Ticket to Ride (5 page)

But if you absolutely have to die, the Whitmans will give you the fanciest of send-offs. They use two hearses instead of one to lead the cars to the cemetery, and Willis Whitman, who for years has been the baritone in the barbershop quartet here, will throw in a song at graveside, the gag being that if you pay him a little more he won't sing. As I said, this is where the wealthy go. It used to be Protestant only, but over the past ten years a few Catholics have been boxed up and gift-wrapped in the Whitman basement. Papist money spends just as well as Martin Luther's. Jewish people go to Iowa City. Everybody else goes to Sweeny's. Mr. Sweeny is a Catholic and Mrs. Sweeny is a Methodist, so it's what you might call corpse-friendly to all kinds of Christians.

There was no way I was ever going to get past the various barriers Linda Raines would have put up at the mansion. I would have to try and talk to her outside of her estate. The logical place was Whitman's. They'd no doubt be making arrangements this morning. Linda's sports car would be easy to spot.

The coffee shop directly across the street from the funeral home made waiting her out tolerable. It didn't have air conditioning, but it had enough fans and open windows to cool things down several degrees. I sat at the counter until a window table opened up. I drank iced coffee and smoked cigarettes and read the Des Moines Register. Around ten thirty, a quick little red car driven by an elegant brunette wearing a red scarf and Jackie Kennedy sunglasses pulled into the parking lot on the side of Whitman's.

As always, she moved with pure purpose. She'd picked up the military bearing from her old man. She was out of her car and mounting the front steps as if somebody was chasing her.

While I waited for her reappearance I thought about Molly asking me to represent Doran. He was a con. That I didn't doubt. But to have somebody associated with our peace group accused of murdering a war hero—that discredited all of us. And more important, it discredited our political position. I had to represent the bastard.

She stayed just about thirty-five minutes. She stood on the small front porch talking to Harold Whitman, Jr., fifth generation of friendly ghouls. The body language didn't tell me anything. She was as rigid as always, all those perfectly blended curves wasted by what she obviously considered finishing school propriety.

When the tip of her tan high heel reached the sidewalk I was out of the coffee shop and bolting across the street. She was in the parking lot before I reached her.

“Mrs. Raines, Mrs. Raines.”

She didn't even turn around to see who was calling her. “Leave me alone.”

“I need to ask you two questions.”

“I told you to leave me alone.” But then I'd always thought Scarlett O'Hara was an obnoxious bitch, too.

I beat her to her car, leaned against the door so she had no choice but to face me.

“Oh, God, it's you.”

“I'm sorry about your father.”

“I'm sure you are. That's why you had that rally. That's why you're trying to tear down everything he fought for.”

“Doran didn't kill him.”

“Have you ever heard of mourning, McCain? That's what I'm doing. My father has been murdered and you're attacking me in the parking lot of the funeral home. The judge is a family friend but you've always been something of a joke. A very bad one. Now get out of my way before I call the police.”

“Cliffie, you mean?”

She leaned forward and punched me in the shoulder. “Get out of my way.”

“I need to know if your father had any enemies. Ones who'd been giving him grief recently.”

Then she cheated. Behind those shades tears began to run, streaming down her perfect cheeks to her perfect little chin. “Will you be a goddamned gentleman for once and leave me to my mourning?” She was having a difficult time talking through her tears.

“Oh, hell,” I said. “I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have bothered you.” Every once in awhile you're able to see yourself through somebody else's eyes. What would I be like if my father had just died and some creep was bothering me the way I was bothering her?

I reached out, unthinking, to touch her arm. She twisted away from me. “Just let me get in my car and get out of here.” She was still crying.

I stood aside immediately. I opened the door for her. She eased into her seat. I tried not to notice how her skirt rode up on those fine fine legs. She backed up fast, wheeled around fast, and left fast.

That old Sam McCain magic was working just swell.

On the way back to my office, I passed by the library. Well, I'd planned to just pass by, but when I saw the small group gathered at the bottom of the steps, I pulled my ragtop over to the curb and parked. The concrete lions on either side of the staircase watched me suspiciously the way they had been since I was checking out Hardy Boys mysteries in fifth grade.

Officer Bill Tomlin had his notepad out and was talking to Trixie Easley, the chief librarian. Two or three people in the crowd were pointing to the glass doors at the top of the stairs.

COMIE
! appeared in dripping red letters across the doors. Whoever had put it there wasn't going to be taking home any prizes from a spelling bee. He or she had obviously meant
COMMIE
. Of course it could have been intentionally misspelled to make people think an illiterate had done the work. The library had most likely been the target because Trixie Easley had been one of the main organizers of the rally.

Molly left the crowd at the bottom of the stairs and went up to the door and started snapping photographs for the paper. She managed to look brand-new despite the heat, having changed clothes again. A pink blouse and short black skirt reminded me that even if we hadn't been soul mates, we'd been body mates. When she turned back, she saw me and waved. It wasn't a happy wave. It was an urgent one.

She was breathless by the time she reached me. I leaned against a parking meter.

“Harrison'll never get a fair trial in this town, McCain.”

“They have any idea who might have done this?”

“Did you hear what I said?” She was loud enough and angry enough to win the attention of several folks standing at the bottom of the library stairs.

“Yeah, I heard. I just don't want to be reminded of who I'm trying to help.”

“He's a patriot, McCain. A real patriot. Not like these phony bastards from the VFW who charged into the newspaper office this morning. They want the publisher to write a front-page editorial and list the names of all the people at the rally last night.”

