Murder Never Forgets (31 page)

“Listen,” I say. “Rob.” My voice is high; I can hear myself upping the volume. “It’s the well, Rob, the one up in the forest, the one we sat beside and you chucked a rock into; that well. I guess she knew about it, and she knew he’d understand. That’s where we have to look.”

“Rob,” I grab him by his jacket collar because he’s staring at me as if I’m speaking a newly invented language, “listen. I get it, I get it; that’s where Aunt Crystal left the stuff; I know where to look.”

 
 
Rob and I are still staring at each other, bemusedly, so to speak, when there is the
skritch
and
click
of a key being turned in a lock. I remember that I have locked us in, and someone with a key is entering.

The person with the key gets the door half-open and stands in the doorway. Outside, the exhibit hall is strangely quiet and looks empty. The person comes into our enclosure.

The person is Dr. Kittredge.

He enters sideways in a strange kind of half-shuffle. He has a gun, which he aims in our general direction. He gets the door shut with his foot and leans against it.

For two days now I’ve been expecting Kittredge, so I am not exactly surprised, just startled, scared, heart pounding, telling myself, “Oh, Jesus.” I’ve even been expecting a Kittredge with a gun. But still I’m not ready. My heart skips, my throat is dry; I half-open my mouth to yell and then decide that that’s not a good idea.

Something is different about Kittredge, who looks at me weirdly, almost sideways, making the gun veer from me to Rob to Daddy. His face is swollen and flushed; his forehead bulges. In a minute I understand. He’s drunk. I’ve seen him drunk before, but not this drunk, which I think is very drunk indeed. The drunkenness makes the gun behave erratically; it wavers, tries to aim at Daddy, finally settles on me.

“Thank you
very
much,” Kittredge says.

He pauses, gestures with the gun, a small, dark blue, shiny type. “That’s just . . . just what I hoped you’d do,” he says.

He waits some more. “I heard it all. I was in the office with the sound system turned up; you enunciated great. Just . . . exactly . . .
exackly
what we needed. And now . . .”

Here he wavers enough that it skips across the back of my mind how maybe I could grab at him, or Rob could, but then he straightens up, the unsteadiness passes. Kittredge is a big man, and he can be plenty drunk before it really stops him. “Too bad,” he says. “In a way. Because normally . . . Miss Carla . . . I’d just send you on your way. But
howinhell
can I do that?” He looks down at the gun and makes a noise with it that I think is taking the safety off.

Rob calls out, “Patrick.
Hey
. Don’t be dumb.”

Kittredge’s gun heat-seeks Rob. “Dumb?” he asks. “I was
smart
. Real smart to think of that sound system.”

“Oh, you were, you were,” I say quickly. Inside of me the adrenaline has begun to kick in and is revving up my responses and telling me what to do. “Delay,” it says. “Engage him. Talk to him. He loves to talk. Get him going. If he’s talking he can’t think about shooting you. Get him started.”

“Hello,” my father says. He sounds pleased. “Quite a few of us are here now. I think it is time to go home. Don’t you think so, too?”

He asks this question of Kittredge, who ignores him and wavers his gun in Rob’s direction. Rob has been making minor gestures with his arms, which I can see flexing under his jacket sleeves, and with his hands, which he’s compressing into fists. He’s getting set for a kung fu leap. When we were in junior high, Rob took kung fu lessons. There was a big vogue in Berkeley for that kind of thing.

I start to yell, “Rob, don’t,” because I think Kittredge will shoot him before he gets the leap finished, and then I decide not to yell but to take action of my own, verbal action, like my adrenaline has been advising. “There are two ways,” the adrenaline whispers into my mental ear, “insult him and get him talking. Or praise him and get him talking.” I start out with insults.

“I don’t think you were smart,” I say. “If you’re so smart how come we’re here? We came because you were dumb. You let us know. You were obvious. All along, you were obvious. Right at the beginning, I said to Rob, you know, I bet all this stuff, all these accidents, is Kittredge.”

Rob tries his own brand of diversion. “Patrick, for God’s sake, use some sense. Come on, you’re a doctor, you’ve got a good job, you’ve got a future, you’re going to have a name in Aging. Or in Retirement Management. People are recognizing you . . . and what you’re doing. You’re writing a paper; you’ll get it published . . .” Rob falters here. I remember that he once told me Kittredge had never published anything and that he was at the Manor because a place like that was the only hidey-hole for a fourth-rate doctor. “At the hospital,” Rob says. “Everyone respects you; everybody knows you.”

