“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess it was my fault. I didn’t mean to spook you.”
The dead eyes considered me and the mouth moved silently. Then his hands rose and he seemed to be making circling signs in the air.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He wants something to write with,” Cyn said. I took out my notepad and handed it to him, along with a pen, and he tried to edge up in the bed to write but grimaced. I bent over and watched him trace the letters, one by one, in big, circular strokes: O-S-W-
My skin went cold.
OSWALD, he had written. MY FRIEND.
“Your friend?” I asked.
He began to write again, and this time I saw another name: KENNEDY.
“Yes? What about him?”
I watched the pen move again, afraid of what the letters would spell: OSWALD KILLED KENNEDY.
“Yes?”
There was no other sound in the room for us but the scratching of the pen on the paper.
He finished writing then and handed me the pad.
I made myself look down and flinched.
There was no mistaking what he had written. It was a single sentence, angling diagonally across the paper and almost spilling off the side. But the words were clear.
JFK IT WAS MY FAULT
TWENTY-EIGHT
We stood in the hallway. The air was ice, and the steps of nurses moving along the corridor were hollow.
“I didn’t have any idea,” Cyn said, hugging her shoulders. “All these years.”
“All these years,” I agreed. “It’s a heavy load to carry.”
“Do you think he’ll get his voice back now?”
“I don’t know.”
I was looking down at the words he had scrawled on the pad, line after line in his slanting handwriting until he had used most of the paper. I went to put the pad back into my pocket, and a piece of paper that had been caught up in its pages fluttered to the ground. Before I could see what it was, Cyn bent down and picked it up.
“What’s this?” she asked.
I looked at it. It was my list of suspects.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“Alan, don’t say that. It’s something. What are these names for? Is this the list of people you suspect?”
I started to answer, but didn’t.
“It is, isn’t it? And my name’s on this list. Is that it? Do you really suspect me? Do you really still think I had a hand in all this?”
“No, of course not. I was just looking at logical possibilities.”
“And I’m a logical possibility.”
“Logically, yes.”
She shut her eyes and shivered. “Oh, God.”
“Cyn—”
“No. Don’t say anything. I need some time to sort this out.” She tried to smile, failed, and stepped back, her face frightened. “I mean, I thought I’d put all this behind me. I lived with it for years, the suspicion, feeling like half a person because of what happened a long time ago. I thought you were different, that we …”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re sorry?” At first I thought she was going to wade into me, but then she seemed to shrink with the hurt. “Well, so am I.”
She started away from me, turning her back so I wouldn’t see the tears.
“Cyn—”
“Don’t say anything. I’ll get a cab.”
I stood there in the corridor like a poleaxed ox and watched her go.
Then I turned back toward the ward. I closed my notebook, put it in my pocket, and found my way out of the hospital.
“I figured you’d be coming,” Staples said. We were sitting in his private office, and he had a quizzical look on his face. “You know, I never picked you for somebody with that kind of pull. Who the hell do you know?”
“Nobody,” I said.
“Somebody from the GAO called me. Don’t tell me you go higher than that.” He shook his head. “Well, I’ve been in the game too long to argue. I may not like it, but I don’t argue. Tell me something, though. Did you try the same stunt with Cooney?”
“Yes.”
“Told you to take a jump, did he? Last of the old-time bosses. Runs his parish like his own little island. Doesn’t want any federal aid.”
“Looks like it.”
“So what kind of files do you want to look at?”
“I want to see what you have on the investigation of Douglas Devlin’s death. Then I’d like to see what you have so far on Clyde Fontenot. I’m especially interested in the interviews you’ve done with possible suspects.”
“You don’t want much.”
“You asked what I wanted.”
“Yeah.” Staples shook his head in disgust and swung his chair to the side. He punched a button on his intercom. “Gillespie, bring in the files on the Devlin case from last year. Everything we’ve got.”
“Do you have a place I can read and make notes?” I asked.
His brows arched. “You take the cake …”
I didn’t move, waiting.
“Okay, you can use the interview room.”
He led me out of his office and down the hall to a door. He opened it, and I saw a plain metal table and some metal folding chairs.
“This is where we beat our suspects. The deputy’ll bring the files in. Don’t take anything out. If you do, it won’t matter who you know inside the Beltway.”
I started through the files at one-thirty, and it took me a couple of hours to go over what they had on the Devlin affair. I pulled out my list of suspects and made notes as I checked each person’s alibi.
Buck Devlin I had already eliminated, so I put a check mark by his name.
Sam Pardue hadn’t been interviewed, nor had Dr. Alvin Childe, which wasn’t odd, since there’d been no reason to suspect them.
Gene McNair didn’t own the property across the stream then, so nobody had come to him, either.
Adolph Dewey, the assistant postmaster, had apparently been asked about mail deliveries to the Devlin house and whether he’d seen anything unusual that day. The notation by the investigating deputy was that Dewey had been at an all-day postal seminar in Baton Rouge and had referred the investigator to one of his colleagues.
