Uncivil Seasons

by Michael Malone

  “I’ve had that kind of headache too, without any accompanying epiphany.”

  She turned and looked so deeply and for so long without blinking straight into my eyes that I grew embarrassed by the intimacy. Finally she whispered, “You have very beautiful eyes. They’re quite open.”

  Neither of us spoke until a whistle of wind blew down the chimney, flurrying sparks in the fire. Then she said, “I have to be careful. I get a strong feeling, inescapable; but who’s to know what it means, if it’s even true. Sometimes it’s nothing.”

  “Sometimes the bodies are buried there in the cellar.” I felt very uncomfortable. “Will you say who you think wants to kill you?”

  “One reason I have to be so hesitant is that these pictures are most intense when I’m ill, or upset. Even a fever from a cold. They came strongest when I was younger. They weren’t pleasant, most of them. I’ll tell you one I never told the police. When Charles was dying, I was at the hospital with him one night when I suddenly saw an image of Bainton Ames out in a boat on Pine Hills Lake.” She stopped to erase part of her drawing.

  I pulled my chair to the fire. The room was too large, the log beams too high over my head, the corners too shadowy. I began to want another drink. “Was that the same night that Bainton actually drowned?”

  She nodded. “Yes. But in my…vision, his death was not an accident. There was somebody hidden in the boat behind Bainton, somebody who leapt up and struck him on the head, somebody he knew.” She moved her leg slightly with her hands and smoothed the blanket.

  A twitch behind my scalp pulled at my hair, even while I was thinking, easy enough to say all this so long after the fact. “Who was the somebody?”

  Again she didn’t respond to my questions, but said, “Finally, my uneasy feeling about Bainton’s death grew so acute, I told Cloris. She was, naturally, reluctant to believe me. She didn’t believe me. In fact, she was angry. There was a painful scene. She asked me not to mention my, as she called them, fantasies to her again.” The even voice dropped. “Well, that was many years ago.”

  Snow had stuck in an oval around the corners of the huge window, making an old-fashioned frame. Through it, black lake and black sky were slipping into each other. With my shoe I pushed a log deeper into the fire’s cave.

  She kept drawing. “You see, Justin, a week ago Sunday, out on St. Simons, I dreamt that Cloris Dollard came to me and told me to find her diary.”

  “You mean you just dreamt she had this diary?”

  The gray eyes frowned, disappointed in me. “Dreams are often wiser than the people who have them. They are, in many cases, certainly more honest.”

  I held up my hands. “God knows.”

  “In my dream, Cloris was dead. Her hair was bloody, and her face blank white. She held out her hand, unclenched her fist, and pearls spilled from it.”

  “You had this dream the night she died?” I came over to her couch and sat down.

  “Yes. She said she’d been killed because Bainton had been killed.”

  “Before you’d heard about her murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have read about the head wound, or someone could have told you about it after you got down here, and you fed the details back into the dream without knowing it.”

  “I could have.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No.” She lifted her long white hand from the opened sketchbook and turned it toward me.

  I whispered, “Good Christ.” Covering the page was a drawing of Cloris Dollard exactly as I had looked down on her that Monday morning. She lay on the flowered quilt, one arm turned back, one foot dangled off the bed’s edge. Joanna had drawn the pillow pressed over the head, drawn the pearls on the rug below, drawn even the ripped right sleeve of the suit. Nothing about that sleeve or about the pearls had been in any public report I’d read. She took the sketchbook back from me, and said quietly, “I told you the images I see are very vivid, Justin.”

  I stood up to walk. “What do you mean she said she was killed because Bainton was killed? Bainton Ames died years ago. We have a man now in custody, a petty thief from East Hillston, on this Cloris case. You don’t think he killed her?”

  “Do you?”

  I turned and stared at her. “I don’t know. Who do you think killed Cloris? If he’d pressed you, what would you have told the reporter?”

  She held her hand over her eyes; it was a large hand, milky white, naked without a wedding ring. “Nothing. I don’t feel I should say anything, not until there is some other… some external evidence.”

