Midnight Haul

by Max Allan Collins

  “Maybe… maybe I should talk to Boone again.”

  “Of course you should,” Roger said. “Go use the pay phone.”

  “It’s long distance…”

  Roger grinned and pulled a roll of quarters out from somewhere. “Here you go,” he said; he rolled the roll toward Crane, who caught it.

  “Why do I get the feeling I’ve been set up?” Crane said, smiling at his two friends; they shrugged and smiled back at him as he got out of the booth.

  He went to the phone on the wall over by the rest rooms and made the station-to-station call. He let it ring a dozen times. It was a big house, after all. No answer. He called information and got another number. He made the second station-to-station call, and on the third ring, Mary Beth’s mother answered.

  He didn’t identify himself; he just asked to speak to Laurie. Mary Beth’s mother said she would put Laurie on.

  “Hello?”

  “Laurie? This is Crane.”

  “Crane! Why you must be calling about Boone.”

  “Why, yes…”

  “Who told you? Did her husband call you about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About Boone. About her taking all those pills. Last I heard, she was still in a coma.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Laurie asked.

  “Yes,” Crane said.

  It was dusk. The trees lining Boone’s street were skeletal, abstract shapes; the ground was white and brown, patches of leaves showing through the light covering of snow. It looked peaceful to Crane. Peaceful like death.

  “I’d rather you came and stayed with us,” Laurie said. “Mother would like you to. We have the room.”

  “No, thank you, Laurie, but I could never stay in that house.” He didn’t look at her as he said this; he’d been with her since late this morning, when she picked him up at the airport, but he hadn’t looked at her much. She was still too much a plumper, slightly older version of Mary Beth for him to be comfortable looking at her.

  “You’ll be staying at the motel, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “Crane, she could be in that coma for a year.”

  “Or forever.”

  “Or forever. The doctor as much as said so. And if she does wake up, she could…”

  “Be a vegetable. He as much as said that, too.”

  “Not necessarily. He did say they got to her within the first hour. He said that was encouraging.”

  “Somewhat encouraging.”

  “Somewhat encouraging, he said. But you can’t stay around here forever, waiting for Boone to wake up. It’s crazy.”

  Crazy. Crazy was Boone in Intensive Care with tubes in her. That was what crazy was.

  “Laurie, I want to thank you for everything. Picking me up at the airport, driving me to the hospital at Fair View, sticking around till I talked to the doctor. Everything.”

  “It’s all right, Crane. You were almost my brother-in-law, remember?” She smiled at him, a little.

  “I remember.” He couldn’t find a smile to give her back. He tried, but it wasn’t there.

  “You’re sure you want out here? Not at the motel?”

  “This is where I want out.”

  There were lights on in Boone’s house, in the downstairs. Two cars were parked at the curb: an MGB and Boone’s yellow Datsun. There was snow on the Datsun. Laurie was double-parked with the motor running.

  Though they’d been together for some hours, he and Laurie hadn’t said much. It had seemed to him that Laurie had tried several times to say something and hadn’t been able to. He glanced at her now, as he opened the car door to get out, and realized she was trying one last time.

  “Crane… you and Boone. You must’ve gotten… close.”

  He closed the door and settled back in the seat.

  “Laurie,” he said, “I love her. That doesn’t take anything away from how I felt about Mary Beth. I still love Mary Beth, and she’s dead. And now Boone, and she’s in a coma. I love them both, and I let them both down, or they wouldn’t be where they are right now.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  He shrugged.

  Laurie was struggling again.

  Crane said, “Say what’s on your mind. Go on.”

  “It’s just… you told me you were leaving town… told mother the same thing… then you move in with Boone. You never called or anything, saying you’d changed your mind about going or anything. But I knew you were still in Greenwood, and with Boone. This is a small town, Crane, in case you haven’t noticed. Word gets around.”

  She had tried to keep the resentment out of her voice, but it was there.

  He said. “I didn’t want to bother you and your mother again. I didn’t want to worry either of you with my suspicions.”

  “Suspicions?”

  “About Mary Beth’s death.”

  “Is that why you were asking questions around town?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, what? You think Mary Beth was, what? Murdered?”

  “Yes. I’d convinced myself that it was something else, but now…”

  “Now Boone attempts suicide, too, and that’s just one too many suicides for you to swallow. Sorry. Poor choice of words.”

  “Not so poor. You said this was a small town. Hasn’t anybody in Greenwood noticed that suicide is going around like the mumps?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “People think it’s strange.”

  “And?”

  “They just think it’s strange. Not suspicious. Just strange.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s suspicious. But I don’t know what you’re going to do about it, if that’s why you’re staying around.”

  “Well, I have no plans for suicide… so if I turn up some morning sleeping under an exhaust pipe, it wasn’t my idea, if anybody asks.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get into this.”

  “Crane.”

  “Yes?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. Go home to your kid, Laurie. I appreciate you picking me up, driving me around today.”

