by Scott Cook
Kathy emerged from the kitchen with an old-style coffee tray laden with a carafe, china cups, and sugar and cream dispensers made of cut glass that caught the early afternoon sunlight. The woman was a lot like her house – a bit on the small side, well kept, attractive enough in a low-rent sort of way. She was obviously fastidious, which made up for her lack of sophistication in Sam’s eyes. As far as he was concerned, white trash was a state of mind, not a socio-economic circumstance.
Kathy laid the tray on the coffee table between them. Sam smiled, hoping he seemed charming. This would be a tough interview, with more than a few tears, and she could very well clam up on him if he came across as anything less than wholly sympathetic. “Thank you, I’m dying for a cup,” he lied as she poured for him. He’d finished his fifth double-double of the day on his way over. He glanced around the room. “You have a beautiful home.”
Kathy smiled demurely, but Sam caught a flash of pride underneath it. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s been a work in progress for some time now. Since Tom died, really.” Sam saw the corners of her smile jump as she said it, briefly turning it into a grimace of pain, but she recovered quickly. “I started with the roof last summer, and things just kind of grew from there. It seems like there hasn’t been two weeks go by that we didn’t have some contractor or other underfoot. They just delivered the furniture last week.”
Sam studied her for a moment. This was far harder for her than she was letting on. Best to tread lightly.
“Well, you’ve done a beautiful job. This is the kind of place I’d love to buy if I could afford it.”
She seemed genuinely touched. “Is it?” she asked, her brown eyes wide. “Is it really?”
“Sure. It’s like one of those makeover houses on the HGTV shows. The ones where they do the big reveal at the end.”
Two matching trickles of tears escaped the corners of Kathy’s eyes. “Thank you. That means a lot. More than you can know.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin from the coffee tray.
Her gratitude was enough to make Sam uncomfortable for a moment. Then it dawned on him.
“Tom liked those shows, didn’t he?” he said quietly.
Kathy nodded, her hands trembling in her lap. “He always wanted to be a handyman type. He’d watch those shows and talk non-stop about everything they were doing, like he knew what he was talking about. Then he’d talk about renovating this place, how he wanted to give Josh his own separate suite downstairs that we could rent out after he left home to join the NHL, and how he’d fix up the outside so that we didn’t look so much like our neighbors. So that our place stood out, so that it was special.”
Sam nodded. “Sounds like he was pretty special himself.”
The dam burst so suddenly that Sam was caught off guard. Kathy’s façade crumbled and her body started to shake with great, wracking sobs. Tears flowed freely now as she wrung the cloth napkin in her hands, seemingly forgotten. Sam restrained an urge to sit on the new sofa beside her and wrap an arm around her shoulder; it wouldn’t be professional. Still, he’d been in enough situations like this one that he knew he needed to just let her go.
After several long moments, Kathy finally heaved a massive, shaky sigh and blew her nose into the cloth napkin (something Sam guessed she would have been horrified by under any other circumstances). It was enough to get her back under control a little.
“I’m so sorry,” she said bleakly.
Sam shook his head. “Nothing to be sorry for.”
She looked at him as if just noticing he was there. “What?” she asked. “No, I don’t mean for that. I was apologizing to Tom.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Kathy looked up at the ceiling and sniffed hard. “I was such a bitch to him,” she croaked. “God, what was wrong with me? He’d watch those shows and dream about how nice our house could be, and you know what I’d do? I’d pick at him. I’d tell him to stop dreaming because we could never do any of that stuff on his salary. Can you believe that? I didn’t even have a job, and there I was, shitting on him for having a dream. What was wrong with me?”
Sam sat silent; Kathy seemed to be speaking to herself more than to him. Best to let it play out.
“Nothing he did was ever good enough. If we were short on money, I’d nag him about it. If he worked overtime to get some extra cash, I’d complain about how he wasn’t home, or how he was missing Josh’s hockey game. I was even harping on him right up until the week before he died, because he had the audacity to go and lose his cell phone. He couldn’t win with me. And you know what the worst thing is? I couldn’t even tell you why. We never went hungry, he never hit me, never cheated on me. And God, he loved Josh so much. No kid could ever have asked for a better father.”
