Wood looked away. It was perhaps another point he’d made previously.
“Cause if you are, it seems like you’re wasting your resources, investigating leaks when you can’t find who killed three kids and shot an old woman.” I shrugged. “I ‘spect you’re right. A story like that’d probably find more resonance among the good people of Austin County than anything about intimidating a drunk.”
Crandall snatched up the newspaper in a wad and shook it at me.
“There’s too much here. You were in that fucking trailer.”
I did not smile. That would’ve seemed like rubbing it in. I stood.
“I’m leaving now,” I said and nodded at Wood and Moze. Neither made any move to stop me so I turned to go.
“You’ll be getting no more information about this,” Crandall hissed in a low and dangerous voice.
“Maybe not. Your call,” I said. I turned to face Crandall. “But let me give you a little insight into how these things work. I have to write something. Editors—hell, readers—expect it. If you don’t tell me anything and nobody else tells me anything, I just have to rehash what I know. Or maybe, just to keep things fresh, I have to write some stuff I didn’t write the first time.”
I gave it a beat to make sure it would register.
“Like how whoever did this maybe was smart enough to search the house for weapons. Like how he found a .22 and disabled it by sticking it in the toilet and bending its barrel in the trap. Like how he’s such a cold son of a bitch he ate an apple off Aunt Lotty’s table while he took a piss then dropped the core in the toilet.”
“You bastard,” Crandall shouted. “You were in that fucking trailer.”
“Or I have good sources.” I shrugged. “Don’t forget that.”
“Either way, you see, Potter, it looks bad. I rehash it, it looks like you guys aren’t getting anywhere. I write that other stuff—stuff I saved so you guys can use it as a flash if you want—I write that, it scares the bejesus out of folks ’cause it sounds like you got some kind of psychopath on the loose. So you decide about cutting me off. And while you’re at it, I’d be mighty careful about leaking information to some other outlet but not to me. I’m kind of sensitive to that sort of discrimination.”
Crandall’s chin crinkled he set his face so hard. Wood had leaned back on the table, his arms crossed, looking at the floor. Moze wasn’t looking at me either, but the knot in his jaw had relaxed.
“And if it really makes a difference to you, Potter,” I said, when I stopped at the door, “any fucking defense attorney who asks whether I was in that trailer or not gets the same answer you did.”
The rest of Sunday felt like any other day. I was in the office with Marley, and the phones rang all afternoon.
As usual, I called a lot of people, and as usual, a few called me back. The morbidly curious, as usual, wanted a head start on tomorrow’s edition. Marley’s wife, as usual, wanted to know when he’d be home.
Marley had stayed that afternoon to write his story and lay out some of the next day’s front page. “Get it straightened out?” was all he asked about the meeting with Crandall. I was relieved that a simple yes satisfied him. I did not want to discuss with him the fact that I and, through me, the paper might be exposed to a couple of felony charges as a result of my enthusiasms.
The decision about which story to lead with the next day distracted Marley. He favored the anguish of the Crawford family as told by Naomi. “We can top the interview with whatever the preacher says at the funeral tomorrow,” Marley said. “It’ll be the timeliest stuff we’ve got. Unless there’s an arrest, of course.”
I preferred the community reaction story. Some parents said three dead children were enough to make them keep their kids home from trick or treating. The town cops reported they had arrested a man who had fired a shot at some teenagers who were soaping his garage windows. One locksmith, two gun-shop guys, and three preachers said, in essence, that three dead children and an injured old woman made for good business. The preachers were even willing to drum up a little more. To a man, they said they would be more than happy to go into the school to counsel the youngsters who were friends of the dead children, but the school superintendent said he had staff who would handle it, now that I’d mentioned it.
“Listen, Bob,” I said to Marley. “You got more than four victims here. A whole town, a whole county’s hurt here. In this little friendly burg, people are locking their doors. They’re not only buying more guns, they’re buying different guns. Handguns, not rifles or shotguns. They’re buying guns to shoot other people, not just Bambi and Thumper like they usually do. People are scared.”
“You got somebody saying this is a ‘dagger to the heart of the community’?” Marley might not have heard about writing in the fourth person, but he knew his way around a metaphor.
“No,” I said.
“Then I’ll present your very persuasive theory to the GM, and he can write it in an editorial.”
We did not have a story on the Russells. After two more calls in which I was told to fuck off, they put on the answering machine. Going out to their house did not seem likely to change their mind, and no one else I called, including their preacher, was willing to try to persuade them otherwise.
We did not have any more on Aunt Lotty. No hospital in hundred-mile radius would admit to having received anyone by her name, McConegal’s name, Wood’s name, Moze’s name, or my name; and none of the dozen or so cops I called, including McConegal, would tell me where she was or what kind of shape she was in.
We did not have any more from the cops. Wood did not hang up on me this time, but he said in an exhausted voice he had nothing new then, and I believed him.
