Chapter thirty-four

For another hour, we sat in the newspaper office and talked. Yardley sat with his feet on Susannah’s desk, his chair tilted full back. His head rested on his laced hands, and the cigarette in his mouth pointed straight up at the ceiling. Susannah sat behind the desk. She was enveloped in a huge purple sweater. One of her hands was lost in the folds of it. The other held a cup of coffee. She sipped at it and shivered. I had climbed up on top of the desk and was now seated at the center of a pile of paper and debris. My back was against the wall, my knees were bent in front of me, my hands were resting on them.

“Is it enough?” said Susannah.

I shook my head. Yardley stared upward.

“I mean, if we tell,” she said, “they can’t just kill him.”

I glanced at the clock. It was six-thirty. Jersey had about thirty-six hours left.

“We oughta call Marks,” said Yardley. “Tell him anyway.”

I nodded. “There’s a lot though …”

“A lot we don’t know,” he said. “But we should tell him. Anyway.”

I drummed a grim little riff on my knees. “It doesn’t make sense. What the hell happened to him? It doesn’t …”

“Michael,” Susannah said, “we’ll never know every …”

“Yeah, but look: he killed a man in his hometown. Then he went to college in New Orleans. He killed a woman there. Then he’s on the run and he kills a vagrant. Then he vanishes. For the next five years there’s not a trace of him and all that time the FBI guy, Sample, is on his trail.” I paused.

“Yeah?” said Yardley around his cigarette. “So?”

“So where are all the other killings? I mean, the man’s a murderer. That’s what he does. He kills people. Where are all the other killings over the next five years? And over the next twenty years?”

Yardley shrugged. “So he got away with them. Lot of these guys, they kill hundreds of people before anyone catches up with them.”

Susannah cocked her head at me, one eye closed. “Or maybe he stopped,” she said.

I looked down at her. “Yeah?”

“Maybe when he became this other guy? Maybe he, like, became this other guy.”

I started drumming my knees again, rocking with the rhythm, staring into space. “Yeah. He kills the vagrant and takes his identity. Harris becomes Johnson.”

“He sure had a way with names,” Yardley said.

“And it takes,” said Susannah.

“Yeah,” I said. “It takes. I mean, Harris is smart. Comes out of nowhere, gets a scholarship, makes a new life when nobody ever gave him a damned thing … So what if he does it again.”

“Takes on a whole new life.”

Yardley glanced at the clock. “We oughta call Marks,” he said.

“And Johnson starts winning through, making good for himself.” I drummed faster, rocking faster. “Burns his past behind him like a conquered town. Comes to Hickman to make a fresh start—and …”

I stopped. Susannah pursed her lips. Yardley lowered his chin to his chest.

“And there’s Laura?” he asked. “Just waiting for him?”

“All right,” I said. “All right, he’s hunting her, then. She’s the one link between him and the New Orleans murder.”

“The one link. There are plenty of links. The debutante’s boyfriend, he’s a link.”

“Shit.” I stopped drumming, slapped my legs.

Again, for a long moment, we sat, we stared, we didn’t speak. The night pressed at the window outside. The smoke pressed back against the glass from within.

Then Yardley said: “He must’ve …”

“Followed her,” I said.

“Loved her,” said Susannah.

“Not loved her exactly.”

“No,” she said.

“Wanted …”

“A friend.”

“Yes,” I said. “He must’ve followed her to find …”

“His only woman friend,” said Susannah.

“Yes.”

Yardley’s chair squeaked as he shifted in it. “And she must have moved here because she was afraid. She was too poor to just take off for no reason. She must have been afraid of Harris and moved here. Maybe to see family.”

“Maybe at random,” I said.

“And he followed her,” said Susannah. “And she turned him away. Like the debutante.”

“Plus she could expose him,” said Yardley.

“Right,” I said. “Take away his new life.”

“And then the Louisa Campbell incident came along and Nathan Jersey became ripe for a set up. Johnson was smart enough for that.”

I nodded. Susannah nodded. Yardley nodded.

“So why’s he in New Orleans now?” he said. “Asking questions, stirring things up.”

I started to answer—but I had no answer. I glanced at Yardley and he looked back, his mouth half open, like mine.

“I think I know,” said Susannah quietly.

We turned to her. She raised her blue eyes to me.

“I think he’s looking for us.”

I shook my head. “No, that doesn’t …”

“Sure,” she said, her voice still soft. “He thinks we know more than we do. He thinks we went to New Orleans to put a case together against him.”

The words hung in the air with the smoke, with the shadows.

“I think he’s looking for us,” Susannah said again.

Yardley was out of his chair. “Shit.”

“She’s right,” I said.

“Would you call Marks? Would you call him?”

“Okay, okay. He’s probably in Indianapolis trying …”

“Would you call him, North?”

I reached down over my legs and picked up the phone. I took Marks’s Hickman number from my wallet and read it off to Susannah as she dialed. The bell rang twice, then Marks picked up.

“Michael. Michael. I’m glad you called.” Exhaustion made his voice thick, hoarse. “The governor says he’s willing to talk to you, but there isn’t much time.”

“All right,” I said. “Listen to this.”

I told him. I tried to take it easy, tried to make it sound rational.

“Laura was just the maid, no one even thought of her,” I said. “But she was the one, see. She was the one this Harris guy was after.”

The pause that followed was long. Slowly, it grew longer. Yardley, his fists pressed into the desk top, hovered over me. Susannah, in her chair, stared up.

