Andrea Prescott’s mother didn’t sound so happy to hear from me this time. Apparently her daughter had been helping her bone up on how to be snotty on the phone. “I’m not sure I want her to talk to you.”
“It’s really important.”
“To you, maybe, Mr. McCain. But we’re respectable people and we don’t want to get dragged into anything having to do with that terrible David Egan.”
“I may not be respectable, Mrs.
Prescott, but I am trying to find the proof.”
“That was an awfully stuffy thing to say, don’t you think?”
I laughed. I sort of liked her again.
“Yeah, come to think of it it was. I mst’ve heard that in a movie or something.”
She sounded much friendlier. “A very bad movie, Mr. McCain.” Then, “You may speak to her for two minutes and no longer.”
“You going to run an egg timer?”
“I have a watch and believe it or not, I know how to tell time.” Then, “Here, honey.”
“I wish you’d quit bugging me,” the girl said to me.
“Nice to speak with you again, too, Andrea.”
“I told you what I know and Mom and Dad wish I hadn’t even told you that much.”
“Jack Coyle was seeing her again, wasn’t he? He broke it off for a long time but then he started seeing her again, didn’t he?”
“I’m going to hang up now.”
“And the baby wasn’t David’s, it was Coyle’s, wasn’t it.”
“Good-bye, McCain.”
“Where did they meet? They couldn’t go to a motel. That’d be too dangerous. But they had some rendezvous spot, didn’t they?”
She hesitated. Then whispered. “Mom just went into the kitchen. She really doesn’t want me to get involved. But I’ll tell you this.
There’s a hunting cabin out by Scarecrow Rock.
Sara mentioned it once to me.” Hesitation.
“That’s what they were fighting about the night before she got killed. She was still in love with Coyle and it was driving David crazy.”
I heard footsteps and then her mother say, “Tell Mr. McCain that my egg timer just went off.”
“Thanks for the help, Andrea. I appreciate it.”
I guess if you lie flat on your back and look straight up at it and the moonlight behind it is just right and the night is cloudless and if you really use your imagination, you can kinda sorta perhaps see how this tall, slender piece of red limestone came to be called Scarecrow Rock. One night in high school when I was particularly brokenhearted over the beautiful Pamela Forrest, I lay on the ground and did exactly that. And in my drunken state of poetic heartbreak, lying right at the base of the damned thing, I could indeed kinda sorta see how it did, if you closed one eye, more or less look vaguely like a scarecrow. I have spent my time in this vale of tears wisely, wasting not a moment.
It didn’t look at all like a scarecrow tonight. A small forest. A moonlit mesa. A five-foot-tall piece of limestone jutting up from a limestone base almost blood-red in this light. A buck deer heard me, pausing momentarily on the mesa and then fleeing with the fragile grace of its kind.
The mesa came at the end of what locals called the Comanche Trail. If you read much about the Comanches, it’s hard to believe they ever got as far east as Iowa. But somehow the narrow, winding dirt trail got itself named that and the locals liked it enough to keep it, accurate history be damned.
In true pioneer spirit, I stopped to take a pee a couple of times, stoke up a Lucky, and get whipped hard enough by sharp-edged pine branches to draw a little blood on my forehead.
I also kept stumbling. I wondered if the pioneers had worn penny loafers.
Probably, wouldn’t you think?
River smell. A lone motorboat somewhere in the darkness. The trail would soon swing northwest, away from the river where, as I recalled, I’d find the hunting cabin.
I had to make a trail of my own, straight down through the loamed and leafy undergrowth you find in any deep woods, the mixed scent of mint and mud and a million feces samples from the little ones-foxes and rabbits and possums and raccoons, among them-^wh gleaming eyes followed me as I tripped and stumbled downslope toward another trail that would take me to the cabin. I hoped I was giving them enough entertainment to last them for a while. That I know of, they don’t have Tv.
I ended my downslope travels with an homage to Buster Keaton. My foot got lodged in a massive claw root extending from a tree. Yanking it free, I stumbled the edge of the slope and fell headfirst to the trail three feet below.
I banged my head hard enough against the earth of the trail to knock myself out momentarily. I also embarrassed the hell out of myself. I could hear the owls laughing now.
I got up, lit a Lucky, and started walking again. Low-hanging pine branches slapping me from either side. The trail angled upward abruptly. At the top of the rise I stood looking down on the cabin I was looking for.
I’ve never figured out why they call these things cabins. It’s really a summer house. Two stories, screened-in front porch, one-car garage. The pioneers, the people who really did live in cabins and soddies, would have called this a mansion.
