Dead Man's Bridge

by Robert J. Mrazek

  “Why did you bring him here?” he whispered angrily. “You promised not to tell anyone, Evelyn.”

  As he came toward us, I saw that he was still dressed in his green medical center pajamas and bathrobe.

  “I thought it best,” she said.

  Palmer had the beach-boy looks of an aging surfer, with a thick helmet of grayish-blond hair and blue eyes like his wife.

  “Officer Cantrell has promised to protect you, Hoyt,” she said.

  “No one can protect me,” he groaned. “He’ll find me no matter where I go.”

  “Who will find you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s over the boy.”

  “What boy?” she demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  Palmer plodded in his slippers back into the first chamber, heading straight toward the burning candelabra like a moth seeking the flame. We followed after him, and I eased myself into one of the club chairs.

  “How did you get past the policeman at the hospital?” I asked.

  He forced a nervous grin at me.

  “I was hiding in one of the other rooms when the two of you went to check on me. I waited for you to go past before I took off. Evelyn and Inge were waiting for me in the parking lot. That’s when I decided to head—”

  “What did you mean about the boy?” interrupted Evelyn Wheatley. “I must know.”

  Before he could respond, the bells above us suddenly started to toll.

  “Oh, God,” Palmer cried out. “He’s up there . . . he’s coming for me.”

  I looked at my watch. It was exactly one o’clock.

  “The electricity must have been restored. The chimes are set to play automatically,” I said as they tolled.

  My words didn’t erase the look of terror in his face. His fear was like a tangible thing in the room with us, abetted by the constant moan of the wind outside the stone walls.

  “I don’t want to die,” he said. “I’m not a brave man, Evelyn.”

  “Die for what?” she asked harshly. “Pull yourself together and tell me what you did.”

  Hearing the tone of rebuke in her voice, he took in a deep breath. Running his hands through his blond hair, he said, “I . . . I’m not proud of what I’m about to tell you. I’ve spent my life trying to atone for it.”

  “Just like Wheatley and Massey,” I said.

  He nodded at me.

  I suddenly felt the hair prickling up on the back of my neck. It was my extra sense checking in again. Pulling out my radio, I called Captain Morgo. She responded immediately. I told her that we had found Hoyt Palmer and exactly where we were. I asked her to send over at least three officers to protect the tower building until an escort could be arranged to take him to a secure place.

  She told me that aside from Ken Macready and her two dispatchers, everyone was now deployed on the campus. She promised to send Ken right over and said she would call the sheriff’s office and ask that two deputies be dispatched immediately to escort Palmer back to the campus police building.

  Evelyn Wheatley waited until I had turned off the radio again before saying, “Tell me about this boy right now, Hoyt.”

  Turning to me with a grisly attempt at a smile, he said, “Did you join a fraternity in college?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Do you know what a closet case is?” he asked.

  “Everyone knows what a closet case is,” snapped Mrs. Wheatley. “Get on with it.”

  “Well . . . during our junior year, there was a bad drinking incident at Tau Epsilon Rho. Two girls were sent to the hospital, and we almost lost our charter over it. The following year, we were on probation . . . and our pledge class really suffered. We had to take guys who ordinarily would have been blackballed . . . you must know what I mean.”

  I nodded again to keep him talking.

  “Anyway, this one kid had showed up the first night with the rest of the herd . . . he was fat . . . and really clumsy. From the moment he arrived, he began bumping into furniture, knocking things over, spilling the punch . . . wherever he went, something happened. Another thing was that he couldn’t keep our names straight. He would call me Robin and he would call Robin Dennis. Maybe he was dyslexic . . . we didn’t know what dyslexia was in those days . . . he just seemed as dumb as a post. He would have been blackballed any other year, but because of the probation situation, the brothers ended up taking him.”

  “Many men are clumsy,” said Evelyn Wheatley. “Dennis was clumsy.”

