Deadline (20 page)

No one was in the kitchen. No one was in the hallway.

I picked up a paring knife from the dish rack on the counter and walked slowly toward the living room. “Pennies from Heaven” ended. The tape was between tracks. When the next song started, drums, then piano, I stepped around the corner.

“Hey, Jackson,” a voice boomed. “Where you been? I thought the Martians beamed you up or something.”

Vern was sitting sideways in the big chair, his legs over one arm and one of my Ballantine Ales in his hand. He was reading the
Newsweek
, folded in half.

I felt nauseated as the adrenaline rush cut off, but I tried to smile and at the same time slide the knife into my back pocket. The point
stuck in the seam at the bottom of the pocket and the ivory-colored plastic handle showed at the top.

Vern still looked at the magazine.

“Careful where you sit with that thing,” he said.

I took the knife out and tossed it on the table.

“You doing potatoes, or should I wait for a formal invitation next time?” he said. “If you're expecting somebody else, I hope they don't show up.”

“No, I was just—”

“Acute paranoia,” Vern said. “Tell me: How long ago did you start arming yourself? Do you keep loaded guns in the house? Do you feel like everyone's out to get you?”

“Today, no, and they are,” I said.

“I was afraid of that,” Vern said, and he smiled.

Vern was a pretty good sports reporter. He was a pretty good writer, and he knew sports inside and out. But what made him better than the usual reporter was his ability to listen. He was big and shapeless and he had a way of smiling and listening at the same time that was disarming. It worked on kids. It worked on coaches. Sometimes it worked on me.

He listened that night. I told him about Roxanne's calls and Martin and his picture and Vigue and the picture of the waitress. He knew which waitress I meant.

“Jesus,” Vern said, putting his beer on the floor. “I knew Arthur was strange, but I didn't know he was so ambitious.”

“An obsession,” I said. “Probably he knew it was wrong, but the more he tried to stop, the more he was driven to it.”

“Guy needed help.”

“Too late now.”

Vern picked up his beer but it was empty. I went and got him another one. He opened it and took a gulp.

“I don't know, Jackson,” he said. “You New York agitators. I don't know. I think you've got something with this mill tax crap. I know it seems routine to you, but you're going after the sacred cow here. And you're from away.”

“So are you,” I said.

“Yeah, but I write about their kids. I say nice things. Like it when they win.”

“Cheerleader.”

“I know,” Vern said. “They're tight skirts, but somebody has to wear them. No, really. Don't get me wrong. I think this mill story should be done. Company's been pushing this place around for too long. Forever. But think about it. Martin's idea of a hard-hitting piece was reporting the actual vote at the council meeting instead of just saying things were approved. You come in with this
Wall Street Journal
stuff and sources and all that, and you've got to expect the manure to hit the fan.”

“That's the way I do it,” I said. “Either that or I leave.”

“And by the sounds of it, there are some people around here who would love to see it.”

I got up and looked out the window toward where I'd been standing in the cold, but couldn't see anything. Vern still sat in the chair.

“Another thing,” he said, behind me. “You forget sometimes, coming from away. Just because this is a small town, don't think everybody's quaint. Some of these guys would give the scumbags in New York a run for their money.”

“I know that.”

“I'm not saying you don't. Reminding you, I guess.”

“But this sex stuff. That's not tough. That's just weird. And Vigue knowing something about it but not saying? I always liked him. Straight cop, I thought.”

“Straight but bitter,” Vern said.

“Just because he can't be chief, is he gonna start lying or whatever it is he's doing? Covering up?”

“I doubt it.”

“And these calls. Is this place filled with perverts or what?”

“Just Paul, and he's got his hands full,” Vern said.

“I'm serious,” I said.

“So am I,” Vern said. “You've got to watch out—watch out for Roxanne, too.”

“I know,” I said, suddenly weary.

“And another thing,” Vern said. “Get some curtains.”

So what am I supposed to do, I thought. Watch television? College football highlights to take my mind off the wacko looking in the windows? Or sit back with a good book, a thriller about somebody being stalked by some nut? Call an old friend from the city and tell him how my life was going?

Right.

That didn't leave much. Clean up the mess a little more, do the dishes, wrap up the trash and take the bag down to the cans in the shed. Sit in the dark and drink until I was in enough of a stupor to go to bed. Add a hangover to the problems that weren't going to go away while I slept. They weren't going anywhere.

I walked into the kitchen and took three pieces of pizza out of the box and wrapped them in foil because there wasn't any Saran Wrap.
I stuffed the box in the trash and threw a dirty knife and fork in the sink. There were two Samuel Smiths left in the six-pack carton on the counter and I started to stick them in the refrigerator, then stuck one back on the counter. I took the opener out of the sink and popped the top on the one and took it out to the living room, turning the kitchen light out on the way. That left the one lamp on in the living room, and I turned it off and dragged my chair over by the window.

I sat in the chair in the dark and looked out toward the blackness that was the trees. When the wind blew there was a faint rustle from the oaks, almost like the sound of waves crashing on a beach. I drank the beer slowly, setting the bottle between my legs and watching the vague darkness. There were things out there but I couldn't quite make them out. Trees. Houses. Lights. People who were doing something—something that was wrong and strange and had more and more to do with me.

