by Ed Gorman
imagined she was twenty.
The wound was on the side of her head, the blood lost in the texture of the hair. I didn’t want to touch her to see how wide and deep the wound went. Blunt instrument trauma, presumably.
I said, “We need to call Cliffie.”
“He’s such a boob.”
“Yeah, he is. But he’s also the chief of police and this is a crime scene.”
“The Griffins are such nice people.”
“The Griffins? He’s got the Cadillac dealership?”
“Yes. You mean you don’t know who the girl is? It’s their daughter, Sara.”
“That’s who she is. Was she invited to the party tonight?”
“Lord, no, Sam. She’s a sophomore in college. Way too young for our crowd.” She bit her lip. “I just wonder what she was doing here.”
“Did you tell Jack?”
“I haven’t had a chance yet.”
“How did you find her?”
She made a perfectly childish and
perfectly fetching face. “We had a tiff.
Jack and I. The usual marriage thing. I just went for a little walk. Needed air.”
“Did you see anything else?”
“Anything else?”
I nodded to the two-lane asphalt road about a long city block from the gazebo. “You didn’t see a car or anybody on the road over there?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
For some reason—professional nosiness, probably—I wanted to ask her what she and her husband, Jack, had been arguing about.
“I need to call Cliffie. And you
need to make sure that nobody leaves. Tell them what happened and tell them that they have to stay here at least until Cliffie gets a chance to take down their names.”
“My God,” she said, “I can’t believe it.”
“What?”
“I’m actually going to let Cliffie Sykes set foot in my home.”
After she left, I spent five minutes looking over the grass that stretched to the road. And found nothing. Then I went to the road itself. The other side of the asphalt was farmland, soybeans.
I didn’t find any notable tire tracks on either the roadside or the two-laner. I assumed that the girl had been killed elsewhere and then carried from a car parked on this road. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble.
Everybody drifted into the front yard. About half brought their drinks. A woman cried; a man said that it was about time somebody dealt with the crime wave we were having in town. I wasn’t sure what crime wave he was talking about. A Shell station had been broken into last night.
Maybe that’s what he had in mind.
There are three things you should know right away about Clifford Sykes Jr., the first being that when his family of rednecks came up here from the Ozarks a few generations ago, they lived not in the Knolls, which was sort of the official slums where I grew up, but on a sandy
end of the river where
they bred babies, filth, and stupidity.
Cliffie’s grandfather tried to bring the Klan up here and even managed to burn a cross in a field until several of the men in town, including my dad, went out there with shotguns and ball bats and persuaded all the fat drunks hiding in sheets that the Klan was not wanted in these parts.
The second thing you need to know about Cliffie is that he hates me because I work for Judge Esme Anne Whitney, whose folks came out here with a lot of Eastern money in the previous century and pretty much built the town. It was almost never mentioned that this branch of the Whitney family had to leave New England rather suddenly when several major papers mentioned a major bank fraud case being brought against the Whitneys’ most infamous black sheep, Esme’s father.
The Whitneys ran the town until
World War Ii came along. Esme was sent back east to school when she was seven, graduated from Smith, lived for a time in Europe, finally returned to town here with a law degree and a yen for the judicial bench, which she got with more than a little help from a Dixiecrat holdout in Harry Truman’s Justice Department.
Cliffie Senior, through a series of coincidences and outright miracles, had been able to parlay his shabby little construction company into a firm that helped the army build training camps and airstrips throughout the Midwest. With his new fortune in hand, Cliffie Senior ran for mayor, won by making all sorts of foolish promises that he actually made good on, and proceeded to buy off every important person loyal to the judge’s camp. All that was left to this branch of the Whitney family, in the person of Esme Anne herself, was her judgeship, several million dollars, and a dire need to fly to New York whenever she could put together a three-day vacation. Don’t ever let her start telling you stories about her “brunches” with the likes of “Lenny Bernstein” and “Dick Nixon” and the various fashion designers who make her stylish clothes. Her stories of the famous are as long-winded and pretentious as a novel by Thomas Wolfe.
The town now belonged to the Cliffies, Senior and Junior, respectively.
The third thing about Cliffie is that he secretly thinks he’s Glenn Ford. Back when we were in grade school together, everything was Glenn Ford Glenn Ford Glenn Ford. In the early fifties, when Ford started making a lot of Westerns, he sometimes wore a khaki outfit and carried his gun slung low. Hence, you will notice that Cliffie, as he makes his appearance here, is also dressed in khaki with his gun slung low.
I admit to a bit of hypocrisy, complaining about Cliffie walking around pretending he’s Glenn; I walk around pretending I’m Robert Ryan.
I was in the driveway when Cliffie swept up in his cruiser, a hopped-up Mercury with a whip antenna that could amputate low-hanging branches if given half a chance. The ambulance was already here, along with Doc Novotony’s shiny black Corvette. Doc is the
medical examiner and a distant relative of Cliffie’s. He’s one of the few Sykes menfolk who doesn’t blow his nose on his shirt sleeve.
