by John Dunning
I thought her words contained a hint, a hope that perhaps she wanted Erin to say, “Why don’t you move back to Denver?” But that invitation didn’t come quickly or easily, and at the moment Laura took pleasure in what she had avoided when Bobby had been alive. She pushed back her reclusive nature and was seen almost every day on the streets, wandering into shops, talking to people, walking with her children. “She’s taking the pulse of the town,” Erin said, “trying to see whether people are suspicious, and how they are with her.” In the afternoons she and Erin walked the town together: Laura would come by, and Parley or I, sometimes both of us, would babysit the kids while she and Erin went out alone and tried to rediscover themselves in a free world. I never asked what they talked about: it was Erin’s business, but at night, when we were alone, she volunteered glimpses of it. “We haven’t talked much about the old days yet. It just doesn’t come up. I think she wants to have some kind of ongoing relationship but I’m not sure yet what that might be. Today she talked again about moving back to Denver.”
Score one for the old Janeway and his hunches. But where it would go from there was anybody’s guess.
For her part, Erin still didn’t know what she wanted. “Maybe I still love her,” she said one night. “But I’ve pushed her away for so long, I denied not only her existence but her right to exist in my mind. And yet she was always there. Even after all these years I’d find myself suddenly thinking of her. I’d be in court and I’d have a momentary lapse in my concentration, like a cat had just crossed my path, and I’d stop and think about it and it was always her. Her face would come floating up out of nowhere, and sometimes I was almost certain she was back there in the crowd, watching me.”
“Do you think you could be friends again?”
“I don’t know. Not like we were, I don’t think. But life is strange, who knows how the ball bounces? Suddenly out of the blue she’ll say something that makes me laugh, and we’ll almost be like those long-lost sisters we were.”
I had still not heard her say Laura’s name: it had always been “her” or “she” when we talked, “Mrs. Marshall” in court. But I didn’t mention it again.
As the holiday approached, Laura was looking radiant: she had had her hair done up and had splurged on some new clothes for herself and the kids. There was almost an air of freedom about her but not quite. “She understands that murder charges are dropped without prejudice,” Parley told me one evening. “They can still refile them, and I think they intend to, somewhere down the road. They’ll always have the Lennie problem to deal with. They’ll need new evidence, a stronger case than they have right now. But I know they’re not satisfied the way it is.”
The judge was fairly well pissed at the way the case was frittered away, Parley said. “He wants Lennie in his court.” Gill remained his usual distant self, but Parley knew after talking to Miss Bailey that he had been right, that they were trying to gather information for a case down the road. “Ann’s like a lot of women I’ve known,” he said, “she’s stubborn to a fault.”
Parley’s best guess was that Lennie had left the state: “That damn fool has gone as far away as his truck will take him.” Me, I wasn’t so sure of that. I had a hunch Lennie was still around, and every day I walked the streets and talked to people in gas stations and shops, the waitress in the café, the old people who sat bundled in the park on the strangely warm snowy days and watched the kids at play. I asked everyone I saw: I left Parley’s phone number and asked them to call me there if they saw or heard anything.
We had planned an old-fashioned afternoon dinner at Parley’s house on Christmas Day. Erin would cook it, Laura and the kids would come over around noon, and we’d spend the afternoon watching It’s a Wonderful Life on video and listening to Christmas music. “This’ll be the first time I’ve had a Christmas tree since Martha died,” Parley said. “I should always do this at Christmas; I ought to have one every year, even if there’s nobody but me to enjoy it.” Erin smiled and said, “Yeah, you should,” but later, in the kitchen, she told me he never would. “There’s nothing worse than trying to fake good cheer when you’re really alone. A tree would drive me crazy if I were him, getting old alone, with nobody really close around me.” A little later she said, “I’ve been considering asking him if he’d like to move into Denver. I think I could get him a job in the firm. I know I could. We always need help, and he could work as little or much as he wanted to.”
