TWENTY-SEVEN

“The girl swears Jason was home all night,” he said Monday morning, “and their neighbors don’t know different.”

He sat flatfooted in the armless chair, thumbs gripping his notepad like a hat he didn’t know where to put. Burst veins like faultlines in his eyes made him look sleepless and volatile.

“What about the gun?” I asked.

Rayfield put the pad in his lap and began rubbing the tips of his fingers. “She says she made him drive to the Cahaba River and throw it in.”

“So you let him go.”

He looked sharply up. “We booked him for assault. If you’d told me the truth downtown we’d have pulled him in with the gun and you wouldn’t have been shot at. Assuming it was him.”

“Jesus Christ, forget the gun. The will is good enough now.”

Rayfield stood. “Oh, it’s the will that killed her. It’s just not Cantwell’s boy.” He walked to the end of the bed. “Let me tell you what I think happened. Lydia Cantwell had a boyfriend she wanted to marry. Cantwell knew, or guessed. For years she’d been his cover and now he stood to lose both that and her money. Then, the night he called from Anniston, Mrs. Cantwell told him about the will. It came to him: by killing her before she signed that will, he could pin it on the boy. So he drove back that night and strangled her. It all fits. He’s got no alibi, he lied about the phone call, and there’s no one in town believes Cantwell gave a shit for his son. All you have to do is think about how he could use that will.” He leaned forward, speaking intently. “I’m almost there, Shaw. All I need is her boyfriend’s name.”

It hit me with the force he had intended: Rayfield had Henry Cantwell one witness from a death sentence, with me in between. Find Mooring, I thought, and he had Lydia’s lover, Jason’s father, and the final proof that would convict Henry Cantwell: Joanne Mooring to say Henry had come home that night. “I’m curious, Lieutenant. Why did Henry shoot at me? I forget.”

“Because you know the boyfriend or some other detail that convicts him. It’s good you’re starting to think about it.”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t compute. I was coming from his place the night I was shot at. I’d just seen him.”

Rayfield leaned still closer. “Cantwell was alone, Shaw. Nothing to keep him from following. He’s a crack shot, you know, and what with you blacked out in the garage he’d have time to see the lights weren’t on and set up in the bushes next door. It’s a perfect blind.”

“It’s perfect bullshit.”

“You know it isn’t. He killed Mrs. Cantwell, played you off against Cade, and then threatened your wife when you got too close. Who did you see the night before you found her picture? Who did you see again the night before you were shot at? What did you tell him that can’t come out?”

I said nothing. “You want your wife killed?” he kept on. “By the time we cull all of Mrs. Cantwell’s friends for gray-haired men it may be too late. But you can stop it. Just tell me who Lee saw visit Mrs. Cantwell. Lee’s not lying, is he?” His voice rose. “Tell me, Shaw. Tell me before that fairy kills you, too.”

His face was rapt and excited. I felt cornered. In a low voice I answered, “You might be better off looking to your own fears.”

A sick, trapped look drained the keenness from his face. “You’re obstructing justice,” he said tightly. “Withholding evidence, lying. I can have you disbarred.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s your last chance. Make me leave the room without her boyfriend’s name and I start working on you.”

I shrugged.

In the instant before leaving he looked almost lonely. Then he straightened and walked out, closing the door with fearful gentleness.

Kris Ann smiled behind me in the bathroom mirror. “Like what you see?”

“Not particularly.” For a moment my image had blurred. I squinted, shaking my head, and my features reappeared. The stitches were gone, leaving a thin scar the doctor said would turn white. But the bruise near my temple was blue and yellow and still swollen enough that my left eye was half-closed. I didn’t mention the blurring. “I take it Henry hasn’t called.”

“No. Should he have?”

“I guess not.”

“How do you feel?”

“My head’s kind of light.”

“You’re home now,” she assured me. “You can relax.” But when I’d finished toweling off and followed her to the bedroom she was loading Cade’s revolver. She took it with us to the living room, secreting it behind a vase on the mantel. Cade’s bulky rented policeman paced the porch outside.

I listened for the telephone.

Kris Ann brought two mineral waters. “I think you should talk with him.”

“Henry?”

“Daddy. Maybe if you discuss this face to face …” Her voice trailed off.

I got up and began pacing with the policeman on the other side of the window. “How good was Henry with guns?”

She looked at me curiously. “Good enough to teach me, remember? Jason, too.”

“I’ve got to see him.”

Her eyes widened. “Jason?”

“Henry.”

The policeman’s footsteps sounded from the porch in monotonous rhythm. Kris Ann looked silently up at the mantel. In a flat voice she said, “So now you think it’s Henry.”

“I just need to talk to him.”

The telephone rang.

Kris Ann went to answer it. “Oh, hi,” I heard her say. “He’s fine, just resting.… No, Daddy’s not here. I think today’s his board meeting.… Yes, he’s up.… You’re sure?… All right, just a minute.”

