Fogbound

by Joseph T. Klempner

  Judge Jorgensen:

  Sorry I missed you. I’m one of the people who talked you into joining the Boyd Davies defense team. Please call me as soon as you can. There are some things we need to talk about. My number is (405) 555-1284.

  Tim Harkin

  He thought of leaving the note inside the lighthouse, but decided against it. He was a son of the South, Harkin was, and he’d been taught manners long before he was old enough to read and write. You didn’t walk into another person’s home uninvited, even when the door was unlocked. So he folded the paper in half and wedged it between the door handle and the frame, where the old man would be sure to find it.

  That evening an onshore breeze would freshen from the southwest, tearing the paper and soon after dislodging it altogether. It would blow around aimlessly for a bit, drifting this way and that, gradually finding its way down to the beach, where the dampness would weigh it down, causing it to rest a while in its travels. Eventually, the rising tide would reach it and lift it up, and the flow of the Gulf Stream would begin to carry it northward. In a few minutes’ time, the ink on the paper would begin to blur and run in the salt water, and soon the writing would fade completely.

  Tim Harkin would know none of that, of course, any more than the old man would.

  By the time Jorgensen got to Roanoke, it was getting dark, and he decided he’d better look for a motel and put off searching for a rest home till morning. None of the places he stopped at allowed dogs, but since it wasn’t supposed to get below 45 degrees or so overnight, he figured Jake would be all right in the cab of the truck, with an old wool blanket he carried around for just such exigencies.

  He found a diner and ordered the rib eye steak special, $11.95. Not because it was something he’d ordinarily eat, but because he knew there’d be enough left over to keep Jake happy. And while he waited for his meal, he used the pay phone to call Ruby Mason, let her know he wouldn’t be back till the following evening.

  “You make sure you eat proper,” she told him.

  It was something Marge would have said, and it caught him up short. He wondered just how long you could go on missing someone so much it physically hurt, and decided the answer was probably forever. He thought about what had brought him to western Virginia, and to Roanoke. And the more he thought about it, the more the notion of looking for help from the father of Boyd Davies’s victim struck him as absurd, perhaps even unfair. Better to stop it, he decided. He’d get a good night’s sleep, then head back to Ruby’s first thing in the morning. He suddenly felt tired, and a very long way from home.

  But when morning came, he woke up feeling different about things. He’d come this far, after all, and as long as he was tactful with Kurt Meisner and didn’t reveal the true nature of his business or let him see the drawing containing the body of his daughter, what harm could come of it? Assuming, that was, that he could find Meisner in the first place.

  It turned out Three-finger Brown had been wrong: There were actually three rest homes in Roanoke, even though none of them called themselves rest homes. There was the Roanoke Assisted Living Center, the Phyllis N. Smythe Residence for Seniors, and the Twylight Passage Rest and Hospice Facility (a pretty enough name, thought Jorgensen, but one that hinted that the staff might not be entirely focused on the recuperative powers of rest).

  But it didn’t matter; Jorgensen never got past the second of the three, the Smythe Residence for Seniors. A pleasant woman greeted him at the door to a red brick building that looked more like a schoolhouse than a, well, an assisted care center. Yes, she said, they had a Kurt Meisner in residence. And as long as Mr. Meisner was willing and up to it, Mr. Jorgensen - he seldom identified himself as Judge Jorgensen, and certainly wasn’t about to break the precedent now - could visit with him as soon as eleven o’clock rolled around.

  That gave him an hour, and he spent it walking the grounds with Jake. And since the grounds consisted of a six-foot-wide apron of grass surrounding the building, they covered every inch of it, several times over, in both directions. When it seemed as though an hour had to be almost over (Jorgensen never wore a watch, preferring to rely on the sun, the stars, and his own internal clock for guidance), he walked Jake back to the truck and himself back to the seniors’ residence. According to a clock just inside the entrance, it still wasn’t quite eleven, but the same pleasant woman didn’t make an issue of it; she simply called over an orderly (or perhaps the young man was a nurse - Jorgensen wasn’t certain) and asked him to take Jorgensen to Mr. Meisner’s room.

