Faith said, “I didn’t want it like this,” still booming his words. “Let a lawyer handle it, get some more facts before bringing it out in the open. But that bastard trying to shoot me … that’s the last straw. Now I want everybody to hear the truth, my lips to your ears, let the whole damn world know what this town’s done to an innocent man.”
Thayer found his voice. “This isn’t buying you any sympathy, Faith. Surrender the gun before—”
“Shut up. I’ll surrender it when I’ve had my say.”
“Say it, then. Get it over with.”
“Innocent man!” Faith thundered. “Innocent! I’m not a murderer, not some kind of monster. I didn’t kill the Carey woman.”
“Liar!” somebody in the crowd shouted back.
And somebody else: “You killed her, all right, you dirty—”
“No, by God, I didn’t. But I know who did. You hear me out there, all you people? I know who did!”
Audrey Sixkiller
I STOOD AMONG a crush of others in the middle of the street, trying to see Dick and John Faith, listening to the words that were being flung against the night. But it was as if I were standing there alone, on a mist-shrouded plain, seeing and hearing everything from a great distance. I thought: Don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him. At the same time I did not believe John Faith would shoot, knew that his cry of “Innocent man!” was the truth. The confusion spawned an intense, irrational desire to run away from here, away from the poison, very fast and very far, like the god Coyote rushing home to his sanctuary atop the dano-batin, the mountain big, that rises high above the south shore.
And when John Faith spoke again I almost did run—I took two faltering steps before the press of bodies stopped me. Then I stood tree-still with his words echoing in my ears, mixing with the frantic voices of the others to create a roaring, near and yet far off, like the mad gabbling of spooks and witches.
“He did it!” Pointing, accusing. “He murdered Storm Carey. Your fine, upstanding police chief, Richard Novak.”
Richard Novak
VERNE ERICKSON ANSWERED before I could. He said angrily, “You’re out of your mind, Faith. Nobody believes that. Nobody!”
“I’ll prove it to you, all of you.”
“You can’t prove a lie—”
“The truth. Listen. I didn’t know it was Novak that night. If I had … the hell with that. This afternoon at the hospital, that’s the first time I was able to do any clear thinking. That’s when I put it together.”
He wasn’t talking to Verne, he was talking to me; his eyes never left mine. Hot with fury, those eyes, like red-rimmed crucibles filled with molten silver. But I wasn’t afraid of him or his words or the gun in his hand. The one emotion I no longer felt was fear.
He said, “I passed a car that night, on the way to her house. Just turned out of her driveway. Dark, and I wasn’t paying attention or I’d have noticed it was a police cruiser, Novak’s cruiser. But he recognized my car, all right. And he saw me turn in. He waited long enough for me to find her body and then he came barreling back up there.”
“You call that proof?” Thayer said. “Only your word you passed another car. Even if that much is true … you can’t swear it was Novak’s cruiser.”
“Then how’d he happen to show up just at the right time? Why’d he go there at all?”
I said, “To see her, talk to her. We were friends.”
“Weren’t there before me, Chief?”
“No.”
“Had no idea she was dead before the two of us went inside?”
“No.”
“Then how’d you know she was killed with a glass paperweight?”
I stared at him without answering.
“It was half under her body and covered with blood,” he said. “I couldn’t tell what it was and I looked closer than you did. You stood off fifteen or twenty feet and called it a glass paperweight.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“Accused me of seeing red, picking up a glass paperweight and hitting her with it.”
I shook my head.
“Your word against mine? Except I’m not the only one you said it to. When you radioed in you used the same words to whoever you talked to—”
“Me,” Verne said. “I was on the other end.”
“You remember him saying it? Skull crushed with a glass paperweight?”
“I remember.”
“All right,” I said, “then I did say it. She kept it on an end table next to the couch. I must’ve seen it wasn’t there—”
“And assumed it was what killed her? Hell of an assumption, Chief, for a man as upset as you were. Besides, the paperweight wasn’t the only slip you made over the radio. Two blows, you said. Two.” He asked Verne, “Remember that?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you know it was two, Chief, not one or three or six or a dozen? Her skull was caved in, blood everywhere, you’re not a doctor and you didn’t go near the body. No way you could know she was hit twice unless you did it yourself.”
