The End of The Road (7 page)

It reminded me of what he had said the day I met him on the spit when, at the Driftwood Inn, he had come around the car to the driver’s window and thanked me for the ride. Then he had said,
Maybe I’ll decide to spend what’s left of my life at the end of the road
, and that I had thought it was an odd way of telling me he liked Homer.

Giving myself a mental shake, I quit speculating and concentrated instead on my driving. Evidently I would soon fin d out what was amiss. I pulled up outside the inn and parked beside the marked car State Trooper Alan Nelson had obviously driven, left Stretch in his basket, and went to the front door, taking the books and the note with me.

As its tinkling bell announced my presence, both Julia Bennet, the owner of the Driftwood Inn, and State Trooper Alan Nelson looked up from the table at which they were sitting.

“Mrs. McNabb?” he questioned, rising and holding out a hand to shake mine as I affirmed my identity.

He was a tall, slender man who looked about the age of my son, Joe.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

Julia brought me a cup of coffee and we all settled at a round table by a front window of the office area. Officer Nelson’s hat, gloves, and clipboard lay in front of him by his coffee cup.

“I understand from the woman at the hotel that you
knew
Mr. John Walker,” he said, with a glance at the report form on the clipboard.

“Well,” I told him, wondering at his past tense use of the word, “I can’t say I really knew him. I met him by chance last Friday, out on the spit, and gave him a lift back into town when it started to rain. At my invitation he came to my house for dinner on Saturday night, with a group of friends and my son, Joe, who was visiting from Seattle.”

“So you hadn’t known him before last Friday?”

“No, but he seemed a nice sort of person, with a congenial sense of humor, and fit in easily with the group on Saturday evening.”

“Who was there? I may need to talk with them as well.”

I gave him the names of the group and he wrote them down: Joyce and Marty Berman, Harriet Christianson, Lewis Joiner, and son Joe, who I explained had gone back to Seattle on Sunday.

“And none of them had met him before?”

“Not to my knowledge, and I think I would have known if they had.”

“Well, he may have said something to one of them that would be helpful.”

“Such as?”

“Did he say where he came from?”

“Not to me, but I didn’t ask,” I told him truthfully, then found myself thinking back to Joe’s assessment of John Walker, so I told him that, too.

“My son said John was vague when asked where he was from and didn’t have a regional accent. He said he was born in the South and his family lived in several places when he was young, that he had traveled a lot doing construction. He mentioned New Orleans after the hurricane, but said he had no current mailing address.”

“Just where on the spit did you meet him?” Trooper Nelson questioned.

I told him and filled him in on our brief conversation.

“But he didn’t tell you how he arrived here?”

“Yes, he did—said he had come down from Anchorage on the Stage Line last Wednesday and was planning to catch it back today, so he’s probably almost there by now.”

Julia shifted uneasily in her chair. There was a long moment of silence as Nelson frowned down at his notes on the clipboard. Then he looked up and shook his head as he spoke.

“Mrs. McNabb . . . Mr. Walker didn’t take the shuttle this morning. When he didn’t appear for coffee, as he usually did, about an hour later Julia says she knocked on the door to his room, but got no answer. He had paid for four nights in cash when he registered. So, assuming he had probably gone somewhere for early breakfast before catching the shuttle, she used her key and found him lying on the bed.

“Sometime, probably very early this morning, he evidently shot himself in the head with a pistol.”

“Aahh . . .”

For a long moment I stared at him, unable to say a word or release the deep gasp of air I had sucked in. What he had told me just didn’t make sense.

I must have lost color, for he reached across the table and laid a hand on my arm as he glanced at Julia.

“Water,” he said. “Get a glass of water, will you?”

The legs of her chair shrieked on the floor as she hurriedly shoved it back, left the table, and came quickly back with a tall glass, half full.

She handed it to me and I let the second breath I had taken back out before taking a swallow. It helped.

He had leaned forward and was watching me closely and frowning in concern as I drank and set the glass on the table.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’m okay. It was the shock of what you said. You
did
mean that he’s dead, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“Yes, Mrs. McNabb, I did. I’m sorry to upset you, but I need information from you if possible. Primarily, we need to know who he is and where he came from. His wallet’s on a shelf next to the bed, but there’s nothing in it to identify him—no papers, driver’s license, credit cards—nothing at all—just two hundred and forty-three dollars in bills and a picture of a young woman. Next to the wallet is some small change—forty-six cents—and a pocketknife. Except for a few clothes in a small duffel and a small kit with a razor, a comb, and a few toiletries in the bathroom, there’s nothing else.”

I frowned, confused.

“But you called him by name—John Walker.”

“Only because that’s the name he gave when he registered here at the inn.”

