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The Laughing Man

Richard Forrest writing as Stockton Woods

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

Chapter One

They reached for him.

He turned away in a vain attempt to escape. His right ankle was caught, then his left. His arms were immobile. He was lifted and placed carefully in a cold place with narrow sides. It was difficult to breathe. He screamed in a voice that faded to a whimper. His fists beat against walls until he gasped at the cool dank air that choked him. His body convulsed in a shaking spasm and then turned rigid as he screamed again.

Brian Maston sat upright on the couch to find that his nails had cut through the outer covering of the cushion. He moaned softly as he swung his feet to the floor and placed his hands to the sides of his perspiration-beaded forehead. It was over for now. He lowered his arms and pushed himself slowly erect.

He took a step, then another, and began to pace until body rhythms returned to normal.

He turned to the far end of the room to observe the disarray. Uncorrected theme papers had slipped to the floor when he’d fallen asleep. As he crossed to retrieve them, he decided that the apartment had finally reached its maximum level of disruption.

Faby had been gone six weeks. She was the last of three women who had stayed for various lengths of time during the seven years he had lived here. It hadn’t worked—nothing seemed to work anymore—and he wondered if the apartment’s deterioration weren’t a conscious attempt at sheer perversity.

A pile of dirty linen lay in alpine shapes by the bedroom door, while stacked newspapers in a far corner tilted precariously toward a row of books in haphazard file along the edge of the carpet. The wrought-iron dining table at the far end of the room near the sliding balcony door was covered with an assortment of dishes, and the counter leading into the kitchen was crowded with open jars of condiments. In the kitchen, cabinet doors gaped open and piled utensils in the overladen sink pointed toward him in an accusatory manner.

The air was stale.

He went into the bathroom and splashed handfuls of cold water into his face. As he finished toweling, his eyes met the reflection in the mirror. Droplets of water still clung to the lower edge of his reddish beard, and he brushed them away with the back of his hand. “Doesn’t hide a damn thing,” he said aloud, and smacked the palms of both hands against the wall tile in a frustration he couldn’t fathom.

Pushing the sliding glass door of the balcony open, he turned in indecision to face the room. He had forty-nine compositions to read and grade, a difficult task with no uncluttered surface to work on. He would clean the place, grab a bite to eat and spend the rest of the evening correcting themes. His resolute step toward the kitchen counter faltered in his overwhelming desire for a drink.

Three weeks ago, in an earlier bout of determination, he had mounted a hasp and padlock to the kitchen cabinet under the sink. He knew there were two fifths of vodka, a bottle of Cherry Herring and a pint of brandy under the sink—but the padlock’s key was in the center drawer of his desk at school. The theory at the time had seemed sound. Drinking should be a social act arrived at through considered choice, a guest for dinner perhaps. After an invitation had been offered and accepted, he could retrieve the key and unlock the cabinet. It had worked for three weeks.

He shrugged in resignation and began to scrape dishes and place them on the counter. When the table was cleared, he extracted the debris from the kitchen sink and ran hot water, watching as the water bubbled the detergent and continued to rise until it reached the lip of the sink and crawled over the edge.

In a single continuous movement he slammed the faucet shut, grabbed a long-handled fork and knelt to pry the hasp from the wood. He had the top to the bottle of vodka twisted off before the cabinet door completed its backward swing.

Bells rang and that wasn’t right, for that never happened in the dream. He must be in school. He tried to speak faster through a dry mouth and carpeted tongue. He half-turned to point toward the blackboard and felt himself fall to the floor. Opening his eyes, he watched the empty vodka bottle roll across the carpet away from an outflung arm.

The phone continued ringing as he staggered to his feet and lurched toward the kitchen wall to answer it. “No one’s here,” he mumbled and started to hang up.

“Brian.” There was an insistence to the weak voice.

“Mother?”

“I had to talk to you.”

“Are you all right? You sound awful.”

“They won’t let me have a phone in my room, and I didn’t have any change for the pay phone in the hall. I had to wait until the night nurse was away from her station so I could …”

“Mrs. Maston! What are you doing out of bed?” It was a vaguely familiar voice.

The connection was broken and Brian stood listening to the dial tone. He hung up and drank a glass of water. The apartment was still a shambles, the themes uncorrected, with him half drunk and his mother in some godforsaken hospital. He picked up the phone.

After interminable delays with long-distance operators and information, he was finally connected with an astringent voice that announced, “Tallman Hospital.”

“Is Mrs. Mary Maston a patient there?”

“Room 314.”

“Please connect me.”

“I am sorry. She cannot receive calls.”

“What’s she there for? Let me speak to a doctor, a nurse, someone.”

“The attending physician is Doctor Cherny. I will give you the number of his service.”

Some inner workings of the phone’s mechanism chimed as Brian slammed down the receiver. A call to Gordon Cherny’s service would mean a delay of hours, and his home phone was probably unlisted. The number would be in the address book, if he could find it.

The typewriter on the desk in the bedroom still held page forty-two as it had for the past two years. Coffee stains rimmed dark circles on the remainder of his master’s thesis. He accidently brushed the manuscript to the floor in his hasty search for the address book.

The waiflike voice that answered the phone made him wonder if the Cherny kids were still awake. He hesitated a moment. “Is that you, Helen? It’s Brian Maston.”

“Are you in town?” It was a question that seemed filled with regret.

“No, still in Canada. It’s important that I speak to Gordon.”

“He’s asleep and has an early …”

“Very important.”

Her sigh was almost inaudible. In the background he could hear grumbling, a snort, and then, “Brian who?” The voice that finally spoke on the phone was firm and assured. “Hey, old buddy. I’ve been expecting your call. Come on over and we’ll tilt a couple.”

“I’m in Montreal. What’s wrong with my mother?”

There was a pause while Gordon’s voice dropped two octaves. “I told them to call you three weeks ago.”

“No one did. Call about what?”

“What’s your legal situation?”

“Confused.”

“Any chance of your getting down here—fast?”

“Last I heard, the price was about five years in Leavenworth.”

“Your decision. But as Mary’s doctor and your friend, I can only give you the prognosis.”

“Jesus Christ! What prognosis?”

“Days. Two weeks at the outside.”

“How could that be?” He listened in numb bewilderment to Gordon’s description of berserk cells swamping the life from his mother, and how in her own conception of New England stalwartness she had delayed a physical examination and diagnosis until six weeks ago. He mumbled-something to Gordon and hung up.

Howard Stanford sat on the couch, looking at ale bubbles that rose from the stem of his glass. Occasionally, he scowled toward Brian who was pacing the floor. Howard was a thirtyish round man with a moon face obscured by wide glasses that accentuated a perpetual frown. He sipped on the ale and grunted. “You’re crazy to try.”

“Christ! I’ve got to get home.”

“What about the Expatriate? The next issue’s due at the printer’s Tuesday.”

“Screw the Expatriate. Hell, circulation’s down to nothing anyway. It’s only a question of time until we have to fold.”

“When’s Faby coming back?”

“Never.”

Howard looked into his glass. “Happens to a lot of the guys.”

Over the years it had seemed to Brian that everything had always happened to a lot of the guys. The “guys” being that assemblage who in the sixties and early seventies had been a large, cohesive group, which was now gradually dissipating home or toward assimilation. He glanced impatiently at his watch. He had two hours to catch an Air Canada flight from Montreal to New York. “What are my chances of getting across?”

“I wouldn’t go until I had an attorney check out my case in the States.”

“I have to. My mother’s ill.”

“That happened to Bill Mathews back in ’72. They picked him up at his father’s funeral.”

“I need advice, not horror stories.”

Howard twirled his empty glass and Brian refilled it. “Fact is, you are in the elite. You are not a simple draft evader, draft dodger or deserter. You are one of the chosen few who deserted from a war zone.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Any of the other categories and your worries would have been over long ago. You should have made contact with a lawyer to go to the Justice Department.”

“I kept meaning to, but never got around to it.”

“In cases such as yours, they treat each one individually. In the meantime, they’ll have a warrant out for you, but they won’t be actively looking.”

“What about the people in my home town?”

“Like I say, everything’s confused. They’ll probably think you’re covered under the pardon.”

“Okay, then.” Brian pulled the straps of a Val-a-pak and locked the case. “If I can get across the border, I’m home free—so to speak.”

“That’s the way it is. Of course, you’ll never get off the ground in Montreal.”

“That’s a big help. Why not?”

“Look at yourself. Faded dungarees, jean jacket, hair over your collar and a beard. The flights are precleared at Montreal for stateside. They usually just take a statement, but when they see you, the first thing they’re going to think is hijacker. Next, they’ll wonder how much pot you’re smuggling. After they eliminate those, they’ll start checking lists.”

“Any ideas?”

“Get a haircut. Shave the beard off, wear a suit and tie and borrow my birth certificate. I’ve been cleared.”

“I don’t own a suit.”

Howard almost smiled. “I’ve got one that’s snug on me, should just about fit you.”

“Thanks.”

“I hate to be judgmental, old man, but is it worth it? If you’re not back soon, what’s left of the magazine goes down the drain, and what about your teaching job? Not to mention the possibility of time in the slammer.”

“There’s only a week left of the term. Will you call them for me?”

“Sure. But you still haven’t answered me. Is it worth it?”

“You’re goddamn right it is!”

The New England Thruway erupts from the Bronx toward the suburbs of Westchester County. In Connecticut it follows the shoreline of Long Island Sound. Below New London, Brian turned the rented Ford off the interstate. The countryside changed dramatically as he was catapulted into the greeness of a New England spring that told him he was almost home.

Route 153 was a winding road shaded by large oaks and pressed on either side by colonial stone walls. The approach to Tallman was unchanged in the seven years he had been away, and probably had changed little in the seventy before that.

“She has a week or two, perhaps only days.” Gordon’s words of the night before replayed endlessly in his mind. He shook his head as if to throw off their meaning, and tried to visualize the approach to Tallman and the two miles up Ferry Road to the house.

The small sign that hung from the tree in front of the porch would still be swinging in the breeze.

Mary Maston—Antiques

The sign would always be there for him, as it had been from his earliest memories. Just as she would always be standing on the front porch, arms akimbo, with a small smile edging the corner of her mouth—this symbol of strength. This strong and compassionate woman who folded him in her arms to chase away childhood fears and the recurring dream.

And yet, he realized, it must have been a struggle for her. Raising a child alone, his father dead before his birth, and also supporting and caring for Uncle Lockwood. As an adult, Brian had realized that the small antique shop brought in little income, and the few acres they farmed were necessary for their subsistence. His mother had always been there, listening quietly, often saying little, but watching him with obvious pride. She had been pleased with his ROTC scholarship to college, and yet willing to accept his removal to Canada.

God, he needed some of that strength now. He could not believe she was dying.

Brian’s shoulders convulsed as he veered the car quickly into a roadside rest area and bent over the steering wheel. It couldn’t be. Certain things were the hinge pins of the cosmos—immutable, permanent fixtures.

He cleared his throat, rubbed his eyes with a forearm and jerked the car forward. The wheels spun as he careened back onto the highway. A horn sounded loudly, and he glanced up at the frightened woman in the station wagon rushing toward him. He quickly downshifted, floored the accelerator and rocked into the proper lane as the other car’s horn faded in the distance.

It was only a few more miles to the Tallman General Hospital, but the Dew Drop Inn was just ahead. A single dusty pickup truck sat in the parking lot near the door. Brian parked and entered.

A barmaid looked up from a newspaper and waited expectantly as he slid on a stool.

“Double vodka, light on the orange juice.”

“No O.J. How about some Hawaiian Punch?”

“Make it Kool-Aid.”

She looked at him quizzically a moment and then laughed as she mixed the drink.

His hand shook as he drank. He was unable to identify the mix, but was afraid to ask. The barmaid, close to his own age, looked familiar, although her name eluded him. The remainder of the room was empty of patrons. There were a half-dozen stools neatly aligned down the bar. The pool table in the side room had all the balls racked, with the exception of the lone red one near a far pocket.

“Do me again, please.”

She looked up from the paper and automatically reached for the Smirnoff behind her. “Kool-Aid. That’s great,” she said as she poured. “Ann Landers has a great column today. About this woman who meets her husband at the door wearing a bikini made of thread spools. You read her?”

“No.” He recognized her. “You’re Katheryn Mulhouse.”

“I know you?”

“Brian Maston. Tallman High, class of ’65.”

“Brian. Hey, sure. Hey, didn’t you go to Sweden or something?”

“Canada.”

The door behind him opened and the barmaid peered toward the new customer. A man in a dark suit sat on a nearby stool. Brian watched from the corner of his eye as the man flicked his hat further back on his forehead. Good God, hardly anyone wore hats in June.

“Draft, please,” the man said. “Do you know where Doctor Gordon Cherny’s office is located? I’ve just got it listed as Tallman Highway and I can’t seem to find it.”

“Sure.” The barmaid tilted a glass under the spigot. “This is Tallman Highway, and he’s in the Medical Arts Building half a mile past the hospital. Kinda set back in the woods. You got to look close.”

“Thanks.”

Brian looked obliquely at the man sipping the draft beer. The clothes, the hat, the total conservative image might signal a federal officer. Did they check plane manifests? Had his photograph been circulated among the Canadian customs people? He felt the rise of inner alarm.

“Hey, Brian, how do you like it up in Can—”

Brian shook his head violently as the man with the hat turned to look at him with dark eyes. Brian laid a bill on the counter, waved and walked quickly to the car. The man in the hat followed him out and stood looking for a moment before he slid behind the wheel of a nondescript Chevrolet.

The Chevy followed Brian until he turned into the hospital parking lot. He waited behind the wheel until the other car continued out of sight.

The third-floor nurses’ station was directly opposite the bank of elevators. Martha Rubinow, mountainous in her stiffly starched white uniform, was half turned away from the elevators as she leaned against the counter talking to the ward clerk. She looked just the way Brian remembered her. A heavy woman with short legs that created a parabolic appearance. Her more than fifty years had sagged her facial features to the extent that her eyes seemed to be retreating into small apertures.

As if sensing his presence, Martha slowly turned to face him. “Brian!” Her voice was low in astonishment as her jaw dropped.

“Hello, Martha.” He momentarily wondered how many times he had seen this woman, his mother’s friend, sitting at their kitchen table, her large body engulfing a chair as she clenched a cup of coffee and laughed in a high-pitched cackle. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“Oh, Brian, you’re here.” Her arms hugged him to her bosom. There was a vague smell of talcum powder. She pushed him away to arm’s length and looked up at him. “She’s ill. Our Mary is very sick.”

“I didn’t know.”

“They said you wouldn’t come. That you couldn’t come.”

“I wasn’t notified. Is she in pain?”

Her words rushed forward in staccato fashion. “I haven’t done private duty in years, but as soon as I heard, I called Doctor Cherny and told him I was available for as many hours as necessary. Jan Wholly is doing night duty. You remember Jan, she used to be Jan Martin?”

“Martha, is she in pain?”

“We do what we can, son. She’s getting the best possible treatment.”

“I know she is, and that you’re doing all you can. Can I see her now?”

She seemed flustered. “I don’t know. The doctor has her on the critical list … I guess I shouldn’t even say that until you talk to him.”

“I talked to Gordon on the phone last night. I understand the severity of the case. Where’s room 314?” Without waiting for an answer, he strode down the hall.

“The other way, Mr. Maston,” echoed the ward clerk’s voice behind him.

Brian swiveled on his heel and walked quickly in the opposite direction. As he passed the nurses’ station Martha walked beside him. “She’s very sick. She may not even know you.”

“Where’s Uncle Lockwood?”

“He’s hardly left the hospital since she was admitted. He’s probably in the sun room. Wouldn’t you like to see him first?”

“No. I’ll talk to him later.” He stopped before the door of 314. There was a No Visitors sign posted across its front. He reached for the handle as Martha twitted beside him.

“Let me get the doctor.”

“I want to see my mother, Martha. I’ll talk to Gordon later.” He turned the handle and stepped in the room and closed the door. Lowered blinds cast shadows across the room. The still form, almost rigid under the blanket, seemed so much smaller than he remembered. He pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat near her. Her eyes were closed, and her sunken cheeks were the color of alabaster. He clenched his fists at the sight of the IV running into her arm and the nose tubes violating her face.

Her eyes flicked open and slowly turned. The ravaged face smiled. “I knew you’d come.”

His hand clasped hers. “You shouldn’t have kept it such a big secret. People go to the hospital all the time, and sons visit mothers in hospitals constantly. Right?”

She winced as her body shuddered from a nameless spasm of pain. “You were a fine boy and you’ve turned into a fine man. I like you without the beard.”

“I shaved it off as a disguise.” He tried to chuckle, but it died in his throat. The times she had traveled to Montreal for the holidays were too vivid, and they had inevitably affectionately argued over the beard.

“How’s Faby?”

“Just fine,” he lied. “She wanted to come but …”

“Brian, your nose is getting longer.”

“She walked out.”

She shook her head and grimaced in pain. “You can get them, but can’t seem to hold them.”

“I’ll find someone.”

“I was hoping that … do you still have the nightmares?”

“Not so much anymore.”

It was obvious that speech was becoming more difficult for her. “Will you forgive me?”

“Mother.” He gripped her fingers and was surprised at the strength of her return clasp. “There’s nothing to forgive. I’m the one who’s …”

“I want you to promise me that you’ll take care of Uncle Lockwood.”

“My solemn word.”

“Bellchamp. I must tell you about Bellchamp.”

The door opening behind him dispersed the shadows into a pyramid of light that framed Mary’s gaunt face. Martha’s hands touched his shoulders. “We have to change the IV, Brian. It’ll only take a few minutes. Doctor Cherny would like to see you while you’re waiting.”

Brian stood reluctantly. Mary’s fingers left his and fell limply onto the covers. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He leaned down and kissed her.

“The doctor’s in the lounge past the nurses’ station,” Martha said as she closed the door behind him.

The doctors’ lounge had a swinging door that waffled shut behind him. Gordon Cherny was making notes in a chart. He looked up and smiled as Brian entered. Pushing the charts aside as his tall frame unwound from the couch, he grasped Brian’s hand.

They had grown up together. They had fished, played ball, and discovered girls together in an easy camaraderie. In recent years their interests had diverged, and Gordon only had made the trip to Canada once, and the visit was made uncomfortable by his wife’s protestations that they were probably doing something wrong and breaking some law or other.

“When you finally get the word, you don’t waste much time, old buddy. And where in hell did you get that suit?”

“She looks terrible, Gordon. I tried to prepare myself, but still …”

The doctor cleared the charts away and motioned to the couch. He shrugged. “What can I tell you? There’s no question in my mind that she’s had severe symptoms for some time, but by the time she came to me and I took a bronchial biopsy, we found squamous carcinoma with metastatic spread to bone and liver.”

“So little time.”

“She’s a tough little fighter. Who knows?”

“There must be something more that can be done. Radiation, some of the new drugs? We could take her to Boston.”

“I don’t think she’d make the trip. Good God, Brian! I’ve known Mary all my life. How many hundreds of hours did I spend in your house, eating at her table?”

“We’ve got to try. Who’s the best man in Hartford for this sort of thing?”

“McKinnley. I’ll call and have him come down if you want.”

“I’d appreciate it. I wouldn’t feel right unless I knew everything possible was being done.”

“I’ll have him here tomorrow.”

“Is she suffering?”

“I’ve changed from Demerol to morphine. She didn’t want to be out while she was waiting for you.”

“Then she is in pain?”

“Now that you’re here, I’ll increase the dosage. I should have before, but she’s a very opinionated little lady.”

“Yes, I know. I also know you’re doing all you can. I’m just sorry I wasn’t here sooner.” Brian walked to the door. “I want to get back to her. Can we talk later?”

“Hell, yes.”

The blinds had been partially opened and bright slats of light fell across the foot of the bed. Brian’s eyes flicked up to see that a full IV bottle now hung from the stanchion.

Something was wrong.

The form on the bed, its upper portion still in shadows, was still—too still. He stepped toward her. “Mother …”

A pillow was spread across her face.

He snatched it away and reached for the limp fingers hanging over the side of the bed. While his hand worked down the slender wrist feeling for a nonexistent pulse, his other hand fumbled across the bedclothes and switched on the emergency buzzer.

Slowly he straightened up, the pillow in his hands, and stood looking at the lifeless form.

Sharp intakes of breath made him turn to see Gordon and Martha framed in the doorway, looking at him with wide eyes. The doctor strode across the room, bent over Mary and then nodded toward Martha, who immediately hurried down the hall.

Brian backed across the room as Gordon pummeled Mary’s sternum. After a few moments he stopped, shook his head toward the group now gathered at the doorway with the emergency cart, and looked toward Brian.

“You’ve done it, old buddy. She’s dead.”

Chapter Two

Brian looked down at the pillow clenched in his hands, and then toward Gordon standing by the bed. “Someone killed her,” he said and let the pillow fall.

Gordon glanced down at the pillow and then into his friend’s face. Turning back to the bed, the doctor pulled the sheet over Mary’s face, and gestured toward Martha to close the door against the men huddled in the hallway. “I don’t blame you,” Gordon said as he looked down at the body.

“I didn’t do it.”

“Who saw him with the pillow?”

“Two others,” Martha responded.

“Uh huh. I’ll sign the death certificate as natural causes.”

“Natural!” Initial shock parted before anger. “She was alive a few minutes ago. While I was gone, someone came in here and …”

“She was in pain. We don’t blame you.”

Tears creased an erratic course down Martha’s heavy face as she stood before him with outstretched arms. “She was waiting for you, child. Every day she asked, and I didn’t know what to say. A while ago, when I changed the medication, she smiled for the first time in days and told me how glad she was that you were home. You did it for her. You put her to rest and I thank you, I thank God for what you have done.”

Brian shrank back from the cloying protectiveness of the large woman. “You’re mistaken. You’re both wrong. We didn’t have enough time together … I couldn’t have.”

“You were the only one alone with her,” Gordon said.

“The pillow was over her face when I came back.”

Gordon turned sharply to Martha. “Exactly who saw it?”

“Doctor Williams.”

“I can handle him.”

“An aide. That new black man, Artie Stewart.”

“Do you know him well enough to keep him quiet?”

“Yes, I think so. If not, there are a lot of people on this floor who loved Mary Maston and will help. I don’t think Artie will say anything.”

Gordon paced the room. “Let me think it through. It’s not that unusual, you know. This sort of thing has happened before and will happen again. Now, everyone knew of Mary’s condition, and the chart will verify that she was weak, with the possibility of clinical death at any time. Who’s to say it would be now, or three days from now? It can be kept quiet. By God, it can!”

“Gordon. Someone just killed my mother!”

“We don’t condemn you, we’re with you all the way.”

“We thank you,” Martha said.

“Martha, you attend in here and call the Faulkland Funeral Home. Faulkland all right with you, Brian?”

“Funeral home … yes.”

“Then let’s get the hell out of here. The administrator’s away on some Mickey Mouse convention, and I happen to know he keeps a bottle in his desk. Right now, you look as if you need a drink—a stiff one.”

Brian stood before the window in the downstairs office. He looked vacantly out at the speckled parking lot, and in some far-away, distant place heard liquid pouring from a bottle.

“Bourbon all right with you?”

Looking down at the drink next to his hand, Brian said, “Sure.” He had to take the paper cup in both hands and immediately sit in the swivel chair behind the desk in order to bring the trembling under control. Gordon slouched in a leather divan at the far side of the room with one leg draped over the arm and eyed him speculatively.

“I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve done it. An overdose in the needle, benign neglect with life-support systems. We’re all human, old buddy.”

Brian snapped his head back and rubbed his forehead. “It’s not a moral issue. You don’t have to vindicate me for something I didn’t do.”

“Have it your way.”

“Someone smothered my mother and I want to know who.”

“There are always dozens of people in the halls. When you left me in the lounge, did you go right back to the room?”

“I stopped in the rest room for a few minutes.”

“Then it could have been me.”

Brian glanced up at his friend. “It could have.”

“It wasn’t.” Gordon crumpled the paper cup and threw it toward a corner wastebasket. “Okay. Possibilities: You did it, and as much as you wanted to do it, you found it so damn alien to your nature that you blacked out the process.”

“No.”

Gordon shrugged. “Or someone else who loved your mother very much, and in anguish over her suffering, decided to do it for you. Someone who knew you had seen her, been at her side, and now was the time. Do you know that when Mary was first admitted, dozens of people a day came to visit? I finally had to put a stop to it. She wasn’t up to that sort of socializing. They knew and loved her.”

“And killed her.”

“There’s another word for it. If there was ever a moral case for euthanasia, it was Mary’s. She was suffering, she had no medical possibility of survival. If she’d had more time with you, I’m sure she would have asked you to do it.”

“She was murdered.”

“Damn it all, old buddy! You’re not listening. Maybe under the circumstances, that’s only natural. This has been one hell of a shock. But think about it, Brian. Why would anyone conceivably murder a woman who had only days, if not hours, to live? And why would anyone want to do away with Mary?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Damn right it doesn’t. I ought to give you something, but I hate to mix a tranquilizer with booze.” He filled two more paper cups with bourbon. “Okay, you didn’t do it. I’ll call the cops.”

“I think it deserves an investigation. Are you afraid of scandal in the hospital?”

“That’s unfair. Any investigation around here is going to point in one direction.”

“Right at me.”

“It’s either that, or you come to terms with the fact that a friend did Mary one hell of a favor.”

“I don’t like either alternative.” He swiveled the chair to stare out the window. A stooped man in overalls left the building and hurried across the macadam toward an ancient station wagon parked in a far corner.

The man was his Uncle Lockwood. Brian wanted to speak with his uncle as soon as possible.

Afraid of the condition of his reflexes, Brian drove the Ford toward the house slowly. The massive combination of drinks, grief and utter fatigue had left him numb. The bright summer day had taken on an aura of unreality.

He stopped for a traffic light at the corner by the village green. The surrounding buildings had been designated an historical district, and therefore retained their original facades; and except for the intrusion of motor vehicles, the green looked unchanged from a century ago.

The war monument had been placed in front of the bandstand. As the light changed, and he made his turn parallel to the green, he pulled to the curb and stopped near the monument.

His father’s name was the last listed of World War II dead.

Brian Maston—1944.

There would be no common grave for Mary and Brian senior. Corporal Maston lay on a small atoll in the South Pacific, the victim of a last convulsive suicidal rush by Japanese defenders. He remembered Mary’s anger at town officials when they showed reluctance to add his father’s name to the list. Brian senior had never lived in Tallman, they had pointed out; in fact, during the war, Mary had married and lived away for a number of years. But the fact of four generations of Mary’s family in Tallman had swayed them, and the name had been added.

“He was a laughing man,” she had told him when he asked about his father. “That’s a quality I hope you inherit. You’re too serious, Brian. Now, your father saw humor in everything, even the day we were married. It was that small Congregational Chruch in Mystic that we’ve passed on the way to the aquarium. It was a small wedding, just the minister, his wife and us. Brian kept them in stitches. He was that kind of man.”

She had never remarried, and in fact, Brian couldn’t recall her ever dating anyone. But now she was dead.

Gordon had suggested that Brian might have blacked out or erased the act of killing.

He didn’t think so. Death was all too real to him. The memory of the first man he had lost in Vietnam was still as vivid as the moment it happened. It was during his third patrol, and the platoon had walked a narrow path a few feet above surrounding rice paddies. They never heard the shot, but the young soldier, carrying the radio at his side, had plunged forward with a look of incredulous shock. It was real then, and his mother’s death was real today. No, he hadn’t blacked out. He wasn’t in any fugue state. Gordon and Martha might talk of euthanasia from now to next year, but Mary’s life had been cut short; perhaps only by a day, hours or minutes, but it still had been shortened.

Brian pressed the accelerator and turned toward Ferry Road and the house he had grown up in. It was a low, rambling brown house set on the top of a small knoll above the sparsely traveled road. The sign on the oak in front swung gently as he turned up the drive and stopped in front of the porch that ran along three sides of the rebuilt farm house. Here they had lived, his grandparents, and theirs before them.

He left the car to walk the few steps up the front porch and open the screen door. The heavy interior door was locked. A small sign with orange lettering that read “Sorry—We are Closed” had been stuck in the door glass. He entered the house by an open side door.

