Murder in the Wings

by Ed Gorman

  I crossed the room and got him under the shoulders and threw him into the wall, not hard enough to hurt him but hard enough to break his eerie concentration.

  A couple of the cons started to get up from their chairs and make menacing motions toward me, but they knew better—I had rage and animal fear on my side at the moment, and they sensed this and stayed where they were.

  Not that the dark-haired guy was completely free of his frenzy. He took a good punch at me, a roundhouse right that he delivered with some expertise, and knocked me into the wall. The next one I saw coming and moved in time. I threw a block into him and slammed him back against the wall again.

  Anne came up. "Karl, calm down, calm down! He's just trying to help you! All he wants to do is help you!"

  At the last, Karl looked like Ahab. There was madness in his gaunt face and a crazed strength that scared me. I knew I wouldn't be able to withstand him for long.

  Keech came up then. "Karl, were you taking the mescaline tonight?" In his yellow pullover sweater and designer jeans, Keech still looked the part of the perfect little man. But now he was frightened like the rest of us, and with Keech, fear spoiled the whole act. "Were you taking mescaline?" Keech was screeching.

  One of the cons came up, a jittery man with bad teeth and a busted nose and brown eyes, like someone out of a Russian novel. "Keech, we was all takin' it. Shit, man, that's what Michael wanted us to do."

  Anne said, "Byrnes, Keech and I told you last night that the class would be different from now on. We told you that." She sounded as if she were going to cry.

  Byrnes shrugged. "It's like Michael always said, man, it's the one way to connect with the truth."

  Anne nodded to Karl. "It seems to be an expensive price to pay." She looked at two other cons who'd come over. "Can you take Karl downstairs to the men's room and wash his face and see if that helps?"

  They shrugged, mumbled. They were shabby, shambling men, and from the little I'd heard from Byrnes they sounded like jail house intellectuals, filled with half-baked ideas expressed with a hipness that was one part desperation and one part naïveté. Some of them would be basically decent men crippled by a mean and uncaring society; others would be (yes, there really is evil) mean and uncaring men who wanted to cripple society. I was beginning to sense Michael Reeves's kinship with this group—certain, lawyers and social workers use cons in the same way. The cons have a great need to express their rage and self-pity and sense of doom, and people like Reeves show them how to do it—just as long as the cons show total allegiance. It's a cheap way to play God.

  Karl was crying now, sobbing and writhing in the grasp of his friends. You could see a big stain where he'd peed his pants. His eyes were shot with red. He stank of sweat. He needed to throw up and sleep. Not much else would do him any good. When they took him away, he was still crying.

  Donna drifted over. "Is he going to be all right? Shouldn't they take him to a hospital?"

  Before I could explain, Keech said, "The hospital would call the cops and they'd bust him for parole violation. Using drugs is something parole officers frown on."

  "Where did he get his mescaline?"

  "Michael's desk," Anne said simply, as if it were perfectly logical that a desk would be used to dispense drugs. "In the next room he had a small office. That's where he kept it."

  "Why mescaline?"

  Keech shrugged. "He said it helped get at the truth."

  "I thought this was an acting class."

  Anne smiled ironically. "Michael always said that acting and truth were the same thing. You couldn't act well unless you understood the truth about yourself."

  "So he fed these poor bastards mescaline," I said. "Great fucking guy."

  "It just kind of got out of hand is all, Dwyer," Keech said. "I mean, for the first six months it was a great class. A very straight acting class. No drugs, anything. Hell, I got good enough in here to get the part at the Bridges Theater. The whole experience made being an ex-con tolerable. Then things changed, I guess."

  "How?"

  Anne said, "Michael started playing 'truth' games, the way acting coaches like to. You know, tell us something painful about your past. Well, as you can imagine, people who've been in trouble with the law feel a great deal of anxiety. Michael became more and more obsessed with getting to that."

  Keech shook his head. "By the end, it was much more like some kind of group therapy than an acting class. Michael would just sit over there and watch us and never say a word. With the drugs, he didn't have to."

  "You said 'us.' Did you take the drugs?"

  He flushed. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."

  "How about you, Anne?"

  She stiffened. Despite her regal good looks, she seemed older now. "Yes." I thought of her and her husband in the cabin this afternoon. The ugly things he'd said to her. Their search for something unknown.

  "Who else was in the class besides the men from the halfway house?"

  Keech thought a moment. "Evelyn."

  I watched Anne's face as Evelyn's name was mentioned. A tic appeared at the corner of her right eye. It was not difficult to guess that they'd both been rivals for Michael's attention.

  "How about Lockhart?"

  Now it was Keech's turn to look uneasy. "Lockhart?"

  "Yeah. He's another guy from the halfway house."

  Keech nodded. "Sure. He was a member of the group for a while."

  "He was very tight with Michael," Anne said. "Very tight."

  I studied Keech's eyes. "He's missing. You have any idea where he might be?"

  "No, I don't."