  They rode an elevator to the second floor, then walked down a long corridor fashioned of cinder block and painted a pale green. There were no paintings in evidence, no photographs, not so much as a table with a vase of dried flowers. The walls were interrupted at regular intervals by numbered doors, all of which were slightly ajar. Jorgensen caught occasional glimpses of patients (or occupants, or seniors, or whatever they called them) propped up in bed, hunched over in wheelchairs, or standing at walkers. They all seemed to be alone, except for the ubiquitous companionship of their television sets.

  Jorgensen’s guide stopped at Room 238 and ushered him inside. The interior was small - tiny might have described it better - and every bit as sparse as the corridor. A white-haired man sat propped up in bed, staring out a window. A faded blanket covered the lower half of his body.

  “Mr. Meisner,” said the young man, “your visitor’s here.” And with that, he backed out the door, leaving them alone.

  Jorgensen navigated his way around the bed until he ended up by the window, cutting off Kurt Meisner’s view of it. What he saw was a ghost, a shadow of a man. His hair was snow white, his skin not far from it. His face was gaunt: eyes that were blue, but a chemical blue, deep-set and ringed with dark circles. Hollow cheeks that suggested a complete absence of teeth beneath them. Arms that were nothing more than bones, draped with skin. To Jorgensen, he had the look of a man whose life was being slowly sucked out of his body. Though he looked to be tall, he couldn’t have weighed 100 pounds, and had Jorgensen not known something of his age, he’d have sworn he was past ninety.

  “My name is Jorgensen, August Jorgensen.”

  “Yes, they told me. Do I know you?”

  “No, you don’t. But I’m hoping you’ll speak with me for a few minutes.”

  Meisner lifted one hand out from underneath the blanket and pointed vaguely at a plastic chair, except for the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. Jorgensen lowered himself onto it and said, “Thank you.”

  “Are you here about the case?” Meisner asked.

  Jorgensen hadn’t expected that. “What case?” he asked, feeling like a small child caught at the cookie jar, able to come up with nothing better than a “Who, me?”

  “The murder case,” said Meisner. “My daughter.” His voice was dry and flat, but at least it wasn’t the voice of a ninety-year-old. Jorgensen found that by looking over the man’s shoulder just a bit, and focusing on a crack in the plaster on the wall beyond him, he could imagine he was talking to someone much younger than the one presented to his eyes.

  Jorgensen flirted briefly with the idea of denying the true reason for his visit, but thought better of it. It was one thing to pass himself off as an insurance adjuster when rummaging around for leads, quite another to utter a bald-faced lie when confronted. So he said, “Yes, I’m here about the case.”

  “They must be getting ready to kill the boy again,” said Meisner. “Every time they get ready to kill him, somebody or other comes here to see me.”

  “He’s not a boy anymore,” said Jorgensen. “He’s a man in his thirties.”

  “To me, he’ll always be a boy, and my daughter will always be eleven. You see, my life ended back then. The day before it happened, I was a young man. The day after it happened . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I’m very sorry,” said Jorgensen.

  Meisner smiled ever so slightly. “When I woke up the next morning, I looked in the mirror. My hair,
” he said, lifting his hand and motioning toward the top of his head, “my hair had turned white, just like this. Overnight.”

  Jorgensen had heard of such things happening to people; he’d just never seen evidence of it before now. “I’m sorry,” he said again, sounding foolish, but feeling the need to say something.

  “That’s all right,” said Meisner, “it wasn’t your fault. So tell me, what can I do for you? You can’t be a reporter, I know, you’re too old. Are you from the clemency board, perhaps?”

  “No, no. I’m looking for a man,” said Jorgensen, “a man who had something to do with the case, back when, when it happened.” He took Boyd Davies’s drawing from his pocket. Carefully he folded it so that the lifeless body of Meisner’s daughter couldn’t be seen. Only the man’s face showed, albeit hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.

