Grave Error

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “As I was saying, Mr. Tanner,” he went on. “Many things were given to me, so many of them I began to feel a certain amount of guilt about it. Or perhaps inadequacy is a better word. I tried to start several ventures on my own, but without success. Then, finally, I did produce something. A son. My son was everything to me. At last I, too, could become immortal.

  “I had such plans for him. An eastern college, then some time in Europe and Latin America, to absorb those cultures, then further learning in the arts. He would not be confined to this valley, as I have been, but would become a man of the world. A patron of beauty in all forms. He was to be my masterpiece, my raison d’être if you will.

  “In retrospect I see that I should have sent him away. To private schools in Spain, perhaps. Or Switzerland. But I couldn’t bear to part with him so soon. And, too, I was certain that if he grew up here he would soon see that there was nothing here in Oxtail for him, and he would break the chain that has bound the Whitsons to this valley for five generations.

  “He was a wonderful boy. I have spent twenty years dreaming of what might have been if only Michael had survived. Now you ask me if he is alive. Of course he is alive. He lives in my mind as vividly as if he were seated in this room, as if he had actually become all the things I dreamed of him becoming.”

  The past seemed to have entered the room with an engraved invitation. Whitson received it like a prodigal, his face aglow in the false light of a prospect beyond fulfillment. I brought him back to the shadows. “Aside from your dreams,” I said, “is there any tangible evidence that Michael might be living? Anything at all?”

  Whitson was still for a long while, until I thought he had fallen asleep. Then suddenly he got to his feet and hobbled over to a small desk in the middle of the room and pulled open the top drawer. He got something out and brought it over to me.

  “I have never told anyone about this. It seemed pointless. It could well have been a vicious prank, and even if it were not, there was no definite indication that Michael would return, or even reveal himself to me. And I was afraid that if I pursued him myself I would drive him ever further from my side. So I put the note away, after memorizing its contents, and continued to hope and dream.”

  He handed me a slip of paper. The words on it were typed. There was no signature or date. I read it: “I am still alive. I did not do what they accuse me of doing. Some day we will be together. Do not forget me. Michael.”

  “That was in our mailbox on Easter day nineteen sixty-eight,” Whitson said. “Ten years ago. There was no postmark or any other indication of its origin.”

  “Do you think it really came from your son?”

  “I know it did.”

  “Then he may be a murderer for a second time.”

  “No,” Whitson blurted. “You say you have no principal, Mr. Tanner. I wish to hire you. To find my son and prove that he is not a murderer.”

  I shook my head, but not until I thought about it for a minute. “I’ve got too many people tugging at me already,” I said. “All I’m interested in right now is in finding Harry’s killer. Anything else is a diversion, maybe a fatal one. I’ve bent and pared and chopped at the truth from time to time, when it helped a client or maybe me, but I’m not doing it on this one. I won’t keep anything back, not if it helps me put Harry’s killer in San Quentin.”

  “If you find the truth,” Whitson said softly, “there will be no need to keep anything back.”

  “Maybe. But maybe not. I’m taking no chances.”

  “Very well,” Whitson said. “I have some influence in this valley. Call on me if you need help. I consider that you are working for me, even if you don’t.”

  “I’ll yell if I need to,” I said. “Just so you understand that if I find out that your son killed Harry Spring I’ll personally turn him in to the authorities and testify at his trial and do anything else to help convict him.”

  “I understand that. I’m prepared for it.”

  “I hope your son is.”

  “One more thing,” Whitson said.

  “What?”

  “Will you tell me about my grandchild, once this is over? Will you tell me who she is and where I can find her?”

  “I’ll tell you,” I said.

  I took one last look at Marisa and went out the door. As I drove toward the highway the walnuts crumbled under my tires like old, dry bones.

  TWENTY

  It was almost sundown by the time I got back to the center of Oxtail. The kids had hit the streets, taking over the town the way they do all small towns on hot summer evenings, cruising interminably in their cars, sprawling over the seats and over each other, shouting insults and propositions, arranging everything from fisticuffs to fornication, and, above all, causing maximum irritation to any adult who blundered into their parade. One young buck in a new Cutlass pulled up next to me at a stop light and gunned his engine while his buddy made a remark about my car and my age. I said something in return and gave them a good look at my face. They drove off quietly when the light changed.

  I wanted to get out of Oxtail. There were only sad stories here, stories of Sara Brooke’s loveless childhood and Jed Peel’s drunken rampages and John Whitson’s Gothic hermitage. It was as though a noxious fume were in the air, one that enabled crops to bloom and thrive but caused humans to wilt and wither or become sour and twisted stalks of rage and evil. I had enough of that poison in me already.

  I knew if I returned to my room at the Laurel Motel I would get even more depressed, so I decided to drive to Sacramento. I could check out Claire Nelson’s orphange the first thing in the morning, and with luck I might stumble across the same lead that Harry had. I hoped so, because as it was I was getting nowhere. I was supposed to be closing in on a killer, but the only thing I had learned was the names of Claire Nelson’s parents. My only suspect in Harry’s case was a man who could have been dead for twenty years.

