by Farris, John
“I’ll speak for him,” Practice said.
“I’d like permission to move him to the hospital.”
“I don’t mind if he stays here,” the Major said.
The doctor pursed his lips. “Hospital’s a better place for him. If pneumonia is brewing, it could explode anytime. Be real dangerous for him, right on the heels of shock.”
“The telephone is in the hallway,” Major Kinsaker said. “You’ll want to call for an ambulance.”
Captain Liles got ponderously to his feet, snapping his notebook shut.
“Wonder if I could ask the boy a few questions, Doctor?”
“I’m sorry, he’s not awake. I thought a sedative would do him good. He may sleep until early tomorrow morning.” Liles muttered something under his breath, looking at the chewed end of his cigar.
“Bad break. Jim, I’m going to send a man along to the hospital with the boy. I’ll have someone outside his door around the clock. Well, I guess I’d better get down below. Major, awful sorry about the disturbance.”
“It’s all right, Captain. A shocking thing.”
“My job to get in touch with Guthrie,” Practice said. “He and Dore will want to be at the hospital.”
As they were leaving, he had a glimpse of Steppie’s face in a doorway at the rear of the house.
The Major saw them all to the door.
Practice put a hand on the sleeve of Liles’s slicker as they were walking through the rain to their cars.
“Just a minute, Captain. I have some more information about the murder.”
They stood close together, with the rain dripping from the brims of their hats, as Practice told the story of Val St. George. Liles’s face had an eager, excited expression as he finished.
“Damn! Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier today?”
“I couldn’t. I was hoping to find Val St. George myself and talk to him. That seemed easy enough.”
Liles nodded. “So Lucy knows him. But where is Lucy?”
“I don’t know. She left the mansion about nine this morning.”
“Maybe her brother can tell us.”
“I hope so.”
“I don’t like to ask this. Is there any possibility of an affair between Lucy and this St. George?”
Practice shook his head irritably. “There couldn’t be. Don’t you understand? Lucy thinks he’s just another crippled bird that can be healed with the right combination of patience and fellowship.”
“She should have spoken up last night,” Liles said angrily. “It must have been obvious to her that this St. George fellow did the job on the Governor’s room.”
“I know she was thinking about it. But she didn’t want to believe he could be capable of such violence.”
“Let’s hope she doesn’t find out the hard way. All right, Jim. I’m calling men in from four other troops on this. I know the city police will cooperate fully. From the description you’ve given me, St. George shouldn’t be hard to locate. I think we’d better start with Dr. Childs and work backward. He’s likely to know where Lucy can be found. I have a couple of more questions. They may not be easy to answer, but it’s my job to ask them.”
“I’ll try to answer.”
“What does Val St. George have against John Guthrie?” Practice hesitated. The information Liles had asked for was dangerous. If the wrong people knew, John Guthrie could be utterly ruined overnight, disgraced as few men know disgrace. Without turning around, Practice felt the pressure of Major Kinsaker from within the house; he wondered if the Major was watching them closely as they stood in the rain, engrossed in tragedy.
Practice knew that Liles was a good policeman, thorough and honest. All he asked was that those involved in an investigation be honest with him, so that he could do his work. In a few seconds Practice weighed all his doubts, and decided that the Captain must be trusted.
“John Guthrie is his father.”
Liles’s eyebrows drew together. “That’s straight?”
“Yes. One thing more.”
“My God. What else?”
“I don’t think Guthrie is even aware of the boy’s existence.”
Liles’s expression became bleak. “I’ll be damned. This is a real bomb. A real, live, ugly—I never thought I’d find myself in the middle of one like this. No wonder you were so reticent inside the house. I was getting ready to ream you good for withholding information. Lucky thing I didn’t.” His eyes flickered to the front of the house. “If the Major even had a smell of this, he’d tear Guthrie’s guts out.”