“Lockwood, you here?” Brian’s voice echoed through the silence. Shuddering at the dank chill in the rooms, he walked quickly through the house opening windows to dispel the damp. The sitting room, with its overstuffed chairs and crocheted doilies at the headrests, had not changed in the years he had been away. He threw open the door of his mother’s room where a picture on the nightstand smiled in his direction. The young soldier in the photograph was obviously proud of his newly sewn corporal stripes and glistening parachutist’s badge. The grin seemed to divide the face, and Brian had always imagined that after the camera shutter had fallen, the man had tilted his head back to emit long peels of laughter that filled the studio.

Brian closed the bedroom door and walked toward the shop that occupied what had once been the formal sitting and dining rooms of the old house. The antique store was cluttered with hundreds of items on display on shelves that ran the length of each room: collections of dolls, porcelain figurines, glassware and decanters, pewter in various sizes and shapes, and furniture.

He stopped before a chest of drawers that he recognized from Mary’s description of it. “I picked it up at an estate auction,” she had told him during one of her visits to Canada. “Absolutely genuine Connecticut River Valley, middle 1700s. A real find.” He ran his finger along the top and felt accumulated dust.

Lockwood’s carvings filled all the shelves on the far wall. His uncle always carved animals: squirrels, deer, field mice, alone and in groups. A standing six-inch chipmunk, a nut held gingerly in his front paws, cocked his head quizzically. They were exquisitely fashioned carvings with beveled edges that shone under a high lacquer finish.

Leaving the house, Brian walked across the back yard toward the barn. Years ago, through choice rather than any family dispute, Uncle Lockwood had moved his possessions into the barn’s tack room. He had installed a Franklin stove, a cot, and had neatly aligned his carving knives along a workbench under the northerly window.

Brian pushed the tack room door open to find his uncle sitting on a three-legged stool near the window. Lockwood’s gnarled hands gripped a nearly completed figure, as the knife, possessed of a life of its own, made sharp flicking cuts along the grain of the wood. The elderly man didn’t look up as the door creaked shut.

“Uncle Lockwood.” The knife flicks seemed to increase in intensity as the only reaction from the man hunched on the stool. “She’s gone.”

“Do you like it, Brian?” Lockwood placed the completed grouping on the workbench and switched on a hanging light. He observed his creation a moment, and then turned out the light and moved the two carvings slightly to place them in a shaft of sunlight that fell through the dusty window. “Much better in natural light. They didn’t like me carving in the hospital. Something about shavings in the ventilator shafts. I think it’s the best I’ve done.”

As Brian stepped closer to the figurines, he was awed by the anguish in the doe’s face as her body arched over a fallen fawn. The turn of the deer’s head reflected a mother’s torment over the fallen child. It was good—very good. “I think it is, too.”

“I think I’ll have it buried with her.” Lockwood took a fine brush from a rack and began to stir a lacquer mixture.

“Look at me, Lockwood.”

“It takes several coats and twelve hours to dry between each coat. I’ll just have enough time if the funeral’s in three days. That’s the usual thing, isn’t it?”

What a strange island of a person his uncle was. Barely eighteen “months younger than Mary, and yet always considered the youngest child by an indeterminate distance. He had been a withdrawn person since Brian’s earliest memories, one of those rare people able to fold within themselves in contentment. He had been unable to finish school beyond early grammar school, and had what Brian now recognized from his educational background as severe dyslexia. A condition which in those earlier days was diagnosed as retardation.

Brian had spent hundreds of hours with his uncle in this room. As the stove glowed red and wind chortled around the eaves, Brian would read while Lockwood carved. “Take care of your uncle,” she had said. He looked at his charge by the workbench, meticulously lacquering the carving.

“Did you put the pillow on her face?” he asked softly. His uncle continued his careful brushwork. “Did you kill her?” The brush paused as Lockwood gazed out the window toward the meadow. “Will you answer me?”

“Is that what happened? Martha didn’t tell me that.”

“You loved her enough to do it.”

“Mary didn’t ask me to.” Lockwood turned toward Brian, the shadows within the room obscuring his eyes. “I would have if she had asked me.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I should have been here weeks ago.” Lockwood picked up the brush and dipped it in the lacquer. “I’m talking to you.”

“I thought Martha would call. Everything got mixed up. You know I never remember things.”

“What’s Bellchamp?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“During the few minutes I was able to see her, she said she was sorry about Bellchamp.”

“Mary shouldn’t be sorry for anything.”

“Tell me what it means.”

“Bellchamp.” Lockwood’s voice was distant until he turned with a slight smile. “Bellchamp was a puppy dog you had when you were a real little fellow. Couldn’t have been more than four when someone gave you this floppy-eared dog. You sure liked that fellow. Then, one day you were playing in the front, and Mary backed the car over the pup. That’s what she meant, Brian. She was saying she was sorry for hurting your pet.”

It was the longest speech he had ever heard the man give, and yet Brian didn’t believe a word of it. Lockwood finished painting the first coat of lacquer and without a word left the room. Brian watched the hunched man cross the yard, slowly mount the steps and disappear inside the house. He sighed and followed.

Lockwood was whispering on the phone in the hallway, but he hung up quickly when Brian entered the kitchen.

“Who were you calling?”

“Food market. Got hamburger here.” He opened the refrigerator door.

“Fine,” Brian said as he sank into a kitchen chair. He wasn’t sure he was hungry, but couldn’t remember when he had last eaten. He watched Lockwood flip four hamburgers on the grill.

“Coffee?”

“Okay. I didn’t know the markets still delivered.”

“Old customers.”

Brian understood this to mean that, supermarkets or not, a few of the old amenities still existed for lifelong residents of Tallman. There were things to be attended to, but he would put them off until morning. Then he would have to face the funeral arrangements, seeing about his mother’s small estate and making some provisions for Lockwood. He doubted that his uncle had the inclination to keep up the house, so it would have to be put on the market. Perhaps he could locate a small building near a highway, where Lockwood could make and sell his carvings and live in the back. He couldn’t cope with all the decisions tonight—tomorrow.

Burnt hamburgers squeezed between stale bread were served as a car pulled in the drive. Both men paused expectantly as footsteps clattered on the porch. Gordon and Martha entered.

“Can’t leave an unfinished soldier,” Gordon said as he plunked the bourbon on the table.

Martha looked at the scorched meat and shook her head. “Like I expected.” She placed a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken before them. “I’m sorry, hon. I would have made it myself, but I didn’t have time after I left the hospital. The doctor and I stopped at that new place on the highway.”

“Thank you, Martha.”

Gordon located glasses and poured drinks. “Did you know that Martha hadn’t worked private duty in years until she heard Mary was in the hospital?”

“I did what I could. She was my oldest friend and would have done the same for me.”

“Can I talk to you a minute, Brian?” Gordon took him by the arm and steered him out to the porch. “I’ve thought about what you said at the hospital, and I wonder if Lockwood couldn’t have …”

“He says he didn’t.”

“Mary watched over him all these years. He’d do anything she asked.”

“There was something she wanted to say and never had a chance to complete.”

“She was a very methodical person who wanted to get her affairs in order and make arrangements about your uncle.”

“I promised I’d take care of him.”

“Then you’ll be staying?”

“Only until I get things worked out. I hate to even think it, but what about Martha?”

“Out of the question. She’s a registered nurse and your mother’s oldest friend. Good God, they grew up together!”

“All the more reason.”

“She wouldn’t have used a pillow. She has access to the drug cabinet, which would have been more humane. I want to know if you’re going to drop it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your choice. Let’s go inside and finish that drink.”

Martha was holding forth in the kitchen while Lockwood sat whittling at the far end of the table. “And except for those years during the war when Harry and I worked for the Colonel, I guess we saw each other every day, or at least talked on the phone. You remember that, don’t you, Lockwood?” Lockwood nodded. “I remember the first day Mary came back to Tallman with you, Brian. You were a cute little fellow. When was that, Lockwood? Time does fly.”

“Late forties.”

“That’s right. Your granddaddy had just died. That’s when Mary came back and opened the antique store.”

“We had a Studebaker with a pointed nose,” Brian said. “I recall going with her to auctions in Vermont and New Hampshire.”

“I thought you were born here?” Gordon asked.

“Nope. Mother went off to work during the war and met my father. She didn’t come back for a couple of years. I was too young to remember much.”

Martha’s arm went around him. “We want to be with you tonight. We’re your family now. I know your daddy didn’t have any folks, so you think of us as your people.”

“Christ,” Gordon said. “Remember the time we threw snowballs at the windows of the old Baily place and the state troopers got us?”

As the evening progressed, stories of childhood and youth pushed aside the patterns of remorse until Brian found himself immersed in a warm glow of friendship. Mary’s presence seemed to join them as vivid memories of her past recreated her. Even Lockwood, still intent on his carving, smiled and nodded in agreement from time to time.

The inescapable groping hands lifted him and placed him in the cold place with narrow sides that restricted his breathing. For the first time, his mother was in the background in wraithlike form that swirled in the choking mist. He felt her near him, but reached to find her gone. He awoke with a stabbing cry.

Darkness enshrouded the bed under the eaves, but Brian could see morning sun splashed across the floor under the window. He paced the board floor in his bare feet until his breathing returned to normal.

The room of his youth had remained unchanged over the years and still held the treasures of the young. Books, rock posters, pennants and team photographs adorned the walls. The small portable typewriter he had used for years, until she had given him an electric model for college, still sat on the desk. He smiled as he ran his fingers lightly over the keys.

The slanting roof and narrow eaves enclosed the space until the room oppressed him. He dressed quickly in slacks and sport shirt and hurried downstairs, where the aroma of perking coffee filled the kitchen.

With a mug of coffee in one hand, he followed the sound of a woman’s humming to the antique store. Martha Rubinow, with a feather duster in one hand, a rag in the other, was cleaning the cluttered shelves.

“You must have slept here last night.”

“Early riser. It’s really up to you, Brian, but Harry and I know this auctioneer in Cromwell who does a marvelous job. You could send cards to all the dealers and hire this man to sell you out.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I’ll speak to the lawyer about it.”

“I had Lockwood take your mother’s clothing down to the Goodwill box behind the supermarket. I hope that’s all right?”

“Someone should get some use out of them. If there’s anything you want, Martha?” He waved around the room. “Please help yourself.”

“Thank you. There is a locket of your mother’s, not that it’s worth much, but it would be a memento for me to remember her.”

“Please, take it.”

She looked at him with concern. “There’s something you should do today, but if you’d rather not, I’d be glad to …”

“The arrangements.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll do it, and then I had better see the lawyer. Clinton Robinson still handle mother’s affairs?”

“Has for years.”

“Where’s Lockwood?”

“I know he’s back from taking the clothing. He’s probably cleaning out the rest of Mary’s things.”

Brian nodded, finished the coffee and went to his mother’s room. The closet door gaped open to reveal lines of empty coat hangers. Empty bureau drawers were pulled open in skewered steps. The photograph of his father was gone.

He crossed the backyard to the barn and slowly pushed the door to the tack room open. The room was empty. As he walked back toward the house, he smelled autumn in the air. He paused and turned. To the rear, behind the barn beyond the apple orchard, was a small ravine, the bed of an ancient river. A plume of smoke drifted skyward to be dispersed by a westerly breeze.

He walked through the orchard, stepped over a crumbling stone wall and stood on the rise above the shallow ravine.

Lockwood grasped a pitchfork in both hands as he stooped to turn the smoldering fire. The fire burned badly. Papers, books and scrapbooks smoldered darkly rather than burned freely. Lockwood picked up a can of gasoline and poured it over the smoldering mass. The fire blazed up for a few moments and then sank back in a smoky haze.

“What are you doing?”

As Lockwood whirled, the pitchfork angled upward, inches from Brian’s waist. Their eyes met, and his uncle’s cheek muscles worked in rapid spasms. The pitchfork wavered and then fell, impaling its prongs in the ground.

“I thought for a moment there that you were going to stick me. What are you burning? It looks like things from mother’s room.”

“Everything.” Lockwood pulled the pitchfork from the ground and turned to snaggle a burning item and move other things back and forth in a vain attempt to feed the fire.

At the rear of the burning rubble, Brian saw his father’s picture staring up at him as smoke curled the edges. He stepped into the ravine, grabbed the fork from Lockwood and flipped the picture away from the flames. He picked up the frame, felt his fingers burn, and held it by the edge with a handkerchief.

“My father’s picture, too?” he asked, and turned to find that Lockwood had left the ravine and was walking quickly through the orchard toward the house.

Chapter Three

The long, silent line terrified him. Brian walked down the thick carpeting of the center aisle, past the open lids where satin puffed upward. Midway down the display, he paused to shut a coffin lid and run his hand along the smooth surface.

“That’s an attractive model,” the soft voice behind him said. “An excellent mahogany that’s built to last. If you will allow me?” The funeral director opened the coffin and reached under the satin pillow to extract a discreet card carrying the figure $1200. “Serviceability without being ostentatious. I think Mary would have approved.”

Brian visualized her lying in the coffin in her best dress, hands folded primly with the cold, vacant composure of the dead. The image dissolved to be replaced with his own body stretched out in the confined space. Darkness would descend as the lid closed, and the dank smell would permeate the narrow box.

He stepped backward and stumbled against another coffin. His breath came in a choked sob.

“Are you all right, Mr. Maston?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Faulkland. I think that one is just fine.” He turned and almost ran from the room.

The law offices of Clinton Robinson were located in a converted house behind the green, not far from the funeral home. A large white sign nailed to the clapboard wall announced:

CLINTON ROBINSON

ATTORNEY AT LAW

GROUND FLOOR

DUANE WILLIAMS

PODIATRIST

SECOND FLOOR

Until four years ago, Clinton Robinson had been one of Tallman’s most prestigious citizens. Three terms in the state legislature had led to the attorney generalship and eventual appointment to the state supreme court. The day after his wife died, however, Clinton had resigned from the bench and returned to town for a haphazard law practice.

Clinton’s feet knocked three file folders to the floor as he tilted back in an ancient swivel chair and forced his feet up onto the desk. His florid face was dominated by bushy eyebrows and a shock of white hair. He clasped his hands over a food-stained vest that covered a large stomach and looked at Brian with mild interest.

Law books, journals, legal documents and legal pads with scrawled notations were piled in complete disorder on every available surface.

“Have a seat.”

Brian picked up two heavy volumes of Patton on Real Property that occupied the seat of the chair before the desk.

“Throw them on the floor. Heard about your mother. Tragic. Mary and I were in high school together.”

“The services will be tomorrow at eleven.”

“I’ll be there. Wonderful woman, Mary. Wonderful. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to see what I should do about the estate. I assume I’m still executor. There’s bound to be items I should take care of before I leave.”

The swivel chair plunked forward as Clinton rummaged through folders and papers. “File’s here somewhere. Margaret!”

A birdlike woman peeked through the door. “Yes, Mr. Robinson?”

“The Maston file. Why can’t I find anything? If you wouldn’t keep moving things.”

“It’s in the vault, Mr. Robinson.”

“Get it. Get it. Be here in a moment, Brian. Wonderful woman, Margaret. Knows where everything is, invaluable, but wouldn’t tell her that, of course.”

“I am executor?”

“Oh, yes. Your mother named you when you turned twenty-five. Never changed it.”

The secretary reappeared carrying a folder, which she hesitatingly placed in Clinton’s hand. The attorney flipped it open, scowled at the pages for a few minutes, placed glasses on the tip of his nose, scowled some more and then looked up at Brian. “All here.” He flipped over a page. “Yes, pay the usual expenses.” He looked over the top edge of his glasses. “That means the funeral expenses and any other open items. Knowing Mary, there won’t be very many.” He looked back at the document. “A trust fund for Lockwood in the amount of fifty thousand dollars, to be administered by the bank. The principal to go to you on Lockwood’s death. Then the usual residual clause for the balance.”

“What does that mean?”

“All that’s left after the expenses and the trust goes to you or your heirs.”

Brian nodded. “There’s about twenty acres with the house, that must be worth something, and then there’s the inventory from the shop that we can auction. We ought to be able to cover Lockwood’s trust. I assume the estate will be below the taxable limit.”

Clinton took off his glasses, folded the file, tossed it nonchalantly onto the nearest pile and leaned back in the chair. “No problem with the trust, that’s already in the bank. Mary did that before she went into the hospital. Federal and state taxes will nibble. When Mary came in last year we prepared an inventory. Current values will affect that, but you should clear a half a million, not including the house and store.”

“A half a what?”

“Give or take some. Don’t know what the AT&T stock is quoted at today, seems to me it split while she had it. Then there’s legal fees.” He cackled. “We get our pound of flesh.”

“What in the world are you talking about? My mother never had that kind of money. If it weren’t for my father’s insurance and a scholarship, I never could have gone to college. All we ever had was the little she made from the shop and from selling off some of the land.”

Clinton searched for the folder and flipped it to Brian. “Look at the inventory. We hold the stock certificates and property deeds in the vault. Mary didn’t want to spend the money for a safe deposit box. All right here, though, safe as a bug in a rug.”

Incredulously, Brian leafed through the list: AAA corporate stocks and bonds, an office building, the small apartment complex on Route 93 … other items. He looked up at the attorney, who smiled benignly. “And you have all this in your safe?”

“And the deeds. No mortgages, clear as a newborn babe.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not? Your mother had some money from the government when your father died, probably some from her father when he went. Combine that with Yankee frugality and hard-nosed New England business sense and it makes you a wealthy young man.”

“It’s hard to believe.”

“Imagine so. Now, what about your other problems?”

“Sir?”

“Other folks in town think you’re covered by the presidential pardon. We know better, don’t we?”

“I assume you represent me and that we now have a client-attorney relationship?” Brian took Clinton’s snort as an affirmative answer. “I deserted.”

“You were an officer?”

“Yes. ROTC at college. On graduation I was commissioned a second lieutenant.”

“If you were against the war, you should have resigned before you were commissioned.”

“I should have done a lot of things differently. My father was killed in World War II, and it seemed only natural that I should serve.” Brian smiled bitterly. “Then, too, I wasn’t aware of our finances. I was under the impression that I needed financial aid to get through college. The ROTC scholarship helped pay my way.”

“You desert from Benning?”

“No.”

“Ord before you shipped over? We’re not playing twenty questions, you know.”

“Vietnam.”

Clinton rolled his eyes. “A combat zone. And just how did you manage that?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Cut the facetious bit.”

“I was a ranger and had a recon platoon. I walked away and hitched to Saigon.”

“That’s a long way from Canada.”

“A couple of days after I got to Saigon, I found another lieutenant in a bar. He had R&R orders for Hawaii to meet his wife. I slipped the owner of the dump a hundred and they knocked him out with chloral hydrate. I stole his orders, I.D., and caught the plane in his place. In Hawaii I changed to mufti, and caught a commercial flight to the States and slipped across the border.”

“Charming.”

Brian’s body bent forward in anger. “I don’t need any goddamn judgmental remarks out of you, Robinson.”

“Sit down, or do you want to spend the next five years in Leavenworth?” He fumbled for a pad. “Now, you’re telling me that you accepted the government’s money for four years, took a commission, volunteered to become a ranger … did you volunteer for recon?”

“Yes.”

“You volunteered too much, boy.”

“Damn it all! I’ve been editor of the Expatriate magazine for the past five years. My moral position is quite clear.”

“Morality in retrospect is the cheapest kind.”

“Forget it!” Brian reached for the door handle. “Take care of the estate and that’s it.”

“Why’d you desert?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

“Kill anyone?”

“Not that I know of. Hell, I never saw an enemy to kill.”

“Atrocities, kids, old people, things like that?”

“No. All of us weren’t monsters.”

“Then tell me.”

“Am I on the witness stand?”

“Yes.”

There was a whiff of cold musty air as he sank back in the chair. “I didn’t like it over there. I guess I didn’t approve. I know now that I didn’t approve, but I’d made a contract and I had my men to protect as best I could … but I …”

“And what?” The white-haired lawyer’s voice was soft.

“I was all right in the open on patrol. Scared, hell, yes, but I could function. It was during a rocket attack. We were in bunkers at Battalion. I could never sleep in a bunker, but I had to go inside. I felt the whole thing closing in … I … couldn’t stand it underground. I’m a coward, Mr. Robinson. It’s pure and simple and I’ve known it every single day, every hour, since I ran screaming from that damn hole in the ground.”

Clinton tented his fingers and looked at Brian for a long moment. “I’ll see what I can do. The law’s murky right now. Ordinarily, the federal people would pick you up on an outstanding warrant and turn you over to the military.”

“What should I do?”

“After the funeral, get back to Canada as fast as you can. Send me copies of your magazine. I’ll wait until you’re up there and then make my approach to the federal people. We’ll see if we can forge some sort of moral issue out of all this.”

“I’ll go back as soon as I can.”

“They’re not looking hard for you fellows right now, but they might. They just might.”

The Tallman Rod and Gun Club was on the far side of town. Brian parked in the small lot behind the firing positions and sat watching Gordon.

“Pull.” The tall doctor jerked the shotgun to his shoulder, led the clay pigeon and fired. Brian tensed instinctively and clutched the steering wheel. “Pull.” The sequence was repeated as he walked to the firing position.

“They told me at your office that you’d be out here and would buy me a drink.”

“Sun should be over the yardarm, but I think I just blew the yardarm away. Sure, wait until I finish this sequence. Pull.” Brian stepped back as he fired again. “What’s the matter, old buddy?”

“I’ve just discovered that I’m a cowardly half a millionaire.”

“Who the hell wants to be a brave pauper? Hey, hand me the double barrel from the rack. Now you’ll really see some fancy shooting.”

Gordon helfted the .12 gauge and then raised it to his shoulder. “Pull.” Two clay pigeons arched from the pit at different trajectories. The gun fired twice in rapid sequence and both targets disintegrated. Gordon turned with a smile and broke the weapon open to extract two smoking shell casings. “Not bad, huh?”

“I thought your life was supposed to be dedicated to a reverence for life and all that.”

“Reverence? Do you know what I saw this morning at the office? A hemorrhoid, a broken finger, a high blood pressure, one possible gallstone and a very obese lady who thinks she has the plague. Hell, it’s always the same.”

“I like to see a man happy in his work.”

“Dermatology, old buddy. Soon as I get the time and money to get certified—dermatology. Do you know there’s not a skin man in the surrounding six towns? No night calls, no emergency calls—just the old prescription pad and a deal on the side with the pharmacist.”

“Your ethics overwhelm me. Where do we get that drink?”

“I’m meeting someone later at the Farmsworth Inn, where they make a good martini.”

“Meet you there.”

They sat on captain’s chairs hunched over a small oaken table next to a window that overlooked the river below the hill. The martinis were ice cold and mixed to perfection.

“You and I should buy this place,” Gordon said. “Your money and my charm would rake in the profits.”

“I thought dermatology was your new bag.”

“Grab it where you can.”

Brian sipped a martini and plunked the olive. “Do you know something about my mother’s estate that I didn’t know until an hour ago?”

“Your mom was loaded, which makes you loaded.”

“How did you know?”

“Hell, everyone in Tallman knew.”

“I didn’t.”

“You’ve been away. All those years in the boondocks and, before that, army and college. Your mother was one of those sweet old New England ladies with a business mind like a calculator.”

“We never lived like that.”

Gordon threw up his hands in mock horror. “Heavens, no. That would be ostentatious, against all the tenets of the puritan ethic.”

“We always watched pennies.”

“To make dollars. Don’t be naive, Brian. Who was the first kid with his own car?”

“It was four years old.” Gordon shook his head. “Okay, okay. It surprised me, that’s all. Which brings me to other surprises. What in hell is going on with Lockwood and Martha? They act like Dracula is buried in the cellar.”

“Lockwood is scared shitless. Mary took care of him since he was young. His life has been disrupted to the point where he doesn’t know which end is up.”

“I’ll see that he lives the way he wants.”

“Then, for God’s sake, tell him. Reassure the poor bastard.”

“And Martha?”

“She wants to help. Do you know how many sins have been committed with that precept?”

“My nerves have been shot. That may account for it.”

“Unburden yourself about one thing. I’ve talked to everyone involved and there’ll be no repercussions. Button the lip is the word at the hospital. Okay?”

Brian wanted to protest, to call for an investigation, but knew it would find him as the prime suspect, which didn’t take into account the exposure that would give him to the federal authorities. He felt unsure and indecisive.

Gordon signaled to the waiter. “Two more here and the usual for the lady.”

They watched the woman come through the archway and approach the table. She was tall with sandy blond hair pulled back straight in a severe bun that accentuated the lines of her features. She wore a well-tailored pants suit and moved toward them with a lithe grace. They rose from their seats as she reached the table.

“Jan,” Gordon said. “You remember Brian Maston?”

Her smile died as her extended hand was pulled back quickly to her side. “Hello, Brian.”

“It’s been a long time, Jan.”

“Jan was on the night shift for Mary.”

“I want to thank you for all you did.”

“We were all very fond of your mother.”

“Come on, everyone. Let’s not stand here wiggling our fingers,” Gordon said as drinks were served.

Her eyes were the deep gray he remembered. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. She ignored Brian to look levelly at Gordon. “I’ll be up in the room. When you’re ready, Doctor.” She left the lounge without looking in either direction.

“What’s that all about?”

“Concerning you or me?”

“Both.”

“I suspect you are marked lousy in Jan’s book. She married a guy named Jerry Wholly after she was capped. He never made it back from Vietnam.”

“And she knows about my army career?”

“Some of it. At least the part about your being in Canada the past few years.”

“That’s the first half.”

Gordon laughed. “You want I should draw you dirty pictures?”

“The room upstairs.”

“We’ve got a little game of doctor-nurse going.”

“Not terribly discreet.”

“Not very. She certainly wanted you to know about it.”

“Maybe because we once had this football player-cheerleader thing going.”

“Cheerleaders were ‘in’ then.”

“You’re leaving Helen?”

“Can’t afford to. Last year with the big scare over malpractice, I put everything but my soul in her name. She owns me. And besides, I’m not sure Jan wants a permanent arrangement.”

“Sounds cozy.”

“Come on, old buddy. Drink up. I’m not really the bastard I sound. Nothing wrong with me more money wouldn’t cure.”

He swore silent oaths as he pulled into the circular drive. Martha’s Lincoln was parked near the house in front of two other cars. Vaguely familiar women were setting up card tables and aligning place settings on the long porch.

Brian found Martha peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink. “I’m afraid to ask what’s going on.”

“I’m so glad you’re home, Brian. Now don’t worry. We’ve got everything under control for tomorrow.”

“It looks like you’re preparing for a wedding reception.”

“That’s not funny. We have a turkey in the oven and the roast beef is already done. Laureen is bringing that lovely aspic she makes, and I’m doing the potato salad. If you would see to the liquor? That’s a man’s job, don’t you think?”

“Please explain?”

“We’re getting ready for after the services tomorrow. We have to have something to offer people when they stop by. Would you be a good boy and go to the liquor store? You’ll need extra ice cubes, but I brought over plenty of glasses. Do you have enough money?”

“A wake?”

“Really, Brian. That’s Irish Catholic. We are Episcopalians; People stop by after the services, that’s all.”

“A stop by.”

“Yes.”

“Is Lockwood in the barn?”

“I don’t think so. You know how he hates crowds. I think he went for a long walk.”

“Martha, about Lockwood. When mother died, you said he was in the sun room.”

Martha seemed to bend into the sink as far as her bulk would allow. “I think I said that.” She began to slash at the potatoes, reeling off long streaks of peeling.

“And you were the one who told him she was dead?”

“Yes.” Her voice was nearly inaudible.

“How did he react?”

“How would you expect him to react? Shock, upset. He loved Mary, God rest her soul.”

“Did he say anything that would lead you to believe …”

The knife hovered in midair. “Believe what?” Her tone was sharp.

“That he was involved.”

“That’s quite enough, Brian. I do not wish to hear another word about Mary’s death. She’s gone, and nothing will bring her back. Not another word.”

“Martha …”

Her tone softened. “Now, run along like a good boy and get the liquor.”

At the liquor store in the shopping center Brian bought two cases of assorted bottles and one of Löwenbräu. He was loading them in the car trunk when he saw her in the drugstore at the paperback book rack. He slammed the trunk and went into the store to stand behind her.

“Here’s a good title,” he said, reaching over her shoulder to extract a book.

“Your mother told me your field was literature,” Jan said. “She didn’t tell me how rotten your taste was.” She slammed the book back in its place.

