The End of the Pier

by Martha Grimes

  They all had kids. They all had kids who a lot of people saw as neglected at best and abused at worst.

  The thought simply stuck. Well, it was ridiculous. Most women did; and there was Eunice—she didn’t fit. As much as he tried to rid himself of the answer, it still came rushing toward him, insane and senseless. Neglected children. Tony. Loreen. Nancy. Elizabeth. In the mind of the murderer, neglected. But Eunice? Her mother, Molly, watched over her like . . . her mother, Molly, hated Eunice. Eunice starts rolling in the hay like a common whore, some would say, maybe to spit in her mother’s face . . .

  Dear God, the one person who might be able to see in this insanity some sort of design was one of the victims . . .

  He was still trying to piece it together when his radio started squawking, bristling with what sounded like overlapping voices. But it was only Donny, his deputy. He lifted the mike and pushed the button. “DeGheyn.”

  “Sheriff? Sheriff?” Donny always seemed to be questioning just who that was.

  Sam sighed. “Yes. It’s the sheriff.”

  “Listen, Sheriff. Maud Chadwick’s kid—you know him?—her kid’s trying to get in touch.”

  Sam held the handset away from him. Donny was shouting. Donny always shouted, because he didn’t appear to believe contact was ever being made over airwaves, radar, whatever. “Stop shouting. What about Chad?”

  “What? What?” Donny bellowed. “Okay. Listen, the Chadwick kid needs to talk to you.”

  Sam frowned. “Did he say why?”

  There was a silence.

  “Did he say why? Donny?”

  Nothing. Had the damned fool signed him off? He did it all the time.

  “Sheriff? You there? No. He didn’t say.”

  “Where was he calling from?”

  Fade-out again. Then the voice crackled back. “From Meridian. I think that’s where.”

  Meridian was about fifty miles out of Belle Harbor, about a hundred miles from here. What the hell was Chad doing there? “Donny?”

  Nothing but static and distant, tinny sound. Donny could have been beating a plate with a spoon for all Sam knew. He hadn’t been Sam’s first choice for deputy, certainly. “Donny?” Now Sam was shouting.

  “Jail.”

  “What’re you talking about? Chad’s in jail?”

  Dead silence. Donny was probably messing with the board and he’d cut Sam off again.

  He replaced the mike and switched on the engine. The car lurched along the dirt road and took the turn onto Main with two wheels an inch off the ground.

  • • •

  He banged the door of the office shut and told Donny to get his feet off the desk and go and help out Sedgewick’s men.

  Recognizing this was indeed the sheriff, Donny yanked his belt and holster from a shelf and scrambled for the door.

  Sam didn’t bother sitting down; he placed the call to Meridian.

  • • •

  “No, he ain’t exactly arrested.”

  Involuntarily, Sam put his hand on his holster. His nerves were on edge, and the Meridian police force—if you could call it that—was a cluster of Donnys. “Well, if he ain’t exactly, then how about letting the kid go?”

  “It’s this car. The kid was driving this Jag that was reported missing.”

  “You’re saying Murray Chadwick stole the car?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what, exactly?”

  “This real bad accident out on twenty-nine. About ten miles from here, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know. What’s that have to do with the Jag?”

  “It’s all the same people. I mean, the Jag owner—well, some family member—was in the accident. We’re just trying to put it together. It was reported, see. This Jag that the kid was driving. Some car, lemme tell you. No wonder it got stole.”

  Jesus. “I thought you said he didn’t steal it.”

  “Yeah. Well, not exactly.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  • • •

  Chad told Sam what had happened. “I wasn’t stealing the fucking car, Sam. And I don’t think Mr. Bond ever reported it that way. I don’t think he’d do that, and anyway, he wouldn’t care about a fucking car at this point.” He was close to weeping; he sounded like he already had, and a lot.

  “They don’t think you did. They’re just trying to get the whole thing figured out. That might take them some time, and I don’t see why you should have to hang around for it.”

