"He must have done it for Waldo," I tell Mace. "You read Barbara's diary. That's the only explanation."
We're heading back downtown. The sun beats harshly on the streets. A group of children, clustered around an open fire hydrant, play in the stream of water. Mace, driving, stares straight ahead. After a burst of exuberance back at O'Neill's, he's gone morose and silent.
"I know what you're thinking," I tell him. "A sketch based on a fifteen-second glimpse recollected after twenty-six years—any defense attorney could tear that to shreds. And even if Kate Evans looks at my sketch and says, 'Yeah, that's the guy!' it won't do you any good. She already worked with me, so she's contaminated."
Mace grins. "So what am I left with, David? An uncorroborated ID by a sleazy ex-cop who only happened to be there because he was trying to blackmail one of the victims. Two unrelated crimes taking place at the same time. Three if you count what Cody did to the Steadmans. Not to mention that Jessup and Barbara were up to their ears in that, too. I tell you, I could really puke. But I'd still like to nail Deval."
He takes me to a dark, working-class pub in Irontown that smells strongly of ale. A Forgers-White Sox game is playing on the TV. A small group of out-of-work laborers sit in gloom at the bar gazing up at the screen. We order beers, carry them to a booth, then stare past one another trying to figure out what to do.
I'm the one who breaks the silence.
"Waldo must have thought he was in an impossible position—his threat to expose Barbara's new affair to Andrew balanced by her threat to expose his blackmail schemes. A stalemate based on the prospect of mutually assured destruction. But a stalemate wasn't good enough for Waldo."
Mace scratches his goatee. "So he turns to his flunky, Deval, gets him to be his triggerman. How? What did he have to offer Deval to get him to do a thing like that?"
"Only Deval knows and he won't be telling." I try to cheer Mace up. "The way I feel about it, even if there's never an indictment, there're other ways to bring a guy like that down. Like a wrongful death suit by the Fulraine boys. Rumors, disgrace, all the stuff Waldo was afraid of."
"Yeah, that'd be nice, I guess . . . but me, I'd prefer an indictment."
When he goes to the bar to fetch us two more beers, I turn toward the window. The strong light outside is nearly blinding. Suddenly I flash on a possible motive. When Mace comes back, I try it out on him:
"According to the rumors, when Waldo met Deval he was a hustler on DaVinci. Waldo cleaned him up, then sent him to England for a year to learn how to talk. They lived together, Deval acting as Waldo's errand boy. Then there came a time when Deval started getting co-writer credit on Waldo's column. In smaller letters, of course, but still a byline. So I'm wondering—could that be what Waldo had to offer?"
"Kill two people for a byline?"
"Not a bad deal if you're hungry enough. Think about it: Tough Street Kid gets his hooks into Toney Society Columnist. Columnist picks up tab while Kid learns social graces. Then when Columnist feels threatened, Kid exacts his price: He'll do dirty job Columnist doesn't have the stomach for, in exchange for an assured future. He'll receive co-byline on future columns, inherit column when Columnist retires, plus house and fortune when Columnist dies. That's a deal a guy without too many scruples could go for."
Mace nods. "I'll check when Deval started getting the byline. But even if it was right after Flamingo, it won't make for any kind of evidence." He stares at the TV above the bar. "Still, it's nice finally to know, I guess."
To finally know may be nice for him, but it's far from enough for me. I want Deval to know I know, want nothing less than to see him wriggle and flinch.
I drop into Waldo's at 4:00 P.M. No sign of him, but Tony assures me he'll be in soon.
"He stops by every afternoon to drink and finish up his column." Tony sniffs. "Just like Waldo always did."
I hang around the bar working on sketches for Sylvie's book. At 4:30 Deval shows up—slack mouth, shiny pate, crested navy blazer, yellow polka-dot silk ascot draped around his neck.
I watch him as he makes his way across the room, stopping at various tables to pat an important back or whisper into a receptive ear. Finally, with territorial confidence, he sits down at the table beneath Waldo's portrait, orders a drink, places a black leather-bound notebook on the table, whips out his cell phone, leans back, and starts making calls.
I turn on my bar stool to face him, expose a fresh page, and begin to draw.
It doesn't take long for him to notice me. When he figures out what I'm doing, he reacts with a mild look of surprise. Then he summons the waiter, whispers something, and the waiter approaches me.
"Mr. Deval asks if you'd like to join him?" I look at Deval, shrug, pick up my drink, and move to his table.
"If you must draw me, old boy, at least do it up close," he says, showing me his best ironic eyebrow-twitching grin. "To what nefarious purpose do I owe this exquisite honor? For, to be frank, old boy, I've had the impression you've been studiously avoiding me."
I hide my revulsion at the highfalutin way he talks.