When I got up close, standing on the beach in front of the place, I found that the garage was empty and the front door locked. No lights inside. All I could hear was the river rushing past thirty yards away. A half-moon had risen above a tiny, nearby island, tall ragged pines silhouetted against its glow.
I stayed on the front porch for a time, squinting inside through the large windows on either side of the door. A nicely furnished place, from what I could see. Large, native stone fireplace, leather furnishings, and a spectacular display of animal heads on the wall, everything from moose to bobcat, spectacular if you weren’t one of those displayed, anyway.
It was time for drastic measures. I took out my Swiss Army knife, which at last count had something like 2eacdgeajjj uses and cost only $2.99 if you also included the coupon the pulp magazine provided.
I started walking around the house, carrying an empty wooden Pepsi case to stand on, looking for a window I could pry open. Two baby raccoons watched me from a tree limb, their bottoms hanging below the limb, their tails twitching kittenlike.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to use my Swiss Army knife. One of the back windows had been left unlocked. I set the Pepsi case up. It was wobbly but it stayed upright long enough for me to grab the window ledge and pull myself inside.
Tobacco. Whiskey. Coldness. These were the things I smelled immediately. The deeper I went into the shadowy house, the more the odors shifted. A recent meal, fried meat, probably beef.
Then-coffee percolating in the dark kitchen.
Somebody here. Shampoo in the downstairs bathroom. A scent of perfume on the stairway leading to the second floor.
I stood on the landing, not sure where to start. The downstairs hadn’t given me anything. I was self-conscious. My breathing sounded too loud.
And wherever I stepped, the flooring squeaked. Then the dust of the place made me sneeze. A cat burglar I was not.
There were four doors, two on each side of the hall. The first door opened on a dormitory-like bedroom. Two pairs of bunkbeds, a bureau with a clock radio on top, a closet where various hunters over the years had left odds and ends of their pleasure, a couple of duck calls, a camouflage jacket, a rain hat, a pair of waders that I associated more with fishing than hunting. In other words, nothing.
Same setup in the next room, the pair of bunkbeds, the bureau, the dormlike configurations. Maybe these middle-aged men missed college life and these cramped little rooms brought back all kinds of remembered pleasures.
I was just leaving this room when Jean Coyle appeared in the moonlit doorway and said, “You shouldn’t be here, Sam. You’re trespassing.”
The moonlight gave her an ethereal presence.
But the black steel gun in her hand kept her very real. Even though I’ve carried a gun sometimes, being around them still spooks me. At least she wasn’t pointing it at me.
“You shouldn’t be here, Sam.” Her voice was dulled. Exhaustion, maybe; alcohol.
“Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right, Sam?”
“I wish you didn’t have that gun, Jean.”
“I heard somebody breaking in. I knew where Jack keeps it in the bedroom down the hall.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
The way she half slumped against the doorframe, I decided it was exhaustion not liquor that had sapped her energy. In her sporty suburban jacket, blouse, and slacks, she still looked vivacious in her languid way. But it was the vivacity of a mannequin.
“You’re trying to blame Jack, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know who I’m trying to blame, Jean.”
“How much do you know?”
“He used to bring Sara Griffin here. I know that much.” I hesitated to tell her that the child Sara had been carrying was perhaps Jack’s. I wasn’t sure she could handle it right now.
She pitched forward. I reached her in time to keep her upright. I lifted her up in my arms and carried her down the stairs. She probably weighed around one hundred fifteen. I had to keep redoubling my arm strength. I was pretty wobbly getting her down the steps.
The leather couch near the fireplace was big enough to work as a daybed. There was even a red woolen football-game blanket at one end of it. I got her arranged and went for some of the coffee I’d smelled earlier.
I found the liquor while I was in the kitchen.
I grabbed a fifth of Wild Turkey on my way back to the living room. After I got her sitting up high enough to drink the Irish coffee without choking, I got the lights on and found the thermostat. Deep in the metal bowels of a furnace came the promise of heat.
I lighted a cigarette and poured myself a thumb of whiskey. I sat in a chair across from the couch. I felt like her inquisitor. I didn’t have any choice.
“Was he in love with her?”
“Thanks for taking care of me.”
“We’re friends, Jean. What the hell else would I do?”
She sipped. “This tastes very good.” She huddled her hands around the cup as if she were very cold. “That was the first part of the explanation. That he was in love with her. But that was the first time.”
“The first time?”
“When she was younger. Worked part-time in his office.
