The Bookman's Wake (34 page)

I
’ve always hated plastic, the symbol of everything
phony in the world.

Not anymore.

It was hot and quick, intense. We were both long
overdue.

I buried my face in her hair, loving her, and she
clawed the plastic down and sealed us inside it. We
slipped around like a pair of peeled avocados twisted
together in Saran Wrap.

Then we lay on top and cooled off, and in a while,
when she was ready, she told me about Pruitt. They had
parked him in the Pierce County Jail on a hold order from
Seattle. Quintana would be sending someone down, maybe as
early as tonight, to pick him up. Trish was vague on the
possible charges. What Quintana wanted now was to talk to
him and see how his story compared with the version they
had gotten out of the kid, Bobby John Dalton. “I
had a long talk with Quintana on the telephone. He
actually talked to me. I must be living right.“

“Cops tend to do that when they think you know
more than they do.”

“He seemed almost human. I got some great
background out of him, off the record.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Off the record. That means you tell no one
without my permission, under penalty of death.”

Sure, I said: I could play her reporter game.

“Bobby’s version of that night remained
constant through two days of questioning. You broke his
jaw, by the way—the cops had to take his statement
through clenched teeth. He’s eating through a
straw, which is hard work for a meat eater.”

“I’ll send him a get-well card.”

“Bobby and Carmichael took the Rigby girl to
Carmichael’s house. That’s just off Aurora
Avenue, not far from downtown. By the time Pruitt got
there Rigby had been trussed up, gagged, and stashed in a
room off the kitchen. There was an argument over what to
do with her. Carmichael was worried about Pruitt—he
had this sudden fear that Pruitt might go too far and
hurt her if she didn’t come up with the book. I
take it Pruitt doesn’t always know when to stop
once he gets started.”

I thought of Slater’s battered face and told her
Carmichael had good reason to worry. “Where was
Bobby in all of this?”

“By then he was hurting so bad he wasn’t
worrying about anybody but himself. Carmichael was the
one sweating it. If Rigby was going to come to any real
harm, Carmichael didn’t want to know about
it—and he sure didn’t want it happening there
in his house. But he couldn’t stand up to Pruitt.
At one point Pruitt lost his temper and knocked
Carmichael back into the kitchen table and broke off one
of the legs. Pruitt yelled at him and said he was worse
than Slater. If it hadn’t been for Slater,
he’d have taken the girl last week and they’d
have the book by now.”

“Which is probably true.”

“Pruitt went into the room with Rigby alone.
There wasn’t a sound, to hear Bobby tell it. He
said it was spooky, the two of them standing in the dead
silence looking at each other and not knowing what was
happening in the other room. Then Pruitt came out and
said he was going to get the book.”

“He scared it out of her. He was her bogeyman,
Slater said. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe why’s not important. It was in the
bus station, in a locker. She had put it there the first
day she got to town.”

I gave a little laugh and shook my head.

“That’s about it. Pruitt told Carmichael
to take Rigby on up to his house, he’d be along
himself as soon as he could get downtown and get the
book. Then he’d settle up with them and they could
both go to hell. Bobby took off for the nearest emergency
room, and that’s the last he saw or heard of them
till he read about Carmichael in the
newspaper.”

“We can finish the story ourselves from there.
Carmichael took Eleanor on to Pruitt’s alone. Olga
was already dead in the house and the killer was still
inside waiting. The only thing about it that I
can’t believe is that Quintana would tell it all to
you.”

“He wants you to come in.”

“He’s moved on in his thinking. He’s
past Pruitt now, same as I am. He knows it’s not
Pruitt and he knows it’s not me. He told you this
stuff to send me a message. This goddamn man is one
pretty good cop.”

“Go see him, Cliff. Do this for me, please, do
it now, before it gets any worse. Who knows when the moon
will turn and Quintana will start drinking blood
again.”

“I’ll make you a deal. If I don’t
wrap this mother up by tomorrow, Quintana can have me.
Solemn word of honor.”

She lay there weighing it, clearly unhappy.