"Why Spencer! How could you think such a thing when all this time I've been in awe?"
He grins a little more to show me he's amused.
"What fascinates me is your role as arbiter here," I continue, wanting to puff him up with flattery so he'll be all ripe and juicy for the fall.
"But why draw me, old boy? What're you up to?"
Continuing to sketch, I tell him I'm doing drawings for Sylvie's book, and that he, being the local media guru, will be among the more prominently featured personalities.
A skeptical smile curls his lip.
"You wouldn't be intending to do me in, would you? Making me out to be the barroom buffoon?"
Since that's precisely what I'm intending, I show him my sketch. "See for yourself."
"Pretty mean," he says, studying my cartoon. "Got a real chip on your shoulder, don't you, old boy? Truly I don't mind being caricatured, but you needn't deny me my good looks." He grins again.
This is the moment.
"You were a lot prettier in the old days," I say, laying down the sketch I made with Jerry O'Neill.
He gapes at my drawing. "What the hell is that?"
"That's how you looked just after you killed the lovers at Flamingo. That's the expression on your face when you paused like a frozen deer in the parking lot across the street."
He stares at me. I can see he's shaken. "You're even nuttier than I thought. What're you trying to pull, Weiss? Going to let me in on the game?"
"It's not a game," I assure him. "I have this from an eye witness. Barbara was going to spread it around you'd been a hustler, Waldo didn't want that, so he had you kill her."
He feigns amusement. "Go on with your fantasy. I'm dying to hear it all."
"You marched in there and shot them. You thought no one saw you, but someone did. What I'm wondering is what Waldo gave you in return. Was it the byline? Did he promise you his column?"
Now he glares at me, pure fury in his eyes. "Don't know what you're up to, old boy. But if it's nasty you want, nasty's what you'll get."
I laugh. "Oh, gosh—the wicked columnist! What are you going to do? Slay me with your pen? Maybe a threat like that worked back in Waldo's time, but no more, Deval. Now it just sounds silly."
"How 'bout I sue you for every cent you've got?"
"I'd welcome a lawsuit. It'd be a pleasure to put you on the stand and watch you lie."
He snaps his cell phone shut, notebook too, sits back and studies me, weighing his options. Then, suddenly, he regains his composure. His fury abates, replaced by a crafty smile.
Watching the change, I find myself admiring his cool, wondering too what's going on in his mind. I see him clearly now. He's a totally self-invented creature who plays others as if they're instruments. When you don't respond to one tune, he adjusts, tries another.
"We have a lot to talk about," he says. "But this isn't the time or place. Suppose we get together later in the evening? Eight o'clock all right?"
"Sure."
"I'll pick you up in front of the hotel. Then we'll go someplace quiet and have it out."
"Should I bring a weapon?"
He smiles. "You've nothing to fear. But by all means bring one if it'll make you feel more comfortable, old boy."
Pam thinks I'm mad to go out alone with him.
"I know you think he's a coward," she says, "but if he killed those people he's dangerous."
"He did kill them. But he won't harm me. If he does you can tell Mace who did it."
"Is that supposed to comfort me?"
I pat her cheek. "Just think of yourself as my insurance policy. I promise I'll check in with you when I get back."
Spencer pulls up on time in front of the Townsend in a big, black vintage Jag, the grand old kind with beautifully curved panels, finely restored chrome work, whitewall tires, and acres of nice-smelling interior wood and leather. The car, I think, perfectly suits his self-image—rich, luxurious, quintessentially British. A gentleman's car . . . except, of course, we both know Spencer's no kind of gentleman.
"Great Jag," I compliment him, strapping myself in.
"Isn't it? It was Waldo's. He used to call it 'Black Beauty.' "
"Part of your inheritance?"
"You know a lot about me."
"I've been studying you for weeks."
"Well, I'm flattered, old boy. I truly am."
He grins, then pulls into traffic. We drive through Irontown, then he turns into an unlit alley and stops.
"Nothing to fear. I'm just going to pat you down. Must make sure you're not wired, you know."
He asks me to open my jacket. When I oblige, he pats me carefully, running his fingers down my chest, belly, then along my sides and back to make sure I don't have a transmitter taped to my body.
"So far so good," he says. "Now comes the unpleasant part. Or perhaps quite pleasant, depending on your point of view. Be so good as to loosen your belt and slip down your jeans."
I balk. "Are you out of your mind?"
"Up to you. I can drive you straight back to the hotel if you like."
Reluctantly I do as he says, trying not to flinch while he pats me down below. But when his hand grazes my balls, I can't help myse1f, I recoil.
He laughs. "I wonder—does the gentleman protest too much?" He pats me on the knee. "You're clean. Zipper up, old boy. And thanks much for assuaging my suspicions."
