The Collected Ed Gorman Volume 2 - Moving Coffin

by Ed Gorman

  “You’re going to sit in this room, huh?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “With the blinds drawn.”

  “I like it when it’s dark. When nobody can see me this way.”

  “Can I tell you about the breezeway, Molly?”

  “The breezeway?”

  “Uh-huh. I came out here last night and checked it out when everybody was asleep. You’ve got an alarm system that kicks on the yard lights whenever anybody approaches the house.”

  “I guess so.”

  “That means that when the person who did this to you ran off, you had a very good chance to see his face.”

  “Oh.”

  I waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, I watched her for a moment—she wore an aqua blouse and jeans and white socks—and then I said, “I think you know who did this to you. And I think that you’re trying to protect him.”

  “You keep saying ‘him,’ Jack. Maybe it was a woman.”

  “Is that what you’re telling me? That it was a woman?”

  “No, but—”

  “It’ll come out eventually, Molly. One way or the other, the police are going to figure out who did this to you.”

  “I just want it to be over with. I’ve accepted it and I just want it to be over with.”

  “It was either Paul or Mr. Meacham, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore, Jack.”

  “Your mother loves you, Molly.”

  “I know.”

  “And she’s very worried about you.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “She doesn’t like the idea that whoever did this is still out there running around free.”

  “It’s over with, Jack. It happened. And I don’t have any choice but to accept it. People accept things all the time. There was a girl in my class two years ago who lost her legs in a tractor accident. She was staying on her uncle’s farm. She’ll never be able to walk again. People accept things all the time.”

  “He should have to pay for doing this, Molly. I don’t know what’s going through your head, but nothing justifies somebody doing this to you. Nothing.”

  I stood up.

  “Susan is worried about you, too.”

  She nodded. “I’d like to watch this show now, if you don’t mind.” But she smiled for the first time. Her scars were hideous in the flickering lights of the TV picture tube. “I appreciate you caring about me, Jack. You’re a nice guy. You really are.”

  When I got downstairs, I found Susan and Clarence waiting for me. The big sheepdog lay next to the desk where Susan was working on her homework.

  As always, the over-trained dog barked as I approached. I was going to get him some Thorazine for Christmas.

  “Mom said to say goodbye. She had to run back to work.” Then: “How’d it go with Molly?”

  I told her about coming out there last night and testing the yard lights. “She had to’ve gotten a good look at the person who did this.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. Tell me one more time. You were sitting in here watching TV—”

  “—and I heard her scream and then I ran out to the breezeway and I saw somebody at the edge of the yard running away. He went up over the white fence out there.”

  “You said ‘he.’ Male?”

  “I think so.”

  “And Molly was—”

  “Molly was in a heap on the breezeway floor. When I flipped on the light, all I could see was the blood. She was in pretty bad shape. Then Clarence came running out and he was barking like crazy.” Then: “I think she knows. Who did it, I mean.”

  “So do I.”

  “But why would she protect him?”

  “That’s what I need to figure out. I’m going over to see our friend Paul.”

  “I’m trying to keep an open mind. The way he dumped me for Molly, I mean, I really hate him. But that doesn’t mean he’d do something like this.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t,” I said. I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Anybody ever tell you what a nice young woman you are?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Paul used to tell me that all the time. Before he fell in love with Molly.”

  4

  Paul lived in a large Colonial house on a wide suburban street filled with little kids doing stunts on skateboards.

  As soon as his mother learned who I was, her polite smile vanished. “You don’t have any right to ask him any questions.”

  I was still outside the front door. “The family has asked me to talk to him.”

  “He didn’t do it,” she said. “I’ll admit that he’s been pretty— involved with Molly lately. But he’d never hurt her. Ever. And that’s just what we told the police.”

  She was a tall, slender woman in black slacks and a red button-down shirt. There was a kind of casual elegance to her movements, as if she might have long ago studied dance.

  Behind her, a voice said: “It’s all right, Mom. I’ll talk to him.”

  Paul was taller than his mother but slender in the same graceful way. There was a snub-nosed boyishness to the face that the dark eyes belied. There was age and anger in the eyes, as if he’d lived through a bitter experience lately and was not the better for it.

  “You sure?” she said to Paul.

  “Finish fixing dinner, Mom. I’ll talk to him.”

  He wore a Notre Dame football jersey and ragged Levi cut-offs. His feet were bare. There was an arrogance about him, a certain dismissiveness in the gaze.

  His mother gave me a last enigmatic look and then vanished from the doorway.

  “I don’t have much time,” he said.

  “I just have two questions.”

  “The police had a lot more than two.”

  “Can you account for your time the night Molly was cut up?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I mostly drove around to the usual places.”

  “And ‘the usual places’ would be where exactly?”

  “The mall and the parking lot next to the Hardee’s out on First Avenue and then out to the mall again.”

  “And you can prove that?”

  “Sure,” he said. But for the first time his lie became obvious. His gaze evaded mine.

  I said: “I saw her.”

