"I'm not protecting her."
"Of course you are. All three of you are. And I won't let you anymore. I won't let you. You'll see." By now she was in tears, her own kind of dark psych-ward tears. There was rage but there was no power, she was drifting off into her madness and so she did the only thing she could. She hung up.
I let the tape roll and sat there in her room and felt sorry for her again, thinking of her freckles and her crazed eyes. She was one of those born truly luckless; not even money could put her life back together again.
The next conversation was with Larry Price. Predictably, he was not as diplomatic as Forester had been. He cursed her a lot and threatened her a lot and it was he, not she, who hung up.
Then came Dave Haskins. From the beginning, he sounded miserable. Over and over he said, "You don't understand what's going on here. We're not-" Then he stopped.
"You're not what?"
"I can't say. Ted and Larry would-"
"Hurt you?"
"Yes, God, don't you understand that? That's exactly what they'd do. They'd hurt me."
"She killed Sonny. And I'm taping all these conversations to turn over to the police. And-"
"If you want to talk to somebody, don't talk to me, all right? Ted and Larry are the ones-"
"I followed you the other day."
"What?"
"I followed you."
"Why?"
"I follow all of you. I follow everybody." She paused. "You almost went to the police, didn't you?"
He said nothing.
"Didn't you?"
Very softly: "Yes."
"You're getting tired of it, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"You're the only good one of the three. And I'm not just saying that. I've followed all of you and I've talked to you on the phone and I know that you're the only good one of the three. I know that. " She was going off again, and the rest of the conversation consisted mostly of her telling him how good he was and wouldn't he please go to the police. But all he said at the end, and obviously without any conviction, was "Give me a few days to think about it, all right? Please give me a few more days."
The next call was the real shocker and as soon as I heard who it was I thought of what Dr. Evans had said, that Karen's pattern was to have a new lover waiting in the wings before she got rid of the old one. And Evans had sensed that there was, in fact, a man in her life at the time Karen had been withdrawing from him.
I sat there in the prim pleasantness of the dead woman's bedroom and listened to the voice, an old-familiar voice, and didn't know what to think or say or do; I just thought of all the people involved, and all the people betrayed.
After a time, I turned off the player and just sat there, listening to the night wind and lonely creaking of a house where anything like real life had stopped in the summer of 1962.
Then I got angry and it was what I needed just then, real anger, and I went down the stairs and out of the house and down the gravel road past where Evelyn lay sprawled in her leathers like some piece of trendy violent sculpture, and I got in my Toyota.
Ten minutes later I was at a drive-up phone.
"You can go home now."
"Really?" Donna said. "You're not worried about that woman anymore?"
"She's dead."
Pause. "You don't sound so good, Dwyer."
"I don't feel so good."
"Why don't you meet me at my apartment in an hour or so."
"There's something I've got to do."
"It doesn't sound like something that's going to make you very happy."
So I thought about it and then I talked about it and then I felt much better than I should have, much better than I would have keeping silent. Donna does that for me.
Chapter 27
"Jack."
"Hi. Gary home?" I tried sounding as if it were Christmas and I were dropping off presents for the kids and I were wearing a red Santa cap and a glow from toddies, but I knew better and she knew better, too.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Jack, come on. I've known you a long time. Something's up."
"It's probably nothing. I just need to see Gary."
"He's at school."
"At this time?"
"He teaches a course in creative writing at night. Adult ed."
"I see." I stared past her into the house. It was inevitably tidy, tidy as she was, with the same kind of poor but resolute dignity. "I'm going to ask you something, and I wouldn't blame you if you'd ask me to leave."
"God, Jack." She put her hands to her face. "You're scaring me."
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, Jack."
And then she came up to me and slid her arms around me and I held her, sexless as a sibling in the soiled light of her living room there, and I permitted myself only certain pleasures in her embrace, the clean smell of her hair, the faintest shape of her small breasts against my chest, the ageless sense of the maternal that bound me up when I finally relaxed and let her begin stroking the back of my head. I was the one who had frightened her, yet she was calming me down. I thought of Glendon Evans' remark that women were the great teachers. And so they were.
"Mom?"
The boy's word said many things, all of them shocked, all of them scared.
She eased away from me and said, "It's just Jack, honey. He's just-sort of upset about something. Jack, I don't believe you've met Gary Junior."
"No," I said, trying to find my voice like a freshman who's been caught kissing a girl in the sudden presence of her father. "No. I haven't."
So I made a big beer-commercial thing of shaking the kid's hand and cuffing him on the shoulder and standing back as if he were a car and I were appraising him and I said, "He's got your looks, Susan. " He was a chunky kid with his old man's shaggy brown hair and that odd gaze of belligerent intelligence, as if he knew something vital but would be damned if he ever told you what it was.
She smiled. "And Gary's brains."
He was seventeen or so and he just wanted out of there. "Can I take the Pontiac?"
"I just finish telling you how smart he is and he says 'Can I take the Pontiac?' Honey, it's 'May I take the Pontiac?' "
"May I, then?"
"You know where the keys are. And tell Jack that you were glad to meet him."
But I was the guy he'd just seen in some kind of curious embrace with his mother and he didn't feel much like saying that he was glad he'd met me. And I didn't blame him at all.
After he was gone, she looked at me levelly and said, "You were going to ask me something that might cause me to ask you to leave."
"Right."
"Well.''
"Does Gary have a writing room?"
"As a matter of fact, he does. The attic."
"I wonder if I could see it."
"You want to see Gary's writing room?" For the first time irritation could be heard in her tone. "Why?"
"It's not anything I can explain."
"Jack, please tell me what's going on. I don't want to be angry with you. I don't want to ask you to leave, but I need you to tell me the truth."
I thought about that, about telling her the truth, but it would be too complicated and would only hurt her more. And at this point, I wasn't sure of what the truth was exactly, anyway.
I said, "I think Karen gave him something."
"Karen?"
"Yes."
"Gave him what?"
"I'm not sure."
"Jack, this is all so crazy."
"She may have given him something that will shed some light on her death."
"Well, you don't think Gary had anything to do with it, do you?"
I said it very quickly. "No."
She sighed and broke out in a grin that was accompanied by tears of relief. This time she hugged me hard enough to hurt my back.
"You had me so scared," she said. "I didn't know what was going on." Then she took my hand and said, "I'm going to take you to the steps leading to the attic now, Jack, and, you take all the time you want."