Murder Sees the Light

by Howard Engel

  “Cooperman, I have nothing to do with this place. It may be part of me and who I am, but I am not entangled in any life or death in Algonquin Park.”

  “Deaths sometimes entangle us when it’s least convenient. You knew Aeneas from when you were a boy. And you saw him the day he died. McCord brought you lake trout. You saw him several times.”

  “So what? I can’t afford to be recognized. I played no part in their deaths.”

  “Neither of us can judge that until all the facts are in. That gold sample Aeneas gave you could be the key to the whole thing. You’ve no right to keep that to yourself.”

  “You’re a very persistent fellow, Cooperman. Yes, he came here. The day of the thunderstorm, just before dark. We talked about old times for a while: the senator, his late son, Gideon, and about what had happened to various people I used to know on the lake. He showed me the sample and asked me to have it assayed. I was touched that he remembered my early interest in minerals, and that the senator saw me following in his footsteps into geology. One of my associates, Ozzie Prothroe, took it in to have it checked. It’s the real thing, all right. Nothing phoney about it. I mean there isn’t any other metal worked into it, so it’s pure gold. The impurities all have to do with crude refining, that’s all.”

  “You took your geology seriously.”

  “Yes, things could have been very different. This mine is somewhere in the park. ’The land of Havilah where there is gold.’ Genesis II.”

  “I found letters about a ruby mine up at Dick Berners’s cabin. That put me off the scent for a while.”

  “That would be over in Hastings County. I knew that he and—what was his name?—Trask, Wayne Trask, used to work a site there. But Trask took it over from Berners until it was mostly his. And then the market for native rubies disappeared, even for industrial uses.”

  “When I found the mine up on Little Crummock, I thought it would be rubies too.”

  “If you find kittens in the doghouse are they puppies?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me, Benny, was there a stove in this cabin? Did you look inside? Tell me what you saw?” I described the potato I found in the ashes. “Perfect! That’s perfect! If you’d taken the trouble to remove the potato you would have seen that the miner had been using it as a crucible.”

  “What?”

  “You cut a potato in half, make a hollow in one half, fill the hole with concentrate, after giving it a bath under water with nitric acid to get rid of the iron. Then you tie the potato together with wire. Oh, I forgot to mention, you mix mercury into the concentrate. My God, I’m amazed how all of this is coming back!”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “Pop it into the stove. When you open it up after an hour or so, you might be lucky enough to find a quarter of a thimbleful of pure gold. But remember always that the trial of faith is more precious than gold.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind. How would he get rid of it up here? I never heard that Berners made regular trips to the big city.”

  “Gold is priced above rubies. That’s not the Bible, that’s simple business. Gems carry their story with them. Any expert can tell where you got a ruby or any other stone. But gold is untraceable. He wouldn’t have had to take it to Toronto. Any dentist would give him a fair price for all he could refine. That potato trick is an old sourdough technique. Still good. But don’t eat the potato. Oh, no. Not unless you want to die from mercury poisoning.”

  “You’ve been a big help.”

  “Ha! You amaze me, Mr. Cooperman. Here I am, the leader of a church with adherents numbered in the millions. Millions that are constantly asking questions about their immortal souls. We deal with countless letters every day at each of our centres. And now you come along and ask me, not about salvation, but for information you could get from any first-year student of geology.”

  “I guess that is amazing.”

  “The most amazing thing of all is that I enjoyed remembering. It’s as though you opened up an old mine-shaft that had been shut up twenty-five years ago. Amazing. Now, Benny, you must go.”

  “Sure. Thanks for everything.”

  “I’d rather not see that policeman again until the end of the week. If that could be arranged I know the church would be very generous in its thanks.”

  “Have you ever met anyone who couldn’t be bought, Mr. Patten?” Norrie Patten tugged at his beard and thought a moment. Then he shook his head.

