Deadline (22 page)

LeMaire, J. walked up behind me, carrying his automatic Canon.

“You're having a busy day,” he said, his eye in the viewfinder.

“You, too,” I said.

“At least nobody's shooting at me.”

“Give it time,” I said.

He moved past me. Crouching awkwardly, then backing up, one step and then another. LeMaire, J. did not look like a professional.

“Getting this one in black and white,” he said. “We are gonna put this little shit away.”

“What for?”

“Third OUI arrest this year. Probation says no alcohol, and he's plastered. No license, no registration. She dies, they ought to hang him by the balls.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said.

LeMaire, J. moved away and I got a shot of him taking pictures, elbows out like a tourist.

I had enough. We'd use one, maybe two pics if it was a fatal. And we'd need a good shot of the kid, the villain. I walked back to the cruiser and leaned close to the glass. The kid was pouting in the backseat.

America's future.

When I walked into the police station, the sound of someone vomiting echoed in the concrete corridor. I knocked once and the
metal door to the duty room buzzed and I pushed it open. LeMaire, J. was sitting at a wooden desk writing in the arrest log, a big blue ring binder. Vigue was on the phone.

“She'd be arriving about now, sir. In Lewiston. That's right. Now, Mr. Gamache, I know you're upset. If I was you, I'd be climbing the walls, let me tell you. But listen, sir. Please try to understand what I'm saying. It isn't going to help your daughter if you're in an accident, too. After twenty years, I know. I can tell you I've seen it. It can and does happen. So I know you're going to want to see her, and you're going to want to get there as fast as possible. Do that. But if you obey the speed limits, take it easy, you'll get there just as fast, and you'll be able to help your daughter. Yessir. I know you're upset. Yessir. Please think of what I said.”

Vigue put the phone down.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “For this they pay me twelve bucks an hour. Guy's so friggin' upset, he'll probably kill himself on the way to the hospital. Should have asked him if somebody else could drive him. Probably doing eighty-five down the one-oh-four by now.”

LeMaire, J. grunted.

Vigue lit a cigarette and drew a third of it into his lungs. “What a way to make a living. Let me tell you.”

He looked at me.

“What can we do you for, Mr. Clark Kent?”

Before I could answer, the patrolman named Plaistow, who looked almost old enough to be in high school, walked in from the booking area, his uniform splattered with vomit.

“Man, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Get the hell back in there,” Vigue barked. “He'll drown in the toilet, and your ass and mine will be in court.”

Plaistow started to say something but stopped, then turned and walked out of the room.

“Don't teach you about puke at the academy,” LeMaire, J. said, poring over forms at the desk. “Report's not done. Not much to it, though. Driver of the Toyota, Lori Gamache, east on Route Two. Second car, Toby Tansey, nineteen, Androscoggin, local dirtbag, swerved from the westbound lane, collided with vehicle one, the Toyota. You saw what was left. Girl is headed for Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Multiple injuries. Tansey is fine, of course.”

I got out my notebook.

“Charges?” I said.

“Oh, maybe a couple. We've got to talk to the DA's office again, but he's already been charged with criminal OUI. A point-two-three.”

“Not bad for a Sunday morning,” Vigue said.

“Probably just out of church,” I said.

“Our Lady of Jack Daniel's,” Vigue said.

LeMaire, J. continued with his report.

“Okay, the OUI. You got that. Operating without a license. Operating an uninspected motor vehicle. Failure to show proof of insurance. Reckless driving. Let's see. What else was there, Lieutenant?”

“Possession.”

“Oh, yeah. Illegal possession of and transportation of alcohol.”

“And that's if the girl lives,” Vigue said.

“It might be a fatal?” I said.

“I don't know,” LeMaire, J. said. “They were talking about internal injuries, internal bleeding. Her insides are all stove up. Steering wheel sort of crushed her chest and abdomen.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-two. Nurse. Lives in Lewiston, works at the hospital down there, I guess. Up here to visit her parents. Good kid. Comes home on weekends. Father, Lionel Gamache, used to work in the mill. Blackie Gamache, they call him. Lives on Penobscot Street, I think. Used to, anyway.”

I scribbled. LeMaire, J. got up from the desk and picked up his camera and started rewinding the film. When the winder spun freely, he popped the camera back open and the yellow Kodak canister dropped on the floor and rolled. He grunted when he picked it up.

“Hey, you know, without Bertin around, where are we gonna get this developed? What are you guys doing with your film?”

“Cindy, our receptionist. She did X-rays at the hospital. She can do it, or I could do it myself if we were in a jam. Takes me forever. What are you gonna do with that?”

“I don't know. Take it to LaVerdiere's? I'm not gonna do it, I know that,” LeMaire, J. said.

“You process film?”

“Hated it. All those timers and little reel things. Remember that, Lieutenant? When we hired Bertin to teach us a few years ago. What a joke that was. Remember that, Lieutenant? Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. You couldn't see what you were doing. None of us were any good at it, but we got detail pay. Lieutenant here was the only one who got anything on his pictures. Spit in the water, I think.”

Vigue growled.

“Trying to teach you numbskulls is like trying to teach a friggin' chimpanzee. Except a chimp can learn something. You guys would screw up a wet dream.”

“What was the idea?” I said.

“Save money,” Vigue said. “Bozos on the council decided they'd all get reelected by saving money. Had us walking to save gas. Cut the uniform allowance. What a joke. So we go through all this crap and then the guy behind it, Millington or Pillington, skinny freak, goes back to Mass. or wherever the hell he came from, the son of a bitch.”

“I like a happy ending,” I said.

