Midnight Haul

by Max Allan Collins

  “Please, Mrs. Meyer…”

  “Kemco was one of the few things in Paul’s life that he was satisfied with. He was assistant plant manager, and he had a good future… this was just a first, small step for him with the company. I’ll tell you something about Kemco, Mr. Crane. Paul lied to them when he filled out his application forms; he withheld information, namely that he had been in a mental institution, and more than once. This came out, after Paul’s suicide, of course. But they are paying me the full pension due Paul. Which they have no legal obligation to do.”

  “Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”

  “Suspicious?” She raised a tiny fist as if to strike him, then quickly lowered it. “It seems humane. It seems very moral. It does not seem suspicious. Don’t bad-mouth Kemco around me, Mr. Crane. The Kemco people have been kind to me. Generous. I think your suspicions, your accusations, are as irresponsible as they are unfounded.”

  “I do have suspicions. But I’m not making any accusations.”

  “By implication you are. Mr. Crane. I don’t mean to fly off the handle at you. I’m not a cold person, really. I, if anyone, can understand how you feel. What you’re going through. You can say you didn’t come here for advice, and I said I wouldn’t give you any if you asked. But I do have some. Let go of her. Your fiancée. Let her die. Let her be dead. Accept it. Go on living. Stop this vain attempt to place the blame for what happened on somebody or some thing. Even if someone was to blame, she’d still be dead.”

  He couldn’t tell her, didn’t know how to tell her, that this had gone beyond that; that he had started to share Boone’s conviction that there was a criminal conspiracy, here, endangering lives.

  So he just said, “Thank you. I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

  “Good,” she said, smiling her thin red line, extending her hand, which he took and shook, as a way of signing a truce.

  And he left her, standing in the doorway, watching him go.

  Even a block away, as he walked by Mary Beth’s, he could feel those dark eyes on his back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The grade school was a one-story modern building on the west edge of town. It was approaching three o’clock. Crane stood near the playground across from the school, leaning against a telephone pole, watching school buses pull up for the farm kids, while older kids, who served as crossing guards, were getting in place at the curb.

  He didn’t imagine too many of the kids would be making a beeline for this playground, which was a dreary little place, just a flat piece of land running back to a fence that separated it from the backyards of some modest, modern homes. There was a jungle gym, slide, swings and so on on it, but no trees or bushes, just some puddles scattered around, from a recent rain.

  Soon the kids were streaming out from the school, and among them was Boone’s kid, Billy. He was wearing a blue zipper jacket and striped T-shirt and jeans. And a sullen expression. Or at least the expression was sullen once he’d seen Crane.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “Your mom isn’t home right now,” Crane told the boy.

  “So?”

  “I just thought you should know.”

  “I can walk home by myself. You aren’t walking me.”

  “I’m not here for that, Billy. I came to talk to somebody at the school. But I wanted to catch you so you didn’t wonder why the house was empty when you got home.”

  “Well. Okay.”

  “I’ll be home in a little while.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The boy walked away. Another little boy, a tow-headed kid in a denim jacket, joined Billy. They roughhoused as they walked along, picked up some rocks from the playground and hurled them at each other, narrowly missing, the rocks careening off the sidewalk, flashing bright colors. Crane supposed he ought to tell Billy to quit throwing rocks, but as much as he liked Boone, he just couldn’t find it in him to give a damn about her bratty kid.

  He entered the school and went to the front office and was directed to room 714, where Mrs. Alma Price was waiting for him.

  She was behind her desk, grading some papers. Behind her, on the blackboard (which was green), were some multiplication problems and a geography assignment. The little tan-topped desks that filled the fourth-grade classroom seemed very small to Crane, incredibly small compared to the fourth-grade classroom in his memory.

  Alma Price was a redheaded woman in her late forties, not unpleasantly plump, with a wide attractive face and the same sort of smile, which she gave Crane generously as she rose from behind her desk, smoothing out her green dress, greeting him with an outstretched hand.

  He shook it and smiled back.

  “There’s a normal-size chair over there,” she said, gesturing to one corner, as she returned to her desk. “Pull it up and we’ll talk.”

  He did so.

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking to see you here at school,” she said, still smiling, but some strain in the smile, now.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m just grateful you were willing to put up with this.”

  “Having gone through something very similar to what you are, I’m more than happy to give you whatever benefit my experience might give you. I take it Mary Beth must’ve mentioned me.”

  That caught him by surprise.

  “Uh, no,” he said.

  That caught her by surprise.

  “Why did you come to see me then? Who told you that Mary Beth had been a student of mine?”

  “No one,” Crane admitted. “I didn’t know. I’m fascinated to find it out, but I didn’t know.”

  She pushed her hands against the edge of her desk, as if about to rise, but remained seated, studying Crane. “Then just what are you doing here, Mr. Crane?”

  “As I said on the phone, I’m aware that you lost your husband, several months ago…”

  “Seven months ago.”

  “And that like Mary Beth, he committed suicide.”

  “In our garage. Shut himself in there, stuffed all the air openings with cloth, turned on the car and lay down near the tail pipe. He went to sleep and never woke up.”

