Debbie said, “Oh, would you, Dan? That’s sweet of you. This way, Daddy can still see if the work’s been done. It will take a load off my mind to know that.”
Dan took her arm. The two of them headed back to the house as Mr. Whitten, Brenda, Spot, and I walked on toward the waterfall.
A little while later, Brenda dropped out, saying she was too tired. She took Spot back with her, partly to keep her company and partly to go for help if anything happened to her on the way back. She had negotiated this path all her life, day and night, but it was a fact of her young life that she could never be too careful.
It was starting to feel like the Wizard of Oz, only in reverse. By the time I got to the Emerald City, all my friends would be gone. I watched Brenda to make sure she was okay on her crutches (she caught me at it and stuck her tongue out at me), then ran a few steps to catch up to the old man.
We walked on in silence until we reached the waterfall. The old man didn’t seem in the mood for conversation—he walked with his head down and his lips tight—and that suited me fine.
I could hear the falls before I could see them—a noise like bacon frying that grew to be quite a respectable roar. The workmen had done a good job. Everything that was supposed to be there was there. Mr. Whitten said so. Then he took hold of one of the guy wires of one of the tents, put his foot up on a tent peg, and looked up at the moon.
He had to speak loudly for me to hear him over the noise of the water. I had visions of the ceremony Saturday, with bride, groom, and bishop all having to scream to be heard—“I do!”
I didn’t have any trouble hearing Mr. Whitten, though. He said, “Know why she went back there, Cobb?”
“She said she wasn’t feeling well.”
“Not Debbie. Brenda. And don’t try to tell me she went back because she was tired. She went to spy on her sister and your friend.”
“Why should she do that?”
He tore his eyes away from the moon and looked at me. “Cobb, I’ve been a newspaperman since before you were born. Do you really think just because I’m old I have to be blind and an ass, too?”
“I never thought you were.”
“Well, you damned well act that way. All of you. I know how the currents are running here. Your Jewish friend wants to bust up my daughter’s marriage. You want to deny that?”
I threw a pebble into the water.
“You and I want him to fail, don’t we?” the old man went on.
“It’s none of my business,” I told him. And the fact that I was lying was none of his business. “Besides,” I went on, “even if it were the case, what could we do about it?”
“Nothing legal. I just want you to know I can tell which way the wind is blowing. Maybe you just get on my nerves acting like I’m a silly old dummy who can’t tell what his own daughters are up to.”
“What about Brenda, then?”
“Oh, she wants your friend and Debbie split up permanently, too. She’s had a crush on him since she was a baby.” He shook his head. “There is something about a good-looking Jew that women can’t resist, have you ever noticed that, Cobb? Never could figure it out. And your friend is definitely good-looking. In a dark sort of way, I mean.”
I was looking at the moon now, thinking, God help us, this man controls the primary sources of information in the hometowns of some fifteen million Americans.
“The thing is, I figured he’d get over Debbie long before this. That’s why I’ve never said anything. My experience with Jews is that they stick with their own kind.”
“His kind,” I said, measuring the words. “His kind, Mr. Whitten, are not necessarily Jews. His are the kind of people who stay friends through thick and thin, who never ever let a friend down through their own fault. Who help you even when you’re doing something stupid and don’t turn their backs on you even after you’ve done it. He happens to be in love with your daughter, Mr. Whitten, and because of that, she’s gotten extra helpings of all these things. Sometimes more than she deserves.”
He looked at me as if I’d gone crazy. “Well of course. Debbie has treated him terribly. I didn’t mean any offense, Cobb. Hell, I never even knew you were Jewish in the first place.”
I was going to straighten him out but decided it would be more trouble than it was worth. “Let’s go back to the house,” I said.
We were about halfway there when we heard the screams.
They were loud screams, piercing ones to penetrate from inside the house and this far out into the grounds. And they didn’t stop.
I left the newspaper magnate in my dust as I sprinted for the house. The dogs added their wails to the night as I passed the kennel. I slipped once and went down, but I turned it into a shoulder roll, regained my feet and kept going. Even as I rushed toward the house, I was dreading what I’d see when I got there.
Just as I got to the back door, the screaming stopped. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. I pulled the door open, sprinted through the kitchen into the main hallway.
I was discarding possibilities as I went. Fire was out. Flood was out. Robbery was unlikely—I hadn’t heard any gunshots, and Dan and Spot together, with karate and teeth, would have been more than a match for any unarmed intruder.
When I reached the bottom of the main stairs I heard sobbing. I noticed the only trace of damage I’d seen in the house. Two of the posts in the stair railing had been broken out, snapped in the middle like matchsticks.
I was halfway up the stairs before it occurred to me I might have wanted to take along a candlestick or something for a weapon. I decided not to take the time to go back.
I wouldn’t have needed it anyway. Nobody up there was going to hurt me; there was only Brenda, Spot, and Debbie. Brenda was leaning against the left-hand wall of the wide hallway. She was the one doing the sobbing. Huge tears rolled from her face and made dark spots on the carpet. Spot was standing over Debbie, licking her face exactly the way he licks mine when he wants to wake me up.