Kittredge doesn’t pay any attention to Rob; he spits on the finger of his left hand and polishes the barrel of the gun while keeping it pointed at me.

“You know,” my father tells him, “I think I know who you are; you’re the man who brings the
New York Times
on Sunday. Am I right? I really appreciate that
New York Times
.”

The gun swivels. “You . . . silly . . . little man. You’re
pretending
. Don’t come at me with that adorable aged Alzheimer’s crap. Con man. I know an old con man when I see one.”

Rob is clenching his fists at his sides some more.

“Listen,” I tell Kittredge as forcefully as I can, “Doctor, I don’t know anything. My father doesn’t and I don’t. My father is a crazy old man that you’ve been feeding pills to. None of us understands a goddamn thing. Something about accidents and you searching our rooms. Nobody here knows any of it, and if you sober up and let us out of here, we’ll go away and not talk about it and never ask you another question.”

Kittredge does some uncoordinated artillery gestures and says, “Ha, Ha.” The stagy kind, meaning,
how dumb do you think I am
.

Rob is being obvious again with his flexing and unflexing.

I return to my calculated insults.

“We thought it was weird, Rob and I did. The first time we ever talked about the accidents, I said, ‘Hey, I bet it’s the doctor. There’s just something about him, too damn unctuous. He lays it on too thick, carries on about how he loves the Manor.’ ”

I’m all set to continue with a description of Kittredge as a would-be lover; details about fat stomachs and panting middle-aged Don Juans, I could do that for five or ten minutes. “And the worst thing,” I start out, as preamble, then I take another look at him. His face is a darker and brighter red; the gun is shaking. This isn’t such a good idea.

He’s trying to aim the gun right at me, at my heart or my lung or my gut.

Can I be reassured by the fact that his aim is probably terrible?

I didn’t think Dr. K. would get this far this fast.

I’ve been halfway counting on the fact that I know him. But maybe I don’t. The Kittredge I thought I knew would have to—slowly—work his way up to . . . shooting somebody.

“Okay,” I say. “Okay.” I stop here and swallow convulsively. That adrenaline hormone has begun to fade. Now we’ll try praise.

“Hey, wait, I have to hand it to you, Doctor. You did some things right, a lot of things; everybody at the Manor thought so. I did, too. I looked at you and went, ‘Hey, that doctor atmosphere.
Good
. He’s got that great manner, makes everybody calm down, the ladies all notice it. Every single one of those ladies . . . ’” Here I steal a side glance at Kittredge. Am I going too fast? Is even one bit of this guff connecting? Yes, the gun is hanging lower and his color has calmed down. “The ladies all had crushes on you; you knew that, I guess. You had a big lineup for your evening office hours. And then there was the
trust
. Everybody trusted you. Yes, real, heavy-duty trust. ‘Our doctor,’ they said. Everybody said it. Smooth. Whatever you were doing, you thought about it and you did it right. It was easy for you. You’ve got that smooth manner. That bedside thing. People go for it; everybody at the Manor went for it.”

Holy God, I think, this is too much. But of course it really isn’t.

Rob is still planning something ridiculous. But Kittredge is a lot more relaxed. I try to babble extra-interestingly so he’ll watch me instead of Rob.

“And believe it or not,” I say. “Yeah, I thought you were connected with the accidents somehow, but we’ve gotten this far, a whole month into the history of this thing, and I simply don’t know what was really happening. Something about buying the Manor, first the accidents and then buying the Manor, is that right? But why? You were smooth; you covered your motives, and I never could really figure it out. Buying the Manor, that was it, right? Why on earth buy the Manor?”

I don’t want him to know that I understand about Aunt Crystal. How she died, that scene on the beach.

So far, that hasn’t come up. Without it he doesn’t have any real reason to butcher me and Rob and Daddy.

Does he?

Rob, to the side of Kittredge, flexes into a half-crouch, arms loose at his sides, hands clenched.

But Kittredge is more aware than I’d realized. He turns and with a sideswipe of his gun clunks Rob on the forehead and knocks him down. Rob tumbles dramatically and lies perfectly still, but after a panic-stricken moment I decide he’s not really hurt. On his way down he turned his face in my direction and winked. That fall was pretty theatrical.