She reappeared in the living room. “It’s Clayton,” she said almost sadly. “He says he has to see you.”

The taxi dropped me in front of the fifty-year-old building I thought of as Henry’s bank.

The Cantwell-Alabama Bank and Trust was a cement-pillared structure with marble floors and oak-paneled rear offices of which Henry’s was the largest, a commodious rectangle with high ceilings, a brass chandelier, and a green rug so deep it muffled my steps like a prowler’s.

He wasn’t there. Neither was any piece of him—plaques or portraits or family pictures—except the sense of a man passing silently through. I wasn’t sure why the room made me sad. I didn’t stay to think about it.

I stopped in the wide marble lobby as customers passed and employees in white shirts or blouses glided around me at such a uniform pace they seemed run by remote control. I’d wanted enough to find Henry, imagined it so clearly, that I seemed unable to do what I had come for.

“Adam.”

I turned to see Clayton Kell hurrying toward me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You look terrible.”

“I’m okay. It sounded important.”

“It is.”

I trailed him to his office, a windowless square he’d worked years for, sitting while he shut the door behind us and reached for ice in the small refrigerator he hid in his credenza with a fifth of bourbon. He filled two glasses, slid mine across the desk, took a hasty gulp of his, and blurted, “It’s all a mess.”

I stopped the drink an inch from my mouth and watched him until he stammered, “Adam, the police were here.”

“What did they want?”

“They had a warrant. There was nothing I could do. I tried calling Roland and he wasn’t in. Henry either—he just hasn’t been around—”

“For Christ’s sake, Clayton, spit it out.” I caught myself. “Look, no one’s saying you fucked up. Just tell me what happened, okay?”

“All right.” He nodded silently, repeatedly. “Okay. It’s just that Rayfield—” He looked up and said, “Lydia’s bank account is total hash, Adam. It’s all wrong.”

“How wrong?”

“Eight hundred thousand fucking dollars.”

“How could that be? You’re computerized, you get daily balances—”

“I don’t know.” He slammed down his drink. “I mean, I do and I don’t. They made me go through the records and it’s gone.”

“What records? What did they show?”

He pushed a low stack of papers at me. “I copied what they took.”

“Good.”

“The top one’s Lydia’s last statement of account, all right? Now the earlier ones show that for years she kept her balance at around a million—”

“Just lying around at six percent?”

“Christ, Adam, I’m not her investment counselor. Henry is. That’s the problem.” He jabbed his finger at the top sheet. “Look here. On March fifteen, there’s an entry showing that Lydia’s account was debited eight hundred thousand dollars. Now she could have withdrawn that much, though I don’t know why she’d want to. But there’s no withdrawal slip, not a goddamned thing with Lydia’s signature to show she got the money. I know. Rayfield made me go through them twice. There has to be a slip. Money doesn’t leave here without one.”

“Or shouldn’t.”

He nodded, collapsing in his chair until his chin doubled into folds and his small round belly strained his shirtfront. His face sagged with the unexpectedness of it. “What about the auditors?” I asked. “You’ve got a daily audit. Wouldn’t they pick this up?”

“No.” Clayton wiped his face. “What they look at is whether the records for all our accounts square with the cash we actually have on hand. That part’s okay; Lydia’s statement shows eight hundred thousand dollars withdrawn and we’ve got eight hundred thousand dollars less money. The problem is that the money went out and there’s no signed withdrawal slip. The auditors don’t check slips. It would take too long.”

Clayton took off his glasses, wiping an imaginary smudge. My head began to throb. “Let me ask you something, Clayton. You don’t keep people’s money segregated, right? I mean, you don’t have some special place for Lydia’s and another for mine and Krissy’s.”

“Uh-huh.”

I reached for my glass and drank, the whiskey burning down. “So,” I finished slowly, “what really happened is that eight hundred thousand dollars of the bank’s money disappeared and Lydia’s statement of account kept the auditors from catching on.”

Clayton’s cheeks blotched. “What are you saying?”

“Clayton, how many people know about this?”

“Just us. Why?”

“I think someone’s embezzled eight hundred thousand dollars.”

His mouth fell open. “Who?”

“Who could alter Lydia’s account statement?”

“The computer programmer, clerks—I suppose anyone at the bank. Hell, I could have. But to do that to cover embezzlement wouldn’t work. Lydia—the customer would raise holy hell as soon as we mailed out her interest statement. She’d open that sucker and—” His lips stopped moving.

“Unless she were dead,” I finished.

“Oh, my God.”

“We can’t let this out.”

“We’ve got to.” His voice rose. “There’s Rayfield, reports to the Feds—”

“I mean just until we get to Henry. Maybe there’s some reason. We can’t go running off.”

“Sure.” Clayton nodded and dabbed his forehead. “Sure.” The word fell emptily into the long silence that followed and then Cade walked in.