“You’ve sent the good doctor home to his wife?”

“Don’t try and make me feel cheap.”

“You can only do that yourself.”

“You’re an arrogant bastard.”

“A French-Canadian lady said the very same thing to me not too long ago. Buy you a drink?”

She turned to look at him with slate eyes. “No, thank you.”

“No one should pass up two offers in one day, not when the last one includes nostalgic talk of old times.” He grasped her firmly by the elbow and led her to the car parked at the curb. She stood impassively by the car as he opened the door. “Come on.” She got in the car and hunched in the far corner to stare fixedly ahead.

He left her in a far booth at the Dew Drop Inn and got two drinks from the bar. “To old times,” he said and clinked glasses with her.

“That was one summer years ago.”

He smiled. “It was a good summer. I’m sorry about your husband. I didn’t know.”

“Would it have made any difference?”

“No.”

“You know, Brian, during our summer together, you never struck me as having such high principles.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

She seemed to soften. “You were afraid of being killed?”

“I was afraid of being smothered and that …” He tried to laugh. “It’s rather complicated and I’d just as soon not go into it again.”

“I knew who you were when I crossed the room this afternoon. All I could think of was that if you hadn’t left, Jerry might have made it back. We only had a year together. The only decent year of my life.”

“The medical profession in Tallman doesn’t seem conducive to peace of mind.”

“Gordon’s told you about gallstones and the boring lot of the family physician.”

“Something like that.”

“He’s a lot of talk. He’s really a fine doctor.”

“I’m sure he is. Are you a good nurse or a bitter one?”

She looked past him and he couldn’t read her eyes. “Sometimes.”

“Which?”

“Both.”

“Would you like to marry Gordon?”

She laughed. “I’m sure he told you about Helen and his money. Do you think I’d marry someone without money?”

“Your husband was wealthy?”

“That was a first marriage and I didn’t know any better. In my widowhood I’ve had time to think. Remember where I used to live?”

“The house trailer down by …”

“The dump. In grade school the kids would come up to me in the playground. ‘Hey, Jan. Saw your father in the street uptown. When you go after him, be careful you don’t step on his fingers.’ When I grew enough to make it interesting for them, they’d pull up by the trailer and honk. No date, no phone call, just a honk. Good ol’ Jan, daughter of the town drunk, she’ll be glad to take a ride up Farnsworth Hill.”

“I never did that.”

“I know. You were the best.”

“What happened to your father?”

“During my last year of training, he drowned in a two-foot puddle. He always did things in a small way. So, you see, the next time around is for the money.”

“Tallman isn’t the place to find them.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I looked out recently and saw that the rainbow seemed to end right over our little town.”

“Do you know who he is, Mrs. Wholly?” They turned to face a wispy man with a drink-creased face standing by the side of the table.

“Pardon?”

“He’s a goddamn draft evader! Listen, buddy. How dare you sit with her? She’s a saint. A veritable saint and Gold Star Mother.”

“Not mother,” Jan replied.

“Or somethin’. And you’re sitting with this jerk. This damn commie pinko. He ought to be run out of town.” The thrown glass of beer spattered against Brian’s face and dribbled down over his chin. The edge of Brian’s hand swooped upward and caught the man across the larynx.

“My God, I’m sorry,” Brian said, as the man did a backward stumble until he hit the far wall and slid to the floor. Breathing in short gasps, the man clutched at his neck with both hands.

Jan moved quickly across the room and knelt by the fallen man. She opened his shirt and applied gentle pressure against his diaphragm until the breathing returned to normal. She turned to Brian.

“Let’s leave now. Please.”

The cemetery was a very old one. Most of the tombstones near the road had been rain-washed for so many years that only by rubbing the tips of your fingers across their smooth surface could the slight indentations of their inscriptions be felt.

The funeral entourage pulled slowly through the front gates and wound toward the open grave near the rear of the property. Cars stopped, doors slammed, and a procession of people moved across the grassy slopes and gathered around the coffin.

Brian stood directly behind the minister with Lockwood and Martha by his side. Jan, Clinton, Gordon and others circled the grave at a respectful distance.

The church on Tallman green had been full. The services had been short, and the graveside ceremony would be even shorter. The day was too bright for his mother to be buried … he had seen so little of her over the past few years … disconnected thoughts floated through Brian’s mind.

Lockwood stared intently at the coffin perched over the grave. “I worked here once,” he said.

“Shh.” Martha put a restraining hand on Lockwood’s shoulder as the priest began the reading.

When the last words had been said, a slight breeze stirred the air, and with a nearly audible sigh, the crowd moved away from the grave toward waiting cars. Brian was alone for a moment, and he looked across the cemetery to see Lockwood at the far side, standing with bent head over a small monument.

His uncle looked up and their eyes met across the sea of stones, and then Lockwood turned abruptly to walk quickly past the waiting limousine toward the rear of the cemetery. Brian knew his uncle would walk the many miles across the fields to the house.

Chapter Four

Cars filled the driveway in front of the house. Brian told the limousine’s solemn driver to let him off under the swinging sign at the oak tree. He trudged reluctantly across the lawn toward the porch, where people stood in clumps with glasses and food plates precariously balanced. Martha’s husband, Harry Rubinow, ferret-faced and out of place dressed in a loud, checkered sports jacket, seemed to dominate the group. The crowd on the porch, like seagulls hovering over the fantail of a ship, listened to his pontifications. Brian had witnessed such tableaux at universities when visiting super-intellectuals dominated cocktail parties, or when men of known wealth voiced opinions on subjects far removed from the secret of their monetary success.

Harry saw Brian on the steps and moved from the throng with outstretched hand. “Condolences, Brian. You know what we all thought of Mary.”

“Thank you, Harry. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate Martha’s help. Her arranging all this.” He waved a hand across the group and hoped his irony wasn’t too apparent.

“Martha’s all heart. Well, guess you won’t be coming down Morris Street to join the Legion, will you?” He broke into a deep laugh that was surprising for his size.

“Not hardly.”

“The old peanut farmer gives the word and the immigration starts back to the land of milk and honey, heh?”

“Something like that.”

“Live and let live; that’s my motto.”

“Good as any.”

“If you need a job, Brian, there’s always room for you in my outfit.”

“That’s kind of you, Harry, but I have a teaching position in Canada.” He wondered briefly what Harry’s ‘outfit’ was. The last he could remember, Martha’s husband had been school custodian. Maybe he needed help in the boiler room, but that wouldn’t account for the hovering sycophants that had surrounded him on the porch.

“Never make big bucks teaching. Let me tell you, things have changed a lot since you went away. Now Martha, she don’t have to work, only went down to the hospital to help with your mom. You change your mind, my office is down at the shopping center.” He winked. “Just might have a couple of sweetheart deals you’d be interested in. Remember that.” He punched Brian affectionately on the shoulder and moved away.

Clinton Robinson stood at the far end of the porch with a plate piled high with food. He ate rapidly while shaking his head in affirmation at a nearby woman. He nodded toward Brian and crossed the porch.

“I hope you’re going to take my advice and leave the country as soon as possible.”

“Is it that imperative?”

“There are a lot of people here that are going to go home, gossip and wonder.”

“Okay, I’ll make reservations and fly out tomorrow. By the way, what accounts for Harry Rubinow’s sudden popularity?”

“Money, and it’s not so sudden.”

“What kind of money?”

“Real estate, and lots of it. It seems that he’d been quietly buying up land for years; then, when the new chemical plant wanted to build out on the north side of town … Harry was waiting.”

“Yankee frugality again?”

“Must be.”

“Will you keep an eye on Lockwood when I go?”

“I’ll add it to my bill.”

Reactions were mixed as Brian made his way through the house. Some of the guests shook his hand solemnly, others stared in open curiosity, while a final group seemed to ignore him studiously. He found Jan in a corner of the sitting room, looking into an un-touched drink.

“Sorry about what happened at the bar yesterday.”

“Wasn’t your fault.”

“Forgive me?”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

Her answer was lost as a group milled around them and she disappeared into the maw of the crowd. In a few minutes Brian found himself alone in a corner with Gordon’s wife, Helen. She was a diminutive woman with bleached-blond hair worn in a large bouffant above the worried crease along her forehead.

“Where’s the good doctor?”

“He had to go back to the hospital after the services. At least today I know one place he isn’t.” She gestured with her head toward the kitchen where Jan was talking to Martha.

“Oh.”

“He told you about that little package of fun and games?”

“Gordon and I haven’t had much chance to talk about anything except mother and so forth.”

“Miss Muffett over there is so forth. You went with her once—is she good in bed? Is she spectacular, hanging from her heels or something?”

“Come on, Helen.”

“What am I supposed to do to compete—suggest an orgy?”

“I know Gordon loves you and the kids very much.”

“Do you, Brian? I could kill the bitch. Let her get her own man.”

“Gordon doesn’t know that you know.”

“You think it would make any difference?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think about it every day. Some days I’m ready to throw down the gauntlet, but then I’m afraid he might pick it up. I don’t know what to do.”

“Give him time.”

She stared into her drink. “Time. I’m not sure how much I have left.”

Before he had a chance to discern the meaning of that cryptic remark, she gave him a little-girl smile and moved away.

Sitting on the edge of his mother’s bed, Brian phoned Air Canada to find he could return the rented car to Boston and catch a 10 A.M. flight. He confirmed the reservation in Howard’s name and turned to see Jan in the doorway.

“You travel under an assumed name?”

“Occasionally.”

“May I ask why?”

“Legal problems.”

She nodded. “Then you’re leaving?”

“In the morning.”

“I think that’s best.”

“Why?”

She walked to the window and looked thoughtfully across the fields. “We might become involved and that wouldn’t be good.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Good-bye.”

“Hey, I haven’t left yet. Why the rush?”

“’Cause I’m leaving. There’s some vibes in the other room that give me the impression that ‘the little woman’ has put the hex on me.”

“She knows about the affair.”

“I’m not surprised. She probably wants me to tattoo a red A on my forehead.”

“Why Gordon?”

She shrugged. “Close daily contact, because he was there, because there’s no available man in twenty miles, or maybe just because he asked me.” She sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette. “I guess it’s over, and just as well.”

“If that makes you a free agent, how about taking a ride with me?”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere away from here for a while.”

“Best offer today. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s the only nonobscene offer today.”

“Let me change my clothes and tell Martha.”

“Not a bad idea. That suit fits you like a sack.”

“You should visit me in Canada and take me shopping.”

“I might take you up on that.”

“Back in a minute.” He took the stairs two at a time up to the small bedroom under the eaves. The cadence of voices and laughter from downstairs rose and fell as he slipped from the ill-fitting suit into slacks and a sport shirt. He stopped in the midst of putting his wallet and keys into a pocket. The room seemed unchanged, and yet something was wrong.

The photograph was gone. The picture of his father that he had salvaged from Lockwood’s fire was missing from the bureau.

He found Martha carving turkey on a cutting board in the kitchen. “Where’s Lockwood?”

“I was just fixing a plate to take out to the barn.”

“I’ll take it.” His voice was harsher than he intended.

“Brian.” Her hand plucked his sleeve. “You’ve got to remember that Lockwood still lives with the days before your mother returned to Tallman. Your grandfather never really understood him, and he had that terrible job and lived in a shack down by the river. I never saw anyone so happy as when your mother went to get him,” she said, heaping large amounts of food on a plate. “He loves you and would do anything for you.” She finished serving and handed him the plate.

“I’ll be leaving in the morning. About cleaning up the house?”

“Now, don’t you worry one bit about that. Harry’s sending some of his maintenance men up here late this afternoon. It’ll be spic and span before night. While you’re gone, I’ll stop in to check on Lockwood every other day or so.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“I’m sorry you have to leave so soon, but it’s probably for the best.”

The tack room was dark. Burlap had been placed over the windows and the light extinguished. Brian set the food plate on the workbench and pulled the cord of the hanging light. Lockwood was huddled on the cot with a blanket pulled to his neck. The naked bulb swung above the workbench, casting alternating swatches of light and shadow on the frightened face.

“Why’d you take it?”

“I’ll leave if you want. You won’t have to fool with me.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Brian felt compassion for this man who lived a solitary, lonely life in a portion of a barn. His uncle’s feelings of love and grief had to be transmitted from his fingers to small pieces of wood … and yet his recent actions were inexplicable.

“The picture of my father, what did you do with it?”

“Leave me alone.”

Brian grasped the edge of the blanket and ripped it from the cot to reveal Lockwood fully dressed. “You always nap like that?” His uncle’s face turned toward him with a gaping mouth that dribbled a thin string of saliva. “Oh, Christ, Lockwood! What are we doing?” Brian was denuded of anger, and he sat heavily on the work stool.

“Are you going to hurt me, Brian?”

“No, Lockwood,” he said softly. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. My picture is gone, and it was all I had left.” He was so very tired. He wondered if it were possible that Lockwood’s grief could not be assuaged through his carvings so that he felt some innate need to obliterate Mary’s existence.

Lockwood sat up and looked toward him fearfully. “You want me to leave, Brian? I don’t have many things and could go in the morning.”

Brian shook his head and sat next to his uncle. “No, I want you to stay. Listen to me carefully. I have to go back to Canada in the morning, but Martha and Clinton Robinson are going to look after you. You can stay on here, and every month the bank will send you a check. When I can return, in a month or two, we’ll find a shop near the highway with a place to sell the animals and a small apartment where you can live.”

Lockwood brightened. “I’d like that.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, but I wanted the picture of my father back. It’s important to me.”

“We’re still friends?”

“Of course.”

“You really want the picture?”

“Very much.”

“I was going to burn it.”

“I’d really like it back,” Brian said softly.

Lockwood climbed onto the end of the workbench and felt along a beam near the ceiling. “I hollowed out a secret place.” He fumbled along the top of the beam and then jumped from the bench with the picture in his hand. He handed it to Brian. “I hope I didn’t hurt it.”

Brian unfurled the photograph. The paper had cracked to make the smiling man’s grin wider than before. “Why?”

Lockwood sat on the stool with the plate on his lap. “I’m hungry. Later we can talk about my new shop, huh, Brian?”

Brian took the photograph back to his room and put it in the spot under the eaves where he had once stored secret things. Going back downstairs, he found Jan standing on the front steps looking out over the mass of cars in the drive.

“I’ll never get my car out,” he said.

“I’ll drive.”

They went to her red Corvette which was parked off the side of the road below the house. Jan drove with a competent abandon, accelerating to the maximum speed the winding roads would allow. Brian watched her intent features as she gripped the wheel with both hands.

“You always drive this fast?”

The car slowed as she immediately decreased the pressure on the accelerator. “Only sometimes.”

“I had to get out of there. Christ.”

“You’ve been away too long. It’s never the same.”

“It’s more than that. I feel like I’m getting ready to run again. I’ve done a lot of that in the past few years. I’ve run out of bunkers, countries and bottles. Jesus, I’m not completing anything. I never got to say good-bye to my mother, and my relations with people in Canada leave something to be desired. Do you know that I completed my course work for my master’s four years ago and haven’t been able to finish the thesis?”

“Leaving Tallman tomorrow isn’t running, it’s prudent.”

“I’m having second thoughts about leaving.”

“Don’t!” The car swerved into the far lane and nearly collided with a pickup truck. The truck’s horn screeched in Doppler effect as it passed harmlessly to the rear.

“I don’t want to stay here dead.”

“Sorry. What you’re really saying is something I’ve seen a dozen times at the hospital when someone dies. Friends and relatives can’t assimilate it. They don’t want to let go.”

“Yes, I know what you mean, but they don’t have eccentric uncles and unanswered questions.”

“There aren’t any questions.”

The speed of the car increased again, but this time her full attention was focused on the road ahead. They drove in silence, with only the rise and fall of the engine providing a background for their thoughts. She avoided major arteries, driving over a haphazard pattern of country roads. The road, speckled with sun through overhanging branches, began to have a soothing effect, and Brian felt his taut nerves begin to calm.

“Friends?” he asked.

“Maybe.” She pretended to pout. “If you get me something to eat. You dragged me away from all Martha’s food, and I’m starved.”

“How about a picnic?”

“Anything, as long as it’s not raw.”

“I know a place not far from here.”

“A secret place?”

“Of course.”

They stopped at a general store with a delicatessen counter and purchased sliced roast beef and turkey breast. A nearby liquor store had chilled wine. After they loaded the car, Brian drove. “It’s only a few miles from here. As a kid I used to bike up here to go fly-fishing.”

He turned into a rutted road and drove for two miles before veering off on an ancient logging trail. The car jounced over the narrow way for a quarter of a mile before it widened sufficiently for him to pull off and park. “Almost there.” He led her by the hand along an overgrown trail until they came to a small rushing river. Further along the river bank, the stream widened where a beaver dam eddied the water into a circular pool. Hanging strands from a willow tree brushed the surface of the water, and a gently rising hummock rose from the water’s edge to enfold the base of the tree.

“It’s a lovely place,” she said.

Brian put the food and wine on the grass and leaned back against the tree trunk. Jan stood at the lip of the water to stare down into the reflection of the willow and scudding clouds.

“I’d like to swim. Promise you’ll close your eyes?”

“Promise.” He put his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. He heard a faint slithering of clothing zippers followed by a splash. When he sat up, he saw her in the center of the pool, treading water with easy strokes. He began to unbutton his shirt.

“Hey, you know something?”

She turned to face him with a smile. “What?”

“The water’s clear as glass to the bottom.”

She laughed as he arched into the water.

They lay back on the grass under the tree after having made love. Brian bent over and kissed her lightly as she ran her fingers over his face. “Your mother said you’d grown a beard. I think I’d like you with a beard.”

He kissed her again. “I’ll never shave again.”

“Know something? I’m still hungry.”

They opened wine and ate chunks of turkey breast and sliced roast beef on pumpernickel bread.

When they left, Brian drove and Jan lay back in the seat with closed eyes, her head nestled against him. He felt slightly guilty that the peace of the afternoon and the warm woman next to him had erased his concerns.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” she said softly, without opening her eyes.

“Most anything.”

“If you go back to Canada tomorrow, I’ll go with you without any commitment on your part. What I mean is, I’ll be your old lady, or whatever the hell they call it nowadays. We’ll take a pup tent and canoe into the Canadian woods and swim in lots of pools.” She stopped for his answer.

“If you still feel this way in a couple of days.”

“No couple of days—tomorrow.”

“I’m not leaving yet.”

“You’ll only get yourself in trouble.”

“You may be right.” He checked the rearview mirror again and made a sharp turn. “I think we’re being followed.”

She turned in the seat to look back as he made another turn. “You could be right. He made the turn, too.”

“He’s been behind us for the past ten minutes. Let’s see if we can lose him.” The sports car sprang ahead as he floored the accelerator.

Jan leaned forward with shining eyes and parted lips as she clenched the dashboard in excitement. “Faster, downshift on the turns!”

The following car stayed a set distance behind as they approached the outskirts of Tallman. Their evasive maneuvers and turns had been unsuccessful in losing the pursuer. On a final impulse, Brian turned up the steep road of Farnsworth Hill. The area was pockmarked with cul-de-sacs and dead-end roads, which might allow them to be temporarily out of sight. When the other car’s headlights were momentarily lost from view, Brian slammed the car into a right-angle turn, made another quick right into the deep shadows of overhanging trees and killed the lights and engine. They sat quietly as the other car continued up the road and was lost from view. In a few minutes it slowly backtracked, sweeping a spotlight over the right of way, and then it was gone.

“Who was it?” she asked.

“Damned if I know.”

“See what I mean? Let’s leave now. Get back to Route 95 and head due north to Canada.”

“In a few days.”

“Tonight.”

He put his finger over her lips and shook his head as they started down the hill toward Ferry Road. “It won’t be long.”

“I want to pretend. To make believe that the last few years hadn’t happened, that there never was a marriage to Jerry, that Gordon’s still a sarcastic kid in college, and you’ve come back for me.”

“If a dream is worth anything, it’ll survive two or three days.”

“I’m not sure I’m up to waiting anymore.”

“Gordon haunting you?”

“Lord, no. It’s just that I’m not going to live my life like I did as a kid, always waiting, wondering if he’d come home. Or, when I was married to Jerry, waiting for him to come home, until one day he didn’t. I don’t know that I can sit in Tallman and worry about you.”

He parked on the road by the house. “My luck will hold.”

“Will it?” She slipped into the driver’s seat as he got out and threw the car in gear. A squeal of tires quickly took her from sight.

Feeling a sheen of depression, he watched her leave. The montage of the day’s events clicked by in rapid succession—the cemetery, Lockwood on the cot, the woman in the pool and a persistent following car. He turned toward the house with resignation.

The headlights of the car parked by the porch flicked on to bracket him in their glare. Car doors slammed, and two men, one in a police uniform, the other in a business suit, walked warily along the edge of light toward him.

“Lieutenant Brian Maston,” the man in the suit said.

“Oh, shit,” Brian replied.

Chapter Five

Their uncommunicative and noncommittal attitudes reduced him to a nonperson. The marshall on the rear seat by his side studiously looked out the window at darkened homes, while the driver glanced periodically into the rearview mirror, as if he were checking on the security of inanimate cargo.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll be booked in Tallman.”

He held out his cuffed hands. “These aren’t necessary.”

The marshall glanced down at the handcuffs. “Regulations.” He looked at Brian with the first sign of interest. “You really do it?”

“Yes, I deserted.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Tallman’s police station was a new structure of brick with modernistic features topped by a large pyramid skylight. They parked by a side door and led Brian inside to a small interrogation room. “What happens now?” he asked the business suit.

“We’ll notify the military police to pick you up. That’s if the state doesn’t put a detainer on you.”

“That’s really great. How did you guys know I was home?”

The agent disappeared around a corner without answering and was replaced by a uniformed officer, who led him to another room for fingerprinting and photographs. Brian went through the routine in a dispassionate state, only vaguely hearing a phone ring in the distance. They let him use the phone after he washed the ink from his fingers.

Clinton Robinson answered with a snort on the seventh ring.

“They’ve picked me up on the desertion charge.”

“Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I tried to get you this afternoon. Information has come my way that the state’s attorney was preparing a warrant. Get a good night’s sleep. I know where you are and will try and have you out in the morning.”

“Thanks a lot,” Brian said into the dead telephone.

The patrolman beckoned to him. “This way, Lieutenant Maston.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Say what?”

They led him to the chief’s office where Willie Dockery sat behind a cleared desk flanked by rows of civic awards. He grasped Brian’s hand warmly. It jolted him to realize that Willie had been a year behind him in school, and at that time was known as “the runt.” His stature had not increased, although his girth had, considerably.

“Sorry to see you here, Brian. I was at the funeral, you know.”

“There were so many, Willie. It was hard to recognize everyone.”

“Yep, there really were. They read you your rights?”

“Out at the house. I understand the military will get me in the morning.”

“Didn’t they tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“The state of Connecticut gets you first. You’re ours.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“Murder. Not that I don’t sympathize. The prosecutor will probably reduce it to manslaughter when you’re bound over.”

“Who did I kill?”

“Your mother, of course.”

The steps of the officers by his side rang in unison as they walked down the polished hallway. They stopped in front of the cell and swung the barred door open. The cop on his right gestured with his thumb as Brian stood motionless before the small detaining cell. It was immaculately clean with polished floor and recently painted walls. The single bunk was made up with starched sheets and had two neatly folded blankets at the foot. But Brian was unable to move from the corridor.

“Inside, Lieutenant.”

“I’ll wait in the interrogation room, my attorney will be …”

“I don’t believe we offered you a choice, sir. We’ll come get you as soon as he arrives.” There was a tinge of sarcasm in the officer’s voice.

“I’ll wait in the hall.”

“Inside, buster.” They grabbed his arms and shoved him inside and locked the door: He heard their intermittent laughter as they retreated down the hall.

Light from the hall cast a glow across part of the narrow cell. He sat on the edge of the bunk with his head in his hands, trying to ward off his claustrophobia.

It came as he knew it would.

First, the cold musty smell that made him shiver and hold his arms tightly against his body. He stretched out on the bunk and pulled a blanket across his body. The cold permeated his very being. He stared into the blackness overhead and felt the walls begin to move slowly toward him. It was an irrational fear. He must hold to the roots of reality to keep his sense of place and time intact. He knew where he was and what was happening, and yet the walls still moved closer. He concentrated on the earlier part of the day. He thought of Jan’s long, smooth body arching into the clear water. He looked up toward the overhanging willow tree and beyond to the sky.

The thoughts dissipated in overwhelming fear, and he jackknifed from the bunk to grasp the cool metal of the door bars. “Somebody! Somebody come here! Come get me!”

The corridor door opened, and footsteps came down the hall until an older officer stood before him with a scowl. “I got the dispatch tonight, Maston, and I’m busy. What is it?”

“Get me out of here!” He peered at the name tag on the police officer’s breast. “Officer Martin, I have to get out of here.”

“Nothing I can do about that until we release you to the county jail in the morning.”

“I give you my word.”

“Mister, you’re in the goddamn slammer. For the present, your word means duck butter.” He turned and left.

Brian clenched the bars as he yelled down the corridor.

An hour later, the cell was a shambles. He huddled in the corner with low moans as Gordon Cherny was admitted to the cell. He stood over Brian with his bag held loosely in one hand.

“He’s flipped out, Doc Cherny. Mad as a hatter.”

Gordon spoke in a low voice as he knelt and felt for a pulse. “What’s the matter, old buddy?”

With a lunge, Brian was off the floor and through the cell door. He careened off a man in the hallway and ran down the corridor to wrench at the locked door. He began to pound on the wire-enforced glass.

“Grab him!” yelled a voice behind him. He was grasped by strong arms and pushed face down against the tile wall. A hypodermic needle penetrated the flesh by his bicep. They turned him as he sagged toward the floor. He lay on the floor, his eyes going out of focus as Gordon’s hand rested against his forehead.

“You aren’t going anywhere, old buddy. Not anywhere at all.”

He awoke with a start to see the bars. His body stiffened as a hand shook his shoulder. “Your lawyer’s here.”

An officer’s hand grasped his elbow as he swung stiffly out the door and down the hall, toward a small room containing a table and two chairs. Clinton Robinson puffed on a cigar and overflowed the chair as he gestured toward Brian.

“I can’t make it in here, Clinton. I went berserk last night and Gordon had to give me a shot.”

“Heard about that.” He opened a cracked briefcase, rummaged through it for a moment and finally extracted several legal forms, which he shoved across the table. “Sign.”

“What are they?”

“Under the circumstances, the prosecutor has agreed to release you on your own recognizance on the manslaughter charge.”

“Then it’s not murder?”

“Manslaughter’s bad enough. Sign.”

“What’s the other?”

“Property pledges for the federal people. Federal attorney down in New Haven happens to be a former law clerk of mine. He’s agreed to honor my writ for your release pending a hearing. Now sign, and let’s get over to my office.”

They walked across the green to the office, where coffee was waiting for Brian and Clinton answered two phone messages. Brian waited until the secretary left the office and the phone calls were complete before carefully putting down the coffee cup and leaning toward Clinton.

“I think I know the rest of the scenario.”

Clinton stopped rummaging through the stack of folders. He saw Brian’s anger and leaned back in his chair. “Good. That will save me a good deal of time.”

“I’ve begun to put things together.”

“I’d say it’s about time.”

“And it all adds up. Someone cut my mother’s life short, and the same person is panting to get me out of Tallman. The same individual turned me in to the authorities, and now that goddamn someone is going to advise me, for my own good, to get the hell back to Canada.”

“I think that’s called jumping bail.”

“Shall I continue?”

“You’re paying for the time.”

“And the only person in this town who could possibly benefit by that sequence of events is you, counselor.”

“My fees will be adequate.”

“I imagine they already have been. How much have you milked from my mother’s estate? As a matter of curiosity, is there anything left?”

Clinton Robinson’s smile caused one eyebrow to rise high above the other. “All those deeds, trust agreements and stock certificates are in my vault.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a nonexistent vault.”

“The safe is quite real.”

“You made your mistake in telling me the size of the estate. I might have never known. Or would I? There are probably ways to track down the assets and how they were they were disposed of.”

“Complaints of this nature are usually made to the district probate judge.”

“Who’s that?”

“Me.”

“Jesus, you’ve got a real lock.”

