Bloodline (40 page)

“Where?” I said.

“Anywhere. Portland. Boston. Come live with me in Colorado Springs. I've got a nice place. Plenty of room. You could write out there.”

“Sounds great, but I don't think I can just leave right now. What if the cops thought I was running from this thing? I don't know. I don't want to give them any ideas.”

“Did they say you couldn't leave town?”

“What? Like the movies?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” I said. “But Poole keeps coming by. If he comes by and the place is empty and I've disappeared, I'm not sure how that would look.”

“We won't disappear. Call him and tell him what happened and tell him where you're going. He can't make you stay.”

“No.”

“Give him what you have. The stuff about the lawyer and the phone calls and all that. Let him take over. We can go on with our lives.”

“Yeah,” I said, uncertainly.

“But what?”

“But this is mine. This place.”

“I'd call him, Jack. Clair can watch your stuff. We could be in Boston tonight. Colorado tomorrow. Making love in peace.”

I smiled.

“Yeah. That would be nice.”

I took my hand from hers and started for the phone.

“Another thing,” I said. “I loaded the gun.”

Roxanne looked at me, dismayed.

“Pull the lever back, safety is on,” I said. “Push it forward, safety is off. You want to try it?”

She just shook her head no.

I tried Poole twice. Once at eight o'clock in the morning, again an hour later. A different dispatcher told me he was off, but this time I told him it was an emergency. He asked me what the nature of the emergency was, and I said it had to do with the Missy Hewett homicide, that I had information crucial to the case. He sounded like he'd heard that one before, but said he'd try to reach Poole at home.

That was the first time.

I sat and waited and then called Clair. He was out in the barn, and Mary asked if I wanted her to go get him. I said I'd come down and she said that was fine.

“And, Jack?” Mary said, catching me before I hung up. “I think Roxanne is just lovely.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”

Roxanne was reading, with her bare feet up on the side of the chair. I put two chunks of beech in the stove and damped it down and told her I was going to Clair's for a minute, that I wanted her to come with me.

“Can't I just—” Roxanne said, pausing as I turned to the front of the house and listened.

A car had pulled up. Not Clair. Not a cop. Not the college girls' Subaru. The motor ticked for a few seconds and then shut off. A door snapped open. Thunked shut.

I went to the closet, opened the door, and took out the rifle. Roxanne swung her legs off the chair as I laid the gun on the counter. There was a shuffle outside the door, then three loud knocks. I looked to Roxanne and then to the loft.

She shook her head no. I walked to the door, listened again, then opened it six inches. And there was Gary Putnam. He wasn't smiling.

“McMorrow,” he said.

“Putnam,” I said. “Funny. I didn't hear an ambulance go by.”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then his face went hard.

“I need to talk to you,” Putnam said.

“You should have called ahead. I would have warmed some Brie.”

“I'm not fooling around,” he said.

“I'm not either.”

I let the door open wider and turned back to the room. He took a step inside and then stopped. I stopped in front of the counter. To my right, six inches from my elbow, was the fixed black stare of the rifle barrel.

Putnam eyed it, then glanced at Roxanne and nodded.

“I thought maybe we could talk alone,” he said.

“I'd tell her about it anyway,” I said. “Roxanne, Gary. Gary, Roxanne.”

They neither spoke nor moved. I leaned against the counter. I didn't offer Putnam a chair.

He was dressed like a model in one of those outdoorsy catalogs for rich guys: tan boots, dark green twill pants, a brown canvas jacket with a leather shooting patch on the shoulder, the kind of jacket that has the pocket in the back for all the little birds blown apart by one's custom-made shotgun. The effect was supposed to be self-assured, to reek of the cockiness that comes from a false and ludicrous sense of caste. I reached for the rifle, fingered the safety, and watched Putnam blanch.

Nothing like fear to blur class distinctions.

“That thing loaded?” Putnam said.

“Yeah,” I said, “and you can't be too careful. Did you know most gun accidents occur in the home?”

“No, I didn't know that. I don't care for the things, really.”

“Just getting the hang of it, myself. I've been trying to memorize it, you know? Which way the safety goes and all that.”

Putnam eyed the barrel as if it were a snake. Then he glanced at Roxanne. She looked at him the same way he'd looked at the gun.

“You're a little far from the yacht club, aren't you, counselor?”

“I think we need to talk. Face-to-face.”

“Last time we were face-to-face, I almost ended up with a door in mine.”

“You caught me at a bad time,” Putnam said.

“Been one of those decades, huh?”

Putnam looked like he was going to start shouting, then choked it back, like medicine. Or maybe vomit.

“Are you always like this?” he asked.

Roxanne looked to me.

“No,” I said. “Sometimes I'm asleep.”

“Listen, McMorrow. I'm trying to make a good-faith effort to settle this thing. I've come all the way up here—”

“To the ends of the earth,” I interrupted.

“Damn close to it.”

“How'd you find me?”

“You left that number. With the Prosperity exchange. I drove here and asked around. A girl at some store up on a hill finally told me.”

“Knox Ridge,” I said.

“Whatever,” Putnam said.

He was feeling better. His natural arrogance was returning, like color to his cheeks. I reached for the gun again and a little of his
cockiness drained away, like beer from a glass. Roxanne watched him closely: a shrink observing a patient. Through one-way glass.

“We have to talk,” Putnam said, back on the script.

“About what? Missy Hewett's brutal murder?”

He winced, then got back in character.

“Listen, we're both reasonable people, McMorrow. I know you're doing your job. I checked you out. The
Times
and all that. You're a pro, and I respect that. But you've got to understand. All I did was try to help this kid. She didn't know how to go about an adoption, and I gave her some advice. She had a lot of questions and she kept coming to me for answers. I could answer some. The legal ones. The personal ones—was this the right decision and all that—I told her she had to make up her own mind about that.”

