by Ed Gorman
Dearest Reece,
When your letter arrived last Tuesday, I canceled a tennis date at the country club I was telling you about. I didn't want anything to interfere with the pleasure of reading your letter. As I told you when I first wrote you, since I saw you on that talk show I've been able to think of no one else but you. No one else even remotely interests me.
I can't tell you how many different feelings your letter evoked in me—joy at knowing that you want our relationship to continue; sorrow at knowing that, for the next few years anyway, we won't be able to be together physically; and pride that somebody like you would find worth and value in somebody like me. I really am, as I've told you, the classic poor little rich girl . . . raised on a great deal of money but no love at all thanks to my mother dying at so early an age and a father who was too busy with his girlfriends and businesses to give me any real love.
I was afraid that you'd lose interest in me if I told you the truth about my marriage record—three strikes and you're out? Isn't that the baseball rule? Well, I've been married three times, and none of them lasted longer than six months. I know this is supposed to be a reflection on me, but I hope you interpret this the way I do . . . that I simply hadn't met the right man until you came along.
I've gone on a diet. Even though you can't see me—though I do plan to visit you soon—when I saw you on TV I said to myself, "There's a man who appreciates a good female body." You're so handsome, Reece, and yet there's such kindness and tenderness in your eyes. I want everything to be perfect for you. So I'm planning to lose eight pounds in the next two months. So that when we meet—
I have nightmares of you in prison. A few years ago I read a Good Housekeeping article written by a woman whose husband was behind bars. Until then, I'd had no idea how terrifying a place prison can be. Nor did I have any idea of how many prisoners are killed in prison.
You don't belong there, Reece. I know that you've made mistakes in your life—but who hasn't? As I told you, thanks to the inheritance my father left me, I've already contacted a very high-powered New York criminal attorney and he believes we have a very good chance of getting you a new trial. And if the state supreme court orders one, there's at least a 50-50 possibility, he says, that the district attorney will decline to try you again, given how much time has passed since your conviction.
Then we can be together, darling. Forever.
Remember how I told you that your letter evoked so many different feelings in me? Well last night, when I got in bed, I lay there naked for a long time in the darkness, your letter upon my breasts. And I had a sexual experience like none other in my life, Reece. With my two husbands, I had a very difficult time reaching satisfaction but last night—Well, last night, your letter on my breasts and my TV image of your face in my mind, I had no trouble at all. I was a complete woman at last.
Just imagine what it will be like when we're actually together.
I'm enclosing a Tibetan prayer I learned when I studied with a very legendary Maharishi in Connecticut a few years ago. I've found that in moments of conflict and crisis, this prayer helps me find my true inner self and become calmed. I hope the prayer helps you as much as it's helped me.
A few days ago, I called the warden's office and asked his rather snotty secretary if I could send you some things. She disallowed about half of what I was going to box up and send to you. I was so angry by the time I hung up, I called Senator Paxton's office and demanded to speak directly to him. My father was a major contributor to the Senator's various campaigns so he not only took my call but also agreed to help me with the warden.
Dusk is falling outside my bedroom window now; the sky gray-blue except for the horizon which is a kind of pearly pink. Even though it's a little chilly, I keep two of the French windows open slightly so I can smell the clean new spring. You'll love this manor house when you come to live in it, darling. I suppose you'II be a little intimidated by it as some of my friends have been, but the staff here always does its best to keep people at ease. After showing you the house, the first place I'll take you is to the stables. My father had two horses that nearly won the Kentucky Derby and one horse that actually won the Preakness in 1971. I'm sure you'll love the horses as much as I do. I'm sure you will.
Well, that's all for now, darling. You're in my mind and soul every waking moment.
In a few minutes, I'll be turning off the light and slipping into bed again. Your letter will soon be touching my naked breasts.
Eternal love, darling.
Rosamund
What he did with the letter, first night he had it, was wait until his pal in the upper bunk was snoring, and then he took the letter and wrapped it around himself and made love to it, his fluids running into her delicate handwriting, becoming one.
15
After leaving the McNally place, I went to a drugstore where I bought some headache powder and drank a milk shake and looked through a science-fiction magazine. Then I went back to my little temporary hutch.
A motel room at mid-afternoon is an especially lonely place. With all their earnest drunken noise, the night people at least lend the place a festive air. But afternoon is wives on the run from rickety marriages, the kids in tow with dirty faces and sad frantic eyes, missing their daddy and yet hating him at the same time for how he treated mommy; and traveling salesmen wearing too much Old Spice and knowing far too many dirty jokes; and afternoon lovers from insurance agencies and advertising firms and department stores, giving each other quick hot sex of the sort their marriage partners gave up on years ago.
I saw samples of all these types passing by my window as I sat in the armchair, talking on the telephone, yellow pad on my knees, telling a friend of mine all about Mr. Tolliver.
"You want to know everything about him?" Sheila asked.
"Everything."
"It'll take me a little while."
"I know."
"He's prominent enough that I think you could probably pick a lot of it up at the library. I really hate to charge you these rates, but it's how I make my living."