We did not have why. It has been my experience that execution-style murders are usually done for a reason, like for revenge or to make a point. But not one of the people who knew the victims or their families I talked to that day could think of a reason to explain why anybody’d want to kill them.
The last phone call came about quarter till seven. Marley answered it, smirked, and pointed to me.
When I picked up the first line, she said, “I’m only going to swear at you once. You son of a bitch.”
“Janelle S.,” I said.
“You nearly cost me my job.”
“You didn’t miss a thing, Janelle S.”
“Stop calling me that. And tell it to my editor. She wants to know how I could’ve missed the show, how come nobody’ll talk to me.”
“Got a copy of my last story? Use it, the facts are still good.”
“Just old.” She blew out breath. “Like you. You know, I lied about only swearing once. Fuck you, asshole.”
God, I liked her.
“So you go with what you got,” I said. “And if it helps, the first funeral’s tomorrow at ten.”
“You’re meat, asshole. You know that? Don’t turn your back, ’cause I’ll stick a fork in you.”
I laughed out loud, she was such a delight.
“Bye, Janelle,” I said and hung up. Marley was sitting back in his chair, his arms crossed, looking bemused.
“You told her when the funeral was,” he said. “You getting soft?”
His remark kind of pulled me up short. I got to thinking about the various people I’d screwed in the last 48 hours, and about how, in that same period of time, it had occurred to me not once but several times maybe scotch’d taste good.
“How ‘bout a Meeting?” I said to Marley, so we went.
We spoke the first time that night.
A phone always lives nearby, this night under my bed. It rang four times before I was conscious enough to untangle myself from the sheet and find it. 2:17 a.m. So said the red readout on my clock. He is a nocturnal animal.
“Are you Ambrose?” he asked before I could say hello.
His is a polite voice: soft
, even, civil. Entirely rational. He speaks so reasonably you don’t notice at first that his questions are devoid of the normal human wellsprings, curiosity or concern. He asks questions only to decide.
“Yeah. Who’re you?” I said.
“Well, I’m . . .” He paused, as though he was actually thinking about it, and sighed. “I’m disappointed.”
“Come on,” I said. “It’s way too early to be playing games. What’s your name?”
Every answer required thought. He paused again, as though it might be tempting.
“That would be a mistake,” he said finally.
“Okay.” I had dealt with reluctant sources before. “What can I do for you?”
“She didn’t die?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The old woman.”
“You mean Lottie? Lottie Nusbaumer?”
“I believe you wrote that the children called her ‘Aunt’ Lottie.”
It was my turn to wait, to see if silence would draw him out, but he pursues his purposes singly. He had clarified. He had no need to say more until I answered.
“If you read my story,” I said finally, “you know she did not die.”
“I’m . . . I’m somewhat removed from your circulation area,” he explained. “I’m told you reported her alive.”
“Last I knew.”
“And I’m told you reported it was a wig she was wearing?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Well,” he said, after a moment. “I suppose there’s no accounting for that,” he concluded.
The hair on the back of my unshaven neck locked knees at attention.
“Do you have something you want to tell me? I asked, trying to come at it broadly.
“I’m very disappointed,” he repeated.
“Why would an old lady living through that disappoint you?”
Now he could see why I was confused.
“Oh, well,” he said, in his reasonable way. “I can’t speak to that.”
The skin on my neck tried to crawl over my eyebrows. It was not so much that he was cold as he was completely analytical. He had not called to gloat. Something had not gone according to plan. He wanted to know what it was. He was merely following up. He could have been talking about the outcome of a science experiment.
“You shot those kids and the old woman?” I said numbly, trying to think of other questions to ask him.
The pause made me think he wanted to answer me directly, but I had already learned that was his way.
“I can’t speak to that,” he said.
“Tell me your name.”
“No.”
He had already decided that question. No need for thought.
“What should I call you?”
“There’s no need. I’m hanging up now. Perhaps you tape calls.”
“No,” I shouted, then calming, “No, I don’t.”
He left me listening to the soft sizzle of an empty line.
I’d gone at it wrong. I’d asked the wrong question. A name I would’ve got eventually. Why, though. Why was question a guy like him might’ve answered, and I would’ve had a different story altogether.
The cops thought we should discuss him at length.
I made some notes about the call and stowed them in a little cache I keep under a floor board under a rug under a floor lamp in my living room. Just about where you’d expect to find them.
Being civic minded, not to mention mindful of the criminal charge for withholding evidence, I called Wood Modine. He said he’d be right over. I said no, I’d be right down. I doubted that Wood would be alone, and neither my landlord or I relish cops in my living room at 3 in the morning.
I told Wood the story. Then McConegal arrived, and I told him the story. Then Crandall came in, and I told him the story.
We were in what Wood calls the “conference room” at the jail. “Interrogation room” is too blunt for Wood. It is a windowless cell of mossy-green, glazed tile. It is furnished with a rectangular, gray-green, chipped metal table, four chairs of similar age and condition, and fluorescent lights that flicker and hum.