“The trouble is,” Practice said quietly, “I think the Major has more than a smell.” He told Liles about the two men who had visited Billie Charmian a week ago and mistreated her.
“A couple of hardcases. So they know about the kid, and they know he was in the state hospital. Did Dr. Mackerras mention if anyone else was asking about St. George recently?”
“No. But they wouldn’t have to go to him. I suppose a dozen staff members have access to patients’ records. If the request seemed harmless enough, and the bribe was big enough, the dossier on St. George could have been made available to others.”
Liles nodded. “More than likely we’re not the only ones looking for St. George. He’d better be dug in real good. But don’t worry, Jim, we’ll get to him first.”
“I hope so.”
Liles nodded again and started off toward his car, where a patrolman waited behind the wheel. Then he turned.
“Thanks for leveling with me. I know it was a hard decision to make.”
“Not so hard, Mike.”
“I’m glad to know I’m trustworthy,” Liles said, a brief sad smile appearing on his face. “Now I’ve got a nasty job to do, and I wish to hell there was a way to get out of it.”
“Hugh McAdams’s parents?”
“Right.” His expression became savage. “That bastard St. George. Maybe he’s off his rocker, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I hope he tries something when we’re pulling him in.” Liles drew up his shoulders in a spasm of disgust and hatred, wiped the rain off his cheek with the edge of his hand, and said, “What about the Governor? How much can you tell him?”
“I don’t know,” Practice admitted. “That’s up to Guthrie himself.”
He stood beside his car until the dark blue patrol car had backed out of the driveway, then he slid in under the wheel and glanced for a moment at the Kinsaker house. On the second floor, where the stairs would be, he glimpsed someone standing behind the curtains, looking out, and thought that it was Steppie, but he couldn’t be sure.
Just as he was leaving, an ambulance from the city hospital came down the street with its red light flashing and turned into the driveway.
• 14 •
In the west, over the river valley, the darkened sky was streaming back like smoke from the molten wreckage of the setting sun, and except for a tatter of squall blowing out along the ridges of the north, the valley lay clear of rain, glistening and green.
Governor John Guthrie sat in a chair he had pulled close to the windows of the sitting room, his back to Practice, an untouched drink in his hand. He had been sitting that way for almost half an hour, saying nothing, staring at the sunset and the slowly clearing sky over the river.
Practice stood near the doorway to Dore’s room, his weight against the wall, a homemade cigarette burning itself out between dry lips, his eyes on Guthrie’s back. He was trying to decide how he felt about this man, and it wasn’t easy, because he had discovered that his feelings for Guthrie were almost as ambivalent and contradictory as Guthrie’s own life had been.
The resentment Practice had felt six years ago at being bluffed and bullied from the edge of disaster by Guthrie gradually disappeared as a bedrock dedication to living took hold, and from that time there was no recurrence of resentment or hostility. As he became more valuable to his employer, the balance of dependence shifted and became more nearly equal, so that what was left of his pride suffered
no severe strains.
And yet, he admitted to himself, the more self-sufficient he became, the more remote he was from Guthrie. Their friendship was real, but passive.
He had always thought of Guthrie as a man firmly in control of his own life, who had by strength and foresight avoided the defeats and disillusionments that characterized the lives of most people. But in the past twenty-four hours Practice had learned differently, and was nearly as shocked as Guthrie must have been in the rare moments when his energy ebbed and the specter of Molly Kinsaker intruded on him. Somehow Guthrie had adjusted to a tragedy that would have killed other men, and Practice felt a grinding sympathy for him. The tragedy was harder to bear because it must never have been admitted. It was still a fresh wound which the Major wouldn’t allow to heal, for reasons of his own. And John Guthrie must have lived for four long years wondering why. Why had the Major worked to elect Guthrie as Governor, even after Guthrie had split the party in a radical move? Why did Guthrie insist on stripping the Major of his power, when there was tragedy enough between them? He had never wavered once from his goals; his determination, at least in Practice’s eyes, had never flagged for more than a few scattered hours during all the months of his term as Governor.