  “No, Mr. Cooperman. It surprises me as well. But I never have.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Mercedes came back into the clearing. It turned around so that the nose pointed the way of escape. As Wilf and Spence got out of the car, the Buick arrived and parked blocking the Mercedes. My old friend Surf’s Up slammed the door and joined the others as Ozzie Prothroe climbed out of the Buick’s back seat. I watched this from the front room. Patten had gone into Lorca’s room, having given me full permission to let myself out and not come back. The arrival of the two cars made me decide to stick around.

  “Well,” said Wilf, who was the first over the threshold, “it’s the fisherman! Did your boat sink on you again?”

  “No. I just came to visit the wreck. Not that I distrust you boys, but the law on salvage is very clear.”

  “What would we want with a boat full of holes? Come on.” Surf’s Up and Ozzie came in and did the same double-take that Will had already demonstrated when they saw me. They looked at Wilf for direction and he shrugged to show that he took no responsibility.

  “Where’s Mr. Edgar?” Prothroe asked.

  “Your boss, Mr. Patten, is talking to Lorca in her room. She isn’t feeling well.”

  “Nothing a taste of Fifth Avenue wouldn’t fix, I’ll bet,” said Wilf to Spence with a leer. I flopped down in the wicker chair near the fireplace like a member of the family and picked up the fallen photograph album. When Patten came into the room, he didn’t appear to see me.

  “Well?” he asked Ozzie. “Did you speak to him?” Ozzie beamed at Patten. He looked like he had already planned how he was going to act out this moment.

  “I had a good line and talked to Van for ten minutes. Norrie, we’re in the clear. Van says that he has excellent information that the court will rule in our favour!”

  “But does he know, Ozzie? I’ve got to be certain.”

  “Well, Norrie, there’s no telling for sure until the court meets and you know that security’s tight about Supreme Court rulings. But Van says he has it on the best authority. He didn’t say how it broke down, but the majority sees things your way. You won, Norrie, you beat the system!”

  “Congratulations, boss,” said Wilf and Spence in turn. Surf’s Up grinned. Norrie had called him Ethan, but I liked Surf’s Up better.

  “Let’s not jump wrong on this, Ozzie. How did Van sound on the phone? Was he nervous, happy, what?” He looked into Ozzie like he was trying to read the omens written on his innards. “Did he say that we should come back right away? Come on, Ozzie, for the love of Christ, spill it. You’re my eyes and ears out there. I want a full report.” Ozzie blinked and wiped his sweating head with a crumpled handkerchief. He started again and reported fully on the telephone call omitting nothing but the dial tone and the graffiti in the phone booth. I couldn’t detect any new helping of information but Patten seemed to like it better. And he was the guy paying the shot after all. The news in fact made Patten almost swell with joy. He clapped Ozzie on the back and sang out for Lorca to come in to hear the good news. She came into the room, rubbing red eyes. She had changed out of her shorts into slim white slacks made of sailcloth. She’d changed the crumpled white shirt for a blue and white T-shirt. Her eyes ran over the contents of the room without showing surprise or pleasure. Patten broke the news.

  “You mean it? We’re going home? Oh, Norrie, you’re wonderful! Isn’t that great! When can we go? I can start packing now. It won’t take me ten minutes.”

  “Now hold on. Possess your soul in patience.” Norr
ie then broke the bubble he’d blown himself for her by adding conditions to her parole.

  “‘Confirmation,’ what do you mean? Are we leaving or not? Norrie, stop torturing me! If we don’t leave today, can we go in the morning? Just say when.” Norrie didn’t like this role: he had exalted her; now he was dragging her back to earth. He tried, rather awkwardly, to take her in his arms. It was as though he’d never done it before; her parts and his didn’t blend, they just seemed to get in the way of one another like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that should fit but don’t.

  “Lorca, we should know by Friday. That’s just three days.”

  “We’re no better off than we were! You said we had to wait until Friday last week. So, nothing’s different.”

  “Woman, try to understand. We are going home on Friday, or as soon as Van can tell us it’s official. If I return now, I might get into a lot of trouble. Trust me on this. You’ve learned to trust me. Trust me again.” Lorca looked beaten.

  “Yes, Norrie.” She sat down like the starch had gone out of her.

