“What good is a woman who doesn’t follow what her heart tells her? Who would want a woman who sees things the way they really are?”
“But—it’s going to come out in some bad way for her, and for me, and there’s no way to stop it. It’s like a long hill and no brakes.”
He looked at me with an unexpected compassion. “If you’re lucky, Fenn, if you get the luck I think you deserve, maybe whatever happens will happen in such a way she’ll get that one good look at him. And when she does, if she does, the spell will be over. She’s strong. She started in a trap and broke out of it and brought him along with her. People not as strong as Meg have survived more horrible things. What was the name of that family five years ago? Brumbeck, wasn’t it? Their only kid, a good-looking boy, an A student, confessing to two rape murders and dying in the chair.”
“I know what you’re trying to say, and thanks. They survived, yes. They kept on living. But how much joy have they got left? Meg was meant to be a joyful woman. Humming and singing and whistling around the house, making fool jokes and playing tricks on her man and her kids, and laughing at nothing when she feels particularly happy. When they first put him away, it was like there wasn’t a sound left in the house. Nothing. I’d go home and feel like whispering. I’d wake up in the night and know she was awake there in the darkness, completely still, completely alone, and there wasn’t anything I could say to her.”
Raglin suddenly appeared beside the booth, grinning, and I asked him to sit down. “Jackpot on the pair,” he said. “Toledo got interested. Felony murder by auto ten days ago. Knocked off a gas station and clobbered an old lady when they went up over the sidewalk, they were in such a hurry. Blew a tire on the curb and escaped on foot. Me and Rossman worked the guy for it first and he didn’t know a thing. So we got the girl out of the tank and said her boy friend had fingered her for driving the car, and she figured we knew so many details, the boy friend had talked. I guess she never realized we could have been in touch with Toledo, so she broke and when she got through screaming, she let us have all of it. She’ll sign the statement. Rossman advised Toledo.”
Dockerty had his copy paper out, and I left them there, with Rags giving Stu the story. I walked back to the headquarters wing, remembering the wiry panic of the grubby girl, the feel of her slender wrists in my hand. By the time they would finally release her, she would be a cowed dark-haired woman, heavy with prison starch, boiled rough-red by the laundry years, perhaps unable to remember the face of Tommy.
I arrived home a few minutes after ten. The kids were in bed. Meg was on the couch, patching a pair of Bobby’s khaki pants. Dwight was sprawled in my chair, watching a television serial. He looked up and gave a grunt of greeting. He made no move to give up the chair. Meg looked anxiously at me and then at him. She relaxed when I sat down on the couch. We made some small talk during the commercials. Dwight didn’t join in. When the show ended at ten-thirty he stood up, stretched, yawned and said, “See ya,” and went off to bed.
I turned the television volume down and went back and sat beside her.
“How has he acted?”
“All right. He had a nap after lunch. He went out in the back yard for a little while. Except for when we ate, he’s been watching television ever since.”
“You act kind of low.”
“There were four phone calls, dear. People called up and said—filthy things and hung up.”
“Goddam them!”
“Don’t be upset. They’re just—sort of sick.”
“But one of the kids might answer the—”
“I made a new rule. I take all calls. And some cars kept driving by, real slow, staring at the house.”
“That won’t last long.”
“I told him this afternoon that if—he wanted to tell me how it was—it might help him. He said the best way I could help him was keep off his back.”
“Nice guy.”
“He used to get this way when we were kids, when something went wrong, or he was planning something he knew he shouldn’t do. I don’t think I could stand it if he got into trouble again, honey. I just couldn’t bear it.”
“We’ll just have to keep an eye on him.”
“Honey, he didn’t realize you always sit in that chair.”
“I don’t have to sit in any particular place.”
“It’s your home. You ought to have the right to—”
“How did it go with the kids?”
“Dwight isn’t used to children. I think they could get on his nerves.”
“Now isn’t that a damned shame!”