“Absolutely. Although the truth of the matter is that I haven’t raped any estates in weeks and weeks.”

“I’ll bet.”

“If I were to take the time, and had the inclination, I could develop an intense dislike for you, my boy. It has also occurred to me that the strange gods of life, had they moved in slightly different directions, could have made you my son. That is a possibility I do not care to dwell on.” He moved to the door in a lithe movement that startled Brian. “Come on!” He yelled out the door. “Margaret. Open the vault, Margaret.”

The safe was a large concrete box affair in the cellar of the building. It had a heavy steel door, and the interior was lined with file cabinets.

“You know I can’t go in there.”

“Then perhaps you’ll never know.”

“You bastard! What kind of game are you playing?”

Clinton Robinson looked at him for a long moment before yelling for Margaret. “Get the whole Maston file and bring it to my office.”

Half an hour of checking property deeds, bonds and stock certificates proved that Clinton’s estimate had been incorrect—it had been fifty thousand too low. The last debit from the estate had been the establishment of Lockwood’s trust. Brian closed the last of the folders and looked sheepishly toward the scowling attorney. “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“You deserve my apology. I lost my temper and wanted you to verify every last deed and certificate in the vault … neglecting your problem with confined places.”

“It doesn’t matter now. I counted. It’s all there.”

“Fine, no further chastisement is necessary, as my fees will reflect the situation accordingly.”

Brian smiled. “I thought they might.”

Clinton tented his fingers and examined the ceiling. “Your exhibition of last night could be useful.”

“Temporary insanity? No way.”

“You have a better defense?”

“Yes. I didn’t do it.”

“Then someone else did. Care to speculate?”

“The same person who turned me in. Any idea who called the authorities?”

“A confidential, anonymous tipster.”

“Male or female?”

“They won’t even reveal the gender.”

“Martha, Jan, Gordon or yourself. Who else knows the situation?”

“You’re doing the speculating.”

“It would require motive. Since you evidently haven’t milked the estate, that rules you out.”

“Nice of you to say that.”

“God only knows, I can’t see any possible motive for Gordon or Martha.”

“Jan works at the hospital and would know those details. Did she know about your army difficulties?”

“I told her myself. You know her husband was killed in ’Nam.”

“Then again, hospitals are like most other institutions—fertile with gossip. Any number of people could have called about your mother; then, when they began to investigate and looked into your background …” The chair creaked forward as the search for a legal pad began. “Let’s get all the details.”

She wore a checkered bandana wound over her head, a brief halter and skimpy shorts. She looked at him blankly, until a frown crossed her forehead and she slowly shook her head.

“Can I come in?”

Jan shook her head again. “I’d rather you didn’t,” she said, but stepped aside as he pushed past her into the living room. At a momentary loss where to begin, he carefully examined the small room as if to discern some revealing fact of her personality. Nothing was indicated by the antiseptic room with its minimal furnishings. She leaned against the living-room archway in quiet resignation. “What do you want?”

“You called them.”

“Called who?”

“The police. About me.”

“Why would I do that?”

The frustration of the past day welled up to form a knot of anger that made him pull her away from the wall by the shoulder. “Because of Jerry!”

“Jerry’s dead, and take your hands off me.” She pushed him away and sat on the edge of the couch to light a cigarette and regain her composure. “Jerry’s gone, and what happened between us at the lake was an accident. I was weak, but now I’ve had time to think … and one of the things I’ve thought about is that I’m not going to be a part of any massive game of paranoia.”

“It had to be you.”

She stubbed the cigarette out in an immaculately clean ash-tray and gave him a push toward the front door. “Go on, please leave.”

He saw no feeling in her eyes as he put his arms around her. “Jan …”

“Don’t.” Her anger was lost.

“Yes.”

Her warmth became part of him as they pressed together. The rigidity of her body gradually turned to a sensual tension, as her arms went around his neck and she pressed deeply against him.

“It wasn’t you?”

“No … oh, Brian … oh, Jesus.”

Brian awoke to find her bent over him, her hair trailing along the edge of his cheek. “You were dreaming.”

“I lose more girls that way.”

Jan kissed him. “Want a drink or something?”

“What time is it?”

“Three. I have to be at work soon.”

“I’ll take you.”

“You have a date.” She bounced from bed and into the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and heard the shower through the partly open door. As the last tendrils of the dream left, he wondered if recent tension caused the constant repetition of the nightmare. In times past, it had come only spasmodically, but in recent days it had been a constant feature of any sleep.

She called through the door as the shower stopped. “Have you seen your uncle today?”

“No. You might say that recently I’ve been detained.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

He stood in the bathroom door and watched her dry herself with a large terry-cloth towel. “You’re very attractive.”

“You’re embarrassing me, but I like the compliments afterwards. Somehow they seem to mean more.”

“Why do you ask about Lockwood?”

“While you were sleeping, I began to think about how strange he behaved during Mary’s illness. He became very agitated and would constantly come over to the nurses’ station and tell me how much pain she was in, and ask if he could do something. One night he was so upset, I thought I was going to have to ask him to leave.”

“He told me he didn’t do it.”

“You haven’t spent much time with him in the past few years. How close are you?”

“When I was a kid, I’d spend hours in the barn with him. But that was years ago.”

“Then he could lie to you?”

“I should probably check on him anyway. Maybe he’s calmed down enough to reveal something. Would you mind if we stopped by the house on the way to the hospital?”

She pecked him on the cheek as she bustled past him into the bedroom. “Fine, but don’t you think you should put some clothes on first?”

The door was slightly ajar as Brian crossed the yard and pushed it completely open. He stood in the entrance to the tack room, unable to assimilate what he saw. The three-legged stool lay on its side a short distance from the dangling feet above the floor. The rope around Lockwood’s neck was looped over the rafters.

“Oh, my God,” Jan said.

Chapter Six

Jan leaned over the limp body they had placed on the cot and felt for a pulse or heartbeat. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. He’s been dead for over an hour, maybe two.”

“I never appreciated what he was going through.”

“It answers the question about your mother, but don’t blame yourself. He couldn’t live with it.”

He turned from the body to examine the room. A pile of shavings lay in a half-circle around the overturned stool, and a can of lacquer had tipped over to run across a completed carving. Brian’s old portable typewriter, which had been in the room under the eaves yesterday, was on the far end of the workbench with a paper wound around the platen. He tilted the paper forward to read the short message.

“Brian—I know you don’t want me here and I got no place to go.”

“I think we had better call the police.”

“Yes,” she replied. “The medical examiner will have to take a look at him before he’s moved.”

“Not only that. Lockwood’s been murdered.”

Brian watched from the kitchen as the blanket-covered body on the stretcher was rolled from the barn and levered up to the bed of the ambulance. The vehicle left slowly, but still remaining were Tallman police cruisers, several state police cars and a large Olds with M.D. plates.

Willie Dockery, carrying a large acetate envelope, entered the kitchen and accepted a cup of coffee from Jan. “If it makes you feel any better, we got lots of help out there—not only my guys, but the M.E. and state forensic people. Let me tell you, they’re going over the whole place with a fine-toothed comb. The way we see it, he stood on that stool, threw the rope over the rafter and kicked off,” He sipped on his coffee with obvious pleasure.

“That’s the way it’s supposed to look.”

“Right. The state print boys took a preliminary dusting from the note.” He waved the acetate envelope in the air. “And they seem to match your uncle’s. ’Course that’s a preliminary opinion.”

“He didn’t kill himself.”

“Now, Brian. We’ve all known your uncle since we were kids. What I mean is, he sometimes used to wander around town and we all saw him. He was, like they say, eccentric. And we all know how upset he was over Mary’s death … and with your not being here and maybe going to jail … it seems pretty logical.”

“Lockwood could not read or write.”

“Everybody in Connecticut reads and writes.”

“Not Lockwood. For God’s sake, I grew up here. I saw the man every day of my life until I went off to college.”

Willie shook his head. “Exactly right. And after college you went in the army and then to Canada. You haven’t been home for ten years. There was a note in the typewriter typed by your uncle. Hell, he might have taken one of those adult-education courses. Lots of people learn enough reading and writing to get by.”

“Lockwood had a severe case of dyslexia.”

“Well, now I know a little bit about that. I got a boy going into the fourth grade, and he’s had trouble learning to read. With the new methods they have now, they do wonders.”

“My mother would have told me.”

“Maybe she knew she was sick and wanted Lockwood to be self-sufficient before she died.… Doesn’t that make sense?”

Brian stared into his coffee. “I suppose.”

“You’re upset over the arrest. I’ve seen it happen before; the family refuses to admit to the possibility of suicide. They just can’t accept it, but they come around. Happens in the best of families. Tragic, but a fact of life.”

“And that’s the way you’re leaving it?”

“That’s the way the M.E.’s going to write it up. Well, we got to finish up and leave.” Willie stood by the window with his mouth agape. “My God, Jesus H. Christ, would you look at that!”

Brian and Jan crowded to the window as a car swerved over the lawn, barely passing between two parked police cruisers. It seemed to be on a direct trajectory for the barn door until the last moment when it swiveled into a bootlegger’s turn and stalled.

Irate policemen raised fists in anger. “What am I going to do with that crazy son of a bitch?” Willie said. “Can you imagine me trying to arrest him in this town?” They watched Clinton Robinson slide his bulk ponderously from the car and, oblivious to angry officers, lumber through the barn door. “Now, where in hell is he going?” Willie yelled through the screen door. “He can’t go in there! That’s sealed property.” The door slammed shut as he ran across the yard.

Clinton and Willie stood arguing before the barn. The words were inaudible, but Willie’s gestures were obvious. Clinton shook a finger in the police chief’s face, until Willie turned and tore the police sign from the barn door.

Clinton sat at the kitchen table and looked disdainfully at the coffee. “I will not ask who dredged this up. Making good coffee is rapidly becoming a lost art.”

“Are you charging for the time?”

“My usual rate.”

“Then, for God’s sake, let’s not discuss the coffee.”

“Impatience destroys reflection, my boy.”

“He didn’t kill himself. I’m positive that Lockwood did not climb up on the stool and loop a rope around his neck. Did you see the note?”

“Briefly, before our local constable saw fit to leave.”

“Lockwood could not read or write,” Brian said.

“He might have learned enough to hunt and peck a short message,” Jan said.

“Doubtful,” Clinton said.

“How’s that?”

“When Mary set up the trust, they both came to my office to sign the final papers. Lockwood could not read any of the documents and could only partially complete his own name. Did you tell Willie about this?”

“He didn’t believe me.”

“Perhaps just as well.”

“How’s that?”

“With Lockwood dead, his trust reverts to you. I really don’t care to defend you on two murder charges.” He lumbered toward the screen door. “Let’s take another look at that room.”

The police had removed the rope, stool and typewriter from the tack room. The spilled lacquer had dried in uneven coats around the carving. It bothered Brian that his uncle’s last piece of work had been desecrated. Or was it the last? There was still a small circle of shavings where the milk stool had stood. He envisioned his uncle straddling the stool, delicately fashioning a small block of wood. He began to search the room for a finished or partially completed carving.

“What are you looking for?” Clinton asked.

“I think he was carving something. It might mean something.”

They searched the room without success, until Brian stood on the workbench and felt along the ceiling rafter toward Lockwood’s secret place. His fingers grasped a small carving in the hollowed-out beam.

“What is it?”

“A puppy. An unfinished puppy.” Brian turned the carving over in his hand. The knife cuts were rough, but the shape and attitude of the finished animal were apparent. “Bellchamp,” he said softly.

“What’s that?”

“It was the last thing my mother said to me. ‘I’m sorry about Bellchamp.’ Afterwards, when I asked Lockwood about it, he told me she was referring to a small dog of mine that she accidentally killed.” He stuck the carving in his pocket, still wondering over its significance.

“I’ve seen enough,” Clinton said, and the others followed him outside and over to the large oak that dominated the yard. He leaned against the trunk with half-closed eyes. “We must proceed on the assumption that everything that’s happened is somehow interrelated. There’s a cohesive plan here, although for the life of me I can’t discern why. In the meanwhile, a little prevention is in order.”

“How?”

“You should not stay here, Brian. Go to a friend’s or a motel in another part of the state.”

“I haven’t lived here in years. Gordon and the Rubinows are the only people I know.”

“You can stay with me,” Jan said. “That is, if you’ll take me to work and pick me up afterwards.”

“I’ll do that,” Brian said, “but there’s a stop I want to make.”

The Rubinow house was a long ranch on a double lot near the center of town. A brick veneer reached to window level, while a grouping of white iron chairs and a table were centered on the closely cropped front lawn. Brian parked in the drive and crossed the asphalt to the side door.

Martha Rubinow was on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. She grunted and struggled to her feet when Brian knocked on the windowpane. She walked splayfooted toward the door, with a frown that changed to a smile when she recognized him.

“Brian! Come in and let me fix you something to eat.”

“No, thank you, Martha.”

“Coffee and cookies, then?” She ushered him to the kitchen table and bustled through cabinets, until a heaping plate of Toll House cookies sat before him. “Harry will be home in a few minutes and the three of us can have dinner.”

“Lockwood’s dead.”

A cup fell to the floor and shattered into a dozen shards. Martha stared at the broken fragments without comprehension for a long while. Finally she began automatically to pick up each sliver. Brian watched the silent ritual as she placed the broken glass in the garbage, and swept and mopped that portion of the floor. Her breath came in short, cooing gasps until her obsessive cleaning was complete.

“You must leave Tallman, Brian.”

“They say he killed himself and left a typed message for me, but you and I know that’s not possible.”

“I knew it. I knew it from the moment she told me what she was going to do. It won’t stop until we’re all dead.”

“If I’m going to be killed, I want to know why.” He held her by the wrists.

“No.” It was a long, anguished cry. “Please go away.”

“My mother was going to tell me about Bellchamp.”

Martha’s head swayed back as if she had been struck. “Don’t ever say that again, or he will kill you.” She began to cry. “Mary was my best friend, and when you’re my age that can’t be replaced. She was so proud of you. She hated your living in Canada and not being able to come home, but—”

“Martha! I want to know.”

She dabbed her eyes with a tiny lace handkerchief and poured a cup of coffee from the electric percolator. “You haven’t touched a cookie. You can take them home with you, if you’d like.” She held the cup of coffee over the sink and poured it down the drain. “You must go before Harry comes home and hears what you’ve been saying.”

“Harry hears what?” said the robust voice from the doorway as Harry Rubinow entered. “You pouring good coffee out, Martha?”

“Lockwood’s dead,” Martha said.

Harry’s smile vanished as he stiffened. “What happened?”

“He was murdered like my mother,” Brian said.

“My God, my God, it’s beginning.” One of Harry’s hands repeatedly brushed the side of his face, as if to dispel imaginary cobwebs. “You know what we have to do, Martha. We talked about it after Mary … We’ve got to do it quickly.”

“I think it’s about time I had some answers from both of you.”

“There’ll be no answers or questions,” Harry said. His voice sharpened as he told his wife, “Get going.”

Brian grabbed Martha’s arm as she started from the room. “I mean now!”

“You have to leave.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

Harry disappeared into the hallway and returned with an ancient .12 gauge shotgun. He levered back the hammers and pointed it at Brian. “Get out of here!”

“We don’t want to hurt you. We wouldn’t do that for the world, unless you make us,” Martha said.

“Just get the hell out,” Harry said as the gun barrel wavered in a nervous circle.

Brian drove aimlessly, feeling that the world had spun off in a strange direction that had no relation to physical laws. After his forcible removal from the Rubinow’s, he had tried to call Clinton, but Margaret informed him that Clinton had left for the day. Jan was at work, and there seemed no one to help focus his confused direction.

The car that followed began to close the distance between the two vehicles. Brian recognized it as the nondescript Ford that had followed them on their return from the lake. Clinton’s warning, and the Rubinow’s extreme fear, caused him to feel alarm. His hands turned clammy on the steering wheel.

The road before him was empty as he turned onto the causeway that bisected the reservoir. As if wishing to end the charade, the following car accelerated until it pulled abreast of him. Brian glanced over at the other driver as the two cars moved in tandem. He was a black man with a massive torso and sunglasses that reflected dashes of light.

The black man drove with one hand, while the other raised a long-barreled revolver.

Brian ducked to the left as the first shot tore into the car and through the side window. As the front wheels swerved to the side, the car brushed noisily against the guard posts alongside the narrow road. Brian braked, hoping his car would fall behind the chasing vehicle.

The black man’s car dropped back. Brian downshifted and floored the gas, but the other car kept pace and pulled alongside. The gun rose again and pointed toward Brian until he turned his wheels into the other car and they met with a screeching whine. Both vehicles rocked dangerously on their chassis, and the black man had to use both hands to fight for control. Brian swerved toward the Ford again. A snap shot whined off the car roof.

Brian turned away from the Ford into the feeble guardrail. The front bumper splintered the wood, the car seemed to hesitate a moment with its wheels over the water, and then plunged downward into the reservoir.

It sank in a front forward position. A thin spurt of water came through the hole in the window, and then more water began to seep around the engine block and through the window and door frames. At twenty feet the car touched bottom, with its forward part sinking into the silt. Brian knew that in two or three minutes enough water would have filled the body to equalize the pressure. Then the door could be pushed open, and he could swim to the surface.

The man with the gun would be waiting. He would have stopped by the broken guardrail and would be standing at the water’s edge with the gun ready to fire when Brian surfaced.

Chapter Seven

A thin spurting stream spewed through the bullet hole in the window. The rush of water increased. Shivering as it lapped around his waist, Brian considered the alternatives of being shot or drowning. The pressure had now equalized, and the door could be pushed open. He could pop to the surface with two or three easy strokes.

The man with the gun would be on the causeway.

Brian swung the seat forward and climbed with difficulty into the rear of the car. The car’s nose, stuck in silt, caused the vehicle to tilt at a forty-five degree angle. He squatted in the rear seat and poked his head upward toward the roof near the rear window.

The water murmured around his torso, rose up his arms and reached for his shoulders. He craned his neck toward the ceiling and his hands clawed at the roof. Panic gorged his throat as rockets hurtled toward the sandbags protecting the roof of the bunker, and the dank smell rose around him.

He cried out but, finally, the water ceased to rise. The air pocket held and he could still breathe. He fought against fear and forced himself to take shallow breaths, while telling himself over and over that it was water—not sand and dirt—and he must stay in the air pocket as long as possible.

He wanted to scramble for the door, push it open and claw for the surface. But time was the only escape, for the man with the gun would not remain on the causeway forever. Eventually, other cars would travel the narrow road and the Ford would be forced to move. Brian counted slowly and took a short, shallow breath every seven seconds.

He estimated he had been underwater twelve to fifteen minutes when the air began to foul. He would have to try it and hope that the black man had left feeling sure that his task had been accomplished.

Taking one last deep breath of the rancid air, Brian ducked under to reach for the door handle. It was stuck. He panicked until it slowly opened, and he was able to kick free from the car and rise to the surface.

His shoulders rose above the water as he strained upward to gulp for air. He came up facing away from the road, but treading water, he turned. The road was empty. The Ford had left. He swam toward a large drainpipe that ran underneath the roadbed. When he reached it, he found he could stand in waist-deep water and brace himself against the slimy sides.

The man with the gun might have pulled off the road at the end of the causeway and still be patiently waiting. Brian waded through the pipe to the far end, where he slipped into the water to swim a parallel course to the roadbed. He ducked underwater as occasional cars passed over the causeway. Scrambling ashore by a heavy stand of pines, he stumbled through them and fell to the ground.

He waited behind the trees until the sun waned across the lake. Once he dozed, with his head cradled on his arms, only to awaken with a start and jerk his head up violently. He got to his feet when the shadows deepened.

A quarter of a mile beyond the reservoir was the Tallman Country Club. Gordon Cherny lived in a new residential subdivision that abutted the golf course. Brian kept away from the road as he walked in that direction.

The rear of the homes in Country Club Estates was built adjacent to a line of trees near the fairway. The Chernys were having a cookout. Gordon, wearing an incongruous chef’s hat, stood with a long-handled spatula near a brick barbecue, while the two children splashed in an above-the-ground pool. Helen Cherny sat at the redwood picnic table, a cocktail glass held limply in her hand. She looked toward her husband as he nonchalantly flipped hamburgers.

The family gathering turned in frozen tableau when Brian stumbled out from the woods. The children’s hands curled over the edge of the pool as they stared at him. Helen spilled her drink across the table, and Gordon rubbed smoke from his eyes and waved his spatula.

“Glad you could make it for dinner, old buddy. But did you come by sewer?”

“I had an accident at the reservoir.”

“Are you all right?” Helen asked.

“If I could have a drink, towel and change of clothing, in that order?”

After Helen mixed him a double at the portable bar, Gordon led Brian toward the house. They entered through sliding glass doors off the patio and went into a hall that led to a comfortable study. There was a desk piled high with medical journals under the window, a wall of books and another wall lined with gun cases.

Brian stood before the shotguns, rifles and handguns. “Quite a collection. I never knew you were such a gun nut.”

“They’re fun to play with and a damn good investment. Let me show you one I picked up last week.” He unlocked the middle case with a set of keys from his pocket. Taking down a long-barreled six-gun, he hefted it lovingly before handing it to Brian. “A single action Colt .44. One of the first peacemakers ever manufactured in Hartford. Beautiful weapon. I picked it up for a song.”

Brian picked up a long-barreled revolver. “And this?”

Gordon smiled. “You don’t know your guns. That’s new vintage.”

“I’ve seen one like this recently.” He could picture the black man’s hand extending through the window with the gun leveled in his direction. “What is it?”

“A .22. Not much wallop, but accurate as hell for a handgun. It’s the type of thing you might use for competition shooting.”

Brian twirled the cylinder and smelled the barrel. “Smells like it’s been fired recently.”

Gordon extracted the cylinder and looked down the barrel. “Christ. I forgot to clean the damn thing.” He placed the gun carefully on a piece of felt on the desk. “There’s a shower through the door there, and I’ll get you something to wear. Get that slime and those pine needles off you. By the way, you been drinking?”

“No. I’ll tell you about it after I shower.”

Brian luxuriated under the shower, lathering and then standing under the sharp needle spray as fatigue washed away. He kept his mind a blank, promising himself that he would consider his problems in a few minutes when dressed and sitting back in one of Gordon’s recliners.

The door opened with a bang against the wall. Brian fell back against the tiles with both hands held protectively in front of his body.

“The clothes are on the hamper,” Gordon said as the door closed.

Brian adjusted the recliner to a comfortable position and sipped a drink, while Gordon methodically cleaned the pistol. Running a final patch through the barrel before squinting through it and then reassembling the weapon, Gordon said, “Want to tell me what’s going on, old buddy?”

“Someone took a couple of shots at me, and I had to drive the car into the lake.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“No. I did see that he was a hell of a big black guy who wore wraparound sunglasses with mirrors.”

“I better call Willie.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Brian walked over to the still-open gun case. “I’d like to borrow one of these.”

“If you’re picked up with a handgun, you’ll be in more trouble than you are now.”

“Do you have one I could carry that’s not registered?”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Next time, there might not be a convenient reservoir.”

Gordon took a small flat automatic from the case. “It’s a .25 caliber Baretta. It’ll fit right in your pocket. I suppose you want it loaded?”

“It helps.”

Gordon found a box of the proper sized ammunition in a drawer below the case and filled the clip of the small gun. “This thing is about as accurate as a slingshot.”

Brian activated the slide to pump a shell into the chamber, flipped on the safety and slipped it in his pocket. “Lockwood’s dead.”

“I heard. The M.E. called me this afternoon. It seems that they found traces of a sedative in his blood and wanted to know if I had prescribed it for him.”

“Had you?”

“Nope. Of course, he could have picked it up from somebody else.”

“I never knew him to take an aspirin, much less a sedative.”

“People develop twinges when they get older.”

“Jesus, Gordon. I feel like I’ve returned to a never-never land.”

“Let me give you a shot and stash you away in the guest room.”

“It could be dangerous for you. Do you know that I went to talk to Martha Rubinow, and Harry threw down on me with a shotgun?”

“I thought Harry only did that when someone tried to cut him out of a real-estate deal.”

“Martha killed my mother.”

“For Christ’s sake, Brian! Martha may be married to the most rapacious scoundrel this side of Scrooge, but she didn’t do anything to Mary. It could have been any of a dozen people. Listen, if it makes you feel any better at all, the diagnosis was more than correct. The cancer had spread throughout her system. The autopsy proved that.”

“I’m sorry the autopsy was necessary.”

“Practically routine in a case like hers. In the long run it might help. Clinton Robinson has asked me for a deposition regarding her exact condition at the time of expiration. She was a very sick lady. Your mother, who had only been in the hospital once before—for a hysterectomy—was riddled with death.”

“I never knew she had a hysterectomy.”

“I noticed the clips during the post and checked back in the chart. My father performed the operation in ’43.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“What difference does it make …” Gordon’s voice trailed off as a deep flush rose from his neck. “It’s not important.”

“Forty-three would be impossible.”

Gordon sipped his drink. “Back in those days they used to extract tonsils, appendixes and ladies’ plumbing like there was no tomorrow. Pop used to say that a new car every year was either ten tonsillectomies, five appendectomies or four hysterectomies.”

“I was born in 1944.”

“Maybe it was ’45.”

“Where are the records?”

“Part of the chart at the hospital.”

“I want to see it.”

“Hey, come on. I want to finish my drink and we’ve got steaks working.”

“Now, Gordon. Right now! Bring your drink with you.”

Gordon left him in the deserted doctors’ lounge while he went to Medical Records for Mary’s chart. Brian felt fatigue embrace him as the effects of the shower evaporated. He had once read that feeling deep lethargy could be caused by extreme depression; but God only knows, he had been through enough today.

A resonant voice echoed through the small room. “This is for doctors only. You have to leave.” The large frame of a black orderly pushing a mop bucket filled the door.

Brian jumped from the couch as his hand fumbled for the small automatic. He aimed the gun and thumbed off the safety. “Get back.”

“What’s wrong with you, man? Put that gun away. I don’t have the keys to the drug cabinet.”

“Take another step and I’ll fire.”

The large man stepped back, holding the mop across his body as if it were a protective shield.

“What in hell’s going on here?” Gordon’s authoritative voice startled them. “Put that damn thing away. Better yet, give it back to me.”

“I think that’s the guy who shot at me.”

“Give me the gun, Brian.”

“I can’t.”

Gordon turned toward the orderly. “It’s all right, Mr. Stewart. I can handle the situation.”

“Crazy as a fuckin’ loon,” the orderly said, as he pulled the mop bucket into the hall and slammed the door.

“You’re out on your feet. I’m going to give you something.” Gordon raised a hypodermic needle and gently pushed the lever until a few drops dribbled from the tip.

“Let me see that chart.” Brian slipped the gun back in his pocket and took the bulky folder. “And put that needle away.” He began at the rear of the chart to read Gordon’s father’s notes of more than forty years ago. The first entry was a routine physical examination of the adolescent Mary, and then a broken wrist during her high school days. The next entry was her admission, in 1943, for a complete hysterectomy. He checked the surrounding documents to verify that they were in proper chronological order and no clerical error had been made in dating. He slowly closed the chart and placed it aside. “She was away from here those years, I don’t understand.”

“It’s not unusual for a patient to return home to see a family doctor they feel they can trust.”

“Nineteen forty-three was the year before I was born.”

“Perhaps you’ve discovered something you weren’t meant to.”

“You knew.”

“No, honest. I mean, I must have seen the entry, but I never put it together as far as you are concerned.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“I don’t know. It might. If there’s anyone in town that would know, it’s Martha Rubinow.”

“I thought you weren’t exactly welcome there?”

“I’ll make myself welcome. Let’s go.”

“Do I have a choice?”

They sat in Gordon’s car in the Rubinow driveway and looked toward the dark house.

“Harry’s Caddy’s gone,” Gordon said.

Brian left the car to press the front doorbell. Chimes reverberated through the quiet interior. He rang again and again, until the chimes merged into discordant noise.

“Let’s go home,” Gordon yelled from the car.

Without answering, Brian went to the side door and picked up a metal milk box. He crashed the box’s corner against a lower window-pane until it shattered. He pushed the remaining slivers into the kitchen before reaching through to unlock the door.

“That’s called breaking and entering,” Gordon said behind him.

“Come on.”

