by Ed Gorman
“This is Glenna, Sam. I wondered if you’d talk to us. Glenna knows something about what happened the night Vanessa died.” Glenna was a thin, tall girl with blond hair in a ponytail and quick, suspicious brown eyes. Her T-shirt read S TOP THE WAR NOW!
“Sure. Come on in.”
Jamie dragged an extra chair in front of my desk so both girls could sit. Glenna’s fringed buckskin shirt had to be damned hot on a day like this. When she sat down she leaned back and dragged a package of Winstons from the front pocket of her jeans. The pack was pinched by now so that when she got a cigarette out she had to straighten it up.
“Glenna just came to the commune a couple of weeks ago. She’s a real good cook. She made a pumpkin pie last week that knocked everybody out. Plus she’s got her college degree. But she dropped out of society just like the rest of us because it’s all such bullshit.”
That remark caused Jamie to show some interest in the conversation. She stopped her typing to listen. The remark caused me to force a somber look on lips that wanted to smile. The casual way so many of them said “we dropped out of society” had always struck me as funny. They shopped at grocery stores, they had cars that needed repairs, some of them had to pay light and gas and phone bills, and they weren’t averse to going to doctors or free clinics. They’d dropped out of the parts of society they didn’t like but they were very much still citizens.
“And she saw Vanessa go into that barn.”
I straightened up. This required full attention. “What time was this, Glenna?”
“She says it was right after supper. She was going to the barn to see if this kitten had come back. She found this little black-and-white one-”
“Sarah, why don’t you let Glenna talk?”
Sarah blushed bright as an autumn apple. “I’m sorry. But she’s shy. She asked me to do the talking.”
“I’m sorry. I need to hear it from her.”
She took a deep breath. “She, uh, thinks you’re like, you know, one of the pigs.”
“Why, that’s not true, Sarah. Mr. C isn’t a pig. You shouldn’t say things like that,” Jamie interjected.
“If that’s true, she should tell me I’m a pig herself.”
“You’re a pig,” Glenna said.
“All right, now that we’ve got that established, how about telling me what you saw that night.”
“I’m only doing this because I know Neil never murdered anybody. That’s something only pigs do. Neil was transcendental and so am I.”
“Good enough. So what about Vanessa that night?”
“I saw her behind the barn. She was arguing with Richard.”
“You could hear them arguing?”
“No, but it was obvious. She sort of shoved him once and started to walk away but he grabbed her by the arm.”
“They didn’t see you?”
“I was over by that old silo. They couldn’t see me in the shadows. Plus it was starting to get real dark.”
“How long did you watch them?”
“Probably ten, eleven minutes, something like that. Until she ran inside the barn and he went in after her. That time I did hear them-at least, I heard him shout her name. I didn’t want to get involved because Richard thinks we spy on him anyway. He can get real paranoid.”
“Why didn’t you come forward before?”
This time she took a deep breath. When she exhaled the sound was ragged, anxious. “I got in a little trouble in Iowa City. I’m on probation. I don’t want to get hassled by the pigs again.”
“What happened in Iowa City?”
“They can’t take a joke is what happened in Iowa City.”
“That doesn’t exactly tell me anything.”
“Go ahead, Glenna. Tell him.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sarah.”
“Sure it matters. So please tell me.”
“I puked into this bucket and then threw the bucket at a cop. I got vomit all over him. All we were doing was trying to take over this dean’s office. This dean was a real pig.”
The hell of it was she seemed to be serious. I wasn’t sure how to deal with someone who didn’t understand that throwing a bucket of puke at somebody just might be considered an aggressive and unlawful act. “Can’t imagine why the cop’d be pissed off about that.”
“I’m glad you never try to be sarcastic. I told you he’d be a pig, Sarah.”
As I’d said so many times, most of the hippies I’d met over the past few years I’d liked. I agreed with them about the war, about the materialism of our society, about the alienation so many of us felt. Just as there were a few hippie haters in town, there were also a few hippie lunatics and right now I was sitting across from one of them.
“All I care about right now is that you’d be willing to testify to what you just said. Under oath.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hey, Glenna, you promised me you would.”
“I said I ‘might.’ But I don’t like this jerk. At all.”
“Forget about him. He doesn’t matter-no offense, Sam. What matters is that you’re willing to admit the truth to the cops. And save my brother’s reputation.”
“Well, if I do it, that’s the only reason I’ll do it.”
“That’s all I care about,” I said. “Sarah, I’ll leave it up to you to hold her to this. The first thing I need to do is talk to Richard. This doesn’t mean he killed her.”
“See what I mean, Sarah? That’s why I didn’t want to come here. He’s already making excuses for Richard. They’re big buddies.”
“She hates Richard, Sam. She thinks she should be running the commune.”
Somehow that’s not a surprise, I thought. But I didn’t say it, of course, not with Rasputin sitting directly in front of me.
“He thinks he’s so cool,” Glenna said.
“She used to live with Richard.”
“He doesn’t believe any of the things he says about the revolution,” Glenna said, managing to light a cigarette while saying this. “He has two credit cards.”
“Maybe he needs them,” Sarah suggested quietly.