  He got out of the car.

  “If you want a ride to Fair View to see Boone tomorrow, or any day,” Laurie said, “just call. Mom can sit with Brucie.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe she’ll wake up, Crane.”

  “Maybe she will.”

  Laurie drove off.

  He turned and looked at Boone’s house. One of the upstairs windows was boarded up. Odd.

  He knocked on the door.

  Billy answered. He seemed to have grown a little.

  “Hello, Billy.”

  Billy looked at Crane through squinty eyes, not recognizing him at first. When recognition came, it was a wave of disgust over the six year old’s face. He turned away and yelled, “Daddy!” and disappeared.

  A moment later, like a special effect in a movie, the young version of Billy was replaced by the older one: Patrick. He was in a white shirt with his collar and tie loose. His eyes behind the wire frames showed confusion, though it was clear he, unlike Billy, knew Crane immediately.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, without hostility.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Crane said.

  Patrick shrugged. “I moved in the day after it happened. That’s, what? Two days ago. Come in, come in.”

  Crane did, but they did not advance to the living room; they stayed right in the entryway, standing awkwardly, like strangers thrown together at a cocktail party. Or a wake.

  “Don’t you have an apartment in Fair View?” Crane said.

  “Yes. And I considered staying there, to be closer to Annie. Not that I could do anything for her at this point.”

  “Why move in here?”
>
  “Greenwood’s where Billy goes to school. Fair View is thirty miles from here. So I moved in to be with Billy. So his life wouldn’t be too disrupted.”

  Billy was sitting on the floor in the next room watching TV.

  “It’s hell to have your life disrupted,” Crane said.

  “Look. I have had some rough damn days, here, you know. Yesterday I didn’t get into work at all. Today at work I had to make up for yesterday. I haven’t even had a chance to get back to the apartment to move some of my stuff here. I just packed a bag and came, to be with my son.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “My ex-wife. A disturbed, irrational woman. I can’t say I feel much love for her anymore. The only thing I feel is sorry for her.”

  “Sorry for her.”

  “Crane, what are you doing here? Somebody called you about Annie, and you came, but there’s nothing for you to do here. She’s in a coma.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You saw her, then.”

  “I saw her.”

  Patrick swallowed. Suddenly his face looked white, long. “Poor Annie,” he said. Looking at the floor.

  “Who did it?”

  “Who did what?”

  “Shoved those pills in her.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “It’s down. Who did it?”

  “She did it.”

  “She took those pills herself? Voluntarily?”

  “She was irrational! Troubled.”

  “She was almost murdered is what she was, and I want to know your part in it.”

  “My part…? Get the fuck out of here.”

  “You tell me first. Who did this? You don’t have the balls to do it yourself, Patrick. Who did it?”

  Patrick spoke through his teeth. “She did it. You can’t stuff a bottle of barbiturates down somebody’s throat. They take it because they want to.”

  “What was she doing with barbiturates? I know how she feels about drugs.”

  “Didn’t you talk to the doctor? She had a prescription. They were to help her sleep.”

  “Why would she be having trouble sleeping?”

  “Maybe it was because she and her new boyfriend had a spat, and he ran out on her.”

  “Fuck you, Patrick.”

  “Get out of my house.”

  “This isn’t your house. We both know whose house it is.”

  “Get out!”

  Billy called from the other room. “Daddy?”

  “It’s okay, Billy,” Patrick said. Then to Crane, no sarcasm, no anger: “Please. Just go.”

  “I’ll go. For now.”

  Crane was halfway down the front walk when he heard Patrick’s voice behind him: “I hope to God Annie comes out of it. Then she can tell you herself what happened.”

  Crane kept walking.

  “Crane, I wouldn’t hurt my son’s mother. I wouldn’t do that.”

  That stopped him: he felt himself believing Patrick again. Goddamnit.

  “What really happened, Patrick?” he said, turning.

  “I told you. I told you. I fucking told you! She was troubled. She wasn’t herself. You left town, and…”

  He went to Patrick. “And what?”

  “Well. In a way maybe I did contribute to it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I petitioned the court for custody of my son.”

  “You what?”

  “I wanted Billy and I thought I could get him. Annie wouldn’t have come off too good in court, a woman who’d made no effort to get a job, instead spending all her energies trying to destroy me and the company that employed me and, indirectly, fed her and my son. Also, she’d had a man living in the house with her—you—and that wouldn’t have looked good for her.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last week.”

  “You’d just served the papers on her? You hadn’t gone to court yet?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And so she took a bottle of sleeping pills? Get serious.”

  “That was just a small part of it.”

  “Was it.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the big part?”

  “Well, the fire, of course.”

  “What fire?”

  “Didn’t you know? Four days ago, there was a fire here. Neither she nor Billy were in the house. Some rooms upstairs were pretty badly burned; her study was gutted. The fire department, such as it is, stopped it from spreading throughout the house. We were lucky.”