They walked through the deserted rooms. The house was in perfect order, with the exception of the master bedroom. Dresser drawers had been pulled open in haphazard disarray and the closet was nearly empty. A suitcase lay open on its side in a corner.

“Either they’ve been ripped off or were in one hell of a hurry,” Gordon said. “Let’s call Joe Vital.”

“Who’s he?”

“Harry’s manager at the real estate office. If they’ve taken off, Joe will know where.” He flipped through the Tallman phone directory from under the night table and then dialed. He spoke for a few moments before hanging up and turning with a puzzled frown. “Joe says Harry and Martha decided to take a cross-country trip. He has no idea where they’re going or when they’ll be back, only that Harry will check in with him from time to time.”

“They couldn’t have been gone for more than an hour or two. Let me use your car.”

“You’ll never find them.”

“I’ll sure in hell try.”

As Brian started for the door, he felt a strong grip on his arm and turned to see Gordon jab a hypodermic needle into his arm. He tore away and fumbled in his pocket for the automatic as the needle wrenched free and fell:

“You’re punchy, old buddy, and shouldn’t be going anywhere, except to bed.”

Brian had the gun in his hand as he stumbled back against the wall, his fingers trying to find the safety.

Gordon, fading into the distance as Brian’s legs melted, said, “This is getting to be a nasty habit.”

“Have to find them. Have to …” He felt himself slide into darkness and barely saw Gordon remove the pistol from his hand.

“Doctor Cherny’s about ready to have you committed.” Clinton’s feet were on the desk, and he scowled at Brian from under bushy eyebrows. “He called me at home after he knocked you out to fill me in: breaking and entering, possession of a handgun, assault on a hospital employee … you are a self-destructive young fellow, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure that he believed what happened to me out at the reservoir.”

“He says it was quite apparent you’d been in some water with your clothes on. If you got that gun back, I’ll take it.”

“No, thank you.”

“I refuse to represent you if you persist in illegal acts.”

“I’m not going to be without protection.”

“I want that gun. Now!”

Brian knew he had to rest his faith in someone and reluctantly slid the small automatic across the desk. As Clinton gingerly picked it up and locked it in the center desk drawer, Brian said, “If I get killed, I’m suing for malpractice. You wouldn’t happen to have a drink?”

“Anything you want as long as it’s rye.” Clinton’s feet thumped to the floor as he tugged at the bottom desk drawer. He pulled out an unopened and dusty bottle of rye and plunked it on the edge of the desk. “This do?”

“Fine.” Brian twisted off the cap and drank directly from the neck. When he lowered the bottle, he saw the attorney observing him closely.

“Mary told me that she thought you were drinking more than you should. The last thing in the world a man with your problems needs are befuddled senses.”

“I don’t need the lecture.”

“You’re not going to get one. I’ll send letters from time to time regarding the status of the estate.”

“What about my other problems?”

“As you say, they’re your problems.”

“One drink turns you off?”

“I don’t think you’re in control of it.” He extracted a large checkbook from the bottom of a pile of documents and flipped through the pages. “I’m giving you a check for five thousand against the proceeds of your inheritance. As an officer of the court, I can’t recommend where I think you should go, but you can use your imagination.” He scrawled his signature, ripped it from the book and slid it toward Brian.

“Fine legal advisor you are. Christ! Everything’s screwed up.”

“I charge more than a psychiatrist.”

“And empathy is obviously not included.”

“Not unless it solves legal problems.”

“Why would they want everyone in my family dead?”

“You won’t find the answer in the bottom of a bottle.”

“For God’s sake! I don’t even know who I am anymore. I could have been cloned.”

“If the biological sciences were capable of that, I would assume they would have done a better job.”

“I’m beginning to develop an active dislike for you.”

“It won’t affect the billing.” Brian noticed that Clinton had a hole in the sole of his shoe as his feet resumed their position on the desk. “You have several choices. The first has already occurred to you, and you can continue looking for solace in a bottle of rye. Then there’s the possibility of going back to Canada and fighting extradition. With enough money, which you now have, and my help, you’ll probably be successful in that area. Or, if you so choose, you can work with me and find answers.”

“Answers! All I get is more questions.”

“That’s the first step.”

“You don’t seem to understand that every foundation of my life has been obliterated. It didn’t start when I returned to Tallman—my honor, country and all that went years ago. Now, my family and identity are gone. For God’s sake, don’t you understand that I don’t even know who I am?”

For the first time, there was compassion in Clinton’s answer. “I think I understand.”

“My mother, who isn’t my mother, is dead. Lockwood was murdered, the Rubinows have disappeared, and some guy is taking pot shots at me.”

“In my war, we had a saying: Give me your card and I’ll punch it for you.”

“Fuck you! Give me the goddamn check.”

Brian snatched the check from the desk and, cradling the bottle under his arm, slammed from the office. Margaret looked up from her typewriter with wide eyes, as he lurched for the outer door with the bottle raised to his lips.

Catching his reflection in the glass of the outer door—a tallish man in his early thirties with a stubble of beard and bloodshot eyes, clenching a rumpled check in one hand, while the other held a whiskey bottle to his lips—Brian paused, dropped the bottle into a nearby umbrella stand and went back to Clinton’s office.

“What can I do?”

Chapter Eight

The Tallman Town Hall was built of weathered stone so darkened that it resembled an abandoned railroad station. At periodic intervals, referendums had been submitted to the voters for a new structure and, with regularity, the bond issues had been rejected. Frugal Connecticut Yankees would voluntarily raise the mill rate for school and police systems, but public structures containing ordinary offices were considered adequate as long as they withstood the elements.

The Town Clerk’s office was on the bottom floor at the rear of the building. Marci Davis sat at her desk in front of the record vault, running legal documents through a time clock. Her white hair was piled in a strange pyramid on the top of her head that accentuated her pointed face. She looked up as Brian entered, removed her glasses and looked again.

“Is that you, Brian Maston?”

“Hello, Miss Marci.”

“About time you renewed that dog tag.”

“I’m afraid that dog’s been dead for fifteen years.”

“Pity. Time does fly with births, deaths, marriages and property conveyances. My goodness, I guess I’ll be doing the year two thousand before I turn around. What can I do for you?”

“Attorney Robinson would like me to pick up a few items he needs for the probate of mother’s estate. We need a certified copy of her marriage license and my birth certificate.”

“Won’t take but a minute.” She walked into the record vault, where thick ledgers filled cases along the walls. Brian started in after her, but hesitated and stood in the open doorway. “Wasn’t Mary married during the war?”

“That’s right. I think it was 1943, but you had better check all the years around that.”

“And you were born in ’44?”

“Uh huh.”

Humming a toneless tune, she expertly flipped several large volumes onto a center table and began to rapidly turn pages, using the eraser of a pencil to run down lists of names. With strength belying the thinness of her arms, Miss Marci replaced some volumes and flipped other ledgers onto the table where she continued searching. Brian shifted from one foot to another in the doorway as the methodical searching continued. The woman’s glasses slipped to the edge of her nose when she turned to Brian in exasperation.

“They’re not here.”

“I thought not.”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t registered.”

“How’s that?”

“In Connecticut, the birth of a child is registered in the town where the child is actually born, and again in the town where the parents reside. Often, both are the same, but say a Tallman couple has a child in New London or New Haven, then the birth would be registered there.” She paused and took off her glasses. “But, of course, if they gave their address as Tallman, it should be registered here also. The same goes for marriage licenses.”

“It was during the war, and my mother was away during that period.”

She began shutting volumes with finality. “Well, that explains it. She registered her marriage and your birth where she was living at the time. You mean, you never had a birth certificate before? I can’t understand how Mary got you in school.”

“I only have a photostat.”

“Well, goodness gracious, Brian. You could have saved us a lot of time. Let me see it.”

Brian searched through the inner folds of his wallet to extract a deeply creased photostat, which he spread on a desk. “I’ve always used this.”

Miss Marci bent to examine the document. “This was registered in West Hartford. See, your mother gave an address at 16 Bishop Road.”

“Then I could get a certified copy from there?”

“Of course. And I’ll bet her marriage is registered there, too.” She bent down to look more closely at the photostat. “Your mother’s maiden name wasn’t Callahan.”

“She always told me that was a typographical error she meant to have corrected.”

Miss Marci shook her head. “Some clerks are very sloppy. You’d be amazed at some of the deeds and things I get in here that are so bad I can’t record them.”

“The probate records are filed here also, aren’t they?”

“Yes. When your mother’s estate is closed, we’ll have it on file.”

“Don’t probate records include adoptions?”

“Yes, but those files are sealed. It takes a court order to open them.”

“You can tell me if there’s a certain adoption file here, can’t you?”

“Only the name, without any details.”

“My name. Brian Maston. Would you run that, Miss Marci?”

Gordon’s Mercedes made the drive to West Hartford almost enjoyable. It occurred to Brian that he could now afford such a car, that he could afford a great many things that had been beyond consideration. Years of frugal living would be difficult to overcome. He laughed aloud with the realization that one of the things he had to do was call the rental car people and tell them that their vehicle was twenty feet down in the Tallman Reservoir.

He thought about the photograph that had sat on his mother’s night table as long as he could remember, and wondered if his search would lead him in that direction.

Suddenly, he became aware of the constant presence of the Ford following fifty yards behind. Pulling into the far right lane, he reduced speed and let the other car overtake and pass him. He kept his speed to the minimum until the Ford rounded a distant curve and was lost from sight.

As the Mercedes swept around the curve, Brian saw the other car on the shoulder ahead. The black man leaned nonchalantly out the window, the sunglasses reflecting intermittent spears of light. As Brian floored the accelerator and watched the speedometer inch toward the hundred mark, the car parked on the shoulder jumped forward in pursuit. The power of the Mercedes outdistanced the Ford and temporarily lost it from sight on another curve. The car rocked into an exit ramp at a dangerous level of speed. Brian braked, downshifted and fought the wheel for control as the Mercedes plummeted down the ramp.

His heart pounding, he felt the weak aftermath of retreating adrenalin as he brought the car under control on a winding country road. Vaguely, he remembered a network of secondary roads leading to Hartford, and knew there was a bridge across the Connecticut River in Haddam. From there, he could connect with Route 66. With luck, he would avoid the man in the Ford.

The West Hartford Town Clerk’s quarters were considerably larger than Miss Marci’s domain. A clerk finally noticed Brian standing at the counter, and he asked her to run the records for the name of Maston.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s quite important.”

“They’re public records, but we’re not in the business of searching titles. Help yourself.” She gestured toward the large vault filled with the now-familiar racks of bound volumes. “I’ll be glad to tell you where to look, but the looking you have to do yourself.”

Brian stood in the vault entrance with one hand clamped to the door frame. He was unable to step forward into the enclosed room.

“Anything the matter?”

“No.” He stepped rigidly forward. His palms perspired as the dank smell of dreams rose around him. He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and opened the first volume.

In minutes, he had located the original copy of the birth certificate he had carried most of his life, and also the marriage certificate of Mary Callahan to Brian Maston. He hurried from the vault and leaned against the wall in the clerk’s office, his breath coming in short gasps.

“You all right, mister?” the clerk asked, making copies of the documents for him.

“Yes, thank you.” He walked from the Town Hall to Gordon’s car, where he sat behind the wheel in confusion. Was Mary Callahan Maston of West Hartford also Mary Dwight Maston of Tallman; the birth certificate of Brian Maston, Junior, was it …?

A gas attendant at the corner directed him toward the address on the documents, which was only a few blocks away. Bishop Road was a short, tree-lined street with Dutch colonial homes built in the early thirties. It was a comfortable area, filled with the aura of middle-class permanence. Brian checked the name of the neighbors. Renquist was inscribed on a plaque in front of number 20.

The woman who answered his ring at number 16 reminded him of Mary. She had the same height, build and age, although her hair was whiter. She cocked her head with a tolerant smile. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m from Connecticut Insurance Company, and the Renquists have applied for a policy. Would you mind answering a few questions?”

“Of course not. The Renquists are lovely people and fine neighbors. Do come in.” Her voice had a pleasant, lilting quality. He followed her through the hall into a comfortable living room, where she gestured him toward a large easy chair. “Exactly what is it you would like to know?”

Brian glanced down at the birth certificate in his hand. “The Renquists list you and your husband as references. You are Mary Callahan Maston?”

“Why, yes. But there must be some mistake. My husband has been dead for three years. They may mean my son, Brian junior, who lives at home with me.”

“Do you know anyone in Tallman, Mrs. Maston?” He found it difficult to pronounce the name.

“Tallman? I don’t believe I’ve ever been there. It’s over near the coast, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Your son, Brian. He was born in 1944?” It was more of a statement than a question. He knew what the answer would be.

“Yes, April the second, to be exact. You look to be his age.”

“I assume the photograph on the mantel is of your husband?” The serious man in the conservative business suit who surveyed the room from a very formal pose bore no resemblance to the smiling man of Brian’s photo.

“Yes, it is. What does this have to do with the Renquists?” Her voice had taken on a twinge of alarm.

“Just verification of references, Mrs. Maston. Thank you for your time.”

“Don’t you want to know …?” Her voice was lost as he hurried from the house toward the car. Turning the ignition key, he glanced up to see her standing in the doorway with a puzzled look.

The Mystic Congregational Church was located not far from the Connecticut Turnpike, and was typical of New England architecture. Its tall white steeple had often signaled to his mother as they drove by. “There’s the church where your father and I were married,” she had repeated a dozen times.

He entered the church’s cool interior to walk midway down the center aisle. Tall side windows cast slanting light across highly polished pews, while a stained-glass window at the rear of the transept bathed the pulpit in a yellowish hue. A door to the left led to the rear of the building.

The minister’s open study door revealed a boyish man in his late twenties, who wore jeans and a “God is only pretending to be dead” T-shirt. Chewing on the end of a pencil, he smiled up at Brian.

“Hi. What can I do you for?”

“I’d like to look at your marriage register.”

“Sure. I suppose we’ve got one somewhere. I’m new here myself. Hey, how does this sound to you?” He read exuberantly from his notes. “‘Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.’ Now, I ask you—what would the meek do with this mess? I suggest to you that with a different translation, meek can be interchanged with debonair. Blessed are the debonair for they shall inherit the earth.” He looked at Brian for approbation. “What do you think?”

“Terrific. Do I get to hear the other twenty-nine minutes?”

“I’m Harvey Passant.” The young minister laughed, and his hand gripped Brian’s. “I need a wife to suffer through this sort of thing. I’m at the point where I even try sermons out on bushes.”

“They grow faster?”

“They wilt.” The hearty and ingenuous laugh filled the small study. “The marriage register, you say.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re doing a genealogical study.”

“Something like that.”

“What period did you have in mind? Seventeen or eighteen hundreds?”

“How about 1940 through 1950.”

“Dullsville. Now, let’s figure out where in hell they are.”

Brian followed the minister into the bowels of the church basement. There was much opening and shutting of closets until they finally located the registers in the far reaches of the cellar.

“Want to use my study?”

“No, thanks. It won’t take long.” It didn’t. The Mystic Congregational Church may have been old and venerable, but the congregation had dwindled over the years. During the decade of the forties, fewer than one hundred marriages had been performed. Brian ran his finger down the names, looking for variations or any clue that might link his mother to the smiling man. There wasn’t any combination that even closely resembled Mary Dwight or Brian Maston. He closed the register and stuck it back in the closet. “Thanks.”

“No luck, huh?”

“No luck,” Brian responded and slowly walked back to the car.

Clinton Robinson wasn’t in his office, but Margaret gave Brian directions to his house, along with an invitation to dinner. Dusk sun brimmed the horizon as he pulled into the long winding drive that led up a small promontory overlooking the river. The rustic house, more like a large cabin, had a high redwood porch along the rear, overlooking the water. Clinton beckoned to him from the edge of the porch.

They sat in high-backed wicker chairs surrounded by books. “Negative,” Brian said. “There’s a Brian Maston birth certificate and marriage license on file, all right. In fact, there is another Brian Maston.”

“Not you.”

“Right.”

“Similarity in age and first name. It’s a common way to obtain a false birth certificate.”

“Check the newspapers for birth announcements and write for a copy of the certificate.” Brian stood by the rail and looked out over the lake. “Which means I don’t even have a name.”

“I’ve called every probate district in the state. There are no adoption files we can trace to you. The Veterans’ Administration informed us that no death benefits were ever paid to Mary.”

“I couldn’t find any marriage record at the church in Mystic.”

“It could have been another church.”

“She must have mentioned the Congregational Church in Mystic two dozen times.”

“Ginger ale?”

“How about something stronger?”

“Would you like your booze in a glass, or do you prefer to drink directly from the bottle and save time?”

“I think I’d like ginger ale.”

As the heavy attorney lumbered into the house, Brian looked out across the lake, where a Sunfish, with brightly speckled sail, scudded before the wind. The sun slanted below the surrounding hills. A cold glass was put in his hand.

“Well have the launching in a few minutes, and then we eat.”

“Launching?”

“A ship model I’ve been working on.”

“Hello. Anyone home?” Jan clattered up the porch steps. “You could have called me when you weren’t going to show up, Maston. I’ve been slightly worried.”

Brian kissed her. “It’s a long story.”

They rolled up their pants legs to help Clinton carry the yard-long, sheet-shrouded model from a cellar workroom. Jan and Brian sloshed back ashore as Clinton whipped off the covering with a flamboyant gesture.

“My god,” Brian said. “It’s beautiful.” A fully detailed scale model of the U.S.S. Constitution, complete with rigging and sail, bobbed in the lake. Small cannon on the gun decks pointed stubby snouts through inch square ports.

Clinton pulled a miniature bottle of champagne from a rear pocket and gently nudged it against the stern of the frigate. “I christen thee the U.S.S. Mellanie.” Then he came ashore as a light breeze filled the sails of the model. The ship heeled to port and began to sail majestically across the lake.

“You had better put a string on it, Clinton,” Jan said. “It might get stuck in the middle or over near those rocks.”

“Never reach that far,” Clinton said as he went back to his martini on the porch. “Modeled after Old Iron-sides, two thousand two hundred and twenty tons with fifty guns and a crew of four hundred and fifty. Mellanie was my wife.”

“I remember her,” Brian said. “She …”

“She’s dead.” He watched the model run before the wind as it cut a miniature wake on the surface of the water. “Lonely without her. Odd, how you can still miss someone even after all these years.”

They sipped their drinks in silence and watched the small boat. “Now I’m getting worried about your model,” Brian said. “Do you have a rowboat we can use to retrieve it?”

“Nope. Would you say it’s about at the center of the lake?”

“I’d say so.”

“It’s time then.” Clinton pulled a small device the size of a cigarette package from his pocket and pushed a button. A small explosion rocked the model as plumes of smoke plunged from the gun ports. In seconds, flames reached for the rigging and engulfed the sails as the Mellanie turned into a flaming pyre.

“Jesus,” Brian said.

It burned a few minutes and then began to sink at the stern, until disappearing below the surface. Clinton continued looking at the unmarked spot of the model’s grave. “Sort of thing one shouldn’t destroy, but give to a grandchild.” He drained the last of the martini and pushed up from the wicker chair. “Time to put the steaks on. Your time begins to run after dinner.”

“What time?”

“Lincoln said, ‘A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock and trade.’”

“You help me with the investigation like Sam Spade,” Brian said, still shaken by the death of the model. “Twenty a day and expenses.”

“Hundred an hour. Spade didn’t have a law degree.”

“Come on, Clinton! This is Tallman, not Wall Street.”

“Lincoln also said, ‘When you’re the only game in town, charge, charge, charge.’”

Clinton cooked steaks, served a mysterious salad and seemed to forget his insistence on Brian’s abstinence when he poured goblets of red wine. He maintained a continual, funny monologue concerning the sins, deeds and foibles of Tallman residents. After coffee, he pushed away from the table and went back to the porch, to sit vacantly in the wicker armchair. Brian and Jan cleared the table.

“I think he may be insane,” Jan said as she scraped a plate into the garbage. “Blowing up a ship model that must have taken him years to make, and now look at him. I think he’s asleep out there.”

“Or thinking.”

Clinton’s voice boomed from the porch. “Get back out here. Your time has begun to run.”

“Should I take notes?”

“Neatness counts.” Clinton glared. “Let’s go back to the beginning. Mary called you in Canada, but the call was terminated in mid-sentence.”

“I can explain that,” Jan said. “I did it.” She looked with concern at Brian’s stricken face. “I didn’t know who she was talking to, only that she was out of bed. God only knows how she got the strength to make it that far in her condition.”

“Why wasn’t I notified how ill she was?”

“Lockwood was to call.”

“Or Martha Rubinow, but neither did.”

“Was there any animosity between you and Lockwood?” Clinton asked.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Next,” Clinton continued, “Mary was about to tell you something, but was killed first. Murdered, even though everyone in town knew she had only days to live. Then, Lockwood is killed and the Rubinows become so frightened that they run away. This is followed by an attempt on your life.”

“And the guy’s still out there somewhere, looking for me.”

“In addition, we now find out that you are not Mary’s son, nor was she married to Brian Maston; in fact, she lied about a whole phase of her background.”

“It could all be tied together. Unless I was born out of state, under a different name. In that case, we’ll never find out.”

“For some reason, Mary went to a great deal of difficulty to create a whole background: a husband, birth certificate, anecdotes. The question is why. An interesting problem.”

“Interesting? I want to find out who I am.”

“Then find Martha.”

“How?”

“It’s incomprehensible to me that Harry Rubinow, with his love for money, wouldn’t be in touch with Joe Vital at his real estate office. Try checking with Joe in the morning.”

“And if he won’t cooperate?”

“I can’t give you all the answers.”

Brian reached for Jan as they stood by their cars in the driveway. She stiffened and turned awkwardly away. “Please, let’s go away before they kill you.”

“I have the feeling that wherever I go, he’ll find me.”

“Don’t make it easy for him.”

“I’d feel better if I could stay at your place.”

“I suppose,” she replied with resignation. “At least I’ll know where you are.”

“I’m going to pick up a few things at the house and I’ll see you later.”

Brian thought about her as he drove toward the house on Ferry Road. Jan was contradictory; in some instances, strong and self-assured, in others, vacillating. He recalled what she had said about her childhood: a drunken father and a struggle merely to survive on the outskirts of an affluent town.

As he approached the house, he cut the lights and engine and glided silently up the drive. Darkened windows stared with reproachful eyes, while the long porch lay in deep shadows. Except for ordinary night sounds and the rustle of wind in the trees, the house was still. Brian sprinted from the car to bound up the front steps and fumble for keys. In the upstairs bedroom, he quickly stuffed a suitcase with clothing and took the picture of the smiling man from its hiding place.

As he returned to the porch and turned to relock the door, arms grabbed him from behind. A blow glanced off the back of his neck. The arms swung him around and against the wall, as another blow hit his shoulder. He kicked out and heard a heavy grunt as someone staggered back against the porch railing.

“Son of a bitch!”

Another punch caught him in the center of the face. Blood gushed from his nose as he wrenched free and struck out with the flat of his hand. The blow connected, and his arms were free as he ran for the steps. He fell back against the railing as a heavy body across his back caught him in a block and knocked him from the porch. He gasped with a loss of wind. Dark shapes loomed over him as he curled into a ball. The kicks began.

They were going to kill him.

The boots thudded into his side and mid-section. “Commie bastard! Go the fuck back where you belong.”

From a dim recess in his mind he knew the voice. He had heard it at the bar after a thrown beer. He felt relief. Perhaps they wouldn’t kill him …

The blows continued until his head lolled to the side and blackness came.

Chapter Nine

A deep instinct for survival forced his eyes painfully open to stare up at a starless sky. He was alone. He had no way of knowing how much time had elapsed. They had left him unconscious and helpless. Brian wondered how much of their drink-induced patriotism had been bought by a large black man with sunglasses.

Struggling to his hands and knees, he crawled painfully down the drive toward the car. He pulled himself erect by the door handle. The bleeding had stopped, although caked blood had matted to his head and face. He was dizzy, and even while he was bent over retching on the grass, he knew he must leave at once.

He slid behind the car’s wheel to find that his pants pocket had been slashed with the thin blade of a knife and the car keys were gone. He pounded the steering wheel in frustration.

Wondering how much time he had before the man with the gun arrived, he staggered from the car toward the house, fell at the steps, pulled himself erect and lurched toward the door. There would be hope if he could reach the phone.

A crunch of gravel turned him toward the drive, as a car, driven without headlights, rolled to a stop behind the Mercedes. He knew who it was.

The dark shadows under the porch overhang temporarily kept him from view as he slid along the wall toward the corner of the building. He made the side porch just before the flashlight beam stabbed through the darkness to play along the front of the house. The light made slow circles across the yard and stopped at the Mercedes. It bobbed down the drive as the man walked toward the car, the long-barreled revolver by his side revealed in the spill of light.

Brian painfully vaulted the rail to land on all fours with a wince. He hobbled around the rear of the house toward the back yard, searching frantically for a hiding place. There was a crawl space under the house, but once interred there, he would be an easy target. The barn would be a dead end, and the aches and pains from the recent beating made it impossible for him to run across fields and outdistance his pursuer.

A spring house stood behind the barn by the capped well. He couldn’t push himself much further, and although it was small and enclosed, with only one entrance, it might be a place to hide.

The spring house, with its low, peaked roof and one layer of stonework above the ground, was twenty yards behind the barn. A narrow row of stone steps led down to a low door that swung open into the dark and cool confines of the small building. The narrow dimensions of the structure were further restricted by the shelves that still contained the remnants of Mary’s canning.

As the door swung shut to envelop him in darkness, the dank, familiar smell immediately assaulted him. He had only been in the spring house a few times in his life. The last time was years ago and had been disastrous. He was only ten, and his mother had asked him to fetch some canned peppers. The door had slammed, and in his fearful and frantic attempt to open it, he had pushed the wrong way. His screams brought Mary running from the house, and she had never again asked him to return to the spring house.

His very fear might now save him. The man with the gun seemed to know a great deal about his activities, and possibly would be aware of his consuming fear of confinement. Possession of that knowledge might cause him to give the spring house a cursory check.

Brian wanted to yell and run from the small building, but he knew that he would only make a few feet across the yard before the man’s flashlight found him. He bit his lip until the salty taste of blood filled his mouth.

The door banged open. The flashlight beam bounded off the far wall and then swung slowly around the shelving, still partially filled with Mason jars and crocks. The man on the steps outside must have knelt, as the light lowered to probe beneath the shelves and into the dark recesses.

The light was gone, and the door slowly swung shut.

Brian waited a few more minutes before lowering himself from his cramped position braced on the cross beams under the peaked roof. Then he opened the door and ran in a crouch toward the bushes by the side of the barn, where, with his elbows, he pulled himself as far under as he could.

Early breaking light awoke Brian. His body ached in every joint, and the deep pain in his mid-section attested to the ferocity of the previous night’s kicks. He pulled himself from the bush to stagger across the yard as a car pulled in the drive. He fell prone on the grass, knowing that further flight was useless. It would be impossible to hide in the light of day.

Jan left the car and looked apprehensively toward the house, took a few steps and called out, “Brian! Are you here?”

He tried to get to his feet. “Jan …” His voice was a croaked mumble.

Chief Dockery’s pajama legs peeked out from under the cuff of his uniform trousers. He shook his head slowly back and forth as he stirred a cup of tepid instant coffee in a styrofoam cup. “Let me get this straight,” he finally said. “A bunch of locals, who you don’t want to name, leaned on you?” He shook his head again. “Did quite a job it it, too. You look like hell. Now, in addition to that, there’s another guy trying to do more than beat on you. He wants to kill you?”

“That’s right.”

“Who is he and why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Run that description past me again.”

“He’s black and big. He must go way over six feet and at least two hundred and seventy pounds.”

“Sounds more like a tackle for the Bears.”

“I’m in no mood for jokes, Willie.”

“And I’m too sleepy to make them. Let’s start with the guys who beat you up.”

“I’m not worried about them. I’m not sure if the black guy set me up with them or, coincidentally, they had a beer-induced bout of patriotism … it doesn’t matter, they’re not my worry. It’s the other guy. He carried a long-barreled .22, like a fancy target shooter, except it has a mounted silencer. He always wears reflecting sunglasses.”

“And he’s the same guy who ran you off the road at the reservoir and took a couple of pot shots at you?”

“That’s right.”

