Gray Matter

by Shirley Kennett

“A violent man?”

  “A drunk, and violent whether he was soused or not. Wife was the same. I broke up fights at their place a number of times. Sometimes they went at each other with knives. Could never figure out which one to arrest, so I brought ’em both in a few times. Donald Lee got fired every couple of months, but always got taken back on when Clinger needed another warm body on the line.”

  “Did they have any friends in this area? Relatives?”

  Youngman snorted. “They didn’t have any family, either of them. Couldn’t find anybody to notify, nobody to bury them. As for friends, well, they weren’t exactly part of the social life here. Anybody went to visit that shack of theirs, he was likely to get a face full of buckshot. You could say they kept to themselves.”

  “Crazy or just antisocial?”

  “Personally, I thought they were both crazy, a mean kind of crazy like rabid dogs. Clinger said Donald Lee thought the factory was haunted. He kept talking about the machinery being taken over by vengeful spirits. Every time there was an accident out there, which was pretty often, Donald Lee said it was the spirits that made the machines hurt the operators. Sometimes I wondered if maybe he helped the spirits along a little bit.”

  “And the woman?”

  “Cathy Lee,” he said, looking thoughtfully out over his lawn. “I would describe her as evil. A crazy, evil woman.”

  Schultz picked up on the description as evil. It wasn’t something Youngman would say casually.

  “In a manner of speaking, you could say that Cathy Lee worked at Clinger’s too,” Youngman continued. “She’d head on out there every payday and swing her ass in front of the men coming out of the gate with cash in their pockets and hardons in their pants. She’d do ’em right in front of the plant, in a pickup truck with a camper top. Sometimes there’d be a line.” He shook his head, remembering. “Can’t imagine why anyone would pay money to be with that broad. I busted her a couple of times, but I stopped after Clinger put in a word for her. Seems he thought she was important for plant morale—probably getting a percentage of her price. Anyway, I didn’t think it was important enough to pursue it. It wasn’t like she was getting her arm twisted.”

  “Sounds as though they weren’t missed after they were killed.”

  “Nope. Not that we celebrated, or anything. I mean, it was an awful thing. Done with such hate…”

  “I understand they had a son.”

  “Yes. Paul, his name was. He was about ten years old when they first moved here, sixteen when his parents were murdered. Sometimes I wondered how they stopped fighting each other long enough to conceive a child. Or maybe they fought during that, too.”

  “What was your take on him?”

  “The boy seemed bright enough but had some kind of learning disability. He could read and speak, but he couldn’t write worth a darn.”

  Schultz thought of ketchup letters on a white kitchen wall. YUR RONG.

  “Kept to himself a lot. He didn’t have any friends at school, never invited anyone to his house. Would you?” Youngman continued without waiting for an answer. “There was some minor trouble, broken windows, smashed mailboxes, once a complaint about a neighbor’s dog gone missing. Paul would come to school with bruises, sometimes cuts. It was obvious the way he was treated at home. He dropped out of school to get a job a couple of weeks before the murders. I guess the family needed money. Donald Lee was probably out of work, and Cathy Sue wouldn’t give him any of her earnings to buy booze.”

  “What did he look like? Any family photos?”

  “As far as I know, Paul destroyed the contents of the house before he left town. Had a bonfire out back. So there wouldn’t be any photos. He wasn’t a big kid. If he’d gotten his full height by then, he’d be only five-seven, five-eight tops. He was gangly, thin and all arms and legs. Brown hair. Shoulder length, although that’s easy to change.”

  Youngman closed his eyes, pulling back a mental image. “Brown eyes, I think. Maybe gray. I don’t remember the color so much as the intensity. Weird eyes, flat one minute and fiery the next. Thin, angular face, narrow upper lip, full lower. Good teeth, which was surprising since I doubt that dental hygiene was a priority at the Macmillan house. No scars or tattoos, that kind of thing. He wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. Come to think of it, there might just be a photo in the high school year book. The school library keeps back copies.”

