“What about her?”
“She told me something crazy.”
“Which was?”
“She told me Mary Beth was murdered.”
“What?”
“You heard me. She’s one of these leftist conspiracy nuts who thinks that the chemical plant everybody around here works for was behind Mary Beth’s death.”
“How so?”
“We didn’t really get into it. She’s just a flake, Roger. It wasn’t worth listening to, really.”
“Well it must be worth talking about, ’cause you’re doing it long distance.”
“It’s nothing. I talked to the local cop here who handled it, and he said it was a clear-cut, cut-and-dry case.”
“Really? How many suicides does a small-town cop like that handle, anyway?”
“More than you’d think. He said he’s handled five in a little over a year.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Oh. Nothing probably. Listen, what time should I be at the airport?”
“You were going to make a point, Roger. Make it.”
“Oh it’s nothing. Uh, tell me. What’s the population of that town? What’s it called? Greenburg?”
“Greenwood. 6000.”
“I see.”
“Roger.”
“Crane, it’s no big deal. It’s just that five suicides out of 6000 people is a high suicide rate. I mean, I’m a sociologist. I know these things.”
“You’re a grad student. You don’t know shit. How high a suicide rate is that, exactly?”
“About ten times the national average.”
Part Three:
Boone
Chapter Eight
“I thought you’d be back,” Boone said. “But I didn’t think you’d bring your suitcase.”
She was standing in the doorway with her arms folded, properly smug.
“It looks like I might be around for a few more days,” Crane said. “I can’t afford the motel much longer. Can you put me up?”
“I can put you up,” Boone said, not budging in the doorway. “The question is, can I put up with you?”
“Right. I’ll just go back to the motel and stay till my money runs out.” He turned to go.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “You needn’t pout. Come on in.”
She led him upstairs, took him into one of the rooms, a big, completely empty one — nothing but smooth white walls and dark wood trim and polished light wood floor.
“I told you my ex took all the furniture,” she said, shrugging. “The only two beds in the place are mine and Billy’s.”
“I can guess how your son would feel about sharing a bed with me.”
“Right. About the same way I would.”
“That’s not what I’m here for.”
“I know you’re not. That wasn’t fair. I have a sleeping bag you can use, and there’s a desk in Billy’s room with a chair, which we can bring in and make this nice and homey.”
“Thanks.”
He followed her across the hall to a small room with a window and a big metal desk and not much else. To one side of the desk was a two-drawer gray steel file; on the other a couple wastebaskets. On the desk was a manual typewriter, around which were scattered notecards, tape cassettes, pages of rough draft and pages of manuscript. Above the desk was a bulletin board with newspaper and magazine articles pinned to it: “DO ‘AGENT ORANGE’ HERBICIDES DESTROY PEOPLE AS WELL AS PLANTS? THE EVIDENCE MOUNTS,” “THE POISONING OF AMERICA,” “KEMCO PROFITS UP.”
“To which you no doubt say, ‘Up Kemco Profits,’ ” Crane said, looking back at her archly, where she stood watching him take all this in.
“You will, too, once you hear the story,” she said.
Crane poked around her desk a bit, just tentatively, waiting for her to stop him. She didn’t.
“You can’t be working on just an article,” Crane said. “There’s too much here for that. Is this the manuscript, so far?” He hefted the box of typescript. “There’s a couple hundred pages, here.”
“It’s a book,” she said.
“How long you been working on it?”
“Since Patrick and I split. Year and a half.”
“Is it for a publisher? Do you have an advance?”
“It’s on spec. I won’t have any trouble selling it.”
“How do you live?”
“Alimony. Child support.”
“From Patrick? Who gets his money from Kemco?”
“I see it as ironic.”
“I see it as hypocritical.”
“Fine, coming from somebody who’s freeloading in the first place.”
“Yeah, well, you’re right. That was uncalled for. Sorry. You wouldn’t happen to have some coffee or something?”
“Herbal tea.”
“That’d be fine. Can we go someplace where there’s furniture? I’d like us to sit and talk, awhile.”
“Sure.”
Downstairs, he returned to the faded red sofa of the evening before, and she brought hot tea for them both, and sat next to him.
“Why did you come back, Crane? Why are you staying?”
“Because I don’t think Mary Beth committed suicide. That’s been my instinct from day one. And now I’ve learned something that convinced me.”
“I suppose you found out about the other suicides.”
“You mean you knew?”
“Of course. If you hadn’t been so quick to classify me as a loon, I’d have been able to tell you that by now. I’ve been doing research into Kemco for a long time, Crane. I know a lot of things that you don’t.”
“What do the suicides have to do with Kemco?”
“All five suicide victims were Kemco employees.”
“Jesus.”
“Of course that could just be a coincidence. A lot of people around here work for Kemco.”
“Jesus. Maybe they did kill her...”
“Where have I heard that before?”
“Why would they do it, Boone?”
“I don’t know exactly. I may know. But I can’t be sure.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“The book I’m doing... it’s called Kemco: Poison and Profit... it mostly centers on what working at the Kemco plant near here has done to the residents of this and half a dozen other small towns, whose workforce Kemco draws upon. What I’ve come up with is a pattern of miscarriages, birth defects and cancer, among Kemco employees and their children.”
Crane sat and thought about that for a while.
“And Mary Beth knew about all this,” he said.
“Of course. You know, I was in high school with Mary Beth’s sister, Laurie, and Laurie and I were good friends back then, though we long since drifted apart. But even in those days Mary Beth was a sharp little kid — she was in grade school and way ahead of her age — and we used to talk. Then, this summer, we got together again and got kind of close. She was interested in my writing, my research, and I felt, considering how close she was to this, considering the tragedies in her own family, which related to the Kemco thing, it, well, seemed natural to let her in on it.”
“No wonder she was depressed about her father... and little Brucie... she was seeing them as symbols of something larger...”
“It explains why she was blue, Crane, but it doesn’t explain suicide. Because she didn’t commit suicide. Not unless you believe it’s possible for Greenwood to have ten times the national suicide rate.”
“That’s exactly what Roger said.”
“Roger?”
“Friend back home. I called him, earlier this afternoon. When I told him there’d been five suicides here in a little over a year, he said that was about ten times the national average... without taking into account that rural areas have a ‘markedly lower rate,’ he said. Less pressure in the lives of ‘rural residents’ as compared to ‘city dwellers.’ ”