Willie Dockery made a note on the pad in front of him. “Okay, I’ll send a tow truck out to the reservoir to make sure your car’s been deep-sixed.”

“Make sure! What’s the skeptical bit?”

When Dockery looked up from his pad toward Brian, the earlier friendliness had fled, to be replaced by the piercing gaze of the professional police officer. “I have to play this by the book, Brian. You’re the prime suspect in a possible manslaughter case, and I play it close to the vest. I don’t want to run off on some half-assed investigation looking for a nonexistent hit man. If I completely accept your story, the state prosecutor’s going to say that Tallman P.D. is helping you build a case for your defense.”

“What do you mean, nonexistent? The guy’s come at me—twice.”

“Uh huh. And on both occasions there’s been one small part of your story that bothers the hell out of me.”

“Like what?”

“Like your staying in a sunken car for ten or fifteen minutes, breathing out of a small air pocket.”

“When a car goes in that way, there’s bound to be …”

“The air would be there, but would you? Secondly, it bothers me that you hid in the rafters of a spring house to get away from this mad killer.”

“I don’t care for your sarcasm. That’s what happened.”

“Okay, sorry. But Jesus, Brian! What kind of case are you trying to build? I suppose this same guy killed Lockwood and your mother?”

“I think he did.”

“Let’s go back to the spring house. It’s probably like most spring houses—a little building, mostly underground, very small and very dark.”

“There are dozens of them still left around here.”

“I know. My dad had one on his farm. We used to go inside and close the door and tell ghost stories. Now, according to your story, you stayed in a sunken car for a hell of a long time and then last night hid in the narrow confines of a place that’s pretty much like a … hell, dungeon? The same guy who went ape in our little lockup—claustrophobia, Clinton claimed!”

“Are you going to do anything?”

“The medical examiner has ruled that your uncle’s death was self-inflicted. It’s up to the grand jury to decide about your mother’s. There is one other thing that bothers me. This guy who’s after you, don’t you think that in a small town like Tallman, that if a guy who you describe as looking like Rosey Grier is wandering around, that we just might have noticed him?”

“So, I have to get killed to prove my point?”

“I’ll give you protective custody.”

“What’s that?”

The chief jerked his thumb toward the rear of the police station. “We put you in number three. It’s the only cell with a northern exposure.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Dockery shrugged. “I’ll do what I can, Brian, but it won’t be a hell of a lot without some sort of independent, third-party verification. I’ll alert the men to keep a sharp lookout for the man you describe. We’ll tow your car out of the drink. I can’t give you a bodyguard; we don’t have the personnel for that. I will make sure that the motor patrols check your house every hour. That’s all I can do. Get me more to go on, and I’ll yell for all the help we need.”

Jan put her arm on his as they left the police station. “Let’s go to my house and do something for those cuts.”

“Okay, but I need to get an extra set of car keys from Gordon, and then I have to call Joe Vital at Harry’s office.”

Jan worked on him for over an hour, but his body still ached in countless places. Then he called the real estate office. They told him that Joe Vital hadn’t arrived yet, and he left a message for Vital to meet him at the house on Ferry Road for an exclusive sales listing.

He borrowed Jan’s car to drive to town and Jensen’s sporting goods store. It had just opened and was vacant, except for a lone clerk. A hang glider hung from the ceiling near the entrance, and there were long counters of fishing rods and football and baseball equipment. The cash register was on a counter to the rear, immediately in front of the gun rack.

“Is there any problem in buying a gun?”

The clerk looked up with a fey smile. “Yep. Guns are cannons.”

“I mean a pistol.”

“Have to get a police permit from your home town.”

“A rifle?”

“Money and a driver’s license.”

“It’s Canadian.”

“The money?”

“The license.”

“What kind do you want?”

He selected a Browning automatic .12 gauge and a box of heavy shot. The bill was a hundred and fifty dollars.

“Deer season isn’t open yet,” the clerk said.

“This is for bear.”

“Man, you look like you fell down a flight of stairs—twice.” Joe Vital, the manager of Harry Rubinow’s real estate office, stood at the steps of the house on Ferry Road. He was a dapper, diminutive man wearing a plaid checkered sports coat. He looked at the shotgun leaning against the wall and stuck out a hand. “Joe Vital. You called about a listing?”

“I’m interested. If I can get the right price fast.”

A look of incipient greed flickered in Joe Vital’s eyes. “We can provide a more efficient service with a long-term exclusive—six months would be appropriate.”

“I’m in a bigger hurry than that.” Brian sat on the porch rail. For an instant, a sense of vertigo moved the porch, and he grasped the balustrade for security until the world steadied. “Where’s Harry?”

“He and the missus are on a cross-country motor trip.”

“Didn’t think that sightseeing was Harry’s bag.”

Vital shrugged and smiled. “Surprised me, him taking off that quickly. Not that they hadn’t been talking about the trip for years, but none of us ever thought he’d really go.”

“Real sudden, then?”

“An hour’s notice. But Harry’s like that. When he makes up his mind to do something, he does it. Now, I’ll tell you, Mr. Maston, we sell by the objectives. We’ll allocate a proposal to your property. Perhaps consider subdividing, and then interest some ‘top-flight’ builder.”

Allocate a proposal. Brian turned the phrase over in his mind a moment, a little unsure of its meaning. “That’s interesting. What do you think we can get for the place?”

“How many acres you got?”

“About twenty.”

“Say we start off with seventy thou.”

Brian felt that was twenty under current market, but remained silent. “I don’t like your talk of six months.”

“Better to reach our objectives.”

I’ll bet, Brian thought. At that price they’d buy it themselves in the name of a nominee. They walked from the porch into the yard. Brian’s legs were weak, but the movement seemed to stabilize him. They went around the rear of the house toward the orchard and stopped to look over the fields. “I’ll tell you, Joe. You don’t mind if I call you Joe?”

“Course not, Brian. You always carry that shotgun?”

“Yes. Listen, I have to go back to Canada, fast. And if I could unload this property right away, I’d let it go for fifty.”

“Fifty? How fast?”

“Friday.”

“That would be difficult, what with the probate of your mother’s estate and the title search.”

“The property was transferred to my name before her death, and Clinton Robinson already has a search on it. Friday, or we go for ninety.”

He could almost hear the perspiration ooze from Joe Vital’s palms, as they looked silently over the north field. “That’s a good deal, Brian, but with Harry out of town … and I’d need him in on it for financing …”

“Get hold of Harry,” Brian snapped.

“He’s on the road for maybe a couple of months. There’s no way to get in touch with him.”

“Now, Joe. I can’t believe Harry would run off without leaving someone with a limited power of attorney.”

Joe Vital laughed. “He’d sure in hell never give that to anyone.”

“Or have some way you could get in touch with him when a good deal like mine comes along.”

“It’s only for the strictest emergency, and I’m the only one with the information.”

“Fifty, firm. If Harry goes along?”

By the time they reached the real estate office over the shopping center, it was ten. The other salespeople were on coffee break as Joe asked Brian to wait in the outer office while he went inside to make the call. Brian sat on the edge of a desk directly by a call director. He gently lifted the receiver and when a line lit on the director, depressed the corresponding button.

“Ethan Allen Inn,” a crisp operator answered.

“Room 212,” Joe Vital said, with a twinge of excitement still in his voice. “Harry, it’s Joe.”

“Goddamn it, Joe! I told you not to get in touch unless you’re in hot water up to your ass.”

“This is hot, Harry. No kidding. Real hot, or I wouldn’t call. We can clear fifty, maybe seventy big ones on this deal.”

“No wet dreams?”

“Solid. You know Brian Maston, whose mother just died. He wants to sell that whole parcel on Ferry Road for fifty thousand, if we can close fast. How’s that for a sweet proposition?”

There was a pause until Harry’s voice came back with a deep chill. “Where’s Brian now?”

“Ready to go for Bond for Deed today, if you give me the okay.”

“Where the fuck is he?”

“Sitting right out in the other office, Harry, big as life.”

“You fool!”

Through the open door, Brian saw Joe Vital hold the phone away from his ear and look at it in utter astonishment. “Hello, Harry. It’s Brian.”

“What kind of game are you playing, Maston? You can’t sell that property until the will is probated.”

“Get Joe off the line.”

“Get off the damn phone, Vital. Go take a coffee break.” The phone in the inner office was hung up, and Joe Vital, shoulders slumped, pushed past Brian.

“I think I’ve been had,” he said as he left the office.

“All right, Harry, we’re alone. Where are you?”

“Not as far away as I’m going to be before this day is over. And if you’re smart, you’ll do the same. Go the other way this time. Go to Mexico. Dissolve into some small village where he’ll never find you.”

Brian clenched the receiver until his knuckles turned white. “Who, Harry? Someone is trying to kill me and I’d like to know why.”

“And he will, unless you get the hell away from there.” There was an indecipherable argument in the background, until Harry’s voice once again became clear. “It’s Brian, and he’s going to get us all killed.”

“I’ve been worried sick about you.” Martha was on the phone, with a voice filled with concern.

“I’d rather have information than compassion.”

“I can understand. You know how much I care for you, son. You’ve been like one of the family, and Mary was my best …”

“Cut the crap, Martha. Things have been happening to me.”

“What sort of things?”

“A man’s shooting at me.”

There was a mumbled conversation until Harry came back on the phone. His voice sounded tired. “All right. Get up here fast. We’ll talk for a few minutes and then leave in opposite directions. But for God’s sake, hurry. I don’t trust them one minute.”

“Where are you?”

“The Ethan Allen Inn, Williamstown, Mass, room—”

“I know. Room 212. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

Brian felt he could make better time on the trip to Massachusetts in Jan’s car, and switched Gordon’s for hers. The route took him through the northwesterly quadrant of Connecticut into the Berkshire Mountains. He drove a circuitous route, observing to himself that recently he had been seeing more back roads than he really cared to.

The shotgun, fully loaded, lay within easy reach on the seat by his side. He wondered if he would be able to fire if the black man with the long-barreled revolver should pull abreast of him.

Locating the two-story motel on the far side of Williamstown, Brian was relieved to see a large Cadillac bearing Connecticut marker plates parked by one of the middle units. A local taxi pulled in just in front of him, taking the only parking place near Harry Rubinow’s car.

As Brian pulled past the parked cars, a large black man left the cab and went toward room 212.

Brian was sure he had been set up. Martha’s concern was a spider’s enticement to get him into the motel room to face the man with the gun.

He parked around the corner of the building and pulled the shotgun over his lap. His fingers curled around the trigger guard, while he tried to clear his mind for a possible course of action.

They expected him to knock on the door of room 212, and once inside, shotgun or not, he would be vulnerable. He wondered if the local police were a possible variable. His body still ached, and recent events had become a confused kaleidoscope of unanswered questions, against a backdrop of fear.

The Rubinows and the black man together might provide the answers. He left the car in a quick motion of resolution.

The taxi nosed around the corner of the building. Brian dropped to the pavement and rolled partially under the car. The taxi, with the black man in the rear seat, continued through the lot toward the street.

Brian got in his car and followed. He kept as far back as he could without losing sight of the cab. It picked up speed, turned on a highway and headed north toward the Vermont border. Five miles from town, the cab made a right turn on a dirt road leading to a small airport. Brian pulled off the road and parked in a small cove of trees.

A twin-engine Beechcraft, its propellers turning, waited at the far end of the runway. Though it began to take off the moment the black man climbed in the cabin, Brian was able to make out its registration numbers as it flew overhead.

Standing before unit 212, Brian knocked softly. The shotgun, wrapped in a blanket he found in the car trunk, was cradled in his arms. He knocked again. They couldn’t have left. Harry’s Cadillac was still parked a few feet away.

The door was unlocked. He let the blanket fall from the rifle as he stepped into the room.

They were sprawled across the beds with bullet holes in the centers of their foreheads. Martha held a piece of lingerie loosely between dead fingers, while Harry’s drink had spilled to form a dark stain on the spread. Brian stood over Martha and looked down at her heavy face, obscenely insensitive in its death mask.

“Who am I, Martha? Who the hell am I?”

Chapter Ten

Brian looked out through the dusty tack room window to see a darkening sky shroud the fields. The day matched his mood and the vehement strokes of the hacksaw blade. The barrel of the shotgun, clamped in the workbench vise, was almost severed. Next, he would cut the stock near the pistol grip. A length of barrel clattered to the floor as he tapped it with a ball-peen hammer. Reversing the weapon, he began to cut through the stock.

At the advent of darkness, intermittent drops of rain splattered against the window and began a tattoo on the roof. The thunderstorm was full-blown by the time he had completed his renovations on the shotgun. Hefting it, he estimated its new length at fourteen inches. The ballistics of the shot pattern would be grossly affected and it would have a terrific recoil, but would be a devastatingly lethal weapon at close range.

The stormy weather was a stroke of luck. He donned a long raincoat and slipped the sawed-off shotgun inside a deepened pocket. It bulged but would pass a cursory glance. He turned from the workbench to face the far wall that separated the tack room from the remainder of the barn. Reaching inside the pocket, he withdrew the weapon and fired simultaneously with a thunderclap. The blast blew a twelve-inch hole through the heavy wooden partition.

A flash of headlights through the front window illuminated the room as he pumped another shell into the chamber. Instinctively, Brian crouched in the shadows by the far corner, leaned forward with the shotgun steadied across his forearm and aimed toward the door.

His finger tightened on the trigger as the door opened.

“Put that blunderbuss away.”

“I almost blew you in half.” Tremors worked upward from his legs toward his arms and shoulders. “What are you doing here, Clinton?”

“Looking for my client. For a man who deserted the infantry, you have a strange propensity for guns.”

“The Rubinows are dead.”

“Your doing?”

“It was the same guy who’s been after me.”

“In that case, I suggest we get the hell away from here.”

A strong easterly wind had pushed the thunderhead further inland, and its passing left a heavy feeling in the air. Jan increased the oppressiveness in her small house by her insistence that all windows and blinds be drawn.

Clinton twirled his thumbs on the couch and, oblivious to Jan’s sidelong glance, plunked his feet up on the coffee table. He examined the ceiling for a few moments before searching through a mass of papers from his pocket to find the back of an envelope with a tiny available space for writing. “I’ll trace the airplane if you’ll give me those registration numbers again.”

Brian repeated the wing numbers he had memorized when the private plane took off in Massachusetts. They both looked at him apprehensively as he worked the bolt of the shotgun on his lap. The recounting of the day’s events, and the possibility that the last possible link had now been destroyed, exhausted him, and Brian wanted to sleep.

“And so, you left.” It was a statement.

“Hell, I’m already under arrest in Connecticut. All I need is to have them pick me up in Massachusetts at a murder scene. They’d throw the key away.”

“Anyone at the motel see you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Let’s hope some bright room clerk didn’t notice you skulking around and make a note of your marker number.” He leaned back and looked pensive. “They’ll make identification of the Rubinows as soon as they find the bodies. That will mean contact with Connecticut authorities to check out the situation in Tallman. I’ll call some friends in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and indicate you’ll make a voluntary statement.”

“From a cell?”

“My boy, it’s my job to keep you from incarceration. If I can.”

“You guarantee that?”

“I don’t guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow. I found something in my encyclopedia today. Does it mean anything to you?” He handed Brian a Xeroxed page.

Brian read the article twice.

“Bellchamp, David Wright (1830–1864), Confederate Cavalry officer in the American Civil War, was born near Chapel Hill, Tenn., on July 13, 1830. Educated at Virginia Military Institute, he was commissioned in the United States Army in 1851. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he resigned his commission and enlisted in a Confederate cavalry regiment. Serving with distinction at the battle of Shiloh, he was present at the capture of Fort Pillow and was subject to much controversy over the so-called Pillow massacre. Tried by military court-martial, he was executed by the Confederate army on June 20, 1864.”

Brian handed the article back to Clinton. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Clinton shrugged. “Never can tell. Well, we at least know several things.”

“You might. I don’t even know who I am.”

“That’s number one. Your identity is tied to the killings. Two: for the first time, they have come out in the open and committed what is obvious murder. Three: whoever is behind all this is getting worried. Their actions aren’t nearly as considered as they initially were.”

“That doesn’t tell us much.”

“The fourth is the most important. You saw the man who killed the Rubinows.”

“I might be able to identify him.”

“And if you continue, they will try again to eliminate you.”

“Continue in what?”

“Trying to find out who you are.”

“That’s great. If I find out who I am, then I am not anyone, because some giant of a guy knocks me off with a silenced gun.”

Clinton pushed away from the sofa. “I would advise you to be careful. In the meanwhile, we must track down other possibilities.”

“Am I paying for these great words?”

“Of course. Now, we know there isn’t any record of your birth or adoption under the name of Maston. That, of course, does not rule out the possibility that you were born overseas. Which is highly unlikely, due to wartime conditions. However, you could be someone else’s illegitimate child, whom Mary decided to take in for some reason. In which case, Mary just arbitrarily assumed the Maston name.”

“That narrows it down considerably,” Brian said with bitterness.

“You still have the picture of the man who was supposed to be your father?”

“Slightly scorched from Lockwood’s attempt to burn it.”

“Trace it.”

As he slept in the chair with the gun on his lap, it came again. The dank smell and reaching hands that put him in the enclosed space. He awoke with a start to find he was on his feet waving the gun.

“Are you all right?” Jan stood in the doorway with her robe clutched at her neck. “Wouldn’t you rather come in the bedroom?”

“No. It’s close to dawn. Do you suppose I could have a cup of coffee?”

He followed her to the kitchen, where she moved around the stove like a sleepwalker. “How are you going to trace the picture?”

Brian pulled it from his pocket and turned the crinkled photograph over. “There’s the name of the studio on the back. May as well start with that.”

“It must have been taken over thirty years ago.”

“It’s all I’ve got to go on.”

The Egan photography studio was located on a deteriorating street, far from the skyscraper shadows of Hartford’s urban renewal. The street was crowded with shops that purveyed used goods, cheap liquor and the false sexuality of “adult books” and massage parlors.

The dust-streaked window of the narrow store was filled with yellowing pictures of long-ago brides and babies smiling wistfully. A small bell attached to the upper portion of the frame tinkled as the door opened, and reminded Brian of the shop bell at the house on Ferry Road. The store was empty, although he could see a back room through a partially open door, with a tripod mounted camera in front of a torn black backdrop.

“Anybody home?”

A chair scraped, someone grunted, and a hunched man with a Daliesque mustache hobbled out to the counter. “Yeah.”

“I’m interested in a picture.”

“Haven’t had calls for that since they opened up that place next door. It’s ruining the small businessman. How can I compete when I have to hire a model, develop the stuff myself, and they sell them dirty books for a buck apiece? It’s a communist plot.”

“I don’t think that.…”

“Here’s the best I got.” He lifted a shoe box from under the counter, blew dust off the lid and flipped through a series of pictures. He found what he was looking for and spread it on the counter with pride. “One of my favorites. That’s Mary. Ann with her legs … well, see for yourself.”

Brian glanced at the photo of the bovine-eyed woman in an obscene pose and wished he hadn’t. “That wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Set used to go for fifteen bucks. Because of those bastards, I’ll let you have them for four bits apiece.”

“No, I’m interested in this one.” He lay the picture of the man he had called his father on the counter. “It was taken a long time ago, but your name is stamped on the back.”

Egan picked it up gingerly. “Yep, this is an oldie … back in the forties. Place was really hopping then.”

“Do you remember anything about it?”

“Remember? Look at the grain on this pic. It was taken during the war. How could I remember?”

Brian laid a twenty-dollar bill on the counter next to the photograph. “Anything at all?”

Egan picked up the photograph and the money. The money disappeared into a vest watch pocket before he turned the picture over in his hands. “Well, it’s mine all right. That’s my stamp on the back, and that number is my lot number. That’s what I use to identify the package with the negatives.”

“Would you still have those records?”

“You crazy or something? That was thirty years ago. Besides, this picture was picked up and paid for.”

“It’s been in my house for years. Can you tell me anything at all about it?”

“The guy was a soldier.”

“I can see that.”

“The YD patch.”

“The Yankee Division.” Something ticked in the back of Brian’s mind, but he couldn’t pin down the elusive thought.

“Yeah, I remember taking that batch. The Division was nationalized at the beginning of the war, and I must have taken hundreds of shots of those guys before they shipped out.”

“Wasn’t the YD made up of New England National Guard units?”

“Sure. This kid was probably right over at the armory when I took this.”

The Connecticut State Armory sat in a square boxed by an interstate highway and the state capital. A directory in the lobby indicated that the personnel office was in room 101. Brian walked down the long hall toward the office, past walls lined with photographs of army units in various poses of combat formations, parade and group formations. He knocked and stepped inside the personnel office.

A regular army master sergeant looked up from a typewriter. “Help you, sir?”

“I’m trying to locate a man who was once in one of the units.”

“Sure. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Harder that way.”

“I have a photograph.”

“Not much help without the name. Do you know the unit or date of enlistment?”

“Sometime in the early forties.”

“All those guys are either dead or retired by now.” The sergeant picked up the photograph with feigned interest. “This here’s an oldie, all right. Look at the uniform, no Ike jacket. But he’s wearing the regimental shields for this unit. That’s one thing hasn’t changed.”

“Any way you can help me?” Brian realized that a tinge of desperation shaded his voice.

“Sorry.” The sergeant resumed his typing and then stopped, as Brian slouched desolately in the doorway. “That important to you, huh?”

“It sure is.”

“Let’s see the picture again.” He frowned down at the photograph. “That’s a rough one. Don’t know what to tell you. Like I said, he’s wearing the old dress blouse before the Ike jacket, probably one of the original guys in the early forties. The only thing I can suggest is for you to see if you can find his face in one of those other pictures on the walls. The guys in those days were picture crazy, thought they were about to save the world or something, and took shots of everything they did. If you find one with him in it, the name will be on the back of the frame.”

There were hundreds of photographs from a great many wars posted on all the walls of the cavernous building. It took Brian two hours with a borrowed flashlight to find the smiling man. He wore combat fatigues and sat behind a .30 caliber, water-cooled machine gun at some distant firing range. Even hunched over the gun, the smile still cleft his face. Brian took the picture from the wall and carefully turned it over. The typed inscription read, “Corporal Wilton Henry, on gunnery range, Camp Drum, New York, December 1941.”

It took another twenty-dollar bill to still the sergeant’s grumbling, and another hour to find the early enlistment records of Wilton Henry in the basement. “According to this, he enlisted in 1941, from 2223 Zion Street, Hartford.”

The heavy door creaked open to the extent of the chainlock. Wisps of pure white hair extended through the opening until the thin wrinkled features of a very old woman were visible. “What are you selling?” The voice was a high, cackling falsetto.

“I’m looking for Wilton Henry.”

“What you want him for?”

Brian wondered if she stirred caldrons in the back room. “Ah, I’m doing a book on World War II, and they said he might help with some information on the early days of his unit.”

“No money in that. He goes after lobster.”

Though the city of Hartford sits astride the scenic Connecticut River, for the past decades, the only fish in the river have been found floating belly up. “Are you related to Mr. Henry?”

“You call a mother a relative? I don’t call a mother any kind of relation. A mother is a burden. A terrible weight that children want to leave … all five of them … all gone … all away. I’m lucky to get a Christmas card, but I tell them not to worry about me. Someday the gas man will find my moldering body, then they’ll know.”

No wonder the five Henry children took off. “Can you tell me where Mr. Henry is?”

“Lobstering, I told you. Has a boat called the Mary D he sails out of Lantern City. When he’s sober.”

Lantern City was on the coast, a few miles below New London, perhaps an hour and a half drive. “Thank you.”

“You a bill collector?”

“No, not a bill collector. At least, I don’t think so.”

There were only four neighborhood bars in Lantern City, and it took the third to find a bartender who knew where Wilton Henry docked the Mary D. Brian stood on the decking in front of the Pier’s End Restaurant at the Dog’s Point Marina and looked down at the dock, where the Mary D bobbed at the end of its mooring line.

A man stood on the deck immediately behind the cockpit, dumping a bucket into the bait box. He wore faded denims, and although his face was rounder and florid to the point of being a near caricature of the smiling man in the old photograph, it was undoubtedly Wilton Henry. As he cast off the front mooring line, Brian hurried down the steps and across the pier.

When the rear line was cast off, Wilton Henry stepped into the cockpit.

“Mr. Henry! Can I see you a minute?”

The man at the wheel turned as the lobster boat began to drift away from the dock. “Have to catch the goddamn tide. See me later, unless you want to come along.”

The small boat was beginning to drift further away from the dock, as Brian took a running jump and fell on all fours on the rear decking. Henry pushed the throttles forward, and the boat began to turn away from the pier and head down the short estuary to the Sound.

“Now, what’s the goddamn hurry? You a bill collector?”

“No,” Brian yelled over the noise of the engines, which sounded inordinately loud for their slow speed.

“What’s so goddamn important?”

“Your engines don’t sound so hot.”

“Need an overhaul. Come on, goddamn, what you want? Or do you go over the side with the first pot?”

“Would you really do that?”

“Don’t know.” He laughed. “Goddamn, might attract more lobster!”

“Ever see this?” Brian handed the man the picture from his mother’s room.

Wilton Henry took the picture with one hand as he steered into Long Island Sound. He glanced at it a moment and then back at Brian. “You goddamn kidding me?”

“Why?”

“This is me. Where’d you get that?”

“A friend of mine had it.”

“Old. Old as the goddamn devil. Wish I looked like that now.”

They cleared the harbor and Wilton pushed the throttle forward, causing the small boat to leap ahead through the light waves. Late sun was directly in their eyes as they headed west.

“Do you know who you gave this picture to?”

“You got to be kidding. That’s at least thirty goddamn years ago. I don’t even remember when it was made.”

“Ever know anyone named Mary Elizabeth Dwight? From Tallman?”

“Who are you?” The smile left. “A cop?”

“Her son.”

The smile never returned as he clenched the helm and stared forward. Angrily, Wilton gave the throttle another push forward and the lobster boat bucked against oncoming waves. He stretched an arm toward Brian. “Get me a beer out of the ice chest.” Brian ripped a can off a six-pack and handed it to him. Wilton tore off the tab, flipped it over his shoulder and took a sip of beer. Easing back on the throttle, he turned to Brian and asked: “What’s this got to do with me?”

“Then you knew her?”

“If it’s the same girl I’m thinking of, maybe.”

Brian flipped through his wallet and extracted a small snapshot of Mary taken some years before. He handed it to the smiling man. “Recognize her?”

Wilton glanced down at the picture and then back toward the sea. “Yeah, that’s her. We went together for about a year. I was serious about her until she wrote me a flush letter when I was in the Pacific.” He paused for a moment and turned to Brian with concern. “How is she?”

“Dead.”

“That happens to a lot of us.” He stepped out of the cockpit. “Take the wheel. Keep us parallel to shore. I got to check something.” The helm spun as he disappeared into the small, cluttered cabin forward of the two-sided cockpit.

Brian grabbed the spinning wheel and corrected the boat’s erratic course. He bent slightly sideways to see into the cabin. Wilton Henry was sitting bent over, with his head in his hands, on a crate in the corner. His shoulders convulsed silently. Brian liked the man’s blustery good nature and the fact that he also emanated compassion and concern. He wished the man were his father.

Wilton Henry’s head poked through the companionway. “Get us another beer. I’ll take the wheel.”

They drank half a can of beer in silence. “Tell me about you two,” Brian said.

“You never told me why.”

“Your picture’s been next to her bed since I can remember.”

“Yeah. I’ll be goddamned. What’d your father say to that?”

“I never knew who my father was.”

The broad smile returned as Wilton Henry turned toward him. “Then that makes you a bastard, don’t it, son?”

Chapter Eleven

They arrived at the beginning of Wilton’s first string of pots. He put the engine in idle, swung out the winch arm and hooked it to the lead string on the buoy. “Make yourself useful, son. When I pass the pot, the lobster goes over there and bait goes back in before she goes back overboard.”

“I want to ask you about Mary.”

“So you do, so you do, but let’s get the goddamn lobsters first.”

Brian found it hard work. As he opened the third pot to take out a large three-pounder, crustacean pincers caught him on the finger. Wilton laughed and showed him how to wedge small wooden pegs between the claws. Henry seemed pleased with the day’s catch, but he did not show further inclination to talk about Mary. He seemed to be assimilating her death as they worked without further conversation. They pulled the last string, and the lobster boat turned back toward the marina.