I put a check mark by Dewey’s name.
Blake Curtin. He had been questioned because, as a scribbled note stated, he did a lot of work at the Devlin place. But Cyn herself had vouched for him. Which meant he could also vouch for Cyn.
And that left only one name: Pat Staples.
I closed the files and went back down the hall to the sheriff’s office and told the deputy I was ready for the next load. He gave me a disdainful look and told me to go back to the interview room. Twenty minutes later, after, I figured, the deputy had drunk his cup of coffee and reread the newspaper to show me he didn’t give a damn who I was or who I knew, he came in and dumped the files on the current case in front of me.
“And I’ll be checking ’em all when you’re done,” he warned.
I read for another hour and a half, wondering what they’d deleted. There was a coroner’s report, statements by myself and Bertha Bomberg, and an interview with Clyde Fontenot’s wife.
The coroner’s report said Fontenot had been killed by a high-velocity bullet of between .25 and .30 caliber. That left the Mannlicher-Carcano in the running, because 6.5 mm was roughly .25 caliber.
Oswald’s ghost?
I skimmed through the interviews for names I recognized.
Buck Devlin was missing. Evidently, no one had thought him worth talking to. So was Dewey, the postmaster, and Sam Pardue. Gene McNair had been interviewed and claimed he was at a business lunch in New Orleans. He named his brother, a judge, and a couple of business associates. It could be checked, but I had a feeling it would hold up.
There was a note that Blake Curtin had been seen by several of his neighbors at his trailer early the morning of the murder. It would have been technically possible for him to have sneaked a
way, but I thought it unlikely.
There was a note that inquiries were being made as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Cynthia Jane Devlin and there was a reference to a case number. I wrote down the number and went on reading. And halted.
Dr. Alvin Childe had been seen driving slowly along Highway 952 at six-thirty on the morning of the murder. He had been spotted by a deputy on patrol, who had stopped to talk with the good doctor. Childe had confessed to being a bird-watcher, which was known to be true, and had gone on his way. The deputy had noticed a pair of binoculars on the front seat of Childe’s car. Later, when questioned, Childe had stated that he had seen nothing suspicious during his drive.
I came to the name Pat Staples.
Once again, I had no way of checking his whereabouts.
I closed the interview files. There was only one folder left, and as I drew it to me across the table, I saw that it bore the case number I had copied earlier.
I opened the folder, knowing already what I would find.
It was a photocopy of an old arrest record for Cynthia Jane Brown. There was also a copy of the verdict, a presentencing report from Probation and Parole, and a statement by the parole officer, stating that Miss Brown had fulfilled the conditions of her release. The final document was signed by the then governor. It was an unconditional pardon, which was standard in the case of first offenders.
I closed the file and went back to the main office.
Staples was standing just inside the counter, talking to one of his deputies.
“Well, did you solve it?” he asked.
I thought about what Blake Curtin had written and wondered how Staples would take it, but decided the time wasn’t right. Maybe, I thought, it would never be right.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t solve it.”
The sheriff tisked and shook his head. “Well, write me a letter when you do,” he said.
I stopped. What was struggling to come free in my mind?
It was midafternoon and a summer storm was brewing. I drove out to the cemetery, impelled by something in my subconscious that told me it was all here and that all I needed to do was make the right connection. I walked back to the Devlin plot, but this time I went past Timothy’s obelisk and contemplated the markers of his son and grandson.
Thunder rumbled over the hills, and I smelled rain. I thought about another cemetery, the one where my parents were buried. They had loved each other, I knew that now. They had lived together, fought, and hated, and for years I had thought I was the cause of their problem. It was my existence that had made my father a slave to the adding machine and my existence that had made my mother desperate not to forfeit her youth.
But in the last few days I realized I had been victim of a child’s logic and that they had stayed together not because of me but out of love. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of passionate love they had once had, but I remembered the tears on my father’s face when my mother had been buried, and I knew now how deeply he had felt it. How deeply he had to have felt it.
Love.
Timothy had loved his sons, but he had loved power and wealth just as much, and because of that one son had turned out a weakling.
Douglas Devlin had loved his wife, but in a selfish way that considered only how she could enhance his manly image. They had both loved their son, who lay at my feet.
A country had loved its young president, because he allowed them to believe in something that never was—Camelot.
And it had been ended by a man who loved no one, least of all himself, and now another man was carrying self-hatred with him to his grave.
All at once, with the suddenness of a clap of thunder, it came to me how it had happened, how it had to have happened. I stood quietly, listening to my inner voice, recoiling at what it was telling me, and when the first raindrops came pelting down, I didn’t feel them, because I was inside myself, experiencing the horror of it all. Only when lightning struck a few hundred yards away and I smelled the burning it left behind did I walk slowly back to the Blazer and take the lonely highway home.
I sat shivering in the living room, dripping water on the rug, and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except ending it now forever.