  “Where was he on the day of the murders?”

  “You certainly don’t beat around the bush, Detective. He was working at Specialty Orchard, right next to my place, picking apples. Quickest thing he could get, I suppose. The crew boss, Phil Trent, swore Paul didn’t leave the field, but Phil was sometimes drunk on the job. He might have spent the whole morning sleeping one off under a tree.”

  “So the boy didn’t have a reliable alibi for the time of the murders?”

  “Nope. Maybe on paper he did, because of Phil’s statement. But not in the real world.”

  Schultz sat expectantly, waiting for more. Youngman seemed reluctant to go on. Schultz thought he knew why, and he summoned what tact he was capable of exercising.

  “But you didn’t consider the boy a suspect,” Schultz said. It wasn’t said as a challenge.

  “Wrong. I did. In fact, he was my chief suspect.” Youngman sighed. “Detective, do you have any children?”

  “Yes. I have a son.”

  “Then maybe you can understand what I’m about to say. Our own boy died in Viet Nam. We have two wonderful daughters, so we count ourselves blessed. But the loss of a child hits you in ways you can’t even imagine until you go through it. It left me with a desire to help other kids get a good start in life. I organized a community center here to give the teenagers something to do besides drink beer and neck. I started a local chapter of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and recruited folks to sign up. A few times I saw a kid headed down on the wrong side of the law, and I worked with ’em to turn the situation around. Sometimes I just scared the shit out of them, which was what they needed. I had some successes.” He paused and twirled the ice in his glass, which was empty.

  “Go on,” Schultz said, as he reached over and poured the last of the lemonade into Youngman’s glass.

  “I had a pretty good idea what kind of home life that boy had. I figured he just snapped one day and couldn’t take it anymore. Killed ’em both and tried to make it look like some bum broke in to rob the place and got surprised in the act. There was even money missing from Cathy Sue’s hiding place, an old lard bucket in the kitchen. I couldn’t really prove that he did it, but I couldn’t prove that he didn’t, either.”

  “What did you do?” Schultz gently prodded. His own excitement was barely contained.

  “I understood how that boy could have come to hate his parents. I felt sorry for him. Now that they were out of his life, I thought he could straighten himself out. He didn’t have any reason to kill anybody else, just them, the ones who made his life a living hell. A one-time deal, you might say. Plus I wasn’t positive he actually did it. There wasn’t a scrap of physical evidence, or even circumstantial. His prints were all over the house, but the boy lived there. If I’d been able to prove it in court, I would have hauled his ass into jail. I might have looked the other way when Cathy Sue spread her legs for money, but murder’s different.”

  Schultz nodded. He understood that a cop has to look at the big picture, couldn’t get bogged down in the little infractions that floated around any group of people like a bad odor. Especially a cop who lived in a small, fairly closed community. He thought about the case he could make. If a DNA analysis of Paul Macmillan’s blood indicated a match with the blood under Sheila’s fingernails, he could almost guarantee a conviction for at least one of the murders.

  “Anyway,” Youngman said, “I told him to move on out of the county. He took it well, said he had somebody he could go live with. I doubted it because our office hadn’t turned up any relatives of the Macmillans. But I let it go.”

  “Any idea
where he did end up?”

  “No.” Youngman fiddled with his glass, hesitating. The dog was asleep under the tree. Bees buzzed past, intent on honey business. There were probably hives kept near the orchard. Schultz let the silence stretch out.

  “I have to ask you, Detective,” Youngman said at last. “Do you really think Paul is the one who murdered your three victims in St. Louis? That after all these years, he snapped again?”

  Schultz considered his answer carefully. Obviously it hadn’t occurred to Youngman that Paul Macmillan could have killed frequently since leaving Fallsburg. He knew nothing about the more than two dozen probable victims in the intervening years, and Schultz wasn’t about to tell him. He might find out eventually, if he followed the news. But not now. Not on this porch, sitting here in wicker chairs with flowery cushions, with the bees droning and Marge three years dead and a heart attack two years ago.

