“Not through me or Archer. Perhaps through Dr. Smitheram. Obviously I can’t protect your interests unless you let me.”
She considered Truttwell’s proposition. “I didn’t want to break with you myself. Especially not at this time. But I can’t speak for my husband.”
“Where is he?”
“I left him at home. These last few days have been awfully hard on Larry. He doesn’t look it, but he’s the nervous type.”
Her words touched a closed place in my mind. “Was that your husband in the film? The boy who got pushed into the water?”
“Yes it was. It was the first day I met Larry. And his last free weekend before he went into the Navy. I could tell that he was interested in me, but I didn’t get to know him that day, not really. I wish I had.”
“When did you get to know him?”
“A couple of years later. He grew up in the meantime.”
“What happened to you in the meantime?”
She turned away from me abruptly, her white neck ridged with strain. “I’m not going to answer that,” she said to Truttwell. “I didn’t hire a lawyer and a detective to dig up all the dirt in my own life. What kind of sense would that make?”
He answered her in a quiet careful voice: “It makes more sense than trying to keep it secret. It’s time the dirt, as you call it, was laid out on the table, among the three of us. I needn’t remind you there have been several murders.”
“I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Your son did,” I reminded her. “We’ve already discussed that death in the hobo jungle.”
She turned back to me. “It was a kidnapping. He killed in self-defense. You said yourself the police would understand.”
“I may have to take that back, now that I know more about it. You held back part of the story—all the really important parts. For example, when I told you that Randy Shepherd was involved in the kidnapping you didn’t mention that Randy was your father.”
“A woman doesn’t have to tell on her husband,” she said. “Isn’t it the same for a girl and her father?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter now. Your father was shot dead in Pasadena yesterday afternoon.”
Her head came up. “Who shot him?”
“The police. Your mother called them.”
“My mother did?” She was silent for a while. “That doesn’t really surprise me. The first thing I remember in my life is the two of them fighting like animals. I had to get away from that kind of life, even if it meant—” Our eyes met, and the sentence died under the impact.
I continued it for her: “Even if it meant running off to Mexico with an embezzler.”
She shook her head. Her black hair fluffed out a little, and made her look both younger and cheaper.
“I never did.”
“You never ran off with Eldon Swain?”
She was silent.
“What did happen, Mrs. Chalmers?”
“I can’t tell you—not even at this late date. There are other people involved.”
“Eldon Swain?”
“He’s the most important one.”
“You don’t have to worry about protecting him, as you very well know. He’s as safe as your father, and for the same reason.”
She gave me a lost look, as if her game with time had failed for a moment and she was caught in the limbo between her two lives. “Is Eldon really dead?”
“You know he is, Mrs. Chalmers. He was the dead man in the railroad yards. You must have known or suspected it at the time.”
Her eyes darkened. “I swear to God I didn’t.”
“You had to know. The body was left with its hands in the fire so that the fingerprints would be erased. No eight-year-old boy did that.”
“That doesn’t mean it was me.”
“You were the one with the motivation,” I said. “If the dead man was identified as Swain, your whole life would collapse. You’d lose your house and your husband and your social standing. You’d be Rita Shepherd again, back on your uppers.”
She was silent, her face working with thought. “You said my father was involved with Eldon. It must have been my father who burned the body—did you say he burned the body?”
“The fingers.”
She nodded. “It must have been my father. He was always talking about getting rid of his own fingerprints. He was a nut on the subject.”
Her voice was unreflective, almost casual. It stopped suddenly. Perhaps she had heard herself as Rita Shepherd, daughter of an ex-con, trapped again in that identity without any possible escape.
The knowledge of her predicament seemed to be striking down into her body and penetrating her mind through layers of indifference, years of forgetfulness. It struck a vital place and crumpled her in the chair, her face in her hands. Her hair fell forward from her nape and sifted over her fingers like black water.
Truttwell stood over her looking down with an intensity that didn’t seem to include any kind of love. Perhaps it was pity he felt, laced with possession. She had passed through several hands and been slightly scorched by felony, but she was still very beautiful.
Forgetful of me, and of himself, Truttwell put his hands on her. He stroked her head very gently, and then her long tapering back. His caresses weren’t sexual in any ordinary sense. Perhaps, I thought, his main feeling was an abstract legal passion which satisfied itself by having her as a client. Or a widower’s underground desire held in check by the undead past.
Mrs. Chalmers recovered after a while, and asked for water. Truttwell went to another room to fetch it. She spoke to me in an urgent whisper:
“Why did my mother call the police on Randy? She must have had a reason.”
“She had. He stole her picture of Nick.”
“The graduation picture I sent her?”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have sent it. But I thought for once in my life I could act like a normal human being.”
“You couldn’t, though. Your father took it to Jean Trask and talked her into hiring Sidney Harrow. That’s how the whole thing started.”
“What did the old man want?”
“Your husband’s money, just like everyone else.”
“But not you, eh?” Her voice was sardonic.
“Not me,” I said. “Money costs too much.”