Wilton opened more beer and tossed a can across the deck to Brian. “Goddamn Sunday boaters musta been driven off by the storm yesterday. Good haul, looks like none were stolen.” He blinked across the water. “You say she kept my picture all those years?”

“That’s right. She talked about you a lot also—although it would seem that some of it wasn’t true.”

“How’s that?”

“You were supposed to have died in the war, and she gave you a different name.”

“Doesn’t sound like the girl I used to know. Then, that was a long time ago. When were you born, son?”

“Nineteen forty-four.”

“That doesn’t make goddamn sense, either. If we’re talking about the same lady, she couldn’t have any children. Least that’s what she told me.”

“She’d had a hysterectomy.”

“Well, at least she wasn’t telling a story about that. That’s what she told me in the Dear John … we couldn’t have any children, and it wouldn’t be fair … said her decision was firm, even if that didn’t make any difference to me. Hell, I can remember that goddamn letter as if I got it yesterday.”

“You cared for her?”

“Only woman I ever did. I kept writing her, but she never did answer. I never could figure her dumping me. The last leave I had before going back overseas, it was all set—we were to be married when I got back. Goddamn, it seemed perfect. I guess I never did get over it. Never married, stayed in the service to be a thirty-year man. Probably drink too much, too.” As if to punctuate his last remark, he opened the cooler and flipped another can toward Brian. “So, I guess she adopted you and didn’t want a lug like me around. She ever marry?”

“No. She always said she had been married to a Maston, but kept your picture by the bed.”

Wilton Henry shook his head. “Doesn’t make any goddamn sense either. It would seem she got rid of me about the time you came along.”

“Something like that.” Brian gazed over the water. It sparkled in the sun, but nothing would dispel the sheen of depression that had descended over him. Another lead going nowhere, and now he knew he had exhausted every avenue.

“You’re looking sad, son. Depressed over her going, I suppose. How long ago did it happen?”

“Just a few days.”

“Did she … did she have a chance to say anything about me?”

“There wasn’t much time. The only thing she said to me was how sorry she was about Bellchamp.”

“Bellchamp! I’ll be goddamned!”

Brian looked at the smiling man with renewed interest. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Hell, yes. Bellchamp is where we met. Friend of hers from her home town was working for my C.O. and introduced us. Martha something or other.” The boat nosed toward the dock, and Wilton eased up on the speed and gently slid into the slip.

“This Martha who introduced you. Was her last name Rubinow?”

“Sounds like it. She and her husband worked for the Colonel.”

“In the town of Bellchamp?”

“Hell, no. Bellchamp’s a house. A goddamn mansion.”

Brian sat before the microfilm reader in the Tallman Public Library and threaded the first spool. The indexes on Bellchamp had led to further references, and a dozen small boxes were piled haphazardly in front of him. The date of the newspaper now illuminated on the screen was May 8, 1946. He felt reluctant to turn the knob. If the pieces fit, his past life would be irrevocably shattered. His fingers rested over the on-off switch as he considered leaving the library. He gave a sigh for lost things, turned the knob rapidly and concentrated on the flashing pages.

When Brian left the library two hours later, his hands trembled to the extent that he had to stuff them deep into his pockets to control the shaking. He walked three blocks to the green and stood silently before the war monument before turning toward Clinton Robinson’s law offices.

Clinton was scribbling rapid notes on a legal pad as Brian sat before the desk. When he looked up, his heavy eyebrows bunched into a scowl. “You look God-awful. Drinking again?”

“A few beers with an old friend on a lobster boat.”

“Traced the airplane to Teeterboro.”

“Where’s that?”

“Jersey Meadows, not far from New York City. From the description I gave him, the charter pilot said he remembered your large friend. Listed his name as Nat Turner, which I think we can safely assume is a pseudonym. Paid cash for the round trip to Williamstown, and was last seen leaving the airport on a bus. Pretty much of a dead end to find him, but it does give you credibility with the Massachusetts authorities, who, I might point out, are becoming quite impatient and might ask Willie to pick you up.”

“I discovered some interesting facts in the library.”

“Libraries are renowned for that.”

“Did you ever hear of the Wright kidnapping case?”

“Of course. About thirty years ago. Crime of the decade, they called it, and other nonsense like that.”

“You think it’s nonsense?”

“Only in the way the newspapers of the time handled it. They pulled all the stop on purple prose: rich war hero, beautiful young wife, missing child, quarter of a million in ransom—quite a pile in those days.”

“Colonel Wright wasn’t quite the war hero they made him out to be. In fact, he came within a hair of being court-martialed. It was hushed up at the time, but the true facts came out in the late fifties.”

Clinton showed his interest by tilting his chair back. “I appreciate all this historical trivia, but why?”

“Trace and research, you said. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“Do you want me to pay you by the word? Or do you plan to start out at the logical end—the beginning?”

Brian paced the room and accentuated his remarks with short chopping motions of his arms. “You found the Civil War reference to Bellchamp in the encyclopedia. Well, Colonel Wright of more recent vintage was evidently related to that Confederate officer. His full name was David Bellchamp Wright, and damn if he didn’t nearly repeat the same events as his forefather.”

“I assume you’re not outlining a master’s thesis?”

“During the Second World War, he commanded the 1055 Regimental Combat Team. It was patterned after British Commandos and Darby’s Rangers.”

“I heard about them when I was in the service. We always thought they were modeled after the SS.”

“Evidently, until they went too far and massacred a company of captured Germans. The regiment was disbanded, and its commanding officer cashiered from the service. He would have been court-martialed except that trying an American officer for war crimes in the midst of World War II didn’t seem like such a good idea at the time. Colonel David Bellchamp Wright was mustered out and sent home.”

“Retired from war wounds to his palatial estate and lovely young wife, as the tabloids put it.”

“Right! And some months later their child was kidnapped. Taken right from the nursery while the Colonel and his wife were downstairs.”

“That comes back to me. The kidnappers used a ladder from a gardening shed up to the nursery window.”

“A week later a ransom note was delivered. It instructed the Colonel to have a quarter of a million on a certain New York elevated train. Somewhere during the trip, a light signal was given and the money was thrown off the train. The child was never sent back, but a few months later, one of the Colonel’s ex-aides was found passing some of the marked ransom money. A … a.…” Brian snapped his fingers. “A Captain Ralston.”

“Tried and executed, as I recall. The rest of the money and his accomplices, if any, were never found.”

“I dug this all out of microfilm at the library.”

“Could have asked me and saved time.”

“Do you know the name of the Colonel’s house?”

“People always call country homes silly names, like the Hedges or the Laurels, things like that.”

“Bellchamp.”

“So?”

“Harry and Martha Rubinow worked for Colonel Wright. A few years after the kidnapping, their finances improved remarkably. Good God, don’t you see, it all fits!”

Clinton Robinson’s feet slipped from the desk as the chair creaked forward. “Well and good, perhaps typical of casual research mixed with a great deal of speculation. If you had continued with the newspaper microfilm, you might have read on and discovered that the Wright child was found. Discovered dead, not two miles from the estate.”

“I read that, and also that the body was so badly decomposed it had to be identified by the Colonel on the basis of its clothing. Do you know that the medical examiner allowed immediate cremation, supposedly because the cause of death was an obvious massive blow to the head?”

Clinton shook his head. “A marvelous edifice of speculation. On such a premise does the Grand Duchess Anastasia still cavort, and Martin Borman inhabits an executive suite at Radio City. Out of desperation, you have now decided that the Rubinows were the actual kidnappers, which explains their sudden affluence and rise from custodial work to real estate tycoons.”

“Only after some years had elapsed. They were smart enough not to start spreading the money around until almost ten years after the ransom payoff.”

“I would suppose, by logical extension, that Mary, your mother, if you still call her that, was in on it?”

“I don’t like to think about that.” Brian sat down pensively. “Of course, there are a lot of unanswered questions.”

“Like, who was the baby found in the woods? Like, for example, why would a woman like Mary get involved in something like that?”

“And who killed the Rubinows and why?”

“An interesting hypothesis, which explains a lot and leaves more unexplained. These are questions, I might add, that will be impossible to answer thirty years after the fact. In assessing your whole speculation, I’m afraid you’re reaching.”

“I might have thought so too, until I saw the photographs of the estate where it all happened—Bellchamp. I don’t know how or why, but the sense of déjà vu was overpowering.”

“The baby was two when kidnapped.”

“And Mary arrived back in Tallman when I was three. Where had we been?”

“There was a little gossip at the time, but those things die out.”

“I’m telling you, I know Bellchamp. There are too many coincidences.”

“Where is this place?”

“Upper New York State.”

“And your intention is to mount a great white steed to charge up the Adirondacks to the enchanted castle, where everyone’s been in a state of suspended animation awaiting your arrival.”

“Don’t make me sound foolish.”

“I only suggest that you may be a little old for a child’s foundling fantasy.”

“Goddamn it! Mary didn’t find me under a cabbage leaf.”

“That she didn’t. Let’s think about the people involved a minute. Harry Rubinow was a conniving money-grubber. Martha would go along with any scheme of Harry’s. Your Uncle Lockwood, in his extreme naiveté, could have been persuaded to do things he shouldn’t. I do not believe, nor can I even comprehend, that Mary Dwight, the woman you’ve called your mother all these years, could have been a party to a plot that included murder.”

“Then why did they kill her?”

“If we follow your line of thinking, another accomplice, covering old tracks.”

“Because she was going to tell me, as Lockwood and the Rubinows might have. Is there a statute of limitations on kidnapping?”

“No, and you forget that there’s also a murder involved. I’m only pointing out that this is all conjecture on your part.”

“I found the smiling man. His name is Wilton Henry, and he served as an orderly to Colonel Wright. The Rubinows introduced him to Mary at Bellchamp.”

“And they became involved.”

“They were engaged until she broke it off.”

“Could be that simple romantic remembrances gave her an attachment to the name of the house. When she knew her time was limited, she wanted to apologize for not marrying the man she loved, for not having a father in your home.”

“It’s more than that.”

“And you think Mary helped take the child?”

“I have to find out.”

“There are other explanations. People do make money from real property. Frugal people do make wise investments and amass a good deal of money. Women with character, like Mary, do take in stray children as their own. There’s a half-dozen other possibilities.”

“I never saw an obituary for Colonel Wright. He’s alive somewhere.”

“It wouldn’t be difficult to locate him. You know, Brian, even if this is all true, how can we prove it?”

“I’m not sure, but I do know one thing. If it’s still there, some of the answers might be at Bellchamp.”

Chapter Twelve

The town of Indian Forks, New York, was a dying thing. The lake that had nurtured the area was now covered with large splotches of green algae that gave the water a scummy appearance. The two-lane road that led through the village, to become Main Street on the outskirts of town, ran parallel to the lake and continued onward to a heavily forested area. A large Victorian building, once a resort hotel, dominated the center of the village. Fire escapes crisscrossed the building’s frame, as a large sign near the road proclaimed it to be the Maywood Convalescent Home. Where the lake curved to the west, an unpainted, decrepit building perched on the water’s edge. A sign near its lone gas pump announced the sale of bait and tackle, with rental boats available.

When Brian got out of the car near the gas pump, a tow-headed boy, holding a bottle of Pepsi and wearing grease-spattered Levis, nonchalantly walked from the building. “Fill ’er up?”

Brian nodded. The attendant inserted a nozzle into the tank and stared off down the road as he pumped gas. “I’m looking for an old house down this way. They call it Bellchamp.”

“Lots of old houses around here, most of them boarded up and falling apart.”

“A Colonel Wright used to own this one, if it’s still here.”

“The old Wright place. Yeah, it’s over across the lake. Still owns it, last I heard. Story is, that years ago there was a murder or something, and they just closed it up and left.”

“How do I get there?”

“You can almost see it from here across the lake. Just follow the road around the lake until you find the entrance. If you can find it.”

The road gradually disintegrated into disrepair after it made the sweep around the end of the lake and began its course up the far side.

Brian thought of Jan. Dreading the thought of what he might find in the long-vacant house, he considered the woman he had left early that morning. Her face, so intent the night before, had relaxed in sleep into a serenity he didn’t often see in her. He could marry her, leave Tallman with its inscrutable problems and go back to Canada. She would agree. They got along well together, and the specter of financial ruin, which continually seemed to haunt her, would be removed forever.

“Don’t go,” she had said from the bed as he dressed. “It won’t lead to anything, and you’re only putting your life in jeopardy.”

Brian had hefted the raincoat and taken the sawed-off shotgun from the floor near his pillow, checked the load and placed it in the pocket. “I’ll be all right. If all goes well, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Recalling the morning’s events made him miss the turnoff. He had gone too far up the lake. He drove onto the breach of a logging road and turned around to go back. Again, he almost missed the entrance to the estate, which was overgrown with long poplar branches that hung over the rutted and unused road.

The road ran a quarter of a mile to a fence surrounding the house. A high stone wall topped with jagged glass ran several hundred yards, until it turned toward the lake. Brian left the car at a high, wrought-iron gate to peer through the latticework, past the overgrown circular drive, at the house.

Boarded windows stared back at him with malevolent eyes. The sense of déjà vu, felt so strongly in the photographs he had seen, was now gone. The empty house spoke only of desolation. A strong breeze rippled tree branches that hung precariously over the drive, and the house momentarily vanished to reappear again when the wind passed. He examined the gate. A heavy chain was looped through the iron work and fastened with a new padlock. He examined the gate posts and, at shoulder height, found on the right post a recessed square with one bent and rusted bolt still protruding from the mortar. He crouched to run his fingers through the weeds immediately in front of the post. It must have fallen years ago and was nearly rusted into obliteration, but the name was still discernible as he ran his fingers over the pitted letters—Bellchamp—on the rectangular plate.

He walked along outside the wall, pushing through thorn brush and saplings. It would be difficult to get over the wall without risk of injury. But he decided the wall probably only ran along three sides of the property and out into the water. The lake side had to be open—why build a house on a lake and then obstruct the view? He went back to the car and backed out onto the road.

The rowboat he rented at the gas station pushed through the lake’s green algae toward Bellchamp. As he drew nearer, he turned to look over his shoulder at the estate. It loomed near the water’s edge, a large house of Florentine motif. The portico and intricate masonry were streaked with roof sediment from the years of neglect. To one side, what had once been a formal garden was now an overgrown jungle. Small trees grew on the front patio, splitting the concrete into radiating mosaics. It was a place of lost grandeur.

A rotting pier jutted from the center of the property where Brian tied the rowboat to a slanting post. He hopped to the ground, carrying the tire iron and flashlight he had removed from the car trunk.

Boarded windows and doors gaped obscenely toward distant objects. Well-buttressed heavy planking across the wide front entrance would be difficult to remove. He pushed his way through overgrown shrubs to the side of the house, where a smaller door was indented under a V-shaped extension of the eastern wing. Inserting the tire iron under the edge of the planking, he began to pry boards from the frame.

Once the boards were removed, he was able to insert the tire iron inside a rusting hasp holding an oversized padlock and pry it from its mounting. The door creaked open and he stepped inside.

The shaft of light from the open door cast oblong patterns across the dusty flooring. The storage area led to a large kitchen with a restaurant-sized stove along one wall that still held culinary implements hanging from the rack near its hood. Brian coughed as his feet stirred dust and sediment that, over the years, had seeped through dozens of minute openings. The pantry led into a formal dining room where table and side chairs were shrouded in sheeting. A dank smell permeated everywhere.

He walked slowly through the maze of downstairs rooms, trying to recreate some vestigial memories. But his only feeling was that of an intruder in a dead past. Decay and disuse disturbed him, and he stopped at the foot of a wide circular staircase, repressing a strong inclination to leave.

It had been a long drive, and now that he was inside the mansion, he might as well complete the mission. He walked tiredly up the stairs.

He stopped at the head of the staircase and turned with the flashlight held limply in one hand. The light shone through the balustrade to cast dappled shadows on the marble vestibule below.

From some deep subconscious level, inchoate feelings swam forward to merge into vague images. He knelt to grip the banister and peer down toward things that no longer existed. An iridescent chandelier glinted above highly polished marble as faint music formed a backdrop to the laughter of milling people. Men in uniforms and tuxedos and women in long gowns swirled across the floor.

And then they were gone. He stood as the after-images of their presence faded from the yellow flashlight falling on the dust below.

The main hall ran the length of the house, but Brian turned right without thought and went to the far end of the building to stop in front of a closed door. His fingers lightly brushed the handle.

Again he felt irresolution, fearful of empiric confirmation of what the dreamlike images below the stairs had revealed. He could run from the house and return to Canada.

The door opened with a slight twist of the knob. The windows had never been boarded, and it was a bright room with afternoon sun in swatches across the flooring. Benign tigers stared shrewdly from faded wallpaper, while a cobwebbed rocking horse laughed in a corner.

The crib was by the window, where he knew it would be. He ran his fingers along its top rail and looked out the window, wondering about the child he had once been.

Over the wall, the forest swayed gently as it stretched toward a distant ridge. At the gate, a large black man was unlocking the padlock.

Brian had an immediate mental picture of the raincoat he had left in the car with the shotgun in its deep pocket. The man below approached the house in a wary crouch, his head weaving slowly back and forth as he clutched the long pistol. As if forewarned by a hunter’s premonition, the man stopped and flicked his eyes across the upper windows. The sunglasses reflected green luminescent patches from the lake as they looked directly toward Brian standing in the nursery window.

In a slow ballet of lethal intent, the gun rose. Then it was steadied with both hands as it swung in a short arc toward the window.

Brian stood immobile, fascinated by the sequence. He heard the abrupt thunk of the pistol as the molding to his right shattered. His abrupt backward movement jarred the bird mobile above the crib. Slowly, it revolved with the final notes of the Brahms lullaby.

Brian pressed against the wall away from the window as he assimilated what had happened. The black man would find the open door and stalk warily through the house with the weapon constantly at the ready. It would be impossible to pry open another door in time. Brian held his breath to listen for ominous sounds in the long-dead house.

He would be cornered and killed in his own nursery.

There was an almost imperceptible shuffling sound from the staircase down the hall. Brian opened the nursery window, then backed up, ran across the room and dove through.

He landed on hands and knees, a sharp pain reverberating in a damaged knee as shock numbed his shoulders. He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the lake. He turned once to look up toward the window.

The man with the gun stood in the nursery window, aiming.

Brian’s knee hurt, and he found running difficult. Bark spattered from a nearby tree trunk, followed by the low thud of the silenced pistol. He ran a weaving pattern toward the lake and out onto the rotting wood of the pier and dove underwater. He swam toward the end of the wall that ran a dozen yards into the water. When he surfaced for air, a quick backward look told him that the black man had left the house and was running toward the water. Brian ducked under, and when he surfaced for the second time, he found he was by the edge of the wall. His pursuer had reached the dock and was untying the rowboat. Brian rounded the wall and swam in quick strokes toward the shore on the other side.

Mud sucked at his feet when he stood in shallow water and staggered over a fallen tree to shore. The rowboat rounded the wall with uneven strokes that pushed the prow first one way and then another. The rower turned and raised the pistol as Brian ran through a pine grove away from the lake.

Low-hanging branches lashed at his face, but he stumbled on toward the front of the house and the car he knew would be parked there. He reached the car and fumbled uselessly with the locked door before trying to raise the latched hood.

He would have to smash the window and reach inside to unlatch the hood before he could rip off the distributor cap or immobilize the vehicle in some other manner. He found a large rock at the edge of the woods and raised it overhead as the black man turned the corner at the far edge of the wall.

A snap shot ricocheted off the car hood. Brian dropped the rock to stumble into the woods; with his breath coming in rasping gasps. He could hear his pursuer crashing through the foliage after him. He forced his progress to become more studied as he ducked and slipped through trees and brush. Finding a thicket with a nearly obscured deer run behind the first layer of brush, he parted the branches quietly and moved inside, where he dropped to the ground to wait.

The gunman’s movements seemed to circle the thicket and then move away. He heard the car start and drive down the pitted road to the highway. The option was obvious. His assailant would patrol the lake road to Brian’s car in the village and back. It would be a patient waiting game that would preclude any attempt on Brian’s part to reach his car or hitch a ride.

He lay prone in the thicket to await dusk.

Night fell across the lake with the cry of a loon. The haunting sound echoed across the valley as sun brimmed the mountains and darkness fell. Brian slipped from the thicket and made his way quietly toward the shore. He had listened carefully and not heard the car return, and could only gamble that his conjecture was correct. The rowboat had drifted and now floated placidly a dozen yards away, its shape barely discernible in the moonless night.

Brian swam toward the boat with low, even strokes and pulled himself over the stern. He lay in the bottom of the boat breathing heavily for a few moments before raising his eyes over the gunnels. It was still quiet along the shore, and he couldn’t see any unusual shapes. He began to row back across the lake.

As he approached the jetty where he had rented the boat, a door opened to illuminate the water. He tensed as the rowboat gently bumped against the dock.

“I was getting worried about you, mister. Just about ready to get the outboard and go looking for you.”

“Thanks, I’m fine.” Brian tied the boat and jumped to the dock. “Anybody asking about me?”

“Yeah, couple a hours ago. Black man. A big guy, looked like a football player. Said he’d come back.”

They walked into the rear of the building. Through the dirty windows, Brian saw his car thirty feet away, and a few feet beyond that, partially illuminated by one of the village street lights, was another car, with the black man sitting patiently behind the wheel. Brian stepped back from the window. “Let me use your phone for a collect call.”

There was no answer at Jan’s house. Clinton picked up his phone on the tenth ring. “Is this who I think it is?”

“Come get me, Clinton. Indian Forks. I’ll be behind the convalescent home,” he whispered into the receiver.

“I don’t make house calls.”

“Come on, damn it! The guy’s sitting right outside and has already taken half-a-dozen shots at me. Come incognito. Got the place?”

Brian left the puzzled attendant with a soggy ten-dollar bill, and slipped out the back door to slink along the lake shore to the rear of the convalescent home. He found a dark corner near a patio wall with woods to the rear and water to the side. It would provide two possible avenues of escape.

Brian lay back in the darkness, listening to the gentle lap of the nearby lake, but his fatigue couldn’t stop the rise of questions. The man who was trying to kill him had a key to the gate at Bellchamp. How did he know Brian was coming to Indian Forks? Did he get the information from Jan or Clinton? Had he been followed, or had discreet questioning at the library pointed toward Bellchamp?

Brian dozed off with intermittent dreams of people with keys.

He awoke with a start as headlights swept across the yard from a vehicle coming down the drive. Slipping behind a tree, he watched as a pickup truck, loaded with slatted crates of live chickens, stopped and switched to parking lights.

A stooped man in overalls and a dirty baseball cap left the truck to walk toward the lake. He looked out over the dark water. “Where the hell are you, Brian?”

“Jesus, is that you, Clinton?”

He spoke in a low voice without turning. “Get in the back, behind the chickens.”

A porch light flicked on behind the nursing home as a man dressed in white coveralls appeared at the back door. “Who’s out there?”

“Can you give me directions to Three Rivers?” Clinton asked as he walked toward the porch. While the attorney engaged the orderly in conversation, Brian raced for the pickup, pushed aside a crate of chickens and crawled into a space in the center of the truck bed.

A few minutes later, the truck turned out the narrow drive and drove slowly up the highway. It was an old truck, with worn shocks and a constant flutter and a smell of chickens. The odor had begun to make Brian nauseous when the truck pulled off the road and stopped. Clinton moved aside the crate of chickens, and Brian slid to the ground. They had pulled into a wayside rest area and were parked next to Clinton’s car.

“Thanks,” Brian said, as the attorney shucked the baseball cap and overalls, tossing them into the cab.

“Cost a hundred to a slightly inebriated farmer in yonder gin mill. I’ll put it on the bill.” Clinton reached back in the cab and turned to face Brian with a gun in his hand. It was the .22 target pistol borrowed from Gordon’s gun cabinet, and it was pointed directly at Brian’s mid-section.

“Not you, Clinton. Please God, not you.”

Chapter Thirteen

“What? You’re shivering.”

“There had to be someone in Tallman who knew my movements.”

Clinton reversed the gun and handed it to Brian butt first. “We might need this. When you’ve finished your hysterical paranoia, I suggest you get under a blanket and drink coffee.”

As Clinton’s car accelerated through the dark night, now turning to dawn, Brian pulled a blanket over his shoulders and drank coffee from a thermos. His fingers, shaking to the point of palsy, made it necessary for him to hold the mug in both hands. The gun jiggled from his lap onto the floor, where Clinton reached for it and wordlessly put it in the glove compartment.

A giggle began deep within Brian and worked up to a paroxysm of laughter. “I thought …” He was hardly able to articulate the words. “I thought it was you.” The laughter continued until he had to lean back in the seat.

“Highly unlikely,” Clinton rasped, and increased the speed of the car. “What happened out there?”

Brian recounted the day’s events, which had already taken on a distant perspective and formed into a cinemalike quality, with him as a mere observer. The shock of recognition that struck him as he opened the nursery door was still strong, although it was now tainted with an aura of unreality. “I’ve been in Bellchamp before,” he said finally.

“Because you knew where the nursery was?”

“I knew before I opened the door.”

“The room you speak of was at the far end of the house?”

“I went right to it. As if I’d been in that hallway a hundred times before.”

“Where else would a nursery be in a house that size? You wanted to find something, and you found it.”

“Always the devil’s advocate.”

“At this point, that’s what you’re paying me for. What interests me is the fact that your assailant had a key to the gate lock.”

“If I was that child, and the house is still owned by Colonel Wright … why are they after me?” The car rocked around a curve as the speedometer inched toward eighty. “Awfully fast, Clinton.”

“We have things to do in New York City. To answer your question, there are two possible reasons: accomplices to the kidnapping are trying to cover themselves; or else it’s something to do with the Wright money. Something we aren’t aware of. The Colonel’s an old man, there aren’t any other children, and my sources tell me that he’s worth close to fifty million.”

“You think we’ll find out something in New York?”

“That’s where the Colonel is. The taxes on Bellchamp are paid by a New York corporation called the 1280 Company. Controlling interest in the company is held by Wright at a Brooklyn address.”

“And that’s where we’re going?”

“Not immediately. We have a luncheon date first. Your bag’s in the back, get into some decent clothes.”

The New York Lawyer’s Club is a venerable place, located on the top floors of an older Broadway building near Trinity Church. The dining room is dominated by a two-story stained-glass window that casts a subdued light over the occupants. Dark wood and quiet waiters create an atmosphere reminiscent of the dusty interior of some ancient brief. Clinton and Brian stood by the maître d’s podium as the elevator door behind them opened to disgorge several men.

A large, balding man in his early sixties strode toward them with a smile. He grasped Clinton’s hand with his and pumped it. “Robinson, you old bastard, it’s been years.”

“Brian Maston, this is an old classmate, Silas O’Keefe.”

Over a before-lunch drink, Brian learned that Silas O’Keefe was a senior partner of Daly, O’Keefe and Bernstein, a Wall street firm specializing in insurance law. He and Clinton had attended Columbia Law together and had evidently kept up the relationship over the years. Brian listened with some puzzlement as the two lawyers reminisced over their earlier years and touched on some cases Clinton had ruled on while still on the bench. When the steak sandwiches were served, Clinton brought him into the conversation.

“Brian’s an old family friend from Tallman. He’s a writer doing a book on the 1055 Combat Team.”

The smile faded from Silas’s face as he pushed back from his lunch. “Controversial. Still controversial, but I’d like to see someone get the facts correct.”

“Brian and I were talking about it the other day when I happened to remember that someone from Columbia had served with the 1055. Went through the old Alumni News—I keep everything you know—and there you were, Silas. Major O’Keefe in the 1055.”

“You mean to tell me that you still have Alumni News from the forties?”

“Good secretary.” Clinton began to cut into his steak sandwich with meticulous care. “In the name of fair play and all that, I thought Brian should get the other side’s view. Someone sympathetic to Colonel Wright.”

Silas O’Keefe leaned forward with great intensity. “The most maligned officer in World War II.”

“I’d be interested in anything you know about him, Mr. O’Keefe,” Brian said. “Anything at all would help.”

Over lunch, coffee, and later, when they went into the reading room at the rear of the club, Silas O’Keefe’s story of Colonel Wright and the 1055 began to unfold.