  “Why not? We’re not going to arrest someone just because of a dream you had.”

  She shook her head no. I leaned closer and touched her hand and was startled by its heat. “Will you tell me why you believe someone is trying to kill you?”

  Her eyes went dark for an instant, then she blinked and they were calm again. “Nobody is trying to kill me now.”

  “But Briggs said…”

  “I have the premonition that somebody will…decide to try to kill me. But hasn’t yet. That must sound odd.” Her hand came up to her neck, and I thought I saw a white scar, very faint, on her wrist at the edge of the sweater’s cuff.

  “Mrs. Cadmean, it all sounds odd to me. I hope my saying so doesn’t bother you.”

  She took my hand and examined it, turning it over, pressing her fingertips into my flesh. “No, it doesn’t bother me. I stopped believing some time ago that it was my fault I wasn’t as…” She let my hand fall and looked up at me. “Wasn’t as numb as most people. I used to think everyone felt as much as I did; they simply didn’t let it show. I was,” she looked away, “deceived. They don’t.”

  “If you thought ordinary people had your gifts, yes, you must have been disappointed.” The phone rang, and I jumped. “Shall I get it?”

  “I’m sure it’s for Briggs. There’s an extension up in the tower.”

  “She’s up there on the roof?”

  “It’s her study. Her telescope’s up there.”

  The phone stopped. The snow had muffled all sound.

  “I should go,” I said. “If there’s ever anything I can do, if you want to talk, will you call?”

  She nodded, and I found myself leaning down again to take her hand. She raised mine to her cheek and held it there for a moment. Then she said, “Here, take this.” She tore a page out of her sketch pad. On it was a drawing of me, done with a skilled and strong line.

  I asked, “Am I this sad?”

  “Yes.”

  I rolled the paper and put it in my coat pocket. “Do you have a feeling when—if somebody is going to try to kill you—when?” Then Joanna Cadmean made the most bizarre statement of our conversation. She said serenely, “I expect I’ll be home long before Easter.”

  “Back on St. Simons?’

  “I mean I will have died. And gone, I assume, somewhere. I don’t expect this little world is all, do you? It’s certainly never felt like home to me.”

  “Died! Christ, what makes you think such a thing?”

  The beautiful head turned slowly toward me, the eyes still as a statue’s. “Cloris told me. I heard her voice. Three days ago, while Briggs and I were in the riding ring. That’s why Manassas shied and threw me. It was death. Animals don’t like it.”

  • • •

  Outside, I wiped snow from my windshield with a pine branch. While the car was warming up, I took out the drawing. It was amazing; it was no more than a few lines, but it was like looking a long time into a mirror. I turned the sheet of paper over. On the back were faint sketches of tiny heads, hideous gargoyles, their eyes tormented, their mouths gaped open with rage.

  At the bottom of the drive I looked-back up at the lodge. High above me the light from the tower turned the snow to a white mist, as if I were far off, lost at sea, and on top of the Cadmean roof an arctic lighthouse warned me away from frozen reefs.

  Chapter 4

  Even though he’d had to leave his
wife watching television alone back in Crest Hollows, shove himself back into all three polyester pieces of his wine-colored suit, and drive his new white Mercury back into town where slush could splash on its chrome, Captain V.D. Fulcher was happy, because he’d heard that Preston Pope had seven placesettings of the Grand Baroque sterling belonging to the Rowell Dollards, and that told him that Preston Pope had murdered Mrs. Dollard, and that told him the case was closed and that the important people in Hillston would think well of him for letting them forget in a hurry that homicides ever happened in Hillston to important people.

  “Except Preston didn’t do it,” Cuddy said again.

  “I don’t care which one,” Fulcher told him. “Graham. Furbus.”

  I said, “Not Furbus. Furbus doesn’t get out for two more years.”

  Cuddy tipped a box of Raisinettes to his mouth and tapped it. “Furbus is the only Pope that would kill somebody. Took after his daddy.”

