Obituary Writer (9780547691732) (20 page)

My mother called as I was studying a map of Dallas and the outlying suburbs, drawing up a rough itinerary.

"So what do you want for your birthday?" In the chaos of my current situation, I had forgotten that my birthday was that Thursday.

Her call was serendipitous, because I was already living paycheck to paycheck and couldn't afford the ticket I had just bought. "It's funny you should mention it," I said.

I told her about the trip to Dallas, thought about saying it was for a story that I'd been working on, but she wouldn't have understood why I'd need the money.

They're not paying for you to go?
she'd have said.
If they can't afford you now, how do they expect to afford you when you're in demand?

I told her that I was going to Dallas not on assignment but for something else, something personal. On the verge of my first breakthrough, I'd decided to go for the day, to be where my father was at the same moment in his career.

"It's a pilgrimage," I said.

The only problem, I explained, was how to afford it. I'd already bought the ticket—impulsively, I had to admit—but this was important to me. It was worth any sacrifice.

"For my birthday all I want is a few dollars to help pay the fare," I said. "Everything's been arranged."

My mother's voice got quiet. "I don't know if I like the idea. What are you going to do there?"

I told her I'd go to the Book Depository and the area around Dealey Plaza, check out my father's old office on Commerce Street, drive by the house where he lived, maybe ask the owners if I could come inside and take a look. I said I might call a few of his old friends—Bob Strampe, Dave Vance, Skip Kaler—beat reporters from the local press whose names I knew from my mother's stories. But mostly I wanted to be in the place where he had been.

"I've never been there," I said. "I want to go."

She let out a cough. "Bob Strampe died in 1981, and I'd be surprised if the others are still there. There's an office complex where the house used to be. Dallas grew too fast."

She said it was a sweet idea and she understood why I would want to go, but with so little left to connect my father's time with the present day, I might find the trip a disappointment.

"It's best to leave Dallas in the imagination," she said.

When I had convinced her that there was no talking me out of it, that I had already made my decision, that even if I changed my mind the ticket was nonrefundable, she turned to the upcoming weekend.

"I hope you'll be back in time," she said.

"It's a one-day trip. I have to get back to finish my story anyway."

"I'll send you the money," she said. "But I'm still coming to see you."

Just as my birthday had slipped my mind, so had the news of my mother's visit. I vaguely remembered a brief conversation from a couple of weeks ago. The timing could not have been worse, but there was nothing to do for it now.

When I came back from lunch, Ritger's chair was pushed in. I signed on to the computer, expecting some kind of message from him, but there was nothing, only an All News announcement saying that the lead removal program was in its final stages; the environment would be clear of toxins by the end of the month.

I checked the mail, and at the bottom of the pile was a number 10 envelope from Margaret Whiting.

"As you requested..." she had written on a note, leaving a daytime and evening telephone number and a number for the Ralston Purina marketing department in Cleveland, where she would be on business until the end of the week. Inside were three color photographs—three-by-fives, unprofessional, and taken from a less than ideal distance—one of the bride and groom, the bride and groom with Margaret and Joe, and Alicia standing alone in front of the lake.

What Margaret had said was true. Alicia looked completely different. Her cheeks were sunken and she had a startled look in her eyes. Her hair, dyed red, lay limp about her shoulders, her bangs sticking up. She was thin as kindling.

In the solo shot, out on the point of Table Rock Lake, Alicia's arms hung loosely at her sides. Her head looked like a weight atop her small neck.

I called Margaret at the business number in Ohio.

She answered immediately.

"Are you busy?" I asked.

"I'm between meetings," she said.

"I got your letter. Thank you." It was strange to say thank you, considering what I held in my hands. But these were only pictures, I told myself. A person in a picture is not a person at all. I would see Alicia soon, and this pale woman from three years ago, this "stray," as Margaret had called her, would be the furthest thing from my mind.

"I'm sending them back." I decided then and there, and slid the pictures into a fresh envelope, sealing it.