  “I was on my way home. I tried to call Mom, but no one answered. Is she down there on the fucking pier?”

  He sounded little-boy enraged. It would all be, in some part, Maud’s fault. Sam smiled. “Yeah, she’s down on the fucking pier. If there’s any problem about leaving there, just tell them to call me. They know me. It’s probably as much excitement as Meridian’s seen in a year.”

  Chad laughed. A weak sound, but better than before. “Right. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours.”

  “For Christ’s sake, you might have a Jag, but don’t get picked up for speeding. I’m going to see your mother.”

  There was a brief silence. Then he said, “Listen, thanks, Sam.”

  “Don’t mention it. Just get here.”

  “You going to tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  Now there was a longer silence, an in-depth silence, as if the boy were turning over the years.

  “I don’t know.” He sounded puzzled.

  FIVE

  “No, of course you can’t,” said Wade. “Don’t know what got into me. Course you can’t put on the dress. Sorry—I guess I wasn’t thinking, Maud. A lot’s happened.”

  Maud felt relief for a second, loosened her grip on the arms of the rocking chair, but tightened up again almost immediately. It was still Dr. Hooper’s dress, wasn’t it? And Wade was looking at her, a look she did not return; she just kept her profile to him, her eyes on the dock opposite.

  He was still there, the man or boy, the tiny red eye of the cigarette winking on and off. Chad. She concentrated as hard as she could on the name and the figure over there. Chad. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to project the name across the water.

  “Things that’s been happening, Maud, I thought maybe you’d understand.” He paused. “What’s wrong? You got your eyes shut tight as a baby.”

  “Baby.” The word sounded, in his mouth, obscene. But she opened her eyes. Her throat worked. Maud raised her fisted hand to cough delicately, to see if any words would come out, for she’d seen, and given no sign whatever she’d seen, the knife. “Why, nothing, Wade. Nothing at all. I guess I’m just surprised you’d be out this late.” It amazed her that she sounded perfectly natural. Amazed her she had the control—even the control to smile a little. “You strike me as someone usually in bed at sundown. With the ch—” She coughed. And then she knew why she’d not said the word “chickens.” Because of Eunice out there in the barn. He’d killed Eunice, too. All of them.

  Now she even forced herself to rock the chair; it creaked on the rotting planks, and she felt her neck creak, too, as she ever-so-slowly turned her face to look at him with that same stiff smile. Wade Hayden was grinning crazily back at her, but she didn’t look away. She dared to look straight at the knife. “Wade, what’ve you got that old kitchen knife for? You can’t hunt with that.” She said it slowly and almost dreamily, her mouth curled up in that memory of a smile. The way, she thought, Joey smiled.

  Shirl would go on seeing Joey in the Rainbow Café forever. But she was never going to see Chad again, never.

  Somehow she managed to go on rocking, holding Dr. Hooper’s blue dress, and saying, while he was looking down at the knife with a puzzled expression, “What things, Wade? Why don’t you tell me what things have been happening?”

  “That’s what I was meaning to do, Maud. Bad things.” Now the knife was between his thumb and forefinger, dangling, swaying slightly. “Things I did. I thought you might hear me out.”
/>   She tried to bring her son’s face to mind and she couldn’t. It was blotted out by the fear.

  She felt a momentary reprieve. Yes, she assured him, she would hear him out. If she didn’t look at him, if she concentrated on the dock over there, she might be able to convince herself that this wasn’t really happening. Beyond that row of little boats she had no future. She wondered if she even had a past. It was all unreal. “What things were those, Wade?” she asked again, conversationally, her fingers pleating the blue dress.

  Wade was crossing his legs, clearing his throat, as if to get comfortable and in voice.

  “You didn’t know me and Eunice very well.”

  No, she hadn’t. Her tongue felt thick. He’d murdered his own child.

  “We was like that.” He held up two fingers close together. “Much more’n her and her mother. Yeah, Eunice and me, we understood one another. Trouble was, Eunice took herself off whorin’ around.”

