by Ed Gorman
Natalie laughed. "That's great. I'm always worried I look like such a prig. Now I know I look like a B-girl."
"We're here to ask you some questions, Esther. About Rivers, the guy who was murdered last night."
"Not a nice guy."
"This is his sister, Esther," I said. "Go a little easy."
"It's all right," Natalie said. "We want the truth."
"Well, that's the truth, honey. Very abrasive. Very pushy. That was Karl. I'm sorry for what happened to him."
"He have any visitors?" I said.
"Only one time that I know of. They had some kind of row."
"How do you know that?"
"Salesman in the next room called down and said he was gonna ask for his money back if they didn't quit yellin' in there. I was fillin' in for Fred, the nightman. He's got some kind of throat ailment. So he says anyway. Lazy bastard, if you ask me. Anyway, I called your brother's room and told him to knock it off or I'd call the cops and have them throw him out."
"He quiet down?"
"Yeah."
"Any idea who all was in his room?"
"Nope. But I walked down there and took a gander down the row. There was three cars and a couple trucks and motorcycles."
"You hear them arguing?"
"Not when I walked down there."
"So no other visitors or problems?"
She shook her graying head. "I'm sorry if I insulted your brother, miss," she said.
Natalie offered a sad smile. "Oh, that's all right. I used to insult him myself."
***
Somebody once said all crowds are potential lynch mobs. Takes very little to turn them in that direction. I must instinctively believe that because crowds make me nervous. I sense their capacity for violence.
There was a crowd gathered around the front doors of the high school in the early autumn evening, the stars cold and hard and beautiful in the gray-washed sky. Headlights washed across the faces of the people - good people, our people, my people - angry now, on one side or the other, about teacher Helen Toricelli. Seeing her as a communist - or even left-wing - was laughable. But Black River Falls hadn't been spared the hysteria of the decade. Even with McCarthy gone, his work was being carried on.
As Natalie and I approached the two-story red brick building where I had spent four years reading paperback crime novels hidden in my schoolbooks, I saw that the crowd was divided not only emotionally but physically, too. They argued back and forth across a gap of three or four feet, the cleared area leading to the steps and indoors. This was going to be a nasty night. Nothing's meaner than a family brawl, and that's what this was going to be. Because the town was a family. People here had known each other since birth. Grown up together. Married each other. Went into business together. Buried each other. And now fools like Jeff Cronin were turning them against each other.
The school had that autumn smell, wooden floors recently shellacked, walls freshly painted, a new school year. The meeting was in the gym. A long table in front of the stage, folding chairs fanned out to face it. The chairs were filled already. Again, the pro-Helen Toricelli people on one side, the against-Helen Toricelli people on the other. The gym was multipurpose. It was used for penny carnivals, proms, sock hops, assemblies, charity dances, voting booths, political gatherings, and even, upon occasion, a basketball game.
Helen herself was here already. She sat in the front row, right on the aisle. There was an empty chair between her and the next person. She looked isolated, the way, as a sad-eyed, gangly spinster, she'd been isolated all her life. Natalie and I found chairs at the back. Then I excused myself and went up to see Helen.
"Thanks for coming, McCain," she said, when she saw me. "I need all the help I can get. I think Cronin'll probably suggest I get shipped straight over to Moscow tonight."
"Cronin's an ass."
She smiled. She sure was homely, buck-toothed, wall-eyed, big-nosed homely, yet there was a sweet sorrow in that face that gave it true dignity. I couldn't help myself. I reached out and gave her a hug.
"You better be careful. People'll start talking about us."
"Let them talk."
"If only you'd been a better student. I hated giving you all those C's. But you did better in college. Otherwise you wouldn't have gotten through law school."
"I didn't read as many Mickey Spillane novels in college as I did in high school."
She smiled. "You and those darn twenty-five-cent paperbacks of yours."
