Seven Silent Men (58 page)

John was forthright, said he had not expected her proposal and therefore would have to think aloud in answering. He said the prospect of wedding her was appealing and that he deeply loved her, but that this love had not yet evolved into a romantic love that was necessary in a long and fulfilling marriage. He said the ghost of Priscilla was too much with him to allow for this at the time. He told Alice that if there was any chance of his love for her becoming a romantic love, as he very much hoped it would, he must somehow come to grips with the ghost, not to exorcise it but to put it into perspective. He told Alice that when he finally went to bed with her, he would like to know it was Alice he was making love to, not Priscilla.

John suggested that Alice and he put time and distance between themselves and the past. Get away from Virginia and one another for a while. Alice, after all, was to begin that fall at Beloit College in Wisconsin. Education, he told her, was important. She told him she would do what he wanted and that she would never stop loving or wanting or needing him.

John Lars Sunstrom joined the FBI, eventually dispelled the ghost of Priscilla, and married Alice. With her, he rose in Bureau prestige and then fell into disgrace and suffered exile. Without her, he would have quit the FBI. Never for a minute did she stop loving him. Or he her. Their sexual love rivaled the emotional … until they reached Prairie Port.

Half a year after taking charge of the administrative operations for Ed Grafton, Strom stopped sleeping with Alice. Why the desire to do so left him, he didn't really know. And found it difficult to discuss. As did Alice. After a protracted period of abstinence, Alice told Strom she feared the ghost of her older sister and Strom's first wife, Priscilla, had reappeared to claim him. Strom said such a notion was poppycock, assured Alice he loved her as deeply as ever, offered no explanation for why this love was not manifesting itself in intercourse and told Alice whatever the matter was with him, it would pass. It did not pass. Alice held an exorcism at their rented home in the fashionable western hills overlooking Prairie Port. An exorcism of Priscilla. Appalled by the rite and worried about Alice's mental state, Strom, who mistrusted psychiatrists and psychologists and behaviorists, went with Alice to a marriage counselor, and in the counselor's presence was mute as to why he no longer would have sex with Alice … no longer could have. Alice told Strom that when he wished, she would go away. He said he never wanted her to go away. He reavowed his love for her. He swore that the trouble would work itself out. She told him the trouble was still Priscilla and never mentioned the subject again. Never brought up the abstinence. But he heard her masturbating in secret at night and, after, quietly sobbing. He knew she was reading books on how to be more attractive, more sexually alluring and provocative. Could not help noticing her more trendy makeup and hairstyling … her taking decorating and gardening courses at the university and trying to stay active every waking moment. This saddened him, but some inner force kept him from seeking out the root of his problem. He liquidated most of his holdings and purchased the stately old hill house he and Alice had always admired so that Alice could busy herself decorating it. Then he lost himself in the anonymity of office administration, in the selflessness of being Ed Grafton's second-in-command. He remained as passive as a minister, but not blind. He knew Alice was anguishing under the rejection he had inflicted on her, winced in the dark each night listening to her muffled and ever more painful crying. Finally he told Alice what he never thought himself capable of saying, that perhaps she should take herself a man and have an affair. She was horrified by the suggestion, weepingly said that such an act would be a betrayal of her love for Strom … of everything they had been to one another. She said, in her pain, that she would prefer death to infidelity, but that if this was truly what Strom wanted her to do, she would do it. Strom said no, it wasn't what he wanted and expunged his suggestion from memory.