  “Now,” Patten said to Surf’s Up, “what do you say to some lunch? I’m starved if nobody else is.” Spence disappeared into the kitchen, where noises began making suggestions to my saliva glands and digestive juices. The boys settled variously. Wilf went out to attend to the boats. Surf’s Up spread himself over the patio. Lorca picked up the picture album staining her white slacks with the perished binding. Ozzie had paperwork to do. He emptied out a briefcase on the rattan table and began sifting through things. I recognized the familiar blue of Canadian passports and the yellow of International Certificates of Vaccination. There was a measurable lull which left Patten suspended between the pages of an act.

  Then Aline was in the room with a gun in her hand. I didn’t see her come in. I don’t think anyone else did either. It was like she’d dropped through the roof in a puff of smoke. The bright red of her pullover and the familiar blue of her faded jeans did nothing to domesticate the gun in her hand. It was a .32 by the look of it—a revolver. In the textbook a .32 is said to lack the stopping power of the larger calibres. But in Aline’s hand it looked bigger than a .45 and the newer guns that can blow you away with a whisper.

  “Aline! What the hell do you mean by this?”

  “Say your prayers Norrie. I’m not fooling!”

  “Woman, be reasonable!”

  “You’re going to see John Malbeck, Norrie. The past is catching up. I’ll bet you forgot all about poor John.” Patten was fingering the back of a wicker chair. It offered no protection at all. And I was sitting right behind him. I dropped to the floor and moved to the outside wall. The others remained frozen.

  “Malbeck was unstable. His death didn’t have anything to do with me. We were in Chicago. There was nothing we could do.”

  “You took me and you took all his money. You ruined him.”

  “I took money from the company, not from John. If you’ll only let me …”

  “John had over seventeen thousand invested. What did you put in? Less than a thousand. But you took it all. Do you wonder he killed himself?” Lorca had moved in my direction too. To neither of us did Patten look like he could stop all of the bullets. Aline went on, waving the gun as she made her arguments. “He trusted you. He was the first. How many millions have you betrayed since John? Answer me! I’m not talking about myself. I was young, but I made my own choice. I’m not an object you took under your arm, thief. But you owed John better than that. We both did.”

  Wilf was looking through the screen door listening. He didn’t dare move except while Aline was talking. Once he was inside the door he would be only three steps from Aline. To me it looked like miles.

  “Pray, Norrie! Put your hands together! ’Our Father …’” Wilf was inside the door. He hadn’t made a sound, but something startled Aline. She looked over her shoulder, caught his shadow in the corner of her eye, then put her left hand on her right and fired, as Wilf hit her on the back of the neck with his linked hands. She went down slowly into the explosion that nearly blew out the windows. The noise was just starting to fade into its own echo, when Patten crumbled face forward. Lorca’s fingers were digging into my arm. Wilf was hitting Aline again. Ozzie sat on the floor. I didn’t see him fall. He crawled over to Patten who didn’t move. I saw Wilf lift his arms and strike Aline again. That was when I found I could still move. I crossed the room and pulled Wilf away from the girl on the floor. I remember seeing the surprise and anger in his eyes as he gave me with both hands what he’d been preparing for her. That was a new kind of explosion. I was riding the fluorescent tubes again. I was in a room without shadows, and a blue-rinsed light winked on and off like a faraway electric storm somewhere above Little Crummock Lake. I felt I was bouncing on the inside of all six faces of the inside of a cube before I irised out completely, like the end of a Chaplin short, with my face buried into the pine floor. And that’s the way matters stood for some time.

  * * *

  “Here, try to drink this.” The voice came from far away, but I recognized it. I didn’t open my eyes because I didn’t want to find out I couldn’t open them. The smell in the air was familiar—the police shooting range. I felt a cold hard edge of glass pressed against my lower lip. I did what I was told. It was that damned prune juice again. But the voice was Joan’s. I tried to take an inventory of my parts: I could feel toes and fingers. I had a pain on the side of my head running from above my ear to low on my jaw. When I squinted it wasn’t Joan I was looking at, it was Harry Glover. He was staring down at me like the light in the dentist’s office.

