Broken English

by P. L. Gaus

  Branden saw Greyson’s right arm move forward an inch at the shoulder and then halt. He watched Greyson’s rheumy eyes and realized Greyson was making a decision. The light jacket that Greyson wore was thoroughly soaked by the rain. It clung tightly to Greyson’s ribs and betrayed a noticeable bulge under his left arm. In the fraction of a second that it took the professor to understand what Greyson was doing, and as Greyson’s right arm started out from behind his back, Cal Troyer came onto the landing above, caught the switch to the basement lights, and called out, “Mike?” from the top of the steps. As Cal descended to the basement, Greyson reversed his arm abruptly, fumbled for a moment at his beltline behind his back, turning to put his back against a wall, brought his right hand around empty, and calmly struck a match to relight his cigar.

  Cal seemed surprised to find Greyson. To the professor he said, “Mike,” and nodded a cautious greeting. To Greyson he said, “I’m Cal Troyer.”

  Greyson shifted his cigar to his left hand, stuck the thumb of his right hand casually into his belt in front, and said, “Nabal Greyson.”

  Troyer looked back and forth between Branden and Greyson, then said to Branden, “Caroline told me I’d find you here.”

  Branden crossed between the machine tools to join Cal at the bottom of the steps, and, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, he asked, “Any news of Hawkins?”

  Cal nodded his head and said, “It’s all taken care of, neat as a pin. That’s what I came over here to tell you.”

  Branden watched Greyson’s eyes, and without looking at Cal, he asked, “You know something about David Hawkins?”

  Greyson leaned back against the concrete basement wall and assumed a studiously casual pose.

  Cal said, “There’s a barn raising scheduled for next month out by a little cabin I know at the edge of a certain field. And I’ve had a long talk with a young woman who’s to live there with her new husband. I’ve just come from their wedding.”

  Branden looked with surprise at Cal and asked, “They’re married?”

  Cal proudly asserted, “They could hold the Jesse Sands trial out on the courthouse lawn if they wanted to, and expect no harm from David Hawkins, Amish husband of the Raber line.”

  Greyson pushed off the wall, drew on his cigar with a strange, satisfied smirk, and stepped toward Cal, away from Branden. He eased the shoulder holster under his wet jacket into a more comfortable position, pulled the bottom seam of his jacket down in back to cover the silenced .22 stuck under his belt, and said, “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Then he climbed the basement stairs, and disappeared through the side door into the rain.

  31

  Wednesday, June 18 5:30 A.M.

  CAROLINE Branden rose up from her pillow. She threw off the single sheet, tucked a few wayward strands of auburn hair behind her ears, and nudged the professor in the ribs. “Michael.” She rustled him again. “How did he know it was you?”

  Branden stirred, muttered something sleepily, and dropped back off. “Michael, how did Greyson know it was you in the basement?” He stirred again and came awake.

  “How did he know it was you?” Caroline asked. “You said you had the lights out.”

  Branden opened his eyes and lay staring up at the ceiling. He cleared dreams from his mind and tried to think. Greyson had said, “Professor.” That had been in the dark. In the basement. Half an hour after the professor had gone through the Hawkins’s back door. Then Cal had arrived with news of the marriage of David Hawkins to Abigail Raber. He had thought it briefly strange that the marriage hadn’t been held on the more traditional Thursday. But he hadn’t found it strange to have imagined David Hawkins coming to Abigail and Cal. Making his peace with life. Taking his bride to the cabin by the woods.

  But now he did have trouble with Caroline’s simplest of questions. How had Greyson known? How had Greyson found him there in the dark? How had Greyson known who was there?

  “I don’t know,” he said, and sat up.

  “You had the lights out?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’d been there for half an hour?”

  “Maybe more.”

  “So, how’d he know it was you?”

  He slid his legs over the edge of their bed, pulled the long green curtains back, and saw the first rays of light dawning in the east. He wandered into the bathroom, washed his face, combed his wavy hair, and brushed his short beard into place, thinking. Caroline went down to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. On the long back porch, they watched the sun rise, and they talked.

  “Where did you park?” Caroline asked.