Alice ordered the painters out of the top floor of their newly purchased but still undecorated house. She herself brought in new enamel, took up a brush and painted every bedroom on the floor a jarringly bright cobalt blue. Then she cut off all her hair and went into a catatonic depression. Sat in a straight-back wood chair facing a cobalt-blue wall in the barren master bedroom. Sat that way every waking moment. Curled up and slept on the floor when it was time to sleep. Arose and sat and faced the wall again. Curled up and slept. Arose. Sat. Faced. Heard not a word Strom said to her. Was oblivious to his hand in front of her. Their doctor had offered no solution other than to send her to a psychiatric hospital. Strom, who had stayed in the room with Alice day and night, could not bear the thought of committing her to any sort of mental home … balked even at calling in a psychiatrist until the fourth morning. Just before the psychiatrist was to arrive, the catatonia disappeared as suddenly as it had struck. Alice got up from the floor perfectly well, cheerfully announced that she was sorry to have been away so long but she had been visiting with the ghost of Priscilla and there was much to discuss. That Priscilla was indeed upset with Alice having sex with Strom and had put a curse on Strom to keep him from making love to Alice, but that Priscilla didn't think it was a good idea for Alice to be unfaithful to Strom with another man. Then Alice went happily off to repaint all the cobalt-blue bedrooms an eggshell white, and Strom, for the second time in his adult life, wept. A month later Alice, who now had no memory of having been with the ghost of Priscilla, was declared clinically normal. Strom noted with relief that her nocturnal masturbation had all but ceased … that on the rare occasions she did self-manipulate, at least no crying followed.

On Tuesday, August 24, 1971, as J. Edgar Hoover was telling a Washington press conference about the robbery at Mormon State National Bank, Alice was twenty-eight and as spectacularly beautiful as ever. She was also in the third month of a lesbian affair with Elaine Picket. John “Strom” Sunstrom, who was forty-six and visibly weary of the administrative functions taken on so reluctantly two and a half years earlier, longed for a command position and action … saw atop a hillock the white horse rear up riderless.

That same afternoon the white horse was his. J. Edgar Hoover dismissed Ed Grafton and put Strom in charge of the office and Romor 91. That night he made love to Alice. And every night thereafter. It was like the very old days for both of them. The recent past was ignored. Alice had been as happy as Strom had ever seen her. Which was why he had such difficulty accepting her suicide, nearly fell apart. Which was why the other men of the office refused to let him see the actual autopsy report … why Cub and Jez and Corticun and Yates had conspired with the medical examiner to present Strom a highly edited report in which nothing was revealed other than the cause of death: suffocation due to strangulation.

What the unabridged forensic findings revealed was that she had been sexually abused in the most horrendous fashion in the days prior to her demise, abused by a male, since sperm was found in anal and vaginal tracts as well as her stomach.

The burial, like the preceding funeral service, was free of the media. Strom stood stoically at the graveside between Cub and Madden de Camp. Only once did his eyes leave the casket, and that was to glance up and look bitterly at an attractive redheaded woman on the fringes of the crowd. Yates noticed this, kept his eye on the woman and Strom throughout the rites. When the casket was being lowered, he saw the woman exchange a troubled look with Jez Jessup … after the ceremony watched from a distance as Jez fell in step beside the departing woman. Heated words were obviously exchanged. The woman veered off in a different direction. Jez stopped in his tracks, then continued on.

Yates followed the woman home. Came up to her as she was putting her key in the lock. Stood there saying nothing.

Elaine Picket stared back at him, remained as poker-faced as he was. “Which one are you?” She spoke with contempt.

“Which one?”

“FBI agent!”

“Yates, William B.”

“The bright boy?” Her scoff was half approving.

“Bright boy?”

“Alice liked you. She said Strom did too, because you're so smart. Come in.”

He followed her upstairs to the bedroom atelier of the town-house.

“Coffee, booze, sex?”

“Nothing.”

“Not even sex? It's all the same to me. I'm somewhat on the jaded side. Why did you follow me?”

“To find out why Strom doesn't like you. Why you had gotten mad at Jez. Why you showed up at the funeral.”

She sat down in a director's chair. “I went to the funeral because I loved Alice. Not in a physical way, although we did sleep together for a while. I
cared
for her. Strom knows I did. Anyway, she was a friend, and believe it or not, I am grieved. If I knew how, I'd fucking well cry.”

“What about Jez?”

“You mean, why did we have words?”

“Yes.”

“I think he hurt Alice. I don't know how, but I think he did.”

“In what way?”

