A Child's Garden of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  He picked up the annotated appointment calendar. His own name was down for 4 P.M., a Roger Hackman at 4:45. Lyon flipped through the pages containing appointments for the next two weeks, and then replaced the calendar in its proper place.

  He pressed one of the inlaid buttons and the drapes behind him began to open. Pressing the button’s counterpart, the drapes shut on noiseless runners. The second button in line caused a quiet click from the office doors, and he realized that they had automatically locked. He unlocked the doors by depressing the next button.

  In actuality the room revealed little about its occupant. That it had been consciously designed and staged was obvious. It would be here that Houston would deal with his company officers, bankers and investors. The books in the shelves were bound in uniform expensive leather and appeared unread. The objects and the artifacts were impersonal.

  He knew little about this man and earlier in the day had gone to the library to read old newspaper files. Last year, after a particularly large gift to the orchestra, the paper had run a Sunday feature article on Asa Houston. Asa Houston: wealthy industrialist and philanthropist. Born to a poor family, he was a self-educated and self-made man of the old school. Starting as an apprentice tool and diemaker, he had started the Houston Company in 1940 on three thousand dollars of borrowed capital. The war, government loans for expansion, and a shrewd talent for negotiating cost-plus contracts had made him a wealthy man.

  Lyon sat behind the desk and slowly opened the center drawer. The drawer’s contents were as neat as the remainder of the room. A few file folders with typed headings, a slide rule, sharpened pencils. Resting on a clean white cloth was a 38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver.

  “Do you like my toys, Mr. Wentworth?”

  Asa Houston stood by the door with a half-smile curling one side of his face. The door slammed behind him as he strode toward Lyon and took the revolver from the drawer.

  “This is a gun, Mr. Wentworth. This gun is not for plinking; it is not for shooting snakes. It is kept for the specific purpose for which it was designed … to shoot people.”

  Lyon stood up, his face flushed, and mumbled, “Sorry.”

  “You should be. There are unpleasant names for what you have been doing. Now, will you sit down or would you prefer my desk?”

  Lyon came out from behind the desk and sat in a side chair. Houston replaced the revolver in the drawer, seated himself at the desk and looked expectantly at Lyon. “You should have stayed behind the desk, Mr. Wentworth. The man behind the desk has a decided advantage.”

  “I didn’t come for advantage.”

  “Perhaps you came to thank me for the small honorarium the company sent you … or wasn’t it enough for your services?”

  Their eyes met. “Exactly why are you here?” Houston continued.

  “I’ve just returned from Florida. As I explained on the phone, I was able to develop some information that might be of interest to you.”

  “Yes?”

  How do you start? Lyon thought. How do you tell a man you think he killed three people? Houston leaned forward, not tense, not nervous …

  “Yes, Mr. Wentworth?”

  Lyon told him about the Florida trip, the breakfast on the boat with Jonathan Coop, and Coop’s admission regarding the passing of inferior parts. Houston listened without comment, making no inquiries, asking for no additional details. His eyes and posture revealed nothing to Lyon. When Lyon finished there was a pause between them.

  “I take it,” Houston said, “that you’re here to accuse me of bribing a government official.”

  “And more.”

  “That I had a motive for killing the Meyerson family?”

  “Yes.” Lyon handed Coop’s affidavit across the desk. Houston read it and looked up.

  “This paper isn’t notarized or witnessed,” he said. “It’s a worthless document.”

  “It’s in his handwriting. I can witness.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not quite adequate.” Asa Houston slowly tore the affidavit into neat squares and dropped them into the waste basket. Both men watched them flutter into the container.

  “That’s only a copy,” Lyon said.

  “Of course. My gesture was symbolic. What do you want, Wentworth? Like Coop—money? Not that it really matters.”

  “I want to know about the Meyersons.”

  “You conveniently shot Bull Martin. That should be satisfaction enough for you.”

  “Bull didn’t kill them, at least all of them. I’m sure of that.”

  “You seem to operate on some sort of mystical process of elimination. In other words, if Bull didn’t kill them, I did?”

  “You had a motive.”

  “You have absolutely nothing. There isn’t a particle of evidence in anything you say or hint.”

  “There’s always something somewhere, Mr. Houston. Even thirty years after, there’s something that can fill in the details, and I will find it. I have a few leads, and I promise you I will find it.”

  Houston regarded him reflectively. “You might at that. You’ve done very well so far.”

  “If that shipment of parts in 1943 had been rejected by the Army, you would have gone under. I am sure we can reconstruct that.”

  “You might. I’m not sure how long certain records are retained by banks, or by the government. Knowing the government, I’m sure they have purchase requisitions going back to the Revolutionary War. That part is true, Wentworth. Houston Company in 1943 was on shaky ground. Everything we had or could beg, borrow or steal had gone into expansion and purchase of material. The rejection of that shipment would have toppled the house of cards. Yes, I did pay off Coop. Yes, I did bribe a government official. I’ll deny that, out of this room and forever, I’ll deny that. And I might point out that the statute of limitations has run out.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “In those days our quality control was primitive. It was a bad batch and Meyerson knew it.”