Sheila Kelly costs half as much as other computer search services I've used yet apologizes constantly for her prices.
"You'll find out things I'll never find in the library."
Sheila was one of that new breed of human beings who spends half her life using a computer as an extension of her mind. Mike Peary had used her on several investigations and told me the information she'd turned up had helped him resolve the cases in a day or so. I'd had similar luck. Sheila performs hacking services that are not, strictly speaking, legal. But they sure are useful.
"Why don't you give me your number?"
I gave her my number.
"Is that a motel?"
"Right."
"Is it a nice place?"
"Well, the toilet flushes anyway."
She laughed. "My husband and I stayed in a place like that in South Dakota once. It was like Motel Hell. We could only get one station on the TV and that was a local show that had pro wrestlers performing between country and western singing acts."
"Well, this isn't quite so bad."
"You probably won't hear from me till tomorrow."
"Whenever."
Ten minutes later, after stripping down to my boxer shorts, I laid down on the bed and opened up my Robert Louis Stevenson book.
I read until I got drowsy and then I napped for a while.
When I woke up, the sunlight was waning behind the curtains. A car door opened and chunked shut. Hearty laughter, man and woman. The night people were arriving.
I went into the bathroom and washed my face and combed my hair and when I came back out I picked out a shirt and trousers for my visit to Jane Avery's tonight.
Then I looked down and realized that my bare feet had stepped in something that I was tracking across the rug.
I turned on the lamp and looked down at the stains I'd made. I raised my foot and turned it so I could see my sole, which I daubed at. Something sticky.
My eyes moved back up the trail I'd left. It stretched from where I stood to the closet door.
I went over to the closet and looked down. So much for the sharp eye of the detective. I'd walked past the small puddle beneath the door without noticing it until I'd accidentally stepped in it. No doubt about it. The Detective League of America, or whatever organization it was that detectives belonged to, was going to kick me out.
The closet door was louvered and dusty. I opened it carefully, on dry hinges that creaked, and looked inside at my clothing hanging from the rod that had been positioned at eye level. A string attached to a light socket above hung in front of my face. I gave it a tug. The naked bulb was burned out.
From here, below the line of shirts and trousers, I could see only a pair of legs from the knees on down. The shoes were tasseled and expensive cordovan loafers. The trousers appeared to be dark blue and hand-tailored. But I wasn't going to learn much this way. I pushed all my attire to the right side of the small dusty closet for a better look.
Even though I'd only seen him once, and then from a distance, I recognized the handsome and imperious face of Sam Lodge. He was still handsome, still the sneering art instructor and antique-shop owner but his charm was gone. The large butcher knife that had been shoved deep into his chest, almost to the hilt, lent him a violence that no amount of charm could have disguised anyway. The killer had shoved him up against the back of the closet so that his neck appeared broken, head resting at an awkward angle on his left shoulder. His blue eyes stared without interest at some point in the room behind me.
I closed the door and stood for a long moment trying to figure out what he'd been doing in my room in the first place. We hadn't exactly been the best of friends. But even so, the enormity of death, of extinction, took me down for a few moments. After my wife died, I'd felt the same way, knowing that never again would she ever exist, not on this world nor on the billions of worlds filling the universe, never exist again no matter how remarkable were the discoveries of future science, never touch others with that special loveliness and grace and quiet self-effacing wisdom that had been so precious to me. And somebody was going to be feeling these same things about Sam Lodge, probably his wife and certainly his parents, when they learned that he was now broken and forgotten in a closet in a shabby little motel in the middle of a nowhere planet in a nowhere backwash of the dark and rolling cosmos.
I did the only thing I could. I went to the phone and called Chief of Police Jane Avery.
1
Six days ago, he had to change cells, again. Five times in a year-and-a-half.
Another one of the warden's grand plans. Probably got the idea from one of his Sociology texts.
He did what he always did, put his toothbrush and toothpaste and shampoo and hairbrush and deodorant and shaving cream and razor into his gym bag and shambled in line behind a guard who led him to a new cellblock.
Guy in the cell is this big dumb shaggy hick with warts or something all over his face.
Guard locks him in.
First thing he does, he starts sniffing the air.
What in hell is that smell?
So dirty, so overwhelming he feels like he's choking.
"Name's Lumir."
He nods to Lumir.
"Not as loud over here in this cellblock. Not as many jigs."
But he's still sniffing, trying to figure it out.
"You don't mind, I like the top bunk."
"You cut your stools with water, Lumir?"
"Huh?"
"After you go to the bathroom, do you throw a glass of water into the toilet?"
"Huh-uh."
"You should."
"How come?"
"Kinda smells in here, Lumir."
"I don't smell nothin'."
"Yeah, well, I do."
That was six days ago and by now he knows what the trouble is. Or, troubles (plural) are:
1) Lumir doesn't cut his stools with water, something some of the more thoughtful cons learn to do for each other.
2) Lumir does not partake of the morning shower any more than two mornings a week.
