Dr Beale spent the night in a motel in Bonham a few miles west of the Bowen house. Fetching some food from the local diner he ate in his room and when he’d finished he got up and went to the window. Easing the drape aside he gazed across the darkened parking lot. Nothing moved; nobody out there. Even so, he checked the dead bolt to make sure the door was secure just the same. The tape recorder was on the bed and he unhooked the microphone.
‘May thirty-first, 1967. Dr Mason Beale in a motel room in Bonham – that’s Fannin County, Texas.’ He paused for a moment looking down where the spool still turned. Clearing his throat he sat straighter. ‘Icarus Bowen is dead. According to the sheriff’s department he shot himself, but his son is at the house right now and he believes it was murder.’
*
Isaac woke in his father’s house. He lay in bed gazing at the white-painted ceiling then got up and took a shower. Combing his hair back from his forehead, he dressed in his uniform and went to the garage where the keys were still in the pickup. Climbing behind the wheel he drove the short distance to the town of Bonham.
The sheriff’s department was a modern, flat-roofed building built across the street from the courthouse. A couple of cruisers in the parking lot, Isaac went in through the glass-panelled doors and found a young woman seated in front of a telephone switchboard.
‘My name is Isaac Bowen,’ he told her.
‘Yes, sir.’ She offered a shallow smile. ‘I thought it might be, on account of your uniform. We’re all so sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you, mam. That’s kind of you.’ Isaac rested a palm on the counter. ‘I want to talk to the deputy who came by my house yesterday.’
‘All right, sir. I’ll see if he’s around.’ Plugging a lead into the switchboard the woman asked if Collins was back there and then she looked up at Isaac. ‘He’ll be right out,’ she said and indicated a pair of plastic chairs set next to a fake orange tree. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’
Isaac did that. Tunic buttoned, he straightened the flaps and sat with his head bowed and hands clasped together. A couple of minutes later the deputy with the pock-marked face appeared from behind the counter.
‘Mr Bowen,’ he said. ‘You asked to see me, sir. What can do for you?’
Isaac was on his feet. ‘The detective you told me about – the one who said my dad shot himself. I don’t think that’s what happened and I’d like to talk to him if that’s OK?’
The deputy looked at him with his brows knit. Briefly he glanced over his shoulder at the switchboard girl and then he looked back.
‘Lieutenant Crowley you’re talking about. He ain’t here right now, I’m afraid. They got him giving evidence in a trial down in Houston.’
Pushing open the glass doors he led Isaac outside. The sun climbing a cobalt sky, the heat shifted tar macadam into mush so it stuck to the soles of their shoes.
‘Look,’ Collins said, ‘I know how this is for you. I lost my own father when I was fourteen and I understand, I promise you.’
Isaac stared at him. ‘Did somebody shoot him?’ he asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Did anybody tell you that he killed himself?’
‘No, he died of liver cancer.’
‘Then I’m sorry, but you don’t know how it is. I want to see him. My dad – where is he?’
The deputy drove him across town to the hospital off Rayburn Drive. Parking the cruiser he led the way through a side door where a coroner’s ambulance was parked. They went down a flight of steps into a short corridor where a set of fire doors faced them. Collins opened those and beyond them they found a clerk in a white coat sitting at a metal desk. A white-tiled anteroom, he listened to the request the deputy made, took a swig from the coffee cup perched at his elbow, then led them into a smaller room at the back where a rack of metal drawers were fixed in vertical rows. Studying the names on the drawers he pulled out a gurney from the row at the bottom.
Isaac stared at his father’s face. Colorless and empty, a tick started up at the corner of his mouth; he ground his jaws so the teeth scraped across one another audibly. At his sides his hands had knotted into fists. His father’s eyes were closed; the skin on the right eye purple and puffy. Pacing around the gurney Isaac bent to study the hole at his temple where a hint of soot lay scattered in all but invisible pinpricks.
With a sigh the deputy folded his arms. ‘The Ranger told me how that wasn’t a contact wound, but the lieutenant said it didn’t matter. Your dad had a lot of guns, Mr Bowen; he knew how to use them and it didn’t matter that the barrel wasn’t pressed right up to the skin.’
Isaac was still inspecting the wound. ‘My dad was 82nd Airborne. He fought in Africa and took a bayonet in the stomach.’ He was shaking his head, looking from the deputy to the clerk and back again to his father’s body. ‘There’s no way he would’ve shot himself. I don’t care what your lieutenant said.’
They drove back to the sheriff’s department and Isaac sat with the window rolled down and his tie loose at the collar. He had his top button undone and sweat scrolled from his temple.
‘Deputy Collins,’ he said. ‘I can’t talk to your lieutenant right now because he’s not here.’ He looked sideways at him. ‘That Texas Ranger you told me about – how do I get a-hold of him?’
*
When Beale drove back to the Bowen house he found the pickup gone and there was no answer when he rang the bell. He rang a second time but still nobody came to the door so he walked round to the back of the house and peered through the kitchen window. No sign of anybody inside. Walking back to his car, he seemed to ponder before he got in.
Back in Shreveport a few hours later he showed his pass to the guard at the hospital gates. Collecting the tape recorder and his briefcase from the trunk of the car, he walked the length of the road to the main entrance, glancing at the patients who were stable enough to work in the garden.
Inside the building it was cool as he crossed the polished parquet floor to the elevator where an orderly ensured no patient made it up to the suite of offices. He nodded to the doctor and Beale nodded back, and when he got to the third floor he spoke to his secretary.
‘How are things, Alice? Has anyone been in touch?’
A middle-aged woman wearing pearl-white cat-eye spectacles, she looked up from behind the weight of her typewriter. ‘Nothing that was urgent, Doctor: everything here is fine. There’s nothing to report, though don’t forget the meeting with the trustees later.’ She paused briefly before she added. ‘Unless you want me to cancel that, of course: I did tell them you’d gone away and that you might not be back.’
Beale had his office door open. ‘Do that, Alice, would you? Tell them I am back, but I’m busy as hell right now so if it could be rescheduled I’d appreciate it.’
Inside his office he closed the door then placed the tape recorder on the coffee table and unhooked the reel of tape. Sliding that into a cardboard case he marked the label then locked it in the safe with the others. Behind him the phone buzzed on his desk.
‘Yes, Alice?’ he said as he pressed the speaker.
‘Orderly Briers is asking to see you.’
Beale seemed to think about that. ‘Is he out there now?’
‘No sir, he just called from downstairs. Said he saw your car in the parking lot and that he needs to have a quick word.’
Beale made a face. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Have him come up.’
A few minutes later the orderly was standing before Beale’s desk and seemed to regard the doctor a little cautiously.
‘Dr Beale,’ he said, ‘Alice told me you were away for a day or two but she didn’t say where you’d gone.’
Beale looked up. ‘That’s because I didn’t tell her.’
Briers colored slightly, hovering on the balls of his feet. ‘I spoke to Nancy. We talked, the two of us. What’s happening, Doc? What’s going on?’
Beale looked at him for a moment longer then his expression softened. Allowing a little trapped air to escape his lips he sat back in the chair and gazed beyond Briers to the photo of Freud.
‘I went to Texas,’ he said. ‘I went to see Ike Bowen.’
‘Did you?’ Briers’s brow was furrowed. ‘And what did he have to say?’
‘Nothing,’ Beale shifted his attention back to the orderly. ‘He’s dead, Charlie. He blew his brains out.’