Breaking Point

by Jon Demartino

  The airport in St. Louis is a relatively small facility, as least compared to the ones in Los Angeles or Pittsburgh. It's a nicely designed airport with one small exception, the restrooms or rather the lack of them. Visiting my sister in Iowa over the years had required a layover in either Chicago or St. Louis, so I'd spent equal time in each, depending on the best prices at the time. O'Hare is huge by any standards, but by God, they were considerate enough to put a bunch of rest-rooms near the gates. In St. Louis, I can only assume that the designer either wore an indwelling catheter or never drank when he flew. For me, a constant imbiber of coffee, beer or both, the dearth of urinals was a major annoyance. Over the years, I'd learned to stop at the first men's room I saw and await my turn. I knew by now that there would be no facilities near the gates and the ones that did exist would be the size of a voting booth, with several men shifting from foot to foot in the hall outside the entrance, hoping for a short wait.

  We landed in St Louis at noon, central time, and I had just a little over an hour before my connecting flight took off for home. I bought a turkey sandwich and a Coke at a small booth near the gates and watched a few of the other passengers walk by. No turbans were visible here, but there were several young mothers carrying baggage as well as crying babies. I marveled at their stamina and patience as they shifted their loads from side to side and occasionally managed to fit a cookie or cracker into one of the grabbing little hands. Amazing. I wondered if the airlines had considered adding a secure area for a day care on planes, to which you could check your kids when you check your luggage. I thought the concept had possibilities.

  On the short flight from St. Louis up to Cedar Rapids, I pondered the facts that had been revealed so far. Charlie Wilson had grown up as a spoiled kid and had seemed to develop into a worm of a man, with a taste for the things that only money could buy. He was probably motivated by greed, as well as self-importance. Frank Goodwin was probably in the drug business for money, and lots of it. Greed again. Petrick, however, may have had a somewhat different reason for his actions. If he had indeed killed his baby, over twenty years ago, it may have been from fear or even selfishness. He'd been old enough to know better, but at eighteen, was still a kid in my book. Remembering all too well how I'd felt about Caroline, even at twenty-one, I wondered what choices I would have made at her request. The comparison made me feel a little sympathy for the young Patrick Donaldson.

  Petrick had killed Charlie Wilson, most likely to protect himself, not from a physical threat but maybe from one that would undermine the life that he had created. So, I wondered, is Mr. C.S. Lewis correct, and does there exist a real right and wrong in our universe? Was the mayor as 'wrong' as any other murderer, regardless of his motive? And, since Charlie Wilson had committed blackmail but not murder, where did he rank compared to Petrick? Was Charlie Wilson, the lying, meth smoking, blackmailing womanizer a better man? So far, I had them in a dead heat, but the mayor could still pull ahead at the slightest tip of the facts. I planned to do some reading again as soon as I had free time, but I didn't hold out much hope for a simple answer.

  By two thirty Monday afternoon, we'd landed at Cedar Rapids. At the Hertz counter, I pulled my yellow parka out of the suitcase and shoved the nylon windbreaker inside. While the Hertz representative was writing up my order for another Explorer, I asked about the temperature and weather over the past twenty four hours.

  "It snowed a little yesterday," he said as he wrote. "But just a dusting. The wind chill's about three degrees this afternoon, but it's going back down to twenty five below tonight." He turned the paper around for me to sign and handed me the car keys, adding, "There's a snowstorm on the way, too." I took a deep breath of the warm air inside the airport and stepped out to the rental lot.

  One day in the balmy California climate had eliminated whatever tolerance I'd built up for Iowa's winter. With a twenty-mile-an-hour wind blowing, the effect was almost overwhelming. My eyeballs felt like they would freeze in their sockets and my nose had no feeling by the time I'd located the white Explorer. If it weren't for the protection of the parka, the wind would have cut right through to my skin. Before I pulled out, I found my gloves and scarf in the pockets and put them on. The Explorer heated up quickly, however, and soon I had plenty of warm air pouring out of the vents.

