She shook her head. “How well do you know John? I mean, really know him?”
“Not well. I know his history somewhat; I know what I’ve seen as one of his co-workers. This investigation has brought a lot into the limelight.”
“He’s self-effacing, neat and tidy, eager to please, almost a workaholic at times, right?”
“Close enough. He obviously doesn’t have much self-esteem. I suppose that makes him overcompensate somewhat.”
“You think part of it is because he’s trying to pull himself up by the bootstraps?”
“Sounds reasonable.”
She snorted, stood up, and began pacing before me. The gesture revealed a screwed-down nervousness I hadn’t focused on earlier. Behind the demure clothing and quiet demeanor was a bundle of energy.
“I kept in touch with him over the years after he’d dropped out of the program. He liked me, trusted me, and he used me as a sort of miniature AA, which doesn’t work, of course. You can’t solve this kind of problem by confiding in one person.”
I thought back to when I’d found him at home, the glass balanced on his stomach. I described the scene to Barb Southworth.
“You didn’t test his blood alcohol?”
I was surprised at the question. “No. We had no cause to. It was ginger ale.”
“Well, if you had, I’d lay odds you would have found him fully loaded, or damn near. You saw the glass, jumped to the right conclusion, and then went into full retreat when you found out it wasn’t booze. That’s what he counted on. I guarantee that if you’d looked for it, you would have found an empty bottle hidden somewhere. He was lying there with a full glass of ginger ale either because he saw you coming, or because he’d run out of the real stuff.”
I was shaken by what she said, not least because it revealed I’d been as gullible as all the rest. I’d come to pride myself on my powers of observation. To discover that a drunk had persuaded me he was sober was a humbling experience.
And yet, I felt there was still something missing, something more important than just being told that John had never been on the wagon.
“Why are you telling us this? Why did John want us to meet?”
“John is still too self-absorbed to make that an easy question to answer, but I think he wanted me to interpret something for him, something he can’t put into words himself.”
She paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “Alcoholics… all addicts, for that matter… are driven by just one desire, and they will do anything to gratify it. On a street level, where appearances don’t matter, that means they’ll lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to get what they want. At our level, appearances are paramount to survivaclass="underline" We can drink ourselves into the grave as long as no one finds out about us. But in both cases, it’s the addiction that controls everything.”
“So what does that tell us about John Woll?” I asked.
“That he couldn’t have done the things they say he did in the papers, because those things had nothing to do with either satisfying or disguising his addiction.”
“His wife and Jardine were cheating on him.”
Her voice was quiet and calm. “If you were him, being a cuckold might come as a comfort; it would reinforce your rationale for drinking, maybe even make it more acceptable to others. Plus, your self-esteem would be so lousy anyhow that your wife taking a lover might be exactly what you thought you deserved.”
In an abrupt but fluid movement, she picked up her handbag and walked toward the door, as if suddenly irritated at her role in all this. She paused on the threshold. “I’ve said what I think John wanted me to say. You’ve got the wrong man, and while the evidence for that may be psychological, it’s hard evidence all the same. Good night.”
I followed her to the glass door and watched her walk away, her red hair highlighted periodically by the lampposts she passed under. I believed what she had told me. I knew the State’s Attorney would have to complete the dance he’d started, and that McDonald and Katz and everyone else with a press deadline to meet would play the story until the business office told them it was no longer selling air-time or issues. But for me, the John Woll aspect of this case was over, not just because it had been taken from me physically, but because Woll himself was innocent.
I’d assigned him that position before, of course, but only because my hands were tied. Now, truly believing it, I found the entire case taking a different shape in my mind, as if, by removing John, I’d also removed one of the rocks of the avalanche I’d envisioned burying me earlier, and by doing that I’d shifted all the others, revealing aspects of them I hadn’t previously noticed.
For the first time in days, I felt enlightened. I’d beaten the shadow player who was behind all this, by making a lie of his very first premise.
30
It was almost two in the morning when I drove up Gail’s steep driveway. Climbing out of the dark embrace of the tree-shrouded road, I was so taken with the vastness of the shimmering, starlit sky that I killed my headlights halfway up to the house and continued the rest of the way without them. It was an almost mystical experience; instead of missing the intense brightness of the car lights, I was overwhelmed by the sky’s generosity. I could see everything without shadow, without glare, and most impressive of all, without color. The landscape’s chromatic vitality had been drained to a mere hint, making me feel as if I were intruding upon a huge and empty stage of a long-closed theater.
I got out of the car, closing the door quietly, letting the sensation carry me for a few moments longer. It was fitting that I could feel ethereally suspended; I’d had so little sleep over the last few nights, my brain felt like warm mush, and I was here to reach back through time and to make amends.
“Joe?”
I peered along the length of the deck above me. About halfway down I saw Gail’s slim shape standing at the rail, outlined in black against the sky.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here?”
I was suddenly embarrassed and tongue-tied. How to explain that watching Barb Southworth walking away, her tale of misery, duplicity, and sorrow in my ears, had made me miss Gail and regret the tensions that had recently wormed their way between us?
I fell back to the mundane. “I needed to tell you something.”
“About John Woll crashing his car?”
I shook my head, beat out by the grapevine again. “No.”
Her arm beckoned against the stars. “Come on up.”
I climbed the outer staircase to the deck. She remained at a distance, facing me. She was completely naked, her body glowing white in the starlight. In the blackness of the building beside her, she looked as if she were floating.
“It was too hot to sleep inside.” Beyond her, shining dully under the stars, I saw her mattress laid out on the deck.
“Take your clothes off.”
I hesitated, not wanting to lose sight of why I had come.
“I feel at a disadvantage,” she added.
The gentleness of her voice persuaded me.
I pulled off my clothes, feeling awkward and self-conscious, and walked over to her. We didn’t touch, but stood side by side, our elbows on the railing, facing the dark slope below and the glow of the city beyond.
“I wanted to apologize for the way I’ve been acting.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but I kept going, wanting it out in the open. “I’ve used you to comfort myself, but I haven’t paid enough attention to how all this has been affecting you.”
“It’s been affecting all of us, and there’s not much you can do about it.”
That stung slightly. I wanted her to accept my offer, not remind me of my limitations. But maybe that was her point: I wasn’t responsible for everything that had happened.
“Has Jackson kept it up?”
“You’ll soon find out for yourself. He’s called for a closed-door session of the selectmen with you and Chief Brandt first thing tomorrow morning.”