"Were you surprised?" Margaret asked.

"No, not particularly." I was beginning to wish I hadn't called.

"You see what I mean? She looked totally different."

The way Alicia looked was not something I wanted to discuss with Margaret. Anything else was fine—Arthur, Joe, her parents, even her feelings about the marriage, the wedding, the past—but how Alicia looked, her physical appearance, that made me uncomfortable.

"Well? She does look entirely different now, doesn't she?" Margaret pressed.

"Alicia's mother is still alive," I burst out, trying to change the subject. It was a careless slip, I would later recall, playing it over in my mind.

"Really?"

Recklessly, I said, "She lives in a place called Weatherford. She hasn't seen her daughter in fifteen years."

"My goodness." Margaret drew out the words.

I did the math for the first time. Alicia had left home at seventeen.

"Where is Alicia planning to go now?"

"You mean where is she moving to?"

"Yes. Where is she moving to?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her in a while," I lied.

"Didn't she sell most of her possessions at the estate sale?" Margaret asked.

"I think you're right, she did." I hesitated.

"So everything is sold, the house is empty, and she has no idea where she's moving to?"

"Last I heard she's staying in the area."

Margaret cleared her throat. Even on the phone, I could sense her anger rising.

"I think I understand why she would want to get on with her life," I offered cautiously. "She's so young, and when something like that happens, in a way it's best to start over."

"You're wrong about her," Margaret said. "It's okay to set the past aside for a time, but you can't discard it. You can't just pick up, clean the slate, and become someone else." I heard somebody whispering in the background. "I'll just be another minute," Margaret told the person, then got back on the phone. "Maybe I neglected to tell you about my brother's will."

"He had a will?" It seemed unusual that anyone would have a will at forty-three, without any children.

"We wrote up our wills while we were living at the house on Dalecarlia, before Alicia," Margaret explained. "Our family has a terrible history of heart disease. Both of our parents had heart attacks, and my father died of one, so we did it just to be sure.

"It had nothing to do with money," she said after a moment. "Neither of us had much anyway. The wills were just part of our bond, a way of ensuring that each of our lives mattered and would continue to matter if something were to happen. We were especially concerned about Joe's livelihood if one of us were gone."

I sensed where this story was heading. "So when Arthur married Alicia, he changed his will."

"Of course. Alicia had complete control over him almost immediately, and he signed everything over to her. The dogs, his share of the Winfield farm, the house, all of its contents. And now she's just getting rid of it all, piece by piece, as fast as she can."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ritger making his way toward the desk. His jaw was wired shut. His face was deep vermilion. I got off the phone quickly.

He took a reporter's notebook from the inside pocket of his tailored suit and, standing over me, scratched out a message, the pen nearly ripping the paper as he wrote.

The company does not pay for your personal business!

"What do you mean?" I asked.

A call to Texas at 11:30
A.M.
None of our stiffs has relatives there. I checked the log.

I didn't know what to say. I wasn't aware of a company policy regarding long-distance calls. Reporters were free to make them, I assumed, so long as it was for a story. Mine could have been for a story.

How had he found out, I wondered. He reached over and hit the redial button.

"Who ish dish?" he spat through his metalwork, the veins in his neck standing out like snakes.

"What shitty ish dish?" he asked.

Slamming down the phone, he wrote me a note:

Fucking Ohio!

Someone other than Margaret had obviously picked up, and now I was in trouble. Ritger stormed away.

I did my best to look busy for the rest of the afternoon. I scraped together the day's obituaries, ran around the newsroom with a determined look, appearing as though routine tasks were thrilling. During the six-thirty meeting, I cleaned up some files that I hadn't touched in months, dusted around the desk, replenished our stock of dummy sheets, legal paper, notebooks, and pens. After the meeting was over and the newsroom had begun to empty of daysiders, I signed on to the computer one last time.

"I've spoken with Dick," read a message from St. John. "Keep this up and your job is more than on the line."