“I’ve got to follow this one out, Trish.
If I’m wrong, Quintana can have everything
I’ve got and you can come visit me every third
Tuesday of the month in the crowbar hotel.”

“You’re chasing a ghost.”

“I’m betting all those deaths were set off
by something in those books. Something that humiliated
him beyond any imaginable reason. It attacked him in his
guts, in his heart, where he lived: it made his life
unbearable to imagine them out there for someone else to
see. It threatened to destroy the one thing that made
life worth living. The Grayson mystique.”

“But you’re hanging all this on the blind
woman.”

“It’s not just the blind woman, it’s
far more than that now. We’ve got the chronology,
with the homicides following the Grayson lettering
schemes to the point of making no geographic sense.
We’ve got the ashes at Hockman’s and
Pruitt’s, and what do you want to bet there
weren’t ashes at all the others too? The house in
New Orleans caught fire, there were lots of ashes there.
We know he didn’t go there to burn old newspapers,
we know exactly why he was there and what he’d come
to burn. Why do I have to work so hard convincing you of
this?—it’s even in your book, that scene when
he wanted to burn those 1949
Ravens
because of the misspelled word. Now the injury was ten
times worse. This was to’ve been his masterpiece,
the book to put that old one to rest at long last. And
somehow he messed it up again, and the masterpiece turned
to dust. And that offended him so deeply that he
couldn’t even wait to get those books outside the
murder scenes to destroy them. Who else would do that but
Grayson himself?”

“He would kill people, you’re saying,
because of the mistake he’d made.”

“No. He kills people because he’s a
killer. He just didn’t know that till he’d
done the first one.”

This is how it works. You get an idea. Usually
you’re wrong. But sometimes you’re right. In
police work, you follow your idea till it pays off or
craps out.

One thing leads to another…

And suddenly I knew where Eleanor was.

“There’s a cabin in the mountains,”
I said. “She goes there when she wants to be
alone.”

I kicked into my pants, tore into my shirt, got up,
sat on a box, and pulled on my shoes.

“What’re you thinking now,” Trish
asked, “that she’s free to come and
go?”

“I don’t know. But I’m betting
that’s where she’ll be.”

“Where is this cabin?”

I stopped short. I didn’t know.

“So what do you know about it?”

“Moon’s supposed to own it, but they all
use it. It’s an hour’s drive from
here.”

“Maybe still in King County, though.”

“Moon said he built it forty years ago and
gradually it’s been surrounded by national-forest
lands.”

“But he still owns it.”

“That’s the impression I had.”

“If it’s in his name, I can find it.
There’s a title company the paper uses when
we’re doing stories that deal with land. They can
search out anything. If I can catch them before quitting
time, we can plot it out on a topographical
map.”

We agreed to coordinate through Amy at the motel. Then
we split up, Trish on a fast run back to Seattle, me to
Snoqualmie, to stake out Archie Moon’s
print-shop.

I
waited but he didn’t come. Eventually I headed on
over toward North Bend. It was almost six o’clock,
almost dark, and almost raining when I drove up to the
Rigby place and found the gate open. The sun had gone and
the night rolled in from the Cascades, pushing the last
flakes of light on to the Pacific. The house looked
smaller than I remembered it. Crystal had left the front
porch light on, casting the yard in a self-contained kind
of glow that was almost subterranean. You got the feeling
that divers would come down from the hills, swim around
the windows and eaves, and wonder what strange creatures
might be living there.

Behind the house the printshop was dark. Beyond that,
a stretch of meadow ran out to the woods. For a brief
time, perhaps no more than these few moments on this
night only, the field caught the last of the day’s
light in this particular way and spread a silver-blue
blanket at the foot of the trees.

Crystal heard me coming and was standing at the door.
I clumped up the stairs and she opened the door.

“Well, Janeway, I didn’t expect to see you
here. You look like an old man.”

“I am an old man, and getting older by the
minute. Have the cops been back?”

“Just once, that same night. They decided not to
tap the phone. They don’t seem as worried about you
as they were at first.”

“That’s good to know. Can we
talk?”

“Sure. Come on in.”