  He held the folded picture out for Meisner to see. “I believe,” Jorgensen told him, “that he was a peace officer of some sort.” He’d meant to say police officer but had inadvertently lapsed into legalese. Technically, he was right: All police officers were peace officers in the eyes of the law, but not all peace officers were police officers. It had mattered when he’d had to apply the Miranda rule, or decide some search-and-seizure case. It didn’t matter now, though, certainly not to Kurt Meisner, and Jorgensen regretted using the term. But he’d used up two “sorrys” already.

  Meisner studied the face for a long moment. Jorgensen wasn’t sure, but at one point he thought he saw a smile begin to form on the man’s thin lips. But if it had happened at all, it was gone the next instant.

  “Do you know him?” he asked.

  Meisner drew a deep breath. “I used to,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “He’s dead.” He leaned what weight he had left in his body back against his pillows and allowed his eyelids to close. “He died sixteen years ago.”

  “Can you tell me his name?” asked Jorgensen.

  Meisner opened his mouth as if to speak, but coughed instead. It was a hacking cough that seemed to dislodge stuff deep inside him. Marge had coughed like that at the end, bringing up big globs of green and yellow phlegm from her chest. A productive cough, the doctors had called it, a good thing. But all it had produced, all the good it had caused, was her death.

  Meisner continued coughing, fighting for breath. His hand sought a device off to one side of him, and he pressed a button. A moment later, a nurse came in. As Jorgensen rose to get out of her way, she placed both her arms around Meisner’s waist and lifted his body forward. Then she freed one arm and pounded him soundly on the back, hard enough, to Jorgensen’s thinking, to break the poor man’s ribs. Gradually, the coughing subsided, and Kurt Meisner regained his breath.

  “I think we’ll let Mr. Meisner rest now,” the nurse said, directing the remark to Jorgensen without looking at him. “Perhaps y’all can resume your visit tomorrow?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Jorgensen. Then, turning to Meisner, he added, “If that’s all right with you.”

  Meisner shrugged.

  Jorgensen took a step toward the bed and said, “Thank you, sir.” The sir came easily, almost automatically, to a lifelong Southerner. So, too, did his the extension of his right hand. Kurt Meisner looked at it for a moment, almost as if he’d expected there to be something in it. Then, slowly, he worked his own right hand free from the blanket that had until then covered it, and they shook.

  So that even before August Jorgensen saw it, he felt it. Kurt Meisner’s right hand was missing two fingers.

  Even under the best of conditions, sleep doesn’t come easily to men in their eighties. Noises that go completely unheard during daylight hours suddenly become deafening. Aches that were barely noticeable hours earlier ripen into cramps demanding constant kneading, stretching, and changing of position. The bladder somehow manages to shrink to the size of a shot glass, allowing only the barest interval to pass before refilling itself and requiring that immediate attention be paid.

  But that night, sleep wouldn’t come at all to August Jorgensen. In addition to the usual suspects, there were a few newcomers he was still adjusting to. For one thing, in spite of the curtains Ruby Mason had thoughtfully hung over the windows in his room, a full moon bathed everything in bright, white light. Closer to home, Ruby’s meatloaf, hush puppies, and gravy had gotten together and were conducting a protest of sorts, holding a sit-in somewhere between his esophagus and his stomach. While off in the distance, some kind of animal was practicing a half-howl, half-snort call that Jorgensen couldn’t place for the life of him. A dog? A pig? A wild boar, maybe? Did they even have wild boars in these parts? Zachary might be able to look it up on his computer.

  But what would keep Jorgensen most from sleeping this night didn’t fall under the heading of ambient noise, cramping muscles, filling bladder, full moon, meatloaf, or even wild boar. What would keep him awake was the discovery that the three-fingered man was none other than Kurt Meisner.

