That explanation made sense now.
And what did I have besides that? The coincidence of four deaths within three years at the high school? But I’d already learned that one of those four, the drowning of a girl in a girls’ swimming period, couldn’t possibly have been caused by Obie. And that the other drowning, the teacher Constance Bonner, seemed quite probably a suicide and anyway didn’t really fit the pattern of the type of killing I’d pictured Obie doing.
Four accidents within two years in the freight yards? All four of them could have fitted the pattern, yes, but why should I think Obie caused them just because he’d gone there the one evening I’d followed him. There’d been no accident there that particular night. And there were at least a dozen reasons, legitimate ones, for his having walked there. A randomly chosen objective for a pleasant stroll on a warm summer night. A destination, such as a friend’s house, beyond the yards, and a short cut through them. A human and unmurderous interest in hoboes. An adventurous interest in railroads and a predilection for hopping and riding moving freight cars.
So what did I have left? Nothing that couldn’t be explained away by mild coincidence.
And yet–
I wasn’t sitting with my feet up any more now. I’d got my start thinking that way, but now I was pacing. I’d pushed the card table aside and I had the whole length of the living room to pace in. It’s a good room for pacing, narrow but longish.
And yet, I thought, I’ve got a much better case against Obie than 1 had before. If he is a killer, I can see why.
The other side of the coin my friend the doctor had handed me.
In what dark way might a boy react to his father’s belief that he was a murderer?
Let’s start it that way from the crisis point, the death of Elizabeth Westphal. No, I still wouldn’t follow Westphal there, no matter what he might have seen in the tree. A four-year-old boy as a deliberate murderer, that I wouldn’t buy. But I could see a boy warped into becoming one, over the course of the years of his formative period, by his father’s unwavering belief.
Let’s say he had pushed his sister. In play, in a scuffle, maybe in defense because she was trying to push him. In whatever manner, for whatever reason, but not to kill her. In his story of what had happened, he lied a little bit, naturally. He daren’t admit that he had pushed her; he was trying to save her, but couldn’t.
But then he learns that his father had seen that push. His father thinks he is a murderer. His father keeps on thinking so, more and more strongly as the years go by. The years, let us say, from four to thirteen. Nine years of being thought a murderer, nine years of being watched, of feeling and being made to feel that he is unnatural, a freak, a thing to be feared and hated.
And likely, for that very reason, he didn’t indulge in the normal killings-in-fantasy of childhood. Certainly not at any time when his father was around watching him. His father’s brooding, watching, somber gaze–under that, would he ever dare point a finger and say bang, even at the most imaginary Indian, let alone at a living playmate? Would his father ever have bought him a toy gun, a cap pistol, a rubber knife, any of the pseudo-lethal things normal to boyhood?
If he ever said or even thought “Bang, bang, you’re dead” it would have been in secret and with a feeling of deep guilt because death and killing were real to him; he had already killed, in reality, and thereby he was denied the catharsis of the imaginary mowing down of enemies.
He had killed his sister. Oh yes, he would have come, by the age of eleven or twelve or thirteen, to believe that. How accurately does anyone remember the details of and the motives behind any act he committed at the age of four, years later?
A month or two after the incident, he would still have remembered that the push had been in fun, in play. Even then, he wouldn’t have been sure. And eight or nine years later? By then the true memory would have been supplanted by a false one, so firmly imbedded that any other version would have been sheer fantasy.
And how he must have come to fear and hate his father! But probably the fear and hate would be buried deep, buried under layers of guilt and awful knowledge of his own viciousness and abnormality.
Henry the murderer, Henry the unspeakable.
Obie the hero, Obie the athlete, the lionized, the admired.
Henry the murderer, Obie the hero.
Schizophrenia.
All right, all right, I told myself, I’m guessing of course. I haven’t got enough, I don’t know enough to do these parlor tricks with psychoanalysis. I’m guessing.
Well, what’s wrong with guessing, as long as I don’t wear a groove in the carpet while I’m doing it?
Of course there’d been a balance to Armin Westphal. What had Doc told me about Obie’s mother?
Amy’s a fine woman. Not overweight mentally … a good wife and mother. Well, maybe too good a mother, the kind that dotes too much on children and spoils them. And Henry got a double dose of it after he became an only child. …
Certainly not overweight mentally if she failed to recognize the symptoms of her husband’s mental illness, to feel the weight of his obsession, however devious he was in concealing it from her.
She must, of course, have felt at least inadequacy in his attitude toward his son, but there was so simple and natural an answer to that. Love the boy twice as much herself, spoil him, be wonderful to him in every possible way to make up to him the apparent lack of love his father showed for him. Of course, Armin didn’t really feel that way, and although sometimes Henry seemed almost–well, almost afraid of his father and was so quiet when his father was around, that was just his way. And although Armin’s way of showing it was strange, he must love his son deep down and deeply else why would he watch the boy so much and so intently. Why would he ask him so many questions? Mostly when she wasn’t around, but that was natural; men didn’t want women around when they did their serious talking. She had a wonderful son–so big and handsome for his age, so smart in school, so admired by everyone. And she had a wonderful husband, if only he could get over that awful drinking, and if only he didn’t act so strangely sometimes. But then he worked so hard, for all of them.
