Grave Error

by Stephen Greenleaf

  The door to the bunkhouse was open and I went inside. It was dark, except for a small candle burning in the middle of a long table at one end of the room. In the shadows along the walls several bodies were making the sounds of sleep. Luis sat at the table, alone, his face haunted and frightening in the candlelight, his eyes dead with fatigue.

  I sat down across from him and told him what had happened, everything except where Roland Nelson was and what he was about to do unless I could stop him. When I got to the part about Michael Whitson being alive and about Michael’s daughter being outside in my car, Luis’s eyes burned brighter than the candle.

  I told Luis I wanted him to take Rodman to Sheriff Marks. He asked me what would happen to Michael’s daughter and I told him she was going with me. He nodded, and went over to waken some of the men.

  The last I saw of Al Rodman he was being carried into the bunkhouse by Luis and his son. The boy looked as though he were enjoying himself, and for the first time all evening Rodman seemed frightened. As the bunkhouse door slammed shut, Claire and I started out for San Francisco.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I dropped Claire off at my apartment, ignoring her pleas to come with me, then fought through the lunch-hour traffic out to Clay Street and parked across from the Nelson house. The front stairs still creaked and the little sign below the bell still asked me not to smoke. In light of the events since I had last seen it, the warning seemed grossly trivial.

  The knob rotated smoothly and the door scraped open. I listened for a few seconds, but all I could hear was the pulse of my own apprehension. When nothing else happened I pushed my way inside.

  The parlor shades were drawn. The room was dark and looked unused and artificial, something on display behind a velvet rope. I ran a finger across a walnut end table and left a causeway through the dust.

  The dining room and kitchen were empty, too. Furry balls of mold had formed on the coffee dregs in a ceramic cup sitting in the sink. The silence was electric; the house seemed to have become a giant explosive device. I hoped I wouldn’t set it off.

  I was halfway up the stairs to the second floor when I heard the voices. They were low and muffled and layered with immediacy. I knew who at least one of them belonged to.

  I took out my gun and walked toward the rear of the house. Along the way I passed a full-length mirror. My reflected image was ridiculously melodramatic, so I put the gun back in its holster.

  By the time I reached the back bedroom the voices had stopped. I waited to see if they would start up again. When they didn’t, I loosened my tie and opened the door and walked into the room.

  It was a frilly chamber, a woman’s place, smelling of jasmine and roses, and there was a woman in it. Jacqueline Nelson lay in the center of a four-poster bed, framed like a finely etched odalisque by the drapes of the canopy above her. A satin dressing gown spread over her body like a white wine sauce. She was propped up against the headboard on two large pillows, but it had been a long time since she had thought about sleep. She was frightened, her eyes wide and unblinking. Beams of supplication darted across the room. I followed her gaze and found the man I had come to get.

  Roland Nelson wasn’t looking at anything but his soul. He was slumped in an old rocker, his eyes on the floor, moving back and forth like some mechanical relic, a perpetual motion machine that hadn’t solved the problem. In his lap his fingers rubbed the grip of the forty-five, as if to summon a genie who would erase reality. The front of his shirt was damp and clinging from the blood.

  I looked back at Mrs. Nelson. Her eyes flicked over at me, then fled back. “Tanner,” she gasped, “you’ve got to stop him. He’s going to kill me.”

  Nelson didn’t react. He just seemed to shrink even further into himself, to become a dense and weighty mass of will. When I took a step toward him something squeaked and he looked up at me. It took a moment for him to focus on who and what I was. “Welcome to judgment day, Tanner,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. My gun was heavy under my arm. I wished I hadn’t looked in that mirror.

  “I had hoped to have this resolved by the time you arrived,” Nelson continued. “Unfortunately, I was forced to stop several times along the way. My wound is a bit more serious than I supposed. But I have the strength to do what must be done.”

  “Which is?”

  “I intend to mete out justice. You’re familiar with the concept, I trust.”

