The Suspect

by L. R. Wright

  “Yes, okay, Staff. I’ll finish up in here.”

  “And Sanducci,” said Alberg, without turning around. “You don’t want to get busted down to constable, do you?”

  “No, Staff.”

  “Then I suggest you start taking a lot of cold showers.”

  “Yes, Staff.” Without looking at him, he handed Alberg the key to the toolshed.

  Christ, thought Alberg, trudging out the side door from the kitchen. Where the hell did he find them all? Better he didn’t know, he thought; the guy might have a harem of sixteen-year-olds.

  The toolshed was much like George Wilcox’s, except that it was bigger, dirtier, and less tidy. Carlyle Burke had himself a power mower, instead of a push-it model, and his ladder was an extendable aluminum job instead of a wooden six-footer, and he had a lot of expensive, little-used lawn furniture stacked away in a corner, instead of three threadbare canvas chairs with slivery wooden arms. But his gardening tools were piled in a heap on a counter and looked as rusty as those in Alberg’s garage, and bags of fertilizer and grass seed had been thrown in carelessly, to slump against the wall.

  The obvious place to start, thought Alberg, sighing, was with the four cardboard cartons on the highest of several shelves lining one wall. They had been marked on the outside with black felt pen: XMAS DECORATIONS. But what the hell, you never know, he thought, and dragged them down.

  The place was clotted with spiderwebs. The beam of sunlight which struggled through the single dirty window was choked with dust. Alberg carried the boxes out onto the lawn and sat on the bench there while he went through them.

  There were boxes of tinsel, some unopened, some half emptied, with silver strings seeping from them. There were gaudy garlands of orange and blue—odd colors, he thought, with which to bedeck a Christmas tree. There were boxes and boxes of ornaments, and string after string of lights, ranging from tiny blinking ones to the large kind used to decorate the outdoors. Three cartons he opened, emptied, sifted through, refilled, and replaced on the shelf in the filthy toolshed.

  But the fourth carton didn’t contain anything having to do with Christmas. It was filled with women’s underclothes—panties and bras and slips and garter belts—and with nylon hose, and negligees, and lace-trimmed pajamas. And it was at the bottom of this carton that he found an ebony box about six inches by eight, bearing on its lid, in gold, the initials AMW.

  This, thought Alberg, is why Carlyle Burke willed George all his possessions; he wanted him to find whatever’s in this small black box. He thought it inexpressibly tasteless, or perhaps simply malevolent, that it should have been buried under a pile of what must have been Audrey’s underthings.

  Alberg let the clothing slip languorously through his hands. She hadn’t been a slim woman—not fat, but not thin, either. She had been feminine, but not lusty; her nightgowns were long-sleeved and scoop necked, threaded with now-faded ribbon, and her underwear was pretty but not particularly seductive. He sniffed at it cautiously and smelled only mustiness.

  He put the box next to him on the bench while he slowly packed the clothing, neatly, almost tenderly, back into the carton. He took both box and carton into the toolshed and put the carton back on the shelf.

  He pulled out a lawn chair, wiped from it spiders and their webs, and set it up in the tremulous shaft of sunlight from the window. Then he sat down with the ebony box.

  It contained several pieces of jewelry: a cameo pin, a gold filigree necklace, a topaz ring, and a wide gold bracelet with no engraving inside. And beneath the jewelry, a small pile of letters.

  Alberg put the jewelry back in the box, closed the lid, and arranged the letters according to date.

  He sat for a moment with them in his lap. Subdued sunlight washed upon them, made uncertain by dust and a grime-streaked window. He was profoundly reluctant to start reading.

  But after a while, he did.

  He soon realized they were letters exchanged between Carlyle Burke and his wife over a period of about six weeks in the summer of 1956; Burke was in Victoria, apparently taking courses at the university there, and Audrey had remained at home in Vancouver.

  Alberg read through them once quickly, then started over again, paying particular attention to certain sections, certain phrases.