As we cross the Calista River via the Stanhope Bridge, I ask him why his vocabulary is so pretentious and his accent so transparently phony.
"People think I picked that up in England," he says, "that I'm some kind of Gatsby type. But truth be known, I'm, well—just a bit affected, old boy."
He steers the big car along River Street, chuckling over the many layers of irony he's laid on. There's something exhausting about him, something in his manner that draws you in then leaves you feeling drained. It's the emptiness, I decide, the hollow core of the man. When you peel away the layers, there's nothing there but the raw hunger.
We follow the twists and turns of the Calista River, covered tonight with mist, then descend to the flat riverbank area where day and night the mills used to roar, belching thunder and eye-stinging cinders which gave the air a sulfurous cast and covered Calista, the would-be Athenian metropolis, with soot.
There's fog down here. The air, I think, has a special aroma tonight, the smell of summer air just before a storm. Spencer drives up to the gates of Fulraine Steel, then stops, waiting for the night watchman to show himself.
"Evening, Mr. Deval," the watchman says, emerging from his shack.
"Evening, Paul. All right if we go in for a while?"
"You're always welcome here, you know that, Mr. Deval. Just give me a minute to open up."
The watchman, a thin, crusty, unshaven old coot, hobbles toward the gate.
"You're known here."
He smiles. "Oh, I am, old boy. I come here regularly to ponder my past."
He gestures toward the watchman now clumsily working the locks.
"Paul was a steelworker. Worked for the Fulraines since he was a boy. Seventy-six now, long past retirement age, but he can't tear himself away. You don't often find such loyalty these days."
"Tell me something, Deval—why are we going in here?"
He grins. "Because it's dark and spooky, a perfect place to dump a body." He pauses, turns serious. "Actually, can you think of a more appropriate venue for what we have to talk about?"
When Paul pulls the gates open, we drive through, then make our way through night fog into the ruins of the steelworks. The broken buildings loom above us like the skeletons of dinosaurs. Spencer drives directly into an old smelting furnace area, roof now reduced to a girder frame open to the sky.
He parks, we get out of the car, then wander on foot deeper into the ruins. Indeed, I think, this venue couldn't be better chosen. What better stage for recounting terrifying acts? The deserted ruins of Fulraine Steel—crumbling brick smokestacks, shattered ceilings, blasted concrete floors, a virtual theater of ravagement and perdition. What better place for one man to open his heart to another, confess terrible past deeds. But will Spencer confess? Or is this all part of a game? Here amidst fogbound ruined furnaces and broken Bessemer converters, old brick walls blackened by accretions of fire and smoke, does he intend to reveal himself or does he have something else, something unexpected in mind?
"As we were saying—"
"As you were saying, old boy. It was you, remember, who broached the subject back in the hotel bar."
He stops, inserts a cigarette into a holder, lights it, draws in the smoke, exhales, then crooks his elbow against his side, archly holding out the holder—his signal that he's now in play.
"Now let's suppose," he says smoothly, "that a certain Gentleman did something similar to what you describe . . . killed a couple in a motel, something ever-so-bad such as that? Someone hearing that story might conclude: 'Oh, he did the awful deed for his Lover . . . who was having a bit of a tiff with the Lady at the time.' This same someone might think that he, the Lover, I mean, hated the Lady sufficiently to wish her dead. And perhaps that would be true, perhaps the Lover did wish that. But he, the Lover, would never have had the cajones to realize such a wish. Wasn't his style, as they say. No, not the style of the type of man we're talking about, the Lover, I mean. His style would be far more devious. He might, for instance, send vicious letters containing old clippings, used condoms, pubic hairs, that sort of thing. So when you say—and, remember, we're spinning a tale here—when you say, 'Oh, the Gentleman did it in return for a promise of a gossip column from his Lover,' well then, old boy, I'm afraid you'd be way off the mark."
"Why did he do it then?" I ask, entering into the game, intrigued that he's opening up to me, repelled too by his arrogance, his apparent belief he can spin his tale harmlessly by concealing it within a stylized fiction. Still, I know, I must appear to believe him.
"Well, old boy—for money, of course!" Spencer chuckles. "Helluva lot of money, too!"
"His Lover paid him?"
"No, damnit! Not his Lover! You're still missing the point."
"Set me straight."
"Oh, I shall, old boy, I shall! Suppose someone else paid him, someone who truly had a lot to lose if the Lady actually did as she had threatened."
"I'd think the Lover would've had a lot to lose."
"You mean a besmirching of his reputation? You're right, that wouldn't have been pleasant, but the Lover could have finessed it well enough. Couple months vacation on the Riviera, then home to resume his column with a vengeance. No, not the Lover, decidedly not. You see, vicious as he was, the only way he knew how to hurt was with words."
"Then who?"
"Clever whippersnapper like you should be able to figure that one out."