It was seven, now dark, when I arrived home. The painters had finished Alicia's house over the weekend, and she had moved back to St. Charles in the morning. We had decided for the first time since getting together three weeks ago to spend a night on our own. After four days in my cramped apartment we had both become tense.

It felt strange eating dinner alone. I pictured Alicia in the photograph, sunken and pale, thought of what Margaret had said about the will and how Alicia was thoughtlessly discarding the past, and I realized how much easier life had been before I'd cared about knowing the truth.

Already I missed her. I wanted to call, but we'd agreed that morning that I'd see her tomorrow. By nine o'clock, though, I couldn't stand the thought of sleeping alone, and flipped on the scanner. At half past, a female voice came across the airwaves:

"Units be advised. All I have is two gunmen running down Delmar Boulevard."

I quickly switched the station, picking up a male voice a fraction down the dial:

"I have a confirmed shooting at the 1600 block of Shepard Drive."

I called Alicia.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

She sounded tired.

"We have a crime scene. I'll meet you there."

"You what?"

"A crime scene," I said. "You wanted to go. We've got a good one."

"Really?" She seemed to come to life. "Where is it?"

On my way out to the car, I realized that she was a half-hour drive away and didn't know the city too well. But she'd find it; of that I was confident.

AT SIXTEENTH AND SHEPARD,
everyone was gone. It had taken me twenty-five minutes to get there, and now all was quiet, just a strip of yellow police tape crossing off the entrance to a corner store.

I parked in front of Lucky 7 Liquors and waited for Alicia, feeling stupid that I hadn't brought the scanner so I could find another crime scene. I turned on the radio on the off chance that something up to the minute might come over the all-news AM station, then a car pulled up, a gold Crown Victoria that glowed chariot-like on the dilapidated street.

The driver rolled his window down. I didn't recognize him at first. He wore a tam-o'-shanter too small for his head and was smoking a long cigar. Three scanners were cranked up loud.

"Are you out buffing?" he asked, taking off the hat and tossing it on the passenger seat.

It was Dr. Osborn, one of the ghouls.

"You know, scanner buffing, looking for crime scenes, trying to make a buck on the side."

"I'm with the
Independent
," I reminded him.

"I don't understand buffers," he said. "You're too busy working to appreciate the drama. You lose your feel for the human condition."

I looked down the street, hoping to see Alicia's Delta 88, but there was no sign of her.

Dr. Osborn turned up one of the scanners: "Units be advised. I have a shooting at the 2300 block of Cole Street. Second call."

"How did I miss that?" Osborn began rolling up his window.

"Wait a minute," I yelled at him. "Can I come with you?"

He waved me over, and I wrote a quick note to Alicia with directions to Cole Street, nine blocks away, and left it on the Gremlin's windshield.

When we rolled up to the crime scene, a tight cluster of flashing red lights, some of the crowd walked toward Osborn's car.

"They think we're undercover," he explained. "It's the Crown Vic. It gets them every time." When we parked in an alley and headed for the
whop, whop
of an arriving ambulance, Marshall Holman emerged from the crowd, too quickly for me to hide. For a second I thought I might sneak by, but then he caught a glimpse of me just as we were passing and twisted back around, grabbing my arm.

"Hatch!" He seemed far more happy to see me than I ever would have guessed. "It's about time!"

He sounded as if he had been expecting me.

"Your girl is a trip." He laughed. "I better watch out or she'll take my job. What's her name again?"

I had no idea what he was talking about. "What?"

"Your girl, whatshername, the budding journalist?" He was amused by how confounded I looked.

"Alicia?" I asked.

"That's it! Alicia. Hold on to her!" He smiled and walked away.

Dr. Osborn was tugging at my sleeve, leading me into the heat of the crime scene. The ambulance had stopped. A teenage boy was lying on a stretcher surrounded by paramedics. He was still alive, moaning, having been shot in the chest. The photographer,
the little man with wild matted hair, jumped in and began taking pictures.