But even in daylight, even looking as hard as I could, thinking and thinking, I couldn't see any of it. So, unseeing, I finished the beer and then found myself dozing in the chair. I forced myself up and grabbed the phone and took it with me to bed, which was still a sleeping bag. The phone went on the floor beside the bed, in case Roxanne called, in case I wanted to call her. For a second, I wondered if this meant I was falling in love, but then I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

The room was still blue-black when I woke up. I looked at the ceiling and waited for my eyes to focus. As I waited, I heard something.

A sound in the living room. Someone sitting down in the chair.

She shouldn't have driven all the way back, I thought, groggily. She must be exhausted. She could have had an accident. I dragged the sleeping bag aside and lurched out of bed.

“Hey, hon,” I said, shuffling into the living room in my boxer shorts. “You should have just called. You must be—”

I tensed.

There was a figure in the dark. And a smell. Soap. Perfume. The wrong smell. I took a half-step back and patted the wall for the switch. The light was blinding.

It wasn't Roxanne.

“Mrs. Wiggins?” I said.

She was wearing a green parka and a red beret sort of hat. The beret was pulled over her white hair at an angle, like Che Guevara. She was holding a shotgun. Martin's Parker, off the rack on the wall. The butt was under her arm and both barrels were pointing at me.

“What the fu—”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Pauline said. She sounded like it was funny. Something was funny.

“I gather you were expecting your floozy. I don't know why you bother to smuggle her in here at this hour. The whole town knows about her. And you.”

“What's going on?” I sputtered. “Put that—”

“We're going to have a talk, Mr. McMorrow. That's the first thing. Sit over there on the couch, please. Sit down. Now.”

Her voice was calm but also tense, as if she were in control of the situation, but the situation was serious. Like somebody trying to tell other people not to panic. Her face was dry and white and her lipstick was red and fresh, like a drag queen's. She sat in the big chair with the
shotgun pointed at my midsection. The barrel was shiny and long, and the round ends were very black.

I sat slowly on the kitchen chair that I'd brought out when Vern had been in her chair. Martin's killed himself, I thought. He blew his brains out, and she wants to take me with her when she goes after him.

Her long fingers were around the trigger and I could see her wedding band and diamond under the barrel.

“I'm going to tell you something about decency,” Pauline said, in the same assured, controlled tone. “It is a subject with which you may not be familiar.”

She looked right at me, right at my eyes. I watched the end of the shotgun make small circles in the air.

“My husband is a decent man. A good man, I think. I'm not boring you, am I? Good. Well, Mr. McMorrow, we have had fifty-one years together, pretty good years, and he has been a devoted husband, a good man. A respected man in the community. Oh, yes, people thought a lot of Martin, in ways you would never understand. Not ever.”

She shifted her left hand. The barrel dropped. I watched her finger on the trigger. One squeeze. It would take one squeeze.

“A long time ago, my husband slipped. Not badly. Just a momentary fall. There was a woman in town who had designs on him, and in a moment of weakness or vanity or insecurity, or whatever it is that makes men do such things, he accepted. Briefly. I knew; I knew all about it, but I had faith in him. You wouldn't know about that either. It didn't last long and we went on with our lives. You do those things. My husband never knew I knew, and he devoted himself to me after that. He did. He really did. A fine man. He was ready to carry his secret to his grave, and it must have been a burden, just to keep from hurting me.”

I shifted my legs, which were cold and bare. The gun went to my face.

“Please listen,” Pauline said.

She waited a moment and continued.

“That grave is approaching for both of us, Mr. McMorrow. And let me tell you something else, sir. Life is remembered as it ends. We like to go out on a happy note, as it were. A word to the wise, let's say.”

She smiled crazily. A strange serene smile.

“Yesterday, Mr. Wiggins came to me a broken man. He came to me and said he wanted me to hear it from him and not from the gossips on the street. And like a man, he stood there and told me about his indiscretion. He told me about Arthur Bertin and his filthy photographs. There's at least one person in this town who did not mourn his passing, I'll tell you. And that is me.”

I was eight feet away from her. The kitchen was to her right. To my right were the living room windows. Fifteen to twenty feet down but storms and window. Too much glass to go through. I'd hang up and get shot.

The butt of the heavy gun had dropped from her armpit to the crook of her arm.

“Another thing you probably don't know much about is pride. You are not half the man he is, for all your big-city background. This picture you gave to the police—it will make him the butt of jokes all over town. Everywhere he goes. He will not be able to get a cup of coffee, to talk to his friends, to walk down the street. A mockery. That's what you've made of his life. After all he's done, after all we've done for this town. We didn't have children, you know. This town was our child.”

She hesitated.

“Mrs. Wiggins, I never wanted to hurt Martin. I didn't—”

She stopped me with a wave of the gun.

“That man walked out of our house last night and he was ruined. Ruined. Because of some big-city big shot up here on a lark to laugh at the locals. A vacation for you and your floozy. It makes me so angry. So sick. Oh, God.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She sobbed and her body and the shotgun jerked up and down. From my belly to my face. Up and down.

The phone rang and I flinched. She turned and there was a white flash and a rocking explosion and I was off the chair and had the shotgun and heaved it behind me. It clattered and I stood over Pauline. The phone had only rung once.

Pauline had her eyes closed and her left hand was holding her right upper arm. She rocked slowly back and forth, her knees and feet pressed together.

“You okay?” I said.

She rocked and didn't answer.

15

T
he butt of the gun had recoiled into her upper arm. The bone, old and brittle, could have been broken or even shattered. I started to go to call an ambulance, but when I got to the door of the bedroom, I could see the phone receiver off the hook and the base upside down.