  I reached West Fork by a quarter to four and parked on the street a block away from the city building. After plugging a couple of quarters into the meter, I walked quickly up the street and into the warmth of the lobby. When the elevator doors opened on the top floor, I saw Ms. Gable at her desk, shouldering the phone to her ear and writing in a large schedule book. She smiled as I approached and held up her index finger. I nodded my understanding and sat on one of the leather chairs. A quick glance told me the reading material hadn't changed much in the short time since I'd last looked it over. There was a copy of today's Des Moines Register, however. I slid the sports section out and snapped the newspaper open to catch up on the latest in Iowa sports. The Hawkeyes were playing at home tomorrow night, hosting Northwestern. Maybe Woody would want to go. He loved basketball. If he was up for it and could bear to spend a couple of hours away from Melanie Goodwin, I'd call and get us a couple of tickets.

  Chapter 26

  By the time I'd finished the piece about the basketball game, Anne Gable was off the phone. She looked great in a dark green jacket over a butter colored silk blouse, but I knew her now for the tease she was, a married woman disguised as a Ms. Even so, the effect of her sunny smile and blue eyes was enough to make me hold in my stomach and straighten my shoulders as I approached her desk.

  "Hi. Remember me?" I inquired with my best boyish grin.

  "Certainly, Mr. Murdock. How are you?"

  We exchanged the usual pleasantries before she told me the mayor was indeed in today. He was, at the moment, on a conference call which had already gone longer than the melodious voiced Ms. Gable had anticipated. She expected him to finish up shortly and she'd let him know I was here. I went back to the newspaper and read the funnies. Dilbert was once again engaged in a struggle against blockheaded management, but the reality of his situation escaped me, as usual. Never having worked in an office or business environment, I was forever out of the loop in appreciating his plight. Charlie Brown, that big headed kid, had always been more up my alley.

  In a couple of minutes, the door to the mayor's office opened. He called out a hearty greeting and beckoned me inside. I cautioned myself to stay alert and to keep an eye on him at all times. The guy was huge and while I didn't think he would try to kill me in his neat and organized office, I didn't want to take any chances. Maybe I should have told Woody to meet me here. Too late for that. I got to my feet and smiled as I made my way into his office.

  "So, Mr. Murdock," he began, "what brings you back to West Fork so soon?" He was immobile as he sat across the desk from me, his big hands folded on the polished wood. The controlled timbre of his voice indicated that he was barely restraining some emotion, fear maybe, or anger. His smile seemed pasted on, as if it might drop onto the desk at any moment. I considered my words carefully before speaking.

  "Mayor Petrick, I seem to have uncovered some rather unpleasant rumors about your life in California," I said slowly. I was trying to keep my manner calm and reassuring, so I could get some information from him rather than setting off a knee-jerk reaction. An artery meandered across his forehead, its pulse visible from six feet away. He wanted to say something, but I held up my hand and quickly went on. "I've met with Sister Alex and she's told me about your life at Saint Martin's as well as the...well, the situation that arose just before your departure. I have the photograph as well as the negatives that Charlie was using against you."

  He sank deeper into the chair as if he'd been deflated. "Oh, yes," he said. "The photograph. That little bastard had to show up here, the worthless son of a bitch." He lunged forward and slammed the side of a meaty fist onto the desk, sending a shudder through the floor that I felt sever
al feet away. The door opened and Ms. Gable peeked around it to ask if everything was all right. The mayor nodded without speaking and waved her out again. He took a deep breath and went on, his voice low but still sharp with anger.

  "What is it exactly that you want, Mr. Murdock?"

  "I guess I want to know the truth. And I'd like to help you," I said calmly.

  Petrick leaned back and laughed a short sour syllable. "Help?" he said. "I don't think that's possible, sir."

  "Why don't you start by telling me about the blackmail," I said. "How did it all start?"