She broke down again, though not as bad as before. Sam let her sob for a few minutes. He’d been taking notes the whole time, though mostly what she was giving him was the kind of puff stuff he hated. Reporters always wanted to turn murder victims into heroes – the high school kid was “well loved” or had “an incredibly bright future,” the middle-aged woman was the perfect mother and/or a pillar of the community. In reality, they were all just people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, no better or worse than anyone else. But a scoop was a scoop, and Sam was the guy holding the handle on this one.
Kathy regained her composure with another hard sniff. She sat back in the couch, collapsing into the soft cushion. “Sorry. This time to you, not Tom.” She smiled weakly. “I asked you here for an interview, and this is turning into a therapy session.”
“It’s fine, really,” he said. “But I assume you asked me here for a reason. You haven’t talked to any of the media at all during this whole thing and you didn’t attend any of the trial. Why now?” And why me? he wanted to add, but decided not to. Not yet, anyway.
Kathy blinked. “I thought you would know why I called you now,” she said, looking mildly confused. “I was waiting for the guilty verdict.”
Now it was Sam’s turn to be confused. “I’m sorry, I think I’m missing something here. Why did you wait for the verdict?”
“That’s what Sergeant Palliser told me to do. He said he didn’t want to see me anywhere, in person, on camera or in print, until the trial was over. And now – ” She teared up again. “Now I understand why. Those savages killed him! That could have been me! Or Josh!” She made the sign of the cross over her bosom.
Sam nodded. “Chuck was a good man. I interviewed him a couple of times during the trial. He mentioned you and Josh, actually. How concerned he was about you both.”
“If only he’d been more concerned about himself,” Kathy said, dabbing away tears again.
Sam was silent. A Montreal reporter had written Palliser’s obituary for the Canadian Press; Sam and a couple other Calgary reporters got a “with files by” nod. By all accounts, Palliser was a lone wolf – hardly surprising, given his line of work – with no surviving family and very few personal ties. His job had been his life for more than twenty years, risking his own safety to get people like Rufus Hodge off the street. And what did he get for it? There wasn’t enough left of him for an urn, and even if there had been, there was no one to send it to.
Sam raised his china cup. “To Chuck,” he said. “And to Tom. Two good men, gone too soon.” Maybe it was inappropriate, but Sam didn’t care. He just hoped it didn’t set off Kathy again.
It didn’t. Her hand trembled slightly as she lifted her own cup, but her voice was steady. “Hear, hear.” She smiled.
They sat for several moments in companionable silence, surrounded by the home that had become a bizarre monument to Tom Ferbey’s dream. Sam wondered if it should be part of the story. A lot of magazine pieces started out with the writer setting the scene with a description of the environment where the interview took place.
“I miss his voice the most,” Kathy said quietly, startling Sam out of his reverie. “He had such a calming voice. So deep. His laugh always made me feel so sa
fe. God, I wish I’d told him that just once.”
Sam wondered for one stupid moment whether she meant Tom or Chuck Palliser. He glanced at the photo of Tom in the church choir. “He was a singer?”
Kathy beamed. “Was he ever. Pastor Lawrence was so happy when he finally convinced Tom to join the group. He’d been looking for a bass forever, someone who could hit those low notes. Whenever Tom struck up those first few bars of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, I swear it felt like the floorboards were vibrating. He was never really all that religious, but he loved to sing. People said he sounded a lot like Barry White.”
Sam grinned. “Let me guess: His favorite song was Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys.”
Kathy’s eyes lit up. “How did you know?”
Sam tried to lower his own voice down to a bass and failed miserably. “Giddy-up, ah-oom, papa-oom, papa mow mow,” he croaked.