But the cost had been paid, every day. Dore had felt the emotional sapping first, and perhaps Chris had felt it, too. Then Practice had seen the slow erosion of energy and resolve. For the last few weeks Guthrie had been running on grit alone.
He sat now in his chair with unseeing eyes, like a man who will never rise.
The attempt on his son’s life, the new tragedy erupting from a nearly forgotten episode in his past, had engulfed John Guthrie. He was trying to fight, but he was weak. And Practice didn’t know what he could do to help.
Guthrie slowly lifted his glass to his lips but didn’t drink.
“Should be a beautiful day tomorrow,” he said tonelessly.
Practice shifted his weight and glanced at his watch, wondering why he hadn’t heard from Mike Liles. So far the state patrol hadn’t been able to get in touch with either Dr. Childs or Lucy, and a worm of alarm caused Practice’s shoulders to tingle. The taste in his mouth was still pure dirt, as it had been half an hour ago when he finished telling Guthrie about Val St. George.
The telephone rang and Practice scooped up the receiver before the bell had stopped. He listened for a few moments, his eyes on the reflection of the Governor’s face in the darkening glass of the windows, then hung up with a murmured, “I’ll tell him.”
“That was Dore,” he said to the motionless Guthrie. “She said that Chris is resting comfortably and wants to know when you’re coming.”
There was no answer and Practice scowled in irritation, then paced the wide room, hoping Guthrie would tell him to sit down, hoping for any sign or spark to indicate that the formidable engine that had driven the man for so long was about to come to life.
“A lot of people wondered why I married Dore,” Guthrie said unexpectedly, in a low voice. “I was forty-one and I had a lot of women on the string, elegant women, brainy, good-looking, the works. I might have married a few of (hem. Instead, I picked Dore. She wasn’t dumb, but she wasn’t bright. Just a kid, too, packing around all that sex, hut naive as hell. I suppose people say I tumbled for the sex and didn’t see another goddamn thing, but that’s baloney.”
“Sure,” Practice said encouragingly.
“Baloney,” Guthrie repeated after a while. “I married Dore because she was woman through and through, not some oversensitized and desexed bitch who has to cut a man’s throat for every smile she gives him. Dore gave me every ounce of woman in her, without a thought of what she was getting in return. Because, you see, with Dore it wasn’t an effort, she was born that way. It was her nature; and when I had Dore close by I could stop clanking around and let down my guard and stop thinking about what it was to be a man and just experience it. You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Well, that’s over with,” Guthrie said resignedly. “Was over a long time ago. Dore smarted up. She wanted to be like all the other women she saw. She listened to the trash they put out when they’re all by themselves, and so she lost interest in just being a woman; she became some kind of godforsaken creation, if you get me. And I let it happen.”
“You could change all that.”
“Know what I feel sometimes? I look at Dore and I feel so disgusted I want to strip all those brassy clothes off her ass and put her back in blue jeans where she belongs. Better still, there’s a place I know out West, a canyon deep in the Montana highlands south of Billings. Nobody ever goes there. I’d like to take Dore and sheep-dip her until her hair’s back the way it was and all the goo melts off her skin. Turn her loose naked in the grass beside the river, until she gets brown all over, until she’s natural again. I wouldn’t mind a spell of that kind of life myself.”
“Then, get going.”
Guthrie reached down and set the glass with its untouched whiskey on the rug. His hand was shaking.
“What the hell?” he said. “When she hears what I’ve done ...”
“She won’t let it hurt her. She may be shocked by Molly Kinsaker’s death and upset for a little while over Billie Charmian, but she’ll get over those things because she has to—for your sake.”
Guthrie rubbed his face, then let his hands fall into his lap. The glass in the window was gold from the setting sun.
