The Prettiest Feathers

by John Philpin

  I found a place called the Sea Breeze. It was right across the street from the river, which smelled like a men’s room in a bus station. The Sea Breeze itself smelled even worse, but it was just what I wanted. I sat at the bar and ordered a Wild Turkey boilermaker.

  The bartender—short, fat, and smothered in tattoos—said all he had was Old Crow.

  “Good enough,” I said.

  There were maybe five guys still drinking. One guy had passed out at his table, and a few hookers were grabbing a drink before heading out for one more trick. There wasn’t much talk, just chain-smoking and serious drinking. I tossed mine back and ordered another.

  I knew what I was doing. Running from Sarah. Running from Liza. Playing at being a cop. Anything to duck reality.

  I knew it, but I couldn’t stop it. You live a whole life that way, what are you supposed to do? You can’t flip a switch and suddenly become sober and responsible. It’s bad enough dealing with shit on the run. Who wants to stand still and do it?

  The headache was receding. Nothing like finding the right medicine.

  A hooker walked over and stood at my elbow. “Twenty in the car. Forty at my place,” she said.

  I looked at her. Nineteen? Twenty? Somebody’s daughter. “Honey, I just want to drink.”

  “I know you,” she said. “You’re a cop. Bert, this dude’s a cop. What are you letting fucking cops in here for?”

  Bert was the bartender. “You a cop?”

  “I just want to sit here and drink,” I said.

  “Finish your drink and get the fuck out,” Bert said.

  “He busted me,” the whore told him. “Couple years ago. Him and a big dyke cop.”

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”

  By this time, two more Sea Breeze patrons had moved toward me.

  “I’m gonna finish my drink, then I’ll walk out of here,” I said, slipping my 9 millimeter onto the bar. They stopped.

  “Give me an excuse,” I said. “Please give me an excuse.”

  I looked at the clock behind the bar. I couldn’t read the time, but it had lights that kept twinkling—like they were drops of water going over Niagara Falls. Over and over again.

  “I don’t need an excuse,” I said, and fired four shots into the waterfall.

  There was a geyser of sparks and shattered plastic, the smell of cordite. All the assholes were under tables or running for the bathrooms.

  The place got real quiet. I didn’t bother with the drink, just sat for a few minutes, then walked out. I made it through the door and into the parking lot before I went down to my knees. I thought I’d been slugged from behind, but I was alone in the lot, on all fours on the damp asphalt.

  I crawled to the old Ford and pulled myself up by the door handle. I felt like I had to get somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where.

  I got behind the wheel and started the car. Then I fished a pint of Wild Turkey out of the glove compartment and removed the cap with my teeth. The old amber liquid did the trick-or at least part of it. I don’t know how long I drove, or what route I took, but it was after three in the morning when I pulled up at the precinct house.

  I managed to find my cubicle and slip in without anyone noticing. At that hour there weren’t many people around anyway.

  I took a sip from my pint and called information for Sax-tons River, Vermont. “The police department,” I said.

  “They have no listing,” the operator said. “I can give you Bellows Falls or the state police.”

  I took both numbers and started with the small-town department.

  “No one in the department goes back that far,” the dispatcher said when I told her I was interested in a case from the 1960s. “Charlie Murdock was chief for years, but he’s dead. You might be better off trying the state police. They’re just up the road from here.”

  I tried one more approach. “What about the name Paul Wolf? That mean anything to you?”

  “Paul Wolf? Why didn’t you say so. I was a substitute teacher at the school when all that happened. It was the only thing people talked about around here for months.”

  She sounded happy to talk. There wasn’t much going on in Bellows Falls at 3:30 in the morning.

  “What exactly happened?” I asked.