“Ha!” Kittredge says, just like the villain in a Japanese movie.

“Pretty good, that, huh?” I guess he’s addressing me while staring down at a prostrate Rob. And I guess I have to send a thank-you up to the Goddess of Combat that Kittredge felt like showing off his martial arts skill instead of his gun readiness.

“Ah, baby,” he says, turning back to me, “you’re askin’ why buy the Manor? Baby, you don’t know a thing, not a thing. You don’t know what the Manor is worth.”

Kittredge has his mouth open, ready to give me his lecture on the value of the Manor, when there’s a small commotion with some diffuse unidentifiable noises at the door and then the squeak of the handle being turned. Apparently Kittredge didn’t lock it.

I think,
Oh, thank God, thank God; here’s some Marines to the rescue. Rothskellar got free, the kids called the local cops, whatever, I don’t care who it is, come in, whoever you are
.

Kittredge raises his gun.

Who comes in is Mrs. Dexter. Mrs. Dexter from the Manor, my old friend, Daddy’s old friend, complete in her purple suit and Red Queen face, but not looking exactly the same, because she doesn’t have her walker.

I do all this recognition in the first couple of seconds, while my mouth is open and I’m starting to yell, “Mrs. Dexter, get back, get out of here. He’s dangerous, he’s got a gun. Go call the . . .”

The lady cuts me off. “Oh, shut up.” It’s her usual crisp no-nonsense voice, maybe a little higher than usual.

“You don’t understand,” I blither. “He’s got this gun; he’s going to shoot us, and he’ll shoot you . . .” This I reap-praise, trying to force the scene into focus. My voice winds down.

This setup is all wrong.

Kittredge has lowered his gun.

Mrs. Dexter is standing just fine without her walker.

A little lopsided, maybe, higher on one side than on the other, but okay.

Her purple suit sits only slightly crooked over one hip.

Maybe the suit sits crooked because that side of Mrs. Dexter is weighted down by her own gun. Bigger than Kittredge’s piece, a capable, blackish-silver firearm, held firmly in her right hand.

The gun isn’t pointed at Dr. Kittredge; it’s aimed at me. And at Rob, stretched out on the floor, and at my father, meek beside his coffin lid.

Mrs. Dexter points her gun mostly into the middle of my shirt and says, “I hate squawking women.”

My mind is racing with scraps of phrases like, “But I thought . . . ,” “I don’t understand,” “What has happened to you,” but I don’t say any of this, because I am beginning to get it.

Mrs. Dexter leans up against the door. She scowls and compresses her Red Queen face and does me over with what might be scorn, except that the Red Queen face always looks scornful.

Then she turns to Kittredge. “Patrick,” she says, “you always were an idiotic oaf. Stand up straight. Quit looking as if the world is imploding.”

I struggle with getting my brain around some new concepts.

Mrs. Dexter knows perfectly well what’s going on.

Correction: she knows perfectly well, and furthermore she’s in charge of things. In charge of Kittredge. She’s acquainted with him in a way I never imagined. She orders him around.

“What in
hell
,” she is inquiring of him now, “did you think you’d gain by slaughtering these people in a public place? A place that afterward will be full of blood and DNA and fingerprints? And you’re drunk.
Drunk.
” She makes it sound like fornicating with goats.

Her gun has moved to cover the whole room, which includes Kittredge as well as us. She seems good at that: getting the whole room in her sights.

“Lou, old
girl
.” Kittredge more or less hangs his head. I suppose he looks sheepish. His own gun hangs down at his side.

“You knew perfectly well,” she says, obviously just warming up into her tirade, “you were supposed to get them together. Quietly, unostentatiously. Get them out of here. Quietly. Out the back door. Not making a scene.
God
, you are an
idiot
.”

She must have been practicing invective in her private moments when the other old ladies weren’t around. She’s pretty good at it.

“Nobody knew,” Kittredge tells her. He pauses and attempts to think about this. “Well, hardly anybody.”

My father smiles happily. He’s pleased. “Nearly everyone is here now. We sound a bit cross, but that’s because we’re hungry . . . I have seen my coffin lid,” he confides to Mrs. Dexter.