And they had an affair. He knew it would destroy both of them so he broke it off. That’s when she had her breakdown and went into the mental hospital. She would never tell her parents who she’d had the affair with. And they never figured it out. They might have suspected but they didn’t have any proof.”
“And you took him back?”
She smiled sadly. “I’m a forgiving person, Sam. It’s my nature. I can’t help it. He made a mistake and asked me if I could forgive him. I did.”
“Wasn’t it difficult?”
“Difficult?” The sad smile again. “Two or three times a day I’d have these little breakdowns. I’d be furious or I’d be so depressed I was paralyzed. I don’t think I let him touch me for a year. And I mean not even a friendly kiss. I just kept thinking how old I must look to him after Sara. She was so beautiful.
I even tried a psychologist in Cedar Rapids. The most vain man I’ve ever met.
He thought it would be good for me if I went to bed with him. He sat down next to me once and tried to kiss me. I walked out and never went back.
He had nerve enough to send me a bill. Which I didn’t pay, of course.”
She drank more coffee. Held the empty cup up. “Do you suppose I could get a refill?”
“Get your own damned coffee.”
For just an instant she believed me and looked shocked. Then she laughed. Or tried to. “I forgot about your sense of humor, Sam. How deadpan you can be.”
After I brought her a second cup, and after I was sitting down again, she said, “About four or five months ago-I can’t say for sure exactly when-Sara started calling Jack again.
I actually felt sorry for her. She was obsessed with him. All that time in the mental hospital-she hadn’t improved any at all.
She’d just managed to stay away from him, but once she gave in to the urge again, she started following him. Calling him. Sending him love letters. And then waiting for him in his car at his office. He couldn’t get away from her. And then-” Her hands huddled around her coffee cup again. Her gaze was fixed on the past. She said. “He gave in to her one night. She convinced him to come out here to the cabin. And she managed to get herself pregnant.”
In other circumstances, her last line would’ve been funny, one of those lines that deflect responsibility. She managed to get herself pregnant. Jack, of course, had had nothing to do with it. A poor passive figure and no more.
“That’s why I’m here tonight.”
“I guess I don’t understand, Jean.”
“He’s been afraid to come out here since the last time they were together. And especially since she was killed.”
“I guess I can understand that.”
“Then after your confrontation with him… he thinks you’ll try to blame him for Sara’s death. And for Egan’s.”
“Why would he have killed Egan?”
“Because Sara might have told him that she was pregnant with Jack’s child.”
“You did it again, huh?” I made it as soft as I could, as if I were talking to my kid sister.
“Did it again?”
“Forgave him.”
“Oh. Yes. I see. Yes, I guess
I did, didn’t I?” Her gaze grew old and sad. “But it really wasn’t his fault. She talked him in! coming out here-he only did it because he was afraid she might have another one of her breakdowns-and when they got here, she seduced him. It really wasn’t his fault, Sam.”
We believe what we choose to believe, what we need to believe, however ludicrous that might be. If we couldn’t lie to ourselves, we couldn’t survive. But Jean’s belief was extraordinary.
“He didn’t kill them, Sam.”
“All right.”
“Do you believe me?”
“I’ll try to.”
“It’s the truth, Sam.”
“Where’s your car?”
“My car? Why?”
“I thought I’d give you a ride to it.”
She sipped some coffee. “I’ve still got things to do out here.”
“Like what?”
“Making sure that she didn’t leave anything behind out here. She was a true child, Sam.
Beautiful, seductive, but a true child. Jack told me that she was always spilling her food on herself. He said he had to clean her up as if she were a three-year-old. He said that sometimes he had to clean her up the way he did our own daughter.” She smiled. “I can hear all those Freudian red flags going up in your head, Sam. But it wasn’t like that at all. She fooled people into thinking she was this little angel. Sweet and innocent, you know how teenage girls can fool people. And she seduced him. I’m sure she let him think he was seducing her. But it was really the other way around.”
Hopeless. I couldn’t take any more. I pitied her in a way I never wanted to pity anybody, in a condescending way, as if she were my house pet or a primate.
I stood up. “I need to go.”
“Please don’t get Jack involved in this.”
“I’ll try not to.”
She flung off the cover and eased off the couch.
She came to me and slid her arms around me.
“Please, Sam. You two have never liked each other. But he’d never kill anybody. It just isn’t in him. It really isn’t. He’s not perfect but none of us are, Sam. And Cliffie hates him. If you make Cliffie think that Jack’s involved-”
I kissed her on the forehead. “‘ationight, Jean. I’ll help you all I can.”