  You bring it on yourself, Audrey, you know you do, Carlyle wrote on July 3. You can’t help yourself. Having a kid wouldn’t make any difference—you sure as hell ought to know that…

  Why can’t we admit it? said Audrey a week later. There’s no shame in it. We can just say we’ve made a mistake, and get a divorce, and go on with our lives.

  We have NOT made a mistake, wrote Carlyle on July 13. I’ve always had trouble with my temper, I’ve told you that, time and time again. It’s part of being a man, for God’s sake. Women have to understand that, if they want to live with a man.

  July 23: Some men do that kind of thing, of course I know that, Audrey replied. Who could know it better than I do… I cannot live in fear. It’s a terrible, terrible thing, living in fear, and I am not going to do it again.

  Don’t talk to me about your goddamn George, said Carlyle, near the end of July. Look at him, off in Europe. They never give single men that kind of opportunity. Talk about prejudice—just try being a single man past thirty-five or so! And now they tell me fifty’s the cutoff—I can’t even apply again! So don’t talk to me about George. And you know he’s no better than the rest of us. You’ve told me yourself, for God’s sake, what he’s capable of. Are you MAD? Are you out of your MIND? To imply that the little bursts of temper that happen to me are as bad as what HE did?… We can keep ourselves under control, Audrey, if we try. It just takes work, that’s all… I’ll never hit you again. I can promise you that. I DO promise you that. We can’t humiliate ourselves, for God’s sake…

  August 9: I just don’t know if I can believe you, wrote Audrey. You don’t understand about George. It wasn’t the same kind of thing at all. I should never have told you, but I thought it would HELP you, Carlyle. Oh, God… I don’t want to fail, either. But if I can’t believe you then I’m going to leave you, Carlyle, I swear it. I just can’t go on like this. I WON’T go on like this.

  Alberg refolded the letters and put them back in the box, under the jewelry. He sat for a long time, holding the black box in his big, long-fingered hands, running the tips of his fingers over the initials on the top, aware of the smoothness of the ebony, warmed by his hands.

  It had been like watching bits and pieces of an old movie, starring actors he had heard of but never seen before. He felt dazed, disoriented.

  Maybe that’s what did it, he thought, sitting in Carlyle Burke’s dusty toolshed. Maybe Carlyle invited him over and spilled his guts, told him everything, confirmed all of George’s worst suspicions.

  And confronted him, probably for the first time, with whatever it was that George had once done that had let Carlyle Burke feel less corrupt by comparison.

  He got up slowly, folded the chair and put it away, and, still holding the ebony box, went out of the toolshed and locked it behind him.

  He told Sanducci to stop the search.

  When he got back to the office, for some reason not clear to him he didn’t tag the ebony box but put it in the bottom drawer of his desk.

  Then he went off to see George Wilcox.

  28

  GEORGE WAS TRYING TO PACK. The clothes hadn’t been difficult. He’d just shoved them all into the suitcases he and Myra used to use when they went traveling. There was still room left in them, enough for whatever personal things he decided to take with him, but the problem was that in wandering through his house he couldn’t find anything except clothes that he wanted to bring. He had called a real estate agent and told him to put the house up for sale. Maybe he should sell all the furniture with it. What use would he have for furniture, anyway? Carol had a big two-bedroom apartment filled with her own stuff; she certainly wouldn’t need any of his. He didn’t have anything really good, anyway; h
e and Myra had spent all their extra money on trips, and never regretted a penny of it, either.

  Maybe he should take his slides and photo albums. And he’d have to take his books. And surely there must be lots more things, he thought with growing desperation, that he couldn’t bear to leave behind. He stood in his kitchen looking around but couldn’t see a single thing he didn’t mind abandoning.

  Then through his window he saw his garden, and lifted his hands and made a strange sound in his throat. He wouldn’t want to take it with him even if he could: he didn’t deserve it any longer; his life-guilt was much too heavy. It hurt his soul to see it spread so joyously out there, unaware that he was deserting it, but he refused to step outside. Never again would he go out there.

