Shame

by Alan Russell

  Tits, Feral thought. That’s what he’d glimpsed earlier when the wind had been pulling at Junior’s shirt. And that’s what he saw now. A bleeding man with tits. How could that be?

  “Polo.”

  It wasn’t Elizabeth’s voice coming from the phone. It was Junior’s. What the hell was going on?

  The car engine started. The headlights turned on him. Feral couldn’t see the driver, but he suddenly knew who was sitting there. The car started toward him.

  Feral raised his gun, got off two quick shots at the car, but it didn’t stop. He started running, but the car was gaining on him. Without breaking stride, Feral pulled the trigger in rapid succession. The car was on top of him. It was so near Feral knew he couldn’t miss. And he didn’t. Glass shattered, and the car braked to a sudden, violent stop.

  Got ’im, Feral thought.

  It was his moment of pride before the fall. The edge had caught up with him.

  As Feral went over the cliff, he started screaming. His screams pierced the fog and the night. He’d courted death assiduously but never looked it in the eye.

  The screams suddenly stopped.

  He who was so fond of last words never offered any of his own.

  36

  THE MEMORIAL SERVICE was more of a wake than a somber occasion. The color of the day wasn’t black. Most of those in attendance were wearing vibrant tropical outfits. The individuals were as flamboyant as their garb, and fully half the people there were drag queens.

  A minister led the service. He was equal parts cheerleader and spiritual leader and had a talent for getting others to do the talking. And remembering Lola took a lot of talking. A life was discussed—laughed over and cried over.

  “Lola never liked to miss a good party,” said Michelle Donnelly. Michelle had very broad shoulders. Some of her older friends called her Mike, evidently the name she had been born with. “I keep expecting music to start up and Lola to begin singing.

  “She’s here, though, center stage, people. I feel her. All we have to do is listen to our hearts and we can hear her last, and best, performance. And Saint Peter, you better watch out, baby, cause Lola’s going to come up and rock that house.”

  Amid all the cheers and whistles, Caleb found himself reaching out for the microphone, accepting the handoff from Michelle. He hadn’t wanted to speak, had hoped others would say all that needed to be said, but he realized he owed Lola this last tribute, and much more. He took a deep breath and waited for the noise to stop and his heart to settle. Caleb hated that all eyes were upon him and that he had to speak, but he confronted his fears. No more running. The media, under orders not to be intrusive during the memorial, suddenly came alive. Caleb tried to ignore all the cameras pointed at him.

  He cleared his throat and looked out upon a very different Torrey Pines Gliderport than the one he had experienced only three nights before. The day was bright and sunny, and the ocean blue and inviting. Caleb swallowed hard. Lola had a lot of friends.

  “The local newspaper called Lola an unusual hero,” he said. “Any hero is an unusual person, an extraordinary person. And that’s how I’ll remember Lola—as a hero and an extraordinary individual.”

  Caleb blinked away his tears. Not far from where he was standing Lola had died in his arms. He found himself looking at the spot. Everyone followed his gaze. There were piles of flowers there, solemn reminders that brought a quiet and stillness to the crowd, but a hang glider broke the spell. He ran past the spot where Lola had fallen, let out an exuberant yell, then soared straight out toward the blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The hang glider caught a thermal and started to rise higher and higher.

  Very different, thought Caleb, from the last man he had seen go over the cliffs.

  Everything had happened so quickly that night. Caleb remembered braking hard, stopping the Mustang just short of the cliff’s edge. The screams of the killer were still in his ear when he jumped out of the car and went in search of Lola.

  It was too dark and foggy to see her, so he yelled, and kept yelling until he heard a weak, “Here.”

  “Where?” he shouted.

  “Here,” she said.

  They repeated their calls. Caleb knew he was getting closer, just as he knew her voice was getting progressively weaker. Another, even more desperate game of Marco Polo, he thought.

  “Here.”

  The whisper in the darkness that was so close. He waved his arms in the mist, trying to push it away, trying to swim through it. And there she was.

  So much blood. The mist couldn’t hide that. He hovered around helplessly for a moment, then dropped to his knees. He didn’t know what to do, but at the same time he knew there was nothing he could do. So he held her.

  “Most of you have read the story of what happened that night,” Caleb said, “or at least versions purporting to be the story. I’d be dead now if it weren’t for Lola. She was the ultimate Good Samaritan. She took me in and believed in me, and in the end she saved my life.”

  It was her plan, all of it. Rehearsed and practiced on the drive up to the glider port.

  “When you were sick,” she said, “when you were delirious, you spoke in Elizabeth’s voice. Can you do that now?”

  “Yes.” Caleb didn’t have to think about it. He’d talked to her in person and listened to her recording for hours on end. Her voice was in his head.

  “Show me.”

  “We’re both Doubting Thomases,” he said. No. Elizabeth said it.

  “Pull over,” Lola said. “Find a place we can park.”

  He’d turned at the light and pulled into a parking lot on the UC San Diego campus.

  “Take off your clothes,” said Lola.

  “What?”

  “Osh-Tisch,” she said.

