary of wall-to-wall books, several Vermeer lithographs, genuine Persian rugs, a desk a fighter jet could land on, and so much leather furniture the cattle population must have been seriously depleted when the manufacturer was putting it together. The sunlight angling through the window gave the wide, deep room a serenity that belied all those dead animal eyes staring at me.
Ross Murdoch was a slender six-footer in a white shirt, blue slacks and cinnamon-colored cowboy boots. He was handsome in a conventional middle-aged way. He didn’t try to prove his masculinity with his handshake, which I appreciated, and he spoke quietly when he offered me a chair. “Care for a drink?”
“No thanks, Mr. Murdoch.”
“‘Ross.’”
“No thanks, Ross.”
“And ‘Sam’s’ okay?”
“Sam’s fine.”
“I’ll be down at the stables, Dad.”
“Thanks, honey.”
“Nice to meet you, Sam,” she said and sounded as if she really meant it. Then she was gone.
I sat in one of the deep leather chairs. He sat, somewhat anxiously, on the edge of his enormous desk. He raised himself up on one side and dug something out of his front pocket. He flipped it in the air toward me. I caught it. A silver dollar.
“That’s when money was money,” he said.
“My early birthday present?”
“The Judge told me you were a smart-ass. Usually, I don’t mind smart-asses but unfortunately now’s not the time. As you’ll see.” He took a very deep breath and then a very deep drink from the bourbon-filled glass he had on his desk. “The silver dollar’s to hire you. Lawyer-client. I’ve got a check for a thousand dollars for you in my desk with your name on it. I want you to look at something for me.”
First I get two hundred and fifty dollars for delivering a letter and now I was being offered $1000 to look at something. I was going to be small-town rich. Or at least small-town comfortable. I started mentally listing all the bills I could pay off.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“You’re going to earn it.”
“Doing what exactly?”
He got up and started walking around, sometimes facing me, sometimes not. Sometimes he seemed to be talking to me, at others he seemed to be talking to himself.
“Sam, I’m going to withdraw from the governor’s race.”
“Are you serious?”
“Afraid I am.” He pressed slender fingers to his forehead as if he had a headache. “I’ve made my peace with it. I don’t like it but I don’t have any choice.”
“Have you talked it over with anybody yet?”
“Not yet. The Judge puts a lot of faith in your skill and integrity.”
News to me, I thought.
“What I need now is legal advice.”
“I don’t mean to be immodest but there are sure more experienced lawyers than me around.”
“Yes. But I don’t trust them. I need somebody I can have absolute trust in. Maybe later on I’ll hire some additional lawyers. But for right now I want a sensible, homegrown young man with the kind of credentials Esme says you have.”
“Well, I’m flattered. But—”
He held his hand up to stop me from speaking. “We have something in common. Cliffie Sykes. He hates me because Judge Whitney is one of my best friends. He’s tried to arrest me on four different occasions for minor infractions of the law—and I’ve beaten him very pub
licly at his own game. He always said he’d get even and now—well, now he may have a chance.” Then: “Sure you wouldn’t want a drink?”
“I’m fine.”
He walked over to a dry bar and took care of his glass again. He added a spritz of water. He turned back to me and said, “This time I may have handed myself over to him.”
“You’ve lost me.”
He started pacing again. “Have you heard about my bomb shelter?”
“I think everybody in town has.”
“Well, it’s all true. A big room that’s half living room with the other half being bunk beds enough for twelve. Comfortable beds.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“You will. In just a few minutes. But right now I need your word that everything I say is between us.”
“Lawyer-client privilege.”
“Sam, I’m not going to elaborate on what I want you to do for me. I need you to check things out for yourself. I need you to go down to the bomb shelter and look it over and then come back upstairs. Then we’ll talk and I’ll tell you what I know.”
The right side of his mouth had developed a tiny tic. His long slender left hand twitched twice.