That afternoon the three of them went for a walk while the turkey cooked. Erin had pointedly invited Parley to join them, leaving me alone to watch the kids. The big front room was full of toys, which delighted the twins even as they went through them all for the tenth time. Jerry and I sat alone watching them. Laura had bought him some new clothes and a fine-looking watch, which alternately seemed to fascinate and bore him. He and I drank eggnog, which he loved coated with cinnamon and spices, and I talked about the world that, so far, he had seen only in movies. I watched his face as I talked and I thought I saw real comprehension there. His eyes were soft and doelike, and at some point I put on Hondo, another of the films we had rented, and watched him as it began to play. He sat transfixed in front of the set, and when the credits came up, I said, “You like John Wayne, Jerry?” Instantly he took up a paper and began to write. I let him do this undisturbed until he had filled the page, then I asked if I might see what he had written. He handed it to me without expression, and it was line after line of John Wayne’s signature, all perfect replicas as if the man’s ghost had floated into the room and done it himself. I handed him another sheet and said, “Can you do Alfred Hitchcock, Jerry?” and in an instant he had scrawled Hitchcock’s signature, with the little Hitchcockian fat-man caricature attached to the end of the name. “That’s fine,” I said, “that’s great. Let’s see what you can do with a few more.” I thought of the books, which had been released by the DA and were now stacked in Parley’s back bedroom; but I didn’t want to get up or disturb anything, so I scanned them in my mind and softly said the names of the authors I remembered—Leonard Bernstein, Paul Whiteman, Robert Frost—and with each name I instantly got back what looked like a perfect signature on the paper. I remembered some of the Preacher’s books and said the names, and some of them worked and some of them didn’t. “What about Andy Warhol, Jerry?” I said, and almost before I got the name out he had scrawled Warhol’s name and had added the famous tomato soup can. He had begun to go down the page, line after line of the same signature, but then I heard a laugh outside and a bump on the porch and I said, “That’s enough for today,” and I reached for the paper and took it gently when he handed it to me. I folded it and put it away as the door opened and Erin came in.
“Well,” Laura said, “what’ve you two been doing all afternoon?”
“Just hangin’ out, watchin’ movies.”
I nodded at Jerry and said, “This is a good kid you’ve got here.”
“He sure is.” She tousled his head. “He’s my boy.”
The turkey came out of the oven at four o’clock and we ate at the big dining table in a room that had been dark for years. Erin offered a toast, “To new beginnings,” and four glasses clinked lightly. Outside, the snow had begun again: we could see it fluttering past the windows as darkness fell over the town. Parley had lit the fireplace and it roared mightily as we ate and talked and shared an occasional laugh. “Parley’s considering moving to Denver,” Erin said at one point, and Parley shrugged. “I will admit that it sounds exciting,” he said. Laura said she had already made her decision: “I can’t live here anymore. This was never my place.” She didn’t mention her dead husband by name, but we all got the point. It had been his house, his town, his choice to live here. “I’m going to put the house up for sale next week,” she said. “The kids’ll be better off in the city, with real schools and others their own age. I think they’ve had enough of me as a homeschool teacher.”
She was motivated to sell it, she would be willing to dicker the pri
ce, she wanted to be far away from Paradise and its little minds before the season turned.
“At the same time, don’t be foolish,” Erin said. “This land alone will be worth a fortune in a few years, and you don’t want to give it away.”
“I know that. But I can’t live my life based on what may be, either. Besides, as I think you all know, I’ve got some pretty steep legal bills.”
Erin said nothing.
“I may move somewhere I’ve never been before,” Laura said a few moments later. “Seattle maybe. I’ve always liked the rain.”
Erin nodded and they looked at each other across the enormous gulf of that tabletop. Laura said, “You think that’s a good idea?”
“I think what makes you happy is what’s good.”
“I don’t know what happy is,” Laura said.
“Then maybe it’s time you found out.”
There was a moment just after dinner: Erin and Parley had cleared away the dishes and taken them into the kitchen, and the kids were playing in the far hallway. Laura and I moved past each other at the end of the table, and suddenly she reached over and hugged me tight. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I know how much work you did for me. God knows where I’d be without you.”