  He went into his den and sat in the chair behind his desk, wondering what to do next. He’d called the garage where his car was being repaired and told them to sell it. He’d phoned the matron at the hospital and let her know he wouldn’t be going there any more. Anybody else who ought to know he would write to from Vancouver.

  He folded his arms on the desk and rested his head there, and he heard Carlyle’s nasal voice again, but this time he was too tired, too tired to get up and get himself some coffee or sweep the floor or do anything, anything at all, to push that voice out of his head…

  How had he persuaded him to come? How had he done it, anyway?

  “George, it’s Carlyle,” he’d said briskly. “I’m not feeling too well these days, George, don’t think I’ve got much longer to go, and I want to get some things said while there’s still time. Don’t do it for me, George”—he’d chuckled, here—“I know you’d never do anything for me, but do it for Myra. You know how she was always trying to make things right between us. And do it for Audrey, George. Come to see me. Just once more.”

  Carlyle had stopped driving, stopped going out to Old Age Pensioners’ things. There was some talk around the village about his sudden inactivity, and George had believed when he called that there might be some truth to the rumor that he was failing.

  So he’d gone. For Myra? For Audrey? He doubted it. He’d gone out of a dark curiosity, a rancorous desire to see his own good health substantiated by a pale and wraithlike Carlyle, dying.

  It was hard to tell about these things, but he certainly hadn’t looked like he was failing.

  He’d just wanted to vent his spleen, that’s all, thought George bitterly, lifting his head from his arms. He was always a venomous bastard and maybe he finally got bored, having to be always on his best behavior in a town the size of Sechelt. And when Myra died, the buffer between him and George was suddenly gone.

  Anyway, he’d called, and for whatever reason, George had answered the summons.

  He’d knocked on the half-open door and heard Carlyle call to him from the living room. “Come!” he’d sung out, like he was a king or some damn thing.

  “What is it, Carlyle? What do you want from me?”

  “Oh, George, just look out there,” said Carlyle from his rocking chair. “Did you ever think we’d be living in a place like this, you and I, only half a mile apart, looking out at such a beautiful sight?”

  “We wouldn’t have been,” said George, “if I’d had anything to say about it. Not both of us.”

  Carlyle glanced over his shoulder. He gave him a grin and one of his ludicrous winks. “Funny, isn’t it,” he said, “the tricks that fate plays.”

  “Just say what you have to say, Carlyle, and then I’ll be getting on my way.”

  “I’d hoped you’d stay for lunch,” said Carlyle. “I just bought a salmon.”

  “I don’t care for fish.”

  Carlyle sighed. He seemed tired; perhaps that was why he wasn’t getting out of the rocking chair. “Well, at least have the courtesy to sit down, George,” he said.

  “I have no intention of sitting down. Just say what you’ve got to say, and if you don’t say it fast, I’m going.”

  Carlyle, looking out at the sea, rocked, and nodded, and rocked.

  “Okay. That’s it. I’m on my way.”

  “Not so fast, George.” Carlyle turned around and hooked an arm around the back of the rocking chair. His voice had lost its warmth. “I’ve gotten pretty sick of you over the last five years. Everywhere I go, there you are with your long face and that perpetual scowl. It wasn’t so bad when Myra was around—she kept you under control, Myra did. But ever since you buried her, George, it’s gotten to be a bit much. Oh, I know you talk about me,” he said, turning back to the window.

  “I’ve never said a goddamn word about you to anyone,” said George, furious. “I don’t like the taste of your name in my mouth.”

  Carlyle was silent for a moment, rocking gently. “It’s too bad we couldn’t ever get to be friends, George. I wanted that, you know, especially in the beginning.” He was speaking quietly, almost to himself. “I thought you were a man I could get to know, confide in—I thought I might have found a real friend. Never had many of those. Never had any, when you come right down to it. I haven’t the faintest idea why I thought you might turn out to be my friend. It was your eyes, I think. So stubborn and unwavering. And something about the way you walked, aggressive and hesitant, all at the same time.” He turned around again, slowly. “But that never happened, did it,” he said bleakly. “I ended up with your sister, instead.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, God, that was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

  “It was a bigger one,” said George huskily, “for her.”