  There was one more stop I wanted to make before leaving town, so I pulled into another gas station and looked up the listings under P. There were three Peels in the book and one of them lived on Railroad Avenue. That should have been somewhere near the depot so I asked the young attendant how to get there. Einstein couldn’t have given me better directions.

  Railroad Avenue ran parallel to the rail line leading into town from the west. Paved for a short stretch near the depot, it deteriorated to gravel and finally to dirt when it reached the warehouse area. I wished the sun hadn’t gone down. Human life isn’t worth warm spit in a rail yard after dark.

  Mrs. Peel’s house was wedged in between a warehouse and some oil storage tanks on the side of the road opposite the tracks. It sat well back from the road, a tiny little box afraid to come down and play with the big boys next door. Two troughs in the dirt passed for a driveway and I turned in.

  The car lights brushed the front of the house. It was painted light blue, the color of a prison work shirt, but scabs of gray concrete showed through where the paint had flaked away. A TV antenna pierced the roof like a syringe. The house number had been painted by someone who could have used a drink.

  I didn’t see any lights, but old ladies sit in the dark a lot so I parked and went up the steps to the little cement stoop outside the front door. There wasn’t a bell so I knocked loudly on the metal screen. The immediate response was a burst of short, shrill barks from inside the house, followed by a series of heavy thuds, like someone was beating a rug. After a minute I figured out that the dog was hurling himself at the door, then backing off and doing it again and again.

  The dog was in a frenzy, but no one came to the door. A thin gauze curtain blocked the front window and I couldn’t see inside. The door was locked. A freight train rattled by on the other side of the road as I walked around to the back.

  The only things behind the house were a little wooden shed full of firewood and a single clothesline that was empty except for a cotton slip flapping quietly in the breeze. The big bad wolf could have blown the shed down with a
yawn. Bits of paper swirled around the yard. I could still hear the dog assaulting the front door.

  I didn’t particularly want to do it, but I opened the back screen and tried the door. The knob turned and I pushed it open a crack and called out to see if anyone was home. Then the smell hit me and I knew whoever was there wasn’t going to answer the door. I wiped the knob with my handkerchief and backed outside.

  I should have just left it alone—made an anonymous call to the cops and headed back for San Francisco and minded my own business until the police looked it over and came up with whatever they could. Life can get very complicated for private investigators who find dead bodies in strange little towns. Then in my mind I saw Ruthie Spring’s face when she found out about Harry, and it gave me what I needed to go back inside.

  It was too dark to see anything clearly. The dog was underfoot, pawing my legs and yapping incessantly. The smell was a physical force that was trying to drive me back outside. I put one hand over my nose and moved carefully, sliding the other hand along the wall until I felt a switch. I held my breath and flipped it.

  It wasn’t the first time I had come across a smashed and mutilated body. I’ve done it several times, starting with when I was in Korea, but not enough to get used to it. This was one of the worst, and I was sure I was going to be sick.

  I turned and stumbled out into the backyard. The little dog came after me, then took off toward the oil tanks, grateful to be free of the carnage. I closed my eyes and leaned against the house and gulped for air until my brain stopped floating and I felt better. Then I forced myself to go back inside.

  She had been shot in the face with a shotgun. Probably a twelve gauge, from the mess. Maybe even sawed off. The killer couldn’t have been over six feet away from her when he pulled the trigger. Blood and shot and flesh and bone were spattered against the cabinets like bugs on a windshield. A hunk of jawbone with gums and teeth attached had been blown against the window hard enough to shatter it.

  The body lay on its back in a pool of blood that had congealed like gelatin. The face was unrecognizable, of course, but from the shape and texture of the torso, the rolled nylons, the dowdy attire, I assumed the dead woman was Mrs. Peel. I didn’t know who else it could be.

  The little dog had run back and forth in the blood around the body and his tiny red footprints were all over the linoleum. It looked like he had gone over to lick the face of his mistress, to try to revive her. Or maybe he had just been hungry.

  She had been fixing dinner when it happened. A little saucepan sat on the counter next to a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. The can hadn’t been opened. A piece of Mrs. Peel’s ear lay in the bottom of the pan.

  Finally some aspects other than the gore began to register. All the cabinet doors were open, as if they had been searched thoroughly. The dead woman’s shoes were still on her feet, but the heels had been pried off and tossed into a corner. Some smudges on the floor could have been footprints. I didn’t see anything else unusual, so I picked my way into the tiny living room, careful to avoid the blood.

  There was the same evidence of a search in there, and the same little dog tracks on the threadbare carpet and on the front door, where the dog had jumped when I rang the bell. The same for the bedroom, where a dark spot at the foot of the bed marked the place where the dog had curled up for the night.

  The smell was getting to me again so I went back to the kitchen and stuck my head out the door. When the water stopped sloshing around in my head I went back in and started looking around more carefully.

  There was nothing in the kitchen except cooking gear, a card table and chairs, and a little gas stove and refrigerator. The food in the room couldn’t have fed a teen-age boy for an hour. The church calendar on the wall was a month behind. It was the kind that had space for your daily appointments, but none of Mrs. Peel’s spaces were filled in. The garbage in the pail by the door probably smelled bad, but death smelled worse.