  “Paul and his mother, Alice Wolf, lived alone in an apartment in Bellows Falls. She was a waitress at a diner there. Nobody was real sure who Paul’s father was. Eventually. Alice met a man named Edward Corrigan and moved in with him in Saxtons River. Corrigan had an old house there that he was always working on, but never really made livable. Paul was a loner. Corrigan had no use for him. People were pretty sure the stepfather batted Paul around, but Alice never complained. She went to church and prayed a lot, but never tried to get help for Paul or any of the family. Then Alice got pregnant. The baby—Sarah—was the apple of Corrigan’s eye. She was his baby. And Sarah was a real cutie, don’t misunderstand me. But things just got worse for Paul. It seemed like Corrigan hated him even more after the little girl was born.”

  The sister’s name was Sarah. Was I finally starting to make some connection?

  “I’m not real clear about why it all happened that night, but Paul went after Corrigan with a knife. Alice grabbed him from behind. Paul cut them both pretty bad, but they managed to get the knife away from him. Mental health was involved after that, and Paul was sent away to some private school. He was home for a while the summer before he left for college. He was so bright. It was such a waste. He left here that summer and hardly ever came back. I heard he didn’t do so well in college down in the city. Then, of course, there was the army. He was killed in Vietnam. His ashes are buried right up the hill here. But somewhere in there—I’m not sure exactly when—he started going by another last name. He was convinced he knew who his real father was. I don’t know where he got the idea. He thought it was Gary Pease, a local guy who died in a logging accident the year Paul was born. That’s why he took to calling himself Paul Pease.”

  “What about Sarah?” I asked.

  “She married and moved away. I don’t know who she married or what her name is. I think she cut off all contact with her parents about the same time Paul was shipped off to Saigon.”

  I sat at the computer terminal and put in a request for information. The army did have a record for Paul Pease. He was killed at Pleiku in 1972, three years before the last American soldiers came home.

  I did the paperwork necessary to get his complete file and his fingerprints.

  “I don’t care what his fucking name is, he ain’t dead,” I muttered to myself. “There’s an explanation for all this shit.”

  “You’re not going to find it,” Hanson said.

  The captain had walked in behind me, right after addressing the 4 A.M. roll call.

  “You don’t work this case,” he said. “That’s department policy. You don’t work any case when you’re on leave. You are on leave, Detective, and you don’t come off leave until you’ve been through alcohol rehab. Twenty-eight days and a clean bill of health, or you start looking for something in warehouse security. Leave the nine on your desk.”

  After Hanson said his piece, he walked out.

  I placed my weapon and badge on my desk, then wandered down the hall. Lieutenant Swartz was standing outside an interrogation room in front of the one-way glass.

  “What’s up?”

  “Willoughby’s been working the guy most of the night,” he said, gesturing at a slightly built, fiftyish guy wearing Coke bottle glasses. “You smell like the inside of a cheap bottle.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Name’s Wayne Purrington. He’s already confessed to doing the three prostitutes up in Albany. There’s two more in Troy the Bureau hadn’t even connected to him. He’s been down our way since just before Harris was done. Won’t talk about Sarah, but says he might have done Harris. Says he doesn’t remember.”

  I studied Purrington’s sallow complexion, sunken cheeks, missing teeth, balding head, l
ong, bony fingers—he was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, looking like he belonged in a dump like the Sea Breeze.

  “He didn’t kill Sarah,” I said. “He didn’t kill Maxine Harris either.”

  Swartz agreed. “But Willoughby’s gonna get a confession out of him anyway.”

  “And when Purrington gets a lawyer, he’ll recant. This is all bullshit.”

  Again, Swartz agreed. “I’m keeping the investigation going, Sinclair. Lane’s going to handle it. You get your ass into rehab and take care of business. You not only smell bad, you look bad.”

  I nodded at him, might have said, “Thanks,” then continued wandering down the hall—with my head banging like a pile driver and the whole world going blurry on me. Swartz was right. I did need a little R&R somewhere. But first I wanted to find Fuzzy.

  Somehow I managed to get to the coffee machine, and there he was.

  “Fuzzy, you went through rehab, didn’t you?”

  “Twice,” Fuzzy said. “I guess it didn’t take. I’m so close to retirement now, they don’t bother with me anymore.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Food’s good. Too much talking, though—all this shit about a higher power. See, I’ve had this understanding with God ever since I was a kid. When He’s ready to take me, I go. No argument. No pleading for more time. I just go.”

