You were just lucky to have old Irving standing guard,” Brennan said. “He had concerns about Jacobson from Friday on, after watching Jake burn Alberts papers in his fire pit in the middle of the night. He said his face”—Brennan put on Irving’s plangent English accent—“was a froitful mask. A couple times during the week, after he saw Jake and you together, he considered warning you to watch the guy.”
“Yeah, he told me when he was over here yesterday,” I said. “But he said he didn’t because I was a big city newspaperman, and he figured I’d be able to handle myself. It was the one thing Irving got wrong. But what’s the deal with Helen Jacobson? How could she go along with Jake and his killing?”
“Both her and Jake have been on five different prescription drugs for quite some time, though it looks like Jake was off his meds for the past couple weeks. They’ve both been alcoholics for decades. I don’t know how they did it. But they weren’t well people. In fact, they were two very sick bunnies.”
“I think I was picking up on it the last time I went over to visit them, the morning after Jake did in poor Jerome. I know I left there feeling not too well myself. But they still acted like a pretty normal couple.”
“Maybe so, but it’s all been confirmed by their shrink and their daughter in White Rock. Helen seemed to live almost exclusively through Jake—she quotes him all the time. Has she always done that?”
“Now that you mention it, yes.”
“Jake put on a good front, but his shrink’s been more worried about Jake than Helen for a dog’s age. For Jake, the idea of losing political office had become life’s big holy terror. When he got the first call from Barlow, he sat downstairs for an hour with that gun in his lap. Helen says she was petrified when he went out that night to meet Sloan, figuring he was going to drive into the bush and use the gun on himself. When he came back home, she was just so glad to see him alive that the things he told her were all very secondary. She didn’t believe he killed Sloan. Same with Jerome Charlie. In both cases, what she thought happened was that Jake had come across their bodies, or heard about it on the radio, then imagined he’d killed them. Or was pretending that he had in some perverse attempt to impress her.”
“Impress her?”
“Show that he could be as ruthless and decisive as his dad. She thought he was fantasizing at some level that he was his father—to keep his strength up. At least, that’s what she claims. The woman’s seriously ill. The deal the Crown cut with her lawyer was that if she told us everything she knew, and the family agreed to have her hospitalized, she wouldn’t face charges. We didn’t have a problem with that. We needed her full statement so we could build a case against Barlow.”
“You’re going after Barlow?”
“You bet. We’d like to see him charged with Sloan’s murder and attempted murder against you. He played that sick bastard like a fiddle, and in both cases he put him up to it. Barlow’s threat to expose Jake’s father also led to Jerome Charlie’s murder, but there wasn’t the same direct involvement, so we’re going to have to probably pass on that one.”
“Does the Crown attorney think he can make a case?”
Brennan sneered. “They’re already talking about bargaining down to some kind of criminal negligence charges, if they have to. It all hinges on the quality of testimony Helen Jacobson can provide. She was standing right beside him when Jake got the calls from Barlow; hell, she listened to him the second time on the cordless, when Barlow was talking about you and Harry Shimizu. She says he told Jake he’d ‘better get right on it.’ Her recall is excellent, but her grasp of reality is the problem. She still doesn’t believe Jake was capable of murdering anyone. Hopefully, the doctors can help her.”
I walked him up to his car.
“That’s a mean fried chicken and potato salad you do, buddy. Even got Ma Brennan beat, and that’s saying a mouthful. You’ll make some woman a good wife.”
“Oh, they’re looking for more than that in a man these days.”
“We’ll never be enough for them.”
He climbed into his cruiser and buckled up. Then he clapped his John Law eyes on me. “Say, buddy, I figured you were owed one, so I gave you the whole shebang. But I will rely on your discretion. Know what I mean?”
I told him I did. “Come back next month for some pears.”
“I might just,” he said, looking down the slope. “Man, what a view.”
I went back to the cabin and washed the dishes.