Second Chance (15 page)

"Unless you've got a reason to be here," he
said, "you'd best leave."

He had a deep voice—·a tough voice. But some of
its effect was lost to the bitter cold. He shivered as he stood
there, shifting from foot to foot like a man holding his water.

"My name's Stoner," I said to him. "I'm
a P.I. Al Foster of the CPD just called about the Volare. The car is
part of a missing persons case I'm working on."

"I thought the name was Pearson," the man
said suspiciously. "That's the name we got on the APB."

"That's the name of the family I'm working for.
You can get in touch with Mrs. Pearson if you want to check me out."

"Already talked to her," the man said,
shifting feet.

"Christ," I said to myself. To the cop, I
said, "Exactly what did you tell her?"

He thought about it for a moment. "Better see
some ID first." He glanced over at the squad car, as if it were
a photo of home. "Maybe we should do it inside, where it's
light."

And warm, I said to myself.

I followed him to the cruiser and got in on the
passenger side. The man started the engine and flipped on the heater
and the overhead light. I could see his name tag for the first time.
It read "L. Parker."

I gave Parker my ID. He studied it for a moment then
handed it back, flipping off the courtesy light with his other hand.

"We found the car about a hour ago," he
said, nodding at the Plymouth. "One of the men was making a
routine run down Miamitown when he saw headlights here in the
hollow."

"The headlights were left on?"

"A pretty good time, too," the cop said. "
'Cause when he tried to start the car up she wouldn't turn over."

"I take it the keys were in the car."

He nodded. "And these."

He reached into the backseat and pulled out a clear
plastic evidence bag with a pair of stained panties in it. I couldn't
tell in the darkness, but the stains looked like blood.

My heart sank. "These were in the Plymouth?"

"On the floor in the back. The panties got a tag
in them from a Chicago store—Milady's."

"The missing girl went to school in Chicago."

"That's what the wife said." He ducked his
head guiltily. "She seemed like a nice woman. I hated like hell
to break this news to her."
 
I
hated it like hell, too. I could scarcely imagine how Phil Pearson
had reacted to the news.

"Have you dusted the car for prints?" I
asked Parker.

"We're waiting for the State Patrol to send down
a criminalistics team. Called it in a goddamn hour ago." He
shrugged. "But that's State for you."

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a pack of
cigarettes, shaking one out and sticking it in his mouth in a single
motion. He offered the pack to me and I said no.

"I guess I should quit," he said, flipping
open a silver Zippo and lighting up.

I stared through the windshield at the twisting
flashlight beams, shooting up from below the lip of the hill. In the
distance the dawn was starting to break above the ridge, purpling the
horizon like a fresh, spreading bruise.

"There was nothing else in the car?" I
said. "Nothing that a man might have carried or worn?"

Parker shook his head, breathing out a thick cloud of
grey tobacco smoke. "Just the panties." He gestured toward
the windshield. "We're looking down there now for anything else
we can turn up. I doubt we'll find much in the dark."

He squinted into the dawn light. "When the sun
comes up we'll call in some help."

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I drove straight from Miamitown to Indian Hill. By
the time I got to Camargo Pike, it was full morning, greys and
turbulent, with a sting of snow already in the air. As I neared
Woodbine Lane, an ambulance blew past me, turning west on Camargo,
blinkers flashing. I couldn't see inside the ambulance, but I had the
awful feeling it was racing Phil Pearson to the hospital.

I knew I was right when I got closer to the Pearson
house. Another ambulance—a red emergency vehicle—was parked in
the driveway behind a green Porsche 935 and a tan Merc. The tan car
belonged to Cora Pearson. I didn't know who belonged to the Porsche.

I parked on the street to keep from blocking the
driveway, and walked slowly up to the front door. A tall, handsome
man with tan skin and thick grey hair answered my knock. Behind him,
down the hall, I could hear Cora Pearson crying.

"I'm Harry Stoner," I said to the
grey-haired man. "I work for the Pearsons."

The man smiled as if he recognized my name, flashing
a set of teeth so large and white and perfect-looking that I thought,
at once, they must be caps. "I'm Saul Lasker," he said in a
deep, genial voice. "A friend of Louise and Phil's. Friend and
neighbor."

He nodded up the street to another estate house. All
I could see of it was the red tile of its roof, billowing like a
circus tent behind a protective screen of spruce. I'd heard of
Lasker—at least, I'd seen his name on the financial pages. He was
very big in real estate and investment banking. Very big, very rich,
very Reagan-Republican. I didn't like him on principle. His kind of
money was always tainted with someone else's pain.

"What happened here, Lasker?"

The man tried to stop smiling. But his face wasn't
used to bad news. "Phil had an attack about ten minutes ago."
He touched the place on his chest where his heart was supposed to be
and fought with the smile some more. "I heard the ambulances and
came over. He was in the living room when it happened. "

"Do you have any idea how bad the attack was?"

"Not good. Louise went with him to the hospital.
I'm going to drive Cora over there in a few minutes and try to lend
some support, although I guess there's nothing we can do now but
pray."

He said it as if it was something he'd heard in a
movie.

"What hospital did they take him to?"

"Bethesda North."

"
You're not sure?"

"Bethesda North,"
he said, sounding a little more like twenty million bucks.

* * *

I caught the expressway to Reed-Hartman. The hospital
was on the east side of the highway—a big glass-and-steel tower,
rising out of an ocean of blacktop. I parked as close as I could to
the emergency room, but it was still a good walk across the lot to
the automatic doors.

