The place had been ransacked. It didn’t take genius to know what the twins were looking for. They wanted the audiotapes that Stephen Chandler had made. Marcie was probably a long shot but these days the twins were desperate. She’d been the producer of the suicide series. She was probably worth checking out. Besides, they seemed to take genuine pleasure in their work.
I went back to my car. The other day I’d been batting flies with my son. I still had my old Louisville Slugger (Henry Aaron model) in the trunk. I went and got it, and what I did next was primitive, but it worked.
I stood behind a hedge and picked up rocks and started lobbing them at the trailer door. I had to throw several innings’ worth of the damn things before I heard the conversation stop inside and one of the twins say, “Listen. What the hell’s that noise?”
There was a grave and lengthy silence, and then the other twin said, “Nothing. You’re just getting spooked.”
“Spooked my ass. I heard something.”
“Let’s just get on with it, all right? There wasn’t any noise.” I heard him kick over something. “Now listen, bitch, where are the tapes?”
I threw another rock. This one was a spitball. It banged off the door, and one minute later the first twin appeared. By then I was behind the door with my Henry Aaron model. It was a clean good hit and he went down first to his knees and then to his face. He crashed with the pleasing sound of something being crushed.
“Rick?” the other twin said from inside after another minute. “Don’t move, bitch.” Then he too came to the door.
He surprised me. Just when I was raising Henry to do battle, he turned and saw me and leveled a .45 at my midsection.
I got him across the face. I heard things break in his nose and mouth and jaw. He looked shocked and furious, and then he collapsed next to his brother.
Inside the trailer Marcie Grant lay facedown on the couch.
Mike Perry, still tied up, watched me come into the room, his eyes widening in recognition. I went over and untied him.
“You just saved yourself some grief, pal,” he said. He didn’t seem unduly grateful for the fact that I might just have saved his life.
“How’s that?”
“The last time you were here, you kicked me in the balls and then knocked me out.”
“That’s right, I did.”
“So I was going to pay you back, but in light of what you did tonight, I won’t.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Marcie got up from the couch, her wonderful breasts still naked.
“Jesus Christ,” Perry said. “Haven’t enough people seen your tits already?”
She ran off into the bedroom.
Two minutes later we sat around the kitchen table sharing a quart of Budweiser, and Marcie Grant told me what she knew about the Stephen Chandler case.
“All I knew was that something was wrong with the way he died. I never believed his suicide. I’d spent a lot of time with him and I knew all about his California ideas. Despite the way he talked sometimes, he was actually a reasonably happy young man. Very bright and very ambitious. But I was afraid to say anything after he died.”
“Why?”
She looked at Perry and then flushed. “This is going to make me sound like a real cold-hearted bitch.” Perry said, “Tell him.”
“I was afraid that if somebody had killed him, that would detract from the power of the story.” She paused. “I’ve been nominated as producer for a major news award. It’ll really help my career. Part of the power of the piece was that he actually committed suicide. But if he was murdered—”
I said, “Channel Three really profited from that story, didn’t they?”
“Well, we were number two and that made us number one. That’s why Channel Six got so nervous. They’d been afraid for a long time that we were going to overtake them. When we did the first piece on teenage suicide three months earlier, it helped our ratings considerably. That’s why we decided to do the second part. That’s when Stephen Chandler committed suicide.”
“He was murdered.”
They looked at each other. Then she sighed and said, “Yes. That’s what I was afraid of.”
“And you could have been the one who did it.”
“Me? Are you crazy?” she said.
I told her about what the janitor had said. That a blond woman had been the last person to go up and see Stephen Chandler the night he died.
“It couldn’t have been me,” she said.
“Why not?”
“The night the Chandler kid died, Mike and I were in Hawaii on vacation.”
Perry said, “We’ve got lots of proof.”
So that was that. My nice neat theory. I had only one other possibility. The janitor had mentioned a limping man. There didn’t seem to be much doubt about who that might be. I finished my beer and stood up.
“You all right?” Marcie Grant said.
I nodded.
“He’s onto something,” Perry said.
“Are you really?” Marcie asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said.
“What should we do with the twins?” she asked.
“Call the police.”
“Is it all about over?” she said. She sounded weary.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just about.”
25
The first place I looked was Kelly Ford’s. The heavy elm trees played shadows off the street again. The night smelled of apple blossoms. I walked up the wide wooden steps. I wanted to have a bouquet of yellow roses in my hand, come a-courting. It was that kind of night.
I went up the stairs to the second floor as quietly as I could. The hallway smelled of new paint. At her door I pressed my ear to the wood and listened. Nothing. Just the sounds of the apartment house. I walked down to the end of the hallway, where the window stood open. I climbed through and got on the fire-escape grating and walked over to one of her rear windows and looked inside. Darkness. Then I eased up the window and went inside.
I spent the next five minutes looking for something to make my job easier when I confronted Fitzgerald with what he’d done. I went through closets and drawers, looked under the bed, even under the sink. I had no idea what I was looking for. Under a quilt in a corner of the living room I found the hope chest, and inside the hope chest I found exactly what I hadn’t been looking for. I found the one thing that made me feel stupid and terrible and very, very old all at the same time.
I took it with me and left.
26
You could see Channel 3 from a half mile away. The display lights gave it the feel of an opening-night gala year round.
I pulled into the parking lot. Right next to Fitzgerald’s car. Right next to Kelly Ford’s.
When the security guard saw me, he frowned. He wore a Federated uniform, and we’d been something like friends. He was maybe forty, beagle-eyed and paunchy.
“You shouldn’t have come out here,” he said.
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“Because I figured out who poisoned that anchorman the other night.”
“Jesus, Dwyer, Becker will have your nuts. When I went in there this afternoon, all he did was rant and rave about how he’d fired you.”
“Fuck Becker. He’s a douche bag.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want in.”
“No way, man. I got three kids. I got laid off the factory, my day job I mean. I just can’t do it.”
I sighed. Just stood there. He was right. Becker would fire him, and with so bad a rap the poor bastard wouldn’t get work for years.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”
“It’s okay. Sorry I’m such a chickenshit.”
“Hey, man, you’re protecting your family. That’s anything but a chickenshit.”