Triple Pursuit (13 page)
Father Dowling was surprised at Amos Cadbury's appetite for irrelevant minutiae when he came to depose the pastor on the events at the now famous dance. He had also decided to depose Maud Gorman; Edna had promised him the use of her office for the occasion. Father Dowling had never before been anxious for a visit of Amos's to be at an end, but he was wary of everything he said, lest he seem to have prejudged the issue. Legally, it was still to be decided, and morally it was difficult to think of either man as the injured party. But what he dreaded was being asked to testify in the case.
“They will come begging for a settlement long before we get to court,” Amos said.
“Wouldn't that be best?”
“When they do, I will know they're beaten. I will refuse. Eventually they will withdraw the suit.”
“You are sure of that?”
“No. But it is the goal I am pursuing.”
“I will make that an object of my prayers.”
Amos Cadbury was a pious man, a man who often thanked God for the many good things that had come his way in a long and successful
life, but for a fleeting moment the idea that special Divine intervention might be needed for the practice of his profession brought a twitch of impatience to his luxurious silver eyebrows.
life, but for a fleeting moment the idea that special Divine intervention might be needed for the practice of his profession brought a twitch of impatience to his luxurious silver eyebrows.
“Of course you're right, Father. And I will do the same.”
And so Father Dowling relived the night of the dance. Amos wanted all the particulars as to why a dance had been held in the first placeâwho had suggested it, how everything had been arranged. Nothing seemed too trivial for the little tape recorder he had placed on the pastor's desk.
“And will it be a regular thing now?”
“After what happened the once, how can you ask?”
“A dance is a wonderful thing, Father. A real dance, I mean, with music you can bear and dancing that is graceful and dignified.”
“Do you dance, Amos?” The priest's mind was suddenly flooded with a vision of the stately attorney sweeping around the floor, his partner held lightly but masterfully as he guided her among the other dancers with precision and grace.
“I danced. But I should like to dance again.”
“Perhaps we will have another, then. After a time.”
“You mustn't let two foolish old men spoil a grand idea.”
And so they came to the night of the dance. Now Amos's curiosity about the music, the songs that were sung, seemed to go well beyond the limits of professional curiosity. That Jack Gallagher had been able to mimic the great singers of yore enthralled him. “Was Dennis Day in his repertoire?”
“He was. He sang âDanny Boy' as Day would do it.”
Amos wanted to know if Gallagher had sung “Dream” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” He had.
“And âGoodnight Irene'?”
“Desmond O'Toole sang that, a version that went on at least five minutes.”
Amos sighed. His eyes were moist. “My dear wife's name was Irene. Whenever I hear that song ⦔
But in a moment he regained control of himself, and the re-creation of the night of the dance went on. Father Dowling was surprised by how much he was able to recall. When Jack stepped down from the microphone and Desmond took over, he had tapped Austin on the shoulder and then Maud was in his arms.
“That woman can dance,” Amos said fervently.
“They danced well together. And during the next dance, Austin tried to reclaim his partner, with disastrous results.”
“All of it, Father. I want to hear it all.”
So Father Dowling told of the repeated attempts on Austin's part to break in on Jack Gallagher and Maud.
“How many times, would you say? This is important.”
“A half-dozen?”
“More? Less?”
“More.”
“Unbelievable rudeness! A dance is a rite and ceremony, Father, there are rules that must be kept.” The lawyer's animosity against the man who had brought this ridiculous suit was now strong and unwavering. But the climactic moment when Austin Rooney threw the punch that felled Jack Gallagher excited Amos more. “Good man, good man,” he said.
Father Dowling was relieved when the deposition was done, and Amos got ready to go over to the school to interview Maud Gorman. Since the dance, he had doubtless tried to forget that night, but now it was almost more vividly present to him than it had been at the time.
“I wish you had witnessed the set-to in the parking lot, Father.”
“Maud can help you there.”