Even more suddenly, she stood on her toes and kissed me hard on the mouth. I felt her tongue and I pulled back instinctively and stammered, “Uh, Laura…”
“Mistletoe,” she said, pointing over my head. “But I guess I’d better leave you alone before Erin comes in here and gets the wrong idea.”
The evening passed uneasily. I had the feeling of something afoot that hadn’t been there before. At nine o’clock, late by Paradise standards, the telephone rang.
“It’s for you,” Parley said.
I went into the hall and picked it up.
“Mr. Janeway?” A woman’s voice.
“Hi, who’s this?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am. You’ve been going around town, asking about Lennie Walsh. You still interested?”
“Sure I am.”
“Well, he’s still here. I saw him night before last.”
“Where?”
“Up at the end of Main Street, right on the edge of town. He was talking to old Freeman Willis…you know, the jailer.”
“You’re sure it was him.”
“Oh, yeah. Listen, I’ve got my reasons for wanting that son of a bitch to get whatever’s coming to him. He hasn’t made many friends in this town. But I’d rather not get directly involved in whatever happens. Just a word to the wise.”
“Thank you,” I said, but she had already hung up.
41
Erin sat still and said nothing while I put on my coat. “I’ll be back in a little while,” I told her, and I hurried out before any of them had a chance to ask any questions.
One thing about a jail: Christmas, Easter, or the Fourth of July, it never closes.
Freeman was sitting behind the big desk with his feet up, playing sheriff. He jumped when I came in, as if I had caught him robbing a poor box, and his feet clattered on the floor.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“Hi, Freeman.”
He came around the desk and sat in the perp’s chair looking guilty.
“I thought maybe you and I could have a little talk.”
“I got nuthin’ to say to you.”
“That’s okay. You can tell it to the DA instead.”
“Tell what to the DA?”
“How a good country boy like you became an accessory to a crime.”
“The hell you talkin’ about?”
I sat across from him and looked into his face. “Hey, Freeman, no matter what you think, I am not your enemy. I have no wish to see you go to jail.”
Alarmed now, he said, “Why would I go to jail?”
“Aiding and abetting a criminal was a crime itself, last time I looked.”
“You talkin’ about Lennie?”
I nodded solemnly, avoiding the temptation to be sarcastic. “Lennie’s got himself into a mess, Freeman. And you two were seen together two nights ago, here in town.”
We stared at each other and I smiled, not unkindly.
“I know you don’t think he ran in here and quit his job just because he suddenly got bored with it,” I said. “I know you’re smarter than that, Freeman,” but in fact I knew nothing of the kind.
“Who said he quit his job?”
“Then where is he?”
A long moment passed. Freeman rubbed his grizzled chin and tried to look away. I did look away, striking a pose of infinite patience. I read the WANTED circulars on the wall and avoided saying the obvious: that soon Lennie would be up there in the rogues’ gallery with Elmer Trigger Adams and Henry Scott, notorious flasher and tit-tweaker, who had moved on to buggery, child molestation, kiddie porn, and other monkey business. I wonder how you’d look up there in that company, Freeman.
“Lennie says you’re trying to sandbag him.”
“That’s about what I’d expect Lennie to say. In fact, I don’t care anything at all about Lennie. You can believe that or not, Freeman, it’s no skin off my nose, but if you crawl into bed with Lennie Walsh, you’ll live to regret it.”
I waited. “You were seen the other night, talking to Lennie,” I told him again.
“Who says?”
“Never mind that. Somebody reliable, I’ll tell you that much. What’d you boys have to talk about so seriously?”
“Nothin’. He just wanted me to give somebody a message.”
“Who might that be?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“What was the message?”
“I don’t know.” He looked into my doubtful eyes. “I’m tellin’ ya, I don’t know. It was a sealed-up letter.”
“I see. Did you deliver it?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Lennie never did me no harm.”