  “And you killed him.”

  “I intended to reach him in other ways. He was a stubborn little guy, but I would have found a way. There’s always a way.”

  “I don’t think he would have taken your money.”

  “Oh, no. I tried that first. No, he was quite stubborn about that, had this thing about the Nazis, a just war and all that sort of thing. But I had found a way. He had relatives in a concentration camp. I was working out a method to obtain their release and smuggle them to Switzerland.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Anything is possible with enough money. I would have taken care of Meyerson in my own manner.”

  “What about his family?”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Someone did,” Lyon said.

  Asa Houston got up from the desk and crossed the room to where the silver parts stood. He ran a hand along the edge of one of the finely machined pieces. “Yes, someone did,” he said.

  “The information on the pay-off is enough to ruin you,” Lyon said.

  “My word carries a bit of weight in this community, in the whole state in fact. My record is excellent, a career without blemish. We don’t manufacture poor parts anymore. We’re quite good. I don’t make the same mistake twice. In 1943 I had to. It was a question of simple survival.”

  “For you. Not the others.”

  “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t kill them?”

  “No.”

  “Because there’s no statute of limitations on murder?”

  “Partially.”

  “Nevertheless, I would prefer that none of this … this unpleasantness were publicized. I can make life awfully difficult for you, Mr. Wentworth.”

  “I am sure you can.”

  “Much more than you can possibly dream. Shall we start with your wife’s political career? Hardly difficult to stop that. The refusal by the State Committee to endorse her, the refusal of her own district to renominate her, the extensive backing of a counter candida
te.”

  “I know you can do that.”

  “And your publishers. How will they take to having a children’s author who’s arrested for indecent exposure?”

  “I will tie you directly into this.”

  “I prefer to handle it my own way.”

  “Three people are dead.…”

  “I said drop it!”

  “No.”

  “Then I will neutralize you, Wentworth. Do you understand that?” Asa Houston returned to the desk. “Let me spell it out. Even if I didn’t kill them, even if I can’t be prosecuted for pay-offs made thirty years ago, I have no intention of having the slightest smear against the Houston name. I’ve spent too many years building a reputation in this state to have you destroy it. I made millions and I gave millions and no old ghosts are going to take that from me.”

  Lyon leaned over the desk, fingers clenched on the smooth surface. The musculature of his arms and legs seemed to have dissolved as an all-pervasive weakness surrounded him, the immediate forerunner of large doses of adrenalin coursing through his body.

  “What about the little girl?” Lyon yelled.

  “The hell with the little girl,” Houston said impatiently.

  Lyon’s fist glanced off the other man’s cheekbone. His clawing hands reached across the desk and grasped the lapels of Houston’s coat. The immediate leverage pulled Houston halfway across the desk before he regained his balance and backed away.

  Houston’s hands reached for the buttons, and Lyon dimly heard the sound of an alarm, and then Houston’s fist smashed into his nose and he fell back. They were in the center of the room grappling as the guards rushed through the door.

  The secretary stood with hands at her face ready to scream as the two security guards grabbed Lyon and pulled him away from Asa Houston.

  “Get that Goddamn idiot out of here,” Houston screamed. “Get him out and keep him out!”

  “You want the police, Mr. Houston?” the guard asked as he pinned Lyon’s arms.

  “No. Just throw him out!”

  “Come on, duck butter,” the large guard said as they dragged Lyon from the office.

  In the hallway, out of sight of the secretaries, they pushed Lyon against the wall. A billy-club dug into his stomach and a knee into his groin, and then he felt another crack against his nose. He heard them dimly as they dragged him to the parking lot.

  “Come on, sweetheart, let’s go bye-bye.”

  Lyon lay, his head against the steering wheel, miles from the Houston factory. Blood dripped from his nose and formed a small pool on his pants leg and then ran in a small rivulet down to the car mat.

  He held his handkerchief against the nose and blinked his eyes to clear the tearing. He climbed slowly from the car and began to walk up the hill.

  Nine

  He sat on top of the hill with his back propped against his daughter’s tombstone and thought about what sort of person he was becoming.

  The cemetery was in Middleburg, only a few miles from the house. Perhaps because of the difficult struggle for life in the early days, the first settlers had picked a large hill in the center of town, truly the choicest location, as the site for their burial ground. It must have been a yearning on their parts, an expression of faith that the hereafter would be preferable to the mortal coil, and therefore deserved the most scenic area in the town limits. His daughter was buried here for that reason, and also because Wentworths had been buried here for 150 years.

  Lyon was a Unitarian. A faith that some chided was a little about God, a little about religion, and mostly about Boston. He didn’t know if he believed in an afterlife, and never thought of his daughter in those terms, although in some mystical way she sat specterlike at his elbow when he created his books for an audience of one—one who would always be eight years old.

  It wasn’t the beating by Houston’s security force that bothered him. It was the all-consuming anger that had made him hit another man, something he hadn’t done since grade school days. And yet, in the light of recent events, the action wasn’t unusual. In the past weeks he had killed one man, threatened to throw a dying man’s medication into the sea and physically attacked another man.