  “Barely. It’s an endangered species.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I intend to execute this fiend myself, to remove this malignancy from society’s flesh with a terrible swift sword of my own.” Nelson’s smile was triumphant and unafraid. “The only question is whether to turn the gun on myself afterward or to submit to the authorities. I’ve always found accountability a troublesome philosophical problem.”

  “We have judges and juries to handle justice, Nelson. Leave it to them. Just give me the gun.”

  “There is no jury more qualified than I to determine guilt in this case, and no judge more qualified to pass sentence. I have the advantage of being intimately familiar with the matter. Most intimately.”

  Nelson’s laugh was a curdled cry of doom that drove his wife even further back away from him. “See?” she urged. “See, Tanner? He’s crazy. You’ve got to stop him. Shoot him. Shoot him, Tanner.”

  I took another step toward Nelson. “That’s far enough,” he said, swinging the gun toward me. “You can view the proceedings just as well from there.”

  “Give me the gun, Nelson,” I repeated. “You don’t want to shoot anyone. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’ll surrender it shortly, after it has served its purpose. I’ve never wanted to do anything more in my life than put a bullet into that creature on the bed. By the way,” Nelson added, “do you know who she is?”

  “Angie Peel.”

  Nelson nodded. “How did you know?”

  “A couple of things. I knew Angie had hooked up with Rodman down in Rutledge. When Rodman showed up at the ranch it was obvious someone was pulling the strings for him. At first I thought Duckie Bollo might have his face in all this, but Rodman was pretty convincing when he denied it. Angie Peel was the only other link to Rodman that I knew of, except Claire. I only realized Angie and your wife were one and the same when I remembered how Mrs. Nelson had signed her name on the check she gave me. Jacqueline and Angelina have several common letters. I had Angie’s signature on a postcard I found at Mrs. Peel’s place, and when I compared them on the way up here I got a match.”

  “Since you know who she is, you know just what she has done,” Nelson said.

  “I’m not sure I know the whole story. Why don’t you start at the beginning, to make sure I have it straight?” There were some things I wanted to know, but mostly I wanted to keep Nelson doing something other than pulling the trigger.

  “You deserve an explanation, I suppose,” Nelson said. “And someone should be able to tell the story to Claire, if I decide not to endure the gloats of my enemies after disposing of my wife. I’ll tell as much of it as I can. After I finish you will understand why you have no chance of preventing me from destroying her.”

  “Don’t believe anything he says, Tanner,” Jacqueline Nelson said. “He murdered my father, then tried to cover it up by killing my mother, too. Now he wants to kill me. And you, too. Don’t let him do it. Please. You can’t just stand there and let me die, for God’s sake.”

  Nelson laughed. “Hear me out, Tanner. By the time I’m finished you’ll want her dead as much as I do.”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  Nelson shrugged. “As you guessed, I survived the automobile accident. But I was frightened and hurt and ashamed of what I had done and of what people would say about me, so I ran. It was the first of a long string of actions of which I am mortified.”

  “Did anyone know you were alive?”

  “No. I stayed in the valley for a few days, hiding in barns and culverts. I managed to get an Oxtail n
ewspaper and learned that Angie’s injuries were extensive but that she was expected to recover. It also said she had told the police that I had murdered her father, but she evidently said nothing about my doing it to protect Mrs. Peel. I was wanted for murder, and that convinced me to run away.”

  “What about the child?” I asked. “Why didn’t you make some arrangement for her?”

  “I didn’t even know Angie was pregnant. I had no reason to be concerned for a daughter or for her future. I like to think that if I had known about the baby I would have stayed and accepted my punishment, but I don’t know. I distrust moralistic retrospectives.”

  “So you went to Seattle.”

  “And from there to San Francisco, where I began my work at the Institute. Everything went smoothly at first. I lived for my work, was totally immersed in it, and became quite successful. I regarded my work as sacred, the only means of atoning for the crimes I had committed. I became a zealot, leading a life of expiation and sacrifice. Then one day Angie Peel reentered my life.”