And then it comes to me, and I feel like a fool for not having seen it. "Andrew Fulraine." Spencer smiles. "But how? I mean—I didn't even know you knew him."
"Knew him? I fucked him! And, believe me, it wasn't all that exciting either. He picked me up on DaVinci, gave me my start, introduced me to what one might laughingly call 'some of the finer things in life.' On that subject, by the way, Waldo could be most amusing. 'Yes,' he'd say, 'it's true, the best things in life are free, but I prefer the second best things . . . and they are very expensive.' Andrew introduced me to Waldo. Waldo specialized in Andy's 'leavings.' But, remember, we're not talking about me here. We're talking about the Gentleman. We're weaving a hypothetical yarn about—what do you call them?—archetypes, I think."
Yes, archetypes. . .
"So Fulraine wanted Barbara dead because of the custody case?"
"I believe it cut a good deal deeper than that. But first let's get our characters straight. So far we have: the Gentleman, the Lover, and the Lady. Now we introduce: the Husband. Which brings us to the matter of the Husband's peccadilloes, as they used, so charmingly, to call them. Now the Husband, as you can imagine, did not wish his private habits known. He wanted custody of his kids, but even more he wanted his secret kept."
"The secret of his peccadilloes?"
"Yes! Those irresistible desires that sent him regularly to the most sordid sections of our fair city. He most decidedly did not want that exposed. He was, after all, a family man."
"And he knew someone who would take care of the matter."
"Let's say he knew someone willing to take care of the matter if he were paid handsomely enough."
"The Gentleman?"
"Good! Now we're back into our story. And yes, indeed, the Gentleman did do the nefarious deed. A whore, after all, is accustomed to performing special personal services for pay."
"Without remorse?"
"Not much really. A year on DaVinci has a way of toughening a boy up. Live that life for a while, you learn to do what you have to to survive. Of one thing the Gentleman was certain: He wasn't going back where he came from . . . no matter what."
"Did the Lover know?"
"The Lover did not know! In fact, he found the Lady's demise quite inconvenient. It spoiled all the delicious plans he had in mind, all the ingenious ways he was going to torment her. But, if truth be told, the Lover was a bit of a horse's ass. And the Gentleman was smart enough not to trust him. Not that his untrustworthiness was any kind of secret. The Lover was often heard to say: 'Never tell me anything you don't want the whole world to know.' Silly people who didn't take the Lover at his word nearly always came to regret it."
Spencer would like, he tells me, there to be no misunderstanding—personally the Gentleman had nothing against the Lady or her Friend. It was simply a dirty job that had to be done. And the payment was commensurate with the difficulty.
Suddenly a bolt of lightning tears the night sky. For a moment, it casts a sharp, crisscross pattern on the concrete floor, shadow of the network of rusted girders above. A moment later the shadow fades, then the sky lets loose.
It's a summer thunderstorm much like the one that broke the afternoon of the Flamingo killings. As the rain crashes down, Deval and I exchange a look. Then, drenched, we seek out shelter, finding it in the alcove of a furnace where, crouching to escape the rain, we find ourselves but inches apart.
More brilliant zigzag tears against the night, cracks of thunder following ever more swiftly. But Deval doesn't stop, he continues to declaim, spewing out his story against the storm.
"You see, it wasn't the money per se, old boy. It was what so much money could do! What you've got to understand is that what the Husband offered the Gentleman was far more than a mere bundle of cash. He offered him a magnificent living. He offered him a life!"
Spencer extracts the wet cigarette from his holder. He turns boastful as he tosses it away.
"Earlier you proposed the notion that the Gentleman received his Lover's column in payment for the deed. To set you straight, the Gentleman did not receive the column as a gift. Rather he bought it. That's right, bought the column, first receiving a byline in smaller print beneath the Lover's, then little by little making the column his own. Through study and emulation, he learned which knobs to turn, levers to pull, in order to enter society. And, over time, his tongue became tarter, more sharply honed than the Lover's. People found his bon mots more amusing. By the last year of the Lover's life, the old man wore a look of defeat. His sources dried up. People considered him passé. Now they looked to the Gentleman for approval, turned to him for counsel, confided secrets into his ear."
The rain slacks off, the lightning passes, the storm quells as quickly as it came. Deval's voice falls too. We crawl out of our shelter. Now his tone turns brittle.
The Gentleman, he tells me, before agreeing to do the deed, pondered what to do if he were caught. He knew one thing: He would not fall upon his sword. If it became clear he was going down, he'd bring the Husband down with him. And so, clever boy that he was, he took steps to ensure proof of the Husband's complicity. It wasn't just the possibility that the Husband would disavow their bargain that drove him; rather something far more serious. For if the Husband was so evil as to employ the Gentleman to slaughter the mother of his children, what insurance did the Gentleman have that the Husband wouldn't later employ another to slaughter him?
