Rose-colored Glasses

by Downing, John

  Wickersham knew it, too. Still not speaking, he indicated for Langley to stay in back of him and then he started down the hall.

  The first doorway they came to opened onto the dining room. Peering inside, Langley could make out shapes. It took him a while longer to put names to them. The tall figure by the window was a plant. In the center of the room was a spacious table, with some kind of centerpiece sitting on it. Chairs circled the table. Two of the chairs had been pulled to one side. In each sat‌—‌and as much as Langley tried to deny what his eyes were seeing, he couldn’t‌—‌a body. More details became apparent. Each body was trundled to the chair in which it sat, its legs tied to the legs of the chair, its hands bound behind its back and secured to one of the back supports of the chair, from which support another rope was attached to the neck of the body, this last rope holding the body in a stiff erect position almost as if it were at attention. One of the bodies was dressed in a nurse’s uniform.

  Not wanting to believe what he was seeing, Langley stepped forward for a closer look. The nearer body was that of a man. He was sitting in profile to Langley. His eyes, Langley saw, were open. As Langley stepped in front of him, the man’s eyes blinked. Langley bit his lip to stop himself from screaming.

  The man, he could see now, did not dare turn his head. The rope around his neck had dug into his flesh. The smallest movement threatened to tighten the rope further and choke him. How long had he been sitting like this, in terror of moving, of falling asleep?

  Langley looked at the nurse. Her eyes, full of fear, stared at him. But they were alive. Both hostages were alive. He felt an enormous sense of relief. Whatever else had happened in this house, at least the worst part of his nightmare had been averted.

  “Get a knife from the kitchen,” he told Wickersham. No longer was he concerned about silence. There was no longer need to be concerned about light, either. But he left the lights off, fearing that to turn them on would leave these two people almost nakedly exposed. He could smell their fear and he knew that after this was all over neither of them would ever be the same.

  Wickersham returned with the knife. Langley noticed that he had put away his gun. With great care, Wickersham cut the two people free. There were bleeding rope burns on the ankles, wrists and throat of each of them.

  The woman tried to talk. “Uh,” she said.

  The man pointed to the ceiling.

  The woman said, “Uh.”

  Upstairs.

  “Call for help,” Langley told Wickersham.

  “The phone’s out,” Wickersham reminded him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I checked the one in the hall.”

  “Maybe you should take these two to the hospital. I’m going to look upstairs.”

  “I think we should both look.”

  “No,” Langley said. “I’m going alone.”

  “In that case, take this with you.” Unholstering his gun, Wickersham held it out to Langley.

  “I don’t need that.”

  “Either you take the gun, O, or I’m going upstairs with you.”

  Langley took the gun. Wickersham turned his attention to the two hostages and Langley went into the hall.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor. When he reached the top step, he laid the gun down on the floorboards.

  He didn’t know which way to go. He knew exactly which way to go. Following the same kind of sixth sense that had told him the house was occupied, he turned to his right. The passageway ended at a T-intersection. Langley turned left. At the end of the corridor a door stood open.

  When he reached the doorway, he stopped. The room beyond was in darkness, but there was enough light for him to see it was some kind of game room. In the center sat a large oblong shape: a pool table. The entire far wall of the room was lined with French doors that gave onto a balcony. Through them he could see the choppy gray sea.

  He crossed to the pool table. He could smell the body before he could see it.

  The body lay spread-eagled, naked, its arms and legs tied down. Langley tried to look away, but his eyes seemed to have a will of their own. There were wounds all over the body, cuts or burns; in the dim light, it was hard to tell. He was grateful for the darkness, but even the darkness could not hide the gaping black wound between the corpse’s legs.

  A voice speaking from the shadows behind him said, “You’re too late.”

  Tearing his eyes away from the body, Langley walked to the French doors. He stood there watching the sea, trying to will the waves to wash away the memory of what he had just seen. Afraid he was going to be sick, he opened one of the doors and gulped in several mouthfuls of fresh, cold air. It helped to settle his queasiness.

  “Did he tell you what this is all about?” he asked then, without turning.

  “He did. Once he got started I could hardly shut him up.”

  Still facing the window, Langley waved a hand behind him, pointing in the direction of the pool table. “Then why… that?”

  For an infinite time there was no response. Then, just as Langley was sure he was never going to get an answer to his question, Burden spoke.