  Preston had certainly been saying he didn’t do it, and his brothers didn’t do it; he’d been saying so for three hours. He was less certain of what he had been doing eight nights back. Finally he decided he’d been out in his van looking for Charlene; that was what he usually did between 10:30 and 1:00 in the morning. When I got back to the municipal building from the lake, and called my mother to tell her I’d gotten back, Preston was still saying that he’d never seen the silverware until I held up the fork, which was what he’d said to begin with.

  I said, “Maybe Charlene brought the silverware over to bathe in.”

  Cuddy said, “Did Dickey or Graham do it?”

  Preston shook his head violently.

  “Did you do it?”

  “You already asked me that a million times! I swear to God, I didn’t choke that lady!”

  “We know you didn’t choke her,” I said. “Did you smother her with a pillow?”

  “Aww, shit!”

  Cuddy bent his head and looked closely into Preston’s eyes. “This is real serious, Preston. Real serious. This isn’t what you’re used to, you got to understand that in a hurry.”

  Preston’s pupils blurred with tears that he swiped at with his fists. “I got eyes, I can see shit when I step in it, don’t you think I can? Y’all got to help me! Get Graham, he’ll tell you I didn’t do nothing.”

  I said, “We have a call in for him right now, believe me. How about this, Preston, did you and maybe Graham and Dickey go over there to North Hillston and rob the place, and you didn’t kill Mrs. Dollard? Maybe she was already dead?”

  “No way!”

  “How about, maybe after you finished stealing everything, somebody else came in and killed her? Any idea who?”

  Preston was sunk down in his chair, rubbing his wrist raw with his chain bracelet. “I don’t even know where the lady lives. I just want y’all to believe me, that’s all I want.”

  At 9:30, Fulcher, splashed with another pint of his rampant aftershave, trotted in smiling, and we all went back to the beginning. Preston begged us to believe he would never rob a house with a woman in it, much less kill her. Then he asked Cuddy if he should confess to the burglary (even though he was innocent), so that then he wouldn’t have to stand trial for the murder (of which he was also innocent, but for which he might nevertheless go to the gas chamber). Then he said he was so hungry he couldn’t think anymore. “Anymore?” Cuddy said, and got him some cheese crackers and a Coke.

  Upstairs, just before eleven, Graham and Dickey Pope, dragging two policemen along with them, rammed into the front room like bears after a cub, and yelled at us to give them back Preston. They swore their baby brother had been at home drinking beer and watching the basketball game on television with them every minute of the night of the murder. Told what Preston’s alibi was, they swore that, come to think a little harder, they’d been out in the van looking for Charlene with him every minute of the night of the murder. The two of them, dribbling wet snow, crowded in on Cuddy. The younger, Dickey, with his black, curly hair and long-lidded blue eyes, was the best-looking of the Popes; as always, he wore a shiny cowboy shirt. Graham was ugly and over six and a half feet tall with a beer belly and the short, tangled beard after which Preston had modeled his own. Graham shouted, “God damn it, Cuddy Mangum, you know that boy ain’t killed the goddamn woman.”

  “You watch your mouth,” said Captain Fulcher.

  “How come all her silverware was in his goddamn bathtub?” Cuddy shouted back at Graham.

  The Popes stared at us without a word and then stared at each other. Finally, Dickey said to Graham, “That little son of a bitch; if he did it, I’m going to kick his ass!”

  Graham said to us, “Y’all put the fix in, is that what’s going on here? Well, God damn it!”

  Captain Fulcher had them both locked up as accessories.

  We’d already sent Preston to bed; he’d gone back to trying to tell us what Charlene was like.

  “He did it,” Fulcher said, doing the clicking noise with his mouth that made him sound as well as look like an agitated hamster.

  “Nope,” said Cuddy.

  “Listen to me, Lieutenant.”

  “All right.”

  “Somebody killed the Senator’s wife. Somebody robbed her first. Preston Pope robbed her and Preston Pope killed her.”

  “Your logic’s real persuasive, but I’m gonna have to disagree.”

  We were in Fulcher’s office, crowded in with his civic awards and bowling trophies. Photos of his children—now teenagers who wouldn’t give him the time of day—grinned gap-toothed in plastic cubes on his metal desk.

