Second Chance

by Jonathan Valin

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Cora Pearson,” she said, holding out her hand and withdrawing it before I could shake with her. “I’m Philip’s mother. Please come in.”

  I followed her down the hall to the grey sitting room. The woman walked as if she were balancing a book on her head, which was probably the way she’d been taught.

  Louise Pearson was sitting in one of the red armchairs by the fireplace. She smiled familiarly when she saw me come in.

  “It was so good of you to do this, Mr. Stoner,” she said, smiling gratefully.

  “I wish I had something good to report.”

  She made a gesture with her hands, as if she were shushing a heckler. “Believe me, just talking to Phil will help.”

  She glanced at the mother, who was standing by the sideboard, taking the conversation in over her shoulder. The older woman nodded as if she agreed with Louise.

  “You’ve met my mother-in-law, Cora Pearson?”

  “Yes.”

  Louise Pearson stood up a little shakily and started across the room to the door. The mother-in-law touched Louise’s left hand sympathetically as she passed, and Louise smiled at her.

  “It’ll be all right,” Cora Pearson whispered.

  “I’m going to go see about Phil,” Louise said. “He’s in with Shelley right now. They should be done soon.”

  “Shelley?” I asked.

  “Sheldon Sacks. He’s Phil’s best friend. Sort of a family counselor. He’s been seeing Kirsty, too. I mean—he saw her over the summer.”

  She didn’t say it, but he’d also been Estelle Pearson’s psychiatrist. I’d seen his name in the newspaper clippings.

  “It might help if I could talk to Sacks about Kirsten,” I said.

  The woman bit her lip. “They don’t usually talk about their cases. It would breach their code of ethics.”

  There was a hint of sarcasm in the way she said “code of ethics.” But it was slight compared to the way she’d spoken about her husband’s profession the day before. Everything about her had changed slightly from the day before, even her looks. She hadn’t made up her eyes or mouth, and she was dressed down in jeans and a white blouse. The sunlight pouring through the undraped window washed her complexion out even further, making her seem younger and more vulnerable. In any light she was strikingly good-looking.

  Louise left the room. The elder Mrs. Pearson stared after her with concern.

  “She doesn’t deserve this,” she said in a bitter voice. “She’s been such a rock.” The woman looked down at the silver tea service as if it were all that remained of the family fortune. “None of us deserve this.”

  I wasn’t sure she was talking to me, so I didn’t reply.

  Mrs. Pearson poured coffee and, as an afterthought, asked me if I’d like a cup.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve been living on the stuff for the last thirty hours.”

  She didn’t look impressed.

  “There is something you should know,” she said, handing me the cup.

  “Yes?”

  “My son has a heart condition. He doesn’t like to dwell on it. He resents illness of any kind, as most doctors do. But the fact is he was hospitalized once already, this past summer when Kirsten acted up. If this current tumult doesn’t end soon, the children may succeed in killing him.”

  She said it as if that was their intention.

  “I’m doing what I can to end this, Mrs. Pearson,” I said. “But unless we can find them . . . ”

  She threw a hand at me. “They’ll be found. They want to be found. And if no one comes to look for them, they’ll make their presences known. Attention is all they want. It’s all they’ve ever wanted. I know whereof I speak. After Estelle’s death I had the two of them on my hands for almost a year, until Louise relieved me of the burden. They were spoiled then, and they’re spoiled now. No one’s life goes smoothly. Do you think my life has gone smoothly? No one made that promise. One picks up and continues.”

  She sounded like she was reading from that book she was carrying on her head. I could imagine what life had been like at Grandma’s.

  “Self-indulgence is a sin. Harboring resentment against your father is a sin. My son has sacrificed his life for other people. First when his own father died. And then when Estelle killed herself. He’s owed a little peace, a little simple gratitude.”

  Her face flushed and she turned away. I thought she was overcome with anger until I realized that someone else had entered the room. A paunchy, balding man in a rumpled business suit was standing in the doorway, looking vaguely embarrassed.