She must have spoiled the boy terribly after he became her only child. And like as not Oedipus had reared his head somewhere in those years, although God knows Obie wouldn’t have needed jealousy of his mother to make him hate his father, if I had the picture right.
Meanwhile growing up, gaining wisdom and stature. From the size of him now, he might have been as strong as a man at thirteen. Able, maybe, to lick his own father– and certainly able to now at seventeen–but afraid to. That’s the one thing he’d always be afraid to do.
I’d guess thirteen to be the age at which Obie made his first kill. In his own mind, convinced by then that he had killed his sister, believing that for nine years, it would have been his second. Why did I pick thirteen? I don’t know; it could have been sooner than that, much sooner. Not more than a year later, though, if the two boys who had died at South Side during his freshman year had been his victims.
The first kill, especially, must have been unplanned. Maybe all of them were–although his visit to the freight yards looked as though he hunted opportunities.
He’d have been in some dangerous place, say on a roof, with one other person. No one else around, no one watching. The other person–friend or stranger, it wouldn’t matter–standing near the edge, Obie behind him. And it would come to him: Why, just a push and 1 could kill him easily, just as I killed my sister.
Suddenly the blood had pounded in his temples, and he had pushed. He had killed.
Whom had he killed? His father, of course. The one being he wanted to kill and feared to kill, he killed in effigy. And killed in effigy again and again, any time a foolproof opportunity came or could be contrived.
Did he know that, I wondered; did he know whom he killed? Or did his subconscious mi
nd hide that dark fact from his conscious one? Did he know only the sudden savage delight each killing gave him, without recognizing the source of that wild ecstasy?
All right, Sam, I told myself, you’ve got two perfectly good solutions and which one do you like best?
One, Obie’s killings are the delusion of a paranoiac father.
Two, Obie’s killings are the result of his father’s obsession.
Pay your money and take your choice.
Either fitted.
And I wanted to kick furniture through the windows because I didn’t know which. I wanted to kick myself because I couldn’t simply accept the first one, which was just as possible as the second. Because if I could accept that I’d merely been fooled by Westphal into momentary sharing of his delusion, then I was through with this thing and it would be off my mind.
I wouldn’t have to do a damned thing about it except forget it. It would mean Westphal was insane, but that wasn’t any business of mine. Not if it hadn’t made a killer out of his son. Not if all those deaths at the school and in the jungles had really been accidents, and if Jimmy Chojnacki had really fallen across the tracks because he’d been running away from a pursuer.
But how the hell could I decide? The only one of those deaths that was fresh was that of the Chojnacki boy and I’d dug into that as hard and as far as I knew how to dig. All of the others were months or years ago and how could I possibly connect Obie with any of them now?
Wait, I told myself, you’ve been wondering how to prove that Obie caused those deaths, or some of them, and maybe that’s impossible, but why not try it from the other end? Maybe I could prove that Obie hadn’t caused them.
It would be difficult if not impossible, now, to find proof that Obie had been elsewhere at the times of the freight-yard accidents. But I might be able to prove that he couldn’t have caused any of the three accidents still under suspicion at the school.
There was an even chance, for instance, that I could prove he hadn’t pushed the Greenough boy out of the tower window. Nina had told me it had happened during second lunch period. The school day at South Side is divided into eight three-quarter-hour periods. Schedules are so arranged that approximately half of the students have their lunch time during the fifth period, from 12:00 noon to 12:45 p.m. and the other half during the sixth period, from 12:45 to 1:30 p.m. Otherwise the school cafeteria couldn’t handle them. But suppose Obie’s schedule for his freshman year gave him first lunch period and a class at the time the Greenough boy had fallen?
And if, that same year, Obie had not had a final period gym class, it would become highly unlikely that he had killed the boy in the locker room. Not impossible; he could have gone to the locker room in the gym after some other last-period class so it wouldn’t give him a complete alibi, but it would lessen probability. Or he might have been absent from school completely on one of those days. Attendance records would show.
As for the teacher Constance Bonner, well, that was probably a suicide anyway. But I could almost completely rule out Obie if I could learn from his record that he didn’t belong to the Drama Club during his junior year. Only the members of that group, whom she had let out of the building when the meeting was over, would have known that Miss Bonner had stayed there to grade papers.
Nina could find those things out for me from the school records. I hated to ask her to because I couldn’t without telling her at least part of the truth about what I was after and without admitting that I’d been lying about my reason for asking the questions I’d already asked her about the accidents. She’d place those dates and times and know that I was trying to connect Obie Westphal with those three deaths. And she’d remember that I’d already asked her casually whether Obie and Jimmy Chojnacki had been friends.
But I didn’t see any way I could find out those things except through Nina.