  Palmer began to gnaw at the knuckle of his right thumb. I saw a spot of blood where his teeth had bitten hard. His eyes slowly became riveted on it.

  “Hoyt,” barked Evelyn Wheatley.

  “I . . . I was the one assigned to go to his room and tell him the good news,” he said, now unable to look at her. “When he opened the door and saw me standing there, he started beaming at me like it was Christmas morning. On the way back to the fraternity, he kept telling me it was the greatest thing to happen in his life.”

  “But he didn’t live happily ever after,” I said.

  “Looking back, I guess he wasn’t really a closet case . . . he was just a big gentle bear of a kid,” said Palmer, as if trying to make belated amends. “We started calling him Oaf. That became his pledge name. I don’t know . . . I guess some of the brothers hoped he would quit.”

  He paused to look across at me again. It was obvious he was one of them.

  “My mouth is very dry,” he said huskily, pointing at a bottle of water on the sideboard next to the table.

  I reached over and grabbed the bottle, passing it across to him. He took several swallows. When he put it down, his hands were shaking. Evelyn Wheatley looked away.

  “Eventually, even the other pledges didn’t want to have anything to do with him,” he said. “He was like that cartoon character who always had the rain clouds over his head. The brothers made him the butt of most of the hazing stunts. He always got the dirtiest pledge assignments.”

  The brothers, I thought, shaking my head in disgust.

  “But no matter what we did to him, he seemed to take it in stride. It was crazy. I mean, he was a big guy . . . like in Of Mice and Men. He was so naïve that he never even knew we were tormenting him. I guess it was actually kind of endearing in a way . . . but of course, we never saw it like that at the time. So he came in for even more special attention.”

  His lips were barely moving when he said, “I regret to say we did all kinds of things to him.”

  “What things?” demanded Evelyn Wheatley.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said, shaking his head. “But Creighton went along with it all like it was part of the wonderful bonding process you went through to become our brother.”

  It was the first time he had used the boy’s name.

  “On pledge night, someone . . . I think it was Dennis . . . came up with an idea to make him quit. While the other pledges were all gathered down in the chapter room, we took him up to our suite on the top floor.”

  “Who took him?” I asked.

  “Dennis . . . and Robin . . . and me,” he said, his voice trailing off to barely a whisper.

  “It started with a bottle of whiskey. There was about half a bottle left. We told him to chug the whole thing. All the other pledges were still celebrating down in the chapter room when we led him outside and over to the bridge.”

  I could see it all in my mind’s eye.

  “He was having trouble walking straight,” went on Palmer. “Dennis had brought a length of stout cord with him that he had found in the chapter room. It was braided with a lot of colors and was used on ceremonial occasions. He tied one end loosely around Creighton’s waist and the other end around one of the bridge stanchions. Then someone said, ‘It’s time for you to walk the line, Oaf.’”

  It was obvious from the pathetic expression on Palmer’s face that he had been the one.

  “Even as drunk as he was, Creighton started to shake. He looked at th
e three of us in turn and said, ‘Please don’t. I’m really afraid of heights.’

  “‘A big guy like you?’ someone shouted back at him.”

  Palmer’s voice caught in his throat, and he had to pause again. Tears appeared in his eyes, and he didn’t bother to wipe them away.

  “Truly . . . none of us expected him to get up there. We thought he would chicken out, and then we would tell him he didn’t pass muster to join the fraternity . . . And then he actually climbed up on the railing. ‘Walk the line, Oaf, and you can be our brother,’ someone shouted up at him. But he didn’t . . . he was just like . . . paralyzed . . . he kept his arms rigidly at his sides . . . like he was standing at attention.”

  Evelyn Wheatley was staring at him with absolute scorn in her eyes.

  “And then what?” she demanded.

  “He . . . he was actually sobbing . . . and then, oh, God . . . and then . . . he went over.”

  It was almost exactly as I had pictured it.