The house was dark, like the first night I’d
seen it, except for the one light coming out of the
kitchen down the hall. I went on back like one of the
family. She came in behind me and motioned to the table,
and I pulled out the same chair I’d sat in
earlier.

“Where’s your husband?”

“Out in the shop working.”

“I didn’t see any lights out there,
that’s why I wondered.”

“You can’t see the lights when he’s
in the back room.”

She poured coffee from a pot on the counter and
offered second-day rolls. They microwaved instantly, she
said, and were about as good the day after. I shook my
head no and she sat across from me, her face etched with
the sadness of the ages. She sipped her coffee, looked at
me through her glasses, and said, “What’s on
your mind?”

“Nola Jean Ryder. We could start with that, go
on from there.”

Her face didn’t change, but I could sense her
heartbeat picking up to a pace something like a
jackhammer.

“I haven’t heard that name in twenty
years.”

“Really?”

“Well, that woman who wrote the book about
Darryl and Richard did want to ask me about her. I
couldn’t help her much. That’s something
Gaston and Archie and I never talk about.”

“Why not?”

“It wasn’t what you’d call a
pleasant association. It’s something we’d all
rather forget.”

I waited her out.

“Nola Jean was DarryFs…I don’t
exactly know how to put it.”

“Huggins called her his whore.”

She stared off at the dark window. “So who the
hell’s Huggins and what does he know about it? Was
he there? I only met the man once or twice, years ago,
and he didn’t seem much interested in Nola Jean
then.”

“Well, was she a whore?”

“If you mean did she walk the streets and hook
for her supper, the answer’s no.”

“There are all kinds of whores,
though.”

“Are you talking from experience?”

“You seem to forget, I was a cop. I did my time
in vice.”

“Of course. You’ve probably seen whores in
their infinite variety, and all in the line of duty.
Somehow I don’t think you ever met anyone quite
like Nola Jean. She was the kind of dark-spirited gal
people write books about.”

She got up and went to the coffeepot but did not pour.
Looking out across the meadow, she said, “She could
get men to do anything. I never knew how she did it. The
only one she couldn’t touch that way was Gaston.
She sure tried, but none of it worked. I guess
that’s why she hated him.”

She rinsed out her cup and turned it bottom-up on the
counter. Again she stared through the window, past the
edge of the printshop to the meadow. She turned her head
toward me and said, “This is all ancient history. I
don’t see what she’s got to do with anything
today.”

“Do you have any idea where she went?”

“No idea at all. Just drifted away, seems to be
what everybody thinks.”

The room was heavy with the presence of this long-lost
woman. Crystal hugged herself as if that would make her
warm again.

“I don’t think about her anymore.”
But she looked away. She was not a woman who lied
easily.

“I can’t even remember what she looked
like,” she said, trying to shore up one lie with
another.

“It shouldn’t be this hard. Just think of
Eleanor.”

She jerked around and smacked her coffee cup into the
sink, breaking it. Surprise became anxiety, then dismay,
finally despondence.

“How did you know?”

“Saw some old photographs. There’s really
not much doubt.”

“Oh, God.” She gave a mighty shiver.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Crystal,” I said as kindly as I could.
“We’ve got to stop the lies now. Get your
husband in here so we can talk it out.”

“No!…No. We don’t talk about these
things to Gaston.”

“We’re gonna have to start. It can’t
stay buried any longer.”

“Oh, don’t do that. Please don’t do
that. Ask me…whatever you want, ask me.”

“Why would Gaston Rigby raise Nola Jean
Ryder’s daughter?”

She gave a little cough and took off her glasses.
Dabbed at her eyes with trembly hands.

“Crystal…”

“Why do I get the feeling you already know these
things? You ask the questions but you already know the
answers.”

“There’s only one answer that makes sense.
Grayson’s her father.”

She looked out at the shop and said nothing.

“What did Gaston think when she started to grow
up? When every time you looked in her face you saw this
evil woman you all hated?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

She turned and looked at me straight on, wanting me to
believe her.

“Truly,” she said, and I did believe
her.

“Then tell me how it was.”