The school board filed in through a side door. Like most politicians, they usually spent time working the room: waving, pointing, grinning. Jus' folks, that's us. But not tonight. Tight, unhappy faces. All business. There'd be no waving and grinning tonight. The Helen Toricelli matter had changed all that.
Charles DeWitt, board chairman, raised his hand to silence the chatter. The sides weren't arguing back and forth across the aisle but they were talking loudly among themselves. Each side had a mix of farmers, laborers, business people. The age spread was similarly varied, from twenty to ninety.
DeWitt said, "I want to tell you people something. I seriously considered resigning tonight. The members of the board asked me to stay on and I did. But I want to warn you: If this meeting tonight gets as ugly as some of the mail I've been getting, I plan to quit on the spot and walk right out that door. I like to think this is a special little town and that whatever disagreements we have can be settled peacefully. But it's like this 'red scare' stuff makes otherwise sensible people crazy." He nodded in the direction of the door he'd just come in. "So I just want to make myself clear. I'm prepared to walk right out that door anytime I think this meeting's getting out of hand."
Somebody said, "Where's Cronin?"
A tiny woman who looked like an angry bird stood up and said, "Jeff Cronin is supposed to present our side in the matter, Mr. DeWitt. He told me just this afternoon that he has evidence that Miss Toricelli has been a member of several groups the Attorney General of the United States has labeled subversive" - she consulted a list in her hand - "including the National Committee for Freedom of the Press, the National Labor Council for Peace, and the People's Drama League." She looked right at Helen Toricelli. "Miss Toricelli was one of my teachers, and I want to go on record as saying that I have a lot of affection for her and respect for her abilities in the classroom. But given her communistic leanings, I don't think she should be allowed to teach our children any longer."
The subversive list she read from was notorious. It targeted Negro, Jewish, immigrant, and left-wing Catholic organizations almost exclusively, especially those having to do with the arts.
"What we're going to do tonight," DeWitt said, "is hear both sides and then vote in private on whether Helen Toricelli should be retained by this school district."
"He means a 'secret' vote, just like the Kremlin," Fritz Krause said. He was Cronin's stalking horse on the school board. "I think we should have the vote tonight, and it should be right out in the open."
His supporters broke into applause.
"Where is Mr. Cronin?" DeWitt said.
Nobody had a good answer. He was late. Obviously, he was the man of the moment. It was up to him to make his charges against Helen, and then her attorney, a grand old man named Ralph Patterson, would rebut.
Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes went by.
Both sides were anxious and starting to get restless. People started drifting outside to have smokes.
"I can't believe he'd miss an opportunity like this," Natalie said. "He's got the audience he wants just waiting for him."
"Damned strange," I said. "This is his big night. There are six reporters in the back of the room and trucks from two TV stations. I wonder where the hell he is."
About every ten minutes, DeWitt would say, "Has anybody heard from Mr. Cronin?" But his people would just look confused and uneasy.
"Maybe something happened to him," Fritz Krause said in his best ominous tones. "Maybe somebody didn't want him to show up at this meeting."
>
"Maybe Khrushchev was hiding in the bushes," somebody else said, "and jumped him."
Our side of the aisle laughed a lot at that one. The other side glowered.
I kept glancing at Helen Toricelli. Straight and proud, she sat - out of fashion clothes-wise, out of favor with some of the townspeople she'd served so well over the years. Patterson sat next to her now, and they talked every once in a while.
A woman came in from the back of the room. She wore an ID badge that said faculty. She walked up to the committee and said something to them. Then she turned back to us and left the room.
Talk started up again. What had she said? Were they withholding information from us? Fritz Krause, all six-two and two hundred and fifty crew-cut pounds of him, got up from behind the table and took the same path out of the gym that the faculty woman had. He didn't say anything. He kept his eyes straight ahead. He didn't even glance over at his own supporters when they called his name.
A woman on our side raised her hand.
"Yes?" DeWitt said.