  We were having a stare-down. He won. I glanced back at the door, where some of the halfway house men had begun to file in. They looked sad and scared and I wanted to say something to them, but they'd already heard far too much from fellow cons who'd used them and dark saviors like Michael who'd exploited them.

  "Why don't you do these guys a favor, Keech, and throw the fucking drugs away?"

  "I'm going to. Believe me." He sounded young and lost.

  For the first time I sensed something likeable in Keech. He was a polished little guy who came on like a hustler, but there was grief in him, and remorse, too. Anne must have sensed these things at the same moment, because she slid her arm across his shoulder. "It's going to be a different acting class from now on, believe me."

  Keech said, "They haven't found Wade yet, I take it?"

  I shook my head.

  Keech's gaze got distant. "That's got to be a special hell."

  "What's that?"

  "Being stalked the way he is."

  I nodded. Then I said, "There's a cabin out by the town of Brackett." Both of them visibly stiffened.

  "You were both out there this afternoon. Keech with Evelyn, Anne with her husband. I think you know a lot more about Michael's death than you've let on."

  Keech's face took on a look of misery that made him look like a very haggard boy. "Were you following us?"

  "No. It was a coincidence." I waited. Neither of them said anything. "After visiting this acting class and hearing about how Michael conducted it, I'm starting to put certain things together. Probably not too long from now, I'm going to go to the police with what I know."

  "You think one of us killed him?" Keech asked.

  "I think it's at least a good possibility."

  Anne said nothing. Just put her eyes to the floor and kept them there.

  "Somehow, Lockhart figures in all this, doesn't he?" I waited for my words to unnerve Keech a little more.

  "Tell me about Lockhart, Keech."

  "What about him?"

  "How old is he?"

  He shrugged. "Thirty, I guess. Why?"

  "Is he bright?"

  "Sort of, I suppose."

  "What's he like to do?"

  For the first time recognition shone in his eyes. He understood that I was going to force him to reveal something he probably didn't want to reveal.

  "Just the usual stuff."

&n
bsp; "What would that be?"

  "Well, he always talked about girls a lot, so I guess it's safe to say that he liked girls."

  "All right. What else?"

  "And he always talked about baseball a lot, so I guess you could call him a baseball freak."

  "Did you know him in prison?"

  "Yeah, but not real well."

  "What was your job in prison?"

  "I worked in the prison library. I have a B.A., so they figured I'd be comfortable around books." He smiled at the irony of institutional wrongheadedness.

  "My B.A. was in physical education."

  "What was Lockhart's job in prison?"

  He did not look happy about telling me. "He worked in the infirmary."

  "What did he do there?"

  Again, the words seemed reluctant. "Oh, he was kind of a paramedic, I guess you'd say."

  He was making me curious. Why wouldn't he want to tell me that Lockhart had been a paramedic?

  "Was he good at it?"

  "I guess so."

  "What kind of things did he do in the infirmary?"

  "Oh, he'd give you cold tablets and things like that."

  "Anything else?"

  "Shots. I guess."

  "Shots?"

  "Yeah, you know, injections." He glanced at Anne uncomfortably.

  Anne said, "We give the men rides back to the halfway house and we're late already. Do you mind?"

  So my conversation was ending. "Sure," I said. I'd learned something, but I wasn't sure what.

  Anne turned to the men. "If you'll go downstairs and get in my car, I'll be right down."

  When they were gone, she said, "Dwyer, I'd like to speak to you alone, if that's all right."

  "Of course."

  I smiled at Donna. Keech seemed agitated about the whole prospect. He gulped very loudly.

  We went over to the corner by the register that Karl had tried to demolish. She said, "Wade killed him."

  "I'm not sure of that."

  "I love Stephen. I really do. But he killed him. Stephen's a drunk with a violent temper, and he knew that getting fired from a job out here would ruin what was left of his reputation."

  "Anne, what are you trying to tell me?"

  She looked as if she were trying very hard not to cry. "There's no point in digging around in all this. Wade killed him. He really did."

  "What were you and your husband doing at the cabin this afternoon?"

  Now the tears came. "It has nothing to do with Michael's death. Nothing."

  "I'm not so sure of that."

  Keech called out. "We've got to go, Anne!" The agitation was still obvious in his voice.

  Anne said, "Please, please, Dwyer. Please just leave things alone." Then she was gone, over to Keech and down the stairs and into the rainy night.

  For a long time Donna and I stood just holding each other, saying nothing. Finally, she whispered, "There's something down at the end of the corridor."

  "What?"

  "Sssh. Not so loud." She leaned closer again.

  "There's somebody down by the end of the corridor."

  Now I whispered, too. "How do you know?"

  "I heard something sneak up the corridor and then sneak back.

  "Shit," I said.

  "What?"

  "I wish I had my gun."

  Her grip stiffened on me. "God, I didn't even think of that."

  "What?"

  "Maybe he has a gun."

  "Well," I whispered.

  "Well, what?"

  "Well, I guess there's only one way to find out."'

  Chapter 15

  He was down there, all right. At first, as I moved into the hall, it was almost like being blind. Moisture from the night and my nerves stuck my shirt to my back. In my hand I carried a piece of plumbing pipe I'd found in a storage closet. I'd made Donna stay behind.

