Second Chance

by Jonathan Valin

  The house key was on the ring with the car keys. I found it, unlocked the front door, and went inside.

  There was a phone on a stand in the hallway. I picked the receiver up and dialed Al Foster at the CPD. While I waited for him to come on the line I thought about going back outside and getting the envelope from the car. But I knew the forensic cops wouldn’t like me tampering with evidence. I had enough to answer for already.

  ******

  We were in the kitchen on the south side of the house—Parker, Foster, and I. Through the icy windows we could see the forensic men packing up their gear. It was almost six-thirty, and grey morning light had just begun to spill down the hillside, wrapping itself around the oak trunks and turning the pitted snow in the yard to lead.

  The coroner had taken Rita Scarne’s body away about ten minutes before. And now it was just the routine work of cleaning up after a suicide. That was what the coroner called it when he’d finished the preliminary exam. The woman’s prints were on the gun butt. A paraffin test had turned up gunpowder on her fingers. The angle of the bullet was such that only she—or someone bending down beside her and holding the gun right to her skull through the open window—could have pulled the trigger. And there were no other footprints by the car. The ones leading to and from the door were definitely Rita’s. And if that wasn’t enough there was the note, sealed in the envelope. I got to see it myself after Parker and Foster had read it—a typed confession on a page of Rita’s stationery. It sat between us on the kitchen table, like a dividing line. I picked it up and read it again while we waited for the forensic team to finish—Rita Scarne’s last testament.

  I am responsible for the deaths of Herbert Talmadge and Estelle, Ethan and Kirsty Pearson.

  May God forgive me for what I’ve done and what I’m about to do.

  There was no signature. She’d signed it in that car with the gun.

  I laid the thing back down on the table. I didn’t feel any different than I had the first time I’d read it. Which was to say I didn’t know what to think. She hadn’t explained anything. And I said so out loud.

  Larry Parker eyed me balefully across the kitchen table. “What is your problem, Stoner? This wasn’t her life story. It was a suicide note. She’d been caught red-handed committing murder, for chrissake. Or she would have been caught if you’d obeyed the law.”

  It wasn’t the first time we’d gone over that ground in the past few hours, and I was getting a little tired of it and of Parker, who’d started to act very much like a small-town cop.

  “There was someone else involved,” I said to him. “Someone who’d paid Rita off thirteen years ago. Someone she was afraid of.”

  “Like who?” Parker said irritably. “And what difference would it make? You heard the coroner. The Scarne woman wasn’t murdered—she killed herself.”

  “It makes a difference if you’re interested in why she did it.”

  “I’m interested in solving three murders. Period. And we’ve got the evidence to do that.”

  He held up his right hand and started ticking things off on his fingers. “The shoe we found in Talmadge’s apartment is the same size that the Scarne woman wears. There are a couple of bottles of Demerol in her medicine cabinet upstairs just like the ones we found in Herbie’s apartment. We got a witness who saw her talking to Talmadge on Monday night. We got a phone call from Ethan to her agency, as well as a note from the motel room, with a name and address that could only come from her. And, lest we forget, we have a fucking confession, typed on her typewriter, on her stationery.” Parker dropped his hand to the table. “We got it all.”

  “Except for the reasons why.”

  Parker got a pained look on his face. “She’d been making time with this guy, Talmadge, thirteen years ago. The Pearson kid saw them together and remembered Herbie’s face. Thirteen years later Talmadge gets out of jail and looks old friend Rita up. She can’t say no to him because he’s dangerous. Plus he’s got something on her—something connected to Estelle Pearson’s suicide or to that other woman you mentioned, the Chaney girl.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “How do I know what?” he snapped. “Christ, it was your idea. You tell me what. Whatever the reason Rita’s scared to death of Talmadge but doesn’t know how to get rid of him until the Pearson kids blunder onto the scene. The boy calls her up, and she sics them on Herbie. And when that backfires she gets Talmadge stoned and does the job herself. Case closed.”