“Good grief.” He looked at his watch, fishing it from a pocket of his vest. “I mustn't keep the woman waiting any longer.”
“How was it?” Marie asked.
“Like making a general confession.”
“Confession? Nothing that happened was your fault.”
“I meant it as an analogy, Marie.”
“Even so. Cy Horvath is here if you can see him.”
“Has he been waiting long?”
“He's been in the kitchen. I gave him a little snack.”
The lieutenant came into the study and sat when Father Dowling asked him to.
“We got a message from Kansas City. Harry Paquette has been seen there.”
“Didn't they arrest him?”
“They got a positive report when they showed his picture around. We got a picture from Minneapolis. They'll find him.”
“And then?”
“We'll find out why he left Fox River in such a hurry.”
That night Phil Keegan stopped by the rectory and, forgetting his previous indifference, was triumphant, praising Cy's tenacity to the skies.
“I suppose it will be difficult to prove he actually pushed her into the path of that car.”
“It won't be difficult for Cy. He has kept in touch with the witnesses, keeping their memories fresh. He is sure that when he produces the man, they will identify him.”
It was odd how one's attitude changed. When the search for a culprit seemed unlikely to succeed, it was easy to think of him as a monster, but once the trail grew warm he seemed a hunted wretch. The man might have a record as long as your arm, as Phil put it, but it was hard not to fear for him as the tenacious search closed in on him. Lines from Francis Thompson's “Hound of Heaven” came to Father Dowling. Guilty as Harry Paquette might be, the priest hoped to see him if and when they caught him. A criminal must be punished, of course, but he was also a sinner and as such, a candidate, like all of us, for Divine mercy. Phil sometimes grew impatient with this “lost sheep”
business, but in his heart he understood. His interest and Roger Dowling's might differ, but they were compatible.
business, but in his heart he understood. His interest and Roger Dowling's might differ, but they were compatible.
The pastor of St. Hilary's sat up late this night, Dante open before him, but his thoughts often elsewhere. The events he had spent over an hour recounting to Amos Cadbury seemed comic compared with the matter Cy was pursuing. Two old men vying for the same old woman at a dance, on the one hand; a man pushing a woman to her death because she refused advances she seemed once to have accepted, on the other. But were they so different? What Austin had done to Jack Gallagher easily could have had more serious consequences. Jack might easily have been injured when he fell; a man his age might have had a heart attack as a result of such rough treatment. Of course the still-unknown Harry had meant to kill his erstwhile love; certainly, to injure her seriously. Still, the anger behind both deeds was in many ways the same. In any case, Harry's presence in Kansas City seemed to exonerate him from what had happened at the El station in Fox River. That seemed to make it what Phil had called it, the work of a copycat. Surely Harry was not to blame because some poor devil had tried to do a similar thing.
George Hessian heard that Joseph Castlemar from Amos Cadbury's office would be taking depositions from those in the school who had witnessed Austin Rooney striking Jack Gallagher. This was welcome news, strengthening the symmetry of the book he was now in the process of outlining. Part one would evoke St. Hilary's school of yesteryear, establish the ethos of the place, introduce the class, but largely as background for the two protagonists of the book, Austin and Jack. Their rivalry, the resort to blows, would provide the base for the following parts. George was certain that there was something deeply significant in the fact that each man had married the other's sister. Dark thoughts of secondhand incest blew through George's mind, but he let
them blow on. Let the reader think such thoughts if he chose; George would merely chronicle. Their careers seemed parallel rather than a continuation of their rivalry, but Tuttle had found that wasn't true.
them blow on. Let the reader think such thoughts if he chose; George would merely chronicle. Their careers seemed parallel rather than a continuation of their rivalry, but Tuttle had found that wasn't true.
“You interviewed at the station?”
The tweed hat bobbed in assent. Tuttle was lying prone on the examination table of the former school nurse's office George used. The hat once more fell over his face.
“Do you have notes of those interviews?”
“It's all in my head.”
“That's equivocal.”