“Why you?” I said.

“Oh, word of mouth, I guess. I used to handle adoptions. Way back when. She talked to somebody I'd done one for—I don't remember who—and called me up. At home.”

He grinned.

“She was a determined little gal, I'll tell you.”

“Don't patronize her,” I said. “Not in my presence.”

I didn't grin. His vanished. Roxanne watched, implacable.

“Listen, McMorrow. I did the adoption for Missy Hewett and that's it. I don't know anything about her personal life. I don't know what losers she may have gotten mixed up with over at the college. You can believe me or not; that's your choice. But what you're doing if you publish my name in connection with this girl's death, in any way, shape, or manner, is destroying my career. My practice. My family. I'm done. Finished in this town. All because I tried to help a confused little girl.”

“So sue me,” I said.

Putnam stopped. His mouth actually hung open. He had expensive teeth, which he bared.

“Listen, you son of a bitch. I don't know what you're doing or why you've picked me out, but you're gonna ruin me. Don't you understand?”

“I don't understand why somebody killed Missy Hewett.”

“How much?”

“How much what?” I asked.

“How much are you going to make on this little story?”

“What makes you think it's gonna be little? Five thousand words might not sound like much to you, but you sit down and start typing, and some days, boy—”

“How much?” Putnam said.

“Getting kind of personal, aren't you?”

“Listen. I'll triple it. Four times it.”

“That's quadruple. Five times is quintuple. Like those people who have all those babies.”

“Goddamn it, McMorrow. I'll give you ten thousand dollars. Cash. Right now.”

“For a whole career? Where's your self-esteem?”

“You bastard,” Putnam snarled. “Twenty thousand. Goddamn blackmailer.”

“You can't blackmail people who don't have anything to hide.”

“I don't. But goddamn it, just my name in the paper with something like this will be enough. You know that, you bastard.”

“I know I'm getting tired of being called names.”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“And you know what else I know?” I said. “I know I'm tired of your silly little jacket. The last time I saw one of those was on
Upstairs, Downstairs.
Some earl was going off to shoot pheasant.”

“Twenty-five.”

“And I'm tired of having you in my house.”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

He squeezed the words through clenched teeth.

“And I'm tired of worrying about having a loaded rifle right here and somebody like you right there.”

“Are you threatening me, you son of a bitch?”

“You already used that one.”

“Bastard.”

“That one, too.”

I took a step toward him and he backed away and reached for the door latch.

“You're making a big mistake,” Putnam said.

“Story of my life,” I said, smiling. “But I try to learn from them.”

He backed through the door and then turned and walked toward a silver Saab, the one I'd seen in his driveway in Falmouth.

“My offer stands for twenty-four hours, McMorrow,” Putnam said.

I stood in the doorway.

“So that's P-U-T-N-A-M, right?” I called.

He got in his fancy car, started the motor, and backed out. Going down the road, the car's tires spun as he slammed from gear to gear.

I stepped back inside and closed the door.

From her chair, Roxanne gave me a long look.

“What was that all about?” she said.

“I don't think he likes the country,” I said.

“No. I mean you. You laid it on a little thick, didn't you? The hard-guy stuff. I don't think I've ever seen you like that.”

“Reduce you to jelly?”

“Not really,” Roxanne said. “Scared me a little, maybe.”

I shrugged.

“This is a scary business.”

“You didn't act scared.”

“No,” I said. “But he did.”

“And?”

“And that's what I wanted to know. Is he a wimp? Is he scared?”

“And he is?” Roxanne said.

“Didn't you think so?”

“Yeah.”

“So I had to push him a little to make sure,” I said.

“And are you?”

“Pretty sure that he didn't kill her.”

“But he seemed like he might know who did,” Roxanne said.

“Maybe,” I said.

She got up from the chair and turned toward the back window. I picked up the rifle and jacked the shells out onto the counter. They bounced like marbles, then rolled in small circles. Roxanne grimaced. I thought again and clicked the shells back into the magazine, one by one.

“This stinks,” I said. “You know why?”

Roxanne turned to me. Her eyes were wide and dark, and after only a couple of days with me, already had circles.

“Yeah,” she said. “Because you had been thinking he did it. That he was the one.”

“And?”

“And you don't have a plan B,” Roxanne said.

I looked at her and smiled.

“Did I ever tell you you're beautiful when you're right?”

So the gun went back in the closet, still loaded, safety on. I thought. I looked out the back window and the front window, too.
Roxanne picked up her book, but I noticed that she was staring, not reading. Then, after a while, the phone rang and I answered it, and a woman asked for Roxanne. I handed her the phone and listened until I could tell it was somebody at her office. I gathered that there was some sort of a problem with somebody in their care. The conversation went on for twenty minutes, maybe longer. To Roxanne's credit, she did not once use the phrase “in crisis.”

When she got off the phone, I was sitting in a hard chair by the back window, looking at a book about hawks.

“So what's up?” I said, as Roxanne laid her hand on my shoulder.

“A problem. This family I was working with, in Colorado Springs. The fourteen-year-old girl tried to kill herself.”

“Did she succeed?”

“No.”

“Why would she do that?” I asked.

“Because she thinks her father doesn't love her.”

“Does he?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he's an asshole,” Roxanne said.

“I hate social worker jargon.”

“Sorry.”

“So the kid suddenly realized this?”

“I guess she ran out of ways to fool herself,” Roxanne said.

We were quiet for a moment. Roxanne's hand was still on my shoulder.

“Missy Hewett didn't have a father at all, to speak of,” I said.

“That's easier, in some ways.”

“And she didn't try to kill herself.”

“Some kids are tougher than others,” Roxanne said.

“And look where it got her,” I said. “Her whole life was one big dirty trick.”