  I poked around in the kitchen a little more, then went to the bedroom. There was nothing in the dresser except the functional trappings of an impoverished old age. There were some empty places where something or other might have been taken by whoever searched the place, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Mrs. Peel wasn’t loaded with possessions.

  I checked the pillows and under the mattress and behind the mirror and came up with nothing. On the floor in the closet was a pair of black shoes just like the ones on Mrs. Peel’s feet, run down at the heels, and a patent leather purse. The purse was empty. Some thin cotton dresses drooped wetly from metal hangers and a shiny black cane leaned into a corner. On the top shelf of the closet a round black hat rested almost pertly next to a cardboard box.

  I took the box down. It was empty, except for the folded newspaper that lined the bottom. I took the newspaper out and unfolded it. It was the July 17, 1914, edition of the Oxtail Times. I leafed through it and when I turned the third page something fell to the floor. It was a photograph, a little Brownie snapshot of a young girl in a bathing suit standing next to a lake. I put it in my pocket and looked through the rest of the paper. A little box in the lower left corner of the society page announced that Jedediah Peel and Elena Valdez had plighted their troth the previous Sunday at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Oxtail. There weren’t any pictures.

  I put the newspaper back in the box and the box back on the shelf. Outside a car with a loud muffler drove past at high speed and made me nervous. I made a quick pass at the bathroom and went back to the living room. There weren’t many places to hide anything and what places there were had obviously been checked out. I sat down on the couch after making sure there wasn’t any blood on it.

  In front of me was a small square coffee table with a glass cover on top to protect the finish. The corner of the glass had cracked and been repaired with cellophane tape. The tape was yellowed and curled. Between the glass and the tabletop were several pictures of religious scenes, including several of someone’s conception of Christ. I had seen pictures like that before and when I remembered where, I leaned down and lifted the glass and took them out. They were postcards, not pictures, and they had all been signed by Angelina.

  There was nothing personal on any of the cards, just a brief printed greeting and a wish for a happy holiday of some kind or another, usually Christmas or Easter. I couldn’t read the postmarks. On one of the cards Angie wrote she had just moved to 2150 Shannon Drive in Rutledge, California. The card was dated March 12, 1965. I wrote the address down in my notebook and put the cards and the glass back on the table.

  I poked around the house for a few more minutes, but there was precious little to see. Elena Peel had lived a harsh and barren life, without frills or beauty or even love, unless she had the love of her god. No one would have traded places with her and no one would have coveted anything she owned. She was one of the anonymous whose history is recorded in the welfare rolls and the unemployment lines and the Social Security records and, finally, in the church graveyard. There are millions of Elena Peels in this country, old and alone and shamefully abandoned by the temporarily young. It is one of America’s most puzzling failures, since a whole lot of us are going to end up like Elena Peel. A whole lot.

  In spite of her bleak existence, Elena Peel had wanted to stay alive. Already denied everything else, her killer had denied her even that. I hoped I was going to run into him before long.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I had to decide what to do about what I’d found and I didn’t want to do it sitting inside the house, so I tossed a final glance at Elena Peel’s remains, switched off the lights, and went outside and got in my car.

  It was pitch black. The only light came from the stars and from the two small bulbs atop the distant oil tanks. A breeze eddied through the car, washing away my tension as it passed. The human psyche is amazingly adaptable. After a few minutes it was as though I had found nothing more remarkable than a leaky faucet.

  It was almost cool, a beautiful evening unless you wer
e sitting twenty yards from a homicide trying to decide whether or not to report what you knew to the police. Another hot rod roared by. Inside it a young girl screamed, but not from fright. I finished one cigarette and lit another. I was tired. Time was afloat in a dense and transparent solution. So were my thoughts. I yawned till it hurt. Then I yawned again.

  If I called Sheriff Marks and told him what I’d found and waited around for him to come out to Mrs. Peel’s house and answered some of his questions and fended off the rest, I’d be out of commission for another day at least. If Harley Cates got involved, as he undoubtedly would since the body was inside the city limits, I’d be out of action a lot longer than that. He might even try to lock me up for murder.

  I couldn’t spare that kind of time. It looked as though someone was out to eliminate everyone who had any information about the death of Jed Peel. If that were true, several more names could be on the killer’s list.

  One was Claire Nelson’s. The killer must have thought Harry Spring knew enough to make him dangerous, and since he couldn’t be sure how much Harry had told Claire, she would have to die, too. Although it was possible the killer didn’t know anything about Claire or her connection with Harry, I didn’t want to chance it. She needed protection.

  Angie Peel’s name could also be on the list. She was the only participant in the Peel death left alive. I wanted to get to Angie fast, faster than Marks or Cates would let me if I stayed around to report Elena Peel’s murder, so I started the car and backed out into Railroad Avenue.

  The first phone booth I came to was in a supermarket parking lot. I pulled down the receiver and called Sara Brooke and told her what I’d found in the little blue house.

  “Are you sure it was murder?” she asked.

  “Definitely.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “You don’t want to know.”