The Sixth Commandment (42 page)

“Yes,” I said faintly, “it surely does.”

He knocked the dottle from his pipe against the heel of his rubber boot. It made a nice mess on the porch, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He took out an oilskin pouch, unrolled it, began to load the pipe again, poking the black, rough-cut tobacco into the bowl with a grimy forefinger.

“Want some advice, sonny?” he said.

“Well … yeah, sure.”

“Do what you want to do,” he said between puffs, as he lighted his pipe. “That’s my advice to you.”

I thought that over a moment, then shook my head, flummoxed.

“I don’t get it,” I told him. “I always do what I want to do.”

The grunts came again. But this time he showed me a mouthful of browned, stumpy teeth.

“The hell you do,” he said. “Don’t tell me there ain’t been things you wanted to do, but then you got to thinking about it. What would this one say? What would that one say? What if this happened? What if that happened? So what you wanted to do in the first place never got done. Ain’t that right?”

“Well … I guess so. There have been things I wanted to do, and never did for one reason or another.”

“I’m telling you,” he said patiently. “I’m giving you the secret, and not charging for it neither. What it took me eighty-four years to learn. I ain’t got a single regret for what I done in this life. But I’ll go to my grave with a whole lot of regrets for things I wanted to do and never did. For one reason or another. Now you remember that, sonny.”

“I surely will,” I said. “Tell me, Mr. Faber, how long do you figure this service will last?”

“What time you got?”

I glanced at my watch. “About ten to one.”

“Should be breaking up any minute now. The Ladies’ Auxiliary, they’re serving coffee and doughnuts in the basement. Think I’ll get me some right now. You coming?”

“No, thanks. I’ll stay here.”

“Waiting for someone?”

“Yes.”

“A woman?”

I nodded.

He cackled again, then clumped down the steps to pick up his rake and rope tow to the wet bushel basket.

“A woman,” he repeated. “I don’t have to fret about
that
no more. But you remember what I said: you want to do something, you just
do
it.”

“I’ll remember,” I said. “Thanks again.”

He grunted, and trudged away in the rain. I watched him go. I wasn’t sure what the hell he had been talking about, but somehow I felt better. He had found a kind of peace, and if that’s what age brought, it might be a little easier to endure varicose veins, dentures, and a truss.

I moved back toward the doors and heard the swelling sonority of the church organ. A few people came out, buttoning up coats and opening umbrellas. I stood to one side and waited. In a few minutes Mary Thorndecker came flying out, face flushed. The long Persian lamb coat was flapping around her ankles. She was gripping a black umbrella. She grabbed my arm.

“The others are having coffee,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t think they saw you. I only have a minute.”

“All right,” I said, taking the umbrella from her and opening it. “Let’s go to my car.”

“Oh no,” she cried. “They may come out and see us.”

“This was your idea,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s walk across the street,” she said nervously. “Away from the church. Just a block or two. It won’t take long.”

I took her arm. I held the big umbrella over both of us. We crossed the street and walked away from the church on the opposite sidewalk.

“There are three guards,” she said rapidly. “The gate guard, one on duty in the nursing home, and a man with a dog who patrols outside. They come on at midnight. A day shift takes over at eight in the morning.”

“No guard in the lab?”

“No. Each building has its own power switches and alarm switches. In the basements of both buildings. The switch boxes are kept locked.”

“Shit,” I said. “I beg your pardon.”

“I can’t get Nurse Beecham’s keys,” she went on. “She hands them over to the night supervisor, a male nurse. He carries them around with him.”

“Listen,” I said, “I’ve narrowed it down. There’s only one place I want to go, one thing I want to see. Your stepfather’s private office. On the second floor of the research laboratory.”

“I can’t get the keys.”

“Sure you can,” I said gently. “Dr. Draper has keys to the main lab building and to your stepfather’s private lab. Get the keys from Draper.”

“But how?” she burst out desperately. “I can’t just ask him for them.”

“Lie,” I told her. “Where does Draper live?”

“In Crittenden Hall. He has a little apartment. Bedroom, sitting room, bathroom.”

“Good,” I said. “Wake him up about two o’clock tomorrow morning. Tell him Thorndecker is working late in Crittenden Hall and wants his journal from the lab. Tell him anything. You’re a clever woman. Make up some excuse, but get the keys.”

