Hard Case Crime: Witness To Myself (17 page)

“Anna, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Look,” she said, after some thought, “I really don’t think he’s dangerous. Unless, that is, he’s crazy and I just don’t see it. I don’t see that at all. Can I ask you something? I almost don’t want to.”

“Oh come on, just ask.”

“If he kept calling you like that, I still don’t understand why you haven’t called the police? Or have you?”

“No. Like I told you. They wouldn’t do anything. He didn’t threaten me. And it’s always from a pay-phone. They’d probably tell me to get an unlisted number. And that wouldn’t do any good since he knows where I work.”

She didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then, “Look, I know if he’s the same person he’s an ingrate, and I’m angry at him for that, and there’s got to be something wrong with him. But what I’m trying to say is that trying to commit suicide doesn’t make someone a bad person. Just a tragic person.”

Oh Anna, he thought. You’ve found another bird with a broken wing.

He was to chair a meeting of the division heads the next morning but, on impulse, the first thing he wanted to do when he got to the office was see if there was a telephone listing for a Roy Bruster in the city or suburbs. Or was it a phony name?

“I don’t see any Roys,” the operator told him, “but I do have an R Bruster. In Wayne.” One of the suburbs. “Would you like that number?”

After jotting it down, he tried to think what to say when he made the call. He didn’t want to talk to him, not yet anyway, just wanted to know where he could reach him if he ever wanted to. He decided he would simply ask whoever answered if R stood for Roy and, if it did, pretend to have the wrong Roy Bruster. He had to be prepared, however, that the guy himself might answer and recognize his voice. But all of this turned out to be a waste of anxiety; no one answered the phone.

He tried to think if there was anything else he could do, then looked over at his computer.

Whatever had driven that guy to try to kill himself, maybe a death in his family, a divorce, a crime — had he, too, committed a crime? — whatever it was, maybe there would be something about him in the newspaper.

Quickly he found the Web site for the city’s largest daily paper. He had no idea if every crime, every obituary, if everything they published in the past few months, say, would be included in their online edition, but he typed in the name Roy Bruster and waited. It brought up nothing. He was thinking about trying the city’s second largest daily when he heard:

“Alan?”

He looked up and Ron Jameson was standing in the doorway. He had a slight smile above his bowtie.

“Did you forget?”

Oh Christ. He was more than ten minutes late for the meeting.

He gathered up his briefcase and strode with Jameson down the hall and into the conference room. Elsa Tomlinson and the division heads were sitting on either side of the long conference table, Elsa next to the empty chair he was supposed to be in.

She was staring at him, hard. They were all staring at him.

He was scheduled to attend a three-day conference in Chicago the next morning. It was a conference of private school educators, and Elsa wanted him there primarily to mingle and learn. He took a plane that evening, anxious just to get away.

Wishing he could go even farther and longer.

Over the next three days he attended seminars, gave a talk on the Foundation’s goals, was almost always talking to people and yet found time to wander through the Field Museum. But anxiety was always hovering around, though it didn’t really begin to close in until he was flying back through the night.

In all these years he had never shaken off the feeling that somewhere police would be waiting for him, this time on the tarmac or, again, at his apartment building. It was almost like something solid he always had to get through. Then when he was entering his apartment and saw the red light on his machine he was sure that one of the calls was from him — from Bruster.

But he had only one call, from Gregg, about “getting together.”

The first thing he did was call Anna. And at the sound of her voice he sensed anger.

“Fine,” she said when he asked how she was.

“Is there anything new?”

“No.”

“Anna, is something wrong?”

She didn’t answer right away. Then, “I didn’t hear from you.”

She was right: It hadn’t been as if he had forgotten to call or was too busy. He’d just kept putting it off, consciously wanting to pull back a little from her. And yet that didn’t make any sense at all; he was so anxious to talk to her now, to see her.

“Anna, all I can say is I’m sorry.”

“I was worried about you. I thought something might have happened.”

“Come on. Nothing happens to guys like me.”

“Don’t joke. I was looking forward to talking to you and you didn’t call.”