“‘ationight, Sam.” Then, “You ever wish we were kids again?”
“All the time.”
Now that I knew my way, the walk back to my car was pleasant. Even the owls, grouchiest of all forest creatures, sounded friendly, and the tiny, bright earnest eyes observing me from the undergrowth seemed merry as Disney eyes.
I hoped to see Linda tonight. Or talk to her on the phone. At least for me, one sign of a good relationship is the ability to find yourself satisfied just to hear her voice. And the ability to spend an hour on the phone and have it go by like five minutes.
The door of my ragtop was open and it shouldn’t have been open. Open maybe a quarter of an inch.
Just enough to tell me that somebody had been here.
The back seat confirmed it. My briefcase was turned upside down and its contents dumped out.
Somebody looking for something. I wondered if they’d found it.
Then I noticed the glove compartment door had been left open, too, everything it held spread out on the passenger’s side of the front seat.
This could be random, of course. The tracks weren’t that far away. A wandering hobo might have searched my car for money or anything he could hock. If that was the case, there was one disappointed hobo somewhere out there.
Just as I finished putting everything away in my briefcase, I heard the cry. I glanced around, not sure where it came from. Male, that was about all I knew for sure. And not too far away.
Urgency, fear in the voice.
A second shout clarified his position. Within thirty seconds, I was back on the Comanche Trail, batting aside pine branches, shouting, “Where are you?” Already sweaty despite the chill, already anxious about this being some kind of trap. I just kept thinking about somebody tossing my car.
Maybe he thought he could get more satisfaction out of dealing with me directly. I’d definitely eliminated the notion of a wandering hobo.
The oppressive smell of loam, the tripping-stumbling-scraping of trying to move through man-tall undergrowth. Tall as my five-five, anyway. He’d cried out again and this time I had a good sense of where he was.
I came into a tiny clearing, no bigger than a prison cell, and saw in the broken moonlight through the pines the six-foot rocky ravine below.
At first I didn’t recognize him. He was just some shadow lying back against the far side of the narrow ravine, pulling up the right leg of his jeans.
“Oh, shit, McCain, thank God.”
It could only be Donny Hughes, teenage dipshit.
“You broke into my car, didn’t you,
Donny?”
“Exactly how do you break into a convertible when the top’s already down, McCain? Now c’mon, help me. I think I broke my leg.”
“What the hell were you looking for?”
“God, are you going to help me or not?”
“Not until you tell me what you were looking for?”
This sound of pain was dramatic as all hell.
“C’mon, McCain. I can’t stand up by myself.
Didn’t you have to take some kind of oath?”
“You’re thinking of doctors and plumbers.
Private investigators don’t take oaths.”
“Do you want to be responsible for my catching pneumonia and dying out here?”
“That’d make me popular with a lot of people in this town, Donny. Now why the hell were you rummaging around in my car?”
“I wanted to see what you had on her. She thinks you’re trying to blame her for Sara and Egan.”
“You mean Rita?”
The forest animals were enjoying this. It was Tv for them. I could hear them scurrying, sliding, slithering to get closer. Two human beings talking. Life didn’t get much better than that.
“I love her, McCain. I don’t want to see her go to the gas chamber.”
“That’s one you don’t have to worry about, Donny. In Iowa, we hang people. There isn’t any gas chamber.”
“Really? Hang people?”
“I don’t like it, either. But that’s what we do.
No liquor by the drink because that’s against God’s law. But hang as many people as you want. That’s just fine.”
“Please, McCain. Please help me. I think gangrene’s setting in.”
“Listen, Donny, I’ve got a saw in my car. I’ll go get it and we’ll have that gangrene cut away in no time.”
“McCain, I’m not kidding. I saw this Western once where the guy died of gangrene.
He was foaming at the mouth and everything.”
“That’s rabies, Donny. Not gangrene.”
“He had rabies? I didn’t think cowboys could get rabies.”
God only knew what that meant.
So I went down there, of course. And helped him, of course. And all the time I was doing my best to examine his leg he was bitching, of course. He was going to tell his dad how long I’d taken getting down here to help him. And his dad was going to sue me. And possibly give me rabies.
His leg was broken. I tried to feel sorry for Donny but you just can’t. Maybe if he really did have rabies you could. But short of rabies, it was real, real hard to feel sorry for Donny under any circumstances.
The shin bone of his right leg was now snapped in two, the ragged upper part of it having torn through the flesh.
I said, “I have to say something, Donny. If my leg were busted like that, I’d do a lot more yelling than you have.”