It was too hot to argue. My shirt was starting to feel glued to my back and I had to keep wiping sweat from my eyes. “Look, first of all, they have a perfect right to be mad, all right? Veterans of Foreign Wars, does that ring any bells? That means that they fought and risked their lives. Harrison didn't. I don't agree with them about Vietnam, but we have to respect what they've done. And second of all, even if they publish a list of names—which I sure as hell don't agree with—it'll look pretty much like the same people who signed that letter to the paper protesting the war.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“Meaning if somebody wants to harass us, a new list of names won't be much added help. They've got the letter we all sent to the paper. Your paper.”

She frowned. Those freckles and that pert little nose made me want to kiss her. “Well, I suppose Harrison's right. All this will just make his book that much more dramatic.”

I was able to restrain myself. I said nothing.

“He has such a beautiful soul, McCain. A Russian soul.”

“Ummm.”

“You're making fun of him.”

“‘Ummm' isn't making fun.”

“The way you say ‘ummm' it is.”

Trixie joined us. “Looks like somebody doesn't agree with us.”

“Doesn't it bother you?”

“Sure it does, Molly. It bothers me that they did it here instead of my house. When I signed that letter in the paper, I was signing as a private citizen, not as a representative of the library. Remember, I wrote a follow-up saying that exactly, and you people published it.”

“We're probably not dealing with anybody here who's real rational,” I said.

“Yes,” Trixie said. In an aqua-colored blouse and dark skirt, she looked trim and competent. Which is how she kept the library—trim and competent. “That's what I'm afraid of.” She glanced from me to Molly and back to me. “You two really do make a cute couple.”

“I've been thinking the same thing myself,” I said.

“Well, time to open the doors. Bye.”

“You didn't have to agree with her, McCain. You just did that to embarrass me.”

“Yeah, that's probably right.”

Then she leaned her pretty head back and gave me a stricken look. She had at last identified the monster. “My God, you're still jealous of him, aren't you?”

“Not really. I just think you're rushing into something and you may be disappointed. Believe it or not, I'm trying to be your friend.”

“Some friend. There he is rotting in a dungeon, and you're out here enjoying your freedom and libeling his name to anybody who'll listen.”

“Slandering.”

“What?”

“You said libeling. That's written word. Slander is spoken word. You majored in journalism, remember?”

“I just can't believe you sometimes,” she said, her bright blue gaze furious now. “You're just pathetic.”

I started to say something, but she held up a halting hand. “Don't bother. Don't bother at all.”

“I'm trying to clear him, aren't I? Not for his sake, but the sake of the cause, as he calls it. Soldiers in the anti-war movement or whatever that bullshit was.”

“It wasn't bullshit. It was poetry.”

I gave her an unwanted peck on the cheek and sauntered back to my ragtop.

7

C
LIFFIE COULD HAVE TAKEN
D
ORAN IN THE BACK DOOR OF THE
police department, of course, but that would have disappointed the reporters he'd obviously tipped in advance. He'd even managed to snag a TV crew from one of the Cedar Rapids channels.
WARNING: MAD DOG KILLER BROUGHT TO JUSTICE AT 11:35 A.M. DON'T MISS IT.

And where there were reporters, there were passersby, twenty or so of them gathered in a semicircle around the squad car from which Harrison Doran, in handcuffs, was just now emerging. I'd pushed my way to the front of the crowd, my elbows making a lot of friends in the process. Cliffie took off his campaign hat and wiped his brow with his sleeve. The temperature was ninety-two. Eight or nine cameras snapped his face, and the TV reporter said, “Did he resist arrest, Chief?”

“Oh, he tried all right.” And then Cliffie slapped his holster. “But I guess he just plain didn't know what he was up against.”

At least a few of the onlookers had the grace to laugh. Most of us quit playing cowboys about age seven or so. Somebody really should point that out to Cliffie sometime. But then if he was secretly Glenn Ford, I had to admit that I was still secretly Robert Ryan. Though Ryan was taller, better looking, tougher, and smarter than me, I could definitely see a similarity between us even if nobody else could.

Doran was gray. His blue eyes were frantic. I could see that he'd been crying. Then I remembered Molly saying that he'd been drunk. Maybe what I was seeing was a combination of terror and hangover. His jeans had grass stains all over the knees, and his T-shirt was smudged in three different places with what was obviously blood. The shirt should have been taken off him and put into an evidence bag. But after all, it was Cliffie in charge, wasn't it?

Doran moved at an angle to me. I saw a long gash on the inside of his left arm. That could explain the blood on his T-shirt.

“Did you get a confession, Chief Sykes?” a reporter called out.

“Not yet. But we will.”

I watched Doran's face. He didn't react in any way. He was hiding, cowering inside himself.

“So you've got evidence against him?” another reporter asked.

“Take a look at this shirt.” Cliffie turned and grabbed a handful of the T-shirt so cameras could get a clear shot of it. This was the kind of evidence you kept to yourself in an arrest. Somewhere in town, the district attorney, another member of the Sykes clan, had just fainted.

He put his campaign hat on and raised his hands. “That's it for now, everybody. We can't have the front of the police station cluttered up this way. We'll be having a press conference later this afternoon, but for now everybody should get back to what they were doing.”

The new station is two-storied red brick with wide concrete steps leading to double glass doors. Cliffie likes to stand on top of the steps for his press conferences. I'm sure it makes him feel like a big-city cop.

“Now, c'mon, everybody, let's break it up.”