I looked at my watch and it was nine o’clock. She’d said she was going to bed early to get a long night’s sleep, but surely she’d hardly have turned in this early.
I phoned her. It even came to me, as I heard the number ringing, that maybe she’d be feeling differently by now and want me to come around to stay the night. After all, after three nights in a row I wouldn’t keep us up very late tonight.
“Hello.”
“This is Sam, Nina. Still annoyed with me?”
“I wasn’t annoyed with you, Sam. It’s just–I was being sensible for once.”
“Still feeling sensible, darling?”
She laughed a little. “No, I’m not. I was hoping you’d call. I was afraid you were annoyed with me for being so silly this morning. I want you to come around, dear. But–”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I’m afraid. It started today, Sam two days early. So I’m going to be a good girl and get to bed early whether I want to or not.”
“But you don’t have to turn in this early do you, Nina? There’s something I want you to do for me. Well, there were two things but now we can rule out one of them. Can I, though, drop over for just a little while? A half hour, maybe? I’m calling from home and I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“Please don’t, Sam. I’m really dead tired; I’d just turned in when the phone rang. Another three minutes and I’d have been too sound asleep to have heard it. Whatever it is you want me to do, I’m afraid I couldn’t. I’m half asleep now.”
“It’s nothing for you to do tonight. I just wanted to explain it to you so you could do it tomorrow.”
“Can’t you tell me over the phone?”
“It’s–I’m afraid it’s too complicated for that.”
“Then can’t it wait a day, Sam? Please?”
“All right,” I said. “Go to bed and pound your pretty ear. Good night.”
“Good night, darling.”
“Will I see you tomorrow night?”
“If you wish, after what I just told you.”
“Don’t be a goof,” I said. “If you think my wanting to see you is for one reason only, I’m glad of a chance to prove otherwise. And how’s about my taking you out to dinner for a change? Will you be ready at–say, half past six?”
“But–aren’t you worried about someone seeing us together?”
“Of course not. But if you are–and I suppose that, working for the school board, it wouldn’t do you any good to be seen with a married man–we can drive out to some place in the country where there wouldn’t be a chance in a thousand of either of us seeing someone who knows him.”
“I think it’s better that way. Yes, I’d love to, Sam. I’ll be ready at six-thirty. And thanks for skipping tonight; I’ll be sound asleep in minutes. ‘Night, darling.”
“Good night, Nina.”
“Love me–just a little bit?”
“What other possible motive could I have for feeding you tomorrow evening?”
She laughed, and we said good night again and hung up.
I wasn’t sleepy and I decided I wanted a drink before I turned in, maybe several drinks. I wanted to quit thinking, too. I’d have to wait a day now to have Nina get me the dope from the school files that might help me make up my mind about Obie, and maybe it would be a good thing for me to forget it for a day. Damn it, this was my vacation.
And besides, I wanted to talk to someone. About anything except the family Westphal.
I drove to the Press Bar across the street from the Herald. It was Thursday night now; I wouldn’t have any trouble explaining to the boys why I was in town. I could simply say that five days on the lake had been enough and that I’d come back a little early.
Ordinarily there’d have been anywhere from two to ten people I knew in the Press Bar at nine-thirty on a week night. Tonight, because I wanted company, there wasn’t one. Even the bartender must have been a new one; he was a stranger to me.
I drank a few beers, though, and got into a
conversation with the man next to me at the bar, but it was a one-sided conversation because he wanted to talk baseball and I know nothing about baseball and care less. But beer and baseball combined to make me sleepy so when I went home and to bed somewhere around eleven o’clock I went to sleep the moment I put my head on the pillow.
FRIDAY
1
In my dream I was standing at the end of a swimming pool. The pool was filled not with water but with ink, black ink. Somehow I knew, although of course I couldn’t see through the ink, that I was standing at the deep end, just a foot or so from the edge. And in my dream I couldn’t swim, although actually I can. Someone or something was standing behind me. I wanted to turn but couldn’t. Then there came a whisper from behind me, “Turn now,” and I turned. A few feet away stood a creature with the body of a man or boy–a big, strong, young boy in slacks and a white T shirt–and the head of a wolf. The wolf’s head whispered, “Don’t laugh; your daughter may be inside.” Then the wolf’s head changed to the head of a tiger and it said, “Turn again, Dick Whittington,” and I turned obediently to face the deep end of the dark pool. There was a push in the middle of my back and I started falling into the pool, and woke suddenly before I got there.
I was wide awake and I lay there thinking about that dream and wondering what it could mean. I don’t mean that I think dreams have meaning in the Gypsy Dream Book sense nor yet do I follow the Freudians in believing in sex symbolism back of every dream. The only thing in that dream which, to my mind, could have been a sex symbol was the wolf’s head and my mind had picked that up from the radiator ornament on the jalopy Obie’s friend had driven. Where, of course, it was a deliberate, if adolescent, sex symbol. And the “Don’t laugh; your daughter may be inside,” phrase was a natural association with the wolf’s head; it had been lettered on the same jalopy.
The Deep End Page 12