  The memory hurt, and the pain of it made Caleb remember his audience. “Many of you might not know that Lola was part Indian. I think that heritage was very important to her. As she lay dying, she told me that she was going to Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery. I don’t know much about the Lakota religion. I only know that a great spirit has joined her ancestors.”

  No, he thought. Two great spirits wrapped in one.

  “Hush.”

  He tried to stop sobbing, tried to respect Lola’s wishes. Her voice in the night kept telling him there was no need to cry, kept offering him absolution for all of his guilt.

  “Hush,” she said again, but the word was offered to comfort him.

  Holding her in his arms, Caleb said, “You beat the bully.” And then he started crying again.

  “Hush,” she said for the third and last time, making the word sound like a gentle blessing.

  “Don’t let them bury me in these clothes,” she said. “And nothing black either. Make it like this mist. White lace.”

  “You’re not going—”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I go to Wakan Tanka.”

  She struggled for another breath, then managed to say, “I’m only a quarter Lakota. I’m not even a real Indian....”

  It was Caleb’s turn to say, “Hush.” But he offered the sound in the spirit she had, a blessing to dispel all doubts.

  “You’re all brave,” he said, “a warrior like Osh-Tisch.”

  “No,” she said, gently chiding him, “I’m a Two-Spirit.” They both had a little laugh, and then she whispered, “Hanta yo,” and was gone.

  She went to meet Wakan Tanka with a smile.

  Later, Caleb learned “hanta yo” was a Lakota war chant that translated to, “The spirit goes ahead of us.” Both spirits, thought Caleb. He found strength in her last words and accompanying smile and passed on her smile to those who were gathered.

  “I only knew Lola for a short time, and yet there are so many things I feel I should say. Lola looked at the world differently than most, and I thank God for that. One of her eyes was feminine, and the other was masculine, and that gave her a unique perspective. She wasn’t judgmental, because she had been judged so harshly herself, and bec
ause of that, she didn’t automatically burden me with the sins of my father. I wish I could have been as nonjudgmental of her. I wish I could have done a lot of things differently. But if Lola taught me anything, it’s that we need to live in the present, instead of letting the shame from the past rule us.”

  Caleb sighed, shook his head, but then remembered her smile. She hadn’t been afraid of the Great Mystery.

  “I’ll miss her,” he said, and nodded several times. “I’ll miss her.”

  He put down the microphone. No one else took it up. The minister didn’t have to announce that the memorial service was over. Everyone knew.

  There was a lot of spontaneous hugging. An impromptu line formed, people waiting to commiserate with Caleb. Lola’s father was dead, and her mother had chosen not to attend the funeral. With no relatives there, Caleb had become Lola’s family. Maybe that was the secret, he thought. If you’re born into the wrong family, form a new one.

  Michelle Donnelly gave Caleb a bear hug. She had the arms to do that. “Lola wouldn’t have wanted anyone to be down,” Michelle whispered.

  “I know.”

  “We’re going to get together at Randi’s tonight, going to have the kind of party that Lola would have wanted. It’s going to be an after-hours thing, starting at one.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  The line started moving through, with just about everyone offering a word to Caleb. He didn’t know why he was the object of their sympathy, but he was glad for it.

  Anna joined him at his side. “Are you all right?” she asked. The question came with a hug.

  “I’ve gotten more hugs today than I have in my entire life,” Caleb said. “Suddenly I’m a huggable sort.”

  “You always were,” said Anna.

  Maybe he could believe that now. He returned Anna’s hug. They’d been talking almost nonstop for the last three days. There was still a lot more talking for them to do, but now they both knew there was time. And there were still so many things he wanted to say to her.

  “I was thinking of taking the kids home,” Anna said, “before James decides to hitch a ride on one of those hang gliders.”

  “Good idea.”

  Another hug, and then a kiss for each of his children. Caleb and Anna had driven in separate cars, both knowing he would need to stay longer.

  Reporters started calling questions out to Caleb. For days they had been dogging him, and he’d been polite but mostly monosyllabic. The full story, he had told them, was being given to Elizabeth Line, and she would be releasing the information as she saw fit.

  Like father, like son, Caleb thought. He had picked the same confidante. She came forward to shield him now, to be the diplomat, but a woman stepped in front of her, another mourner who wanted to give Caleb a hug. Caleb wasn’t sure whether he was hugging a biological woman or not, but it no longer mattered to him.

  A hug was a hug.

  37

  “WILL YOU BE going back to work soon?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Caleb said.

  The two of them had taken an outdoor table at the Pannikin, La Jolla’s answer to good coffee, and they were sitting in the very back corner to get the privacy they wanted and needed.

  “For the past couple of days,” he said, “it seems as if everyone in San Diego’s been calling to have their trees trimmed.”

  “Everyone loves a winner.”

  “Or a sideshow act. There’s no shortage of people who want a piece of me. The media. Movie types. Publishers. They’re waving lots of money.”

  “It’s time you talked to one of those business managers I recommended.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just tell everyone to go away. What do they really want from me anyway?”

  “The same thing they want from me: a firsthand account of the devil. They’re curious about John Farrell. They want to hear about the new Shame versus the old Shame. They want our impressions, our feelings.”