“You think Lenin had credit cards?”
“I need to get out of here. I have some appointments. One of them will be to go see Richard. In the meantime, Sarah, I’d appreciate it if you’d make sure that Glenna is willing to tell her story to the authorities if need be.”
“That’s cool. Now he’s not talking to me. He’s only talking to you.”
But Sarah was already dragging herself and Glenna to their feet and didn’t respond. I think that she was as tired of Stalin’s daughter as Jamie and I were.
“I’ll talk to you soon, Sam.”
“Thanks, Sarah. And thank you, too, Glenna. I appreciate you helping us like this.” You crazy bitch. But of course that was a thought meant only for me, myself, and I. Like Sarah, I had to abide Glenna’s nastiness in order to ensure her testimony.
At the door, Sarah turned back and gave me a frown, a shrug and a nod toward Glenna, who was preceding her into the hall. I wished she had drawn an invisible circle around her head, the way people do to indicate that somebody is nuts. But then Glenna just might have been packing a flame thrower and melted Sarah down on the spot.
After we heard the outside door open and close, Jamie said, “That woman scares me. And she shouldn’t have talked to you the way she did.”
“Well, she’ll be helpful to us if Richard was involved as she claims.”
“Turk thinks hippies should be put in prison. He says they don’t contribute anything to society. And he says boys with long hair are nothing but girls anyway and make him sick.”
Let’s see. Turk the wife-abuser, Turk the willfully unemployed, Turk who lives off his wife’s work, Turk the leader of Iowa’s only surfer band, thinks hippies should be sent to prison. It seemed that the ones who hassled hippies the most were the bikers, the local thugs, and the hillbillies from the Hills-you know, the cream of local society. No surprise that Turk was amon
g them.
“I just say live and let live, like most people around here do.”
As I was passing her desk, I bent over and kissed the top of her head.
“Gee, thanks, Mr. C.” The blush just made her all the cuter.
I was about out the door. In fact, I was one step over the office threshold when the phone rang. When I was four steps over the threshold and making my way to the outside door, Jamie said, “It’s Mr. Federman. Do you want to talk to him?”
“Hey,” he said. “I call at a bad time?” The people at the Wilhoyt agency were always polite.
“No. It’s fine. Just real busy.”
“Well I found out two things that might interest you. Eve, original name Sharon Carmichael, has been named in two different divorce cases by very unhappy wives. She has also been married to two wealthy older gentlemen. She got a small sum from one when he kicked her out for cheating on him and nothing from the other one because he threatened to send around the photos his private investigator snapped of her. Her name was variously Sharon Downes and Sylvia Tralins. I got this from two newspapermen. Just thought you’d like to know. Should I keep digging?”
“Definitely. I just wonder if Mainwaring knew about any of this.”
He laughed. “The way you described how hooked he is-you think it would’ve made any difference?”
18
The commune was busy. Four or five people worked the sprawling garden, two two-man units were fixing drainpipes and a front door and two women were washing a van vivid with peace symbols in various colors. Grace Slick was urging people to violence (from her safe posh digs on the West Coast, of course) and a dog was yipping his disagreement. I wanted to shake his paw.
As I walked to the front porch of the nearest house a few people looked me over and apparently decided I wasn’t worth even sneering at. A Negro kid named Jim Ryan came out the front door carrying a toolbox. He was tall and fleshy but not fat. A few of the more ardent racists in town had hassled him many times. One time he decided to hassle them back. It turned into another case where Cliffie wanted to charge him but the county attorney’s office said no, he’d just been defending himself. The good people of the town, who far outnumber the bad, wrote many letters to the newspaper talking about the “riffraff” that had picked on Ryan and given Black River Falls a name it didn’t deserve.
Ryan had been one of those rare perfect clients-bright, quiet, amenable to following my instructions. Today he wore his “Power to the People” T-shirt and jeans. He smiled when he saw me. “Lot of people around here don’t seem to like you much.”
“It’s the same in town, Jim.”
He set the toolbox down. “I used to build homes in the summers. I collected a lot of stuff. You lookin’ for Sarah?” He was talking loud, over Grace Slick.
“Donovan.”
His dark eyes changed expression. “He’s been in his room since early last night. He doesn’t want anybody to bother him. I knocked once last night and he called me a bunch of names. Pissed me off. He’s a nasty son of a bitch, way he runs this place. I’ll be moving on pretty soon. Can’t hack it here any more with him around.”
“Any idea why he’s holed up?”
“You’re askin’ the wrong guy, Mr. McCain. I never could figure him out except he’s a jerk. I admit we need a leader here just to keep things running right. But we don’t need an egomaniac.”
A woman came out wearing a craftsman’s denim apron. She must have been in charge of the music because it died just as I heard a “See you in the barn, Jim.” She glanced at me. Her lips flattened into displeasure. She hurried on.
“Another admirer.”
“They think you didn’t defend us very well from all the bad publicity. Not all of them think that, not me and the majority. But some of them. They’re lookin’ for somebody to blame because they think maybe they’ll all have to move because of some of the people in town. I kept tryin’ to tell them that there wasn’t anything you could do. But you know how stoners are.”