Thus certain steps were taken, and a good thing, for over the years the Husband tried several times to renege. Whenever this happened, the Gentleman would remind the Husband of the hold he had, the means to send him to prison. Then as punishment, he'd require even larger payments.
As expected, the Husband would always relent, in the end making the huge final payment as demanded. So in that sense, at least, their pact was not Faustian, not one in which the Gentleman sold his soul to the Devil and then one day the Devil came by to collect his note. Rather it was a case in which the Gentleman performed a service for the Devil (i.e., the Husband), then used proof of their bargain to extract ever larger sums.
"You're wondering what that proof was, aren't you?" Spencer's eyes gleam in the night, "Remember how I patted you down? If the Husband had patted the Gentleman down, there would have been no proof. Perhaps even, for that matter, no crime. But in the story I'm telling, the scheme between them was recorded."
"Why're you telling me this?"
He shrugs. "It's just a story after all."
He stops speaking then as suddenly as he began. Storytelling time, it seems, is over. He turns, starts back toward his car. I watch him as he gets inside, then beckons me to the driver's window.
"Well, that's it, old boy." He smiles. "Time now for me to bow out." He starts the engine. "I'm sure you'll manage to find your way home." And then, feigning an afterthought, he hands me an envelope. "A souvenir. I know you'll make good use of it. Well . . . so long, old boy. . . ." And, with that, he raises his window, switches on his headlights, then drives off slowly into the fog.
I stand there staring after him, amazed at what he's told me, the cool manner in which he's told it, his strange, cool departure too. What is he up to? Why has he left me here? Why has he told me so much? Is this all some kind of complicated taunt?
When he's out of sight, I tear open the envelope, find a tape cassette inside.
If this is the recording he made of his deal with Andrew, why give it to me now? Why go to all the trouble of patting me down, telling me what happened in the guise of a story, then hand me what appears to be hard evidence of his guilt?
In the post-storm silence, I can hear the throbbing engine of his car as it makes its way through the ruins, then a short, sharp honk when it reaches the steelworks gate. I move out of the furnace area toward the river, hoping to catch sight of the Jag as it crosses the flatlands then mounts the road to the bluffs above.
I make it out finally, its perfect profile, as, headlights gleaming, it ascends River Street toward the Stanhope Bridge. A fine black shape moving smoothly upward through the night. Then, at the crest above the riverbank, it stops.
Good! Maybe he'll come back for me.
Hearing the roar of the engine revving up across the water, I get a feeling that's not what's going to happen. Then with mounting terror, I watch as the big car suddenly leaps forward toward the railing, crashes through, soars out into space, hangs in the air for a moment like a great falcon poised before attack, then plunges down-down-down toward the Calista River, finally splashing in the water, then sinking slowly into the iron-red muck.
Calista County Courthouse, 12:30 P.M. Closing arguments in the Foster trial are done, the prosecution having methodically summed up its case, the defense having emotionally cast "reasonable doubt."
I've spent the morning distracting myself from last night's trauma by producing a dozen drawings, half of defense counsel ridiculing the evidence, half of the prosecutor pounding home his points. As soon as Judge Winterson completes instructions and sends the jury off to deliberate, all of us in the media circus troupe our way back to the Townsend to wait in Waldo's for the verdict.
Lots of rumors circulate around the barroom as to possible dispositions of the case. But as the afternoon wears on, another rumor snakes its way in, not about the Foster trial but about local society columnist Spencer Deval.
3:00 P.M. The first glimmer reaching Pam and me as we sit with Sylvie at the bar is that Deval's car was fished out of the Calista River at dawn.
A few minutes later, Starret stops by to tell Pam he hears Deval was involved in an old local murder case.
A half hour after that, Tony whispers that he's heard Deval was drowned.
"The cops were in his house this morning going through his stuff," Tony tells us. "Course to me it'll always be Mr. C's house. And that car! What a shame! It was Mr. C's pride and joy."
"What were they looking for?" Pam asks.
Tony gives us a "search-me" shrug. "Whatever it was, they found it or they didn't. I hear they stopped early this afternoon."
7:00 P.M. Just as everyone is chowing down on hotel sandwiches, a new rumor hits the room: the Foster jury has been escorted to Plato's for dinner, all jurors looking relaxed and relieved. This, coupled with courthouse rumors, suggests they've reached a verdict.
8:30 P.M. Mace appears at the barroom door, spots us, gestures for us to join him outside. We depart Waldo's casually, search him out, discover him on a couch behind a potted palm in a quiet, rear corner of the lobby.