  “For me,” said Caleb, “Farrell will always be a figure shrouded in fog.”

  “I need to see him more clearly than that. I’ve devoted the last few days to learning all I can about him. There’s a lot there. He’s going to keep me busy for a long time. The ironic thing is that I interviewed Farrell a few months ago. His girlfriend was originally thought to be one of the Cave Man’s victims. Now it’s evident that Farrell was the one who killed her.

  “The Cave Man—Ron McNeill—was charged with the murders of eight Colorado women. He originally confessed to all the killings, but when I talked to him he partially recanted, saying he was responsible for only six of the deaths. McNeill liked the notoriety of having killed more women than he really had, but the fifth and sixth victims were both blondes, a hair color he isn’t partial to. McNeill decided he couldn’t take credit for those two victims because they weren’t good enough to be in his ‘trophy collection.’ His words.

  “In addition to murdering his girlfriend, I think Farrell also killed a second young woman who looked like her. Her death, I suspect, was to divert suspicion from himself for his girlfriend’s murder. When I interviewed Farrell, he knew I believed McNeill’s revised story, but in retrospect I think he was more amused than threatened.”

  “Why would he have been amused?”

  “Because he was already planning to kill me—to kill us—when I showed up in Colorado.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been in regular contact with the Denver Police Department. Among Farrell’s effects were copies of reports submitted to him by a Vincent Coleman, a private detective who worked for Farrell on and off for several years. Judging by the detective’s reports, Farrell’s been interested in us for at least two years. If you’d like to read all about yourself, and maybe learn things you don’t even know, I can get you a copy.”

  Caleb sighed. Having been spied on still rankled. “I’ll pass.”

  “I was hoping Coleman would be able to answer a number of my questions,” she said, “but he’s dead, and I don’t think his death was a coincidence. He was struck by an automobile a month ago, just days after he finished a two-week surveillance of you. The Denver PD is in the process of examining Farrell’s vehicles to see if they can find any evidence that either his truck or his car was involved in the hit-and-run.

  “I suspect that killing was a way of life for Farrell for some time. When he was twenty-one, both his parents died in an automobile accident. Their car went off the side of a mountain pass. As a result, Farrell inherited a substantial amount of money, as well as a business. That happened six years ago.”

  “Was it a suspicious accident?”

  “Authorities didn’t think so at the time. Now they do.”

  “Wonderful thing, hindsight.”

  “I’m guilty of it myself. When I interviewed Farrell, I never suspected him of having murdered his girlfriend. I remember him as being well spoken, even overly solicitous about my comfort. The two questionable homicides had me believing that some kind of Cave Man copycat was involved.”

  Elizabeth waved a notepad. “I had my Farrell interview notes overnighted out of Denver. Mostly I just took down his quotes, but I did make a few observations about him.”

  She turned to one of the paper-clipped pages. “‘Very bright,’ I wrote, ‘but a bit grandiose.’” She flipped some more pages until she came to the next paper clip. “And here I jotted down, ‘John is enamored with his own voice, even a bit stuck-up, but perhaps he’s overcompensating.’ So much for my picking up on the fact that he hated me.”

  “That wasn’t something he wanted to advertise.”

  “True. He did a great Prince Charming imitation.”

  She shut her notebook more firmly than was necessary.

  “I doubt whether I’d want to read your early observations of me,” said Caleb. “I am not even sure if I’d want to see your most recent ones.”

  Elizabeth picked up a pen and started scratching furiously on a napkin. Caleb leaned over and looke
d at her scribbling. “Worse than I thought,” he said.

  She put her pen down. As their smiles faded, a lull in the conversation followed. Both pretended interest in their coffee.

  “So what do you do now?” asked Caleb.

  “Look for Rosebud.”

  Caleb gave her a quizzical look.

  “Citizen Kane reference,” she said. “I love that movie. I think Welles would have been a hell of a crime writer. He loved scratching beneath the surface. That’s what I try to do. If I look hard enough I’m convinced I can find Rosebud, or at least a few petals. That, more than anything else, motivates me to write my books.”

  “You probably like doing puzzles.”

  “No. They’re too limiting. The human puzzle is much more interesting. There are no boundaries, and the colors change, and you have to connect pieces that to the eye just don’t fit. I like it when I make my readers say, ‘Aha!’ There’s nothing quite so satisfying as revealing ‘the rest of the story.’”

  And maybe nothing so frightening, Caleb thought. For so long he’d wanted to tell the rest of the story, but he had never dared.

  “I like being surprised myself,” Elizabeth said. “The day before yesterday I found out that Farrell was adopted. And then yesterday I started learning about the rest of the story. His biological mother was Leslie Van Doren. You remember that name?”

  Caleb’s mouth opened. He remembered.

  “That’s right,” Elizabeth said. “Farrell was Van Doren’s grown-up baby, the one she tried to pass off as your father’s son, the one whose original birth certificate listed him as Gray Parker Junior.

  “After your father’s execution, Van Doren left Florida and returned to Colorado. She kept the boy, whom she continued to call Gray, until he was twenty-one months old. By all accounts she wasn’t a good mother. Her drug and alcohol use escalated, and her baby’s needs became secondary to her own.