  “Are you Stoner?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’m Shelley Sacks.” He came in and shook with me.

  “Louise’ll be along in a minute. She’s still talking to Phil.” He glanced at Cora Pearson. “Are you all right, Cora?”

  “Fine,” the woman said without turning toward him.

  The man arched an eyebrow skeptically. He had a round face, round mouth, snub nose, round blue eyes, a round bald spot on the back of his head—like a kid’s drawing of Dad. His roly-poly paunchiness made him look younger than he probably was, judging by the grey in his hair.

  “Has there been any news?” he asked me.

  “None.”

  “I guess I don’t have to tell you that this isn’t a good situation,” he said grimly.

  “Do you have any suggestions?”

  “I’m not a detective. But from what I’ve been told I think it would be a good idea to find this man Ethan has fixated on—as quickly as possible.”

  “That’s what I intended to do.”

  “I think you might keep a watch on this house. Perhaps on Stelle’s grave. On places Ethan associates with her.”

  “Like your office?”

  The man looked surprised—unpleasantly so, as if he didn’t like surprises.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were Estelle’s psychiatrist, weren’t you?”

  He nodded slowly. “How did you know that?”

  I told him about Ethan’s clippings.

  “That’s very sad,” he said thoughtfully, as if he found it more interesting than sad. “Obsessions are always sad. They trail the past endlessly, like beggar children.”

  “Obsessions aren’t always this dangerous, are they?”

  “No. Usually they only damage the one who has them. Ethan’s case is special.”

  “This may be a stupid question, but is it possible he really did see someone on the day his mother died?”

  “Quite possible. Someone on the street. In a car, in a newspaper photo. It isn’t the seeing that’s at issue. It’s the connection he made to his mother’s suicide.”

  “No question it was suicide?”

  He shook his head, no. “Estelle was a deeply disturbed woman. I believe she was fated to end her own life.”

  I winced at the words—at the echo of Kirsten’s words—wondering if Sacks was where she first heard them. It was certainly a convenient way to rationalize your failures.

  “I didn’t mean to sound cynical,” he said, as if he had read my mind. “But there is a fatality to mental life, to certain disorders in particular. We can ameliorate schizophrenia, palliate. But we can’t cure. In all too many cases, we can’t even help.”

  “In Kirsten’s case . . . ?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Obviously it depends on the next few days. She has a fresh insight into her problems. She’s regressed at the moment. But if she can channel what she’s learned . . . ”

  The man was being vague, and he knew it.

  “It’s difficult for me to talk about this,” he said apologetically. “You do know that Kirsten is my patient?”

  I nodded.

  “Let me just say that I’m not without hope.”

  “That’s swell, Doctor, but hope’s not going to help me find her.”

  He smiled. “It may help her find herself.”

  Louise Pearson
came back into the room. All three of us turned toward her, and she flushed prettily, as if she was embarrassed by the attention.

  “Phil would like to speak with you now, Mr. Stoner,” she said.

  “All right.”

  “We’ll talk again,” Sacks said, as if my hour was up.

  I walked out into the hall. Louise led me to a closed door at the end of the corridor. She paused outside.

  “Phil’s suffering from certain health problems,” she said.

  “Your mother-in-law told me.”

  “She shouldn’t have,” Louise said. But I had the feeling that she was relieved that I knew.

  She knocked at the door, and Pearson said, “Come in.”

  The woman patted me on the shoulder. “I’d like to speak with you again before you leave.”

  I nodded and went into the room.

  It was a study lined with bookshelves and mullioned windows. Pearson was sitting on a leather wingback chair in the center of the room, behind a glass desk with brass-sawhorse legs. Even at a distance I could tell that he was in bad shape. His face was drained of color, except for the dark circles beneath his eyes. His hand trembled when he waved me toward a chair in front of him.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have anything to report yet.”

  He nodded stupidly. His blue eyes had lost their piercing intensity. His speech was dulled too, as if he were heavily tranquilized.