  He didn’t ask me who “her” was.

  “When?”

  “A few hours ago.”

  “Was she—”

  “I didn’t get a real good look at her. The room was pretty dark.”

  He surprised me, then, as human beings constantly do. His eyes got wet with tears. “The poor kid.”

  “She’s a nice girl.”

  “She’s a lot more than nice.”

  “Susan’s nice, too.”

  “Yeah, she is. And I treated her like shit and I’m sorry about it.” He cleared tears from his face. “I couldn’t help—what I feel for Molly. It just kind of happened.”

  “Molly’s mother thinks you’re obsessed with her. In the clinical sense, I mean.”

  “I love her. If that’s being obsessed.” He sounded a lot older and a lot wearier than he had just a few minutes ago.

  “Her mother also thinks you were the one who cut her.”

  He smiled bitterly. “That’s funny. I’ve been thinking it was her mother who did it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nodded. “Hell, yes, I’m serious. Her mother’s got a real problem with Molly. She’s very jealous of her. Molly told me how bitter she was when this Brad started coming after her. She pushed Molly down the stairs, bruised her up pretty bad.”

  “She show you the bruises?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She wasn’t exaggerating?”

  “Not at all.”

  Somewhere inside, a telephone rang, was picked up on the second ring. His mother called: “Telephone, Paul.”

  “Maybe I’d better get that.”

  “You ca
n prove where you were when Molly was being cut?”

  He surprised me again. “No, I can’t Mr. Dwyer. I can’t. I was alone.”

  “How about the mall?”

  He shrugged. “I just made it up.”

  “Then you were doing what?”

  “Just driving around.”

  Mother: “Honey, somebody’s waiting on the phone.”

  “Just driving around?”

  “Thinking about her. Molly. I really have to go, Mr. Dwyer.”

  “Honey!” his mother called again.

  5

  This was the kind of neighborhood where college professors always lived in the movies of my youth, a couple blocks of brick Tudors set high up on well-landscaped hills. The cars in the driveways ran to Volvos and Saabs, and the music, when you heard it through the occasional open window, ran to Brahms and Mahler. At night, the professors would sit in front of the fireplace, a blanket across their legs, reading Eliot or Frost. Even if life here wasn’t really like this, it was nice to think that even a small part of our world could still be so enviably civilized.

  A knock and the door opened almost at once. A heavy woman in a green sweater and a pair of too-snug jeans stood there watching me with obvious displeasure. She wore too much makeup on her fleshy, bitter face. Women who lived in these houses were supposed to look dignified, not like aging dance club babes. “Yes?” she said. Her mouth was small and bitter. She’d sucked on a lot of lemons, at least figurative ones, in her time.

  “I’d like to see Bob Meacham.”

  She did something odd, then. She smiled with a kind of nasty pleasure. “Oh, God, you’re another cop, aren’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  I showed her my license.

  “Well, come in, Mr. Dwyer. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I couldn’t figure out why she was so happy to see me suddenly. Why would the presence of a private detective bring her such pleasure?

  She flung an arm to a leather wingback chair that sat, comfortably, near a fireplace. An identical chair sat just across the way.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She didn’t go far. The floor creaked a few times and then she said, “So it’s all over, is it, you bastard? Well, guess who’s here to see you? Another cop. Your little girlfriend must think you were the one who cut her up.”

  When he appeared, moments later, he kept looking over his shoulder at his wife, as if he was waiting for her to put a knife in his back.

  He came over and said, “I’m Bob Meacham.”

  “Jack Dwyer. Nice to meet you.”

  We shook hands.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Dwyer?”

  “I wanted to ask you some questions about Molly.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  His wife, who stood to the side of him, smirked at me. “When we first got married, Mr. Dwyer, I used to worry that my husband was secretly gay. I guess I should be happy he just has this nice hetero-sexual thing for underage girls.”

  Meacham obliged her by blushing.

  Seeing that she’d scored a direct hit, she said, “I’ll go back to my woman’s work now, and leave you two to discussing the wages of sin.”

  “I know what you must think of her,” Meacham said softly after his wife left. “But it’s my fault, I mean, I’ve made her like this. I’ve—I’ve had a lot of affairs over the years. We should’ve gotten divorced a long time ago but—somehow it’s just never happened.”

  He didn’t fit the professorial mold, either. He was a little too beefy and a little too rough in the face. He’d probably played football at some point in his life. Or boxed. His nose and jaw had the look of heavy contact with violence. He wore a chambray shirt and jeans. His balding head didn’t make him look any more professorial, either. It just added to the impression of middle-aged toughness. He didn’t belong in a Tudor house with a Volvo in the drive and T.S. Eliot lying open on his knee.

  “You said you’ve had some affairs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Were they with young girls?”

  “Youngish.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Always of consenting age, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Molly isn’t of age.”

  “Molly’s the first. A fluke. Being that young, I mean.”

  “You realize that hustling her has opened you up to several legal charges if the cops want to press them.”