"What the heck is going on here? Most of us have kids and housework. We can't sit here all night for no good reason."
"Mr. Krause has been called to the phone."
"Do you know why?"
"Not exactly, Louise. I believe Mrs. Cronin called him."
"Mrs. Cronin? But you don't know why?"
"I'm hoping Mr. Krause will explain that when he comes back."
Confusion. Speculation. Irritation. I kept checking my watch. I was supposed to meet Dana at the gate where Cronin's car had been the other night. I was still curious about what he'd been doing in a pasture. He was a city boy. And especially on the night Richard Conners had shown up following a mysterious absence.
A man on the other side addressed DeWitt. "I was told that the school board is picking up the charges for Miss Toricelli's attorney."
"Then you were told wrong," DeWitt said. "And we're not paying for Mr. Cronin's lawyer, either."
The man had wanted an argument - maybe just to kill time while we all waited for Fritz Krause to come back - and he looked disappointed.
When Fritz came back, he didn't look good. He looked, in fact, angry and troubled. What could Mrs. Cronin have said to upset him?
He took his seat again and started whispering in DeWitt's ear.
"I thought you were the one who didn't want any secrets," one of his own supporters shouted at him.
A lot of people shouted their agreement.
DeWitt held his hand up for silence. "Fritz is going to explain what's going on here. So let's have quiet, please."
Fritz Krause said, "I don't want nobody to ask me any questions after I say my piece. Because I don't have any more idea of what's going on than you do. All I know for sure is that a few minutes ago on the phone in the faculty lounge, Jeff's wife told me he's disappeared. She doesn't know where he is. She sounded worried." Krause paused, and when he continued, he sounded more uncomfortable than worried. "Jeff had information pertinent to the investigation of Helen Toricelli. We can't conduct this hearing without him."
What the hell was this all about?
I obviously wasn't the only one asking the question. The crowd fell again into verbal chaos.
"We stuck our necks out and supported him," a man sitting on the other side said. "What the hell's going on here?"
"I told you. No questions. I don't know any more than you do. I just know what Mrs. Cronin told me. And what she told me, I just told you."
DeWitt stood up. "I move that we adjourn this meeting. Is there a second?"
One of the board members raised her hand.
"I appreciate your interest in this matter," DeWitt said, "but maybe it's just as well that it ends like this."
"Oh, it ain't over," said a particularly angry man. "Not by a long shot, it ain't."
His mood proved typical of the anti-Helen Toricelli crowd that gathered outside. There were even a few brief scuffles among men on opposing sides of the issue.
"These people scare me," Natalie whispered, putting her arm through mine.
"Yeah," I said, feeling that I was betraying my own townspeople, "they scare me, too."
***
With the top down on my ragtop, and the going slow because the gravel road out here in the country was rutted from recent rains, you could hear the farm animals settling in for the night: horses, cows, pigs. My uncle had this horse once who snored so loud you could hear him from the house if you kept the windows open on a summer night.
"May I ask you something?" Natalie said.
"Sure."
"This woman who left you, this Pamela, aren't you in great pain?"
"Yeah. About every fifteen minutes it hits me."
"A Dartmouth boy left me for a Smith girl one winter, and I couldn't get out of bed for a month. It was very dramatic. I felt purely Russian for the first time since I'd come to the States." She paused. "You hide it very well, your pain."
"I've had practice."
"Oh?"
"She's broken my heart somewhere in the vicinity of three thousand times. You never get used to it, but you get better at handling it."
Then we were there. With all the new silos and barns and metal outbuildings, most of the countryside looked different these days. When I was growing up, you could go places that hadn't changed much since the Indians had wandered here untroubled a couple of centuries earlier, before French trappers reached the Mississippi River, sixty miles to the east.