  “You going to live?” he asked. It seemed like a good idea until I tried to nod, then I felt as though I’d been introduced to the Scottish Maiden that Maggie had been talking about. I didn’t hear the head roll on the floor and began to think that maybe it was still on my shoulders. I thought of John Malbeck and his machine in a rented room.

  I tried to shift my weight so that I was half sitting. That seemed to help. I looked around. The room was full of people. At the edge of my vision, a uniformed cop was talking to Lloyd Pearcy. Joan Harbison was standing next to Maggie McCord, who was sitting in Lorca’s wicker chair. I couldn’t see Patten or the other residents anywhere.

  “What’s going on?” I asked in Glover’s direction. He leaned in closer: “Aline Barbour burst in and started blasting away with a .32.”

  “I stayed awake for that part. I mean, what happened next?”

  “She didn’t kill anybody, but she nicked Patten pretty bad. He’s on his way to the hospital in Huntsville. They’ve got heart-lung machines there. Miss Barbour went to pieces after we got here and she’s under guard. I never saw the like of her face when I got here: the woman’s crazy as a loon.” Harry might not know a lot about cranes. but he knew more about loons than most.

  “When did all this happen. I mean how long have I been like this?”

  “That Lorca woman says she ran right over to the lodge. That would have taken ten minutes. I was talking with Joan in the clearing near the gas pumps, and so it didn’t take more than another couple of minutes to get my car here. Patten was down behind that chair. Take my word for it; don’t turn around. I’ve had everybody that was here taken back to the Annex. You were keeping things from me, Benny. You knew it was Patten all along. Sly as a ferret you are. See where it gets you.”

  “I’m going to try to get up,” I said. Nobody seemed to think much of the idea, and, after the first try, neither did I. I’d been lying on the couch. The wooden top plank of the back was shattered by a bullet within a football field of where my head had been. There was a blood stain on the rag carpet. I looked at Glover, who looked off at a piece of fly-paper dangling from a Coleman lantern. The second try got me on my feet, and the third was a complete success.

  “Benny, what do you know about Aline Barbour?”

  “Won’t it keep? My brain rattles when I talk. I think I’ve got it all straight now, but it has to settle.”

  “All ri
ght, everybody. The shows over. He’s going to be right as rain tomorrow. Thanks for your help, Mrs. Harbison. Thanks everybody.” Maggie leaned over and pressed my hand. It was the first tune I’d seen her since George’s death. She looked more like her true age than before. Joan sent a pained smile over Maggie’s shoulder. The others waved or called out some thing reassuring. The uniformed men were making chalk marks on the floor and measuring off distances with a metal tape.

  “Can I give you a lift?” Lloyd Pearcy asked. After getting a confirming nod from Glover, I walked out into the afternoon sun, a little wobbly, like Disney’s Bambi when he stood up for the first time. Lloyd didn’t say anything but opened the door of his Ford and I got in.

  “Just settle back and don’t worry,” Lloyd said, starting the motor. The front seat felt like a sauna even with the windows open. I tried to close my eyes, but things began turning upside down. Once things begin turning, I might as well cancel all immediate plans. I kept my eyes off the road, away from the forest parting around us. The sky proved the right target. I kept my eyes there.

  “Lloyd, do you remember me asking you about the fire at the mill?”

  “The night Cissy took a snootful? That was quite a night.”

  “Sunday. Seems like a month ago. You told me that Dick Berners wasn’t around.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But it isn’t right, Lloyd, and you know it.” Lloyd kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t offer anything, so I went back at him. “I respect your motives, Lloyd, but Dick’s dead and right now the truth is more important. You think he set that fire, don’t you?”

  “I don’t rightly know what I think about that. I know I don’t have to say anything. So I don’t intend to, if it’s all the same.”

  “If it was all the same I’d agree with you. But people have been killed, Lloyd. Maybe the murderer isn’t finished yet. In books—I don’t know about true life—but in books it’s secrets that account for half the bodies on the library floor. Secrets are a one-way ticket to the mortuary. Best way to escape the curse of a secret is to give it to somebody else. You said Dick hadn’t showed his dirty face around the lodge at the time of the fire, right?”