  Fuzzy was getting revved up—maybe from the coffee, I don’t know. He was also going in and out of focus. Too much to drink and not enough sleep. Or maybe I needed a drink.

  “This body ain’t no temple,” Fuzzy said, “as you can plainly see. When it needs Irish whiskey, it gets Irish whiskey. And I’ve put enough stout through my kidneys to rain out a Yankees game. Now, I had these rehab dudes—most of ’em found Jesus curbside—telling me to give myself up to a higher power. I already had that worked out. And I kept getting the steps mixed up. There must be a dozen of them fucking things.”

  Fuzzy’s voice faded, my eyes wouldn’t focus, and my head was pounding like a son of a bitch. I saw Fuzzy put his coffee down and start to reach for me. Then the lights went out.

  The room was white.

  And God—all seven feet of him—was very clearly black.

  “This ain’t heaven,” I said.

  “No, mon,” the grinning giant said. “Don’ be heaven, but be nice gig.”

  “Hospital?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you really that big, or are you standing on something?”

  “I eat only the right foods, mon. Grains. Fruit. Built me a very healthy body.”

  “Why aren’t you playing for the Giants?”

  “I play no silly game with puny guys. I’m in an elevator one time standing eye to eye with Shaquille O’Neal. He’s not used to that, now. No football. No basketball. I bowl.”

  “Reach out and knock the pins down, huh?”

  “Break the pins, mon. Another hospital pay me five hundred dollars to play for them this year. Next year I renegotiate. Maybe this place gets wise.”

  I was enjoying the big guy, but I had other things on my mind—namely, finding a way out. “What is this place?”

  “Same one you break out of before. But not this time. You and me, we have a good time. I tell you the story of my hero’s life—Bob Marley—you fall asleep. Then I listen to my music.”

  He held up a Walkman and a set of ratty-looking earphones.

  “You sleep some more,” he said. “That way you stay out of four points.”

  “Four points?”

  Still grinning, he held up a leather strap. “Four-point restraint. They keep you in bed so you shit in a pan. You want to shit in a pan?”

  “I want to go to sleep.”

  “Good. Then I tell you about my hero, Mr. Bob Marley. Humble beginnings, that mon.”

  “What’s your name? And what are you doing here?”

  The grin disappeared. “I’m Lymann Murr. I’m hired as a special to make sure you don’t wander off. We understand each other?”

  Just then Hanson appeared at the door and started in. For a big man, Murr was quick. Hanson’s face was about level with the guy’s breastbone.

  “Who are you?” Murr asked.

  Hanson was nonplussed. “Hanson. I’m the captain.”

  “Show some ID,” Murr said.

  Hanson did.

  Murr wasn’t impressed. “You’re not on the list,” he said.

  “I’m the captain—his boss,” Hanson said.

  “Go away,” Murr said. “I don’t like violence.”

  Lane came in then, and walked around Murr and Hanson.

  “Lymann,” she said, nodding a hello.

  “Hey, Lane. You want this guy in?”

  Lane looked at Hanson. “Probably not a good idea right now, Captain,” she said. “The doctor’s on his way over, too. We’ll all have to leave.”

  Hanson retreated.

  “I stopped and picked up your mail,” she said, tossing it on the bed. “I also fixed your door.”

  “Look, about last night.”

  “Lymann, tell the little white man to shut up.”

  “Lady said shut up, mon.”

  “And it wasn’t last night anyway,” Lane said. “You lost a day.”

  I’ve been drunk enough to miss out a few hours before, but never anything like this. I knew I’d been down at the waterfront. There was a hooker. I remembered bits and pieces, but couldn’t put the whole picture together.

  “He keeps threatening me with a bedpan,” I said. “That your idea, too?”

  “That’s for shooting Bert’s favorite clock. He says it was an heirloom.”

  I looked at her. “I did that?”