I didn't see Louise inside. I figured she was in one
of the examination rooms with her husband. I double-checked with a
nurse to make sure that Pearson had been admitted, then went over to
a waiting area and sat down with three anxious-looking strangers.
Half an hour must have passed before Louise came out. I could tell
from her ashen look that Pearson was in bad shape.

"Oh, God, Harry," she said, slumping beside
me in a chair. She covered her face with her hands.

"It's my fault," she said hoarsely. "It's
my fault."

"No, it's not," I said.

"You don't understand. They found Ethan's car. I
had to tell him they found Ethan's car."

"I know. I talked to the cops."

"You know?" Louise said with surprise.
"Then why didn't you call me? Why did you let me hear that from
a stranger?"

"I got there too late, Louise," I said,
feeling bad. "They'd already made the call."

She dropped her hands from her cheeks and stared
queerly into space. "I didn't want to tell him, but he knew it
was the police. He heard me talking to them." She turned to me
with a guilty look. "What was I supposed to do?"

"You had to tell  him."

"He went crazy," she said with a trace of
horror in her voice. "I've never seen him get that upset, even
when . . .even after Estelle. He said things to me. Dreadful things.
We fought."

Her head fell to her chest and she sobbed. "They
say he may die."

I sat there with Louise for about ten minutes,
holding her hand tightly in mine. Lasker finally arrived with Cora
Pearson. The woman looked awful, her face blasted, her gait
doddering, as if she'd aged twenty years since the day before. Louise
got up immediately, walked over to her mother-in-law, and took her in
her arms.

Cora Pearson sobbed. "He's not going to die?"

"It's not in our hands anymore," Lasker
said.

Louise flashed an angry look at him over Cora's
shoulder, and the man's face reddened as if he'd been slapped.

"No, he's not going to die," Louise said to
her mother-in-law. She pushed Cora Pearson back and straightened her
white hair as if she were grooming a child.

The older woman smiled at her weakly. "You're so
good to me, Louise," she said with deep feeling. "Always so
good."

Cora walked unsteadily over to the waiting area and
sat down on one of the plastic chairs.

I couldn't hear him, but Lasker apparently said
something else to Louise, something well-intentioned and inept. She
frowned dismissively, and he backed out of the emergency room like he
was leaving royalty.

After Lasker left Louise came over to us. "Did
you call Shelley?" she asked Cora.

The older woman nodded. "He's on his way."

Louise sat down beside Cora and put an arm around her
shoulder. The woman leaned against her heavily. "Don't worry,
Mother," Louise whispered. "I'm here with you."

It had come to me when I'd first met Pearson that
Louise anchored his life. I was beginning to realize that she
anchored the whole family—probably the children too, insofar as
they could be reached. It was what she had meant the night before
when she'd complained about people automatically relying upon her
strength. But that strength was no illusion—it was real and
impressive, especially at that moment.

A nurse came into the hall and called Louise's name.

She patted her mother-in-law's shoulder and stood up.

"I've got to go," she said to Cora.

"Will I be able to see him?" the woman
asked plaintively.

"In a little while," Louise said.

She went over to where the nurse was standing and
together they walked off down the hall to the emergency rooms.

I didn't want to leave Cora Pearson alone, so I
waited for Shelley Sacks to arrive. The woman didn't say much to me.
Her shock was too deep, and there wasn't anything to say.

When Sacks came in, I got to my feet. The woman
looked up at me suddenly. Her face was  already red from crying,
but the color that rose in her cheeks was more than despair or grief.

"They did this to him!" she said in a
strangled voice. "I hope they die for this—for what they've
done."

She didr1't mean what she'd said. She might not have
realized she was saying it. But the truth was that her curse could
already have come true.

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Beforeeleaving the hospital I called Sergeant Larry
Parker from a pay phone in the lobby to see if the State Patrol
forensic team had turned up anything new.

"We haven't found a body in the river," he
said grimly.

"But State confirmed that the stains on the
panties were blood. Type O negative. You might want to check with the
Pearsons about the girl's blood type. We've also got some positive
lifts off the Plymouth's steering wheel."

"Do you have a make on the prints?"

T Parker sighed. "Yeah, but you're not going to
like it. They prints belong to a convicted felon named Herbert
Talmadge."

"Jesus," I said aloud. The very fact that
Ethan and Kirsty I had ended up in that clearing with Ta1madge—in
the same spot where Estelle Pearson had taken her own life—defied
logic.

"You know the guy?" Parker said, responding
to the pained sound of my voice.

I thought about going into Pearson family history
with Parker, then decided against it. It wasn't going to help him
find Talmadge. "No, I don't know him."

"Well, he's an honest-to-God bad man, Stoner. If
your MPs ran into him, I'm afraid they chanced into serious trouble.
State's already put an APB out on him. So has Kentucky. The son of a
bitch was released from Lexington the week before last. Ten days and
he's already. . . ."

He didn't finish the sentence, but I knew what he was
thinking. Ten days and he'd already committed murder—or attempted
to.

"You don't have any leads yet, do you?"

"None. How 'bout you—did you check on that
Chicago store?"

"Not yet."

"Well, I'd appreciate
you finding out. And find out about the blood type, too. I'll get in
touch if anything else turns up."

* * *

I was in a bad mood when I hung up on Parker. And the
mood kept deepening on the drive downtown to the office. Herbert
Talmadge wasn't the kind of guy who would take hostages or halfway
measures. If the Pearson kids had found him as they apparently had,
he'd brought their revenge fantasies to a quick, pitiless end—at
best. I didn't want to think about what he might have done at worst.