  "What I told you the last time was mostly the truth. Wilson was in town and stopped at the soccer field. We met and introduced ourselves. I recognized him right away of course, as the little creep who'd stayed at the Home that summer. He hadn't any idea who I was at first, though. I just wanted to be rid of him, but he pushed his way into my life, with his corporate sponsorship of our sports teams. He quickly made allies of the local merchants, many of whom serve as council members and it wasn't long before I had no way to be free of him. His presence became like a cancer in my life. I could do nothing but wait until it finally sprang to life, as I knew it eventually would."

  He left his chair and my whole body tensed in anticipation of an attack, but he walked to the water cooler and got himself a drink. He filled and downed two of the little cups full before returning to his chair.

  "I kept waiting for him to realize out who I was. My blood pressure went up," he continued, "and I had to begin taking medication for it. I started to get anxiety attacks. I couldn't concentrate. Charlie Wilson was making my life a nightmare, just by his presence. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, when he would realize who I was. And eventually, of course, he figured it out."

  "How?"

  "He'd often comment that I looked familiar and he insisted we must have met before. Finally one day, he realized that this," Petrick said, holding the back of his left hand toward me, "was from the tattoo I'd had when he knew me, a remnant of my time in the gangs. Before he confronted me, he went back to his parents' house and dug up that damned photograph and brought it back with him."

  "When did he begin blackmailing you?"

  "January of this year. He came here, to the office and showed me the picture. He was gloating, watching for my reaction as he handed it to me. I tore it into shreds and he laughed, saying that of course he had the negative. He wanted twenty thousand dollars to keep his mouth shut. That wasn't the end of it, of course. In February he was back for more, forty thousand this time and in March he asked for fifty." Petrick's hands were clasped together so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  "Did you pay him every time?"

  "I didn't have a choice. You can't realize what this meant to me. I have a life now, damn it!" His voice rose and he glanced toward the door, then lowered it. "I have a family, three beautiful kids and a wife who loves me." He leaned across the desk and stared into my face. The muscles in his cheeks twitched as he clenched his jaw. "I never had anything like that before, Mr. Murdock. My parents were both drunks and I raised myself on the streets of Los Angeles, hiding in the Catholic Church when my old man was out of his head, trying to kill me." Petrick shook his head. "Do you think for one moment," he said very slowly, "that I have ever forgotten that night and what I did?"

  "What exactly happened?" I asked, genuinely puzzled.

  He took a couple of deep breaths while he considered his answer. After staring at me until I was ready to look away, he said, "Oh, what the hell. It's all over now anyway." He focused his gaze on a point somewhere over my left shoulder, toward the wall where his old family photos were hanging.

  "Monica was pregnant," he said. "She told me it was mine and I believed her. We had been fooling around for over a year and it was certainly possible. I was no angel and neither was Monica. I sneaked out to meet her many times." I nodded but kept my mouth shut.

  "Toward the end of that summer, her family flew to Las Vegas for a week and Mon was allowed to stay home alone. She told them she didn't want to miss her exercise classes and her parents believed her. There was a housekeeper, but she slept over the garage. I was at Monica's house every night. The poor nuns could rarely manage to catch me sneaking out and even if they did, they couldn't stop me. I don't think they really cared what I did anyway," he added. "They'd been pressured into taking me in the first place and besides, they had a bunch of little kids there to take care of, kids who needed and appreciated what the sisters did for them. I was just a punk with a chip on my shoulder. The nuns and I tolerated each other for almost two years, but that was about it."

  "So you sneaked over to see your girlfriend?" I wanted to hear this story and I'd be damned if I was going to let him walk all around it first.

  "Yes. Monica was pretty big by then. Her folks didn't know about the baby at all. They thought she was just getting fatter. She wasn't thin to start with, if you know what I mean."

  I nodded again. I was smart enough to grasp the concept of a chubby teenaged girl.

  "One of her rich little friends got mad at Monica for ignoring her while I was around and she ran to Mon's parents when they got back from Vegas and told them that their daughter was pregnant. It wasn't true, though, by then. She wasn't pregnant anymore."