“I guess I don’t.”
He grinned. “Sometimes they make me ashamed I enjoy drugs as much as I do.”
The interior of the house had been cleaned up and painted. The furnishings in the front room came from the Salvation Army or someplace similar. The old stuff has faces-the weary couch, the tortured chair, the wounded ottoman. It was no different upstairs where air mattresses and sleeping bags ran three or four to a room. The smells ran to pot and smoke and wine and sex. A kitten so small she would have fit in the palm of my hand accompanied me as I tried to find Richard Donovan. The walls of the hallway were colorful and baleful with posters of Che, Bobby Rush, Nixon, and Southern cops.
My search ended at the only room with a closed door. I tried the doorknob and found that it was also locked. I knocked: “Richard, it’s McCain. Open up.”
So our little game began. I’d knock and he’d stay silent. I had my usual rational reaction to impotence; I kept rattling the doorknob. It would magically open; I just knew it.
Finally, he said, “I don’t feel like talking. Just go away.”
“If I don’t talk to you, I’ll talk to Mike Potter.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?”
“I’ve got a witness who saw you arguing with Vanessa right before she was killed.”
The silence again.
“You hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you all right and I bet it was that bitch Glenna who told you, too.”
“Doesn’t matter who it was. Now open up.”
After a long minute he was in the doorway, shirtless, barefoot and sullen. He was doing a James Dean, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. From what I could see, his room was clean and orderly, almost military in the precise way he’d laid it out. “So we argued a little. That’s all it was.”
“What did you argue about?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m told she shoved you and started to walk away but you grabbed her by the arm and then followed her into the barn shouting her name.”
“You know the kind of lawyers my old man has access to? He’d take some bitch like Glenna apart on the stand.”
“You’re not convincing me you didn’t kill Vanessa.”
He leaned against the doorframe as if he might fall down if he didn’t have support. His eyes went through three quick and remarkable expressions-anger, hurt, fear. “I shouldn’t ever have hooked up with Glenna. She’s psycho, and I mean completely. Jealous of any girl who even looked at me.”
“That why you broke it off with her?”
“I can’t believe she still hates me. That was almost six months ago.”
He took a minute to jerk a pack of Marlboros from his back pocket. He knew how to stall. He set a world record finding a book of matches in the other back pocket, then getting the smoke lit. “I had a little thing with somebody.”
“Vanessa.”
His body tensed at the mention of her name. “She and Neil were having problems.”
“So you stepped in.”
“She wanted it.” The absolute lord and master of the commune was whimpering now. “I saw her in town one night and we ended up going to a movie in Iowa City. A French flick. She was a pretty cool girl for a hole like Black River Falls. Then we just started seeing each other-you know, on the sly.” His gaze fell away from me. He got real interested in how his cigarette was burning. “I didn’t want Neil to find out. I didn’t want him to think I was moving in on his chick.”
I forced the laugh back down my throat. “Yeah, you wouldn’t want him to think anything like that.”
This time his eyes tried to put burning holes in my face. “We were friends.”
“You’re a noble son of a bitch, no doubt about it.”
He moved back and started to slam the door but I was too quick. In a past life I must have sold encyclopedias. I had my foot planted in front of said door and it wasn’t going anywhere. “What happened when he found out?”
“Who said he found out?”
“Don’t waste my time. Of course he found out. It’s hard to sneak around in this commune or in town for that matter. Somebody must have spotted you.”
He touched his forehead with the fingers that held his cigarette as if somebody had just driven a railroad spike into it. “Glenna followed me one night. She saw us and told Neil. He-” I wasn’t sure if the shrug was meant to impress me or himself. “He was crazy. He threatened to kill me. Then I didn’t give a damn about him anymore. And neither did Van. She was afraid of him, in fact.”
“Leading up to the night she was killed.”
“What?”
“You still haven’t told me what you were arguing about with her.”
“ You know every goddamn thing. How about you telling me?”
“That she didn’t want to see you anymore and that there wasn’t any point in bothering her the way you had been.”
I wasn’t sure if it was an illusion or whether his face had paled.
“That seemed to be the pattern. Whenever the guy got too close to her she got scared and walked away. And that’s what happened to you, too, wasn’t it?”
The scowl didn’t work because he looked tired now. “You think whatever you want. But you better have some proof. Like I said, McCain, my old man has some very prominent lawyers. They’d eat you alive.”
“I wouldn’t go anywhere if I was you.”
The scowl hadn’t worked but he had more success with the smirk. “Sure thing, little man.”
I withdrew my foot. The door slammed shut. I wondered how long it would take him to call his old man. The prodigal son returns home. In bad need of a big-time mouthpiece.
Whittier Point was in favor when it was used by the kids of a grade school a block away. Then the grade school was consolidated with a larger school and Whittier Point was left to lie fallow. The city kept the grass mown on the area around the large pavilion but all the playground equipment was gone. Without supervision the city would be asking for a lawsuit; hell, even with supervision there’d been lawsuits. Hot weekends families still trekked up here, but on workdays it was often empty except for school-age lovers lost in their own obsession with each other.