“You like things mysterious, Ross.”
“I’ll explain everything—afterward.”
“That’s what you hired me for? To look in your bomb shelter?”
“That’s one of the reasons, Sam. The other reason—well, you’ll find out for yourself.”
“I can’t ask any questions?”
“Not right now. Just please do what I ask, Sam. Please.”
I wondered if Deirdre was at the door. Listening. Probably. I would be, if he was my father. I didn’t yet know what was wrong but I could sense that despite his apparent self-control, he was coming apart in little ways. Little ways that would lead to a complete loss of self-control very soon now.
Deirdre, as I’d suspected, was walking away very quickly—too quickly—when I opened the door. She disappeared into shadows near the front door.
At this point, he was sighing every thirty seconds or so. Quick, ragged sighs that just might portend a heart-attack. Maybe his body would turn on itself and kill him.
He walked to a door, opened it. “Down the stairs. The various rooms are marked. You won’t have any trouble finding it.”
“You’re not going down there with me?”
Another sigh. “I’d prefer not to.” Even his hand was glazed with sweat now. It shone like the brass doorknob it held.
Deirdre came up. “Want me to go with him, Dad?”
“No!” He said it with such anger that he sounded like a different person entirely. “I need you to stay out of this, Deirdre. I’ve told you that already.”
“Want me to go to my room and play with dolls or something, Dad?” She was now as angry as he’d been. She obviously didn’t like being treated so coldly, especially in front of a guest. But she was quick to relent. “I was just trying to help, Dad.”
Now it was his turn to sound apologetic. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s just—things.” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. “All this’ll be over soon. I’m sure Sam here can help me.”
Deirdre and I looked at each other. Her expression was much like mine. I wasn’t quite sure what would “all be over soon.” The answer was apparently in the bomb shelter. As to what I’d be “helping” him with, I had no idea.
“I guess I will go upstairs, actually,” Deirdre said, the brown eyes melancholy. Easy to picture her as a little girl confused and disappointed by the secret world of adults. “Well, good luck, Sam.”
“Thanks.”
“Hope I see you again, Sam.”
“I’ll make a point of it.”
When she’d gone, he said, “You made a friend. Her fiancé broke off their engagement a little over a year ago. This is the first time I’ve seen her show any interest in a male since then.”
“Well, I know one other male she sure seems to care about.”
“Oh?”
“You. That’s pretty easy to see.”
“Yes,” he said, being mysterious again. “And that sure doesn’t make any of this any easier, either.” Then: “Here, Sam. Down these stairs and to the right you’ll find the bomb shelter.”
THREE
THE BASEMENT STEPS WERE spiral-style. And steep. I was about halfway down them, when the whole thing started to feel unreal. He was scared to the point of dysfunction. He wanted to pay me a thousand dollars but wouldn’t say why. And now he wanted me to check out his bomb shelter.
The basement was divided into rooms with doors. I was in a basement unlike any I’d ever seen before. Usually there’s a sink and washer where Mom does the laundry. And a coal bin left over from Grandpa’s day. And a furnace that sounds like a bomb blast every time it comes on. And in the various corners are stacks of magazines running from Colliers to The Saturday Evening Post and wooden cases of empty Pepsi bottles. And then you’ve got your galvanized buckets and your mops that look like gray seaweed and your collection of ancient dusty cleaning fluids. And all sorts of other stuff that should’ve been thrown out long ago but somehow never was. The smells would be laundry soap, dust, dampness, and mildew from the stacks of newspapers. You would see an occasional bug, an occasional crack in the floor, an occasional cobweb on the unfinished ceiling.
Not so in Ross Murdoch’s basement.
The basement was laid out in a maze of narrow hallway, walls and doors. It smelled of the fresh lime green paint on the walls and of the air conditioning that really wasn’t necessary on an Indian summer day like this one. There were no bugs, no cracks in the floor and, God forbid, no cobwebs. Each door was marked with a neatly painted sign. FURNACE ROOM, LAUNDRY ROOM, and two others, BOMB SHELTER was what I was looking for and BOMB SHELTER was what I found.