“Michael,” Marks said very slowly. “You can’t see me, but I’m counting on my fingers …”

“No. No. This is it. I’m telling you. We don’t have it all. We’re guessing a lot but it makes sense …”

“I don’t need sense!” It was the first time I’d heard him raise his voice. He stopped at once. I could hear him breathing on the line, fighting for control. “I need proof.”

“But this …”

“I need proof and we don’t have time. You’ve got to come with me to Indianapolis, you and Susannah. You’ve got to come tonight. You’ve got to, I can’t …” It trailed off into a low half groan, then nothing. “You’ve got to,” he said again.

The sound of him killed the protest on my lips. I sagged, the breath coming out of me. “All right.”

“All right?”

“All right,” I said.

I gestured my surrender to the others. Yardley turned away. Susannah leaned back in her chair.

Marks’s tone was apologetic now. “Michael. Michael, I swear to God, if there were … some way. If we could … if we could even go out and search the inn again, but the time … not even a day and a half … you have to, have to understand …”

I nodded. I started to say “all right.” But I didn’t say it. I said: “Search the inn for what?”

“What?”

I began to climb off the desk. “For … what did you search the inn for? You said search it again, what did you …?”

“I was grasping at straws.”

“You’ve been out there. You went looking for something.”

“A long time ago. We’ve got to …”

“Howard,” I said. I came into the aisle. I paced, the phone held tight against my ear. “What. What were you looking for? You’ve got to tell me.”

I stood still, aware of nothing but the silence on the wire. The dark distance and the silence between him and me. And then Marks sighed. And then he said: “No one ever found your father’s account books. I went back a couple of times to look for them but, like I said, I always figured Jersey was guilty …”

“His account books.”

“Yeah. Yeah, well … those and …”

He stopped. I opened my mouth. No sound came out. I licked my lips. “And what else?” I said.

“And Laura’s letters.”

I wrote to Laura once or twice a long while back.

“I never really took much time looking for them, I …”

I wrote to Laura … That’s what Jeannie said.

“… but when you mentioned Laura, I thought …”

My palm was wet and slick against the phone’s black plastic. “The ghosts,” I said.

“Michael.”

“A little boy, out by the inn, he told me there were ghosts. Haunting the place. Rummaging through the place.”

“Well, I haven’t been back there in …”

“Not you. Not you.”

He tried one more time: “Michael, the governor will …”

“I’m going out there.”

“It’s too late. It’s too long ago. Twenty years. The governor …”

“I’m going out there. Just for an hour. Two or three hours. I’ll meet you at your house afterward. I just have to …”

“Michael.”

“I just have to,” I said. And quietly, I lay the phone in its cradle.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“We’ll take both cars,” said Yardley. “You two can drive to Marks’s from there.”

We grabbed our jackets, headed toward the door. Only as Yardley was pushing it open did we pause, the two of us, and look back at Susannah.

She was standing in the aisle now. Standing there with her arms wrapped around herself, trembling. She watched us with wide eyes.

“Go on,” I said to Yardley.

He didn’t move. He could not take his eyes off her.

“Go on,” I said.

He glanced at me once. Then he pushed through the door and was gone.

I went to her. She took my shoulders. I pulled her close, kissed her neck, put my hand down the back of her jeans to her warm skin.

“When will it be over?” she said.

When I have my hands on him, I thought. When I have my hands on him and I feel him stop breathing.

“Soon,” I whispered gently. “Soon.”

The phone rang. Susannah groaned against my chest. I held her in one arm, reached for the phone with the other.

“What?” I said.

“North. This is Carl McGill.”

I let Susannah go. Stepped away from her, turned my back to her, struggling to keep the rage from sounding in my voice. “Where are you?”

“Lima,” McGill said. “Listen—”

“No. No, the line’s too clear. You sound like you’re around the corner. Where are you?”

“I’m in Lima, damn it. Shut up and listen.”

“Who’s the scarred man, Carl?”

“Carl?” said Susannah.

“I don’t know,” McGill growled. “Would you listen?”

“You were there, Carl. Who’s the scarred man?”

“I’m telling you, goddamn it, I don’t know.”

I felt Susannah’s eyes on my back. I felt my heart beating hard.

“I’m sorry,” McGill said then. “I am. What the hell else do you want me to say? I should have told you. All right? I should have told her. That’s why I brought you two together finally, on Christmas. I figured it was gonna be over for Jersey after all these years. I figured I could tell you and we could put an end to it. I wanted to tell you. I tried. Damn it, you know I did.”

“Is that what I know?” I said. “How come when we were on the train—when you were reading that article about Jersey’s execution—how come you tried to hide it from me, Carl? You didn’t want me to see it. That’s what I know. I know that.”

The silence was longer this time. Then: “Yeah. Well. I haven’t got an answer, Michael. Old habits die hard, I guess. I guess I’d kept it from her mother for so long. I guess I’d worked so hard to make Susannah’s life all right—to make it perfect. I mean, I wanted her to know and I didn’t, okay? Hell, she was a little girl, Mike. My little girl. It didn’t seem to hurt anyone. And you—the way you were—I got the feeling you didn’t even want to know, anyway. Or maybe I was hoping you’d just remember on your own and save me the grief. Anyway, I couldn’t tell you. That’s the story. I tried, but I couldn’t. That covers the whole thing.” Both of us breathed into the pause. “I’m sorry your life jumped out at you like that,” he said.

I frowned. I didn’t answer.

“North?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m on my way back. A few days. I’ve got good stuff for the book.”

I nodded. “You want to talk to Susannah?”

He took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

I held the receiver out toward her. She hesitated only a moment, her eyes growing damp. Then she took the instrument from me with both hands. She held it to her ear. Her lips parted, then pressed together trembling.

“Daddy?” she said.

I went out and waited for her in the car.