“He can’t say anything that will harm me,” Tait argues weakly. “I was his lawyer. It was my job to defend him as best I could.”
“And I’m sure all your wealthy clients in Boston will understand that,” I say.
I hear Tait gasp.
What I am doing here is chipping away at the foundations of his self-image – demolishing it slowly, brick by brick. I have done all the damage I can with Gary Stacey – now it is time to move on.
“Then there’s the money, Harvey,” I say.
“What money?”
“The money you used to buy the way into your firm. The way I figure it, it would have been too dangerous to pay it over to you directly, so it must have been laundered.”
“That’s preposterous,” Tait says.
“And even with careful laundering, you leave a trail,” I continue, ignoring him. “It’s like with Gary Stacey – nobody’s found it because nobody’s been looking for it. But once the Feds and the IRS get the scent, they’re going to stick with it till they have some answers.”
He knows I’m right and – chink – another few bricks are gone.
“It’s all circumstantial,” he says shakily.
“I know what you mean, Harvey,” I agree. “It’s messy – bits of evidence and supposition all over the place. What we need is something to tie it all together, don’t we?” I pause for a moment. “I’ve got it! How about we use the death of Thurston Craddock’s wife?”
“That wouldn’t—”
“Yes, it would, Harvey – because even if her friends don’t know for certain why it happened, they sure as hell suspect. And just suspicion is enough to make it all slot together, isn’t it, Harvey?”
There is more I could say, but I don’t think I will have to. I have pulled away more than enough bricks, now all I have to do is wait for him to crumble.
Tait is silent for maybe thirty seconds – although I can still hear his deep, irregular breathing on the other end of the line.
Then, finally, he says, “Why are you telling me this, Kaleta? What is it you want from me?”
“Do you know what you are, Harvey?” I ask.
And then I shut up.
He holds out for maybe twenty seconds before saying, “No, what am I?”
“You’re today’s lucky prize winner.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to let you off the hook, Harvey. I’m going to allow you to keep on living a lie.”
“Why should you do that for me?” he asks suspiciously.
“Because it’s the big fish I’m after, and to get at them, I’m going to need your help. I am making sense to you, aren’t I, Harvey?”
“Yes – you’re making sense.”
He sounds empty – exhausted by the years of deception.
“We need to set up a meet,” I tell him.
“Where?”
“The Blue Ridge Motel, which is just outside of Staunton. And come alone, because I’ve left Sergeant Williams in New York, and if anything happens to me, she’ll see to it that you go down with the others.”
“I’ll come alone,” he promises.
I believe him. He has no more fight left in him.
“One more thing,” I say. “Bring the photographs.”
“Photographs? What photographs are you talking about?”
“Maybe I mean the ones you made your mother take down from the lounge walls because you didn’t want anybody making the connection between a big-shot lawyer from Boston and a ragged-assed attorney from Macclesfield,” I suggest. “Do you think that they’re the ones I mean, Harvey?”
“No, I—”
“So it’s gotta be something else, hasn’t it? Some Polaroids – the kind of pictures you can’t get developed at your local drug store.”
I am guessing here. Photographs seem likely, but until I hear Tait hesitate, I’m not actually certain that they exist.
“I don’t have them,” he says. “What would I want with them? Do you think I’m sick or something?”
Yeah, I think he’s sick – but not in that way.
“You don’t have the photographs, but you know where they are,” I say – and it is not a question.
“I’m not sure that I can—”
“Get them, Harvey! Whatever it takes, get them. And bring them with you – because the deal doesn’t go ahead without them.”
36
It is Harvey Dillworth, rather than Maxwell Tait, who I let into my motel room. The expensive suit hangs loose and awkward. The air of self-assurance is gone. This is the face he must have presented as a small-town attorney trying to find a place in a big-city firm. This is how he must have looked when he arrived in Boston with his pockets full of money but knowing nothing about either corporate law or high society.
He looks so rough that I almost take pity on him and offer him a drink. Then I remember his lonely old mother back in Macclesfield, and just pour one for myself.
“The photographs,” I say.
Tait puts his hand in his pocket, pulls out the envelope and passes it to me. I open it and extract the glossy Polaroid prints.
Bobbie Hopgood in a variety of poses – most of them pornographic – with a series of terrified children.
Bobbie Hopgood staring into the camera, smiling an odd, uncomfortable smile.
Wondering if he is doing the right thing!
Wondering if he is pleasing!
From the very beginning of the case, my working assumption has been that Mayor Pine needed an arrest – any arrest – to keep CompTech’s image-makers happy, and to persuade its executives that Harrisburg was once more a place where they could bring up their children. It never occurred to me for a second that Bobbie was anything more than a random choice – an easy target.
Now, I know the truth. Now, I understand why Ringman could have been so sure there would be no more rapes once Bobbie was in jail.
“Were there photographs of Gary Stacey, too?” I ask.
“Yes,” Tait says heavily. “Him too.”
“Who planted little Annie Coughlin’s underpants in Bobbie’s bedroom?” I demand. “Was it Ringman?”