  “We . . . we all thought he would be saved by the rope Dennis had tied around him, but the rope was loosely tied . . . it just swept up over his shoulders. At the last second, he managed to get one hand inside the rope as it pulled tight around his neck . . . but it was . . . too late.”

  He was staring at his bloody knuckle again.

  He let out a long sigh and said, “When we pulled him back up, he was dead . . . his neck had been broken.”

  As if almost dreading what he would see, Palmer turned to look at Evelyn Wheatley again, his shoulders slumped.

  “And you just left him there like that?” she asked, her voice full of contempt.

  She seemed to ignore the fact that her husband and Massey had been fellow conspirators.

  “Jake,” I heard someone yell out from the stairwell, and Palmer bolted upright. I recognized Ken Macready’s voice. Going to the hidden passageway, I found the mechanism to slide the portal open.

  Ken was standing there, his parka covered with mud. He looked a lot more self-assured since I had last seen him. He had obviously come through the storm a better officer.

  “You look like hell, Jake,” he said, staring at my bloodstained waterproofs. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  “I was already there,” I said, asking him to remain in the stairwell and to be prepared for a possible intruder. As I went back inside, Ken drew his Glock 17 and checked it to make sure there was a round in the chamber.

  “Evelyn, we spent our lives atoning for it,” Palmer pleaded in a beseeching tone.

  “How did Taylor’s father find out the truth?” I asked him.

  “It’s his father?” asked Palmer.

  “I think so.”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “Only the three of us knew what happened, and none of us has ever breathed a word of it.”

  He looked over at Evelyn Wheatley, his eyes silently begging for forgiveness. Without another word, she stood up and left the secret chamber.

  Palmer stared down at his hands again and began to sob.

  23

  While standing with Ken in the stairwell, I called Captain Morgo on the radio and told her that the man who had killed Wheatley and Robin Massey was almost certainly the father of Creighton Taylor. She said she would call the sheriff’s office right away so they could swear out a warrant for his arrest as a material witness in the case.

  Ten minutes later, Jim Dickey’s two deputies arrived. Ken and I waited for them on the landing outside the chamber. The first one came bounding up the staircase two steps at a time. He wasn’t even breathing heavily when he joined us outside the passageway. The deputy was young and black with an open, intelligent face.

  “The cavalry has arrived,” he said with a grin.

  The second man lagged about forty feet behind him. When he finally huffed and puffed his way up to the landing, I saw he had a large paunch protruding through the open rain jacket over his uniform. The nameplate on his breast pocket read, “Dickey.” He was Big Jim’s older brother, Darryl.

  “The sheriff has decided to question this man Hoyt personally,” he said. “He wants him kept right here.”

  Big Jim obviously saw an opportunity to become the hero in a high-profile murder investigation. He didn’t want the principal witness exposed until he could bring him in with appropriate fanfare.

  “I think we should get him back to a secure place as quickly as possible,” I said. “The man stalking him is—”

  “I already told you. The sheriff wants him kept right here,” he repeated as if it were an imperial decree. In a way, it was. Once the missing persons alert for Hoyt Palmer had gone out, the sheriff was technically in charge of the case. I didn’t say anything further.

  “So what’s his problem?” he asked as Palmer continued to sob uncontrollably inside the chamber.

  I told him.

  “And the man who may have murdered his two friends is ex-army airborne,” I added. “He probably had Special Forces training. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait until the sheriff arrives to get the witness out of here.”

  He grinned back at me and said, “Son, I been huntin’ since I was five years old. I know how to stalk wild game as well as anybody, so don’t you worry now.” Turning to the black deputy, he said, “Marlon, you head back downstairs and guard the door. It’s the only way up. I’ll stay here.”

  I pulled Ken aside and told him not to leave Palmer alone for any reason until he was back in protective custody at either the sheriff’s office or the campus security police building.

  “Don’t worry, Jake,” he said.

  Evelyn Wheatley was waiting for me when I got to the foot of the iron staircase.