“Is he a good friend of yours? A close chum? A member of the fraternity, as it were?” She lit a cigarette. “Of course you're members, who am I kidding. Only he's no fan of yours, I can tell you that. Watch out for him.”

“What did you and Jez argue about?” Billy asked.

“He showed up here one night, like you did. Unannounced. I believe in fucking first and talking later. We fucked.” She paused, grinned briefly. “I liked him. Anyway, he explained he was checking about a robbery in the neighborhood. That's what brought him to my door. He was vague about it. Only asked if I'd seen anything in the neighborhood. He didn't press me and left. I remembered that Alice had seen something one night when she was here. I called him and told him. I didn't use Alice's name. He came back in a few hours and we made love.” She paused. “Isn't that funny, I usually say fuck. I like the sound, the shock value it has. And I just said ‘made love.' But that's what we did, at least I thought it was. And he got Alice's name out of me. And what had gone on. I never saw Jez again after that. Then Alice was killed, and standing at the grave, I felt sure telling him that had had something to do with her dying.”

“What did Alice see that night?”

Elaine motioned to the far window. “She was standing over there. It was night. She looked across the street into the office there and saw someone get killed.”

“Get killed how?”

“All she said was she saw one man pick up a gun and shoot another man … a small man shoot a tall man.”

“Did you look?”

“Of course. But the lights were out across the street when I did. The lights were on when Alice looked.”

“Did you believe Alice?”

“At the time, no. We'd had a fight. I thought she might be making it up. Looking for attention. In thinking it over, I realized it was true. Alice doesn't lie. Didn't.”

“And you told this to Jez?”

“And never saw him again.”

“Do you have any idea when this killing took place?”

“Right after Mormon State was robbed.”

“How long after? A night, a week?”

“The Tuesday after.”

Jake Hagland had been able to determine only the first five of seven digits Mule had dialed from the phone booth in the bus station, the call to the raspy unidentified voice that told Mule to stay out of the tunnels, who had said when it was time to go back underground he would ring Mule at home and ask for “Howard.” Yates had a more urgent task for Hagland, checking the phone calls made from Strom Sunstrom's home since the Tuesday after the robbery … since the evening Alice witnessed a murder in the building across from Elaine Picket's apartment. Strom was an early riser who routinely reached the office by 7:30
A
.
M
. Any calls after that had to have been made by Alice. It was a slow task, but Yates began to get a picture of Alice's dependency on her husband. Strom's private number at the FBI resident office was listed on an average of three times a day in the data supplied by Hagland. Calls to the FBI's general office number averaged out at five a day. Yates presumed Alice's use of the general office number was for leaving messages for Strom. What roused his curiosity was the call made less than three weeks before, a call made late at night to FBI-2000, the Bureau's emergency hot line number for information on the Mormon State robbery.

Yates went to the eleventh-floor log in which all incoming FBI-2000 calls were recorded. Nothing was listed for the hours between 9 and 11
P
.
M
. The call from Strom's house to FBI-2000, Hagland's data showed, had been placed at 10:48
P
.
M
.

The office's duty roster was the next thing checked by Yates. He talked with the agent assigned to taking FBI-2000 calls that evening. As Billy expected, the man had been relieved intermittently during the evening by whoever was around the office.

At night Yates went into the empty premises opposite Elaine Picket's townhouse, searched through, found the stain on the floor. He sat down, hugged his raised knees, stared at the stain … began to figure things out.

Jake Hagland told Yates he had detected what went wrong with the bug he had placed on the bus station phone booth and that he had corrected the trouble and they would now be able to home in on what number Mule was dialing. Yates said this was no longer necessary, that he knew all he needed to know. He did, though, prevail on Hagland for one last favor.

At sundown Yates rang up Strom Sunstrom and then Jez Jessup and told each of them he had finally found what it was Brewmeister had discovered. He asked them to meet with him at the railroad-yard diner Ed Grafton so favored. He waited in a phone booth across the way until both men arrived, then called Mule at home and, disguising his voice, said, “Don't bother with Howard. I found it. Meet me down there as fast as you can.”