  “You may not believe this, Mr. Dwyer, but I wasn’t hustling her. We haven’t slept together. I don’t plan to sleep with her till we’re married. I know people laugh at me; I mean, I know I’m not much better than a dirty joke these days, but I don’t give a damn about anything or anybody other than Molly.”

  He looked at me.

  “You’re smiling, Mr. Dwyer.”

  “Are you seeing a shrink?”

  “No.”

  “You should be.”

  “I’m in love with her.”

  “She’s fifteen.”

  “She’s also the most spiritually beautiful creature I’ve ever known. That’s why I say I’m not hustling her, Mr. Dwyer. That’s why I say we won’t make love till we’re married.”

  “Or at least till he gets out of prison,” Mrs. Meacham said, walking back into the room.

  For the first time, I saw the sorrow Meacham had hinted at. Saw it in the slump of her shoulder, saw it behind the pain and anger in her gaze. She looked old and sad and slightly adrift.

  “He’s going to lose his teaching job—the school is already seeing to that—and then the district attorney will charge him with contributing. He brought her over here one day while I was gone and they drank wine together. Isn’t that sweet?”

  She hovered at the back of his chair. The smirk was back.

  “He said he’s going to leave me everything, when he runs away with her. Probably Tahiti, is what I’m thinking. He’s always been obsessed with Gauguin. He even got sweet Molly interested in him.”

  She started wandering around the living room. We watched her with great glum interest.

  “He’s going to leave me everything, Mr. Dwyer. The mortgage. The car that has nearly 175,000 miles on it. The bank account that never gets above $2,000. And the cancer. I’ve had three cancer surgeries in the past four years, Mr. Dwyer. And I’ll know in a few weeks if I need another one.” This time there was no smirk, just grief in the eyes and mouth. “And you know the worst thing of all, Mr. Dwyer? I still love him. God, I’m just as sick as he is but I can’t help it.”

  After a moment, Meacham said, “Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down? You sound tired.”

  She looked at me. “I’m sorry for all this, Mr. Dwyer.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “That’s why we don’t have friends anymore. Nobody wants to come over here and hear all this terrible bullshit we put each other through.”’ Then: “Goodbye, Mr. Dwyer.”

  After she left, he said, “I suppose you’re getting a bad impression of me.”

  I almost laughed. He was pursuing a fifteen-year-old, cheating on a wife with cancer, and thinking of running away and leaving that same wife with all the bills. Gee, why would that give me a bad impression of him?

  “My opinion of you doesn’t matter.”

  He stared at me a long time. “I’m a romantic, Mr. Dwyer. I believe in the ideals of art and beauty. That’s why I was so drawn to Molly. She’s beautiful in an idealistic way—perfectly untouched—a virgin of body and mind. That’s why I want to take her away—to save her so that she doesn’t become corrupted.”

  I thought of Brad dumping Linda for Molly; and Paul dumping Susan for Molly, and taking her picture all the time, and following her around obsessively; and I thought of how I’d been all summer, meeting perfectly fine women whom I rejected because they didn’t fit my ideal. A dangerous thing, beauty. It brings out the best and worst in men. The trouble is, sometimes the best and the worst are there at the same time—Meach
am here loving her in the pure way of a college boy dumbstruck by the beauty of art; and yet at the same time willing to hurt a wife who was sick and needed him. The best and the worst. Beauty has a way of making us even more selfish than money does.

  “She said no.”

  “Who said no?”

  “Molly.”

  “She told you that, Mr. Dwyer?”

  “In so many words.”

  “So you think that because she was taking some time to think it over—”

  I sighed. “Meacham, listen to me. She wasn’t thinking it over. There was no way she was ever going to run off with you. Ever. But maybe deep down you really understood that. And maybe deep down that’s why you cut her face.”

  “My God, you really think I could do that?”

  “I think it’s possible. You’re so obsessive about her that—”

  “‘Obsessive.’ That’s a word my wife would use. A clinical word.

  There’s nothing clinical in my feelings for Molly, believe me. They’re pure passion. And I emphasize pure and passion. There’s no way I could cut her up. She’s the woman I’ve waited for all my life.”

  I wondered if I happened to be blushing at this point in the conversation. I thought again of all the women I’d stayed away from because they weren’t my ideal. Good women. There’s nothing like hearing your own sappy words put into the sappy mouth of someone else. Then you realize how inane your beliefs really are.

  “Were you here the night it happened?”

  “No, Mr. Dwyer, I wasn’t. I was walking, actually.”

  “The entire night?”

  “Most of it. You’re wanting an alibi?”

  “That would help.”

  “I don’t have one—other than the fact that I’m a creator, Mr. Dwyer, not a destroyer. I have created something with Molly that is too beautiful for anybody to destroy. Even I couldn’t destroy it if I wanted to.”

  I had to agree with his wife. I don’t know why she stuck it out all these years, either.

  “I’ll be going now, Mr. Meacham.”

  A chill smile. “You don’t like me much, do you, Mr. Dwyer?”