  “At the bar. Maybe five blocks away.”

  “How did you get to the Hawkins place?”

  “Hiked in the rain, through the alleys.”

  “You said you went in through the back door. Maybe you turned the lights on.”

  “I didn’t,” Branden said, and then the obvious answer to Caroline’s simple question tore through him like a thresher. “He must have followed me there.”

  A chill went through Caroline, and she shuddered. “Why?” she asked, obviously troubled.

  Branden thought of Greyson in the dark outside the neighborhood bar where Sands had taken his drinks before he had murdered Janet Hawkins. It was the same bar where Branden, last night, had followed in Sands’s path. He thought of his walk in the rain through the back alleys, and he realized that Greyson must have been there, close behind. He thought of Greyson watching him go in, and then of Greyson standing on the lawn in the backyard, waiting while Branden sat thinking in the dark, in Hawkins’s back basement room.

  “Greyson followed me there. Maybe starting at the bar. Maybe even earlier.”

  Caroline shivered and repeated, “But why?”

  A good question, and the professor didn’t know the answer. He frowned. “I’m going down to the courthouse for the mayor’s ceremony,” he said.

  The doorbell rang, and Caroline answered it to find Branden’s private secretary, Lawrence Mallory, at the door with a fax that had come in overnight at the college. Mallory gave her the fax, left, and Caroline began reading the letter as she came back down the front hall.

  “Michael!” she exclaimed and hurried with the fax onto the back porch.

  Branden rapidly scanned the bold scrawl on the first page.

  I can’t let it go, Professor. The warden and your Mr. Greyson put in a few years together with the FBI when they were first getting started. They each had maybe ten years with the bureau. Greyson quit to take a job as a security officer at an Atlantic City casino. The attached article should tell you what you need to know. I think this is what got your reporter killed. Lt. Brown.

  The second page was a fuzzy copy of an old newspaper article. Two pictures headlined side by side atop the article. The photo on the left was a mug shot of a young, angry-looking man, and the copy read: “Jesse Sands, convicted of rape and felonious assault.” On the right, there was the unmistakable image of a young Nabal Greyson. The caption read: “Nabal Greyson, ex-FBI.”

  Branden muttered “Good grief,” and read the story aloud.

  Ex-FBI agent Nabal Greyson has vowed that Jesse Sands, convicted of raping Greyson’s fiancée Hazel Johnson in January of 1972, will never be granted early parole. “I will do everything I can to keep that monster in jail,” Greyson said.

  The victim remains in an institution in Baltimore. Greyson quit the FBI to remain near her. When asked about Greyson’s leaving the bureau, his former partner, FBI agent Allen Franks, said, “They were transferring us to Washington state. Nabal wanted to be on hand whenever Sands comes up for parole.”

  The victim’s condition has not improved, hospital officials said. Greyson now works in Atlantic City as a security guard.

  Caroline fell into a wicker chair, stunned. Branden paced in front of her, thinking, the pages of the fax hanging loose in his fingers. “I’m going down to the courthouse,” he said. “Please try to phone Bruce to tell him what
we’ve learned.”

  Branden dressed quickly and came back downstairs. Caroline said, “They’re all outside at the courthouse, Ellie says.”

  “I’m going down,” Branden said. “Try Ellie again. Maybe she can get word to Ricky Niell.”

  Branden came down off the college hills breaking the speed limit. He jerked to a stop in the No Parking zone behind the jail, and jogged around to the front of the jail on the courthouse lawn.

  Nancy Blain was there in jeans and a college T-shirt, two cameras hanging from straps around her neck. As Branden came onto the lawn near the big courthouse steps, she cranked off several frames of the microphone stand, with the mayor and city council president waiting next to Greyson at the top of the steps. Marty Holcombe stood at the bottom of the steps with his arms folded over his chest. Branden spotted Robertson on the lawn, in full uniform. Out of the corner of his eye, Branden caught a brief flutter of yellow.

