by John Dunning
“It tends to stay around one-thirty over eighty-five. How’s yours?”
“Mine would be two-fifty over one-twenty if I wasn’t on pills.” He grunted. “So much for accommodating the world’s cheeriest assholes.”
The sky had darkened and the mountains were faint outlines in the swirling gray mist. “Looks like it’s gettin’ mean up there,” McNamara said, smoothly changing the subject. Within three minutes we went through a light snow shower into a heavy, wet autumn blizzard. About five miles beyond the town limit the road forked. McNamara motioned me to the right, and almost at once we clattered onto a snow-pocked dirt surface and began to climb. I put the car into four-wheel drive. The dirt road disappeared and fresh snow swirled down from the dark skies. It came in flurries, then in gusts that shook the car. “Looks like Lennie’s goin’ up anyway,” McNamara said. Ahead, the deputy’s car swirled through the snow and a stream of smoke poured from his cracked-open window. I could see his head bobbing fiercely from side to side. “He seems to be carrying on quite a conversation with himself,” I said.
McNamara nodded. “Watch out for that one, Mr. Janeway. I’ve known him since he was a kid and he’s never been any good.”
“Why does it not surprise me to hear that?”
“I don’t know if he’d actually do anything, but he talks a bad show. Struts around flaunting his authority under the guise of protecting the community. Never known him to resort to any brutality, but I don’t imagine he’d be the first lawman to shave a point here and there. Just watch your flank, that’s all I’m telling you. I’m not one to say he’s crooked, but he’s always been mean as hell.”
“He’s crooked too,” I said, and I told the old man about my run-in at the stop sign. At the end of the story McNamara was no longer accommodating: he was damned mad.
“That sorry-ass son of a bitch.” A moment later he said, “I’ll take your case gratis if you want to hang around and bring it to the judge.”
“What kind of chance would I have?”
“Hard to say. You’d be in county court, and the county court judge out here is just an old highway patrolman. But he’s got a good sense of right and wrong, and he knows Lennie and his ways. I think you’d have a chance.”
“What kind of bird is the district court judge?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah. He just got appointed this year. He lives up in Gunnison and has a summer home in Paradise. Used to be a pretty good lawyer, coulda been a real good one, but that’s just my opinion. He represented a couple of corporations, one or two banks in Gunnison and Montrose, and I hear did a good job. Worked his way up in the Colorado Bar Association, served on commissions and ethics committees and was real diligent. Then we had a sudden vacancy, the governor picked him, and the appointment went straight to his head. He likes to pontificate from the bench, loves to lecture defendants and their attorneys. He’d be okay, in other words, if he didn’t think he was God. He’s got a rude awakening coming when he’s got to stand for election with the voters.”
“So he’s eccentric and he’s got an ego. Is he fair?”
“He’s a political animal is what he is. Out here that means pretty solidly pro-prosecution: a conservative law-and-order type with a short attention span and an impatient streak as wide as the Colorado River. He wears a gun in the courtroom, underneath that black robe.”
“You’re kidding.”
He laughed. “I never kid about the law, son. Well, hardly ever. Sometimes it gets so strange you just can’t help it.”
“Now I’m tempted to hang around, just to see him in action.”
“You should do that. And while you’re here, give Lennie a run through the county court. It wouldn’t be any piece of cake, but you know you need to take Lennie to court over that. You can’t let that stand.”
“Yeah, but in real life I haven’t got days to waste on it, only to lose anyway.”
“That’s what bastards like Lennie Walsh count on.”
He was quiet for another minute but I knew it was still grating on him and I liked him for that. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think I’ll walk down the street after we get back tonight and talk to people in the stores on that corner. They all know me. I think there’s at least a fair chance somebody saw it happen. We’d have him by the balls then.”
“You’re a good man, Mr. McNamara.”
“Call me Parley. And I’ll call you what?”
“Cliff’ll be fine.”
Snow swirled down from the mountaintop and the road ahead looked increasingly forbidding, dark and socked in. It peaked, dipped, and wound upward again. I couldn’t see the bottom of the valley now: it was all fog with occasional dark spots. Suddenly I saw Walsh’s car ahead of us, moving fast and half-obliterated in a swirl of white powder. “Wonder what that silly bastard is up to now,” Parley said.
“Letting us know who the boss is.”
“He must be really haulin’ ass up there. If it was us driving like that, he’d give us a ticket.”
“Maybe we should make a citizen’s arrest.”
The old man laughed. “I’m game if you are.”
Walsh was now out of sight. I asked how much farther and McNamara said four or five miles. Casually I said, “So what can you tell me about Mrs. Marshall and her late husband?”
“I hope you mean just background. I don’t want to get into the specifics of this case yet.”
“Background’s fine. We can hash over the other stuff if and when we find ourselves working the same side of the street.”
“Just for background, then, Laura’s a good woman. I always thought so, even if nobody else did.”
“Are you saying nobody else did?”
“She didn’t suck up to the local yokels. That won’t ever get you on lists as the most popular gal in this town.”
I was formulating another question when he said, “Sinclair Lewis had it right, and not just about Minnesota, either. Little towns like this are the same everywhere. Friendly people who take real deep offense if all that coziness isn’t returned in full, right away.”