  “That house is way out of Preston’s league,” Cuddy said. “Besides, if he had been there, he’d have left behind his fingerprints, his car keys, and his dog.”

  I took out a cigarette, but Fulcher tapped the NO SMOKING Lucite bar on the edge of his desk, and I put it back. He added an apologetic smile. I asked Cuddy, “What makes you so sure?”

  “Charlene. Listen, Justin, there wasn’t a mark on that girl. Here he was ranting and raving how he was going to kill her for whoring around, and he hadn’t even slapped her.”

  Fulcher punched his finger on our report. “Six shots fired!”

  “Not at her. That’s first. Number two is, Preston’s got a snapshot of himself and his mama in his wallet. He didn’t smother any fifty-year-old woman.”

  Fulcher looked smug. “His mother deserted him, don’t forget that.”

  With a pencil, Cuddy drew a quick series of overlapping triangles on his pad. “V.D., I’m real sorry you took that psychology extension course last summer.”

  “Don’t get smart, mister.”

  “All right.”

  “And don’t ever call me…that.” Fulcher couldn’t bring himself to repeat his initials and spluttered to a stop.

  “So where’s the rest, where’s all her jewelry and the coins?” I said. “We looked at the Popes’. They’re not there.”

  “They’re somewhere,” Fulcher announced. “You find them. I want Preston Pope pinned to the wall. I want this case closed fast.” He worked into his overcoat. “I’m going home. It’s sleeting out there.” He called his wife on the phone and told her so.

  As soon as the door shut, Cuddy snapped his pencil in two.

  “Christ.” I lit my cigarette. “Can you believe Fulcher’s parents had the gall to name him after General Earl Van Dorn?”

  “Yeah.” Cuddy threw the pencil pieces at the wastebasket. “Just because they wore silk sashes doesn’t mean those damn Confederate generals of yours weren’t idiots too.”

  “What’d you call him V.D. for? You’re going to get yourself fired.”

  “You can support me. That suck-butt’ll never fire you.”

  If Fulcher had known Rowell Dollard was going to arrive ten minutes later, no doubt he would have stayed to be congratulated. We saw my uncle as we were on our way down to the lab. Cuddy’d had a patrolman bring over every pair of shoes, boots, and gloves Preston had in the house, for forensics
to check them out.

  • • •

  Senator Dollard was in the foyer, standing by himself in the middle of the black and white marble parquet floor. He looked like a part of the design, with his perfect white hair and perfect black wool overcoat, and his furled black umbrella with its silver head. His face, ruddier from the cold, was tilted up at the fulllength portrait of Briggs Monmouth Cadmean that was hanging lavishly framed above the double doors to the courtroom, with a plaque below it saying he’d given Hillston the entire building. Our hollow footsteps on the marble startled Dollard. He turned, swinging the umbrella like a racquet and reminding me of the last time we’d played squash, when he’d slammed into the wall hard enough to slit open his cheek.

  As soon as he saw us, he said, “Has he confessed? Pope?”

  I shook my head and introduced Cuddy, who immediately said that in his opinion Preston Pope wasn’t responsible for the crime.

  Rowell looked at me the whole time Cuddy was talking, but he turned to Cuddy when he stopped and said, “Then I hope you’ll find out who is.”

  “I’m going to try, sir,” Cuddy answered. “I’ll be down in the lab, Justin.”

  Dollard gave a small nod as Cuddy walked away. “Is he in on the case?”

  I said, “Now.”

  From his days as solicitor, Dollard knew this building and our procedures well; he’d followed our investigation the way he played squash, and Fulcher was terrified of his daily phone calls. Mother said Rowell’s involvement was his way of coping with what had happened to Cloris, that he would never forgive himself for losing her because he hadn’t been there to protect her, because he had never been able to convince her not to leave the house unlocked, not to trust strangers, not to realize that the world was dangerous. He insisted that only a stranger could have killed his wife, because no one who knew her could possibly want to hurt her. “Who in God’s name would kill Cloris? She had more friends than anyone I ever knew!”