“Anna, I’m sorry.”

“Did you,” she asked hesitantly, “have a date?”

“Anna, please. No, I didn’t have a date. I was always with people and —”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Honey, I’m not yelling at you.”

“You were. I don’t want to be yelled at.”

“I’m sorry if it sounded that way. I didn’t mean it. Now, what are you doing? Can I see you?”

“You don’t have to. I’m not a child.”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to. Can I see you?”

He got to her apartment a little before ten. She still seemed distant, and when he tried to kiss her she buried her face instead against his shoulder.

He said, “Anna, don’t be mad at me. Please?”

“I’m not mad.” But she didn’t lift her face.

He wanted to say, “Then what’s wrong?” But he knew what was really troubling her, that it was not all his not calling: She wanted him to say so much more than he could say.

She took a deep breath. “So tell me about Chicago,” though he knew she was not interested in Chicago.

“It’s a very beautiful city. With a beautiful lake that’s more like an ocean. Have you ever been there?”

“No, I haven’t been to most places.”

“Well, tell me about your work. How’s it going?”

She shrugged. “You know. What can I say?”

And then he asked her what he had told himself not to: “Did that guy Bruster’s aunt ever show up?”

“No, in fact he called just today to say she was going to get live-in help for a while. He asked me if I knew anyone. I said I didn’t.” She paused. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, it might upset you. But he asked me to go out with him. I told him no,” she added quickly.

Alan looked at her, and as he did the strangest thought flashed through his brain.

That bastard’s out to steal my life!

He came home shortly before one. Ordinarily he might have stayed over but when he held her and kissed her goodnight it seemed right — to her too, he sensed — that he go.

He hadn’t checked the Breeze since leaving for Chicago and he didn’t want to now either. He wanted to go right to bed, didn’t think his head could absorb another thing. But when he was still awake a couple of hours later he couldn’t resist the pull any longer and he went over to the computer. And there in the darkness of his living room glowed a picture of Mack McKinney holding flowers as he kneeled by a gravestone.

The headline read: flowers for susheela.

The story told how yesterday would have been her twenty-eighth birthday, and that McKinney and occasionally other investigators visited her grave on that day. McKinney had started going following the death of her parents because she had no other relatives in this country. And he had never missed a birthday.

Alan kept staring at the picture, unable for long moments to turn it off.

Who in the end, he wondered, was going to drive him mad — the girl he murdered or the man he saved?

Both Patty and I couldn’t get over Alan’s behavior at the zoo, and we still occasionally brought it up. Like this one morning at breakfast, the morning I’d made a note to call Detective Murray again.

“I still keep thinking about it,” Patty said. “I feel sorry for him that he’s obviously jealous of her, but the thing that bothers me is that he didn’t give two damns we were standing there able to hear. I felt so sorry for her. Has he ever talked to you about her?”

“No.”

“No you’re relieved he hasn’t? Or no you wish he would?”

“Pat, what the hell would I say to him? Give her up? Marry her?”

“I don’t know. I guess just listen to what he may have to say.”

After breakfast I went to my desk. I had a few things I wanted to check with Detective Murray but I learned that he was out and wouldn’t be back until late in the day. He returned my call early in the evening. And before I even had a chance to ask him a question, he said, a weariness in his voice:

“The damn Luder thing is going all over the place. Whatever you ask the prick did he do this, did he do that, he says yes. He doesn’t want a lawyer and he’s confessing to everything now, and we don’t know where we’re striking gold and where he’s full of shit.”

And this, I realized, could go on forever.

Gregg Osterly called Alan at the office late the next afternoon. “How about meeting me at the gym after work?”

“No, sorry.” He had no desire to go. “I’ve got too many things to do.”

“Come on, it’ll do you good. And it’ll do me good beating you at squash.” Gregg finally talked him into it, and Alan wasn’t sorry once he got there and into a game. It was as though that little ball became his enemy, the threat to his life, as he raced to it and smashed it from angles and off ricochets he had never made so consistently. He beat Gregg every game. Afterward, wiping his face with a towel, Gregg said, “Next time I ask you to come, stick to your guns. Don’t come.”