  “It’s possible. But it’s probably a wild goose chase on my part,” Schultz said. “After all, there’s not that much similarity except the missing heads.”

  “Dear Lord, I hope you’re right.” Youngman turned toward him, eyes moist, voice a little out of control. “I’d hate to think I was responsible for letting loose a…a monster.”

  Schultz excused himself, saying that he wanted to get started on the drive back to St. Louis. He thanked Youngman for talking with him, bantered a little about the peach crop this year, and drove away, Oscar escorting him to the edge of the Youngman property.

  He found a gas station with a pay phone and called Deputy Rita. She gave him directions to the old Macmillan homestead, after asking around the office and finding a clerk who knew the place. He also asked if he could get into the high school library, and explained why. She told him where it was located and said that she would call ahead for him.

  He decided to go to the school first. He introduced himself to the principal, showed his ID, and was shown to the library. It only took a couple of minutes to unearth the year books from 1974 to 1976, the years Paul might have attended. The librarian told him that the class pictures pretty much contained everybody in the class except kids who were sick that day, but the individual pictures had to be paid for and only about half of the students (or their parents) coughed up the money.

  He sat at a long table on a chair that was too small for his rear end, thumbing through the year books. The one for 1974 was a flop. Paul was probably too young. The freshman class picture for 1975 listed Paul Macmillan among the sixty or so students. Schultz eagerly counted over from the left. When he got to where Paul was supposed to be, all that showed was a glimpse of brown hair. It looked as though he ducked at the exact moment the photographer took the picture. Schultz wondered if the boy had bruises on his face that day, and didn’t want them to be recorded. Disappointed, Schultz went through the rest of the book. There was no individual photo, which was understandable. Mom and Pop Macmillan would rather buy a bottle of booze than pay for their son’s picture in his school year book. The 1976 book didn’t list Paul at all. Apparently he was sick the day the pictures were taken. Or at least not caught off guard.

  Schultz thanked the librarian and the principal. He could tell that they were curious, but he didn’t offer to relieve their curiosity.

  He drove the few miles out of town to the place where Paul spent six years of his young life. The directions took him from a blacktop road to a gravel county road and finally to a dirt feeder road that had a few houses on it. There were four mail boxes on a dilapidated wooden stand at the corner. The mailman didn’t make it down the dirt road, and Schultz could see why. It was rutted, and in one place it crossed a rocky creek bottom with about six inches of water flowing over it. He didn’t mind pushing the Pacer over the gravel and dirt. If it got a few more dings in it, that would just add to its already ample character.

  The house was still standing, although it was more of a shack than a real house. It was cobbled together from wood scraps, odd-sized windows, and black tar paper on the roof. The front door was missing.

  Schultz got out of the car and walked up the short driveway. The property was overgrown with weeds, but it looked as though that was its normal condition even when occupied. He stepped inside the front door, which brought him into the living room. The floor was bare mismatched planks, and there were holes in the ceiling. Birds had taken up residence in the rafters, and there were piles of bird droppings under the nests.

  In the kitchen he ran his finger along the filthy, scarred countertop, trying to imagine what Paul Macmillan’s childhood was like. He looked into the bedroom, where the bodies had been found. It had the same plank flooring, and there were dark stains in the wood along one wall, especially in the grooves between the boards. It could have been something else, though. Animals clearly had free access.

  When Schultz walked back to his car, he was certain that Paul Macmillan was responsible for three deaths in St. Louis and at least two dozen elsewhere.

  Now all he had to do was find him. And prove it.

  CHAPTER 21

  MERLIN HERE. WHAT’S THE buzz, Keypunch?

  I’m trying to sort out some things that happened. Can we talk?

  Wait just a minute…there. I’ve got my cyber-shrink hat on. Go.

  You know I’m working on a murder investigation. It’s been made clear to me here that I’m an outsider. I don’t have cop mystique, or whatever it is that glues these people together.

  You mean you don’t get asked out for a drink with the boys?

