Sam McCain - 05 - Everybody's Somebody's Fool (21 page)

“Was he in love with her?”

“Thanks for taking care of me.”

“We’re friends, Jean. What the hell else would I do?”

She sipped. “This tastes very good.” She huddled her hands around the cup as if she were very cold. “That was the first part of the explanation. That he was in love with her. But that was the first time.”

“The first time?”

“When she was younger. Worked part-time in his office.

And they had an affair. He knew it would destroy both of them so he broke it off. That’s when she had her breakdown and went into the mental hospital. She would never tell her parents who she’d had the affair with. And they never figured it out. They might have suspected but they didn’t have any proof.”

“And you took him back?”

She smiled sadly. “I’m a forgiving

person, Sam. It’s my nature. I can’t help it. He made a mistake and asked me if I could forgive him. I did.”

“Wasn’t it difficult?”

“Difficult?” The sad smile again. “Two or three times a day I’d have these little breakdowns. I’d be furious or I’d be so depressed I was paralyzed. I don’t think I let him touch me for a year. And I mean not even a friendly kiss. I just kept thinking how old I must look to him after Sara. She was so beautiful.

I even tried a psychologist in Cedar Rapids. The most vain man I’ve ever met.

He thought it would be good for me if I went to bed with him. He sat down next to me once and tried to kiss me. I walked out and never went back.

He had nerve enough to send me a bill. Which I didn’t pay, of course.”

She drank more coffee. Held the empty cup up. “Do you suppose I could get a refill?”

“Get your own damned coffee.”

For just an instant she believed me and looked shocked. Then she laughed. Or tried to. “I forgot about your sense of humor, Sam. How deadpan you can be.”

After I brought her a second cup, and after I was sitting down again, she said, “About four or five months ago—I can’t say for sure exactly when—Sara started calling Jack again.

I actually felt sorry for her. She was obsessed with him. All that time in the mental hospital—she hadn’t improved any at all.

She’d just managed to stay away from him, but once she gave in to the urge again, she started following him. Calling him. Sending him love letters. And then waiting for him in his car at his office. He couldn’t get away from her. And then—” Her hands huddled around her coffee cup again. Her gaze was fixed on the past. She said. “He gave in to her one night. She convinced him to come out here to the cabin. And she managed to get herself pregnant.”

In other circumstances, her last line would’ve been funny, one of those lines that deflect responsibility. She managed to get herself pregnant. Jack, of course, had had nothing to do with it. A poor passive figure and no more.

“That’s why I’m here tonight.”

“I guess I don’t understand, Jean.”

“He’s been afraid to come out here since the last time they were together. And especially since she was killed.”

“I guess I can understand that.”

“Then after your confrontation with him … he thinks you’ll try to blame him for Sara’s death. And for Egan’s.”

“Why would he have killed Egan?”

“Because Sara might have told him that she was pregnant with Jack’s child.”

“You did it again, huh?” I made it as soft as I could, as if I were talking to my kid sister.

“Did it again?”

“Forgave him.”

“Oh. Yes. I see. Yes, I guess

I did, didn’t I?” Her gaze grew old and sad. “But it really wasn’t his fault. She talked him in!coming out here—he only did it because he was afraid she might have another one of her breakdowns—and when they got here, she seduced him. It really wasn’t his fault, Sam.”

We believe what we choose to believe, what we need to believe, however ludicrous that might be. If we couldn’t lie to ourselves, we couldn’t survive. But Jean’s belief was

extraordinary.

“He didn’t kill them, Sam.”

“All right.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I’ll try to.”

“It’s the truth, Sam.”

“Where’s your car?”

“My car? Why?”

“I thought I’d give you a ride to it.”

She sipped some coffee. “I’ve still got things to do out here.”

“Like what?”

“Making sure that she didn’t leave anything behind out here. She was a true child, Sam.