“Really?”
“Really. Let’s get you to my car and get you to the hospital.”
“Do you have a comb?”
That was Donny. A comb. Sure he was ugly, sure he was short, sure he was mouthy, but dammit he had great hair. Just like Elvis’s.
Just ask him.
His hot rod, he told me, was parked over near the ranger cabin.
“You know what he’ll do, don’t you, McCain?” he said.
“Who?”
“The park ranger.”
“What’ll he do?”
“Take my car for a spin.”
“Yeah, I can see that. He’s in his late forties, he lives in that small cabin with his wife and three kids, he’s probably already in bed and asleep. And he’s gonna get up and take your car for a spin.”
“People resent the fact that my old man has all that money.”
“No, they don’t, Donny. They resent the fact that you’re an asshole.”
I hadn’t meant to say it. Not consciously, anyway. It was like I was on automatic pilot except this was automatic insult.
“I’m sorry I said that, Donny.”
“It’s all right, McCain.”
“No, it isn’t, Donny. I apologize.”
“I know what people think of me. The only one who really gets me is Rita. I bought her those boots, she wore them once, and now she says they hurt her feet and she can’t wear them. That’s the one that hurts, McCain.
Rita.”
“Gifts aren’t going to get you anywhere with a girl like Rita, Donny.”
“Then what the hell is, McCain? I’ve tried everything.”
I helped him stand on his good leg. “If I had the answer, Donny, I’d be happily married and have three or four kids.”
Getting up the side of the ravine was no fun.
He wanted to do it on his own. I didn’t blame him. Men should always try and look manly even if it means damn near killing themselves in the process.
Trip to the car, trip to the hospital, uneventful. He just talked about how much he loved Rita. It got tiresome. But then I remembered how tiresome I must have been back in the days when I still held out hope for me and the beautiful Pamela Forrest. Sometime, somewhere, everybody in his or her lifetime gets tiresome over somebody. That’s as certain as death and taxes.
“I tried to make her jealous once,” he said as we approached the hospital.
“What happened?”
“She told me she thought this other girl and I made a cute couple.”
“I could see where that would piss you off.”
“Then I tried not paying any attention to her.”
“How’d that one go?”
“Well, after three weeks and four days, I went up to her said, “Haven’t you noticed that I haven’t been paying any attention to you?” And she said, “Oh, Donny, I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy. So you really haven’t been paying any attention to me?””
“That mst’ve hurt.”
“That’s when I started buying her stuff, McCain. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
As we were wheeling into the emergency end of the hospital, he said, “My folks think I’m a fool.”
“You are a fool, Donny. And so am I and so is everybody else.”
I took him inside and they got to work fixing up his broken leg. He was a lot more concerned about Rita than he was his broken bone.
Linda said, “I guess I’m pretty tired, Sam.”
“So maybe I’d better not pop in, huh?”
A hesitation. “Sam.”
There are a lot of ways you can say “Sam,” but when it’s said the way she had just said it, it’s never good news.
“Yes.”
“Sam, I-”
“You’re not ready for this.”
Another hesitation. “It’s so confusing, Sam.
And I feel I sort of-used you, you know.”
“I like being used that way.”
I was in a phone booth outside a noisy bar. The red neon of the place lent the night a gaudy humanity. People getting together to get drunk. Some staggering their way in, some staggering their way out. The happy ones were the ones who had girls to stagger out with him. If they had a girl, their grins made them look like kids, no matter how old they were.
“I just need some more time alone, I guess.”
“I probably rushed things, Linda. I’m sorry.”
“No, Sam. I rushed things. I had to find out how a man would react to- So I wouldn’t think all men were like my ex-husband.”
“I had a good time, Linda. I hope I can see you again.”
“There’s this shrink I see in Iowa City. I think I need to start seeing her again. I guess she’s an expert at dealing with women who’ve had -y know, the kind of operation I’ve had. And I’m not going to drink, either. Liquor just confuses me.” Then, “I’m really sorry, Sam. If it were some other time in my life-” Then, “G’night, Sam.”
I drove around. I couldn’t tell you where. I wasn’t in love with her. That wasn’t it. But it had felt good to be with her. Dating around had turned me into a pretty superficial guy. You said what you were expected to say on dates. There wasn’t much genuine contact. But with Linda-Easy for me to say, I finally realized as I slipped into bed that night. She’s the one with the mastectomy. She’s the one who has to beat the cancer odds. All I have to do is show up on dates wearing clean underwear.