Truttwell brought her a paper cup of water and watched her drink it. “Are you feeling up to a little drive?”
Her body jerked in alarm. “Where to?”
“The Smitheram Clinic. It’s time we had a chat with Nick.”
She looked profoundly unwilling. “Dr. Smitheram won’t let you in.”
“I think he will. You’re Nick’s mother. I’m his attorney. If Dr. Smitheram won’t cooperate, I’ll slap a writ of habeas corpus on him.”
Truttwell wasn’t entirely serious, but her mood of alarm persisted. “No. Please, don’t do anything like that I’ll talk to Dr. Smitheram.”
On the way out I asked the switchboard girl if Betty had come back with the lab report. She hadn’t. I left word for her that I’d be at the clinic.
chapter 35
Irene Chalmers dismissed Emilio. She rode between Truttwell and me in the front seat of his Cadillac. When she got out of the car in the parking lot of the clinic she moved like a drugged woman. Truttwell gave her his arm and guided her into the reception room.
Moira Smitheram was behind the desk, as she had been the day I met her. It seemed like a long time ago. Her face had aged and deepened, or maybe I could see more deeply into her. She looked from Truttwell to me.
“You didn’t give me much time.”
“We’re running out of time.”
Truttwell said: “It’s very important that we talk to Nick Chalmers. Mrs. Chalmers agrees.”
“You’ll have to take that up with Dr. Smitheram.”
Moira went and got her husband. He came through the inner door, striding angrily in his white smock.
“You don’t give up eas
ily, do you?” he said to Truttwell.
“I don’t give up at all, old man. We’re here to see Nick, and I’m very much afraid that you can’t stop us.”
Smitheram turned his back on Truttwell and said to Mrs. Chalmers: “How do you feel about this?”
“You better let us in, doctor,” she said without raising her eyes.
“Have you re-engaged Mr. Truttwell as your attorney?”
“Yes I have.”
“And has Mr. Chalmers concurred?”
“He will.”
Dr. Smitheram gave her a probing look. “What sort of pressure are you under, anyway?”
Truttwell said: “You’re wasting time, doctor. We’re here to talk to your patient, not to you.”
Smitheram swallowed his anger. “Very well.”
He and his wife conducted us through the inner door, along a corridor to a second door which had to be unlocked and relocked. The wing beyond it contained eight or ten rooms beginning with a suicide room in which a woman sat on the padded floor looking out at us through thick glass.
Nick had a bed-sitting room with an open door. He sat in an armchair holding an open textbook. In his light wool robe he looked almost like any other young man interrupted at his studies. He stood up when he saw his mother, his black eyes large and bright in his pale face. His dark glasses were on the desk beside him.
“Hello, Mother, Mr. Truttwell.” His glance traveled across our faces without pausing. “Where’s Dad? Where’s Betty?”
“This isn’t a social occasion,” Truttwell said, “though it’s good to see you. We have some questions to ask you.”
“Keep them as brief as possible,” Smitheram said. “Sit down, Nick.”
Moira took his book and put a marker in it; then stood beside her husband in the doorway. Irene Chalmers sat in the other chair, Truttwell and I on the single bed facing Nick.
“I’m not going to beat around the bush,” Truttwell said. “About fifteen years ago, when you were a small boy, you shot a man in the railroad yards.”
Nick raised his eyes to Smitheram’s and said in a flat disappointed tone: “You told him.”
“No, I did not,” Smitheram said.
Truttwell said to the doctor: “You took on quite a responsibility when you kept that shooting quiet.”
“I know that. I acted in the best interests of an eight-year-old who was threatened with autism. The law isn’t the only guide to the conduct of human affairs. Even if it were, the homicide was justifiable or accidental.”
Truttwell said wearily: “I didn’t come here to argue law or ethics with you, doctor.”
“Then don’t attack my motives.”
“Which are, of course, as pure as the driven snow.”
The doctor’s large body made a small threatening move in Truttwell’s direction. It was inhibited by Moira’s hand on his elbow.
Truttwell turned back to Nick. “Tell me about that shooting down by the tracks. Was it an accident?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then just tell me how it happened. How did you get to the railroad yards in the first place?”
Nick answered haltingly as if his memory operated by fits and starts like a teletype ticker. “I was on my way home from school when the man picked me up in his car. I know I shouldn’t have got in. But he seemed terribly serious. And I felt sorry for him. He was sick and old.
“He asked me a lot of questions about who my mother was, and who my father was, and when and where I was born. Then he said that he was my father. I didn’t exactly believe him, but I was interested enough to go along to the hobo jungle with him.
“He took me to a place behind the old roundhouse. Someone had left a fire burning and we added some wood and sat beside it. He got out a pint of whisky and took a pull and gave me a taste of it. It burned my mouth. But he drank it down like water, and finished the bottle.
“It made him foolish. He sang some old songs, and then he got sentimental. He said I was his darling boy and when he came into his rights he’d assume his true position and look after me. He started to paw me and kiss me, and that was when I shot him. He had a gun in the waistband of his trousers. I pulled it out and shot him, and he died.”