3) Lumir does not use deodorant because he claims it "makes me break out, like a rash on a baby's butt donchaknow, and then I'm just ascratchin' and ascratchin' my armpits."
4) Lumir is constantly picking his nose and eating the boogers.
5) Lumir is constantly snuffling up phlegm and spitting it haphazardly at the toilet.
6) Lumir changes socks no oftener than once a week.
7) Lumir can scratch himself in a really noisy way; and Lumir scratches himself eighteen hours a day. Some day Lumir will no doubt become the first man ever able to scratch himself while he's asleep.
Now all these things are the stuff of great high hilarity when you're sitting in a bar ten years later recounting them.
But he has to spend day-in, day-out with Lumir and there's nothing funny about that at all.
Nights . . . he just lies there. He never gets used to the smells . . . the really foul stomach-turning odors of Lumir's stools . . . or the rancid stink of his socks . . . or the sweet-sour stench of his unbathed body.
For the third time, he finds himself thinking seriously about escaping.
2
An hour later, I stood in the motel parking lot, leaning against my car, listening to Jane become more and more irritated with my dishonesty. Night was coming now, and with it the immortal teenagers in their immortal hot cars cruising up and down the main street, the joy of their radios obscene against the grim business in my room.
"You didn't know him, right, Jim?"
"Right."
"But somebody killed him in your room."
"Guess so."
"Just by coincidence."
"That's the only thing I can figure out," I said.
"You think you'll tell me what's going on before anybody else gets killed?"
"I would if I could."
"What's that mean, 'if you could'?"
I was thinking of Melissa McNally. Kidnapped.
"If I could. Just what I said."
Jane sighed. In the gathering dusk, the downtown lights had come on, a little outpost of civilization in a land where only three hundred years ago Indians had roamed, killed rattlesnakes and wore them around their necks for good luck. Every once in a while you could feel those old winds blowing down the timelines, carrying the exuberance of the Mesquakie when this land belonged to them, and the peace of the vast prairie when it was nothing but wild corn and vivid flowers and free-roaming animals.
"You're wandering off," Jane said.
"I'm thinking."
She shook her head, leaned close. Some of the fifty-or-so citizens filling the driveway had heard our sparring and moved closer for a more definitive version. We walked to the other side of the boxy white ambulance where we could argue without being heard.
"Why don't you just tell me the truth?"
"Jane, listen, as soon as I can—"
The attendants were just now bringing the body out in a black bag on a stretcher. Inside, two of Jane's officers, who regularly went to Des Moines for crime-scene training, were just now going through the room for fingerprints. Jane was irritated that the medical examiner, a man shared by several small communities, had yet to put in an appearance.
Jane was about to start talking again when one of her auxiliary deputies, the Burt Reynolds macho man, swaggered up and whispered something in her ear.
"Where?" she said.
"Down the block. Right at the end."
"You're sure?"
"Heck, Jane, I used to help the guy move stuff. I should ought to know his car when I see it."
Car. I'd been wondering about that, too. How had Lodge gotten here? While waiting for Jane to show up, I'd gone up and down the parking lot checking registrations. I hadn't found a car with Lodge's name on it.
I turned back for a look at the crowd. By now, what with all the lights provided by Cedar Rapids TV station
s, the parking lot was starting to resemble a movie set, the crowd looking appropriately curious, the cops looking appropriately harried, the motel itself looking appropriately seedy. This would inevitably be a drama about a carousing husband who had met his fate in the very same motel room where he'd bopped innumerable married ladies and yummy teenage nymphets, most of whom were cheerleaders.
I saw him only because I felt his intense gaze at my back. I turned to the right and there he was, tall enough to tower over everybody in front of him. Despite the cool breezes, he wore only a T-shirt. But McNally didn't need a jacket. He had his rage and his fear to keep him warm.
I was still wondering whom he'd seen this afternoon out at the Brindle farm. And why he'd seen them. And why somebody had kidnapped his daughter.
Just as I turned away, I saw a few more familiar faces. There, several yards from McNally, at the very back of the crowd and standing on a small rise of grass, were the good Reverend Roberts, Kenny Deihl and Mindy Lane. If they were here to save Sam Lodge's soul, they were a mite late.
"There's Doc Winick," the auxiliary deputy said, referring to the rumpled little medical examiner making his way toward us.
"God," Jane said, the stress of the moment clearly starting to tell on her mood, "I sure hope he's sober."
She started to walk away. I grabbed her elbow. "Are we still on for tonight?"
She glared at me. "You don't know how much I dislike you right now."
"I'll pay for the pizza."
She leaned in. "You jerk." But she was smiling. "Double cheese."
"I used to think that was my name until my mom told me different."
"Very funny."
"I'll even bring some ice cream."
She frowned. "We shouldn't even be talking about food." She nodded to the ambulance that was just starting to pull away. "Not with Lodge dead like that."
"I'll go get myself another room for tonight." I pointed to the CRIME SCENE signs her two detectives were affixing to door and window.