  When Carlyle looked at him this time there was grief on his face, and in his watery blue eyes. George didn’t believe it for an instant.

  “I didn’t want her to die,” said Carlyle, heavily. “I loved her. As much as I could. You jumped to a lot of conclusions about me, George. Some of them were accurate. But some of them weren’t.”

  “You killed her,” said George. He stared at Carlyle, open-mouthed, hardly able to believe he’d said it. “You killed her,” he said, more belligerently.

  “You do insist,” said Carlyle coldly, staring back at him, “on missing the point.” He deliberately turned his back on George. “She was a foul driver, and she finally managed to kill herself. I’d never let her drive, never, not while I was in the car. I tried to stop her that day, as a matter of fact, but she was in a state, as usual, wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “You made her go,” said George. “You frightened her into going.”

  Carlyle turned around again, slowly, smiling. “Ah, George. Did you hear what you just said?”

  George felt the earth shift beneath his feet.

  “I didn’t make her do things, George,” said Carlyle, petulant. “She made me do things.” He shifted himself around in the rocking chair, clumsily, it seemed to George, and looked again out at his garden and the sea. “You should have told me,” he said. “You had a responsibility to tell me what I was getting into. How was I supposed to know, for God’s sake? And then she told me, finally, when it was too late. Oh, she told me, all right, she told me everything,” said Carlyle, rapidly, nodding, rocking.

  George began looking desperately around the room. He thought he was looking for something close enough to grab, hang on to, something he could lean on while he made his painful passage out of the house, away from the sound of Carlyle’s voice.

  Carlyle glanced over his shoulder at him. “I’m talking about your sister, George. Your family. Pay some respect, George. Pay some attention.” He watched until George became still, then smiled and once more arranged himself to face the sea. “There was nothing much you could do about it, was there? Although you certainly tried, like a good son, a good brother. But that sort of thing is contagious, in a way—did you ever think of that? It’s ironic, but they get to like things that way. That’s what I think, anyway. Do you see what I mean? So the damage was already done, George, long before she met me; probably before you decided to take matters into your own clumsy hands…”

  George saw the shell casings sittin
g on the bookshelf, and suddenly his feet were no longer nailed to the floor.

  Carlyle shook his head regretfully at the ocean. “It must have been a terrible scene,” he said, “just dreadful, such an awful thing you did, and all the time—you’ll never know—maybe they liked it! After all,” he said, beginning to turn, “she didn’t let you save her in the end, did she, and Audrey—”

  George struck him.

  He sat upright, now, at his desk, his heart beating fast, looking out the window, not seeing his garden.

  A long time later he noticed that the sun was getting low, and he was hungry.

  He forced other things from his mind and thought about tomato soup.

  Then he made himself think about his daughter. She had sounded happy that he was coming. She’d been suggesting it for months, ever since her mother died.

  George tried to remember if she had a balcony. Maybe he could grow things in pots.

  But he knew he never would.

  29

  FOR SEVERAL MINUTES AFTER he knocked on the door, Alberg heard only silence within the house. He was just about to go around to the garden and have a look there when the door opened and George Wilcox was looking up at him.

  “You know,” said George, “I kind of thought it might be you. The perfect end to a perfect day, as they say.”

  He looked disarranged. The deep waves in his hair were askew, as though he’d been abstractedly running his hands through it. The ubiquitous gray cardigan was absent. He was wearing an open-necked white shirt which revealed the sagging flesh of his neck, wide maroon suspenders, shapeless gray pants and scuffed leather slippers.

  “Cassandra been talking to you?” said George.

  “Cassandra?” said Alberg. “No. Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The two of you seem to be pretty thick these days.” He opened the door wider and gestured to Alberg to come in. “I thought she might have told you about my plans,” he said, as Alberg squeezed past him into the long, narrow living room.