  She nodded. “You walk away from treatment, you face charges. That’s the deal.”

  I fumbled through the mail that I hadn’t bothered to pick up for days. Bills. Ads. And a small package with no return address, just a postal cancellation from White River Junction. I couldn’t read the state abbreviation.

  “I picked up all your notes,” Lane said. “Also got that notebook Chadwick sent you.”

  “Good. Where’s White River Junction?” I asked.

  “Vermont,” Lymann said. “Other side of the river from Hanover, New Hampshire, where I went to school.”

  “You went to Dartmouth?” Lane asked.

  “Studied music. I play synclavier. Bedpans aren’t my only gig,” he told her. “I thought you knew everything about me, cuz.”

  “Cuz?” I said.

  “I’m Lane’s mama’s sister’s boy,” he explained, grinning. “That makes us cousins.”

  “Nice to know we’re keeping my confinement all in the family,” I said, as a book slipped out of the wrapping and onto the bed.

  Rimbaud.

  I opened the cover and stared at the bookplate: From the Library of Maxine Harris.

  “This is the book that Sarah told me about,” I said. “The one I had gone to her house to get.”

  My head was finally starting to clear. “Wolf’s name is Pease,” I said. “He has a sister named Sarah.”

  I told Lane what I remembered from my conversation with the dispatcher in Vermont—that Wolf had grown up in Saxtons River, tried to kill his parents, and was believed to have died in Vietnam.

  “Somebody has to get to the sister,” I said, pushing the blanket off and starting to get up.

  “He’s had enough,” Lymann said, putting me right back where I was.

  “There were notes and some stuff from the army on your desk,” Lane said.

  “That’s what you need,” I told her.

  “I’ll take care of it. You’re here for the duration.”

  I leaned back, looking again at the volume of poetry, thumbing through the pages until I saw the highlighted lines. I read them aloud to Lane:

  The wolf howled under the leaves

  And spit out the prettiest feathers

  Of his meal of fowl,

  hike him I consume myself.

  “Christ, what
are we dealing with?” she said.

  Lane

  I flunked my polygraph.

  One question did me in: “Do you know who killed Sarah Sinclair?”

  My voice was saying, “No,” but my head was saying “Yes.” I knew that Wolf/Carver/Chadwick/Pease was our killer. I couldn’t even tell anybody what he looked like, but I knew that he did it. So when I said no, the needle jumped.

  Fibs (that’s what we call the guy who runs our polygraph; his name is Gibbs) asked me the same question during three different trials, and each time it activated an emotional response. After the third try, he said, “Sorry, Lane. This isn’t working out.”

  I didn’t even wait for Hanson to call me in. Monday morning, while he was out at a city council meeting, I walked into his office and put my badge and gun on his desk—along with a note reminding him that department policy required that I be placed on paid suspension.

  Before I left, I gathered up everything that I thought I might possibly need: Xeroxes of all the scientific evidence reports, the packet of faxes I had received from surrounding police departments, the stack of crime scene photos Benny took. To avoid being brought up on charges, I stuck a handwritten note in the case file, signing them out to an unreadable name.

  I also picked the lock on Robert’s file drawer again. He had told me about the book and the gun that “Alan Carver” dropped off. I wanted the gun. Now that Hanson had my 9 millimeter, I wanted something with more firepower than the .22 I kept at my apartment.

  Robert had known that the whole embassy story was a fraud, so the paperwork on the gun had to be fake. He’d even yelled at Sarah, telling her what a fool she was to fall for all the lies this Wolf character was telling her. But then it was days before he ran the serial number on the gun.

  I found the report in Robert’s in basket, so I knew that he hadn’t seen it. The .32 had come back registered to Dr. Alan Chadwick of Hasty Hills, Connecticut. There was also a second gun in Chadwick’s name—this one a .38 (probably the gun he used on the two guys in the alley across from the bookstore).

  I tucked the .32 into my cosmetics bag and headed home, where a fax from Pop was waiting. I sat down to read it while I waited for some coffee to perk.