  No less than four times would Jorgensen climb out of bed, turn on the light, find his reading glasses, and stare at Boyd Davies’s drawing. And each time - in spite of the mirrored sunglasses that hid the man’s eyes, in spite of the dark hair that fell across his forehead, and in spite of the fact that the man in the drawing couldn’t have been a day over forty, while the one sitting in bed at the Smythe Residence for Seniors looked to be at least twice that - Jorgensen would nevertheless know they had to be one and the same.

  And yet that couldn’t be. Both the police reports and the trial testimony made it quite clear that Kurt Meisner hadn’t seen his daughter’s body - let alone carried it - until he’d identified her the following day, when she was draped in a sheet and lying on a gurney at the county coroner’s office. So how on earth could Boyd Davies had gotten a glimpse of Meisner carrying her, lifeless but still clothed?

  Unless . . .

  And when you came right down to it, it was precisely that unless that would keep August Jorgensen awake all night.

  What kept Jessica Woodruff awake was much simpler. After putting it off for as long as she felt she could, she’d finally decided to get word to August Jorgensen that the Supreme Court had issued a scheduling order, and that the Davies case would be heard the second week of April.

  Normally, getting word would have meant picking up the phone and calling, or having some intern at the station do it for her. But Jorgensen’s lack of a phone made that impossible. Ditto for e-mailing him or faxing him. She could send him a letter - regular, overnight, priority, registered, certified, whatever. But she was already on notice that he paid little attention to his mail, and often threw envelopes away without opening them.

  Not wanting to take chances, she’d had a letter typed, and then had the station dispatch a courier from its Charleston affiliate to hand-deliver it. That way, a human being could present it to Jorgensen, stand there to make sure he not only opened it up but actually read it, and get him to sign an acknowledgment that he understood it.

  Jesus, she thought. It was like dealing with a child. But she’d done it anyway. Better safe than sorry, she’d decided.

  That was four days ago. Now her secretary had buzzed her to tell her the courier was on the phone, waiting to speak with her. Didn’t he understand that wasn’t necessary, that all he had to do was forward the signed acknowledgment to her?

  “It sounds like there’s some kind of problem,” the secretary explained.

  “Jesus,” she thought again, this time out loud. “Put him through.”

  There was some clicking on the line, then a male voice. “Hello?”

  “Hello,” said Jessica. “Are you the courier?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “He’s not home.”

  “So wait for him. He doesn’t go far.”

  “I’ve been waiting for him all day, ma’am.”

  Christ, she thought. Maybe the old guy had an embolism, or a heart attack. His body’s probably in t
here, rotting away. “Is his dog there?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Have you looked in the windows?”

  “There are no windows, ma’am. Just these little round things. Can’t hardly see nothin’ through ‘em, neither.”

  “How about his truck?”

  “I doubt it would fit through the door, ma’am.”

  “No, no. Do you see it parked outside?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like a TRUCK,” Jessica shouted. “Red. Full of rust. About a thousand years old.”

  “Where does he keep it?”

  “Right there. You’d see it.”

  “Then I guess it’s not here, ma’am.”

  “Great.” She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. “Listen, can you go back tomorrow?”

  “Yes, ma’am, only there’ll be an extra charge for re-”

  “Go back tomorrow!” shouted Jessica, slamming down the phone and stubbing out the cigarette. Maybe the judge was at the doctor’s, she decided. Old people were always going to the doctor. Or to the vet, maybe, or to get his truck serviced, or the hairs in his ears and nose trimmed. Leave it alone, she told herself; it could be almost anything.

  What worried her, of course, was that it might not just be anything. It might be that August Jorgensen was off snooping somewhere.

  Well, let him snoop all he wanted to. When you came right down to it, what were the chances of his actually finding anything? And if it turned out she was wrong, if he happened by pure dumb luck to stumble onto something that wasn’t his business, well, they’d deal with that, too, if they had to. That’s the way things worked in television. Every problem, no matter how perplexing or annoying, had a solution. The bottom line was the story, and getting that story out to the viewers, whatever it took. Anyone or anything that got in the way of that was expendable. That’s simply the way it had to be.