“Yes.”
“And how long had he known the real truth? Did he find out before Annie was attacked?”
Tait looks shocked.
“No, of course not,” he protests. “Even Ringman’s not as callous as that.”
“When did he find out?”
“When I got back from Europe. The moment that I read in the local papers about what had been happening, I knew that I had to go see him, and tell him the truth.”
“So he planted the underpants. What else did he do to make sure it was Bobbie we arrested? Did he write the letter?”
He knows what letter I am talking about – the anonymous one which led Carrie and me right to Bobbie’s house:
‘BOBBIE HOPGOOD IS THE ONE YOUR LOOKIN FOR. HE DONE IT TO ALL THEM KIDS AND YOU AIN’T DOIN NUTHIN BOUT IT.’
Yeah, that letter, the one which, I see now, was the work of an educated man who was trying to disguise the fact – a man who wrote ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’ but, out of habit, put an apostrophe in ‘ain’t’.
“Did Ringman write it?” I repeat.
For a moment, it really looks as if Tait will try to lie to me, then he reluctantly shakes his head.
“No, I wrote that,” he admits. “The Chief insisted it had to be me.”
Yeah, that would make sense. By getting Tait to write the note, Ringman would be implicating him – locking him tighter into the conspiracy.
Style, Chief!
Real style!
“Mayor Pine was the one who first came up with the idea of arresting Bobbie,” I say. “Right?”
“Right.”
“Whose idea was it that he had to die? Yours?”
Tait shakes his head again – more violently this time.
“It wasn’t me. I swear to God it wasn’t me. I was just going to make sure Bobbie was conv
icted, but Ringman said that wouldn’t work. He said that, since Bobbie hadn’t done it for money – like Gary had – then whatever we made him promise, we could never be sure that he wouldn’t talk.”
The redneck cop had been right, and the smart Boston lawyer wrong. Bobbie would have talked. Bobbie almost did talk the night of the press conference in prison – the night he died.
I remember him sitting behind the heavy institutional table, Maxwell Tait at his side, an invisible reporter throwing questions at him:
‘Did you do those bad things to all those little boys and girls?’
‘I didn’t want to hurt them. I only wanted to play. My mom never let me play.’
‘You did hurt them, though. Didn’t you?’
‘He told me …’
But the ‘he’ Bobbie means is not Maxwell Tait. That isn’t who Bobbie is talking about at all! Yet it is Tait who steps in to shut him up:
‘How can you expect someone of Bobbie’s mental age to know what hurts? All children shout and scream when they’re playing. And don’t be fooled by his size. He has a child’s mind.’
And then the press conference is over.
Before Bobbie can say any more.
Before he can do just what Ringman is afraid that he’ll do.
“You got Bobbie to confess on TV,” I tell Tait. “You arranged it. That was your responsibility.”
Tait shrugs, helplessly.
“Ringman said it had to be done in a hurry. You’d found out the rapes couldn’t have been carried out without a car – and that scared him. He was worried about what else you’d come up with if he left it any longer.”
They would have killed Bobbie anyway – but not then. I had forced them to act quickly. I had put that noose around his neck as surely as if I’d placed it there with my own two hands. And if I’d been a just little smarter – seen things just a little clearer – maybe I could have saved him.
“Was it Ringman’s idea that Bobbie had to die that night?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Pine’s?”
“Pine didn’t know about it until it was all over.”
“But you did. You’re an accessory to murder.”
“Bobbie was guilty,” Tait says.
He realizes he’s made a mistake the moment he’s spoken – but there’s no turning back.
“I … I mean,” he continues, “he did do it, didn’t he?”
Tait is standing maybe 3ft away from me. I drop my glass, and before it’s had time to bounce I’ve reached across, grabbed him by the lapels of his smooth lawyer jacket, and pulled him closer.
I can feel his short, frightened breaths against my cheek.
“Don’t try to play games with me, you motherfucker,” I say. “Yes, he did it – but he wasn’t guilty.”
Suddenly, contact with him makes my flesh creep. I push him violently away. He stumbles backwards, trips against a chair and falls in an awkward heap on the floor. How do you like that, Mr Dignified Big-city Lawyer?
“Who did Ringman take with him to the prison to help with the hanging?” I demand. “I want to know who else he used.”
Tait has eased himself into a sitting position, but he daren’t get up off the floor without my explicit permission.
“Ringman didn’t take anybody with him,” he says. “He went in there alone.”
“Don’t lie to me, Harvey. He would have needed help. Bobbie was a big strong boy. Ringman could never have managed it alone.”
Tait looks genuinely surprised.
“But Ringman didn’t hang Bobbie,” he says.
“Then who did?”
“Nobody. Bobbie hung himself. All that Ringman did was to show him how to do it.”
Of course – knowing Ringman and Bobbie as I do, I should have been able to work that out for myself.
*
I imagine the scene. Bobbie, alone and unhappy in his cell – a cell in an empty block, geographically as far as possible from the guard, because what is about to happen has all been carefully planned out.
