SIXTY-FIVE

The specter of Buzz Farmer’s death haunted me. When I closed my eyes, the vision of him shooting himself blotted out everything else.

I blamed myself for not having been more forceful. For not being skillful enough to have prevented what occurred. My nights were filled with remorse, my days with distraction.

My rational self argued there was no way I could have thwarted Farmer’s suicide. I wasn’t the threat that caused him to kill himself. He had turned out not to be the image of perfection he had fashioned for himself. And that, he couldn’t live with.

My irrational self charged me with failure. Petrov escaped prosecution. And, in retrospect, Farmer did, too.

Despite the media veneration, I saw myself as having botched the job. And, instead of facing media adulation, what I was really facing was my steadfastly unforgiving conscience.

And, just as my father was experiencing a respite from the inevitability of his fate, I was staring eye-to-eye at mine.

I stepped off the plane in Chicago, rented a Chevy Camaro, and drove to Rockport. I parked in front of her house and sat there for a while.

It was one of a community of modest homes, all crowded together in a lower-middle class neighborhood, on narrow streets that often doubled as playgrounds and makeshift clubhouses.

Finally I navigated the short cement walkway and the three steps that led to the front door. I rang the bell.

When she opened it, I realized I had seen her before. At the Ralph’s market in Freedom, examining canned goods further down the aisle from where I had unexpectedly run into her husband. He had never thought to introduce us and I hadn’t put two and two together until this moment.

“Sheriff Steel.” She offered her hand. “Kelly Farmer.”

“Mrs. Farmer.”

“Will you come in?”

“Thank you.” I followed her inside.

She was kind-looking, at ease within herself, and pretty in an understated way. She wore no makeup. Hers was a narrow face, full lipped with a slightly upturned nose and a ruddy complexion that emphasized the intensity of her moist brown eyes.

She showed me into a small living room that was also a repository for a great many children’s toys and accessories, as well as a tiny playpen, currently unoccupied.

“Nap time,” Kelly Farmer explained. “We’ll need to keep our voices down.”

I nodded. We sat.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why am I here?”

She nodded.

“To pay my respects.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“I know. But there was something unfinished between me and Buzz. Something unspoken that didn’t exactly end with his death.”

“Such as?”

“I haven’t actually articulated it before. I hope I can make myself clear.”

Again she nodded.

“I was one of those who was in favor of his coming to Freedom. Perhaps it was the bill of goods he sold me regarding how much he wanted his family out of Chicago and away from a big city. I keep wondering what it was about him that got to me.”

“He had a way of doing that, of getting to people. Ever since he was a kid.”

“Well, he surely got to me. In hindsight, I think it was because he seemed so devoted to his work. He took things seriously and spared no effort in his quest to be perfect at each and every turn.”

“You noticed,” Kelly said. “That was his parlor trick. He always made people believe his faux seriousness.”

“You think it was a trick?”

“I do. I think it was a more complicated trick than what met the eye. It wasn’t about his seriousness regarding the job, his quest to be perfect, as you put it. It was his seriousness as it applied to him succeeding at his con. Making you believe he was the best there was, when all the time it was about pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes regarding what he was really up to.”

“Killing people.”

“Not just that. It was how he killed them. The level of preparation and expertise it took. And making sure no one ever caught on. My shrink refers to it as his psychosis.”

“Your shrink?”

“My psychiatrist. Thanks to my parents, I’ve been seeing her ever since I got back here.”

She withdrew into herself for several moments.

I watched her consider what she wanted to say next, discard the first thoughts that crossed her mind, then settle on it. “He fooled me. For the longest time. I’m in analysis to learn how that could have happened. And to prevent it from ever happening again.”

“And the children?”

“The baby’s too young to know anything other than he’s no longer here. Burton Junior is four, though, and he keeps asking when his daddy will be coming home.”

“Burton, Junior?”

“Yes. After his father.”

“Buzz’s name was Burton?”

“It was.”

“Mine too.”

“Your name is Burton?”

“Burton, Junior.”

“But they call you Buddy.”

“Yes.”

“Buddy and Buzz. Nicknames. What an odd coincidence.”

“Yes.”

“What is it that brought you here?”

“He haunts me.”

“He fooled you, too.”

“He was very good at it.”

“He was.”

After an awkward silence, I asked, “How are you faring?”

“With my shrink?”

“With your life.”

“I know there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I just haven’t spotted it yet.”

“But you will.”

“Yes. And I also believe I’ll be a better person and mother once I do.”

“He told me his death would be on my conscience.”

“Of course he did.”

“It was the last thing he ever said.”

She chuckled. “And you bought it?”

“I might have.”

“Get over it, Buddy. May I call you Buddy?”

“Better than Burton.”

“Don’t stay caught up in his game. He knew there was no other way out. He would have been bonkers had he gone to jail. This was his exit strategy. As carefully planned as was everything else in his life. Don’t buy it, Buddy. He set you up in the hope you would. That you’d suffer because of it.”

I considered all she was saying and somewhere inside, I knew it was true. He set me up to be his victim.

“Thank you, Kelly. You’re right, of course.”

“Funny,” she said.

“What is?”

“Gullibility. We believe what we want to believe and everything else be damned.”

“Even when we know it to be wrong.”

“Especially then.”