Kathy’s girlish giggle erased ten years from her face. They talked for another hour, Sam slowly coaxing Tom’s story out of the woman who had shared his life for so many years. For the most part, Kathy kept it together, painting a portrait of a man who was spectacularly ordinary but immensely likeable, which is what the readers wanted in their murder victims. The story wouldn’t win Sam any awards, but he was the only guy in the country who had it, so it would at least hit the wires, and would likely be carried by most dailies, including the nationals. You had to take what you could get.
And in spite of himself, he was beginning to admire Tom Ferbey just a little bit. The guy worked hard, loved his family, and dreamed about having a house on HGTV. Sam wished he himself could be a bit more like Tom, a simple man whose self worth wasn’t inextricably tied to his job.
About halfway through their second cup of coffee, a gangly teen emerged in the front doorway, carrying a skateboard in one hand and a half-empty bottle of Coke in the other. The pictures on the walls created a false expectation of the kid himself, Sam thought. Josh-on-the-wall was a blond boy with a winning smile and a clear complexion. Josh-at-the-door’s hair was closer to the color of brown sugar now, longer and coarser, and his face was beginning to sport the signs of the first battles in what would no doubt be a long and painful war with acne. As if losing his dad wasn’t bad enough, puberty was already running roughshod over Josh Ferbey.
Kathy lit up as her son entered the living room, crossing to the door and wrapping her arms around his scrawny neck. Josh quailed but didn’t move away, which Sam respected. No teenage boy wants to hug his mother, but Josh understood that it was necessary and allowed it.
Kathy turned to Sam and beamed. “Sam, this is Josh. Josh, this is Mr. Walsh from the Chronicle.”
Sam stood and offered a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Josh. And it’s Sam.”
The boy gave him a man’s handshake and nodded dutifully. “Nice to meet you. Mom told me you were coming today.”
Kathy, still smiling, rubbed Josh’s arm. “He’s the man of the house now. I don’t know what I’d do without him.” Then a cloud crossed her face and she turned to Sam. “You – you don’t need to interview Josh, do you?”
Sam smiled gently. “No.” The kid looked as relieved as his mother. Sam had thought about it, but after watching Josh for about three seconds, he knew he had no business adding to the kid’s burdens.
Kathy’s smile returned as quickly as it had faded. “Well, then,” she said. “I guess you’d better finish packing, son of mine. We have to be gone no later than four o’clock.”
“All right,” Josh said. He moved to make his way down the hall, but quickly turned back to Sam. They made eye contact, which was obviously awkward for the boy. “Good luck with your article, Mr. Walsh. Uh, Sam. I hope you let everyone know how awesome my dad was.”
Sam felt a twinge in his gut – not enough to moisten his eyes, but enough to remind him that yes, he actually did have a heart. “I’ll do my best, Josh. I promise.”
The kid gave him a lopsided grin and slunk off down the hall. Sam suddenly envied the relationship Josh must have had with Tom.
“He’s a good boy who had to grow up too soon,” Kathy said wistfully from behind him.
“He seems like a fine young man,” Sam said, gathering his notes. “I think I’ve taken enough of your time, Kathy. I really appreciate you talking to me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have thought of talking with anyone else. I’ve been reading all your coverage of the trial. You’re an excellent writer, and I trust you not to sensationalize things. And now, after getting to know you, I’m sure Tom’s story is in good hands.”
Her eyes had misted over again, and the twinge was back in Sam’s belly. Better change the subject before she made him cry, too. “You told Josh you had to be gone by four. Are you going on a trip?”
Kathy blinked. “Did I not tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
She shook her head as if to clear it. “Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. We’re headed out of the country. Tonight. That’s why I wanted you here today.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. There’s a lot of that going on lately, he didn’t say. “I’m not following you.”
“This way, Josh and I will be long gone when the story comes out. I really wish we could have done this sooner, but like I said, I had to wait until after the verdict.” She looked startled for a moment. “You won’t put this in the story, will you?”
Sam felt like he’d missed the quarterback calling the play. “I don’t even know what’s going on.”
Kathy sighed. “I’m sorry, Sam, I don’t know where my head is these days. I’ve been so scattered with the verdict, and then the insurance and the trip. I just assumed you knew what was happening. That was silly of me. I mean, how could you?”