“He really didn’t pay hardly any attention to them at all. Bobby seemed very reserved around him. But Judy jabbered at him a mile a minute. You know how she is. She’s so convinced everybody loves her. That reminds me. That girl called again on the phone. That Cathie Perkins. He talked to her quite a long time. I was trying not to listen, but I got the idea she wanted to come over and see him, and he was discouraging her. I talked to Betty Robling on the phone about something else and I asked her about Cathie Perkins. Betty says she’s a sweet girl, but sort of strange and hard to control. She didn’t go back to college last year. She works in the business office at the phone company. It would be so good for Dwight if he could—find a really nice girl.”
Again I remembered the stony starveling face of the girl who had tried to escape. She seemed more suitable for Dwight McAran.
Lulu came cautiously into the living room, whined softly at us, and grinned in a rather abashed way.
“Darn you, Lulu,” Meg said. “Every time she sees Dwight, she screams and runs under something.”
“That’s because he kicked her,” I said.
She looked at me uncertainly. “Is that some kind of a joke, Fenn?”
“No. When we arrived, just before you came out, she started to jump on him. You know how she is. He gave her one hell of a thump with his knee.”
“And poor Lulu thinks he meant to do it?”
“Yes, and so do I. She landed on her back six feet away, and ran under the garage.”
“But—if he did kick her on purpose it was only because he—because it just happened to—”
She stopped and looked away. I put my hand on her arm. But she pulled away from me and stood up and went slowly to our bedroom. I heard the door close quietly. Lulu bumped her head against my leg. I scratched her behind the ears. She whined again. She did not like what had happened to her home. Nor did I.
But there was no way I could comfort Lulu—or Meg.
Without Meg I would become a dull beast, indeed, an entirely cold and rational fellow. I can erect all the structures of logic. But she has a warm heart and the knack of making joyful use of her days. Often I feel as if I have no good way to reach her, or reach anybody else I know in any deep and meaningful way. I can never say to her all the things which should be said. All I can do is hope she has the instinctive knowledge of me which needs no explanation.
Lulu stared at me, her eyes softly brown and adoring. I wondered if Cathie Perkins had eyes of that same vulnerable tone.
Two days later I went to the high school and talked to Mr. Theodore Perkins in his office after the day’s classes were over. He was a big, bald, gentle man, quite willing to talk when he learned who I was.
“I have good girls, Lieutenant Hillyer. The two eldest are married, and one is very happy and one is miserably unhappy. Their mother died seven years ago. Her people were opposed to our marriage. We eloped. It was a good and happy relationship. You see, we have no right to force our children into our patterns and beliefs. Each heart has its own direction. Cathie is twenty-two. She is a woman. When this started she was a child, a dreamy, imaginative child. I thought she’d get over it. It was the kind of fantasy any young girl might have, I suppose. But how could I have known it would last for five years?”
I did not tell him what a familiar phenomenon it is, whenever any reasonably presentable man is convicted of a crime of passion and receives m
uch newspaper publicity. Women respond, write letters, try to arrange visits, convinced they must patch up this broken life.
“For the past six months, Lieutenant, Cathie has been getting more and more tense, waiting for McAran to be released. She thinks she loves him.”
“They’ve never met.”
“I know. But they have corresponded. Perhaps—it might be right for her. How can we be sure it isn’t?”
“McAran isn’t right for anybody, Mr. Perkins.”
“He’s living in your home.”
“Because he’s my wife’s half-brother, and she is a very loyal woman, and he’s getting some kind of charge out of making me as uncomfortable as he can, because I’m a cop. I think he’s a cruel, vicious, dangerous man.”
I saw the expression of pain on his face. “I’ve been trying to tell myself he isn’t like that, Lieutenant Hillyer. I—I can’t talk to Cathie about it. This is a compulsion with her. Can you—talk to her?”
“I suppose I could try.”