Verne’s eyes were on me; everyone’s eyes were on me. The combined intensity of their stares was like surgical lasers—cutting, probing, hurting.
“Answer him, Novak.” Thayer’s voice this time, hard and cold. “How’d you know?”
I told myself to stand up, get off my knees and stand up like a man. When I did that, Faith stood, too, in the same slow movements, so that we continued to face each other at eye level.
Thayer: “Answer the question.”
Verne: “Say something, for God’s sake.”
Kent was the last straw, all right. It has to stop, right here and now.
I looked away from Faith for the first time. Didn’t look at Verne or Thayer as I turned around, or at anyone else. I stared out beyond the light into the dark, above all, the laser eyes and all the faceless, buzzing bodies. Easier that way. It wasn’t much different from addressing a roomful of strangers.
“Faith is right,” I said, “everything he said is right. I did it. I killed her.”
Epilogue
Leo Thayer
FOUR OF US were present in the interrogation room when Novak taped his confession. Me, Ben Seeley, Joe Proctor, and Verne Erickson because the mayor and city council made him acting Chief. We didn’t have to prod Novak any, or even ask him more than half a dozen questions to clarify minor details. He just rolled it all off the top of his head in a flat, used-up voice—the tone most felons have when they know their ride’s over and done with.
I read the transcript three times. The main part made me feel like puking every time.
She called me Thursday night, late. It was the first I’d heard from her since we broke off the affair six months ago. She practically begged me to come to her house. She was a little drunk but not that drunk. She said she needed me, really needed me. I didn’t want to go because I was afraid of what might happen. I don’t mean violence, I mean getting involved again. The affair hadn’t been good for either of us, me particularly. She was the kind of woman who got under your skin like a tick and just kept burrowing. I spent six months trying to dig her out and I thought I had but I hadn’t. I tried to say no to her that night and I couldn’t. I went to her just like she asked me to.
We made love three times in three hours. For me, anyway, it was making love. But not a good kind, even then. I knew it but I wouldn’t let myself accept the truth. She led me to believe … no, that’s not right. I led myself to believe she felt the same way, that there was a bond or connection between us and we could rebuild what we’d had before. Except we hadn’t had anything before, just sex, that’s all. I don’t know how I could have deluded myself like that. Ripe for it, I guess. Lonely, mixed up inside my head—midlife crisis or maybe just plain crisis. I don’t know. I needed to believe, so I believed.
Friday night I drove back to her house, uninvited this time. Nine-thirty, quarter of ten, I don’t remember the exact time I got there. She let me in, but she was
n’t the same as the night before. In a strange mood even for her. No pretense of softness or sexiness. Bitchy, cutting, like she was spoiling for a fight. More than a fight … as though there was something in her that was pushing me to do to her what I ended up doing. I’m not trying to blame her when I say that. I’m through blaming anybody but myself. I’m only telling you the way it was.
She started yelling, provoking me right away. Saying I had a lot of nerve showing up unannounced and she was through with me, she didn’t want me coming around bothering her anymore. I told her I loved her. She laughed at me. She said I was pathetic, a sorry excuse for a man in and out of bed. She got right up in my face and screamed at me—lousy lover, sorry excuse, get the hell out and leave her alone because a real man was coming over, a man who knew how to satisfy a woman. On and on like that, spitting it in my face. Provoking me until I couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t think straight and started seeing red. I slapped her face, and she hit me back with her fist, screaming all the time. Tried to knee me, claw me. I slapped her again and she picked up the paperweight and swung it at my head, just missed me. I took it away from her and … that’s all I remember. I don’t remember hitting her with it. Only some part of me must have realized I’d done it twice or I wouldn’t have said so to Faith and then to Verne on the radio. Next thing I do remember is seeing her on the couch with her skull crushed and blood all over her head and face. And I was standing over her with the bloody paperweight in my hand.