  The young black deputy was standing behind her in the stairwell next to the massive oak door. He forced the door open against the strength of the wind and held it for us until we went out. I heard it close behind us.

  I had forgotten to turn off the truck’s headlights, and the engine barely turned over before it finally caught. Putting the transmission into first gear, I headed across the storm-ravaged campus one more time.

  Evelyn Wheatley didn’t say a word on the ride back. When we arrived at the covered entrance of her husband’s fraternity house, she made no move to get out of the truck. Almost a minute passed while she sat quietly and stared out at the rain.

  “I felt such . . . such helpless anger as I listened to him,” she said finally. “And Dennis . . . he . . . he—”

  “Your husband spent his life trying to atone for it,” I said, interrupting her. “Try to always remember that.”

  Maybe the knowledge of what her husband did with Massey and Palmer had somehow released her from a lifelong obligation. When she turned to look at me, all the rage had drained out of her face. It looked delicate again.

  “I will never come back here,” she said softly.

  I went around and opened the passenger door for her. She stepped down from the cab, and I watched her walk across the entryway until she disappeared through the front door.

  24

  According to my watch, it was almost one thirty. I wondered if Bobby Devane or Brian Razzano had tried to reach me. Turning on the transceiver again, I checked with the dispatcher to find out whether I had any phone messages. Carlene was on duty and said that no calls had come in for me.

  As I pulled into the parking lot behind the police building, a sheet of wood paneling flew past the windshield as if it was a piece of stationery. Before I could get out of the truck, Carlene called me back to say that an army officer was trying to reach me from Washington. I asked her to patch him through. It was Mike Andrews.

  “Well, I tracked your man down,” he said. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought. He was no ticket puncher, Jake. The guy was one hell of a combat soldier, although he didn’t do so well later in the Pentagon under the eyes of the almighty brass. I guess he didn’t like ass-kissing as much as soldiering. Anyway, he made it to brigade command before they finally retired him.”

  So Taylor had got
ten his star. He had made brigadier general.

  “A retired sergeant major I trust told me that Frank Taylor was one of the best battalion commanders in Vietnam during that whole goddam war.”

  “Did he serve with the 101st?”

  “Yeah . . . he was leading a company when the 101st relieved Hue after Tet. He won a Silver Star at Perfume River . . . and later on another one near Pleiku.”

  “What regiment was he with?” I asked.

  I could hear him flipping the pages of a personnel file before he said, “The five oh deuce.”

  Ben Massengale hadn’t been so drunk after all. He had gotten it right.

  “Mike, you only owe me sixteen more favors,” I said.

  “The next time you’re in Washington, just take me to the Palm for lunch,” he came back. “I’ll order the twenty-four-ounce prime rib.”

  “Sure,” I said, signing off.

  So where are you now, General Taylor? I wondered.

  The squad room was mobbed as I came through the rear door and headed straight for the emergency medical technician who was sitting on one of the cots in the hallway. She looked as exhausted as I felt. I asked her to bring her medical kit to my cubicle. Taking off my waterproof jacket, I pulled up the lower edge of the bloody denim shirt and asked her to put a new bandage on the wounds.

  “Duct tape,” she laughed.

  She sliced the tape with medical scissors and gently pulled the ends away from the towel I had used for a bandage. The entrance and exit wounds looked like the puckered mouths of two trout.

  “This looks like a bullet wound,” she said, glancing up at me.

  “I was speared by a length of copper tubing. Just take care of it.”

  She looked back up at me dubiously before spraying anesthetic on the holes and taping on a new bandage.

  There was no doubt in my mind that General Taylor was within a few hundred yards of where I was now sitting. He wasn’t about to leave. Not when he had one more job to do.

  I tried to put myself in Taylor’s position when he had first arrived at St. Andrews a couple of nights earlier. He had probably never visited the campus. Thirty years ago, he might well have been deployed overseas. His son was here for only five months.