“It actually makes perfect sense,” he said. “If I was in your shoes, I’d probably do the same thing after what happened last week. But you mentioned insurance?”
“Yes, I had to make sure that our finances were in order before we left. The double indemnity on Tom’s policy didn’t pay out until Rufus Hodge was found guilty. That was another reason Sgt. Palliser suggested I stay away from the trial. He said a murder conviction was a fragile thing.” She looked wistfully at the china cup in her hand. “Those were his exact words. And he said getting family involved in a trial always added an element that the prosecution couldn’t control.”
“It was his idea for you to leave the country, wasn’t it?”
“Mm-hm. I first met him a few days after – after Tom passed, but he stayed in touch throughout the trial. He often talked about how much he wanted to make sure we got all the insurance money, that Josh and I got a ‘happy ending,’ but that we should be prepared to get far away from Calgary if anything happened after the verdict. To be honest, I would have gone anyway. Josh and I could do with a change of scenery.” Kathy’s eyes shimmered and the line of her mouth turned hard. “Chuck didn’t deserve what happened to him. I hope those bastards pay.”
Kathy’s cheeks flushed and she turned to Sam. “You’re not going to use that in the story, are you?”
Sam smiled and shook his head. “The story here begins and ends with Tom.”
They chatted for a few more minutes before Sam left, and Kathy gave him a snapshot of Tom to go with the story. Shippy had wanted a photo of her and Josh, but he would just have to deal with the fact that they were going to remain anonymous in the eyes of the public. Like Chuck Palliser, Sam Walsh believed that Kathy and Josh Ferbey deserved their happy ending.
#
Sam had finished his cheeseburger, and was halfway through a glob of congealed French fries, by the time he finished the story. He was reading it back to himself before saving it into the “filed story” folder – where writers’ babies went to drown in a sea of editorial pie-fingering –when Tess Gallagher invaded the sanctity of his cubicle. He flinched as she punched his shoulder with a surprisingly hard-knuckled fist.
“Ow! What the hell?”
“You went to Peter’s Drive-In and y
ou didn’t get me anything? You’re lucky all you got was a punch. I have scissors in my desk, you know.”
“Yeah, the little ones with the rounded ends so you don’t hurt yourself.”
Tess ignored the jibe. “So how’s the scoop coming, you lucky so-and-so?” She leaned over Sam’s shoulder to peer at his monitor. The scent of rose oil on her neck was a distraction he really didn’t need at the moment, but even though he’d never admit it, Tess was the best writer at the Chronicle, and he could use any constructive criticism she might offer. This was the kind of story that could get him noticed by Bill Vogt, the Chronicle’s publisher.
“Not bad,” she said, straightening up.
“Careful with the flattery, I might get a swelled head.”
She slapped the back of his head. “Maybe that’ll help. Drop the sarcasm, mister, or I won’t point out the error you made.”
Sam bristled. “Excuse me? What error? There’s no error.”
“Oh, well then. Just submit it as it is.” She turned to leave.
“All right, hold on.” He held up his hands in defeat. “What did I get wrong?”
Tess’s go-to-hell smile shone bright in the dank cubicle. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing major. You say that Tom Ferbey sang bass. He was actually a baritone.”
Sam peered at her. “What are you talking about?”
She pointed at the screen. “Right here, you say he sang bass in his church choir. But he didn’t; he was a baritone.”
Sam thought about correcting her for a moment – he got the information directly from the man’s widow, after all – but curiosity won out. Instead, he asked: “How would you know?”
“I sang in school choir for eight years,” she said. “Just one of the perks of a private Catholic school. Trust me, I can tell a baritone from a bass. Baritone is the most common voice type for men, but a true bass voice is quite rare.”
“I meant how would you know if you’ve never heard his voice?”
She rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t, dumbass. I have heard his voice.”
Sam’s ancient desk chair groaned in protest as he pitched forward. He didn’t hear it; his mind was working too hard trying to process this new information. “You,” he said slowly. “Heard Tom Ferbey’s voice.”