  “The police . . . ?”

  “I reported Ethan and Kirsten as missing persons. That’s all the police know.”

  I thought that would please him, but it didn’t.

  “I’ve given you the wrong impression,” he said, looking pained. “I do that sometimes.”

  He tried to draw himself up in his chair, grimaced, and slumped back again.

  “I want you to find my children. I don’t care what it costs or what it takes. I was wrong to react the way I did last night. I was thinking of myself, of my own feelings. You know now that my first wife, Estelle, committed suicide. The thought of having that tragedy dredged up again and publicized . . . it unnerved me.”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “I feel that I do. I feel that I owe you an explanation of why I withheld certain facts about Kirsten and Ethan. It was not because I don’t love them. On the contrary, I’m afraid that I’ve loved them too much.” The man blushed furiously, as if his love for his children was shameful. “When you lose someone you hold dear, when you lose that person to irrational violence, you hold even more tightly to those who are left behind. I have done that to my children. In trying to protect them I have smothered them. Now I’m afraid that it’s my fate to lose them too—to lose all that I love.”

  Pearson’s lips trembled violently.

  “It is my failure as a father that I was trying to conceal from you,” he said with effort. “It was my failure as a husband that made me a coward.”

  I shouldn’t have said anything at all. But I did. “I think you may be shouldering too much blame.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t know. The children do.”

  This time I didn’t answer him.

  “You have a plan of some kind?” Pearson asked.

  “To try to find the man from the newspaper before Ethan and Kirsty do. The police will be looking for their car. We’ll notify local hotels, hospices, and hospitals. Someone should spot them soon.”

  “Good. I’ve canceled my appointments for the week. I’ll be here if they decide to come home.”

  “Do they have any special friends in town?”

  “I don’t think so,” Pearson said. “At least I don’t think Kirsty does—she’s always been so shy. I haven’t seen Ethan in some years.”

  Pearson stared forlornly at his desk, as if he was struck by the pathos of what he’d just said.

  “Find them, Mr. Stoner,” he said heavily. “Bring them back. Give me the chance to make amends.”

  “I’ll do all I can,” I told him.

  ******

  After finishing with Pearson I went back down the hall to the living room. Sacks and Cora Pearson had left, and Louise Pearson was sitting alone by the fire. She stood up as I came through the door.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Stoner,” she said warmly. “For everything.”

  “I’m working for you. No thanks are necessary.”

  “Thanks anyway for sticking with us, especially after the mixed signals I gave you yesterday. I was very wrong about Kirsty. I thought she was recovering. Maybe she would have if Ethan hadn’t shown up. He’s always had a powerful effect on her, although he’s never managed to talk her into doing anything this stupid before.”

  From the disgust in her voice, it was obvious that she had had her fill of her stepson long before Sunday night.

  “Ethan’s given you trouble in the past?”

  “He’s been nothing but trouble,” Louise Pearson said wearily. “He’s never forgiven Phil for Estelle’s death. And he never will, in spite of Phil’s efforts to bribe him back into the family.”

  “Your husband gives Ethan money?”

  “Since he was a kid. It’s all that’s left between them—the blood money that Phil gives him every month.”

  “Why do you call it blood money?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I meant the term loosely, though in some way I suppose Phil is compensating Ethan for Estelle’s death. And keeping this stupid obsession alive.”

  “Has Ethan ever been in trouble with the police before now?”

  “He hasn’t the guts for that,” Louise Pearson said with crude satisfaction. “Ethan’s not much of a doer, but he’s a ferocious, bullying talker. Witness how he twisted Kirsty around his finger.”

  “I don’t think it was Ethan alone that led Kirsten to this,” I said. “She’s had a rotten year. And last week an important relationship went awry.”

  “What kind of relationship?”

  “A romantic one.”

  The woman looked surprised. “She was having an affair?”

  “She was trying to. There’s some question about whether she succeeded. The man . . . he’s an older man. A teacher at the university.”