  She said that matter-of-factly, but there was a tremble under it.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Price.”

  “I’m sorry about Mary Beth. I’m sorry for you. She’d have been a wonderful wife. Now. Excuse me, please, Mr. Crane, but what exactly brought you to me? Is it simply the fact that we both have suffered the suicides of someone we loved? If so, I will try to help. But I’ll be frank: time won’t heal the wound. You’ll learn to live with it, but you won’t forget it, and it won’t heal over. I’m sorry, but that, I’m afraid, is the reality of it.”

  “Mrs. Price, your advice is appreciated, and taken to heart, believe me. But it’s not why I’m here. I’m here because there is something your husband and Mary Beth had in common beyond suicide.”

  She nodded. “They both worked for Kemco.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Of all the students I ever had, Mary Beth was my favorite. Of all the teachers she ever had, I was her favorite. I kept track of her. She kept in touch with me. Of course I knew she was in town this summer, working for Kemco. Of course I knew that.”

  “I think Mary Beth may not have committed suicide, Mrs. Price. I think it may have only looked like suicide. I think it may have had something to do with Kemco.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “I don’t know what I am. But ‘surprised’ isn’t it.”

  “Then you had similar suspicions about your husband’s death?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “And?”

  “I eventually dismissed them.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s natural to want to explain away the suicide of your husband. Or wife, or fiancée. It’s human to want to reject the notion that someone you loved, someone that loved you, would want to end his or her life.”

  “So y
ou decided your suspicions were groundless?”

  “Not groundless. But I did decide that they were just suspicions and nothing more.”

  “Why do I sense there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  “There’s much I’m not telling you.”

  “Mrs. Price, this is very important to me. I think you can understand how important.”

  “Of course I can. But I don’t want to encourage this… excuse me, obsession of yours.”

  “Do I sound obsessed?”

  “No. You seem rational. In control. But that’s your outward appearance. I believe that, inside, you’re avoiding reality. That you will do whatever you have to to convince yourself Mary Beth did not take her life.”

  “Was your husband the sort of man who would take his life?”

  “Yes. He did, after all.”

  “And you’re convinced of that.”

  “I am. I can see there’s no way around this. I’m going to have to share something personal with you. I’d like not to. But I will if you insist. And I’m going to make you insist, Mr. Crane.”

  “Please, Mrs. Price.”

  “If you insist. My husband, George, had a problem. The problem was my first husband. My late first husband, by whom I had two children, boy in college, daughter married and here in town with children of her own. I married just out of high school, and it wasn’t until my first husband died, fifteen years ago, that I went to college. You see my first husband’s name also was George. George Waters. I loved him very much. He died of cancer, when he was just thirty-seven years old. You know he seemed so much older than me when we were married; I always thought of him as being so old. And now I’m forty-seven, ten years older than he was when he died. Well. So three years ago my other George came along. A sweet, caring man. When we were just seeing each other, we had no problems. After we married, well… the coincidence of having the same name as my first husband started to bother him. He didn’t like it when my friends would talk about my late husband, referring to him as ‘the first George,’ or ‘George the First.’ He came to resent my two children, both of whom were grown by the time he came into my life. He was jealous of a memory, which to make it worse had his same name. He seldom would discuss his frustrations about my late husband; he just brooded about it. Sometimes he drank. For the year before he took his life, he was quite depressed.”

  “All because he and your first husband shared the same first name?”

  “And the same wife, don’t forget. And similar jobs.”

  “Oh?”

  “Both of them worked in maintenance at Kemco. My first husband didn’t have as good a job as my second, who was head of the maintenance crew. But it was in the same area. And the coincidence of it bothered him.”

  “I admit it’s kind of strange, but why get obsessed with it?”

  “George—the second George—worked at another chemical processing plant in the Midwest, before coming to Greenwood. It wasn’t a Kemco facility; I believe it was Monsanto. He felt Kemco was… this is what I hesitate to get into with you because I’m afraid it will only serve to reinforce your obsession.”

  “Mrs. Price. Please go on.”

  “He felt Kemco was borderline negligent. At the other plant he worked at, when the government would hand down a pollution level, for example, the company would set its own, stricter policy, well below what the government would allow. But at Kemco, George said, they would push it to the limit, and beyond, if they felt they could get away with it.”

  “I see.”

  “And he generally felt that the safety procedures at the local plant were lax. He and other workers had been exposed to dangerous chemicals, hazardous substances. But he could never do anything about it. Neither management nor union seemed to care. He said.”

  “I’m still not sure if I understand how this relates to his obsession about your first husband.”

  “Simple. He thought he was getting cancer.”

  “Was he?”

  “I have no way of knowing. He would never see a doctor about it.”

  “Was there an autopsy?”

  “Yes, and nothing was turned up.”

  “But cancer wasn’t what they were looking for.”

  “If it was advanced, they’d have found it.”

  “If it was in beginning stages, they might not.”

  “Possibly. But it was probably all just the delusion of a jealous, neurotic man. The ‘other’ George caught cancer working at Kemco, so now the same thing was happening to him. He thought.”