On the long side of the table, opposite the two-way mirror on one wall, a handcuff is bolted to the edge. I had taken a chair at one end of the table, away from the cuff. Probably cops here are gentler than Chicago cops, but there were gouges in the table under the cuff chain that were a little too deep for my tastes.
McConegal sat the other end of the table. It was very early, but he smelled of aftershave and sported his blue sport jacket and a shiny silk tie.
“You tape the call?” he asked.
“No.”
“You ever tape calls?”
I shrugged.
“Sure you do, and sometimes you don’t tell the guy on the other end you’re doing it,” McConegal said. “What d’you use? Something attached to the handset or you run the phone line through the recorder before it gets to the phone?”
“Are you trying to entrap me, Sergeant?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said, grinning. The grin left. “But you didn’t tape this one, jackass.”
He sounded a little disgusted, so we talked some more about how I was sound asleep when the call came in and about how it didn’t last that long and about how the guy on the other end was such a scary bastard that I didn’t think of it. I felt compelled to describe the voice yet again.
Crandall leaned against the wall in a kind of parade rest, arms bent, hands behind his back probably tucked in his waistband. He wore a pressed blue dress shirt and suspenders held up his suit pants, but he’d left his coat and tie at home.
“Where’re your notes?” he asked, looking up from the floor.
“Don’t have any.”
“Bullshit,” Crandall said.
I crossed my arms in what the editor of the paper’s Living section would no doubt call a display of defensive body language. I cocked my chin at the two-way mirror.
“You decide that after I told the story the first time or the third?”
“You said you were called at 2:17 a.m.,” Crandall said. “You said the call lasted no more than five minutes. The dispatcher says you didn’t call here until 2:53 a.m. You call anyone else?”
“No.”
“You didn’t talk to Bob Marley, for instance?”
“No.”
“You didn’t consult the paper’s goddamn lawyer about what you should do?”
“I know what I should do. I should tell you, which I’m doing. Then I should write a story about it for today’s paper. You know, I’m very offended that not one of you has suggested that I might’ve been shooing a good-looking woman out of my bed.”
Crandall ran right over that suggestion.
“And yet you’ve told us a very detailed story about this phone conversation.” His voice was rising, and in it, I could hear a hint of residual resentment from yesterday’s confrontation. “You’ve quoted a conversation to us nearly word for word. What the fuck else did you do with twenty minutes of your fucking time, if you didn’t make notes?”
As with any tantrum-prone child, a distraction seemed to be in order.
“Where is this guy if he’s not around here?” I asked.
Crandall continued to glare at me, his breathing puffy with the exertion of his little outburst and a lifetime of cigars. But McConegal passed a look to Wood, who leaned against the wall near the mirror.
“And maybe more to the point, who’s passing him information and would therefore know his whereabouts?” I said.
Crandall joined McConegal in a quick glance at Wood.
“How do you know that he’s not around here or that someone’s passing information?” McConegal asked, returning his attention to me.
“He said. He told me, ‘I’m somewhat removed from your
circulation area.’ ‘I’m told that you reported that . . . ‘ He didn’t know if Aunt Lotty had died or how she survived.”
“We want to trap your line,” Crandall said, perhaps as a bit of distraction of his own.
A trap would collect the numbers used by callers to my phone. He didn’t anything about tapping the line and recording conversations, which would have been worse, but still.
“Nope,” I said. “Too many people call me for too many reasons to let cops dink with my phone.
“He’ll call again,” McConegal said. “If he does, we want to trace him.”
“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t,” I said. “The answer’s the same. No taps, no traps, no traces.”
“We could get an order,” McConegal said.
“The paper’d fight it,” I said.
“Or we could just ask the phone company for its records,” Crandall said, a satisfied smile beginning to spread across his pug face. “See what numbers you receive calls from. Now that there’s some history of this person calling you, now that you yourself have brought it to our attention, I don’t imagine the judge’d stand in the way of that.”
This was not a bed I wanted to crawl into, nor these people I wanted to sleep with. But I wasn’t seeing a lot of options.
“Only for last night. Nothing else,” I said. I’d had no other calls; it wouldn’t make any difference. “You want a waiver or some consent form, I’ll sign it, but only for last night.”
“How about a trap for future calls?” McConegal pressed.
I shrugged, trying to stay nonchalant. “If he calls, I’ll tape it. You can check the records again if something comes in.”
McConegal stood up. Crandall and Wood peeled themselves off the walls. From my seat, I said, “And just so we understand each other, I find out you sly bastards tapped me or the paper or broke this agreement in any way, here’s what I’m going to do. See, I’ve got great faith in your investigative abilities. I believe you’ll find and arrest this guy. But when you do, I’ll present myself to his attorney and tell him about how you improperly obtained the evidence that led to the arrest of his client. I’ll testify to that, and then I’ll listen to the guy’s lawyer sing that song to the judge about how all the evidence you obtained thereafter would be fruit of the poisonous tree.”
Fourth Person No More Page 10