Usually, Cliffie swaggers. And sneers. The thing is, though he had his gun and his white Stetson and his cowboy boots, he had one more thing tonight, too. His feelings of inferiority.
Most people don’t ever forget being poor. As much as poverty deprives the belly, it also deprives the spirit. A big house like this, a dozen locally prominent people standing on the Jay Gatsby lawn, a hint of art and culture glimpsed through the wide front windows … this wasn’t Cliffie territory and never would be. No matter how mean, rich, or powerful Cliffie got, he would never be accepted by people like these and he knew it.
I would have felt sorry for the dumb bastard but he would’ve scowled if I’d mentioned that I knew how he was feeling.
He came up and said, “Looks like these fancy friends of yours got some trouble on their hands.”
“Looks like.”
“One of ‘em needs a lawyer, Counselor, I’ll bet it won’t be you. It’ll be some blue-suit prick from Cedar Rapids.”
“Probably.”
He looked at me as if my face had
broken out. “You not feeling well tonight, Counselor?”
“Why?”
He checked his wristwatch.
“Been here nearly two minutes and you haven’t insulted me yet.”
“That’s because you and I have one thing in common tonight.
We don’t belong here. And we both know it.
It’s sort of intimidating for a couple of hayseeds from the Knolls.”
He spat a stream of chewing tobacco. He usually spat in the direction of one of my shoes.
The way the bad guy in the bad Westerns always shoots at the ground and makes the pitiful old drunk dance.
“Shit, Counselor, I’ll bet my old
man has three times as much money as Coyle here.”
“I’ll bet he does, too,” I said. He knew damned well what I was talking about. And I knew damned well he wouldn’t
admit it.
Two of his men took care of business. They’d been taking police training at the state academy. They
had a pretty decent knowledge of inspecting crime scenes and interviewing witnesses and identifying suspects. He looked at them now and snorted. “Those two men, they get a little bit of police school and they think they’re hot shit.”
“Maybe you should get a little of that training yourself.
Couldn’t hurt.”
He gaped at me again. “What the hell’s with you tonight, Counselor? You sound like one of those psychologist guys on the tube.” Then, “And you tell that judge of yours not to get you involved in this one, McCain, you get me? I’d hate to have to make a fool of her again.”
I almost said something but stopped myself in time. The standing battle between Judge Whitney and Cliffie took the form of her always disproving the guilt of the person Cliffie had charged with a capital crime. By this time the score was something like 37 to 0, due in no small part to the fact that Cliffie didn’t know anything about investigative techniques. He always claimed he went on “hunches.” Ah, those good old hunches.
Cliffie said, “Now I gotta go call the Griffins and tell them what happened. I’ll just patch in through my two-way.”
“Sort of the personal touch, huh, Chief?”
“You want to call them for me, Counselor?
You think you’d like to make a call like that?”
He went away and came back within a few minutes. I spent the time talking to one of his deputies, who actually sounded intelligent.
For a minute or so I was alone. I took in the summer moon-drift sky and the scent of grass and flowers from the nearby garden. It was a night to be twelve again, catch fireflies, and read comic books under the covers with a flashlight and dream of the girl you hope to walk home from school with some lucky day.
Cliffie said, “Well, well, Counselor, looks like you and me may be buttin’ heads on this dead girl after all.”
“How would that be?”
“One of my least favorite people sounds like he’s in a lot of trouble.”
“How does that affect me?”
“He’s one of your clients. One of
those punks we’re always haulin’ in and you’re always bailin’ out. Mrs. Griffin told me that her daughter and him had a terrible argument just this afternoon and that he slapped her.”
I knew the name he was going to say. And I dreaded hearing it. A lot of people had predicted that he would kill somebody someday. Maybe that day had come around at last.
“David Egan, Counselor.” Cliffie
smirked. “He is a client of yours, isn’t he?”
Three
Over the next half hour, I got curious about why Cliffie was spending so much time talking to Linda Dennehy. She was pretty, maybe that was why. But after the third time he walked over to his men and then came right back to Linda, I wondered what was going on.
I stood on the lawn with everybody else. As soon as Cliffie’s men finished with them, the guests left. They all looked tired. They’d talked it all out for now; tomorrow, over breakfast coffee, they’d start talking about it again. And for days after that.
Linda drifted over after a time. “You about ready for that car ride, Sam?”
“Been ready.”
“I think Cliffie’s done questioning me.”
“What was that all about?”
“The party—I came with Jane Daly. I’d left my purse in her car and needed to get it.
He wanted to know if I saw anything or anybody. I didn’t. Cliffie seems to think I’m hiding something because I’m afraid to be a witness. No matter how many times I told him otherwise, he’d keep coming back and telling me how he’d protect me and I shouldn’t be afraid to tell him who I saw in the garage. He really thinks I saw the killer.”
“That’s our Cliffie. He never lets reality get in his way.”
“I almost feel guilty for not having seen the killer, you know?”
“You did what you could. You told him the truth.