  His past life had been dedicated to an artistic orderliness; even the few years in the Army had fallen into that category, and, except for an isolated example or two, his service as an intelligence officer had been an intellectual game.

  Did it matter that Houston might be the creator of the ancient grave? Was justice, whatever that was, served by his admission or nonadmission of guilt? Lyon knew the answer.

  His anger and attack had been directed as much at his own helplessness in the situation as against Houston. He was at a loss in which direction to go—and yet he couldn’t drop the matter and let it fade into an insignificant memory.

  He tried to order his thoughts. In one sense they had come far; they had established identities and tied the Houston Company into the murders; and now it was impossible to disengage the relationship of the dead Meyersons from the bribery of the government inspector.

  She started up the hill. When she saw him her pace quickened. Her hair blew in the wind and her eyes squinted slightly against the sun as she looked toward him, and Lyon loved his wife very much. She was now almost running toward him, her legs flashing in the sun; her knees and hips had changed little from those of the girl he had married.

  She was out of breath when she reached the top of the hill. The squint faded as she seemed to be about to say something but instead sat next to him on the grass. After a few moments she turned toward him. “WE’VE BEEN WORRIED ABOUT YOU.”

  “I’m O.K.”

  “Rocco called the Houston Company and found out what happened. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ve been up here all night. THAT’S A KOOKY THING TO DO,” she said and seemed to regret it instantly. “I’m sorry, I know you’re upset.”

  “I wanted to kill him, Bea. If I’d been stronger, or trained, or had had a weapon, I might have. At that moment I wanted to kill him.”

  “You never will again, Lyon.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, but recently …”

  “No, not him. Not ever again,” she said. “Asa Houston is dead.”

  Rocco’s cruiser was at the cemetery gate, and as Lyon and Bea got into the rear seat Lyon’s right leg began to tremble and his hands to shake. He hadn’t been able to assimilate Houston’s death—the velocity of events was beginning to take its toll, reality taking on a strange tinge that gave a dream quality to ordinary and mundane things. His nerves were stretched to an unhealthy tautness.

  Rocco drove a few miles to a small restaurant off the main roads. Inside, the large man took command of the ordering—heavy drinks immediately, followed by steaks. Lyon drank his double sherry, and as the warmth spread through his body the trembling began to subside. He exhaled slowly and leaned back. “All right,” he said. “I guess I’m ready for it. What happened to Houston?”

  Rocco pulled the notebook from his breast pocket. “You want it exact?”

  “Exact.”

  “This morning while Bea and I were chasing over half the state trying to find you, we caught the bulletin over the car radio. I called downtown and got some of the details from a friend of mine.”

  Beatrice put her hand on Lyon’s. Lyon brushed his forehead with his free hand. “I don’t know what to say. It’s too fast. Details, Rocco. Details.”

  “This morning at twenty-two minutes past ten Asa Houston shot himself in his office.”

  “How do you know he shot himself?”

  For a moment Rocco looked tired and then continued in a factual monotone. “At exactly ten twenty-two this morning a shot was heard from Asa Houston’s office. A foremen’s meeting was going on in the board room next door; they broke open the door and found him behind the desk, the gun next to his body.”

  “His own gun?” Lyon asked. “The one from the desk?”


  “Yes. Anyway, that’s about it, except they found a message on his office recorder. A classic suicide message.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Lyon said.

  “OH, FOR GOD’S SAKE, LYON,” Bea said. “Come off it, really.”

  Rocco turned to Beatrice. “He means he can’t believe in a different sense, Bea. Too much has happened; it’s hard to realize that it’s all over.”

  “That’s not at all what I meant,” Lyon said. “I don’t think Asa Houston killed himself.”

  “People do it all the time, old buddy.”

  “Let’s take him home,” Bea said and attempted a laugh.

  Rocco leaned forward in his best professional manner, and for a moment Lyon felt that he’d run a stop sign and the Chief was preparing a lecture. “Now listen, old friend, and listen good. Here’s what happened. You saw Houston yesterday afternoon; you obviously got to him or he wouldn’t have reacted. He knew you couldn’t be kept out of the way indefinitely, that eventually you’d be back with additional evidence.”

  “I hinted that to him.”

  “Right. Now, he’s already shook because we traced the bodies and linked them to Houston Company. You’ve tracked down the government inspector; you’re hot on his trail. He can’t bear up under it; he spends a restless night, can’t see any way out, and this morning … whacko. It’s all over. Now, doesn’t that make sense?”

  “Yes, it makes a lot of sense. Houston was afraid of us, arranged for Bull Martin to pull his deal, knew I saw Coop in Florida …”

  “A question of time.”

  “We didn’t have a damn thing, Rocco. Not really. You know that, I know that and he knew that.”

  “Did he? What about his guilt all those years? Why do you think he was the state’s biggest philanthropist? He’d created an image, and you were about to destroy it.”

  “What more do you want, Lyon?” Beatrice said. “A dozen people saw Houston go into his office, thirty people heard the shot, and within minutes twenty of those were in the office where Houston was dead by his own gun. No one else was there.”