Write me a letter, Sheriff Staples had said.
I went to my study, took out a piece of white paper, and stared at it. Then I rolled it into my old Smith Corona, and with the wind blowing the branches outside against the eaves of the house I wrote Sheriff Staples a letter.
TWENTY-NINE
I sat on the log in my poncho listening to the sounds of dripping around me. In the last two days there had been deluges every afternoon, and for a while I’d worried that today’s storm would last into the night, ruining my plans. But the rain had quit just before six, and I had been able to negotiate the mud trail in the four-wheel drive. Two days ago I had sent a letter to Sheriff Pat Staples.
Dear Sheriff Staples:
This is far too important for a phone call, where there is always the possibility of a misunderstanding. What I have to say you have to see in black and white …
When I’d finished, I’d placed the letter in a plain white envelope and typed my return address in the upper left-hand corner. Then, beside the name of the addressee, I’d written, CONFIDENTIAL.
I wasn’t sure the letter would have the desired effect, but it seemed worth the try.
I will be at the deer stand on the old Pardue Tract. If you will come at 8 A.M., there is something I will show you …
Now all there was to do was wait, with the old .32 in my belt and a gnawing in my belly that told me I was doing something foolish—that people had been killed out here twice, and that one more could easily be accommodated.
So I tried to think about other things. I thought about the rest of Blake Curtin’s story, painfully scribbled out during my second visit to the hospital when I’d gone alone. It was a story about two friends who had served in the same Marine unit overseas and about how one of them had been discharged early and disappeared while the other finished out his enlistment and came home to the woods and hills of the Felicianas. It was about how one day this veteran had gone to New Orleans on a weekend and had run into his friend from the Marines standing on a corner passing out pamphlets. How they had renewed their acquaintance, and the man on the street corner had written his old friend, asking about job prospects in the tiny town of Jackson, and had been told there might be openings at the mental hospital there.
I thought about it and what had happened afterward. I remembered the face of the man in the hospital bed and I felt myself starting to tremble.
I began to breathe in and out slowly. That was all I needed now—a bad case of the shakes. My mind was wandering too much. I needed to keep my mind on the present danger. Kennedy was dead. The world had changed. It was all over, and nothing would set it right, just as nothing would ever change what had been between my parents. But Clyde Fontenot’s death was an occurrence that was still happening, because the greed that had caused it was still with us and would continue to be until it was blotted away.
Something crashed in the brush downhill and I jumped. It was a branch, no doubt, weighted down with water. I wasn’t afraid of the trail up from the creek, anyway; it was slick now, and nobody could scramble their way up without making noise. No. The killer I was waiting for would be coming from the east, from the direction of the blacktop. So I’d left the gate open.
I’d thought of climbing into the deer stand, where I could have a better view, but I’d realized quickly I would be a target, with no way out. Better down here, a few yards off the trail, just out of sight of the Blazer.
Another branch fell against the ground, only this time in the direction from which I’d come.
I tensed.
The only noise was the constant dripping around me, set off by the croaking of frogs down near the water.
I checked my watch. It was seven-thirty, another half-hour until the time set in the letter for the sheriff to come.
May
be I should call, make sure. I fingered the cell phone in my pocket, then removed my hand. He’d said he’d be here. Calling wouldn’t bring him any sooner.
I looked west across the valley. The red ball of the sun was balancing just over the trees. The atmosphere had cooled with the rain, but the earth was still hot and the air was full of water, so that my clothes stuck to my body.
A year ago a man had run down the hill on the far side of the valley, and when he’d reached the creek, a shot had rung out. The man had staggered halfway across the shallow stream and then fallen facedown on the other bank. A week ago another man had come down the trail on the opposite side of the valley, and when he had reached the spot where I now waited, another shot had felled him. He had been dragged to the creek and dumped in.
Two murders. But the same crime underlay them both.
I checked my watch again: seven thirty-five. I was getting antsy. If I’d read this wrong, I was going to look a terrible fool.
I shifted on my log, listening.
And a twig cracked.
I leaned forward, straining to hear.
All I heard was the dripping.
I held my breath, but when no other sound came, I started to relax.
And heard another snap.
It was closer, and this time there was no doubt, because it was followed immediately by the sound of a splash—someone stepping into a puddle. I had a sudden urge to run. This was insane. I was staking myself out here like a Judas goat. What had I been thinking to write that letter?
The footsteps were a few feet away, and then I saw his legs through the brush. They were blue.
I put my hand under my poncho and took the pistol out of my belt.
“I’m over here,” I said.
The legs halted and I saw the form shift position. I stood up slowly so that my upper body was visible over the brush.
“Are you looking for me?” I asked.
He was wearing a cowboy hat pulled low over his face, and it gave such a different image that at first I thought I had the wrong man. Then he raised his head a little so I could make out his face. But my eyes were focused on the rifle in his hands.
Assassin's Blood (The Alan Graham Mysteries) Page 19