  “You didn’t tell Phil that, did you?” Louise Pearson said with alarm.

  “No. I didn’t tell him much of anything. He didn’t look as if he could take it.”

  “He can’t,” Louise Pearson said flatly. “Especially that.”

  The woman took a step closer to me and I caught her sweet, powerful scent again.

  “Mr. Stoner, if things should go wrong, please call me. I mean, before you talk to Phil. He’ll need careful handling if Kirsten and Ethan land in real trouble.”

  She handed me a piece of stationery with a phone number on it.

  “That’s my private number here at the house. I’ve got a fairly busy social schedule. If I should be out, an answering service will know where to find me.”

  I told her I’d call when I had some news.

  Leaning forward hesitantly the woman kissed me lightly on the cheek. It wasn’t meant to be provocative, but it had that effect on me. It must not have felt right to Louise Pearson either, for she pulled away at once.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reddening. “I’m feeling a little frail at the moment. And then I’m a physical sort of person, anyway.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I liked it.”

  She laughed feebly.

  “Go,” she said, waving her hand down the hall to the front door. “Before I make a fool out of myself.”

  12

  FROM THE Pearson house I drove downtown to the main branch of the Public Library on Vine Street.

  The first-floor periodical room was relatively empty that early on a Monday morning—a couple of earnest-looking college students, a few old-age pensioners, and two or three bums, who’d come in out of the cold and fallen asleep on scattered benches, their shopping bags of belongings rolled up for pillows. I skirt
ed the snoozing bums and got a brief workout running down a fleet-footed librarian, who kept turning corners in front of me as I tracked her through the stacks. Once I ran the woman to ground I asked her for advice on where to begin looking for Ethan Pearson’s photograph.

  “If the article you’re interested in was from a paper purchased in the Ft. Thomas area, you should begin with the Kentucky Post,” she said. “It has the largest circulation in that part of northern Kentucky. You should also try the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Cincinnati Enquirer, of course. Many northern Kentuckians read the Enquirer. ”

  “Do you keep back issues in circulation?” I asked.

  “For seven days, then they’re recorded on microfiche.”

  She pointed me to the newspaper stacks and told me to come back if I needed to use a microfiche machine.

  I found the Wednesday, December 16, edition of the Kentucky Post and read through it slowly. The court news was in the local section, but there were no photos or paragraphs on released felons. I tried the Courier-Journal next, without any luck. Then the Enquirer. Ethan’s mystery man wasn’t there—or if he was I wasn’t seeing him.

  I was very tired, and concentrating on the newsprint was maddeningly difficult. I was worried that the fatigue would cause me to overlook something—and even more worried that Ethan’s photo didn’t exist. If that was the case I’d have nothing to go on, save the chance that the Volare would be spotted by the cops. That is, if the Pearson kids had come back to Cincinnati, which was no ironclad cinch.

  I sat, brooding, at the library table for a full minute, before it dawned on me that the photo didn’t have to be in Wednesday’s papers. Ethan could have spotted the picture in an older newspaper—a paper from the day before or the day before that. Or it could have been that he’d gone down to the library like I had, and combed through months of back issues. Years of them.

  That way lay madness.

  I dragged myself to my feet and returned to the stacks. The Tuesday the 15th and Monday the 14th editions of the Post were the last two papers on the shelves. Anything before them meant sitting in front of a microfiche machine for hours.

  I tried the Tuesday paper first and found nothing.

  Then I tried the Monday paper—and got lucky. On the fourth page of the Monday the 14th Post, the court news page, there was a tiny mugshot of a middle-aged black man. According to the paragraph beneath the photo his name was Herbert Talmadge, and he’d been released from Lexington the week before on parole, after serving thirteen years of a twenty-to-life sentence for the rape and murder of a Kentucky nurse. The killing had occurred in Newport in December, 1976, and it must have been particularly brutal or they wouldn’t have printed Talmadge’s picture.