“And Laura didn’t?”
“She’s just a private lady. Didn’t have time for committees and clubs, coffee-klatching and endless bullshit. She had three kids to raise and a house to run. I think she’s got a right to her own life without being expected to do things.”
“What about her kids?”
“She and Bob had two: they adopted one, years ago when it seemed she might not be able to have any, then surprised themselves and had two of their own.”
“What about Marshall?”
“What do you want to know?”
“What kind of guy was he?”
“He was all right.”
I waited but the elaboration didn’t come. “All right how?” I finally asked. “You mean he walked in good health, he made no obvious enemies, or he was a jolly good fellow?”
“All of the above, as far as I know. Take that right up there.”
I turned in to a narrow, rutted road and bumped my way up a slope toward a wooded crest. Again McNamara had lapsed into silence.
“I really am asking just for background, Parley,” I said. “I’ve got maybe another day at the most to formulate a recommendation and then get out of here. In fact, Erin told me to come on home. I’m not even supposed to be here now.”
“Tell me about Erin. What kinda lawyer is she?”
“She practiced in a big Denver firm for several years. Worked on corporate matters and on a big Wyoming water rights case. She’s a supercompetent generalist. Was on a fast track to make partner by her midthirties but got restless and quit. She’s thirty-two now.”
“You say she’s a generalist. She ever handle criminal cases?”
“Quite a few, actually. Mostly pro bono.”
“Those are the ones you’ve either got your heart into or not. They show me what kind of lawyer you are.”
“She wasn’t
assigned to do ’em, I’ll tell you that. She did a lot more than the company wanted her to do, and she won a helluva lot more than she lost. She’s a good trial lawyer, and I’m not just saying that because I like her. If Laura Marshall were my sister, I don’t think I could find her anyone better.”
“She’d have one strike against her before she even gets her coat off. The judge won’t ever say so out loud, but he doesn’t like women attorneys.”
“Well, the prosecution has one too, so at least they’d start out evenly handicapped.”
“Yeah, but he knows that one. Watched her grow up. And she is the prosecutor.”
Suddenly I saw the house through the trees. It perched on a hilltop facing a sweeping mountain range and overlooking a valley. It was visible for just a few seconds, then swallowed by the snowstorm, then visible, then gone again. “We’re gettin’ there,” McNamara said. “You see any sign of Lennie’s car?”
“Not yet.”
We made a sharp turn and started up a long last incline, coming between two pine trees into the front yard. “Where the hell’s Lennie?” McNamara said softly, almost to himself. There was no car anywhere in sight, and no tracks in the fresh snow. “You see anyplace he could’ve pulled over?”
“Maybe he ran off the road somewhere. He was going way too fast.”
“We’da seen him, though, if he’da cracked up. I don’t see how we wouldn’t see him, wherever he went off.”
I pulled up in front of the house and we got out. From the front porch a picture-postcard vista of snow peaks stretched across the full horizon and around to the side. “This must’ve cost the Marshalls plenty,” I said. “How much land they got up here?”
“Oh, a hundred acres easy. Enough to keep the bastards at bay, so there won’t be any Holiday Inns going up right under their faces.”
“Must’ve cost ’em,” I said again.
“Actually, Marshall’s grandfather bought this tract back in 1930. You could get land up here for a song then. If you think this is remote now, think how it was then. He picked up the whole thing for next to nothing. They started building this house a few years later. It started as a cabin—that’s the main part of it—and later they added more rooms. That’s what gives it its rambling look. Different generations added to it.”
I walked out to the edge of the porch. “Wow,” I said, breathing in the cold air.
“I don’t think Laura and Bobby are rich by any means, so don’t assume that. I think it’s been a struggle the last few years just to keep up the taxes on this place. But that’s life in America. Just because you’ve got something fine like this, that don’t mean the bastards’ll let you keep it.”
We stood there together, listening to the wind whipping across the hill.
“Now where the hell has that silly sumbitch gone?” He jingled a small key ring in his hand.
I figured Lennie was just being Lennie, screwing with our heads. I stood at the top of the steps looking out across the meadow. From there I could see the weather moving in, rolling across the opposite range. I could see the road disappearing as it came, and the trees being consumed along the lower rim, almost at eye level with where we were standing. And suddenly I saw something move.
“There he is.”
McNamara squinted, but Lennie, or whatever it had been, had disappeared.
“My eyes ain’t what they once were,” the old man said.
“He’s gone now anyway.”
“You sure it was him?”
“Actually, no.”
McNamara said, “I’m gettin’ damned tired of this,” and he turned toward the door. At that moment Lennie stepped out of the woods across the way and stood watching us with a rifle in his hands.
It was almost too dark to make him out: in another five minutes I wouldn’t have seen him at all. McNamara got the door open and said, “Come on in,” but I stayed there watching Lennie watch me. Lennie lifted the rifle to his shoulder but I didn’t move. We stood still, a pair of fools playing chicken, until he lowered the gun and stepped back into the trees. What was he trying to prove, that he could kill me? That he could do it from some vast distance and there was nothing I could do to stop it? That he was crazy enough? What does one fool ever prove to another?