“He’ll want to get the journal himself.”

“Not if you handle it right. Just get the keys. By fifteen minutes after two, I’ll be inside the fence. I’ll be waiting at the back entrance to the research lab. The door at the end of that covered walk that comes down the hill from the nursing home.”

She didn’t say anything, but I felt her shiver under my hand. I thought I might have thrown it at her too fast, so I slowed down and went over it once again. Get the keys from Draper at 2:00
A.M.
Let me into the lab at 2:15.

“I’m not going to steal anything,” I told her. “You’ll be with me; you’ll see. I just want to look in Thorndecker’s journal.”

“What for?”

“To see what he’s been doing, and why. He said he keeps very precise, complete notes. It should all be there.”

She was silent awhile, then …

“Do I have to be with you?” she asked. “Can’t I just give you the keys?”

I stopped and turned her toward me. There we stood under that big, black umbrella, the rain sliding off it in a circular curtain. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You don’t really want to know, do you?” I asked softly.

She shook her head dumbly, teeth biting down into her lower lip.

“Mary, I
need
you there. I need a witness. And maybe you can help me with the scientific stuff. You must know more of that than I do. Anyone would!”

She smiled wanly.

“And also,” I said, “I need you with me for a very selfish reason. If we’re caught, it’ll be impossible to charge me with breaking-and-entering if I’m with a member of the family.”

She nodded, lifted her chin.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll get the keys. Somehow. I’ll let you in. I’ll go with you. We’ll read the journal together. I don’t care how awful it is. I do want to know.”

I pressed her arm. We started walking back toward the church. Her stride seemed more confident now. She was leading the way. I had to hurry to keep up with her. We stopped across the street from the church. We faced each other again.

“I know how to get the keys from Kenneth,” she said, looking into my eyes.

“Good,” I said. “How?”

“I’ll go to bed with him,” she said, plucked the umbrella from my hand, dashed across the street.

I just stood there, hearing the faint hiss of rain, watching her run up the church steps and disappear. And I had thought her prissy.

It was a few minutes before I could move. I felt the drops pelt my sodden tweed hat. I saw the rain run down my trenchcoat in wavery rivulets. I knew my boots were leaking and my feet were wet.

Simple solution: “I’ll go to bed with him.” Just like that. Maybe old Ben Faber was right. You want to do something, then
do
it.

I got back in my car, still in a state of bemused wonderment. I drove around awhile, trying to make sense of what was going on, of what people were doing, of what I was doing. What amazed me most was how Telford Gordon Thorndecker, unknowingly, was impinging on the lives of so many. Mary. Dr. Draper. Julie. Edward. Ronnie and Millie Goodfellow. The “best people” of Coburn. And me. Thorndecker was changing us. Nudging our lives, for better or for worse. None of us would ever be the same.

The man was a force. It went out in waves, affecting people he didn’t even know. Joan Powell, for example. Thorndecker was the reason I had come to Coburn. Coburn was changing the way I felt about Joan Powell. Her life might be turned around, or at least altered, by the influence of a man she had never met.

I wondered if all life was like this: a series of interlocking concentric circles, everything connected to everything else in some mad scheme that the greatest computer in the world would digest and then type out on its TV monitor: “Insufficient data.”

It was a humbling thought, that we are all pushed and pulled by influences that we are not even aware of. Life is not a bowl of cherries. Life is a bowl of linguine with clam sauce, everything intertangled and slithery. No end to it.

Maybe that was the job of the investigators. We’re the guys with the fork and the soup spoon, lifting high a tangle of the strands, twirling fork tines in the bowl of the spoon, and producing a neat, palatable ball.

It made me hungry just to think of it.

The Coburn Civic Building looked like it had shrunk in the rain. I didn’t expect bustling activity on a Sunday afternoon, but I thought
someone
would be on duty in the city hall, minding the store. I finally found a few real, live human beings by peering through the dirty glass window in the wide door of the firehouse. Inside, four guys in coveralls sat around a wooden table playing cards. I would have bet my last kopeck it was pinochle. I also got a view of their equipment: an antique pumper and a hose truck that looked like a converted Eskimo Pie van. Neither vehicle looked especially clean.