I shrugged. “I’m looking for a killer, Freeman. If that happens to be Lennie, and you go down with him…”
I let that settle on him. Softly I said, “Murder’s serious business.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
“I think Lennie knows something about it.”
“Well, he didn’t tell me where he was going.”
“I see.”
“He didn’t. I’m not lyin’ to ya.”
“I think you know where he went anyway.”
I pushed back as if to leave.
“Wait a minute,” Freeman said. “Listen.”
I pulled in close again and I listened.
42
Fourteen hours later I was rolling gingerly along what looked like a rutted turn-of-the-century logging road. It had taken most of the morning to rent the Jeep; I had to wait till the guy decided to open and do the paperwork, and now as I went higher, I felt the tension growing like a knot in my belly. There was a feeling of death in the air: it’s always that way when a standoff is in the works and you don’t know what the other guy is capable of. The way so far was just as Freeman had said: a nearly impossible road unfit even for horse and mule teams, with deep holes in both ruts that kept me rocking back and forth and in the worst places tilting precariously to one side and then the other over yawning rocky valleys. The cabin was just below timberline, surrounded by a few scrawny, mutant-looking trees and some hardy underbrush. Far below I could see the remains of an old mining town, a collection of ruins that twisted around smaller mountains along what was probably a snow-covered dirt road. Beyond the range was Paradise, socked in now as a storm system moved in from the west. I could see it coming seventy miles away, a swirling gathering of black clouds and snow moving slowly across the rugged landscape. I came over a crest and saw a higher mountain just ahead, and one to the north beyond it. You’ll know you’re gettin’ close when you see them two peaks, Freeman said. You follow the road on up the ridge, past what’s left of an old mine, and right after that you’ll come on the cabin all-of-a-sudden-like. You’ll have to walk or crawl them last
two hundred yards. You could make it in a Jeep, but he’d see you comin’ and I wouldn’t wanna be you if he does. Lennie is a crack shot with that deer rifle.
He looked worried. Don’t let ’im know it was me you got this from. He’ll know anyways; he ain’t stupid, and he ain’t talked to nobody else.
I’ll cover for you, Freeman, I said. I tried to mean it, but he wouldn’t say more than that; he froze and shook his head, afraid he had already put himself in jeopardy, probably wishing that he’d said nothing at all.
Before starting out, I had retrieved my own gun and it was snug under my left arm. But I knew Lennie’s deer rifle would beat it at a distance hands down, and there was a good chance he’d be watching.
I stopped and got out; looked over the terrain and imagined Lennie out there, cunningly hidden. No fooling around now, no silly games as we’d done on the slope across from the Marshall place. In plain fact I didn’t know what to expect from Lennie. He had talked a bad show, but I had met others like him, dozens of badass hoods who had talked and were dead now because they had messed with the wrong guy or hesitated at the wrong time. Three of them were in the ground by my own hand, and I wasn’t anxious to add to that dark tally. But here the odds were on Lennie’s side and I knew that as well. That fact alone made me too ready to shoot first and ask questions later, and I still couldn’t pin him with anything more than intentionally screwing up a crime scene and lying about it.
I still didn’t know. I had had one quick glimmer and a growing hunch that whatever had happened, for better or worse, the answer went through Lennie.
Hunches, instincts, glimmers: all converging in a game of life and death.
But it was more than a hunch now. I moved on, keeping my head below what his line of sight would be from the ridge, and I skirted it with the gun in my right hand, held down at the ground as I walked. There was a path, but it was rugged, cutting across the face of the hill, apparently to the top of the mountain a mile downrange. Much farther than I wanted to go on my belly. For now I picked my way along, dropping off the path whenever I sensed too much open space across the gulch. I knew there would come a time, and it was coming up quickly, when I’d have to dare the hundred-yard final approach across what was essentially open terrain or lie down and wait for the darkness, many hours away. My sense of things told me I didn’t want to do that. The storm that was coming would be wicked, especially here at the top.