He hears footsteps coming down the long hall. He wonders who it is. Is it that nice Mr Tait who has said that as long as he does what he’s been told, everything will be all right?
Or is it perhaps his special friend?
A man appears. He has a thin, pointed face and frightening eyes. Bobbie thinks he has seen the man before, but he is not sure where. There have been so many people around since the policemen locked him up that it’s hard to keep track of them.
The man has a key in his hand, and opens the door.
Does it occur to Bobbie to hit him over the head and make a run for it?
No!
He would never do anything to make a grown-up angry.
Ringman steps into the cell.
‘You did a very bad thing,’ he says. ‘You hurt all those little children.’
Yesterday and today, everyone has been telling him he has done a very bad thing. But it wasn’t at all like that before.
‘They liked it,’ he protests. ‘We were playing.’
But maybe by now, he is crying. Maybe by now, his dull, earnest brain is telling him that whatever his special friend said about those little boys and girls liking it, they did seem to be hurting.
It is all so confusing and difficult. What a grown-up says must be true, but what do you do when other grown-ups tell you completely different stories?
‘Everybody is real mad at you, Bobbie. The police are mad at you. Dr Maddox is mad at you—”
‘I went to his school. Dr Maddox likes me.’
‘Not anymore. Not now he knows what you’ve done. Even your mom is mad at you – madder than she’s ever been before. And there’s only one way you can make it up to them. Only one way you can put everything right. Do you want to do that, Bobbie? Do you want to make everything all right again?’
And Bobbie, who has spent his whole life trying to win approval, will have nodded his head.
‘Do you know what hanging is, Bobbie?’
‘Like in the cowboy movies?’
‘Yeah. Like that. I’ll show you how to make a noose, and you’re going to have to hang yourself.’
You’re going to have to hang yourself!
At this point, even a dull, unimaginative mind like Bobbie’s must have felt fear.
Fear – but not defiance.
He doesn’t tell Ringman that he won’t do it. Instead, he looks at the Chief through those big, puppy-dog eyes of his, and asks: ‘Will it hurt me?’
‘Yeah, it will hurt a little,’ Ringman tells him. ‘But you hurt those little boys and girls and now you’ve got to be punished. You always have to be punished when you’ve been bad. And if you don’t do it, your mom and Dr Maddox will stay mad at you.’
Ringman takes the bed sheet, and makes a noose with one corner. He climbs onto the chair and ties the other end around the overhead pipe, then steps back onto the floor.
‘Stand on the chair, Bobbie. Put the noose right over your head. You have to do it. You know you have to do it.’
And Bobbie – because he is a good little boy – does just that.
*
I look down at Tait again. He is cowering in the corner, his eyes wide with fear. And I realize that what must be scaring him so much is the expression that I didn’t even know was on my face.
He opens his mouth to try and speak, and finally a few words manage to escape.
“I … it … don’t …” he jabbers hysterically.
“Get up off the floor, you motherfucker!” I shout. “I’m going to explain the deal, and you’d better accept it – all of it – without question, because if you don’t, that’ll give me just the excuse I need to kill you!”
37
The sign outside the Shenandoah Motor Lodge says that there are no vacancies, which isn’t a problem to a guy who already has one of its room keys in his pocket.
I park Marty’s Eldorado close to reception and check my watch.
&
nbsp; Six-thirty.
It is half an hour since I saw Tait drive away from the Blue Ridge Motel. He must be nearly back in Harrisburg by now.
The Shenandoah – which, unlike the Blue Ridge, caters mainly for people who can actually remember each other’s names when they wake up in the morning – does not have water beds or blue movie channels. But it does have a hot drinks machine, which is what I head for now.
I feed my coins into the slot and dial a large black coffee. The coffee comes gurgling out of the spout into a cardboard cup which has a notice printed on its side advising me to ‘keep Virginia clean’.
Cleaning up Virginia – or at least one part of it – is just what I’m planning to do.
I pick up the coffee and head for my room. On the way there, I pass a middle-aged tourist wearing Bermuda shorts and a Madonna tee shirt. He is looking up at the sky.
“Might rain tonight,” he says.
“Yeah, just might,” I agree.
I open the door of my room, and step inside. It looks empty at first, but then I see the barrel of a .38 pointing at me from behind one of the easy chairs.
“I’m a friend – don’t shoot!” I say.
Carrie rises from her crouch with a grin on her face. Then she slips the gun back into her holster and starts to look businesslike.
“How did it go?” she asks.
“Good. I think Tait’s scared enough to do just what we want him to do.”
“What did you tell him about me?”
“That you were in New York.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Sure. What else is he going to think? That I’d be dumb enough to stash you in a motel room only three miles from where I was meeting him?”
Carrie’s eyes flash me a warning look.
“Don’t start with that again, Mike,” she says. “There’s no way on God’s green earth that you can talk me out of being part of this operation.”
I know. I’ve been trying ever since we left Maccleesfield and I haven’t managed to shift her an inch.
“When’s it going to be?” Carrie asks.
“Tonight.”
She sighs. “Thank God for that. I am just so sick of being on the run.”
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