Beautiful, seductive, but a true child. Jack told me that she was always spilling her food on herself. He said he had to clean her up as if she were a three-year-old. He said that sometimes he had to clean her up the way he did our own daughter.” She smiled. “I can hear all those Freudian red flags going up in your head, Sam. But it wasn’t like that at all. She fooled people into thinking she was this little angel. Sweet and innocent, you know how teenage girls can fool people. And she seduced him. I’m sure she let him think he was seducing her. But it was really the other way around.”

Hopeless. I couldn’t take any more. I pitied her in a way I never wanted to pity anybody, in a condescending way, as if she were my house pet or a primate.

I stood up. “I need to go.”

“Please don’t get Jack involved in this.”

“I’ll try not to.”

She flung off the cover and eased off the couch.

She came to me and slid her arms around me.

“Please, Sam. You two have never liked each other. But he’d never kill anybody. It just isn’t in him. It really isn’t. He’s not perfect but none of us are, Sam. And Cliffie hates him. If you make Cliffie think that Jack’s involved—”

I kissed her on the forehead. “‘ationight, Jean. I’ll help you all I can.”

“‘ationight, Sam.” Then, “You ever wish we were kids again?”

“All the time.”

Now that I knew my way, the walk back to my car was pleasant. Even the owls, grouchiest of all forest creatures, sounded friendly, and the tiny, bright earnest eyes observing me from the

undergrowth seemed merry as Disney eyes.

I hoped to see Linda tonight. Or talk to her on the phone. At least for me, one sign of a good relationship is the ability to find yourself satisfied just to hear her voice. And the ability to spend an hour on the phone and have it go by like five minutes.

The door of my ragtop was open and it shouldn’t have been open. Open maybe a quarter of an inch.

Just enough to tell me that somebody had been here.

The back seat confirmed it. My briefcase was turned upside down and its contents dumped out.

Somebody looking for something. I wondered if they’d found it.

Then I noticed the glove compartment door had been left open, too, everything it held spread out on the passenger’s side of the front seat.

This could be random, of course. The tracks weren’t that far away. A wandering hobo might have searched my car for money or anything he could hock. If that was the case, there was one disappointed hobo somewhere out there.

Just as I finished putting everything away in my briefcase, I heard the cry. I glanced around, not sure where it came from. Male, that was about all I knew for sure. And not too far away.

Urgency, fear in the voice.

A second shout clarified his position. Within thirty seconds, I was back on the Comanche Trail, batting aside pine branches, shouting, “Where are you?” Already sweaty despite the chill, already anxious about this being some kind of trap. I just kept thinking about somebody tossing my car.

Maybe he thought he could get more satisfaction out of dealing with me directly. I’d definitely eliminated the notion of a wandering hobo.

The oppressive smell of loam, the

tripping-stumbling-scraping of trying to move through man-tall undergrowth. Tall as my five-five, anyway. He’d cried out again and this time I had a good sense of where he was.

I came into a tiny clearing, no bigger than a prison cell, and saw in the broken moonlight through the pines the six-foot rocky ravine below.

At first I didn’t recognize him. He was just some shadow lying back against the far side of the narrow ravine, pulling up the right leg of his jeans.

“Oh, shit, McCain, thank God.”

It could only be Donny Hughes, teenage dipshit.

“You broke into my car, didn’t you,

Donny?”

“Exactly how do you break into a convertible when the top’s already down, McCain? Now c’mon, help me. I think I broke my leg.”

“What the hell were you looking for?”

“God, are you going to help me or not?”

“Not until you tell me what you were looking for?”

This sound of pain was dramatic as all hell.

“C’mon, McCain. I can’t stand up by myself.

Didn’t you have to take some kind of oath?”

“You’re thinking of doctors and plumbers.

Private investigators don’t take oaths.”

“Do you want to be responsible for my catching pneumonia and dying out here?”

“That’d make me popular with a lot of people in this town, Donny. Now why the hell were you rummaging around in my car?”

“I wanted to see what you had on her. She thinks you’re trying to blame her for Sara and Egan.”

“You mean Rita?”

The forest animals were enjoying this. It was Tv for them. I could hear them scurrying, sliding, slithering to get closer. Two human beings talking. Life didn’t get much better than that.

“I love her, McCain. I don’t want

to see her go to the gas chamber.”

