A wasteland of strangers (33 page)

"Look at that, will you," Verne said as we reached Park. "Must be a hundred and fifty people, maybe more."

Thayer muttered, "Damn three-ring circus," but he didn't sound worried or unhappy. If anything, he was eager. Anticipating the grinding cameras and exploding flashbulbs, probably.

Faith sat forward, his hands balling into fists. I sensed rather than saw the trapped-animal desperation in him again.

Verne made the swing onto Park. Heads and bodies had swiveled in our direction; arms lifted, fingers pointed. I could see mouths moving as though in an exaggerated pantomime.

"Pull up even with the entrance," I said to Verne. "You and I get out first and come around front and back. Leo, you stay inside until we're on your side."

"You don't have to tell me procedure, Novak."

"I'm not telling you anything. I'm reminding you."

"You're the one who needs reminders, not me."

"Don't start up again."

"It's not a dead issue," he said, "just remember that. I don't care what Seeley says."

We rolled past the gawking faces, into the outspill from all the lights. The glare seemed unnaturally bright. Half a dozen Minicams were on us like huge, hungry eyes. Thayer had his head turned toward the window glass, toward the cameras; I couldn't see his face, but I knew he was wearing his official expression, the one with flared nostrils and upward-jutting jaw.

The cruiser stopped. The door beside me clicked as Verne flipped the toggle to unlock.

We were almost there.

Douglas Kent

STANDING CLOSE TO the front of the gathered rabble, I patted Roscoe on his little hammer head.

"How you doing in there, pal?"

"Same as you're doing out there, pal."

"All set to lose the Faith?"

"Knock off the puns. We have serious business here."

"Very serious business here. Avenging Storm."

"Not a bad title for a book."

"I won't be around to write it."

"You never know. First-person account of a sodden newspaper hack who goes cunningly bonkers after the murder of his beloved town punchbag, anthropomorphizes his old man's—"

"Big word for a little gun."

"—I say, anthropomorphizes his old man's .38 to the point of holding interior philosophical discussions with it, and the two of them exact their vengeance in front of a couple of hundred eyewitnesses and an eager TV audience of many thousands. Socko stuff."

"Not really," Kent said. "All we're doing is following in giant footsteps—imitators, not innovators. Nobody'd publish it."

Voices rose around us in an excited roar. I looked and said, "Ah, the cop chariot enters the arena at last."

"Americans and Romans," Roscoe said pityingly, "you can't have your metaphors both ways. How many fuzz with Faith?"

"Three. And only one of you."

Til still get off first."

"You'd better. Look, they're climbing out."

"I can't look, I don't have eyes."

"Shut your muzzle."

'Then I can't get off at all."

"Here they come. Ready, pal?"

"Ready, pal."

"Heigh-ho, here we go."

Roscoe and me, and Jack Ruby makes three.

Jay Dietrich

I WAS INTENT on John Faith lifting his huge body from inside the police cruiser, Chief Novak on one side and Sergeant Erickson on the other and Sheriff Thayer standing off a couple of paces with his attention shifting between the prisoner and the TV cameras, when somebody bumped into me from behind, It was a hard, lurching bump, hard enough to nearly knock me down. I glared at the man who'd done it, who was now pushing past me.

Mr. Kent.

I hadn't even known he was here. Drunk as usual, that was obvious. How he could function with so much—

Hey, what was he doing? Staggering out onto the brightly lit sidewalk, making a beeline toward Faith and the officers. Pulling a shiny object out of his pocket—

Oh my God'

"He's got a gun!" I yelled it at the top of my voice. "Look out, he's got a gun!"

Richard Novak

IT ALL SEEMED TO happen at once, everything jumbled and compressed into one long, bulging moment.

I heard the warning yell, saw the man coming toward us, recognized him, saw the handgun he was bringing to bear, heard someone else shout and a woman scream and feet and bodies beginning to scramble out of harm's way—and on automatic reflex I threw a shoulder into Faith to take him from the line of fire, then lunged to meet Kent. I deflected his arm downward just as he squeezed off. The pistol made a flat crack that was lost in the bedlam around us, the bullet going harmlessly into the sidewalk, chipping pavement but not ricocheting. I battered Kent's wrist with my right hand, clawing for the weapon with my left. It came loose from his grasp, but I couldn't hold it; it fell with a clatter and by accident I kicked it with my shoe. Then I had both hands on his coat and I jerked him off his feet, flung him down hard. But I lost my balance as I did that, slipped, fell on top of him. A grunt, the whoosh of his breath, and he went limp under me.