I panicked. At a time like that … everything’s crazy, mixed up. You can’t think at all. The only thing that seems to matter is getting away, saving yourself. You’ve heard all that before, same as I have, and it’s true. You can’t face what you’ve done, the instinct for self-preservation takes over, you panic and run.
I threw the paperweight down next to her body and ran outside and washed off her blood with the garden hose. There was some on my uniform sleeve, too, and I rubbed that out with water. Faith was too wound up to notice the sleeve was wet, or maybe it’d dried by then … doesn’t matter. I drove away, fast. Just down the road from her driveway I passed Faith’s beat-up Porsche. Only car like it in Pomo, and we’d had words earlier in the day. I guess that’s why it registered, even in the state I was in. In the mirror I saw him turn into her driveway. I thought he was the man she’d been waiting for, the “real man” she’d thrown in my face. I still wasn’t tracking too well. I drove on a little ways and then … I don’t know, I turned around and went back there. I didn’t think about what I was doing or why, I just did it. I had no intention at that point of trying to put the blame on Faith. That’s the truth. If I had any intention at all, it was to cover myself by pretending to show up for the first time after the body was discovered.
But he came running out of the house just as I got there and things got all mixed up again. It was like I really was arriving for the first time and had caught him running out. Denial. Still wasn’t able to face the fact that I’d killed her, that I was capable of such a thing. So I treated Faith the way I would’ve any other suspect in similar circumstances. And when I saw her lying dead inside … it was as though I was seeing her there for the first time and the pain I felt was the shock of discovery. As though somebody else had done it. Faith, because he was right there. I questioned him, accused him, started to arrest him. Didn’t let myself think the whole time. Just doing my job, upholding the law, protecting the public interest. I know that sounds sick and crazy, but that’s the way I was that night. Sick and crazy.
It just went on from there. Faith jumping me and breaking my nose, me shooting him before he went into the lake, the search for his body and all the rest … it made the fiction I’d built up more real. And the more things escalated, the easier it was to shift my guilt onto him, make him the scapegoat. If he was dead or in prison, there’d be an end to it, a closure, and then I could find a way to go on living with myself and do my job. But now … I know I couldn’t have buried the truth, or even continued the pretense much longer. Too much kept happening, like there was an epidemic and I was the Typhoid Mary who’d started it all. I had that on my conscience too, along with Storm. I’ve been a cop too many years. A man like me can’t keep on riding the tiger. Sooner or later I’d have been torn apart. Might’ve been too late for Faith by then, but I never much cared about him from the beginning. God help me, I never gave a damn about him, and I’m not sure I do even now. He was a stranger. He was just another stranger.
Well, maybe Novak never cared about John Faith, but everybody else sure seems to. That’s one of the galling things about this whole lousy affair. They’re whitewashing Faith. Seeley, Proctor, everybody else with any clout in Pomo County. Dropping all charges against him, including one of the worst felonies there is, for my money—assaulting a police officer. The official line is that he’s suffered enough, that prosecuting him will keep the wounds open and delay a return to normalcy around here, but that’s just bullshit. They’re scared to death of a big lawsuit that might bankrupt the county; they made Faith sign a waiver against suing for damages as one of the conditions of the whitewash.
Another thing they’re afraid of is more negative publicity. Faith’s big show in front of the media and half the town, forcing Novak to admit guilt the way he did, made him a temporary two-bit hero and swung public sentiment over to his side. Prosecute him and there’d be another media circus throughout the trial, and if he was convicted, for a long time afterward, and that would have a negative effect on business throughout the county. Better to let the entire affair die a natural death, Seeley says; Faith goes away, the media has nothing to feed on, and pretty soon people start to forget it ever happened. He’s got a point, I guess. But I still hate to see Faith get away with all he pulled here, all the felonies he committed. A man like that, a hard case, a damn stranger comes in and tears up Pomo County and then walks away scot-free. It just don’t seem right.