This back pasture had none of the modern accoutrements except for barbed wire fencing. Heavy dark rain clouds kept obscuring the moon. With a forest nearby and pastureland before us rolling up toward the dark empty hills, it had a feeling of isolation. What would Jeff Cronin be doing out here? If he was going to eavesdrop on the Connerses, he certainly would have gotten closer to their house. This field was a good mile from the farm itself. It didn't make any sense.
We heard her before we saw her.
There was something timeless and thrilling about the sound of the solitary rider and horse in the shadows before us. It was a noise - the hooves and the heaving chest of the animal - heard upon this land for centuries.
She dismounted easily, with the experienced rider's disdain for perfect form; she simply dropped to the ground. In her blue suede jacket, white shirt, and jeans and a goddess's head of blond hair, she was the Potomac's version of the grand prize in the young-beautiful-wife sweepstakes. Out here the grand prizes tend to have dimples and cuddly breasts and say inanely cute things. In Washington, D.C., they discuss Sartre and foreign policy and dare you to make a move on their fierce, slim bodies.
"Sorry I'm late," Dana Conners said, more civil than usual. "Chris and I were having a little disagreement."
"You were having a disagreement two days ago when we saw you at the Garst farm with Khrushchev," I said. "You shoved her, in fact."
"She had it coming, believe me." Before I could say anything more, she put out her hand to Natalie and said, "I'm Dana Conners. And you are -?"
I introduced them properly.
"I'm sorry about your brother," Dana said. Then: "Oh, what a hypocrite I'm being. I'm not sorry about your brother at all. He was our enemy. And I think he had something to do with my husband's murder."
"I'm not going to defend my brother," Natalie said. "I can't. But I can mourn him. I owe him that. I know what you're going through with your husband's death," she added.
Dana nodded.
I turned on my flashlight. "I checked the back weather reports. Three hours before Cronin's car was seen up here, it rained. So it should be easy to find some tire tracks. He drives a new Studebaker. I checked the tread on his tires: a diamond pattern."
Dana said to Natalie, "Impressive, isn't he?"
Natalie laughed. "So far, anyway."
I walked back to the gate and started playing my light around on the ground. The grass thinned as I began walking back toward the two women. Then, in areas of open soil, the tire tracks appeared. Th
ey didn't reach out and sock you in the knee for attention, but they were there when you got down on your haunches and looked for them. Diamond-shaped tread.
Then, as I reached the section where grass was growing heavily, the tracks disappeared. I was halfway to the women. It was one of those nights that were alternately muggy and chilly. It smelled of fresh, good earth.
"Any luck?" Dana said.
"Yeah."
"Well, then, at least we can ask Cronin to explain what he was doing out here."
I didn't say anything. I'd found another long patch of soil. At the halfway point in this stretch, the tire tracks stopped. For some reason, Cronin had parked here. Above me now, hidden in the overcast sky, a big commercial airliner roared through the night.
I looked around, trying to see a reason for Cronin to park here.
Then I saw the footprints. In the criminology course I took while getting my private investigator's license, one of the guest speakers - they brought in detectives from all over this part of the state - talked about how the footprint was too often overlooked as evidence. The professor said that Indians had been reading footprints for centuries, hence their abilities as trackers. Footprints not only told you the direction somebody was headed in, they also told you about weight and height and even certain characteristics about the person's walking patterns. In modern times, they also told you the size and type of shoe. Tread on the sole was a good means of identification. Take two pairs of seemingly identical shoes. They won't be identical for long. Each person wears shoes differently - length of stride, angle of wear on the heel - and thus creates a mark as singular as a fingerprint.
I could follow the footsteps from the car. A single set of prints. One man walking to the back of the car. Then there were two sets of prints. Both were pointed toward the front of the car along the passenger side.
"Here's something interesting," I said.
They'd been talking. Now they came over.
"You find something?" Dana said.
I showed her the outline I'd constructed. "Here'd be the front of the car. He walks to the back - follow the flashlight here - and all the time there's a single set of footprints. But now look."