  That’s part of it, certainly, but there’s more to it than what equipment you’ve got under your trousers. There’s a woman on my team, Anita, and I get the same feeling from her. It’s us and them, and I’m definitely in the them crowd.

  Aren’t you used to that as a psychologist?

  It’s not the same. With a patient, I have to be able to empathize and still maintain some distance, for a lot of reasons. Here, I’m the one being held at arm’s length.

  Oho. Sauce for the goose. Think of it this way: you have your skills and they have theirs. Put them together, and whammo! The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

  I want to make a real contribution.

  You have. You will. Now stop whining.

  PJ told Merlin what had happened since their last online conversation: Vanitzky’s murder, the videotape with the offscreen humming, the red letters on her kitchen wall, Sheila coming to her, Schultz dropping the ball, Sheila’s death.

  I’m sorry to hear this news, Keypunch. It sounds like you and Sheila could have become good friends.

  Yes.

  No tears. You’ll short out your keyboard. What about Schultz?

  He’s punishing himself, and he’s good at it. He doesn’t need any help from me.

  Thomas?

  Better.

  How about that contact from Wash U.? Anything come of it?

  Now there’s a bright spot. Mike lent me the hardware I wanted, although I haven’t had time to integrate it yet. He’s very nice. A real hunk, too. You might have warned me he was bald. When we had lunch, I dropped some pizza and he wanted to wipe my chest with a napkin.

  Sounds promising. Next time, let him.

  Dirty old man.

  Want some candy, little girl? How about a sucker?

  Pervert. How unattached is Mike?

  Got the hots, eh? No significant others, as far as I know. His divorce was finalized almost two years ago. Very, very messy. You’ll have to get the gory details from him, if and when he’s ready. You should be good at that.

  Damn it, I don’t want him to think of me as his psychologist!

  Next time you see him, take off all your clothes and dance on the table. That will minimize, but probably not eliminate, the possibility of him thinking of you as his psychologist.

  Thanks for the advice. Bye.

  Wait! You haven’t gotten your list:

  1. On being an outsider: live with it.

  2. On losing an almost-friend: live with it.
<
br />   3. On Schultz messing up: live with it, or don’t. But know which one.

  4. On pursuing Mike: lust can be good.

  5. On getting older (oh, that wasn’t in our discussion?): live with it.

  6. The word for the day, and a versatile word it is: lust.

  Sleep well.

  CHAPTER 22

  ALL OF A SUDDEN it was Friday morning, Thomas’s last day of school. PJ had spent the last hour on the phone in her bedroom, talking with Schultz, catching up on everything he had learned from his trip to Tennessee. The phone had rung just as she was stepping out of the tub. She was mildly peeved that he hadn’t invited her along, as her psychology training might have been of some use in dredging up impressions of Paul Macmillan. She wasn’t sure he was on the right track in pursuing the boy from Fallsburg, but she couldn’t discount anything in which he had so much faith. She had a lot to think about, to try to integrate her own thoughts and feelings about the case with all the information he had dumped on her in the last hour.

  PJ sat across from Thomas, watching him shovel cereal into his mouth while reading at the table. He must have been at an exciting part of his book, because his hand and mouth were on automatic, and his eyes were fastened to the page. She hated to interrupt.

  “This is your last day, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Huh?” The rhythm was disrupted, and milk dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. She wanted to take a napkin and wipe it, but he was far too old for that. When had that happened? When had her little boy turned into this quasi-teenager?

  “Last week we said we’d talk again about what to do when school’s over.”

  “Aw, Mom, can’t I just stay home? I’m twelve years old, you know. I’m not a baby.”

  “Ordinarily I would say yes. But after the break-in we had, I’m just not comfortable with you being alone in this house all day.”

  “I’m not alone. I have Megabite.” As if waiting for her cue, the cat jumped up on the table. She approached Thomas for her customary stroking, then sniffed at his face. She delicately licked at the milk on his chin. “Look, Mom, she’s kissing me.”