Debbie was lying on the carpet near the other wall in an attitude of sleep, but Spot was wasting his time. Even from this distance I could see Debbie was never going to wake up. She was small and pathetic, lying there. She was stretched out, but there was still enough room to walk around her without touching a wall.
I noted without thinking much about it that Dan had been right about Debbie’s face and the small purple blotches that discolored it. They stood out very distinctly against the whiteness of her dead skin. They were the same color as the great angry purple welt across her throat that showed where someone had hit her with enormous force.
I wondered if the customary music had been coming from that throat when somebody smashed it.
I wondered where my friend was. “Where’s Dan?” I asked Brenda. She looked at me dumbly through her tears.
“Dan!” I yelled. “Dan!”
No answer. The big house swallowed up the sound.
CHAPTER 10
“Thank you! And welcome to the fastest half hour in television.”
–Mike Stokey, “Stump the Stars” (CBS)
I GUESS YOU COULD call what I was doing over the next several minutes thinking. My brain was very obligingly providing me with a List of Things to Do and even giving me hints as to how to go about them. What it refused to do was draw any conclusions. I was doing all these constructive things without the least idea of why I was doing them.
The first thing on the list was Find Out What Time It Is. That was easy. Through some quirk of my brain, I always know what time it is within ten minutes or so, and I wear a watch besides. I estimated it was nine-thirty; the watch said nine twenty-six. I congratulated myself. Then I decided that meant we’d heard Brenda scream about nine-twenty or so. Then I got on with the list.
The next thing to do was Call the Cops. I took a chance and called 911, the instant police-fire-ambulance number in New York. Lots of cities have installed systems like that, and I remembered Sewanka had been talking about it the last time I’d been up this way.
It worked. A small triumph. I was speaking to the police department in seconds. I thought about asking for Chief Cooper, but I decided against it. Once I gave them the address, they’d call him. There was no way the chief was going to be left out of this. The desk sergeant took my name; I told him what, where, and when; he said men would be there right away. I hung up on him before he could tell me not to leave the scene. I wanted to keep my options open.
“Where’s the phone book?” Brenda didn’t hear the question, or if she did, she was ignoring it. She was sitting on the sofa, her head between her knees, sobbing. Outside, I could hear her father yelling as he approached the house. “Cobb, goddammit, what the hell is going on?” The voice was still distant and quite breathy, but Mr. Whitten was a determined old man. He’d get here before I was ready for him.
“Brenda!” I snapped. She looked up at me, anguished and sullen.
“What?” she demanded.
“Cut out the crying or you’ll rust your leg.”
She goggled at me for a second, astonished that anyone could be so tasteless. Then she started to laugh. It wasn’t the healthiest kind of laughter, but this wasn’t the healthiest kind of situation. I’d shocked her into listening to me—that was the best I’d hoped for in any case.
Brenda was still laughing. “Matt, you’re sick!”
“Brenda, your father’s going to be here in a few minutes. A few seconds. We’ve got to be able to handle him. I won’t be able to do it alone. You’ve got to help me keep him downstairs.”
“Me? Downstairs? Why?”
I didn’t have time to be anything but blunt. I made a mental note to hate myself for it later. “We’ve got to keep everybody away from Debbie until the police get here.”
There were a million things Brenda could have said in response to that, but if I’d made a list of them, the thing she did say wouldn’t have been on it. “Spot’s still up there,” she reminded me.
“Yeah. He might as well stay. He’s evidence.” That was more or less true. The cops were going to find dog hairs all over the corpse and the murder scene; they might as well find the dog, too.
“Brenda,” I said again, “where’s the phone book?”
She was going to ask me what the hell I wanted with the phone book but saw my face and decided against it. “It’s in the cabinet the phone sits on.”
That made sense. I might have been thinking, but I wasn’t thinking any too well. I pulled the phone book from the cabinet and turned to the B’s. E. R. Bowen. The best lawyer in town, according to Les Tilman. Next, I reminded myself, to the district attorney.
There was a half-column of Bowens, but E. R. Bowen, atty., was easy to find. My luck was holding; there was a night number. I dialed it, made a mistake, pushed the disconnect button, and dialed again, grumbling. You’d have thought people as rich as the Whittens could have afforded Touch-Tone phones.
The night number, as I’d figured it would be, was an answering service. I gave my name again, said it was an emergency, and asked that E. R. Bowen call me back immediately at this number. The operator said she’d do her best; I hung up the phone and began chewing my fingernails.
I wondered what had happened to the old man; he hadn’t come in yet, and I’d heard no further yelling. Maybe the effort of running was too much for him, I thought. Maybe he’s lying outside dying of a heart attack. Maybe, I thought, you ought to shut up, Cobb.
He came in just as the phone rang. It would happen like that. I didn’t know what to deal with first.
Brenda saved me. She got to her feet, without using her crutches, and lunged across the room into her father’s arms. The force of her embrace drove the rest of the old man’s wind from him, and all he could do was stand there, holding his daughter and trying to catch his breath.