  "Was the baby stillborn?" I asked for the second time in as many days.

  "Almost. It just kind of came out while she was in the bathroom. It was little and wrinkled and red but it moved some and whimpered a little and I was terrified. I wanted to run and get one of the Sisters but Monica begged me not to. She said the baby was too small and that it was suffering. That's why she said it was making those noises, because it was in pain. She told me it was going to die in a few minutes."

  "So you buried the...dead baby?"

  He nodded. "She...she wrapped it up in a towel, really tight and shoved it at me. She was crying and begging me to get rid of it for her." I could see tears filling Petrick's eyes as he remembered that night.

  "I was terrified. I could taste the fear in my mouth as I ran. I carried that towel and I ran as far as I could into the woods behind the convent and beyond, for several miles, I think. I buried...," he stopped and took a deep breath. "I buried it under a rock that I pushed aside, where the dirt was soft and easy to scoop out. Then I covered it up and rolled the rock back on top of the..." He stopped and wiped his eyes with one hand. "On top of the grave." he finished and sat back, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to dab his face.

  "Was it still alive?" I said softly.

  "When I...I'm not...I don't know. Maybe." Petrick leaned toward me again. "Listen, Murdock. I had never even been around a baby before, much less a newborn one. I thought that Monica was telling me the truth and the baby was suffering, it would be dead in a minute or two. I did what she told me to do. I did it, OK? Is that what you want to hear? I did it." He was quiet for a moment and a weighty silence covered the room. "At her house, it was making a little whimpering sound. Several times a year, I still hear that soft crying in my dreams," he said. "It's been over twenty years and every so often, there it is again. Crying, calling to me from beneath that rock."

  "And Charlie Wilson knew what you'd done?"

  "Oh, yes. Charlie Wilson. He woke up that night and found that I was gone. We shared a room. He knew I'd be at Monica's and he decided to spy on us, I guess. I don't know what his plan was. He got down the tree...that's how we sneaked in and out. He got down in time to see me running into the woods at the back of the property, carrying the bundle. He apparently followed me and watched the whole thing, then waited."

  "Waited?"

  "He waited until I had gone back to Monica's. When he came here in January, with the picture, he told me that he'd heard the baby make noise just before I put it in the grave. I don't know if he was lying or not. Like I said, I don't really remember what I heard while I was digging the hole. My heart was pounding in my ears and that's the only sound that I remember hearing at that moment. Anyway, Charl
ie said he waited until he thought I wouldn't be coming back and then he dug the baby up. It was dead by that time, if it hadn't been earlier."

  "What was he planning to do about it?"

  "Back then, nothing. He had a crush on Monica and he didn't want to get her in trouble. Otherwise, I think he would have gone to the police that night. But he didn't. He said he marked the spot and he went back to bed and never told anyone. I had no reason to disbelieve him."

  "But when he recognized you, he saw a way to use the knowledge against you.

  "Not so much against me as for himself, I think. He said he had some financial needs and that since we were old pals, he knew I'd want to help him." The mayor stood and walked across the room to the water cooler, helping himself to several more of the little paper cups full of water before returning to his seat. "He could put me at the scene and if he had to, could probably locate the grave. The authorities can now do DNA testing on the remains. They could also probably discover if the baby had been..." He coughed into his fist, then cleared his throat before adding, "if the baby had been...alive at the time."

  "If you didn't agree to pay, he was prepared to destroy everything you'd spent the past twenty years building,...your whole life?"

  "Certainly. He had me and he knew it. The thought of having my wife, or even the citizens of West Fork find out about my past was unbearable to me. No one, not even Diane, knows of my real parents and the life I lived. I'd fabricated a history that satisfied anyone who cared enough to ask," he said with a sweeping gesture toward the photographs and certificates on the wall.

  "I found those photographs in a garage sale in Oregon many years ago and they became my family history. The little boy on his father's knee does look like me, doesn't he?" A faint smile crossed his face, as if he felt a fondness for the little boy who might have been him.