  “What about the ten thousand bucks? Who paid her that kind of money, Parker? And why? She said someone died because of it.”

  “She said a lot of things,” Parker said uneasily. “Christ Almighty, she was headed for death row. She got fired for stealing drugs, didn’t she? Maybe the money came from drugs—or from some other deal she cooked up. Who the hell knows?”

  “Or ever will,” I said, “if you don’t ask a few more questions.”

  He glared at me. “Well, we can’t ask Rita now, can we? Thanks to you.”

  “We can try to find Carla Chaney,” I said. “At least we can try to find out what happened to her.”

  “You try to find her.” Parker got up and lumbered over to the door. “I’m going home to get some sleep.” He glanced back over his shoulder at me and Foster. “It’ll come together. Over the next few days, it’ll all fit. Even the money thing. We’ll keep dredging the river, but I already know what we’re going to find.”

  “We don’t know they’re dead,” I said.

  “I do,” Parker said. “The blood on the panties we found in the Plymouth and the blood on the bed in the apartment was Kirsten’s. We’ve confirmed it.”

  “How?”

  “The stepmother gave me the girl’s blood type last night when I called the hospital looking for you. Type O negative.”

  He opened the door then looked back over his shoulder. “You know those papers in the fireplace? Forensic says they could be pages from a diary. Some kind of manuscript, anyway. Does that ring any bells for you?”

  “The Pearson girl was writing a book about her life. She was looking for an ending.”

  “Well, she found one,” he said as he went out the door.

  28

  I SPENT a few more minutes talking to Foster before going home. He knew the case wasn’t as cut-and-dry as Parker wanted it to be. But he also knew that most of the questions I’d raised would never be answered. There was no one left to answer them.

  “Thirteen years is a long time, Harry,” he said. “There are bound to be loose ends when a thing stretches back that far. Parker’s got to make a case for the coroner’s jury. And there’s enough circumstantial evidence to do that.”

  “It isn’t right, Al,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Maybe not. But unless you come up with something more than hearsay or a hunch, I’m going to have to stick with Park.”

  “Do me one favor, will you? Just run the Chaney girl through CID. Okay? Carla Chaney.” I gave him her old addresses on Minton Street in Dayton and on Terrace in Cincinnati. “See if you come up with anything.”

  Al sighed. “Like what?”

  “I’d settle for a current address.”

  He wrote down the girl’s name, then got up and went to the door. “You better start resigning yourself to the fact that the Pearson case is history. Or you’re going to end up wasting a lot of your time—and mine.”

  ******

  I should have phoned Louise Pearson as soon as I got back to the apartment. But I was too depressed to make the call. Larry Parker had been right about one thing. If I’d told the cops about Rita Scarne, she’d have been in custody at that moment. Instead I’d played it as if it was my case—mine alone. And now Rita was dead. And whatever she had known had died with her.

  I lay down on the bed and eventually fell asleep. But it was troubled sleep—full of my own guilt and other people’s deaths. The woman in the car with her head split apart. The grey Plymouth with the dark river below it, making a roar l
ike traffic. Kirsten’s book, turning fat and black in the fireplace. Talmadge, leaking blood on a battered kitchen floor. A world without second chances.

  ******

  The alarm woke me around eleven that Wednesday morning. There was sun outside and cold blue sky. I sat in bed for a while, letting the dreams clear out of my head. Dragging myself into the kitchen I fixed coffee, pouring a little Scotch in the cup to brace myself for what lay ahead.

  Officially the Pearson case was almost over for everyone but me and the Pearsons. However many of them were left alive on that winter morning.

  I took a hot shower, shaved, dressed, and managed to make it out of the apartment and into the car by noon. Phil Pearson would be coming out of surgery about the time I got to Bethesda North, if he’d survived the bypass. With what I had to say it might have been better for him if he didn’t survive.

  I got to the hospital at twelve-thirty. The woman at the reception desk on the first floor told me that Pearson, P. was in ICU recovery. His condition was critical.