"It's all over," he tells us. "The voices on the tape check out. It's Fulraine and Deval making a murder deal, cold and vile, utterly vile." He strokes his goatee. "What I don't get is why he patted you down, then handed you that tape."
I've been thinking about that all day myself. "I don't think he made up his mind what he was going to do till the very end," I tell Mace. "Then, by giving me the tape, he forced himself to take the leap."
"But surely he knew he didn't have to do anything. He didn't have to talk with you. He could have gotten away with it."
"Of course you're right. But there was an instant yesterday in Waldo's when I saw him crack. One moment he was going to sue me, the next he wanted to talk. At the time I thought he was just playing me, trying out a different tune. Now I think he was making a choice he'd been considering for years. I think he'd gotten whatever it was he wanted out of life. He had wealth and power, but he knew he was a fraud. Then I came along with my accusations, giving him the excuse he needed to self-destruct. But being Spencer, he had to do it the arch-mannered way he'd learned from Waldo, turn it all into 'a story,' then make a big flamboyant gesture to certify its truth. Driving his vintage Jag off a cliff—that's consistent with what he thought of as 'high style.' I think for him going to prison would've been worse than going back to DaVinci. Once he handed me that tape he had no choice, he'd passed the point of no return."
Mace raises his eyebrows. "What gets me is this was a murder-for-hire case and the real killer got home free. Fulraine hires this guy to kill his wife, gets custody of his kids, keeps his secret, lives a respectable life, then dies a respectable natural death."
"Remember what you told me about Fulraine, that he wouldn't have known how to hire a hit man?"
Mace shrugs. "I was wrong about a lot of stuff. And you know what? Now that this is solved, I hope I never have to think about it again."
I open my room door at 6:00 A.M. and pick up the early edition of the Times-Dispatch. Most of the front page is devoted to the Foster trial, but at the bottom there's a two-column-wide headline:
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST COMMITS SUICIDE\WAS INVOLVED IN OLD FLAMINGO MURDER CASE
I quickly scan the story, pausing at the eighth paragraph:
FSI Corp., formerly known as Fulraine Steel Industries, last night released the following statement by CEO Mark Fulraine, son of the more prominent of the two Flamingo Court Motel victims:
"Speaking for the Fulraine family, we do not accept the notion that our father plotted our beloved mother's death. This latest attempt to foist the killings upon a man no longer here to defend himself is one more painful chapter in an awful family tragedy."
Near the end, on the follow-up page, I come upon this:
Sheriff's Department Chief Inspector Mace Bartel mentioned the important contribution of freelance forensic sketch artist David Weiss, currently in Calista covering the Foster trial for ABC News.
Weiss, a Calista native, is the son of the late Dr. Thomas Rubin, a local psychoanalyst who was treating Mrs. Fulraine at the time of the Flamingo shootings.
According to Bartel, Weiss has been obsessed with the case since he was a child. It was one of Weiss' sketches, Bartel said, that persuaded investigators that Spencer Deval was the actual triggerman at the Flamingo Court Motel.
Weiss, Bartel added, is well-known for his work in a number of high-profile murder cases, including drawings that led to the arrest of the Zigzag Killer in San Francisco and the Saturn Killer in Omaha.
Obsessed since he was a child. Yeah, I think, they got that right. . . .
Calista County Courthouse, 10:07 A.M. We in the courtroom hold our collective breath as Judge Winterson asks defendant Foster to rise and face the jury.
"We find the defendant not guilty."
My eyes, of course, are fastened onto Kit. The low-key demeanor, sadly hung head, and glazed eyes all suddenly disappear. In a flash, her body straightens, her head cocks up, her eyes bug out, and a wide haw-haw grin stretches her mouth. The meek, soulful waif-defendant becomes the gleeful scam artist. She throws her arms about her lawyer and whirls him around.
At last I have something to draw! I sketch furiously, trying to catch the scene in all its horrible splendor, knowing that if I can get it down right, create a three-frame series of close-ups of Kit's transformation, I'll be able to tell the story of a murder trial gone terribly wrong.
Except for Wash, Starret, Harriet, and me, the courtroom empties fast. Harriet waits respectfully until I finish up my drawing, takes one look, purrs with delight, then rushes out. A moment later, Wash finishes his and hands it off to Starret.
Wash and I glance at one another, then smile.
"It's over," I tell him. "Let's have a drink?"
Even though Waldo's is full this afternoon, people standing two and three deep at the bar, the mood in the barroom is subdued. Harriet and I, Pam, Wash, and Starret sit together at a corner table.
The buzz surrounding us is uniform:
Foster got away with murder; not only is she free, she'll end up with Caleb Meadows's fortune. The only astonishing turn, everyone agrees, was the way she revealed herself at the end.
"I've covered murder trials for twenty years and I never saw a move like that," Wash tells us.
Most surprising to me, nobody in the room appears to be talking about Deval.