  “Do you think there could be any truth to it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know a friend of Mary Beth’s named Anne Boone?”

  “Yes, I’ve met her. She’s doing research of some sort, gathering data on Greenwood itself. She interviewed me, several months ago.”

  “But you didn’t tell her all of what you’ve told me.”

  “No. Judging from the questions she asked, she would’ve been interested in hearing about my husband’s concerns about safety and other problems at Kemco. But I didn’t tell her.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “I don’t really know. How do you happen to know about my conversation with Ms. Boone?”

  “I’ve heard the tape of it.”

  She stiffened. “Oh really?”

  “It’s all right—I’m working with Ms. Boone. We’re compiling evidence that may show Kemco negligent in several areas… including the areas that concerned your husband. Are you aware that the cancer rate in Greenwood is well above the national average?”

  “No…”

  “And the same is true for birth defects, and miscarriages. Not to mention the suicide rate: five suicides in not much more than a year. All by Kemco employees.”

  “I take it you don’t believe they’re suicides.”

  “Not all of them. At least one does seem to be a legitimate suicide.”

  “Of course. The man who shot himself and his family. I remember. I had the children in school.”

  “But I suspect Mary Beth had information about Kemco’s negligence, which may have cost her her life.”

  “And you think my husband had the same or similar information?”

  “If he was as obsessed with Kemco’s negligence as you say he was, wouldn’t he have sought it out?”

  She thought about that.

  Then she rose.

  “Mr. Crane,” she said, and from her tone it was clear school was being dismissed, “I have work to do.”

  Crane got out of the chair, put it back where he’d found it.

  He said, “I hope you’ll think about what I’ve said.”

  “I will. But I have to warn you. I don’t share my late husband’s opinions where Kemco is concerned. Kemco has a solid record of civic concern in Greenwood. They donated the land this school is built on. They provide work for many of our city’s residents. Some of the people who run that plant are former students of mine. I’m seeing a man right now who is employed there. So don’t look at me as an ally. I’m still of the opinion that you are very much on the wrong track. George killed himself. As much as I hate to think it, I’m afraid Mary Beth did the same.”

  “I’m staying at Ms. Boone’s, if you think of anything else I should know.”

  “I doubt you’ll be hearing from me.”

  “Well, just in case.”

  “All right. Now, I don’t like to seem ungracious, but I do have papers to mark.”

  He said, “Of course,” and walked to the door.

  As he was about to go out, he heard her voice from behind him: “If we do talk again, Mr. Crane, perhaps I could tell you about Mary Beth. Some things I remember about her from when she was in my class.”

  “Was it this classroom?” Crane asked.

  “Yes. The first year the school was built. First class I ever taught.”

  “Where did she sit?”

  “That seat to your left. Last one in the third row.”

 
; Crane walked over to it and touched the back of the seat.

  Then he went to the door, turned and said, “We’ll talk again,” and left.

  He walked the several blocks to Boone’s house, confused, not knowing quite what to make of Mrs. Price. Or Mrs. Meyer, for that matter. He was almost on top of it before he noticed the blue Chrysler with the Kemco logo on the door, parked in front of Boone’s house.

  A guy in his twenties with short black hair, mustache and a short-sleeved white shirt with black-and-white striped tie got out of the car and said, “Are you Crane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Boone would like to talk with you.”

  Boone? What would she have to do with this guy?

  Then he understood.

  “Patrick Boone, you mean?”

  “That’s right,” the guy said. “He said if you’re willing to come talk, I’m to give you a lift out to Kemco.”

  Crane got in the car.

  Chapter Eighteen

  This was the first time he’d seen the Kemco plant in the daytime, and it seemed less impressive, and not at all sinister: the sheets of mottled aqua plastic that were the walls of the larger buildings looked somehow insubstantial, houses of cards that might topple momentarily; the pipes twining in and out and around these plastic-sheeted structures reminded him of the jungle gym in that dreary little playground he’d been standing near just an hour or so before.

  The drive here had taken fifteen minutes but it had been a long ride just the same: the guy with the short black hair and mustache and black-and-white striped tie did not introduce himself and did not speak for the ride’s duration; he did push a tape into the player in the dash of the company car: Willie Nelson. Crane had hoped people in the East didn’t listen to Willie Nelson; no such luck.

  He felt a nervousness in his stomach, like opening-night butterflies. But he wasn’t scared. He knew that if Mary Beth had been murdered, Patrick Boone was very likely, in some way, shape or form, involved. But he didn’t fear for his life, not sitting in a Chrysler with a Willie Nelson fan in a tie; not pulling up in front of a chemical plant that in the daylight looked anything but ominous.

  Anxious was what he felt. He wondered why Boone’s ex-husband had called him out here. Was the man really onto what he and Boone had been doing? Would he toss Boone’s empty Nikon in Crane’s lap? Or maybe one of the people he’d been asking questions of called up Patrick Boone and informed him somebody named Crane was nosing around; Mrs. Meyer, the Kemco loyalist, most likely.