SIX

A COLD WIND WAS BLOWING STEADILY FROM THE WEST, catching up spray from the crests of the incoming waves of the outer inlet and hurling it onto the spit that afternoon as I walked slowly along the high edge of the shingle that had been left damp by the outgoing tide. Stretch padded along at my side, ears flopping in the breeze, shivering every so often and giving me baleful looks. Though I had insisted that he wear the red sweater I had knit for him, he was not particularly pleased at being outside instead of at home, warm and dry. The damp sand clung to his paws. He disliked it and kept shaking them frequently, to little effect.

Probably, I should have left him in the car, which I had, as usual, parked up by the road near the shops that were closed for the season, but I had wanted the company.

After a few more questions before I left the Driftwood Inn, Trooper Nelson had requested that I formally identify John Walker. So, assuring him that I had seen dead people before, having buried two husbands of my own, and would not faint, he and I had gone together to a small room near the entrance of the inn and I had sadly made the identification.

John Walker, if that really was his name, had looked peaceful enough lying on top of the carefully made bed, his head on a pillow that he had evidently covered with a towel spread over a black plastic trash bag to keep the blood from the bullet wound to his head from staining it.

“What will you do with him?” I asked as we left the room.

“His body will be sent to the lab in Anchorage,” Trooper Nelson told me. “The coroner will try to establish some identification. The lack of any ID makes it seem he made an effort to conceal who he is, so it’s probable that John Walker isn’t his real name. Fingerprints may help us find out who he is. If he’s ever had them taken they’ll be on file in the national index and could help us find out where he came from, if we’re lucky, but it will take some time. I’ll speak to the people who were at your dinner party. They may remember something he said that could help.”

I agreed and gave him the note John had left with the books. “Interesting that he mentions the days as his
last
,” he commented after he had read it.

“Yes. That struck me, too. And once, the day I met him, he said he might spend the rest of his life here in Homer. But I couldn’t have known he meant anything like this.”

We were standing outside John’s room, facing Duggan’s pub across the street.

“You know,” I offered, “you might check over there. He said he might go there, and after a beer or two he may have been more forthcoming with someone—the owner, a bartender, or another customer.”

“Good idea,” Nelson said, nodding. “I’ll try that. Thanks, Mrs. McNabb, for your assistance—and your good sense. Here’s my card. Call if you have questions, or think of anything else that might be helpful.”

“I will,” I promised. “And could you let me know if you find out anything more about him? I’d like to know who he really was and where he came from—why he chose Homer, Alaska.”

I had gone straight home, but found myself restlessly pacing from space to space inside my house, not ready to light anywhere or get back to the book I had been reading. Periodically I watched the dark clouds that were drifting in over the bay and mountains, tried to eat lunch, but found that the sandwich I made tasted more like sawdust than tuna. Finally I had given up, dressed myself and Stretch for the cold outside, and drove us out to the spit where I had first met John.

I thought it all through again as I walked the beach that miserable afternoon. What a strange thing for someone to do, leaving so many questions unanswered. If I ever decided to do away with myself, which I had no intention of doing, I thought I might decide to hike off into the wilderness that makes up the largest part of Alaska and select a place where no one would ever find or have to deal with me—or even think of looking, for that matter. Not that I really ever would, but . . .

Part of me wished I had taken my Winnebago south for the winter, as I had done the last year or two. If I had I could have avoided all this and never even met John Walker. Though he had been pleasant enough company, it had upset me deeply to think of his dying alone and in that manner. What, I wondered, could possibly have inspired it?

Kicking a piece of driftwood out of my way, I suddenly knew I was not only sad, I was angry—felt somehow used and abandoned, as if he had had some kind of obligation to me and had declined to honor it. What could have inspired that feeling? Just being kind to someone confers no debt—or shouldn’t. Nevertheless . . .

I realized that I wanted answers and had been given none—probably would never get any, for who but John had them to give? And he had, by his personal reserve and his actions, refused. His suicide was clearly the most final rejection of all.

That idea depressed me all over again.

Having slowed considerably as I thought about it, I suddenly became aware that I was walking alone. Turning, I looked back to find that Stretch, unable to get my attention with his shivers and a whine or two, had simply given up and stopped several yards away. He was sitting down, staring after me, waiting to see just how long it would take for me to understand that this rebellion was serious and he wanted this miserable outing to end—now.

I had to smile. When Stretch decides to look pitiful, there is no dog I know that has perfected the art quite so successfully. He simply droops from nose to tail, cocks his head, stares at you with those irresistible liquid brown eyes, and waits to see what reaction will be forthcoming, knowing full well he’ll win sympathy at the very least.