That’s one thing that frosts my nuts. The other is Novak. Proctor’s going to prosecute him, all right, but it looks like he’ll let Novak plead to Murder Two or maybe even voluntary manslaughter. Same bullshit about healing wounds and keeping Pomo out of the media spotlight, negative publicity harming family tourism, plus the county’s just too poor to afford a high-profile or even a low-profile Murder One trial. Plus—and this is the one that really gets me—there’s Novak’s “spotless past record as a good, honest policeman,” which Proctor claims is an argument on behalf of leniency.
Jesus Christ! Good, honest policeman, my ass. He kills a woman, tries to frame somebody else for the crime, starts a chain reaction that leaves everything in a shambles … a cop can’t dirty his badge any worse than that, can he? I never liked Novak personally, and now I know why. The one thing I hate more than anything else is a cop who craps on his badge, and I think I saw something in Novak all along that told me he was that kind. I know what people say about me: I’m lazy, I’m a political flunky, I’m not the brightest or the hardest-working sheriff the county’s ever had. Well, maybe there’s some truth in all of that. But by God, there’s one other thing I am and that’s honest, an honest man who respects the law and does his level best to uphold it. I never took so much as a free cup of coffee in all the time I been in office. I never dirtied my badge in any way, and I never will.
If it was up to me, I’d stick Novak and every other dirty cop in a cell together and throw away the frigging key.
Harry Richmond
WELL, FAITH’S GONE. Left Porno yesterday afternoon in that rattletrap Porsche of his, as soon as they released him from jail. Thrown out of town is more like it; rumor has it one of the conditions of his release was that he leave Porno County straightaway and never set foot here again. He got off too easy, if you ask me. And I’ll bet any man twenty dollars that Novak gets off almost as easy when his time comes. The muckety-mucks take care of their own around here, while the rest of us get the book thrown at us if we step out of line just once.
I don’t mind saying it surprised m
e when I first heard about Novak’s confession. He was the last one I figured could’ve killed that bitch Storm Carey. Just goes to show you, I guess. You think you know people and what they’re capable of doing or not doing, and turns out you don’t. Sometimes you can be so far off base with a person, like Novak for one—and like George Petrie, for another—you begin to wonder if maybe you’re not as far off base with others. Not that man Faith, though. No sir, not him. I don’t care what he did or didn’t do in Pomo, or what anybody says about him, he’s a bad one through and through. Look at all the damage he left behind. Like a hurricane or tornado that went slashing through. Like we all got hit by a devil wind.
Folks keep saying that with him gone, it’s over and now we can get back to normal. I wish I could believe that, but I don’t. All the publicity—and there was plenty of it for some people—will bring in curiosity seekers for a while, sure, but it’ll keep away the family trade, the weekenders and vacationers the county economy depends on. Maybe most of the negative stuff will be forgotten by the time fishing season starts in April and it won’t have any real effect on next summer’s tourism, but I don’t believe that, either. As sure as I’m sitting here, there’ll be fewer fishermen and fewer overnight and short-term guests at Lakeside Resort next season. This part of Lake Pomo is never coming back to what it once was, and that’s the plain hard truth. You look at it that way, you also see that what happened with Faith and Storm Carey and Novak and the rest wasn’t much more than the beating of a dead horse.
Last night I took a closer look at my finances and prospects, and they’re worse than I thought. And as if that wasn’t enough to throw a man into a fit of depression, that thick-skulled Maria Lorenzo up and quit on me this morning. Came in and said her and her husband decided she couldn’t work for me anymore, no other reason, and then she walked out again with her nose in the air like she’d been smelling turds. Goddamn Indians, they’re all shiftless and worthless. Doesn’t really matter much, her quitting, I suppose; sooner or later I’d’ve had to let her go, because I’ll need even the little I was paying her for my own expenses. But now I’ll have to start cleaning the cabins myself, unless I can find another Indian who’ll work for less than minimum wage on a short-term basis, and the other downside is that I won’t have that big fat ass of Maria’s to watch anymore.
A Wasteland of Strangers Page 28