  He moved.

  From what I could gather, as my eyes began to adjust, he was behind several big packing crates. The noise was his jacket scraping against the rough boards of the crates. A rasping, like rats in walls.

  I knew he might be any sort of vandal or vagrant, but I didn't think he was. There were plenty of hiding places on the first floor. He had chosen to be near the classroom because the acting class interested him. I was beginning to form an impression of who he might be.

  The pipe in my hand was rusting from my sweat as I saw him dart across the hall from one big crate to another.

  "Stop!" I yelled. Maybe he'd think I was a cop. But you couldn't say I impressed him much. The mildewed air was silent except for my breathing. No sign of anybody ambling out with his hands up. He wasn't going to make it easy. For either of us.

  Toward the opposite end of the hall, in the muzzy light spilling from the classroom, I saw Donna peek out. Exactly what I told her not to do, in case the guy had a weapon and fired at me.

  I turned back toward the packing crates, and that's when he jumped me.

  He came at me in an awkward tackle, getting me around the waist and putting me hard up against the wall. The pipe dropped from my hand, clattering in the darkness on the floor. Just before he kicked me in the side of the face, I heard Donna start screaming. He got me one more time in the face and took off. Now I yelled, warning Donna, and tried to get to my feet.

  What happened next, there in the spill of light from the classroom doorway, was not without a comic aspect. Donna stuck one of her long legs out, sort of like a confused chorus girl who didn't quite know the dance routine, and the man was obliging enough to stumble over it. He wore a shabby overcoat, which made the windmilling motions of his arms look even more cartoonish. By the time he reached the floor, sprawling and sliding, he had sworn so many times it was quite impressive. That was when she jumped on him, the way you jump on a trampoline, with your bottom leading and your arms outstretched. "Hurry, Dwyer! I don't know what to do next!" she said on the way down.

  When she landed, he started groaning and scrambling to his feet. He tried to punch her, but he had no leverage and missed. In return she gave him a dainty little slap. The next one she gave him was not dainty at all.

  I got him by the shoulders of his coat and dragged him into the classroom. I was still scared and mad enough that I wanted to pay him back for the kick in the face, so I got a good sharp fast one off to his ribs.

  "God," Donna said, coming into the room, "who is he?"

  "I have a feeling we've just met Lockhart."

  "Fuck yourself," the man said.

  "Boy, so far," Donna said, "he seems like a delightful person."

  Probably not even Lockhart's mother loved his face. He had feral brown eyes and a feral pink mouth and feral pointed ears. He needed a shave and a shower. Donna was right. He was delightful.

  "I think you can help us," I said.

  "I think you're full of shit."

  "That may be. But I still think you can help us." My face hurt but I'd be damned if I'd give him the satisfaction of rubbing it. "Who killed Reeves?"

  He smiled. "Your buddy. Wade."

  "No, he didn't."

  "Gee, then I must've been listening to the wrong station. Seems like every time I turn on the radio or the TV, they're talking about how many cops are out looking for him." He winced. Looking down at him, the way his eyes narrowed with pain, I wondered if I should have kicked him quite so hard. I probably could have made my point with a bit less violence.

  "Why were you out in the hall?"

  He looked at Donna. "I was taking a piss."

  She smiled at him. "Gosh, I'm really offended and shocked. Taking a pee in a school corridor."

  "I don't want to kick you again," I said.

  He grimaced. "You try it, motherfucker, and see what happens."

  I stepped on his hand, quickly enough that he didn't even try to get it out of the way. I stepped down hard.

  "God, Dwyer, c'mon." It was Donna talking. "God, look at him." She looked down at his hand as if she were going to be sick.

  "Why
were you out in the hallway?"

  "Fuck yourself."

  I stepped down harder. "Tell me."

  He screamed.

  "God, Dwyer, please," she said.

  "Donna, for Christ's sake, I've got to know why he was out there."

  "But you're hurting him."

  "Look at the left side of my face."

  She looked. "God, what happened?"

  "This guy you're so worried about kicked me."

  "Why, you bastard," she said to him.

  "So will you please go somewhere if you can't take it?"

  "Why did you kick him in the face?" she said to Lockhart. He was too busy grimacing to answer.

  "Step on his hand," she said. "He deserves it." Then she said, "But not real hard, you know, Dwyer? Not real hard."

  "Donna."

  She made a face. I eased up a little, out of deference to the woman I love, and that's when he grabbed my ankle and knocked me over, and Donna right after me.

  He ran to the door to the stairs. We were maybe a half-minute behind. His feet clattered on the staircase. Below, he careened into two old ladies coming from their Medicare class. They screamed. He kept on running.

  I nearly ran into the same two ladies myself, trying to get to him. His flight had been slowed just enough that when he reached the front door I could grab the sleeve of his raggedy overcoat. It ripped away from the rest of his coat. He whirled around, slamming into the doorframe, and then he got his composure again and started into the downpour.