When I arrived at the Chandler house, because my mind was so scattered, I uncharacteristically left my ax handle in the car.
Inside, Mrs. Chandler and Christine Humbert were sitting on the couch. Mrs. Chandler had started to look like her skin had been removed and stretched over wire hangers.
Christine looked less poised than usual. She wore jeans and a loose shirt and tennis shoes. Her hair had been tied back in what appeared to be a quick fashion, as a number of strands were poking out randomly.
They were both looking at me.
I walked in without an invitation. I was starting to be that bold dog. I put the files on the coffee table. Christine looked up at me. Her eyes were wet. She had her hands resting on her knees. Her thumbs and forefingers were in splints wrapped with white tape.
“Hoped I would see you,” Christine said. “I was leaving a goodbye message with Mrs. Chandler. I’m selling the paper and moving. I got a good price.”
“What?”
“I think it’s best.”
I looked down at her hands. “Who did this?”
“I had an accident.”
“What kind of accident was that?”
“Stupid one. Sometimes, Danny, being right isn’t enough. I wanted to see you before I went away.”
“Ah, hell,” I said.
“No more articles,” she said. “Write the book. Do it somewhere else, but write it.”
“They had a talk with me, and now they’ve had one with you. Jack Jr. do this?”
“I prefer to say I had an accident.”
“But when you get past your preference, did Jack Jr. do this?”
“Go home, Danny. I thought some things could change. I thought I was a brave crusader. Seemed so simple and they seemed so obvious. But evil wins out more than we like to admit. It has a stronger agenda than the rest of us. Goodbye, Danny.”
Christine stood and came over and kissed me on the cheek and carefully moved past me toward the door. I thought about giving her a pep talk about how we could get it done, but I was all out of pep. I listened to her go out the front door and close it.
Mrs. Chandler said, “Let it go, Danny. She’s scared and has a right to be. She knows what you have. I told her about Bert’s files.”
“We wouldn’t make a very good secret organization.”
“There have been enough secrets. The light needs to be shone on these cockroaches, but Christine, she needs to go. It’s best. Maybe she’s right, and you need to go too. Write that book the way she said. Far from here.”
“I admit it crossed my mind. But I think they wouldn’t let that happen in the long run. They offered me a way out, but my guess is that was just an attempt to make me think I had one. Relax a bit, then they can make sure I disappear or turn up in a ditch somewhere. A victim of misadventure.”
“Sit beside me, Danny.”
I sat.
“Listen here. She wouldn’t say who, but someone put her hands in her desk drawer and slammed it closed. Whoever did it made it clear that if she continued publishing your articles, it wouldn’t end well. The whole newspaper staff decided on new careers. Christine is tough, but not that tough. No one has to be that tough. I feel like I started all of this with that book long ago. Perhaps I shouldn’t have.”
“I want to go back to where I lived and put new and serious locks on all the doors, bars on all the windows, and climb into bed and stay there. That’s what I want to do.”
“But?”
“Do that, I might as well be mistreating and murdering people myself. My silence will do that.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Mrs. Chandler said.
“What about you? You’re in danger too.”
“Figure by the time they decide to get any kind of vengeance on me, they’ll have to go out and pee on my grave.”
I picked up the files. “I think you might trick that ol’ cancer.”
She smiled at me. It wasn’t a smile that said I was particularly convincing.
* * *
Upstairs, I sat down and wrote the next article just as if it were going to be published, and when I finished, it was late in the evening.
The weather didn’t encourage it, but I decided then that I had to get away. It was a crazy thing to do, but I took my article and put it in my suitcase with the rest of my stuff, packed up my typewriter and all my gear, and carried everything out to the car. I drove two hours back through blinding rain to the home I had inherited from my aunt.
Neither Ronnie’s nor her parents’ car was there. They hadn’t arrived or weren’t coming. Ronnie trying to convince her mother and father to run away on what they would consider hearsay might not be an easy task. And I don’t think either had a tendency to run.
I used the spare key that was hidden under a rock in the dead flower bed to let myself in. The house felt strange, as if the place had abandoned all hope. It smelled stale, or maybe that was me.
I turned on the central air and locked up. I don’t know how safe I was, but I felt more secure than I had in days. Away from New Long Lincoln and all that I knew. Here, that world, what was going on there, seemed as distant as another universe.
I went to bed then but didn’t sleep well. I didn’t get a visit from my father’s ghost, but my memories of Buck Rogers working over poor old Jeff Davis made me toss and turn. I could hear the sound of that wet towel on human flesh.
Next morning, I read my article over. When I considered the evidence, the people who had been killed for insurance payouts, my feelings about Jefferson Davis adjusted a little. I wasn’t ready to hit him with a wet towel myself, but I was slightly more thankful that someone had.