Nick’s pale face was still composed. But I could hear his rapid breathing.
“What did you do with the gun?” I said.
“I didn’t do anything with it. I left it lying there and walked home. Later I told my parents what I’d done. They didn’t believe me at first. Then it came out in the paper, about the dead man, and they believed me. They brought me to Dr. Smitheram. And,” he added with wry bitterness, “I’ve been with him ever since. I wish I’d gone to the police in the first place.” His eyes were on his mother’s half-averted face.
“It wasn’t your decision,” I said. “Now let’s get on to the Sidney Harrow killing.”
“Good Lord, do you think I killed him, too?”
“You thought so, remember?”
His gaze turned inward. “I was pretty confused, wasn’t I? The trouble was I really felt like killing Harrow. I went to his motel room that night to have a showdown with him. Jean told me where he was staying. He wasn’t there, but I found him in his car on the beach.”
“Alive or dead?”
“He was dead. The gun that killed him was lying beside his car. I picked it up to look at it and something clicked in my head. And the ground literally shifted under my feet. I thought at first it was an earthquake. Then I realized it was in me. I was confused for a long time, and suicidal.” He added: “The gun seemed to want me to do something with it.”
“You already had done something with it,” I said. “It was the same gun that you left in the railroad yards.”
“How could that be?”
“I don’t know how it could be. But it was the same gun. The police have ballistic records that prove it. Are you sure you left the gun beside the body?”
Nick was confused again. His eyes looked at our faces in naked helplessness. He reached for his dark glasses and put them on. “Harrow’s body?”
“Eldon Swain’s body. The man in the railroad yards who said he was your father. Did you leave the gun there beside him, Nick?”
“Yes. I know I didn’t take it home with me.”
“Then someone else picked it up and kept it for fifteen years and used it on Harrow. Who would that be?”
“I don’t know.” The young man shook his head slowly from side to side.
Smitheram stepped forward. “He’s had enough. And you’re not learning anything.” His eyes were full of anxiety, but whether it was for Nick I couldn’t tell.
“I’m learning a good deal, doctor. So is Nick.”
“Yes.” The young man looked up. “Was the man in the railroad yards really my father as he said?”
“You’ll have to ask your mother.”
“Was he, mother?”
Irene Chalmers looked around the room as if another trap had closed on her. The pressure of our silence forced words out of her:
“I don’t have to answer that and I’m not going to.”
“That means he was my father.”
She didn’t answer Nick or look at him. She sat with her head bowed. Truttwell stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. She inclined her head sideways so that her cheek rested against his knuckles. In contrast with her flawless skin, his hand was spotted with age.
Nick said insistently: “I knew that Lawrence Chalmers couldn’t be my father.”
“How did you know that?” I asked him.
“The letters he wrote from overseas—I don’t remember the dates exactly, but the timing wasn’t right.”
“Is that why you took the letters out of the safe?”
“Not really. I stumbled onto that aspect of it. Sidney Harrow and Jean Trask came to me with a wild story that my father—that Lawrence Chalmers had committed a crime. I took the letters to prove to them that they were mistaken. He was overseas at the time the theft occurred.”
“What theft?”
“Jean said he stole some money from her family—from her father—actually an enormous amount of money, half a million or so. But his letters proved that Jean and Harrow were wrong. On the day of the alleged theft—I think it was July 1, 1945—my fa—Mr. Chalmers was at sea aboard his carrier.” He added with a look of sad irony: “In proving that I also proved that he couldn’t be my father. I was born on December 14, 1945, and nine months before, when I must have been—” He looked at his mother, and couldn’t find the word.
“Conceived?” I said.
“When I must have been conceived, he was aboard his ship in the forward area. Do you hear that, Mother?”
“I hear you.”
“Haven’t you any other comment?”
“You don’t have to turn against me,” she said in a low tone. “I’m your mother. What does it matter who your father was?”
“It matters to me.”
“Forget it. Why don’t you forget it?”
“I have some of the letters here.” I brought out my wallet and showed Nick the three letters. “I think these are the ones you were particularly interested in.”
“Yes. Where did you get them?”
“From your apartment,” I said.
“May I have them for a minute?”
I handed him the letters. He went through them quickly.
“This is the one he wrote on March 15, 1945: ‘Dearest Mother: Here I am in the forward area again so my letter won’t go off for a while.’ That would seem to prove conclusively that whoever my father was, he wasn’t and isn’t Lieutenant (j.g.) L. Chalmers.” He looked at his mother again in murky speculation: “Was it the man in the railroad yards, Mother? The man I killed?”
“You don’t want an answer,” she said.
“That means the answer is yes,” he said in bleak satisfaction. “At least I know that much for certain. What did you say his name was? My father’s name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Eldon Swain,” I said. “He was Jean Trask’s father.”
“She said we were brother and sister. You mean it’s really true?”
“I don’t have the answers. You’re the one who seems to have them.” I paused, and went on: “There’s one very important answer I have to ask you for, Nick. What took you to Jean Trask’s house in San Diego?”
The Goodbye Look Page 20