All around us, then, there was a sudden rising hiss and babble— sharp intakes of air, little frightened cries, more shouts, another scream. I pushed up off Kent, swung around on one knee. And stayed there like that, motionless, going cold inside.

Faith had the gun.

And he was pointing it straight at me.

Verne Erickson

THERE WAS NOTHING I could do, any of us could do. Faith was on that pistol as soon as the Chief kicked it, quick as a cat on a piece of raw liver. I had my service revolver half drawn; so did Thayer, a few steps away on my left. But we both froze when we saw Faith come up with Kent's weapon and throw down on Novak. There might've been time to get off a shot at him before he could fire at the Chief, but training stopped me and the sheriff and any other officer close enough to think about trying it. People were milling around, pushing and shoving, but the immediate area was still crowded with those damn-fool TV cameramen and their whirring Minicams, photographers and their popping flashbulbs. You didn't dare risk a wild shot in confusion like this. It was six kinds of wonder that the round Kent had triggered hadn't ricocheted and taken some bystander's head off.

Faith kept us all in place with bellowed words like a series of thunderclaps. "Nobody move! Come at me, I'll shoot! Try to get behind me, I'll shoot!"

He was moving himself as he spoke, in a scrabbling crouch to get clear of the individuals clogging the station doors. When he had his back to bare wall he stopped and lowered himself to one knee. His eyes and the Chiefs had been locked the entire time. There was maybe eight feet of wet pavement separating them.

Novak said loudly, "Do what he says. No sudden moves." If he was afraid, being under the gun like that, he didn't show it.

More flashbulbs exploded, the Minicams ground away. I could almost hear the reporters gleefully smacking their lips. I felt exposed and foolish and mad as hell—at myself and Thayer and Novak and Faith and most of all at that crazy drunken son of a bitch Kent lying there unconscious behind the Chief. What had possessed him? What in God's name did he think he was doing?

Faith said, "I didn't want it like this," still booming his words. "Let a lawyer handle it, get some more facts before bringing it out in the open. But that bastard trying to shoot me ... that's the last straw. Now I want everybody to hear the truth, my lips to your ears, let the whole damn world know what this town's done to an innocent man."

Thayer found his voice. 'This isn't buying you any sympathy, Faith. Surrender the gun before—"

"Shut up. I'll surrender it when I've had my say."

"Say it, then. Get it over with."

"Innocent man!" Faith thundered. "Innocent! I'm not a murderer, not some kind of monster. I didn't kill the Carey woman."

"Liar!" somebody in the crowd shouted back.

And somebody else: "You killed her, all right, you dirty—"

"No, by God, I didn't. But I know who did. You hear me out there, all you people?
I
know who did!"

Audrey Sixkiller

I STOOD AMONG a crush of others in the middle of the street, trying to see Dick and John Faith, listening to the words that were being flung against the night. But it was as if I were standing there alone, on a mist-shrouded plain, seeing and hearing everything from a great distance. I thought: Don't hurt him, please don't hurt him. At the same time I did not believe John Faith would shoot, knew that his cry of "Innocent man!" was the truth. The confusion spawned an intense, irrational desire to run away from here, away from the poison, very fast and very far, like the god Coyote rushing home to his sanctuary atop the dano-batin, the mountain big, that rises high above the south shore.

And when John Faith spoke again I almost did run—I took two faltering steps before the press of bodies stopped me. Then I stood tree-still with his words echoing in my ears, mixing with the frantic voices of the others to create a roaring, near and yet far off, like the mad gabbling of spooks and witches.

"He did it!" Pointing, accusing. "He murdered Storm Carey. Your fine, upstanding police chief, Richard Novak."

Richard Novak

VERNE ERICKSON ANSWERED before I could. He said angrily, "You're out of your mind, Faith. Nobody believes that. Nobody!" "I'll prove it to you, all of you."