  I took the elevator up to the top floor and followed arrows to ICU. The Pearsons, wife and mother, were sitting in a waiting room outside the recovery room door. Pale sunlight coming through the plate-glass window cut across their feet and climbed the far wall, turning it brilliant white. The air was still and cool and full of that quiet that isn’t really quiet, just a holding of breath. I felt like holding my breath, too.

  The mother saw me first. She had been crying, and powder had run down her cheeks like salt tears.

  “Louise,” she said in a deadened voice.

  Louise leaned forward in the chair, and her face came into the sun. Like the mother, she looked haggard and sick with waiting.

  “Hello, Harry,” she said.

  “Hello, Louise.”

  Louise glanced at Cora Pearson then stood up slowly, as if she didn’t want to alarm the older woman with sudden movements. She came over to me and took my hands in hers.

  “I’m very glad you’re here,” she said with feeling.

  “How is he?”

  She shook her head. “We don’t know. He just came out of surgery twenty minutes ago. Five hours. That’s how long it’s been.”

  “Wasn’t anyone else here with you?”

  “Shelley. He had an emergency a few hours ago. He said he’d be back as soon as he could.” She forced a smile. “Now you’re here.”

  I ducked my head. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Is it about the kids?”

  I nodded.

  Louise looked back over her shoulder at Cora. “Mother, I’m going to go talk with Mr. Stoner. I’ll be right back.”

  The older woman didn’t move—she didn’t hear Louise. All her energies were concentrated on the door to ICU Recovery.

  We went down the hall to another empty waiting room. Louise closed the door behind us. Taking my hands in hers she drew me close and laid her head wearily on my shoulder. Outside in the corridor an elevator bell went off melodiously, like a shipboard gong.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I asked her.

  “I guess I am,” Louise said, almost as if it surprised her. “Yes, I am. At least, for now. What is it you want to tell me?”

  “It isn’t good, Louise. Are you up to it?”

  Her face went white. “They found the children’s bodies,” she said, pulling away from me.

  “Not yet. But you better brace yourself for it eventually. Rita Scarne committed suicide last night and left a note implying that Kirsty and Ethan were dead. Murdered by Talmadge.”

  Louise’s eyes filled with tears. “I expected it,” she said, fighting to control her voice. “I guess we all did. That’s why Phil’s lying in there now.”

  She went over to a chair and sat down heavily. For a while she simply stared at the stippled wall.

  “How did Rita know they were dead?” she asked after a time.

  I explained the whole thing—at least as much of it as I could explain. I saved the part about Rita, Talmadge, and Estelle’s death for last. When I told her what I suspected, her face filled with shocked surprise.

  “You mean Ethan was right? Stelle really was murdered?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But there is that possibility. There’s something else, too. The cops don’t seem to care about it but I do.”

  “Go on.”

  “Thirteen years ago Rita Scarne was paid a good deal of money. The cops think it was for a drug sale. But I don’t. I think it was connected to someone’s death, quite possibly Estelle’s.”

  “Why do you say that?” Louise asked. “Why would someone pay Rita off for what Herbert Talmadge did in a drugged fit?”

  “Someone may have wanted to keep the whole thing quiet. To keep what had really happened a secret.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “I’m very serious.”

  She laughed nervously. “But that’s crazy. I mean you sound like Ethan—that’s how crazy it is.”

  When I didn’t laugh, she stared at me incredulously. “Even if this was true, who would want to do such a thing? I mean who would profit by it?”

  It was something I hadn’t wanted to think about, especially that morning. But there was one obvious candidate—a man who had already showed me how readily ashamed he was of his children and his past.

  Louise caught what I was thinking, and her eyes went dead. “You’re not suggesting that Phil . . . ?”

  “It’s possible,” I said uneasily. “I have a hunch he kept Ethan’s testimony about Talmadge out of the police report. It’s possible that he paid Rita to shut up, too.”

  “To cover up murder?” Louise shook her head, no. “It’s true that he wanted Estelle out of his life. After all those years of hell he wanted to be done with her and start fresh. But he didn’t connive at her death, if that’s what you’re saying. My God, all he had to do was divorce Stelle to be rid of her. In fact, that’s precisely what he intended to do at the end of the year.”