“That’s one you don’t have to worry about, Donny. In Iowa, we hang people. There isn’t any gas chamber.”

“Really? Hang people?”

“I don’t like it, either. But that’s what we do.

No liquor by the drink because that’s against God’s law. But hang as many people as you want. That’s just fine.”

“Please, McCain. Please help me. I think gangrene’s setting in.”

“Listen, Donny, I’ve got a saw in my car. I’ll go get it and we’ll have that gangrene cut away in no time.”

“McCain, I’m not kidding. I saw this Western once where the guy died of gangrene.

He was foaming at the mouth and everything.”

“That’s rabies, Donny. Not gangrene.”

“He had rabies? I didn’t think cowboys could get rabies.”

God only knew what that meant.

So I went down there, of course. And

helped him, of course. And all the time I was doing my best to examine his leg he was bitching, of course. He was going to tell his dad how long I’d taken getting down here to help him. And his dad was going to sue me. And possibly give me rabies.

His leg was broken. I tried to feel sorry for Donny but you just can’t. Maybe if he really did have rabies you could. But short of rabies, it was real, real hard to feel sorry for Donny under any circumstances.

The shin bone of his right leg was now snapped in two, the ragged upper part of it having torn through the flesh.

I said, “I have to say something, Donny. If my leg were busted like that, I’d do a lot more yelling than you have.”

“Really?”

“Really. Let’s get you to my car and get you to the hospital.”

“Do you have a comb?”

That was Donny. A comb. Sure he was ugly, sure he was short, sure he was mouthy, but dammit he had great hair. Just like Elvis’s.

Just ask him.

His hot rod, he told me, was parked over near the ranger cabin.

“You know what he’ll do, don’t you, McCain?” he said.

“Who?”

“The park ranger.”

“What’ll he do?”

“Take my car for a spin.”

“Yeah, I can see that. He’s in his late forties, he lives in that small cabin with his wife and three kids, he’s probably already in bed and asleep. And he’s gonna get up and take your car for a spin.”

“People resent the fact that my old man has all that money.”

“No, they don’t, Donny. They resent the fact that you’re an asshole.”

I hadn’t meant to say it. Not consciously, anyway. It was like I was on automatic pilot except this was automatic insult.

“I’m sorry I said that, Donny.”

“It’s all right, McCain.”

“No, it isn’t, Donny. I

apologize.”

“I know what people think of me. The

only one who really gets me is Rita. I bought her those boots, she wore them once, and now she says they hurt her feet and she can’t wear them. That’s the one that hurts, McCain.

Rita.”

“Gifts aren’t going to get you anywhere with a girl like Rita, Donny.”

“Then what the hell is, McCain? I’ve tried everything.”

I helped him stand on his good leg. “If I had the answer, Donny, I’d be happily married and have three or four kids.”

Getting up the side of the ravine was no fun.

He wanted to do it on his own. I didn’t blame him. Men should always try and look manly even if it means damn near killing themselves in the process.

Trip to the car, trip to the hospital, uneventful. He just talked about how much he loved Rita. It got tiresome. But then I

remembered how tiresome I must have been back in the days when I still held out hope for me and the beautiful Pamela Forrest. Sometime, somewhere, everybody in his or her lifetime gets tiresome over somebody. That’s as certain as death and taxes.

“I tried to make her jealous once,” he said as we approached the hospital.

“What happened?”

“She told me she thought this other girl and I made a cute couple.”

“I could see where that would piss you off.”

“Then I tried not paying any attention to her.”

“How’d that one go?”

“Well, after three weeks and four days, I went up to her said, “Haven’t you noticed that I haven’t been paying any attention to you?” And she said, “Oh, Donny, I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy. So you really haven’t been paying any attention to me?””

“That mst’ve hurt.”

“That’s when I started buying her stuff, McCain. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

As we were wheeling into the emergency end of the hospital, he said, “My folks think I’m a fool.”

“You are a fool, Donny. And so am I and so is everybody else.”

I took him inside and they got to work

fixing up his broken leg. He was a lot more concerned about Rita than he was his broken bone.