  “I wanted to see how loud I could make him scream. You should have heard him.”

  January 1982

  Langley switched on the ignition.

  He drove to the corner. The snow reduced visibility to at most two hundred feet. He looked right, left, straight ahead. There was no sign of Burden.

  A block farther on Langley still had not found him. He drove on. He was sure he had lost him, when suddenly, fifty yards ahead, there he was.

  Drawing even with Burden, Langley steered the car next to the curb and stopped. He leaned across the front seat and rolled down the passenger-side window.

  “Terry,” he called.

  Burden walked on. Langley called again. Still Burden walked on. Langley called a third time, this time using his last name.

  “Burden!”

  Burden stopped, turned. He walked back to where Langley was parked and bent down so that his head was level with the open window. He didn’t bat an eye when he saw who it was.

  “Can I give you a lift?” Langley asked.

  “I’m just going to the train station.”

  “Hop in. I’ll drive you.”

  “It’s not far to walk,” Burden said.

  The same old Burden, Langley thought. “Get in the goddamn car,” he said, and to his surprise Burden did just that.

  Now that he had managed to entice Burden into the car he couldn’t think of what to say. Certain that when the time came to approach Burden he would chicken out, he hadn’t rehearsed anything.

  They drove a block in silence. And another. Langley knew they could drive to California and back before Burden would say a word.

  “What are your plans?” he asked finally.

  There was a patented Burden silence. “I haven’t any,” he said finally. “You would think that with twenty-five years to think about it I’d have a pretty good idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life but…” He didn’t add that he hadn’t really expected that he would ever get out. The decision of the governor to commute his sentence had come as a surprise to everyone.

  “You’re welcome to stay with me while you make up your mind,” Langley said.

  Burden turned to look at him. “What would Fay say?”

  He had mentioned Fay’s name to Burden once, a quarter century ago, and still he remembered it.

  “It was her idea,” Langley told him. “The children are grown. The house is empty. We have more than enough room.”

  Burden nodded. “Thanks, anyway.”

  But no thanks.

  They had reached the station. Langley pulled up to the curb.

  “Where are you headed for?” he asked.

  No answer.

  “I don’t mean to pry.”

  Burden waved a hand. “I’m going to take the first train that comes in
. I’ll see where it takes me.”

  Langley switched off the windshield wipers. Almost at once the glass was covered with snow.

  “Do you… do you ever regret what you did?” he asked.

  “No.”

  The answer had come quickly. It was, Langley supposed, the one question Burden didn’t have to think over.

  “You’d have beaten the rap.”

  “So would he.” Meaning DeBrough.

  “You had the money. Wouldn’t that have been punishment enough for your brother?”

  Burden shook his head. “I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have wound up with the money in the end. He would have hired the best lawyers money can buy to challenge the will on the grounds of his mother’s mental incompetence. I’m guessing he would have wound up with at least half the money, if not all of it. And even if he hadn’t gotten a penny, I believe he would have found a way to regroup somehow. His kind always seem to manage to land on their feet. He might even, in time, have rehabilitated himself politically. Look at Nixon. Can you picture it: Governor DeBrough?… I can.”

  He made a sound halfway between a grunt and a chuckle. It was the closest Langley had ever heard him come to laughing.

  “You paid a hell of a price to bring him to justice.”

  “I don’t know. What else would I have done with my life? I would have fucked a few more women‌—‌I would have fucked a lot more women. But other than that, I don’t think my life would have been materially different.”

  By now the snow had completely obscured the windshield. To Langley, it felt as if they were buried in a snow bank. To relieve the sense of claustrophobia, he turned his head so that he could see out the side window.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t do better by you, Terry.”

  “You did your best.”

  “My best was not nearly good enough.”

  Burden had never been tried for Laurel’s murder. But then he had never been cleared, either. Very quietly, the State dropped the charges against him. In the minds of most people, however, he was believed to be as guilty of Laurel’s murder as he was of DeBrough’s, for which he was tried and convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

  Because he was a material witness in the case, Langley had been unable to represent him at the trial. In his stead, he hired the ablest attorney he could find to stand up for Burden. As it turned out, there was nothing for the lawyer to do, for Burden insisted on pleading guilty. For Langley, who could only sit by and watch, the experience was one of maddening frustration. He believed, then and ever after, that a plea of not guilty by reason of temporary insanity would have carried the day. He believed that when the extent of his brother’s treachery had sunk in, Burden had in fact gone temporarily off his head; that at the time he caught up to DeBrough and killed him, he was mentally unbalanced.