  “How did she learn who you were?”

  “She claimed she saw me on a newscast and recognized me from the way I moved. It may be true. She has the instincts of a jungle animal. And I must admit that at first I was glad she was here. For many years I had refrained from intimacy with a woman for fear it might lead to my exposure, but the inevitable tensions of celibacy began to possess me. I began to frequent prostitutes, secretly and in other cities, until the shame of the liaisons overcame any release I experienced. Then Angie arrived. Her physical attraction was as powerful as ever. Her sexuality overwhelmed me. It still does, in spite of all the rest. Angie eliminated my need for other women, and I thought she was the answer to my dreams. But she soon became my blackest nightmare.”

  Over on the bed Jacqueline Nelson muttered a curse. One strap of her gown had slipped off her shoulder, exposing her left breast. She didn’t seem to notice, and Nelson didn’t either. Her eyes crawled over her husband’s face like jackals, craving a morsel of hope. Nelson seemed submerged in recollection, but the gun was firmly in his fist.

  “One thing,” I said. “Angie doesn’t look the same, does she? Was it the wreck?”

  Nelson nodded. “Her face was badly cut in the crash. There was extensive plastic surgery and she left Oxtail immediately after her baby was born and she recovered, so no one knew what the new Angie Peel looked like. She was disguised even better than I.”

  “What happened next?”

  “After a few months I came to my senses. I realized I didn’t love Angie, that we shared nothing but lust.”

  “So you tried to get rid of her.”

  “I told her how I felt and offered to pay a generous amount every month if she would leave me alone, but she turned on me like a wildcat. She threatened to expose me if I didn’t marry her and to tell the police I’d murdered her father for the money they used to say he had. An honorable man would have rejected the bargain, but like the coward that I am, I capitulated. And Angie collected the fee for her silence. Money, primarily. And status. Finally, in her foulest deed, she refused to allow me to order Alvin Rodman away from Claire.

  “I was a vassal. By day I was a respected man, a man of dignity; at night I became a groveling toady, forced to perform sexual stunts and servile chores at her slightest whim. I was driven to the brink of suicide. It is not always the least honorable alternative, and were I more of a man, I would have abandoned my wretched existence long ago. I also considered homicide, but by then Claire was here and I wanted to spare her the shame of such a deed. As it turned out, of course, she would have been better off if I had done years ago what I am about to do.” Nelson shook his head, as though he were amazed at what he had become.

  “What about Claire?” I asked. “How did she come into the picture?”

  “Angie first told me I had a daughter about a year after she turned up here in San Francisco. I was flabbergasted and became desperate to find my child. It wasn’t entirely altruistic, of course. Nothing is. I thought that somehow, if I could just possess my daughter, an innocent, harmless creature, it would reduce some of the shame of my relationship with Angie, knowing that at least one thing of beauty had emerged from our union. What I should have realized was that Angie had ulterior motives for bringing Claire into our home, that even maternal affection was an emotion entirely foreign to her.”

  “You said at the cabin that you caused all the killing. How?”

  “I decided to put an end to my vassalage. I decided to become a man, and Angie found out and couldn’t bear it.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “A few weeks ago. I went away for a while, away from Angie and away from the Institute. I made a list of the alternatives, of the consequences of the various avenues open to me. I decided that whatever exposure of my past might bring, it could not be worse than what my present had become.”

  “Independence Day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sara Brooke was with you.”

  Nelson looked surprised that I knew. “I called for her to join me once the decision was made,” he explained. “She did, and we consummated our love. For the first time. I told her I would soon be free to love her in the way I had wanted to love her for twenty years.”

  “How much did she know?” I asked.

  “Almost nothing. She knew who I was, but she didn’t know Jacqueline’s true identity or the hell my life had become. She knew only that I was tormented and that I would not allow myself to become intimate with her. I told her it was because of my work, but really I was afraid of what Angie might do if she found out.”

  “But your wife must have recognized Sara.”