I'm sitting on Pam's bed watching her pack, waiting for the evening news. She's flying to D.C. tonight on the eight o'clock, then on to L.A. over the weekend. Since I'm booked on a morning flight to San Francisco, it seems we won't be spending a final night together. Or, viewing it another way, we already did that last night.
Her movements are rapid as she pulls clothing out of drawers and stows it in her bags.
"I wonder if I'll ever get back here," she says. "What about you?"
"I doubt it."
"Make you sad?"
"Not really. I don't have family here anymore."
She stuffs a sports bra into a side pocket of her overnight.
"Anyway, you accomplished what you came here for."
"Yeah, I did."
"And now you're feeling let down."
"Pretty much," I agree.
She finishes packing, sits beside me on the bed, gently takes my hand.
"So a rich, screwy young woman and a rich, decadent old man both got away with murder. So it's an imperfect world. Nothing new about that."
After we watch our respective news shows back to back, we descend to Waldo's for a farewell drink.
Tony's strangely cool when we take our stools at the bar. He refuses to make eye contact, barely nods when Pam requests our usual, a pair of margaritas.
"Something bothering you, Tony?" she asks.
"You better believe it," he mutters without looking up.
"Why don't you tell us?" She speaks gently. "We like you. Be a shame to end things on a sour note."
"I got no problem with you, Miss," Tony says, his eyes sallow, face pale as snow. "It's Mr. Weiss here's got me peeved."
"Because of what I told the papers about Waldo doing blackmail?"
Tony doesn't bother to nod or even to look at me, simply faces Waldo's portrait as he speaks his mind:
"Mr. C was a great man. You and some others here would like to tear him down, but the people who really knew him know he could never have done what you say. He was a great man and he will always be great. And now please excuse me, this is my busy time. Lots of clients waiting for drinks. . . ."
Pam and I exchange a look, I leave a hundred dollars on the bar, then we move to a table. A few minutes later, a waiter returns the money on a tray along with a brief explanation: "No gratuity necessary, Tony says."
Pam shrugs. "He still loves the guy. What can you do?"
Even in the morning I can still taste her final salty kiss upon my lips, the kiss she bestowed when I dropped her at the airport, along with her parting words: "I hope you call."
I check out of the Townsend early. There's a place I want to revisit before I return my car. I drive out to Van Buren Heights, pass the Pembroke Club, then stop in front of 2558 Demington, the house where I was brought up.
The place looks different than on the night I drove here from Izzy Mendoza's. It appeared moody then, spooky even, hulking and only vaguely outlined in the darkness. This morning the sun is out full force, sharpening the edges and brickwork, polishing the dark timbers recessed in the facade.
I look more closely. The front door has a dark reddish hue . . . just as it did the morning my mother, sister, and I left twenty-five years ago. It was winter then, a blizzard was raging through the Calista Valley, but there came a moment when we were seated inside our taxi, I in the front seat, Mom and Rachel in back, that I turned to look at the house a final time and sunlight suddenly broke through the slate gray sky and glinted off the cordovan panels of the open door.
Tears spring to my eyes as I recall the image of my father in his shirtsleeves shivering in the icy wind, standing lean and tall and lonely in the doorway, a stricken look upon his face.
Peering at him through the passenger window, I wondered when I would see him again. Then he moved a little, the sun caught the water glistening in his eyes, and suddenly I felt hollow and turned away to face the windshield. A few moments later we were on our way to the airport, to our new life in Southern California, leaving Dad to face the winter alone and the demons raging in his heart.
San Francisco: I've been back here a week, sleeping poorly, trying to impose order on everything I discovered in Calista, wondering too how the end of my quest will now affect my life.
Thinking has never been my best route to understanding. For me drawing works better, mapping my discoveries and insights on human faces. And so I have been drawing since seven o'clock last night, working at my drafting table surrounded by windows overlooking the city and the bay.