  For a while, even, Langley had wondered if it was mental illness that compelled Burden to plead guilty at his trial. But he decided no. When Burden was innocent, he refused to plead guilty. And when he was guilty, he refused to plead innocent. Perhaps the best word to describe that was not madness, but honor. A peculiar brand of honor, to be sure. But honor nonetheless.

  “Why do you suppose your brother hired me?” he asked, managing at last to ask the question he had come here to ask.

  Burden was a long time answering. “I think he wanted to make it appear that he was trying to help me. Maybe he hoped that if worse came to worst and I inherited the money, I would, out of gratitude for his efforts on my behalf, will it to him upon my execution. And fool that I was, I might have… On second thought, I don’t think I was ever that foolish.”

  “But why me?”

  Burden shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “Didn’t you ask him when…?” When you were torturing the other information out of him.

  “No. Why should I do that?”

  “Why do you think he hired me?” Langley asked.

  This time Burden didn’t have to think about his answer. He said, “Because you were a naïf.”

  “I was not,” Langley protested. “I was a cynic through and through, suspicious of every‌—‌”

  “You were a naïf,” Burden said, with some vehemence. Then, in a quieter tone: “I think we all were, back then. Even me. Hell, the minute‌—‌the second!‌—‌you told me that my brother had hired you, I should have known what was what. All right, I never would have been able to guess what his motive was, but at least I could have sent you off in the right direction. He hired you because you were a naïf. The last thing he wanted was a cynic, someone who, sensing a chance to make a name for himself, might start shoveling dirt all over the place. Some of that dirt just might have landed on my brother. He knew you would play by the rules and not drag him into the case unless you had good reason to.”

  “Maybe I should have thrown dirt all over the place,” Langley said. “Hell, it was my job to throw dirt all over the place. Any lawyer worth his salt would have done it without thinking twice about it.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Burden said. “Later on, I hired an investigator to look for evidence that my brother and Luray had met together sometime in the years after they left Columbia. He couldn’t find even a single witness who could testify that they had known each other at Columbia.”

  The news came as a surprise to Langley. So Burden had made an attempt to gather evidence that might have been used to appeal his conviction for his brother’s death. No, that couldn’t have been the reason. Whether DeBrough and Luray had met once, or a thousand times, after they’d left Columbia had no bearing on Burden’s culpability for DeBrough’s murder. What had Burden been after, then? Langley thought of one possibility. To exculpate himself for Laurel Rose’s murder. Was it possible that he actually cared that in people’s minds he was believed to be responsible for killing Laurel?

  Or maybe all he was really looking to do was dig up dirt that would tarnish the memory of DeBrough, whom the history books had treated rather sympathetically, placing him in that department reserved for famous murder victims, like Lizzie Borden’s parents and Sam Shepard’s wife.

  Burden nodded toward the station. “I’m going to miss my train.” He reached for the handle of his door, but then with his hand on the lever he stopped.

  “You know my outlook on life,” he said, turning back so that he was one-quarter profile to Langley. “Twenty-five years in prison haven’t improved it any.”

  Burden had survived his years in prison with less fuss than one might have expected, considering his volatility and notoriety. But then he had something that most prisoners in his situation lacked. Money. Money to pay a network of spies to watch his back. Money to finance the elimination of enemies who threatened him. Money to buy silence and forgetfulness. Langley had heard stories. But that’s all they were‌—‌stories.

  Burden was speaking again. “The Jews have this belief,” he said. “The seventy-five righteous men. Meaning that at any one moment in history there are living in the world seventy-five men of honor and courage and decency. The number seems entirely too high to me. But, anyway… If I hadn’t been lucky enough to have had one of those seventy-five men for my lawyer, I’d have been tried and convicted‌—‌and executed‌—‌for Laurel’s murder. For whatever it is worth, you saved my life.”

  With that, he stepped out into the snow. He closed the car door behind him. Then, without a backward glance, he crossed the sidewalk towards the station and disappeared inside.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  wning, John, Rose-colored Glasses