I met her by prearrangement when she left the phone company office at five o’clock. She was a tall, brown-eyed blonde, with a round, pretty, somewhat immature face. She was remote, slightly defiant and ill at ease. We talked over coffee in a luncheonette booth a half-block from the phone company offices.
“I wouldn’t talk to you if my father hadn’t made me promise I would.”
“I’m meddling in something that’s probably none of my business, Cathie.”
It disarmed her slightly. “Probably,” she said.
“Why did you write to him in the first place?”
“Because everybody was against him!” she said hotly. “It wasn’t fair. There wasn’t anybody on his side. They wanted to pull him down, like a pack of dogs. Now more than ever, he needs somebody on his side.”
“How have you managed to get so emotionally involved with a man you’ve never met?”
“Oh, I met him. My father doesn’t know this. Dwight doesn’t remember, but I do. Maybe he’ll remember when he sees me. It was when he was working in the sporting goods store. I was just a kid. I went in to buy bowling shoes. He was very sweet and funny, and he made me laugh. He was nice to me. I didn’t have enough money, so he found a lot of wild crazy things wrong with the shoes I wanted, and he marked them down. That was before he got mixed up with that terrible woman. She ruined his life, and I don’t think he killed her. I think he’s so big and strong that a lot of little men had to put him in prison because they were jealous of him. And they didn’t want him to come back here, but he promised me he would in his letters. You have no idea the wonderful letters he wrote me. Nobody else in the world really understands him.”
“He used to be able to be very charming, especially to pretty girls.”
She flushed. “His letters weren’t charming. They were sincere.”
“So what’s the next step?”
“I don’t know. I want to help him any way he’ll let me, any way at all. But I’ll just have to wait until he’s—willing to see me. How—how is he acting, really?”
“He eats and sleeps and watches television. Sometimes he goes out into the back yard. That’s as far as he goes from the house.”
“I’m aching to be with him and talk to him. But I can’t do that until he feels—ready to see me.”
“What if you find out he isn’t the kind of a man you think he is, Cathie?”
“But I know what kind of a man he is. He’s hurt now, and angry, but way underneath he’s a gentle man, if the world will give him a chance to be gentle.”
“Listen to me. That gentle fellow went on Jeff Kermer’s payroll at two hundred a week, cash. And Jeff sent him out to reason gently with a man named David Morissa, five-foot-six, a hundred and forty pounds. Dwight gently snapped both Davie’s wrists, dislocated his shoulder and cracked half his ribs, and Jeff was very pleased with the job, because that was just what he was paying for.”
Her brown eyes looked wide and sick. “You’re making that up!”
“Why would I?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. You must have some reason.” She was a slender, vulnerable girl, shapely, fragrant, pretty, with a soft mouth, gentle breasts, fragile hands. “You must have some reason. Maybe you didn’t come to my father. Maybe he went to you and asked you to do this.”
“No. Here is the reason. I just don’t want you making a lot of blind excuses for anything McAran says or does. I don’t want you to be sacrificial about this—long-range romance, Cathie. I want you to just leave your mind open to the possibility that everything he has written you is part of a complicated lie, that there’s no gentleness in him, and he wants to use you.”
“It isn’t that way,” she whispered.
“But just leave room for a tiny little bit of doubt. And then give him the chance to eliminate that doubt, or increase it. Be watchful, that’s all. And if he lets you in on his plans, and you don’t think those plans are—exactly gentle, you let me know. You see, he’s always had the knack of using women, and making them believe in him.”
“But this time he—”
“If you think there can be some kind of a valid relationship, a little concealed skepticism in the beginning isn’t going to bankrupt it, Cathie.”
“Just tell me why you’re doing this?”
“Because I have so much at stake, I can’t afford to overlook the smallest chance. It’s a table stakes game, and everything I own is on the table. My wife, my marriage, my job, my reputation, and the reputation of my friends.”