  “She did, and she reveled in our frustration. At one point I told Jacqueline I was going to fire Sara, so she could be free of me and make a new life for herself, but Jackie refused to let me do it. She said she enjoyed watching Sara yearn for something that she could never have.”

  “Did you tell Jackie you had decided to make the break?”

  “No, but she suspected it. When I returned from my retreat I became less responsive to her demands. That’s what led to the killing. She was afraid her leverage would be lost before she could complete her grand design. So she had Rodman kill your friend, and then her own mother, in order to protect her secret. Her secret, and mine. She would have had him kill you, eventually.”

  “He tried.”

  “You must be a lucky man. Angie seldom fails.”

  “What about the money?” I asked. “She thought you were taking money from the Institute.”

  “I was. It was for Claire. I was buying stocks in trust for her, so she would have a measure of independence regardless of what happened to me. It was another deed of less than honorable dimensions, but one I felt had to be done.”

  Nelson closed his eyes and pressed his hand to his shoulder. The wound had begun to bleed again. I didn’t move and neither did Angie. We sat that way for a while, locked in a stilted tableau, three lives twisted into a single strand of destiny, waiting out the day.

  Nelson’s head dropped forward onto his chest, then rose and fell with his breaths. I couldn’t tell if he was conscious. I kept thinking of things to do and then not doing them because they would make it worse.

  “Get the gun.”

  The whisper ripped in the silence. I didn’t move and Jacqueline Nelson repeated her command. I shook my head, keeping my eyes on her husband. He blinked twice and shook himself awake.

  “Let me call the police, Nelson,” I said. “Martyrs aren’t in vogue. Memories are too short these days.”

  He shook his head. “Angie must die as her victims have died. Horribly, without mercy.” Nelson’s voice was as dreamy and lilting as a benediction repeated until it was meaningless.

  “You’ll be leaving Claire with a mother in a grave and a father in jail for murder,” I said.

  “Claire no longer needs me. I realize that now. She will be better off without either of us. At least I will leav
e her a worthy legacy—the destruction of a monster.” Nelson winced again. He would have to lose consciousness before long. I hoped.

  “What about your work? If you kill Angie you’ll destroy your name and the Institute as well. Everything you’ve lived for.”

  “That’s the ultimate irony, Tanner. That’s what freed me to break away from Angie. The Institute has become a travesty. Bill Freedman and the rest have become drunk with power. They care only about results, about destroying another politician, ridiculing another executive. Freedman has far fewer scruples than most of the men he pursues. He and his people have burglarized and bribed and threatened and libeled, all to achieve what they believe to be a better world. They are the new Gestapo, destroying lives at whim. It’s abominable, but it’s beyond my control. Freedman has demanded that I resign and turn the Institute over to him. He says if I refuse he will organize a coup among the staff and have me displaced.”

  “Then stay and fight.”

  “No. We only have so many battles in us, and I’ve fought all mine. I’m old and tired and afraid.”

  Welcome to the club.

  Nelson’s head lay back against the chair. His eyes closed and his mouth dropped open; his breaths were as slow as chimes. He stayed that way for several minutes, until I was certain he had finally passed out. I reached for him, my eyes on the gun, trying to keep silent.

  The bedsprings creaked and I turned. Jacqueline Nelson was scrambling frantically toward her husband, crawling off the bed in a desperate effort to seize the gun and save her life. The scissors in her hand gleamed like starlight.

  She was on the floor and about to spring when Nelson moved. With the ease of a handball player he swiped his palm against his wife’s face, just below her eyes, as though he were brushing lint off his trousers. She fell to the floor, her whimper echoing through the house like a Moslem call to prayer.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Jacqueline Nelson curled at her husband’s feet in a defensive reflex as old as life. She was groggy but conscious. Blood trickled down her neck from a rip behind her ear and her lip had begun to swell and darken. She looked as though she couldn’t believe Nelson had hit her. I believed it. I also believed he would do a lot more than that before he was through, unless someone stopped him.