  It was a still, warm morning, skies hazy. The sandstone walls and ornate windows of the courthouse seemed to hold a memory of the night air, cooling the heat of what promised to be a sultry day. The sky gave only a hint of blue. It wasn’t actually cloudy, just the typical hazy gray, with its usual surplus of humidity from the great lake to the north. The dull green copper roof of the courthouse seemed muted against the colorless sky. The traffic on the square had not yet built to its crescendo of tourist buses and Amish buggies. There were no buggies hitched at the rail.

  On the top steps to the courthouse, a tall Amish carpenter carried his wooden tray of tools to the microphone and affixed a small round plaque to the microphone stand. The plaque carried the Millersburg City insignia. It was round, six inches in diameter, with a serrated edge painted gold. An ornate scroll ran across its center, bearing the Sheriff’s Department motto—“To Serve and Protect.”

  The Amish carpenter left quietly, practically unobserved. The mayor motioned for Robertson, and the big sheriff came slowly off the lawn and up the steps. The four men posed there as Nancy Blain took photographs. Several more people assembled on the lawn and waited. The minutes passed.

  Branden stood back from the crowd next to Ricky Niell and tugged nervously at his short brown beard. Again, his eye caught a flutter of yellow, and he stepped suddenly forward, walked left, and saw a small flag of yellow silk attached to a thin, white fiberglass pole, hooked into the top branches of a dogwood next to the courthouse steps. In a shattering instant, he realized what it meant.

  The mayor stepped to the microphone and began his speech. Branden pulled Niell aside and rushed through an explanation about the yellow wind-marker flag in the branches of the dogwood. The city council president made his way to the microphone and began to speak. Branden and Niell separated on the lawn, searching for another yellow flag. At the back of the lawn, at the far corner near the intersection of Jackson and Clay, high atop a streetlight, Branden found the second fluttering strip of silk. Now, on the top step, Greyson moved to the podium and stood behind the microphone. Branden drew a line in his mind, connected the two yellow flags, and scanned the rooftops in the distance. Two hundred yards. Three hundred yards and there he saw a moment’s flash of stainless steel and blue sparkle polymer on a rooftop, four long blocks away.

  Branden shouted at Niell and tore for the courthouse steps. Niell fell in behind him, and Blain caught sight of them as they ran. Greyson’s rasping voice came out strong on the loudspeakers, and Branden saw the whole tragedy play itself out in his mind. He understood in one frantic instant the meaning of what Jesse Sands had told David Hawkins that night at the jail. He saw Greyson in his mind, the night Janet Hawkins was murdered. Greyson, who must have followed Sands there in the rain. The unspeakable image of Greyson, waiting in the shadows that night as Sands broke into the house. Greyson in the dark, watching as Janet Hawkins walked unknowingly to her death. Greyson who first “arrived” after the gunshots, to drop Jesse Sands as he fled. Greyson who let Janet Hawkins die in order to put Sands down hard on a charge of murder. And, as he ran for the steps of the Millersburg courthouse, Branden understood why Jesse Sands had never been the target of David Hawkins. Understood that it was Greyson’s unforgivable betrayal of his daughter that had drawn Hawkins here this morning with his rifle. He understood the detestable trap of vengeance that Greyson had laid for Jesse Sands, with Janet Hawkins as the bait. Janet Hawkins, murdered as much by Nabal Greyson’s waiting in the dark as by the man who had actually pulled the trigger. And, as he ran for the steps, Professor Branden saw David Hawkins in his mind’s eye, on a rooftop, four blocks away. He imagined the heat shimmers in Hawkins’s scope. His finger tightening on the custom trigger. His pulse dropping to an undetectable whisper in his ears. His rifle balanced unwaveringly on a sandbag, the cross hairs settling onto Greyson’s face.

  Branden shouted, “Down!” and tore up the stone steps. The square receded into a vast, quiet space. His pounding footsteps registered on the stone in slow motion. Traffic noises disappeared. Greyson’s crackling voice faded on the loudspeaker. The crowd turned to look. A camera on motor drive clicked and whirred in his right ear. Blain shouted as he passed her, but kept snapping shots. The men at the top of the steps backed up instinctively as they saw him approach. Greyson stood motionless behind the microphone, his right hand tucked under his left lapel.