“I see. When do you think he’ll want to see me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I talk to him on the phone every day. I think he wants time to—be more like himself for me. More like he used to be, before they put him in a cage. And we probably both feel a little shy and awkward. I mean, after you write very personal things to someone, you worry about—saying the same sort of things face to face.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine him being shy about anything.”
“Because you don’t really know him.”
“And you do?”
She lifted her chin. “I know I do.”
“I could tell you other things, but you wouldn’t believe them, would you?”
“No.”
“But leave room for a little doubt, so you won’t—get in too deep too soon, Cathie.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “I have to go now. You’ve—been nicer than I thought you’d be. You’re not like he described you in one letter. He said you’re a cold, selfish, righteous man who doesn’t give a damn about people, that all you care about is enforcing the law to the letter. He said he didn’t know how his sister could stand you.”
“I wonder about that myself.”
She flushed again and said, “I thought that when a man got out of prison he’d be anxious to—see a girl.” She sighed. “He’s very strange.”
“That’s where we agree, Cathie.”
After we left the restaurant, I watched her walk to the bus stop at the corner. The wind touched her blonde hair and tugged at the hem of her narrow skirt. She walked like a lady. I knew she was another victim. McAran collected them like beads on a string.
The days went by and I felt a restless impatience, an irritability. I did not enjoy going home, yet felt guilty when I stayed away needlessly. Even when he was in what had been Bobby’s room and the door was closed, I could feel his presence. To me it was like a faintly acrid stench, unidentifiable, untraceable, the kind which makes you uneasy because it can mean something might break into flame.
I had to talk to Bobby again. I had a long talk with him before I brought McAran back from Harpersburg, at the time when the other kids first started to tease him. Meg told me he was acting very strangely. So on the next really pleasant Saturday morning, I walked with him to the playground and we sat on the bench. He was very reserved. I had hoped our kids would look like her, but both of them have my sallowness, and the dank black hair, and the sor
rowful shape to their faces—though Judy is such a cheery child it is not apparent.
“I suppose the kids are giving you a hard time,” I said.
“Not so much.”
“Remember, I told you what to keep telling yourself, so it wouldn’t bother you.”
“Sure.”
“Did it work?”
“I guess so,” he said with elaborate indifference.
“Bobby, this is a very hard time for your mother. She loves us, but she loves her brother too. And she’s known him a lot longer than she’s known us. What we have to do is make it easier for her by—by acting as if everything is just fine, even though it isn’t.”
“I don’t see how she can love him the way she does us.”
“Love doesn’t go by reasons, Bobby.”
He sat still for quite a long time and then he turned toward me, his face pinched and white, and his eyes slitted and he said, “I hate that dirty killer son of a bitch!”
“Hey now! Steady!”
“I hate him! If he was shot dead right now I’d laugh and laugh.”
“You’re working yourself right into a paddling, fellow.”
“Go ahead. I don’t care what you do. It won’t change anything.”
“Now just what in the world has he done to you?”
I saw his face change, smooth out, become secretive. “He hasn’t done anything to me.” I’ve done too much interrogation work to have failed to notice the subtle emphasis on “me.”
“To Lulu then?”
“No.”
“Judy?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
“I promised I wouldn’t tell.”
It didn’t take long to get all of it, because it was a promise he didn’t want to keep. It was too much for him. She shouldn’t have asked it of him. He had come home from school. Meg and Dwight had been arguing in the kitchen, talking so loudly they didn’t hear him come in. He had seen Dwight strike Meg in the stomach with his fist and knock her down, then walk to his room and slam the door. Bobby had begun to cry. She had gotten up slowly and painfully and vomited into the sink and then taken him with her to our bedroom. She had lain on the bed and held him in her arms until they were both cried out, then made him promise he would say nothing. In the telling he cried again, but tried to conceal it. I would have held him, but he was eight years old, and there were friends of his on the playground.
One Monday We Killed Them All Page 8