“I never loved Billie,” he said. “I seduced her, pure and simple. It lasted three days. I wanted her and I had her. She didn’t resist. She cried after the first time, but then she wanted me as much as I did her.” His face contorted. “God! She was a sweet girl.”
“If it hadn’t been you ...”
“Don’t say that. I could have cared about poor Ted Croft, dying. But all I thought about was going to bed with Billie. I think she loved me, but she let me go without saying a word. I never went back.”
Guthrie rose from his chair and hurried into Dore’s bedroom. He was gone for a quarter of an hour, but when he returned, he looked better. He had shaved and changed his shirt. There was a little crawl of blood near his left earlobe, where he had nicked himself, and the shaved moon of his jaw was a pale blue.
He smiled wanly at Practice.
“Know what I’ve been thinking? The boy might be killed when Liles’s men try to arrest him.”
“It’s possible.”
Guthrie nodded, absorbed. “I want him dead and wiped out of my life, because I can’t face him.” He sat down at a writing desk and drew out a sheet of paper with the Governor’s letterhead, selected a pen, and sat staring at the paper with his fists clenched.
“All I want is to save something of myself.”
“Do you think you can accomplish that by resigning your office?”
Guthrie glanced up in annoyance.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll do or where I’ll go when the boy tells his story.”
“If he tells it.”
“If he doesn’t, the Major will. All the Major has to do is plant a few notions with the right newspapermen, and they’ll dig up the rest.”
“Use your head. Suppose Val St. George does talk and someone without authority hears him. It’s going to sound like the ravings of an insane murderer with some imaginary grudge against you. Even the lowest type of newshound is going to think twice about accepting such a story, and proving it will be next to impossible. Without documented corroboration from Val St. George or Billie Charmian, there is no story, and I’m convinced only Billie’s word could damage you conclusively. She’d never admit it. No paper in the state hates you enough to print a story based on St. George’s confession, whatever it may be. Mike Liles will see to it that the boy’s signed confession doesn’t damage you. As for the Major, he’ll have only the wildest suspicions, enough for a rumor campaign if he chooses. Survival may take some gumption on your part, but it won’t be fatal.”
Guthrie’s face was bleak, but
a hint of determination showed around the mouth. He sat straighter in his chair, staring down at the blank paper.
“Wherever he’s hiding, the boy still has his sword right at my throat. Because, Jim, the Major might get in touch with him first. And when he does, he’ll squeeze out every drop of information that’s in the boy. If he needs evidence, he’ll manufacture it and drop it right in the lap of an editor like Swenson. If the story sees print in just one edition, even if a retraction is forced later on and the whole shoddy affair hushed up, the boy will have realized his wish—he’ll have my head.”
The room had darkened and Practice switched on a table lamp, then drew the drapes across the high windows.
“The only way for the Major to get his hands on Val St. George is for Val to give himself up to him. That’s not even worth considering. John, I’m not even convinced that the Major would smear you if he had the boy in his pocket.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’s had other means of ruining you, these years, and he hasn’t done it.”
Guthrie looked up at him.
“You don’t understand the Major. He could never bring himself to use his daughter’s name for revenge against me.” His head dropped until his chin was nearly on his chest. “Jim, how did you know what happened to Molly Kinsaker?”
“I only learned about it today. Steppie told me. She’d seen the movie the Major has.”
“I’ve heard about that movie,” Guthrie muttered.
“Why did you go along with it, John? The accident wasn’t pleasant, but it wouldn’t necessarily have meant the end of your political career.”
Guthrie’s mouth twisted. “I was very, very drunk. By the time I sobered up enough to realize what had happened, the story was already out that Molly had fallen from her horse. Even then I wanted to admit the truth, but the Major wouldn’t let me do it. Only he and Fletcher Childs knew what had happened.”
“What did happen? Do you remember?”
“It was five years ago. Sometimes I only see the accident clearly in nightmares. What really happened, and what happens only in nightmares—it’s hard to say. Molly wanted to go jeeping. I felt fine when we started out ...”