The sun was shining when I set to work. I paused at twilight to watch as darkness began to coat the buildings, bridges, and surrounding waters, draining away the colors, turning my view into a nightscape of grays and blacks. Then I set to work again, and, without my willing it, the planchette effect took hold. Once that happened, time had no meaning. With a good thirty or more Calista faces stored in my memory, I drew and drew, covering sheet after sheet, depicting scenes between the actors in the overlapping dramas nearly as rapidly as I could imagine them being played:
My shocked expression, as, seven years old, I stand outside a bathroom door hearing the sound as Becky Hallworth slaps little Belle Fulraine across the face;
Max Rakoubian's jolly smile while photographing Barbara Fulraine in his Doubleton Building studio, counterpoised with the crafty expression on his face as he betrays her by installing a camera behind the grate above her love-nest bed;
Barbara's grimace of ecstasy while making love with Jack Cody in his bedroom above the gaming room at The Elms;
Waldo Channing, left eyeball twitching, telling police investigators that Barbara Fulraine was some kind of slut;
Andrew Fulraine, cold as ice, promising Spencer Deval a fortune if he will but do him the kindness of committing murder;
My father, Dr. Thomas Rubin, pausing outside the door to room 201 at the Flamingo, hesitating, then discovering he has no choice but to knock;
Tom Jessup, possessed by passion and lust, daydreaming of his beloved Barbara when he should have been fairly refereeing my boxing match with Mark in the Hayes School gym;
Scuzzy Walter Maritz mercilessly beaten in a garage by Cody's henchmen while Cody watches from the shadows, a cruel half smile playing on his lip;
Me sitting hunched over my bedroom desk drawing cartoon after cartoon of happy smiling families, trying to blot out the shouting coming from down the hall as my mother accuses my father of having loved my classmate's murdered mom;
Tom Jessup sitting with the Steadmans in the basement recreation room of their house on Thistle Ridge Road, gazing at photos of little blond girls in their casting book, wondering how his life has come to such a turn;
On and on, encounter after encounter, scene after scene, all encapsulated in images . . . until, at last, I reach the double ending, the twin finale of suffering and blood:
A man and woman in a motel room have finished making love. Now they lie naked on the bed, bodies striped by light cast by venetian blinds, the woman explaining to the man why they cannot meet again, the man listening, feeling a crushing in his chest. . .
A middle-aged man stares out the open window of his office as late afternoon snow drifts slowly by. He thinks about a woman he has loved who now is dead, and then how he can barely bring himself to return to the empty house where he and his family once lived in happiness. As the snow settles upon the ledge outside, clings to the bare limbs of trees, carpets the tops of cars below, he considers how he has brought all this grief and sadness upon himself. ...
A telephone rings in the motel room. The young man hands the receiver to the woman, watches as she listens, speaks angry words, then hangs up. She points up at the ceiling above the bed. They put a camera up there! Her face is panicked. They have pictures of us! Oh, God! As he moves toward her, there's a sound outside. Both turn as the room door bursts open. A thin man wearing a dark hat and coat is silhouetted against the blazing light. He raises a gun. Feeling his intent, the lovers cling to one another while squirming back against the headboard . . .
The man steps out the open office window onto a narrow parapet. It's dark outside. The cold night wind batters his face. The falling snow is so thick he cannot see the ground. He shivers in the cold, feeling powerless to resist the mysterious force he has studied professionally for many years, the force he knows as the death instinct, Thanatos. Balancing on the ledge like a gymnast on a balance bar, he pauses, spreads his arms, then swan dives ever so gently into the murk of softly falling flakes. . . .
The woman, seeing the gunman's finger tighten on the trigger, understands she is going to die. With that her consciousness blurs and she retreats into a dream state. She barely hears the first explosion, so deep has she withdrawn within herself. When the second shot comes, riddling her body, causing it to spasm against her lover, she involuntarily rises and falls, twists and turns, as the hot steel balls penetrate her flesh. Then this woman, who has loved so intensely and unwisely, imagines herself astride a horse, riding, riding . . . and then she feels the horse breaking, breaking, breaking beneath her, until she and the horse are all broken-broken-broken into pieces strewn like shards upon the dark-shadowed ground. . . .
The man, soaring downward through the mist of perfect hexagons of snow, feels close to the woman in her death throes. He smiles slightly as he falls, imagining himself galloping beside her. He knows this sweet sensation must soon end . . . yet it seems to go on and on. And then he feels himself start to break, and he thinks: The horses broke . . . and broke . . and broke . . . and then he knows that he too is broken . . . that the broken horses mean death . . . and then he feels himself falling into a dreamless state as he lies broken and dying in the soft, soft, cold Calista snow. . . .
The drama is over. I put my pencil down. The planchette effect deserts my hand.
It's dawn. My bay window faces east, and the sun, like a great airship catching fire, rises out of the dark foothills of the sierra, projecting scarlet slashes across the morning sky.
An hour later, my fax machine spews out a letter. It's from the FBI field office in San Jose. A twelve-year-old girl is missing, last seen hiking in the hills above Los Gatos. A man in a pickup was observed cruising the area. The witness, another child, seems shaky. Will I come down, interview her, try to produce a sketch of the driver?
I'll come right away, of course . . . prepared, too, to believe everything the "shaky" witness has to tell me.
7:00 AM. Driving south, I pick up my cell phone, punch out a number in L.A.
Pam answers, voice groggy.
I know it's early. Sorry I woke you, I tell her. To say I've been missing you is why I called. You said it yourself— that I wouldn't know how much till I got back home. Well, this is my eighth day back, and now I think I know.