  It jolted her, the way he said this, his voice so measured and calm. Maud’s hair was a cap of perspiration; her scalp prickled. She would have to hide her terror.

  “. . . whorin’, and got herself pregnant.” He turned it into three syllables—“preg-a-nant.” Now his voice, almost guttural before, became high and thin and whined like a saw as he brought his fist down on the arm of the aluminum chair. “You can’t have that goin’ on, not in your own house—not your own flesh.”

  She could feel the heat coming off him; it was like the shimmering heat that can rise, miragelike, from baked surfaces—a road, the desert. She had to answer him: “No. No, you can’t, Wade.” Keep saying his name. Did he even hear her? Did he even know where he was?

  “Eunice, she’d’ve turned out like that Loreen Butts or that Tony what’s-her-name.”

  He had forgotten. Maud shut her eyes. He’d actually forgotten the name, as if Tony were only some lost acquaintance, someone he’d known casually.

  “Did you ever know Loreen Butts?” His tone was conversational, casual, as if they’d just stopped on the pavement to exchange a bit of gossip.

  No. The word did not come out; she choked on it, swallowed. Maud cleared her throat. “No,” she said firmly.

  He turned to her. “You coming down with something, Maud? You’re all over sweat. Nothin’ worse’n a summer cold.”

  Nothing worse. She clutched her book. Behind her, twigs snapped. Sam.

  It’s not Sam. You didn’t hear a car. Forget Sam. She tried to shut out Wade’s voice. He was talking about Loreen Butts.

  “Thing was, she took up with that Boy Chalmers. He’s queerer than a three-dollar bill, everyone knows that. In a way it’s just as well that sheriff in Elton County arrested him. Boy Chalmers.” Wade leaned over, spat onto the boards. “His kind shouldn’t be walking around. Don’t surprise me trash like that Loreen Butts would take up with Boy Chalmers.” Now he was back to talking about Eunice again. “Thing is, Eunice’s ma never really knew how to raise her, though I expect she tried. Not like my own momma. You should’ve known her . . .”

  His angel of a mother. Maud gripped her book, the blue dress now lying folded over the chair arm, and listened to this peculiar, disjointed tale, about how wonderful his angel mother was. It was all a lie. Wade’s mother had gone off when he was just a little boy. Sam had got it from Molly Hayden; even Molly, so tight-lipped around nearly everyone, even she would talk to Sam.

  Where was he? Was he coming back?

  “Dr. Hooper.” Maud didn’t know she’d said it aloud until Wade turned to her, turned as if he were still with cold, his whole torso, not just his head.

  “She had you all fooled, didn’t she, that woman? Probably just because she was a doctor, you thought she was better than other people? You know them letters she used to write? Well, you ought to have read them letters and I bet you wouldn’t think she was so wonderful.”

  His voice, Maud thought, had taken on the rancor and bitterness of an invalid, a sick old woman like Aunt Simkin.

  “You didn’t know she walked out on her boy, did you?” His tone had deepened. “Letters is bad news, most of the time. Being postmaster, well, I should know. Postmasters got a sacred trust.”

  She felt him looking at her, wanting her to ask. “I expect they do, Wade. I’m not sure just what it is, myself.” She coughed.

  “It’s a sacred trust to know. To know what goes on in your town. That Billy Katz—you know him? He’s postal clerk over in Hebrides. Billy Katz is a disgrace to the profession.” Wade leaned forward, spat into the dark water, then continued, conversationally. “Yeah, that Billy. If it wasn’t for me going over there to pinch-hit him, well, that town’d hardly get any service at all. Don’t think I didn’t know all about Loreen Butts and that Antoinette woman. Ain’t much goes on a postmaster don’t know about.” He took a pull at the can of beer, laughed as he swallowed, and wiped the spittle from his mouth. “Sam DeGheyn thinks I was over to Hebrides all that afternoon. You remember? Afternoon Eunice was murdered?”