“The stuff that goes on,” Vigue muttered, and got up and hitched his equipment belt.

We stood for a moment or two.

“Your friend Mrs. Wiggins is in Central Maine Med, too,” Vigue said. “Held for observation.”

I nodded.

“You should come in tomorrow and sign the reports, after they're typed up. Somebody from the DA's office will want to talk to you.”

“I don't think I want—”

There was a shout from the cell block. Then a crash.

Vigue and LeMaire, J. bolted through the door and I followed.

The kid from the accident was on his back on the floor. There was blood on his nose and mouth and he was laughing. Plaistow, the patrolman, stood over him, panting.

“Got behind me,” he sputtered. “Tried to choke me, the son of a bitch.”

The kid was laughing so hard that tears were running from the corners of his eyes. Vigue used his boot to flip him onto his stomach, then stood with his boot pressing the kid's face hard into the concrete floor. The laughing stopped.

Under the boot, the kid whined.

“Fundamentals,” Vigue said. “You've got to keep your prisoner secured.”

16

L
ate Sunday afternoon, I saw LeMaire, J. on the street. I was walking up to the Pine Tree to get something to eat and he was sitting in a cruiser outside the Federal Bank, waiting as a clerk from LaVerdiere's made a deposit. The deposit escorts were one of the department's services for local business.

“How'd your pictures come out?” I said.

“Don't know,” he said. “Might get lucky.”

“You have a darkroom down there?”

“Got a room full of sinks. Supposed to make our own pictures, sell them to insurance companies. Accidents and stuff like that. So we go out and buy all this stuff and then the whole thing is forgotten.”

“So much for that.”

“Big ideas come and go. The rest of the stuff never changes.”

The clerk from LaVerdiere's came back and got in her car, a white Volkswagen Rabbit. She waved at LeMaire, J. as she pulled away and he gave his siren a blip.

Service with a smile.

“How's the girl from the accident?” I said, still standing beside the cruiser.

“Gonna make it, I guess. Broken ribs. Something about her spleen. Ruptured. Possible punctured lung. I gotta call again tonight. Still hope the little bastard hangs.”

“Before he kills somebody else,” I said.

“It was my daughter, they wouldn't have to worry about that,” LeMaire, J. said, and he put the cruiser into gear and pulled away.

I kept walking. Even if she lived, it was still page one. I made a note to call the parents for an interview. If they were both in Lewiston at the hospital, would one of them come home? I hated hospital waiting-room interviews, especially over the phone. Every one I'd ever done had left me feeling dirty.

For this, I made twelve bucks an hour.

I went into the Pine Tree and saw the heads turn as I walked to the counter.

“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” I murmured to myself, and picked a stool two from the door, four away from the next diner. I turned as I sat down and saw two old women turn in their booth to look me over. I smiled at them and nodded and they turned back, flustered. One came in every week with notes from the Androscoggin Baptist Church Auxiliary. She turned and peeked at me again.

So this was what Pauline and Martin would get. Times a hundred. For the rest of their lives. The lady who took a shot at the fella from the newspaper. What was his name? Almost blew his head off with a shotgun. Martin had an affair—you remember her, Meredith? Well, he did, and the fella wanted to do a story on it and she went over there and tried to kill him. I knew she wasn't right. Sad. You know, I don't think they should have let her out. Put her someplace where they can look after her, poor dear. Get some medication. You
know she always was high-strung. Oh, yes. Even when she was at the school. You didn't think so? Oh, I always did. Maybe if I had said something to somebody, it wouldn't have happened. Oh, I know. You mind your own business or you get nothing but trouble. Oh, yes, I've learned my lesson on that score, believe you me.

Jo, the owner, waited on me at the counter. She was fifty and looked sixty, the answer to anybody who thought hard work kept you young.

“What'll it be today?” she said, wiping the counter with a white cloth and dropping a coffee cup in front of me.

“Tuna fish, I guess. Whole wheat and lettuce, and I guess that's it.”

“You had some trouble, I hear.”

“A little bit.”

“Everybody okay?” Jo asked, pouring water in my glass.

“She hurt her arm. Could have been worse. You think I could have that to go? It's later than I thought, and I've got work to do.”

“Sure, dear,” Jo said. In a minute she came back with a waxed paper bag holding my sandwich on a paper plate.

Heads turned again as I left.

The trials of a celebrity.

I did have work to do, which said something about the relentlessness of this little paper. It didn't stop for my problems. It didn't stop for Arthur's death. It didn't stop for anything. The
Review
was like a train that always left on time and we were the crew, stoking its fire, taking the tickets, cleaning the bathrooms, and trying to keep it on schedule, and on the track. The same was true for any newspaper, but sometimes this one seemed even more demanding, maybe because there was no other crew to take over.

The crew.

Vern would have to write something about the shooting at my house, I guessed. If we didn't report anything, people would say we covered it up. Maybe something straight for the police log, bare bones from the report. Cover ourselves and nothing more. There was no need to exploit Pauline's mental problems—or was that all there was to it? Jack McMorrow, the great rationalizer. The man of a million excuses, the answer to every ethical question. Like most news people, I did not apply the same standards to my coverage and to myself.

So the pragmatist ate his sandwich at his computer terminal, focusing not on larger issues but on the task at hand, which was to get the editorial page done and out of the way by Monday. That was when the pre-deadline chaos would begin. But if this was not chaos, what was? Did chaos plus chaos equal calm? Screw it. I started typing. And when I felt I'd said everything that needed to be said, I stopped and reread it.

          
As most of us know, Arthur Bertin drowned last week in a canal near the St. Amand Co. mill.