I walked around the building to the police station in the rear. It was open, desolate, deserted. It smelled like every police station in the world: an awful amalgam of eye-stinging disinfectant, vintage urine, mold, dust, vomit, and several other odors of interest only to a pathologist.

There was a waist-high railing enclosing three desks. A frosted glass door led away to inner offices. This splintered room was tastefully decorated with
Wanted
posters and a calendar displaying a lady in a gaping black lace negligee. I thought her proportions highly improbable. She may have been one of those life-size inflatable rubber dolls Japanese sailors take along on lengthy cruises.

From somewhere beneath my feet, a guy was singing—sort of. He was bellowing, “Oh Dolly, oh Dolly, how you can love.” That’s all. Over and over. “Oh Dolly, oh Dolly, how you can love.” From this, I deduced that the drunk tank was in the basement.

“Hello?” I called. “Anyone home?”

No answer. One of these days, some smart, big-city gonnif was going to drop by and steal the Coburn police station.

“Hello?” I yelled again, louder. Same result: none.

I pushed open the railing gate, went over to the frosted glass door, opened that, stepped into a narrow corridor with four doors. Three were unmarked; one bore the legend: Chief. One of the unmarked doors was open. I peeked in.

My old friend, Constable Fred Aikens. He was sprawled in a wood swivel chair, feet parked up on the desk. His hands were clasped across his hard, little pot belly. His head was thrown back, mouth sagging, and he was fast asleep. I could hear him. It wasn’t exactly a snore. More like a regular, “Aaagh. Aaagh. Aaagh.” There was a sheaf of pornographic photos spread out on his desk blotter.

I stared at Coburn’s first line of defense against criminal wrongdoing. I had forgotten what a nasty little toad he was, with his squinchy features and a hairline that seemed anxious to tangle with his eyebrows. I had an insane impulse. I’d very carefully, very quietly tiptoe into the office and very slowly, very easily slide his service revolver from his holster. Then I’d tiptoe from the room, from the building, and drive back to the Coburn Inn where I’d finish the vodka while laughing my head off as I thought of Fred Aikens explaining to the Chief Constable how he happened to lose his gun.

I didn’t do it, of course. Instead, I went back to the main room. I slammed the gate of the railing a few times, and I really screamed, “Hello? Hello? Anyone here?”

That did the trick. In a few minutes Aiken came strolling out, uniform cap squared away, tunic smoothed down, every inch the alert police officer.

“Todd,” he said. “No need to bellow. How you doing?”

“Okay,” I said. “How
you
doing?”

“Quiet,” he said. “Just the way I like it. If you came to ask about those slashed tires of yours, we haven’t been able to come up with—”

“No, no,” I said. “This is about something else. Could I please talk to you for a couple of minutes?”

I said it very humbly. Some cops you can handle just like anyone else. Some you can manipulate better if you start out crawling. Fred Aikens was one of those.

“Why, sure,” he said genially. “Come on into my private office where we can sit.”

I followed him through the frosted glass door into his room. He jerked open the top desk drawer and swept the pornographic photos out of sight.

“Evidence,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Terrible what’s going down these days.”

“Sure is,” he said. “You park there and tell me what’s on your mind.”

I sat in a scarred armchair alongside his desk, and gave him my best wide-eyed, sincere look.

“I heard about Al Coburn,” I said. “That’s a hell of a thing.”

“Ain’t it though?” he said. “You knew him?”

Those mean, little eyes never blinked.

“Well … sure,” I said. “Met him two or three times. Had a few drinks with him at the Coburn Inn.”

“Yeah,” he said, “old Al liked the sauce. That’s what killed him. The nutty coot must have had a snootful. Just drove right off the bluff into the river.”

“The bluff?”

“A place we call Lovers’ Leap. Out of town a ways.”

“How did you spot the truck? Someone call it in?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “Goodfellow saw him go over. Had been tailing him, see. Coburn was driving like a maniac, all over the road, and Ronnie was trying to catch up, figuring to pull him over. Had the siren and lights going: everything. But before he could stop him, Al Coburn drives right off the edge. There’s been talk of putting a guard rail up there, but no one’s got around to it.”