"You can't prove a lie—"

'The truth. Listen. I didn't know it was Novak that night. If I had ... the hell with that. This afternoon at the hospital, that's the first time I was able to do any clear thinking. That's when I put it together."

He wasn't talking to Verne, he was talking to me; his eyes never left mine. Hot with fury, those eyes, like red-rimmed crucibles filled with molten silver. But I wasn't afraid of him or his words or the gun in his hand. The one emotion I no longer felt was fear.

He said, "I passed a car that night, on the way to her house. Just turned out of her driveway. Dark, and I wasn't paying attention or I'd have noticed it was a police cruiser, Novak's cruiser. But he recognized my car, all right. And he saw me turn in. He waited long enough for me to find her body and then he came barreling back up there."

"You call that proof?" Thayer said. "Only your word you passed another car. Even if that much is true ... you can't swear it was Novak's cruiser."

'Then how'd he happen to show up just at the right time? Why'd he go there at all?"

I said, 'To see her, talk to her. We were friends."

"Weren't there before me, Chief?"

"No."

"Had no idea she was dead before the two of us went inside?"

"No."

"Then how'd you know she was killed with a glass paperweight?"

I stared at him without answering.

"It was half under her body and covered with blood," he said. "I couldn't tell what it was and I looked closer than you did. You stood off fifteen or twenty feet and called it a glass paperweight."

"I don't remember saying that."

"Accused me of seeing red, picking up a glass paperweight and hitting her with it."

I shook my head.

"Your word against mine? Except I'm not the only one you said it to. When you radioed in you used the same words to whoever you talked to—"

"Me," Verne said. "I was on the other end."

"You remember him saying it? Skull crushed with a glass paperweight?"

"I remember."

"All right," I said, "then I did say it. She kept it on an end table next to the couch. I must've seen it wasn't there—"

"And assumed it was what killed her? Hell of an assumption, Chief, for a man as upset as you were. Besides, the paperweight wasn't the only slip you made over the radio. Two blows, you said. Two." He asked Verne, "Remember that?"

"Yeah."

"How'd you know it was two, Chief, not one or three or six or a dozen? Her skull was caved in, blood everywhere, you're not a doctor and you didn't go near the body. No way you could know she was hit twice unless you did it yourself."

Verne's eyes were on me; everyone's eyes were on me. The combined intensity of their stares was like surgical lasers—cutting, probing, hurting.

"Answer him, Novak." Thayer's voice this time, hard and cold. "How'd you know?"

I told myself to stand up, get off my knees and stand up like a man. When I did that, Faith stood, too, in the same slow movements, so that we continued to face each other at eye level.

Thayer: "Answer the question."

Verne: "Say something, for God's sake."

Kent was the last straw, all right. It has to stop, right here and now.

I looked away from Faith for the first time. Didn't look at Verne or Thayer as I turned around, or at anyone else. I stared out beyond the light into the dark, above all, the laser eyes and all the faceless, buzzing bodies. Easier that way. It wasn't much different from addressing a roomful of strangers.

"Faith is right," I said, "everything he said is right. I did it. I killed her."

Epilogue

Leo Thayer

FOUR OF US were present in the interrogation room when Novak taped his confession. Me, Ben Seeley, Joe Proctor, and Verne Erickson because the mayor and city council made him acting Chief. We didn't have to prod Novak any, or even ask him more than half a dozen questions to clarify minor details. He just rolled it all off the top of his head in a flat, used-up voice—the tone most felons have when they know their ride's over and done with.

I read the transcript three times. The main part made me feel like puking every time.

She called me Thursday night, late. It was the first I'd heard from her since we broke off the affair six months ago. She practically begged me to come to her house. She was a little drunk but not that drunk. She said she needed me, really needed me. I didn't want to go because I was afraid of what might happen. I don't mean violence, I mean getting involved again. The affair hadn't been good for either of us, me particularly. She was the kind of woman who got under your skin like a tick and just kept burrowing. I spent six months trying to dig her out and I thought I had but I hadn't. I tried to say no to her that night and I couldn't. I went to her just like she asked me to.