Alan started to go off to shower but he still had energy he hadn’t used, so he walked past the noisy weight room, which was rimmed by a track, and swam lap after lap in the Olympic-size pool.

But the feeling of well-being lasted only until he started walking out of the building to his car. The car that was now taking him back to his life.

He wasn’t in his apartment long when the phone rang. A woman’s voice said, “Who is this?”

“Miss,” he said, “you called me. Who are you?”

“Well, you called us a few days ago. I’m just curious and want to know why.”

“Tell me, who is this?”

“Didn’t you call a few days ago? The name’s Bruster.”

R. Bruster, of course! She must have had a phone system that identified all calls, even unanswered ones.

“Oh,” he said, “yes, I did. And thanks for calling back.”

“As I say, I’m just curious.”

“Well, I’m trying to reach a Roy Bruster. And I was wondering if this is his number.”

“Roy? No, this isn’t Roy. You have the wrong person.”

“Would you happen to know a Roy Bruster?”

She paused. “Look, I’m going to let you talk to my husband.”

The line was silent for a few minutes. He didn’t know whether she had quietly hung up or was conferring with someone. Her husband came on. He said, “Do you know Roy Bruster?”

“I met him briefly and I want to get in touch with him.”

“What’s your Roy look like?”

Alan gave him a fast description. After a long pause the man said, “Well, he and I are cousins. But we’re not friends, you understand? In fact I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“No.”

“Well, can you tell me something about him? Do you know, for instance, if he has an aunt he looks after?”

“An aunt? I don’t know anything about an aunt. Maybe on his mother’s side. I wouldn’t know that.”

“Do you know if he’s married?”

“Look, I’ll tell you this,” he said, his voice suddenly angry — at Roy Bruster, Alan quickly learned. “The last I heard, he was married, had kids. But I’ll tell you this too — he’s crazy. He —” He stopped, and Alan could hear the vague sounds of an argument with his wife. He came back on, apparently warned by her. “Look, I’ve said enough. I don’t need trouble. Good luck to you.”

And with that he hung up.

Alan immediately called Anna. “Look, I don’t want to be a pain but I thought you should know this.” He then told her what he’d heard from Bruster’s cousin. “He used the word crazy. I got the definite feeling he was afraid of him, even afraid just to talk about him.”

She didn’t answer right away. Then, “Well, I haven’t heard from him again. And I don’t think I will. But I’m going to say this again, I’m not afraid of him. In fact it’s all just very sad.”

“What do you mean sad?”

“Just that it’s very sad.” She hesitated. “When he was here he told me some things about himself but I didn’t want to tell you, I knew how you felt. But a lot’s happened to him. He lost his job as a teacher and after that he lost his wife and kids — she took off with them. And to top it all he’s come down with diabetes. He’s a depressed guy and like I say it’s sad.”

He wanted to say just be careful of him but he didn’t. He simply said something like, “I see.”

There was a long pause, then she said, “Look, I hope you don’t mind but I think I’m going to go to bed now. So look, you take care.” “You too, Anna.”

And with that he sensed that this girl he loved and yet knew he had to push away had finally pushed back.

He felt emptied out, as though everything was gone now. There were only two people he could think of, my mother and me, who would be truly distressed by the magnitude of his secret — after all, we’d known him ever since he was a kid — and even we would get over it. His mother would never know; Anna, with him already out of her life, would come to realize something had been wrong with him all along; friends such as Gregg Osterly and people like Elsa Tomlinson would be shocked to their toes but it wouldn’t change their lives one bit. He felt all of this, but nevertheless a phone call he got late the following afternoon almost lifted him from his chair in rage.

“Mr. Benning, this is Steve Manuso.”

“Oh yes, Steve.” The manager of the gym.

“Look, I just want you to know that a friend of yours was just here and went through the place to see if he might join. In fact he asked if he could use the pool as your guest and I told him he could. Anyway he says he’s pretty sure he’s going to join.”