  “Her study was gutted?”

  “Yes. That’s what set her off, Crane, I’m sure.”

  Crane looked up at the boarded-over window on the second floor.

  “Her book,” Patrick was saying, “her research files. Everything. All of it. Burned up in the fire.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was hard to tell where the overcast day ended and the smoke from Kemco began. The buildings with their aqua plastic walls and intertwining pipes seemed to suit this bleak, cold afternoon. So did the snow-flecked empty field across the way, that immense balding dandruff-spotted scalp, farmland where no one dared grow anything.

  He thanked Laurie for driving him out there. She said she could wait for him and drive him back when he was done, but he told her no, he was quite sure he could find a ride back.

  They’d been to see Boone again. The doctor had let him sit in the room with Boone, for about an hour. She looked pale. A little thin. But still very pretty. She seemed to be asleep. He found himself thinking of Mary Beth. He remembered the conscious decision he’d made at the funeral not to look at her as she lay in her casket. If Boone died, he knew he would see her this way, forever: forever in a coma. He knew it and hated it. But he would be here. Even as she deteriorated physically, getting thinner, thinner. Intravenous feeding could keep her alive; but she’d still seem to waste away. But he would be here. Every day, as long as it took. Sitting in her room. Till she woke up. Or not.

  Soon he’d have to deal with his parents. He hadn’t called them before he left; he wasn’t up to arguing about this. He’d written them a letter, telling them he was dropping out for the semester and going back to Greenwood. They knew nothing about him and Boone; they wouldn’t begin to understand what this was about. Eventually he would have to tell them. Eventually he would have to tell them he’d drawn out from his bank account all of the school money he worked for this summer, to live on here.

  But that would have to wait.

  Boone came first.

  Boone, and Kemco.

  He walked into the building that housed the executive offices; the receptionist looked at him from her window in her wall and asked him who he was there to see. He told her Mr. Boone was expecting him. Which was nonsense, but Patrick wasn’t likely to turn him away, either.

  He sat down on one of the plaid-upholstered couches. He noticed that the quote from the founder (“Industry is people”) was hanging crooked in its frame, above the other couch. He got up and straightened it and sat down again.

  Patrick was in his shirt-sleeves with a dark blue tie, and slacks and face about the same color gray. He stood on the other side of the turnstile that separated the reception area and hallway, keeping it between him and Crane.

  “What do you want?” he said. His voice seemed strained. The eyes behind the wire frames blinked.

  Crane stood. He put on a small smile. “Just want to talk, Patrick.”

  “We talked last night.”

  “Patrick. Please. I came to apologize, in a way. Could we go to your office?”

  Patrick studied Crane for what seemed like a long time. The smile made Crane’s face hurt, but he kept it on.

  Finally Patrick motioned at him to come on, nodding at the receptionist that it was okay. Crane went through the turnstile and followed Patrick down the long, rather wide hall.

  Patrick told his secretary to hold all calls and closed the door behind Crane and himself. He sat behind his desk. Folded h
is hands. Crane took a chair and sat across from him, not bothering to smile anymore, but keeping a neutral expression.

  “I’ll go to the police,” Patrick said.

  “What are you talking about, Patrick?”

  “I’m just someone trying to make a living, trying to raise a son. I can’t take this harassment. I won’t be harassed, Crane!”

  “Patrick. I told you. I came to apologize.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean it. I’ve been out of line. Finding out what happened to Boone threw me out of whack. You can understand that.”

  Patrick nodded, slowly, still not quite buying it.

  “Surely, you admit some strange things have been happening,” Crane said.

  “Yes. I admit that.”

  “Like the fire. Like the suicides.”

  “I told you last night, the police and fire department agreed that there was no evidence of arson.”

  “I know you did. But you can understand why I can’t get too worked up over the opinions of Greenwood’s Finest.”

  Patrick shrugged. “Crane, if I believed that that had been arson, I’d be the first to complain.”

  “Well, sure. I can see how you’d want to do that. I can see where a complaint might be in order.”

  Patrick shifted in his swivel chair, studying Crane, looking for sarcasm, not quite finding it.

  Crane said, “I came here to tell you I’m leaving Greenwood.”

  “You are?”

  “That’s right. I’ll send you my address and phone number, in Iowa City. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me posted, where Boone’s concerned.”

  Patrick lifted his eyebrows. “Well, of course. Why not.”

  “I know it must’ve been a blow to Boone to lose all her research materials. To have her entire manuscript, months of work, go up in smoke.”

  He nodded. “She was devastated. As I told you last night, I’m convinced that’s why she did what she did.”

  “Took those pills.”

  “Yes.”

  “At least there’s one encouraging note.”

  “Yes?”

  “When we spoke, you and I, five weeks ago, you said Kemco itself was concerned about some of Boone’s findings… the high incidence of certain illnesses among employees and their families, for example. You said Kemco would be doing its own study into the matter.”