  Branden realized he was shouting. He heard the camera behind him on the steps, its metallic shutter snapping relentlessly. His momentum carried him forward. On the last step he threw himself forward, heard the shattering impact of an explosion, and saw the round plaque on the microphone stand disintegrate in front of Greyson’s chest. He smashed into Greyson and knocked him over backwards against the sandstone walls. He expected another shot. It never came.

  Greyson scrambled out from under Branden, jerked the professor fiercely to his feet by the neck, and slammed him against a sandstone pillar, infuriated. The professor opened his eyes and tried to focus on Greyson’s apoplectic face.

  With his left hand clutching the collar at Branden’s throat, Greyson pushed the cold end of a .45 automatic into Branden’s face. Greyson shouted something unintelligible to Branden, and then he reached up with his right thumb and cocked the hammer. There was a malicious sneer on his lips and a trace of spittle on his chin. A camera near at hand motored through frame after frame.

  Greyson jerked ferociously on Branden’s collar and lifted him from his feet. The top edge of the stone steps caught Greyson off balance, and he stumbled backwards. They toppled together down the steps, the .45 still fixed in Branden’s face. Something shattered in Branden’s leg.

  The professor could see people around him shouting and running, but he heard only the click and whir of Nancy Blain’s Nikon. Ricky Niell came into view with his pistol drawn.

  Greyson abruptly stopped shouting. He noticed the camera, and his grip on Branden’s throat relaxed. Branden collapsed onto the steps of the courthouse, with his leg buckled underneath him, and with Greyson pulled down upon him. A wave of nausea engulfed Branden and then an unendurable, grinding pain. When he passed out, he was watching Ricky Niell and Bruce Robertson wrestle furiously with Greyson, to pull him up from the professor’s shattered leg.

  32

  Thursday, June 19 5:45 P.M.

  “PUSH the red button, Professor.” The nurse put the gray metal box into his hand. He pushed. Slowly, the narcotic carried him back into the painless and lonely world of Morpheus, where strange faces hovered before him without personalities. Where empty rooms of pastel lights awaited him at the end of deserted hallways. Where blankness held him adrift in a whirling nightmare of weakness. He saw pastel worms lurching, hanging from the ceiling by the score. Great entangled monsters of metal and flesh hovering over him. Unending flashes of colors and forms of indecipherable shapes projected onto the inside of his eyelids.

  There was a sip of ice water, and a moment’s awareness of his leg, in a cast strung from wires. Months later, the memories would drift back to him in segments. Ellie Troyer
and Ricky Niell, encouraging. Bruce Robertson, promising. Abigail Raber, thanking. Cal Troyer, praying. Caroline, smiling bravely.

  He would remember hearing the doctors tell Caroline that the leg had been fractured in seven places. They had inserted pins, plates, and screws. One bone fragment had pierced the skin and severed an artery. He had lost a startling amount of blood. Now they could only wait.

  In time, they tapered the morphine down. The Percocet left him with an awareness of pain, but without the will to care. He would never remember the wrenching nausea and the unconscious moaning, when the general anesthetic had worn off after the surgery. He would not remember the rotation of cold cloths on his forehead, the alarming drop in the oximeter readings, and the subsequent transfusions. The professor would not likely remember any of these things, or so at least they had told Caroline.

  After three days, once it appeared that he was mending, the doctors convinced Caroline to start sleeping at home again. Cal drove her down off the little knoll where Joel Pomerene Hospital sits beside the Wooster road. He turned at the square, and Caroline’s eyes filled with tears as they passed the courthouse steps where Nabal Greyson had snapped at the report of a rifle shot, and then pushed the muzzle of his .45 automatic into Branden’s face with murderous intent. As Cal’s truck climbed the hill to the college, she remembered how Ricky Niell had explained to her that they had had to pry Greyson loose before they could get to Branden to stop the bleeding. She remembered the obliterating avalanche of fear that had buried her when Niell had come in his cruiser to take her to the emergency room. And as Cal turned into the circle where her brick colonial stood on the eastern cliffs of town, she fought to free her mind of the image of Bruce Robertson’s sorrowful eyes, when he had met her in his uniform in the hall outside the operating room.