  As if this were just another to-be-forgotten date on the calendar. Maud’s fingers were tight around the blue dress. She couldn’t answer.

  “Sam DeGheyn thinks he is the cat’s pee-jays around here.” His tone became sly. “He was carrying on with that Alonzo woman, did you know that?”

  Maud shook her head. She knew it wasn’t so, and yet a flicker of jealousy spurted up within her. It was astonishing that in the midst of all this fear, she could feel something as clear as jealousy.

  “Oh, hell, yeah.” He kept his eyes on her. “Fooled around over there in the courthouse after hours. I bet he had her in just about every—”

  “How’d you fool him, Wade?” She blurted it out in a voice that sounded tight as violin strings. “How’d you put one over on Sam?”

  His laugh was more of a giggle. It was awful. “Easy as pie. All I had to do was jump in my pickup and come back to the farm and then go back again. Only took an hour, not much more. Anyone’d come into the post office, all I had to do was say I was in the john or was sick. No one come in, I guess. Who wants to talk to Billy Katz, anyway? He don’t know his ass from—excuse my French.”

  The giggle was frightening, almost worse than his thumb running the blade of the knife.

  “Dr. Elizabeth Hooper . . . Dr. Elizabeth Hooper . . .”

  He repeated the name again and again as if he were stroking it, tasting it. He told Maud how he had watched, that very night, from inside the dark post office. “She wasn’t nothin’ but a whore, Maud.” His voice had taken on again that whining petulance. “Had to do her, didn’t I? Just like I did the others. What the hell did she care about her boy? She just walked out on him, didn’t she? Like Loreen Butts left that baby of hers time and again so she could go with that Boy Chalmers.” The voice had changed to that high, rasping whine again, as he talked about standing at the window of the post office. It was down the street a little from the Brandywine Guest House, but he could look up that way and watch.

  “Don’t . . .” Maud held up her hands to stop him telling her about what had happened.

  It was crazy to challenge him, to suggest he’d done something wrong, but she couldn’t help herself. Not when it came to Dr. Hooper. “She was here because of her son. Because of him she came through here like clockwork, once a month, just to see her son.”

  Maud was weeping now, looking out over the water. All of those people across the lake and not one of them could help her. Sam.

  “It’s too late.”

  The change in his voice jolted through her like an electrical shock. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the knife move, no longer forgotten. She had said just the wrong thing: it was not her place to argue Dr. Hooper’s case; it was her place to tell Wade he was right. Wade Hayden needed absolution; he might be going to kill them both, but he needed something from her. That was the reason his voice was so cold with rage.

  Suddenly the fear left her. She couldn’t understand why or how it had fled to go and watch her from some other p
lace. She squinted, looking across the water, and saw either the same figure returned or another much like it. The figure was no more than a black stick, but she could still see the tiny light of cigarette or cigar. It was as if the fear had fled across the water to stand way over there and observe her.

  Maud just sat there waiting, smoothing her hand over her book of poetry as if it were some kind of talisman. She did not fully understand this new feeling; here she was sitting on the end of the pier with a madman, a psychopath, a murderer, and she felt lightweight. Looking across the water, she felt the scene before her dissolve into particles of light and then reform itself into something the same yet subtly different, something that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye but could only be felt. “Ramon Fernandez, tell me . . .”

  Wade was saying something.

  “What?” she asked.

  “ ‘Ramon,’ you said.”

  She must have said the name aloud.

  “ ‘Ramon Ferdinand,’ you said. Who’s he?”

  “Not ‘Ferdinand.’ Fer-nan-dez.”

  “What kinda name’s that? Is that a Spanish name?”

  She smiled slightly, smoothed her hand over the book. “Maybe it’s Cuban.”

  “Sounds like a spic.” Angrily, he spit into the water. He seemed to have forgotten why he was here.

  She smiled again. “Well, he’s not.”

  “It’s one of them spic names,” he said sulkily.