Silence from beneath the tweed hat. But Tuttle told George of the remembered visit of Austin Rooney to the station. When Jack Gallagher went down he took a fortune's worth of records with him.
“I'm surprised he didn't sue him then.”
“I wasn't advising him then.”
It was tempting to tell Tuttle what Rawley had reported on the way the little lawyer was haunting Western Sun Community. “I think he or his partner are out here all night,” Rawley had said.
“What are they looking for?”
“They're keeping an eye on Gallagher.”
“But Gallagher is his client.”
“Lawyers are nuts.”
Rawley worked various shifts, not really caring whether he put in his eight hours in daylight or darkness, but he preferred the graveyard shift, from midnight to eight in the morning. “I can read then without being interrupted.”
Tuttle had been satisfied with George's assurance that he could be of no help to him on what had happened between Austin and Jack. That provided an excuse to get the story from Tuttle, who became a compendium of all the accounts he had gathered from his interviews. What George learned was better than he had expected. The fact that Austin had attacked Jack in his office at the station, provided continuity with their playground scuffles and the events at the St. Hilary
Senior Center dance. All these resorts to blows had involved women. Somewhere in these attacks a theme lurked, and George Hessian was intent on finding it. Had Maud been the bone of contention early and late? She had been a student when Austin and Jack were in St. Hilary's school. None of the comments on their deportment had linked Maud to the two boys, but it seemed to George that a little poetic license could at least suggest that she had been the object of their rivalry from the beginning.
Senior Center dance. All these resorts to blows had involved women. Somewhere in these attacks a theme lurked, and George Hessian was intent on finding it. Had Maud been the bone of contention early and late? She had been a student when Austin and Jack were in St. Hilary's school. None of the comments on their deportment had linked Maud to the two boys, but it seemed to George that a little poetic license could at least suggest that she had been the object of their rivalry from the beginning.
“A little old lady?” Rawley asked. He puffed between sentences, causing his mustache to flutter. “You mean the one in the condo next to Jack's?”
“Who's that?”
“A widow named Ritchie.”
“Mrs. Oswald Ritchie?”
“That's right.”
“You remember Ozzie.”
“Do I?”
Rawley refused to find George's enthusiasm contagious. He wanted to talk books, at least the book he was reading at the timeâthat was
Indian Summer
by William Dean Howells.
Indian Summer
by William Dean Howells.
“It could have been written by James.”
“Is Jack interested in the widow?”
“What do you mean by âinterested'?”
“Oswald Ritchie was in the same department at the university as Austin Rooney.”
“How do you know that?”
“I cleared his loan at the bank. When he bought his house.”
“What a memory for trivia you have.”
But links suggested themselves to George Hessian, whose imagination was now in full flow. Maybe Maud had a rival. After a shift change in the guard shack, he called on Isabel Ritchie.
“I knew your husband from the bank.”
“It broke my heart to sell that house,” she said, when he had given her more details. Isabel was no Maud Gorman, but she was cute enough, for an old lady. George's lack of experience in matters of the heart made anything seem equally possible or impossible in such matters.
“And now you live next door to Jack Gallagher.”
Her eyes brightened and she sighed. “Such a man, such a voice.”
“He was a favorite of my mother's.”
“He was everyone's favorite.”
“I wheeled her over to meet him at the clubhouse.”
“Wheeled her?”
“She's moved on to assisted living.”
Isabel did not want to know any more. Life at Western Sun was calibrated to degrees of dependency and Isabel was still in the part where she was as independent as she would have been if she had kept her house.
“I suppose you remember Austin Rooney.”
“We weren't close to the Rooneys.”
“He is Jack's brother-in-law.”
This lent Austin significance in Isabel's eyes. “What a small world.”
“A marble in space. Do you and Jack go to the clubhouse often?”
“We're often there together.”
No need to pry further for the nonce. Had she been dissembling in claiming not to have been close to the Rooneys? George would pursue the spoor further with Austin. But discreetly.
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