  I sighed. “Well, someone died because of that money. At least that’s what Rita told her sister. And I’ll tell you something else—Rita acted as if there was another person involved, somebody who was capable of killing.” I stared at Louise for a moment. “The name Carla Chaney has popped up a couple of times. Does it ring any bells for you?”

  “I’ve never heard of her. Who is she?”

  “A nurse, a friend of Rita Scarne and Herbert Talmadge. She might be dead, too, as a result of this thing. If not, she’s probably the one person left who can unravel it.”

  Louise stared at me thoughtfully. “The police are going to try to find her?”

  “I’m going to find her,” I said. “The police think the case is closed.”

  “Perhaps it should be closed. So much death.” She glanced toward the door. “Even Phil. He’s going to die—I know it in my gut.”

  “He may survive.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I know he won’t. I’ve simply got to prepare myself for it. For all of this.”

  Someone knocked on the door. Louise straightened up quickly. I straightened up, too. It was Saul Lasker, he of the Porsche and the mansion house and the fixed, paltry smile. He was still smiling when I opened the door, although his grin wavered for a second when he saw me and Louise, as if the current that ran it had momentarily failed.

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I,” he said with a smooth sort of nastiness.

  “No, Saul,” Louise said flatly. “When did you get here?”

  “A few minutes ago. I was talking with Cora when the nurse came out of ICU. There’s news about Phil.” He put the smile away and put on the deeply earnest number. “The surgeon wants to talk to you.”

  Louise looked at me. For just a second her face trembled with fear.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I said to her.

  She shook her head, no. “I’ve come this far alone. I’ll see it through.”

  She put her hands to her face as if she
was gathering her strength, then dropped them to her sides.

  “I’ll be there in a second,” she said to Lasker.

  He nodded and walked off down the hall.

  Louise came over to me and put a hand to my cheek. “You’ll call me tonight?”

  I didn’t have to think about it. “Yes.”

  She started for the door, then looked back over her shoulder. “Let the police handle this from now on, Harry. There’s been too much death. Stirring things up won’t bring Kirsty back to life. Or Ethan. It won’t change any of it. From what you’ve told me, it was too late to change anything, anyway. Too late by thirteen years.”

  ******

  I went back to the office and just sat behind the desk for a while, staring out the frosty window at the sunlit city and the cold blue December sky. There were things I could have done—calls I could have made to jog the cops. Instead I sat there waiting, as if I were still sitting in that muffled hospital room. Around one-thirty Lasker phoned to tell me that Phil Pearson had died in recovery.

  “Louise asked me to call,” he said.

  “How’s she taking it?”

  “She’s fine. It’s Cora we’re worried about . . . she collapsed when she heard about Phil. They have her in ECU right now.”

  “Christ,” I said.

  “They’re doing everything they can,” he said lamely. “I’ll call again if there’s any further news.”

  I hung up the phone and stared stupidly at the desktop. The whole Pearson family was dying or dead. Something out of the past had risen up and killed them, and I hadn’t been able to do a thing to stop it. All I’d done was make mistakes.

  It was the girl that bothered me most. I’d had a chance with Kirsty—if I’d stayed in Marnee’s apartment for a few minutes longer, or come back a few minutes earlier, or found that Evanston motel sooner in the day. But she and her brother had managed to keep a few ticks ahead of me, as if they were operating on a different kind of time than I was—a ruthless, malevolent kind of time. A time with murder in its heart. And now there weren’t going to be any second chances for her.

  Something was very wrong. I knew it in my gut. Taking Parker’s case against Rita as gospel it had all been accident, coincidence, mad, vengeful error. Kirsten Pearson had died because Talmadge had impulsively murdered her mother, because Rita Scarne had hidden a guilty secret rather than go to the cops, because Ethan had seen something that no one believed, because thirteen years later all four of them had collided again like a car wreck, with Kirsten riding in the backseat.