“I don’t know if I can. You’d have
to’ve been part of it, watched them together when
she was growing up. She didn’t look anything like
Nola then, all we could see was Darryl in her face. And
Gaston thought the sun rose and set on that child, she
just lit up his life. I’ve never heard that song
”You Light Up My Life“ without thinking of
Gaston and Ellie. He loved her to pieces. Read to her
nights, took her over to Seattle to walk along the
waterfront. He was so crazy about that child, I actually
envied her sometimes. He’d take her walking and
later tell me it was like Darryl himself was walking with
them. So that’s how it was. She’s ours but
she came from Darryl, the last living part of him. It was
like he’d made her, like a book, without any help
from any woman, and left her here for us. And
what’s in a face? I mean, really, who cares what
someone looks like? Ellie’s really nothing like
Nola Jean in any way that counts. She didn’t get
her heart from her mamma, or her mind…we all know
where that came from. And when she started to grow up and
look like Nola, Gaston didn’t seem to notice at
all. To him she was Darryl’s little girl, and I
don’t think he ever worried or even stopped to
consider who her mother was.”

“What about you, Crystal? Did you think about
it?”

She didn’t want to answer that. She had thought
about it plenty. “She’s got nothing to do
with Nola Jean Ryder anymore. You can’t raise a
child from the cradle and not love her.” She
fidgeted with her hands. “Only two things have
mattered in my life—first Gaston, then Eleanor.
Anybody who thinks I didn’t love that child is just
full of it, and they’d better not say it to me. I
had her almost from the day she was born. Nola never
cared: as soon as Ellie was born, she was out of here,
gone on the road with some bum she met down at the
tavern. We started thinking of Ellie as ours, right from
that first winter. Even when Nola came back here in the
spring and took up with Darryl again, she couldn’t
care less about her daughter. And after Darryl died, she
never came back.”

We looked hard at each other. I leaned across the
table so she couldn’t escape my eyes. “I hate
to break this to you, Crystal, but you’re still
lying to me.”

Another shock wave rippled across her face. She
touched her lips with her fingers and seemed to be
holding her breath.

“You keep talking about Darryl Grayson as if
he’s really dead.”

“Of course he’s dead. Everybody knows
that.”

“I think he’s alive and well.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I think he’s alive and still working
after all these years.”

She shook her head.

“And you and Rigby and maybe Moon have devoted
your lives to his secret. You’ve created a safe
haven where he can do his stuff in peace and seclusion,
back there in that shop, in that back room where nobody
ever goes.”

“You are out of your mind.”

“Then I might as well tell you the rest of it,
since you feel that way anyway. I think Grayson is
obsessed by the idea of his own genius. I think after a
while it became all that mattered to him. The mystique,
the Grayson legend, the almost religious following
that’s coming along behind him. I think
that’s what this case is all about. You tell a guy
often enough that he’s a god, after a while he
starts to believe it. And it led him straight over the
edge, till he became as cold-blooded a killer as
I’ve ever seen.”

“You must be mad.”

“Let me ask you this. Have you ever heard of
Otto Murdock?”

She tried to shake her head. I wouldn’t let
her.

“He’s a book dealer, or was, but you know
that. He’s dead now. Murdered.”

“I saw it…in the newspaper.”

“Ever hear of Joseph Hockman?”

She made a little
no
movement with her head.

“What about Reggie Dressier?…Mike
Hollings-worth?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“What about Laura Warner?”

Nothing from her now. Her face looked like stone.

“They were book collectors. Grayson killed
them.”

“I want you to leave now,” she said
numbly.

“You remember your stalker?…The guy named
Pruitt?”

Her eyes came up and gripped mine. Oh, yes, she
remembered Pruitt.

“He’d be dead now too if he hadn’t
been lucky. Somebody else took the knife that was meant
for him.”

“Will you leave now?” she said
thickly.

“Yeah, I’m finished. And I’m sorry,
Crystal, I really am. I liked you all.”

I got up from the table. “I suppose you’ll
tell Grayson what’s been said here tonight. I
imagine he’ll come after me next.”

I gave her a last sad look. “Tell him I’m
waiting for him.”

I walked out.