The shelter was pretty much as it had been described. Very good living room and kitchen furnishings took up half of it; the other half offering six sets of bunk beds and a couple huge armoires. In the kitchen area there were enough boxes and crates of canned foodstuffs to keep a small army going for a year or so. Same with cigarettes, cigars, soda pop and alcoholic refreshments. There was a large carpet that looked to be the indoor-outdoor stuff that would hold up for a while. And the electrical generator in the east corner was imposing both for its size and its fire-engine red color. There were plenty of lamps, a portable 17-inch TV and a large Zenith radio that had so many buttons it could probably tune in Mars if you wanted it to. Home sweet home.
The dead woman spoiled everything.
She was sprawled on the brown corduroy-covered couch. Arms flung wide, silver silk blouse torn to reveal small breasts contained in a white bra, blue skirt pushed up to mid-thigh. She wore blue hose and silver flats. She had wonderful flawless legs. The purple bruising on her neck likely showed the means of her death. Some murder victims look horrible, their expressions reflecting clearly the terrors and suffering they went through. Other corpses appear almost peaceful. As if their passing had not been all that bad; or as if their passing had been something that they might have secretly wished for.
If the young woman’s skin hadn’t just now given a trace of the blue tint that would soon invade it, you’d have thought she was just resting, waiting to be called to dinner.
Her face was the most interesting part of the picture, not because it was so beautiful, which it was, but because it belonged to the young woman whose black-and-white glossy Hastings had shown me earlier this morning.
I walked the length of the room. Cliffie wouldn’t search it properly so I assumed it would fall to me. I spent twenty minutes down there. I imagined Ross Murdoch was wondering what I was doing. But he was scrupulous about staying out of my way. He’d looked scared enough to put me in charge, something he probably wasn’t used to. Everything about him spoke to being the king of the walk.
I didn’t find anything remarkable. I’d been hoping for something obvious. A button. A footprint. A note saying: “Yes, I kil
led her. Here’s my home phone number. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
But no such luck. Police science would have to take over from here. Cliffie had a recent graduate of the Police Academy as his number two now. He wasn’t a genius but he was competent and if Cliffie let him do his job—“Who cares about all this mumbo-jumbo!” I’d heard Cliffie snap at the guy one night—he might actually come up with some interesting ideas.
Now it was time to go back upstairs.
“You’ll have TO tell me everything, Ross. Everything. That’s the only way I can help you.”
He didn’t say anything. He just sat slumped behind his desk. He just looked sad, scared. I wondered if he was in shock.
I leaned forward, put my elbows on the front of the desk and looked right at him. “Who was she, Ross? I already know who she is. But I want to hear you say it. And then I want to hear you say that she was your girlfriend.”
“Her name is Karen Hastings. She wasn’t my girlfriend. She was our girlfriend.”
“What?”
“Three of my best friends from here—we went to a business convention in Chicago. She was a hostess in a booth. We all got drunk together—and more than once—over the four days we were there.” The men in his group were, like many men their age who’d taken Jack Kennedy as an icon, into sailing, hot air ballooning and, inevitably, a mean game of touch football.
“Meaning you four and the woman?”
“Yes. And then we decided—you know how things can sound perfectly sensible when you’re drunk—that we all needed some excitement in our lives but that running around on the side was too risky. But what if we all chipped in and set up a mistress in a nice apartment not far from where we lived? Shared the expenses and shared the woman. This was two years ago. Before I’d decided to run for governor.”
“I think the word you want here is prostitute.”
“Yes. But of a very special kind. So anyway, we all pitched in and arranged for a very nice apartment and for a monthly allowance and for a clothing allowance. We even paid for her life insurance. And to have her visit a doctor every two months.”