From now on it’s his problem.”
I was just about to ask if she wanted to go when Cliffie appeared.
“Counselor, you could do me and this town
a favor by convincing your frightened little friend that she should tell me everything she knows.”
“She’s told you everything she knows.”
He smirked. “I see she’s already told you I’ve been asking her for the truth.”
“You want her to make up something? Maybe draw a name out of a hat?”
He looked at her and said, “You ever gone out with this David Egan, Linda?”
“I don’t usually date high school
boys.”
“This day and age, anything’s possible.”
“Well, I’ve never dated him, Chief.
I’m not sure I’ve ever even spoken to him.”
“Pretty gal like you, maybe he’s spoken to you.”
“I’m afraid not.”
Cliffie started to ask another question but I interrupted him. “She’s told you what she knows.
She’s willing to sign a statement to the effect that everything’s she’s told you is the truth. How’s that?”
“You her lawyer now, are you, Counselor?”
“I am if she needs one. Does she need one, Chief?”
He sighed. “Maybe you can make her understand, Counselor.” We were talking man to man now.
Girls excluded. It was as if Linda had vanished. “Maybe you can explain how police protection works. Everywhere she goes, she’ll have one of my men trailing her. And every time she’s at home, I’ll have a man parked nearby. I won’t let anybody touch her.”
Linda smiled. “That sounds very nice, Chief.
Having protection like that. Unfortunately, I really don’t know who the killer is.”
“That’s just about all she has to say, Chief.
Now, we’d like to get out of here if possible.”
He leaned in my direction and said, “You know these people pretty good, do you, Counselor?”
“If you mean the Coyles, I’m a friend of Jean’s.”
He leaned in and whispered. “Glad you’re not a friend of her husband’s. There’s a jackass for you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You come out here often?”
“A few times a year. To parties.”
“I’m surprised they’d invite somebody who grew up in the Knolls out here.”
“They’re well-off. But that doesn’t
mean they’re snobs.”
“I’m also told that the dead girl was going out with David.”
“I have to take your word for all this. I don’t know anything about David’s personal life. Not much, anyway. I’ve represented him on a few traffic charges is all.”
“The way he drag races, he’s gonna
get himself killed one of these days. And he’s gonna kill somebody else, too, while he’s at it.”
“I agree. And I’ve told him that many times.”
The smile. “Well, Counselor, it was bound to happen. We had to agree with each other someday and it finally happened.” Then, to Linda, “Don’t leave the county without my permission.”
“Darn, Linda,” I said, “there goes your trip to Antarctica.”
“Gosh, and I was hoping to bring back all that whale blubber, too.”
“You two should go on Ed Sullivan,”
Cliffie said. “You’re getting your act down real good.”
“Can he do that? Order me to stay in the county?”
Linda asked as Cliffie walked away. He was now a whole lot less intimidated by the house and its guests. His swagger was back. And that was the natural order of things. Cliffie was an incompetent jerk. My momentary madness of feeling sorry for him had passed.
“Of course not.”
“That ride really sounds good, Sam.”
“Yeah,” I said, sliding my arm around her slender shoulders, “it sure does.”
I always try to picture the land as it was before even the Indians arrived. Impenet
rable timber and man-tall grass and prairies and meadows and hills raw with deep true colors. Enough buffalo and bison to make the ground rumble when they approached. Enough steep red limestone cliffs to provide a facsimile of life as the original cliff dwellings must have looked like.
And the rushing, bank-overflowing rivers, fast and blue and slapping with fish.
At night come the mysteries that must have given even the Vikings pause, those sounds and shadows, that harsh and brazen moon, the tumbled dark ravines and the caves with their seared white bones of
unknown animals—night is best of all.
We didn’t talk.
You can do that sometimes after sharing a proximity to death. A car accident, all mangled metal and terrible lurid blood on the highway; or sobbing, plump swimsuited adults telling you about a five-year-old who has just drowned in the public pool; or a crowd of drunks in a parking lot where one drunken battler accidentally killed another with an unlucky punch.
There’s either a lot of talk or not much talk at all.
A teenage girl had died tonight and there was nothing to say and so we said it.
There was just the wind and the smooth V-8 of the red ragtop in the moon-silver countryside: the sandpits where we’d drunk underage beer in high school; the drive-in theater that would close with the first frost but for now showed a screenful of images of rock and roll and sex and despair and death, city images out here in the country dancing on a piece of cloth; and the baseball park where the Little Leaguers dreamed of big league glory, not understanding that the cost of such glory would be their innocence.
We got Koma on the radio, best
rock-and-roll station in the country, pure rock all the way across the land from Oklahoma City, the favorite of small-town Midwestern kids and adult-kids everywhere.
I decided to talk. “I’ll be your lawyer.”
She didn’t respond at first. Her eyes behind her glasses looked far, far away. She was pulled up on the seat with her fine legs beneath her and her hair caught in the wind.
“Will I need one?”
“Probably. Cliffie’ll pester the hell out of you.”