I picked up the phone. “Matt Cobb,” I said.
A woman’s voice said, “Is this Matt Cobb?”
Under other circumstances, I would have made a remark, but I wasn’t in the mood. I just said, yes, I was Matt Cobb.
“Did you go to Whitten College?”
Great, I thought. I’m in the middle of a murder case, and I stumble into a phone solicitation for alumni contributions. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” I demanded. My temper was straining to break free.
“This is E. R. Bowen,” the voice said.
“Oh,” I said. So E. R. Bowen was a woman. Fancy that. Les had told me, but I’d forgotten in the heat of my exchange with the police chief.
“I want to retain you,” I told her.
She was amused. “You want to retain me?”
Good-bye, temper. “Will you stop doing that? This is important!”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“No, goddammit, but after this phone call, I’m going to. Do you want to be hired or not?”
The voice was all business now. “What’s the nature of your problem?”
“Okay, the first thing I have to tell you is I’m not the client. The client is Daniel Morris, here’s his address.” I gave it to her, then said, “I want you to go there and wait with him until the police show up.”
“He’s not in custody?”
“He will be.”
“What for?”
“Murder. Probably Murder Two.”
“You want me to go to the house of a man who’s a fugitive from a murder charge?”
“He’s not a fugitive from anything. Look. Get your biggest, toughest friends to go with you, all right? Don’t worry, I’ll tell him you’re coming. If he’s home. If he’s not home, God help me, I’ll need you, too, because I’ll be leaving the scene of a crime to go look for him. You’ll hear from me later.”
“This is most irregular,” she said. Lawyers say that all the time. They get disbarred if they don’t call something irregular at least four times a week.
“I know it is. The question is, will you do it?”
She sighed, a very soft, very nice sigh. “I’ll do it. Let me have that address again, will you?”
I gave it to her, then added, “Somebody today told me you were the best criminal lawyer in private practice in western New York. Are you?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “I am.”
“Good,” I said.
She sighed again. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you, Matt?”
I said something brilliant, like, “Huh?” but she’d already hung up.
I didn’t have time to worry about it. I dialed Dan’s number.
The phone rang. And rang. I stuck my head out of the phone alcove to see what Brenda and her father were up to. They were on the couch. The old man’s face, which had been red when he came in the door, was now white and numb-looking. Brenda was crying again, but at least she’d kept the old man busy.
Dan answered on the thirteenth ring. He was surly and his voice was rough, the way it tended to get when he’d had too much to drink. Wonderful, I thought.
“Who is it?” Dan growled. “Leave me alone.”
“Dan, it’s Matt.”
Dan began to cry. I had never known him to cry before. “Oh, Jesus, Matt, I’ve ruined everything, I don’t know how it happened—I—I just couldn’t make things go right—”
“Dan—”
“It’s over now. I wish I was dead. I never dreamed it would turn out like this, how could I know? I only—”
“Dan!” I said. “For God’s sake, shut up!”
He subsided, but it was too late. I should have known this was going to happen. I had now given myself a choice of what I was going to do on the witness stand, because it was damn sure I was going to be a witness in this case. I could perjure myself and deny this phone call ever took place, or I could tell the jury what he said and parcel my best friend off to jail for the rest of his life.
The only consolation was I could now ask the question I was afraid to learn the answer to. It might make things worse, but not much.
“Dan,” I said, “what happened here tonight?�
��
“Don’t you know?”
“Humor me.”
“Matt, I’ll pay for the banister.”
“To hell with the banister! Tell me!”
“I tried to talk Debbie out of this stupid marriage.”
“Yeah, go on.”
“Then we had a fight. She told me I was petty and jealous and she never wanted to see me again.”
“Then?”
“She told me to get out, and I left.”
“Did you hit her?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Did you?”
“No. God knows the little bitch deserved it, but I couldn’t hit her. I took it out on the banister on the way out. Why?”
“I’ll tell you later. No time now. Listen, Dan, a lady named E. R. Bowen is on her way to your place. You do whatever she tells you, all right?”
He wanted to know more, but I made him agree and hung up. So now I knew Dan was innocent. I knew he was innocent because I believed that under the circumstances he couldn’t have faked his reactions with me just now. I also knew I was the only person on God’s green earth who’d believe that. Dan was in big trouble.
Because right now, just down a short hallway from where I stood, A. Lawrence Whitten, the most powerful man in this part of the state, was yelling at the top of his voice that Dan Morris had killed his daughter, and that he would pay for it Dan Morris would pay if he, Whitten, had to kill him himself.
And Mr. Whitten was a determined old man.
CHAPTER 11
“... Now do you recognize this voice from your past?”
–Ralph Edwards, “This Is Your Life” (NBC)
AN HOUR OR SO later, I was back in the basement headquarters of the Sewanka Police Department. The desk sergeant wanted to know if he could help me.
“I wish you could,” I said sincerely. At that point, I was wishing anybody could help me. “I’m just here to see Miss Bowen when she gets done talking to her client.”
Killed with a Passion Page 6