“Come on in,” McNamara called out again, and I turned away and went into a dark front hall.
“Just so you know,” I said, “I saw Lennie across the way. This time there wasn’t any doubt about it. He was pointing a rifle at us.”
McNamara turned and faced me. “Why in the hell would he do that?”
His face was a pale blur and I couldn’t read the silence that followed. His voice had been incredulous, as if even Lennie couldn’t be that crazy. What would the natural conclusion of such doubt be?… That I was the crazy one?
“He must be nuts,” he said, and I felt better.
He shook his head. “This really makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
He turned and walked ahead of me into the house, putting on lights as he went. The hall stretched straight on back through the house, past another hall that led, I assumed, to the bedrooms. Off to the right was a large room of some kind; to the left, another big room where the tragedy had happened. The death room, as the press would probably call it.
McNamara went left and turned on the lights. I came to the door and stood there for a moment looking at the carnage. The carpet had been a light tan—probably lighter than it now seemed, I thought: now the center of it was dominated by an ugly black bloodstain. How many death scenes had I seen like this in my years as a Denver cop? I didn’t know what it would tell me this time; maybe nothing, but a cop always had to look, and in that moment I was a cop again. McNamara had gone across the room, stepping gingerly around the blood to stand near an old-style rinky-tink piano. Behind the piano was a pair of French doors, which were curtained with some flimsy lace stuff. I didn’t move. McNamara watched me as if he’d seen me work in some past life and knew what to expect. My eyes roved around the room and finally came back to where the old man was.
“Ugly, isn’t it?” he said.
“It always is, Parley.”
“What’re you lookin’ for?”
“No idea,” I said. “Maybe I’m just hoping the room will speak to me.”
“You cops are funny birds.”
“Yeah. Some of us are a riot.”
Eventually I came into the room, taking care not to touch anything. Yes, it had been three weeks. The sheriff had gone over it and he had had technicians out from the CBI, but to me it was a new scene. I could now see for myself what Parley had just told me: that this house, this cabin, had been built in pieces, with God knew how many add-ons over time, and this main room had probably been here for the full sixty years. There was nothing new-looking anywhere in sight. Straight across the room was a rustic rock fireplace. To the left of that, a glassed-in porch that in good weather would overlook the mountain range. But now darkness had spread beyond the glass, and with the lights on it seemed even darker, as if night had been upon us for hours.
“So what’s it tell you?” Parley asked.
“Nothing yet.” I shrugged: I really didn’t expect much. “It’s cold.”
My eyes roved back to the left. There, near the fireplace, was a couch and a small circle of chairs with a coffee table in the center. Two floor lamps were placed behind the chairs, making it a cozy little reading circle when the fire was lit. In fact, a small stack of books was on the table and instinctively I moved across the room to see what they were. I looked down at The Quality of Courage, a recent book with Mickey Mantle’s byline.
“Was Marshall a baseball fan?”
He shrugged. “I really didn’t know him that well.”
I bent over and touched the book by the edge. “Can I borrow your gloves for a minute?”
“You think they’ll fit you?”
“You got big hands, Parley. They’ll be good enough.”
I pulled the right glove on. It was snug, no
t quite tight.
“What’s the deal?” Parley said. “Sheriff said they were finished in here.”
“Maybe, but I don’t see any residue on these books.”
“You mean fingerprint dust?”
I nodded. “Just call it an old cop’s habit. I don’t like to touch things where somebody’s been killed.”
I picked off the Mantle book, holding it by the corners, and laid it flat on the table beside the others. Under it was a novel, The Ballad of Cat Ballou, and under that a thing called How to Be a Bandleader, by Paul Whiteman. Under that was The Speeches of Adlai Stevenson, and at the bottom was a cheap tattered paperback, Gabby Hayes’ Treasure Chest of Tall Tales.
McNamara seemed to sense my surprise. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t know. This is just the strangest damned group of books I ever saw. Way too weird for anybody to be reading them.”
“Then why are they here?”
“Exactly.”
I looked at them again.
“Are they worth anything?” Parley asked.
“Not so you’d know it. The Cat Ballou’s got a little sex appeal because of the film, but I don’t think it’s ever gonna be this century’s answer to War and Peace.” I couldn’t help laughing. Singsong, I said, “Adlai Stevenson and Gabby Hayes?”
“It does kinda blow your mind, doesn’t it?”
“Best laugh I’ve had all day.”
But then my eyes wandered back to the bloodstain, and that was no laughing matter. We stood transfixed for another moment. A hundred thoughts ran through my head, none of them worth a damn on the face of it. I walked across to the piano, turned, and said, “I’m missing something somewhere.”
“Maybe you’re trying too hard to make sense out of something that’s just… you know, happenstance.”
“Maybe.”
A moment passed.
“It’s not happenstance, Parley. Happenstance would be five disparate books, maybe an eclectic mix of fiction and non. But what does this little collection tell you? I mean, Paul Whiteman? A history of the Whiteman band maybe, but a book on how to be a bandleader? Were either of the Marshalls fans of band music?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