David Bellchamp Wright had followed the family tradition and entered West Point in 1921, graduating near the top of his class in 1925. Impatient with the peacetime army, he had resigned his commission in 1932. In the thirties, he had entered the family cotton brokerage business in Savannah and gradually moved his operations to New York, where he expanded the family fortune with the same diligence he had applied to military matters. He had been recalled into the service as a major in 1940.

The success of special German units in capturing the Belgian border forts at the beginning of the war caused the British to form their famous commando units, and the U.S. to start the Rangers under Colonel Darby and the 1055 under Wright. The 1055 was a crack regiment. Each member was a volunteer, weapons expert and parachutist. They were honed to a fine edge of nervous expectancy. During the North African campaign, they received unit citations and, as individuals, were one of the most decorated groups in the army. Disaster occurred after Normandy and the subsequent breakthrough.

“By pure happenstance,” Silas said, “I was a convalescent in England, but I heard about it later. A company of German troops surrendered to the 1055 and were machine-gunned down. That’s the kind of thing staff people hush up, but somehow the word reached Ike. The 1055 was dismantled. Wright was sent stateside for court-martial, but they dropped it and gave him the boot.”

“Was he guilty?”

Silas shrugged. “It was a combat situation. Just let me tell you, if the 1055 had remained attached to Patton’s Third Army, God knows what they might have accomplished. Wright was a soldier, a natural-born soldier.”

“What about Wright’s wife?”

Silas thought a moment. “As I recall, he married later in life, about the time he went back in the army. I met her once, a beautiful woman, although quite a bit younger than the Colonel.”

“Did you know Captain Ralston, the one involved in the kidnapping?”

“That bastard! Hell, I knew him. A guy who joined the regular army in the thirties as an enlisted man. A mustang who came up through the ranks. He was the Colonel’s aide until he was hit. Ungrateful prick. When he was wounded and sent back to the States, the Colonel let him stay at his house. That’s when he cased the place for the kidnapping.”

“As I remember it,” Clinton said, “it was after the body had been found that they caught Ralston with the ransom money.”

“Only a small part of it. They never did catch the other people involved, if there were others.”

“How did they catch him?”

“Routine police work. They had serial numbers of part of the money. For a long time bills didn’t appear, then, gradually, banks began picking up one here, one there, all from Manhattan. They kept narrowing it down, and the final lead was a liquor store on Madison Avenue. The owner remembered taking one of the bills from a regular customer.”

“Captain Ralston?”

“Right. Ex-captain by then. The war was over, and he was working in New York. They searched his apartment and found a few thousand more of the money.”

“Pretty circumstantial, wasn’t it?”

“Feelings were high and he had the money, or at least some of it. He had been in the house prior to the kidnapping and knew the layout. Then, he couldn’t account for his actions the night it happened.”

“He never confessed?”

“Never. Claimed he was innocent up to the night they executed him.”

Hands seemed to rise toward him through the mist. They pinned his legs and held his wrists clamped together. The dank smell was all-pervasive. He struggled, thrashing in their grip. His cries were somewhere deep within him. He fell.

He awoke on the hotel room floor, wedged between the twin beds. The travel clock on the bureau said five, which meant he had slept an hour. He stumbled to the shower and turned the water on full force. He let it run over him as he tilted his head back under the full onslaught of the spray.

Clinton would still be in the New York Public Library. The lawyer’s past skepticism had been replaced by silent contemplation. He seemed grimly determined to find out all he could in the hope that some hint of the real events of the thirty-year-old incident might be revealed.

Brian toweled and dressed, indecisive about his next move. He wasn’t hungry, yet he felt compelled to leave the room and its oppressive confinement.

He took the elevator to the main floor, where there was a pocket-sized bar off the lobby.

The bartender was mixing a frozen drink for a couple at the corner of the bar. Brian slid onto a stool and ordered a vodka martini.

He stared down at the olive resting in the bottom of the glass like a green gem, and realized he didn’t want the drink. Was that progress or aimless resignation? The velocity of events numbed and frightened him to the point where clarity of thought had become impossible. There were few alternatives left except the Colonel. He found it impossible to contemplate the man as his natural father, just as he found it difficult not to consider the woman buried next to Lockwood in the small New England cemetery as his mother.

Questions rose from the small cocktail glass before him. There had been a thirty-year-old kidnapping, that was known, but to align Lockwood and Mary with such a cause was beyond the reach of his imagination. Perhaps, in naiveté, Lockwood could have been persuaded, but Mary? The Rubinows, pushed forward by Harry’s rapacious nature, could have been involved, but if so, who was the child whose body was discovered and identified as the Wright child? Why were they trying to kill him? Where did the black man with the gun come from?

He pushed the drink away, and with an impatient gesture, slapped a bill on the bar and left the hotel.

New York’s noise broke around him as he left the hotel. He walked a brisk pace toward Fifth Avenue, as if by gaining distance from the hotel he might leave the apparitions that haunted him.

He stood on a corner waiting for a traffic light and impulsively signaled for a taxi.

“Where to, buddy?” An impatient face frowned through scratched Plexiglass. “I asked, where you going?”

Brian fumbled for the address, Clinton had given him. “Ah, State Street … in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn? Oh, sheet.” The driver slammed the taxi into gear.

Brian had always considered Brooklyn halfway to the ends of the earth. Like many who lived out of the exurban reaches of the city, and who traveled to Manhattan to see Broadway shows or museums, his impression of the city consisted primarily of airports and the midtown area. His quickly formed impression of the Colonel did not seem to jibe with a Brooklyn resident.

The photographs from the news accounts he had read were still vivid. Colonel Wright was a short man with a severe military bearing. The earlier pictures had shown a thin mustache cutting across his upper lip, while his eyes seemed set back a bit too far from an aquiline nose. He gave the appearance of a very stern man.

The cab’s progress across the Brooklyn Bridge was accompanied by the hum of wheels over a mesh surface. Just beyond the bridge, by the Municipal Building, they turned down a tree-lined street. The complexion of the city changed. The streets were bordered with well-kept brownstones, and the sidewalks were peopled with a mixture of prosperous housewives and young arty types.

“State Street where?” the driver asked.

“Here.”

Brian got out of the cab, stood on the corner and looked up the two-hundred block. It was not what he expected. The brownstones were wide, and wrought-iron fences bracketed small, carefully cultivated flower plots, while shady trees overhung the walk. It occurred to him that standing on a Brooklyn street corner was not particularly productive and that people were giving him curious glances. He walked the half-block to stop in front of number 216. The house was wider than most of the homes on the street. Heavy drapes were pulled across the parlor-floor windows and obscured the interior. Steps from the street to the first-floor entrance were flanked by an intricate rail. Brian stared up at the front door, as if he could discern the occupants by sheer force of concentration.

The heavy front door swung open. A man with a cane stepped out to look down toward him. Their eyes met and held for a moment before Brian turned away. It was the man in the newspaper photographs. The mustache was gone and the hair had turned white, but the deep-set, piercing eyes were unmistakable. He wore a dark suit with a regimental tie and a small ribbon in his lapel. He carried himself with a stiffly erect carriage.

The unforeseen meeting had been accidental. Brian walked away from the house in confusion, and was inexplicably embarrassed.

“Lieutenant Maston.” The voice immediately behind him was sharp and commanding. Brian slowed his pace, as the end of the cane curved over his arm and pulled him around to face Colonel Wright.

“I beg your pardon. You must be mistaken.”

“I don’t believe so, Lieutenant.” At close range, the eyes were even more piercing, with an opaque quality that revealed no emotion.

The Colonel turned his head slightly toward the man who had just come out of the house. “Buxton, Lieutenant Maston will be joining us. Please escort him to the solarium.” The cane left Brian’s arm as the Colonel walked briskly back to the house. Brian stood transfixed, unready for the confrontation.

He felt an arm on his shoulder and looked up to see the large black man with reflecting sunglasses. Buxton used his free hand to lightly flip aside his jacket, revealing a holstered gun under his armpit.

“The man said the solarium.”

It was the house of a military man. Original paintings of ramrod-stiff troops in various American military uniforms, from the Continental Army to the camouflage of Vietnam, angled up the wall of the interior staircase. A suit of armor, grasping a large battle-ax, guarded the downstairs hall. There was an aura of austerity about the house. Immaculately clean and filled with military artifacts, it lacked any sort of gentle touch. It was a house devoid of any feminine influence.

Once they were inside and the massive outer door shut, Buxton pushed Brian against the wall. Efficiently, he patted Brian down for any weapon and then shoved him toward a hall leading to the rear of the house. The hall exited into a solarium at the far end of the building. A small fountain in the center of the room was surrounded by hanging baskets of flowers, with nearby plantings of tropical vegetation. In a corner, a white iron table with a glass top sat next to a rolling bar cart. The room’s decor was in strange juxtaposition to the remainder of the house.

“Sit,” Buxton commanded, and pushed Brian into a chair by the table. “What are you drinking?”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind! You’ve tried to kill me on three occasions, and now you’re offering me a drink?”

Buxton removed the sunglasses and stuck them in a breast pocket of his dark suit. “Nothing personal, man.”

Colonel Wright had changed into a dinner jacket but still carried the cane as he entered the solarium. Brian jumped to his feet. “Do you know this man is a murderer?”

The cane pushed against Brian’s chest with sufficient power to force him back in the chair. “A question of definition, Lieutenant. A few years ago, Captain Buxton commanded a Green Beret A team and killed most efficiently. Society called him a hero. Unfortunately, the market for mercenaries these days is of a different pigmentation. I was most fortunate to recruit him for my staff.” The Colonel sat across from Brian, while Buxton mixed cocktails. “We had arranged to dine elsewhere this evening, but your arrival has changed our plans.”

Cocktail glasses were set on the glass-topped table as Buxton ceremoniously poured from a shaker until amber liquid brimmed the rims. Brian looked down at the undulating drink and then up at the Colonel, who leaned on his cane with his feet crossed. “You’re both mad. First you try to kill me, and now you serve cocktails. What’s in it, for Christ’s sake, hemlock?”

“Gauche, Lieutenant. One should always be courteous to one’s enemies—at least initially.”

“Since we have never met before, I hardly see how I qualify as an enemy.” The Colonel sipped his drink and looked at Brian over the rim of the glass. “And how did you know who I was?”

“Intelligence is the first resource of any commander. Captain Buxton, please get the Lieutenant’s dossier.”

Buxton left the solarium and returned with a heavy manila folder, which he placed before Brian. The first items in the folder were photographs: large, clearly detailed shots of Brian in his Canadian classroom, on the streets of Montreal, and one of him sitting in a restaurant with a friend. There were several more of him in Tallman, one which he recognized as having been taken at the graveyard services for Mary. He flipped rapidly through the folder and glanced at the other papers: a complete copy of his military service record, his college transcript and typed notes from some anonymous observer, describing in detail his personal habits and preferences. He closed the folder and looked back at the Colonel. “Very thorough, almost frightening.”

“Not very difficult to assemble if one has the staff, time and money.”

“Why?”

“You posed a possible threat by becoming involved in areas that did not concern you.”

“Like the others you killed, all four of them?”

Colonel Wright looked at Buxton with false ingenuousness. “Was it four, Buxton?”

“Should have been five, sir. But I blew the last assignment.”

“Noted, Captain. Never fear, you shall have another opportunity.”

“Both of you are stark raving mad!”

“Not really. Practical. Eminently practical.”

“You’ve both admitted to four killings, you call that practical? Do you know who I am?”

“Extensively. Do you know who you are?”

It was an awesome feeling for Brian to realize the extent of his dislike for the diminutive colonel, who now sat so primly across from him. He had a desire to lift the table and crash it across the face, to obliterate the probing eyes. It was the aftershock of this feeling that made him think who this man might be, and what their relationship might be. He sipped his drink, hoping that a mundane action might restore a semblance of control. “You never answered my question. What’s the reason for all of this?”

“Not what you probably expect. You are aware of the tragedy that befell me some thirty years ago. The child that was taken and uselessly murdered?”

“Yes, I know of it.”

“The leader of the criminals was an ex-aide of mine, Captain Ralston, who was apprehended and executed. There were others, however.” He leaned forward with an intensity of expression that elongated his face. “Several others. The authorities knew this, but time brings other crimes their way. I do not have that problem, and my energies have been devoted to the case. Can you understand that? My resources were directed toward the confrontation I knew would eventually take place. When the time arrived, Buxton was the instrument of my revenge. The good captain was my front-line assault.”

“You think the Rubinows were involved in the crime?”

“I know they were.”

“And Mary and Lockwood?”

“Both accomplices.”

“You waited thirty years to execute them?”

“I am a patient man.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Do you, Lieutenant? And what do you believe?”

“The child might live.”

“I identified the remains myself, and then ordered cremation.”

“You could have been wrong.”

“I’m not.”

“Why kill me? I’m obviously too young to have been involved as an accomplice. Your dossier proves that. Why destroy me also?”

“The sins of the father, my boy. A festering sore must be excised, cut away and destroyed.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes! You are a coward. You are the worst sort of soldier and officer. You deserted under fire. You deserve to be shot. If you were under my command, you would have been shot.”

“You’re avoiding the issue. You refuse to acknowledge who I am.”

“Your interest in Bellchamp has not escaped my notice. Sneaking into the nursery … did you possibly think that would give you information to establish your claim?”

“I had been there before.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“All?”

“The pretenders. The confidence men desirous of getting their hands on the Wright money. Come, my boy, did you think you were the first? There have been at least a dozen over the years. The Wright child is alive, they claim, and come with outstretched hands for their largess. We’ve proven each claim fallacious, as yours is.”

“I had been to that house before.”

“Had you?” The Colonel slowly undid his tie and removed the studs from his dress shirt. “I’ve worn these for years,” he said, and slipped a small silver chain over his head and slapped it on the table covered with his palm. “My army dog tags. They contain my blood type.”

“That won’t prove anything.”

“At this juncture, I’m willing to gamble that they will certainly disprove who you pretend to be. Do you know your blood type?”

“O negative.”

“How convenient.” He took his palm off the dog tags and tossed them at Brian.

Brian read the stamped inscription. The blood type was A. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“My wife, the mother of the child, is also A. Read any basic text. You could not possibly be my child.”

“Evidence like this can be manufactured.”

“Blood-typing is irrefutable.”

Brian pushed the folder of personal information across the table. “You know my blood type from medical records.” He twirled the dog tags. “And these could be punched out at any penny arcade.”

“That would be illogical. Why should I want to lie in order to disown my own child?”

“The dossier, as you call it, that you prepared on me. You went to a great deal of trouble. It’s occurred to me that perhaps you would not want to acknowledge an army deserter.”

“The incompatability of blood types was a gratuitous event in your case, Lieutenant. Combat brings out the best in men, and in your case, the worst.”

“Like the massacre of unarmed prisoners, Colonel?”

Brian quickly ducked his head as the cane slashed downward, shattering a cocktail glass into a hundred shards and cracking the table top. The second blow caught him across the edge of the cheek and cut the skin open. Brian threw himself backward as the cane was raised again. His arms were pinned to his sides by a powerful grip, and he realized that Buxton, with an agility surprising for his massive size, had moved to his rear to immobilize him.

Colonel Wright stood trembling as the cane slashed down again and again across Brian’s face and body. It was now apparent that sometime in the near past the Colonel had suffered a mild stroke, as the frenzy of the blows contorted one side of his face, while the other side remained impassive and immobile. The blows ceased and the Colonel stepped back, his chest heaving from exertion. Brian felt blood trickling down the side of his face toward his chin.

“Dispose of him, Captain. I want it away from here and done in such a manner that the body is never located. I will leave the operational details to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Brian’s back arched as Buxton’s massive arm encircled his neck. His fingers tore at the choking muscled forearm. His eyes began to cloud as a prelude to losing consciousness. He was helpless under the superior strength of his assailant.

The Colonel’s voice seemed distant. “Messy, Captain. Unforgivable that I should lose my temper.”

The pressure on Brian’s neck slackened slightly as Colonel Wright, at the portable bar, methodically poured a small vial of liquid into a straight glass and then half-filled it with bourbon. Brian had a rapid flash of the irony of the sequence of events: chloral hydrate that he paid to have used on the young officer in Saigon would now be the instrument of his own destruction. They would force him to drink, and then when he was unconscious, his limp body would be placed in a car and taken to some remote area, or the sea, and permanently hidden.

A hand under his chin forced his head to tilt back as fingers closed over his nostrils. Liquid was poured into his mouth. He tried to regurgitate, but involuntarily swallowed again and again.

“That’s a good boy,” a far-away voice said as he was lowered onto a chair.

His eyes began to lose focus as somewhere in the far distance a heavy fist pounded on a door.

Buxton left the room, while Colonel Wright stood near the fountain, running a hand up and down the length of his cane.

Brian’s limbs were leaden, and he was barely conscious of the commotion in the hall. Voices came to him across many ranges of mountains.

“Damn it! The call said a fire at 216 State!”

It took a long time to turn his head and look down the hall. Groups of rubber-coated firemen filled the downstairs. One tall fireman held the nozzle of a slack hose, while through the open front door the flashing red lights of fire-fighting apparatus cast streaks of red through the house.

A battalion chief was arguing with Buxton near the suit of armor as Brian flung himself from the chair. He fell toward the floor until his hand caught the edge of a hanging basket of flowers. The basket ripped from its mooring as he staggered from the solarium.

The hall was a hundred miles long, with dim figures at its end. They looked at him with curiosity. He bounded from one wall to another as he forced himself forward.

Falling, his arms went around the shoulders of a fireman who pushed him away with a grimace. Voices battered at him.

“Drunk as a hoot owl.”

“He’s a sick man. We’ll take him upstairs.”

“Who turned in the fucking alarm?”

Someone said, “Help me,” and it was Brian’s own weak voice. He had made it to the door and could look down steps that stretched endlessly below him. Buxton’s hand closed over his arm, and he reeled to look up half-consciously at the smiling black man.

“I’ll take him.” Someone else was guiding him down the stairs toward onlookers surrounding the fire trucks.

“Going to kill me … going to kill me.” He tried to communicate to the man holding him.

“I have a cab waiting down the block. Thought a false alarm might be the best course of action.”

Vainly, Brian tried to place who belonged to the familiar voice.

“Only a few feet further,” the voice continued.

“Clinton,” he gasped. “You knew where …”

“A reasonable assumption, but I could have been wrong. Thus the firemen rather than police. A little further.”

“A few feet, oh, Christ.…”

Chapter Fourteen

The place was not far from where the Rubinows died. Brian had traveled the same roads then with anticipation, eager to hear what Martha might tell him, and returning in shock and dismay. Now he drove them as a last resort.

He had left Clinton in a black mood at a motel in Connecticut. The white-maned attorney had spent a good deal of time during the drive from Brooklyn mumbling and making lists. One list contained the charges that could be levied against them, which seemed to range from turning in a false alarm, to withholding evidence and willful destruction of property (lost automobiles). The other list was of charges they might levy against the residents of the State Street house: murder against Buxton, conspiracy to murder and assault against the Colonel.

Brian found the address and turned into the visitors’ parking lot. Within minutes he had directions from the receptionist and left through the rear of the building, to walk toward the high meadow near the mountains.

He saw her across the grass and wanted to run to her. He knew she was in her fifties, but distance and perspective belied her age; also, she walked with the limber gait of a young woman. Occasionally, she stopped to pick some small flower, which she added to a bunch already in the basket by her side. His feelings toward her were different than toward the Colonel, as if the memory of some long-ago crooning song awakened inchoate remembrances of warmth and security.

He walked slowly toward her, aware of the long wall surrounding the field and the low clusters of buildings that comprised the hospital. She seemed oblivious to his presence, still intent in searching low meadow grass for further acquisitions for the basket at her waist.

“Mrs. Wright,” he called softly.

She looked up. Her eyes flattened and turned opaque as she shrank from him. “It’s not time to go back.”

“They said I might talk to you a few minutes.”

“A visitor? I don’t have many visitors. Or are you a new doctor? They come and go so, I can hardly keep track of them. Just when I think I really know one … poof … he’s gone.” Her laughter tinkled momentarily in the bright air before dying away in the wind.

The childlike woman now on the cusp of middle age looked at him wistfully, awaiting an explanation of his presence. He wondered what strange mental machinations had forced him to this place, and what sort of clue he could possibly expect from her shattered mind. “May I walk with you?”

“Of course. I’m gathering flowers for the table. That’s always my job, you know.” She looked toward him reproachfully, as if his power might take away such a simple thing.

It had taxed even Clinton’s resources to find her. The records had been sealed in probate court, and it took ethical gymnastics and the calling of several past favors by the attorney to finally have them opened far enough to reveal her location, a private mental hospital in the Berkshires.

“How long have you been here, Mrs. Wright?”

She bent toward a dandelion. “Oh, a long time. Most of my life, I suppose. I do like dandelions, don’t you? Some say they are weeds, but they are such a persistent flower and so yellow.”

“You’ve been here since the forties?”

She stopped pensively. “The forties? I would think so. Not always here. There was another place in Hartford, but I like it here much better. Look, you can see the mountains.” They both turned toward the green hills of the Berkshires. “In the winter the snow is lovely.”

“Can I help with the flowers?”

She turned with tilted head. Brian realized that time had stopped for her a good many years before. “The other doctors never asked.” She laughed, and again the air tinkled. “Of course you can.”

They walked the meadow together, occasionally stopping to pick a wildflower. She would signal by lightly plucking his sleeve, and he would stoop to gather a flower or sprig. “You lived in Bellchamp,” he finally said.

She stopped to look toward distant hills. She pronounced the word slowly: “Bellchamp. Yes, I lived there. It was very beautiful. A good deal like here, except, of course, we had the lake.”

“And you picked flowers for the parties and the table.”

She turned with delight. “You know about the parties. You must have been there. Oh, the men were so handsome in their uniforms.”

“And your child would watch from an upstairs landing.”

“Yes. He would often look through the banister when we had a party. Sometimes I would see him there, but I wouldn’t say anything for a while. Then I’d go up and carry the sleepyhead to bed. He was …” Her words died. “My baby is dead.” She turned away.

Brian watched as she walked across the field alone, and he remembered. He remembered holding to the railing and peering out at swirling couples below … and then someone lifting and carrying him down the long hall. And yet the blood types didn’t match. His possible heritage was vehemently denied by the Colonel. Still, he remembered. He caught her arm. “Do you recall Captain Ralston?”

“He killed my baby, you know. They say he was a very evil man. That’s why I’m being punished. But you know all that. They always write down what I say on those pads. They know all about Captain Ralston and how bad I was.”

“How bad was that?” Brian’s voice was low and almost inaudible as a light breeze crossed the meadow.

“I don’t wish to discuss it anymore. I must finish now. It’s my job to gather the flowers.”

He held her arm so tightly that she winced. “I must know. Please.”

“Then ask that man.”

“Who?”

“The one who smiles all the time.”

Clouds peaked the hills and a chilling breeze cut across the field. Brian felt a burning sensation in his eyes. Feelings he had subliminated for the last several days thrust forward unbidden. “Tell me about Captain Ralston.”

“He was a very good-looking man, but evil men always are.”

“How do you know he was so evil?”

She looked at him with a childlike expression that was in strange apposition to the lines on her face. “Why, he killed my baby and this is my punishment. I must go now. They get angry if I’m late with the flowers.” She turned to stride toward the nearest building.

Brian watched her hurry toward her quarters. He wanted to hold her, tell her who he was—in some desperate way make up for the lost years, but that was impossible.

She disappeared through a low arch and was lost from sight. He stood in the center of the field where she had picked her last flower, and nostalgia was replaced by a burning anger that turned to a deep fury.

He knew what had happened thirty years ago, just as he knew how those events had destroyed this woman, and Mary, and all the others. The pieces would have to be melded into a whole before the puzzle was complete, and when that was accomplished, a course of action decided upon.

Standing on the decking above the pier, Brian watched the small lobster boat chug toward the jetty. He assumed it had stopped further up the river at the wholesale market and unloaded its catch, and was now finished for the day. The smiling man tied bow and stern lines before stepping off the boat. He squinted up at Brian in the waning sun as they approached each other at the center of the dock.

“Not going to find your goddamn daddy around here.” He broke into a huge smile. “At least I don’t think so.”

“Buy you a drink, Mr. Henry?”

“That’s an offer I never refused.”

They sat at a table on the patio of the restaurant on the hill above the marina. Brian watched lines of pleasure craft bobbing softly at their moorings. When drinks were served, Wilton Henry raised his glass in salute.

“Here’s to you, boy.”

Brian nodded. “Mind if I ask you a few more questions?”

“That depends.” He laughed.

“Last time I saw you, you said that you were at your commanding officer’s house when you met Mary.”

“Goddamned right.”

“His name was Wright. Colonel Wright.”

“Right again. The rotten son of a bitch. He about had my ass shot off for good that last time.”

“How’s that?”

“I was orderly to the little bastard, and one day me and his aide got caught in a mortar burst and were sent stateside. Hell, I figured it was a million-dollar wound that would take me out of it for the duration.”

“The Colonel’s aide that was hit with you, that was Captain Ralston, and you both went to stay at Bellchamp.”

“You got it, son. They had me on TDY up at that place, and I figured that was all she wrote.”

“That’s when you met Mary?”

“This couple that worked there introduced me.”

“Martha Rubinow.”

“That’s it.”

“How did the Colonel almost get you killed?”

“He came home to Bellchamp, see. Got himself in hot water over some prisoners getting killed, and they sent him back. Anyway, I felt I owed him one, and I did what I thought was a favor. The little fink got mad as hell and worked it so’s I found my ass sitting in the Pacific. Not only sitting there, but as a damn pathfinder for the invasion of Japan.”

“What’s a pathfinder?”

“Dead men. Pathfinders jump on the drop zone before the rest of the paratroopers come down. We mark the zone with lights and smoke. We were scheduled to jump right the fuck into the center of the plains of Japan. We all knew we’d never get back. Then they dropped the A-bomb, and that was all she wrote.”

“What was the favor that turned the Colonel against you?”

“I should have known better, but hell, we’d been overseas together and I figured he was getting a raw deal. Weren’t for that, I’da kept my mouth shut.”

“About what?”

“About his wife and the captain.”

A strong wind from the sea pushed a mass of black, ominous clouds toward the shore. The obscured sun cast shadows of gray over the patio. Brian stared into his drink before continuing. “Exactly what happened? What did you see?”

Wilton tilted his empty glass, and Brian motioned to the waitress to serve another. He continued after a fresh drink had arrived. “When I got back to the States the first time, I went to the fucking house like the Colonel said. The captain was …”

“Captain Ralston?”

“Right. He’d been hit same time as me and sent home, only he didn’t have no home. So the Colonel said we should stay at Bellchamp. No reason why not, the house was big as hell … only the captain had lived with lots of people overseas and didn’t like all that space. He wanted to be roommates with Mrs. Wright.”

“And you saw it?”

“Hell, a blind man could have. They were screwing all over the goddamn place. Once I practically fell over them out in the woods.”

“The Colonel came home, you told him, and all hell broke loose.”

“Colonel beat the living shit out of the captain with a goddamn swagger stick. I was holding the poor guy, but it made me so sick I turned and left.”

“This never came out in the trial after the kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping happened a couple of years after that. Ralston had been long gone, discharged from the service.”

“Yet you think the Colonel got you sent to the Pacific?”

“Hell, yes.” He smiled again. “Know so. Some men just don’t want to know the truth, and the guy that tells them gets on their list.”

Brian ordered the smiling man another drink and thought about long-ago events and one piece that still didn’t fit. He felt the man’s hand on his shoulder and looked into Wilton’s serious face.

“You know, son, I wasn’t always like this. I mean, all the cussin’ and drinking and not-giving-a-damn attitude. After me and Mary broke up, I didn’t seem to care anymore. And well, what I’m trying to say is, she was a fine woman. A damn fine woman, the best I ever knew.”

Brian parked on the grass by the border and walked toward the graves of what had once been his family. The Dwights had lived in Tallman for several generations and the earlier headstones were worn to the point of near illegibility. The two new stones set side by side seemed almost obscene in their new veneer. He sat on the grass near them and leaned against a tree.

Mary Dwight, as she always had, watched over Lockwood.

“He said you were a fine person, mother.”

Brian fought a wave of bitterness. It wasn’t her fault, she had tried to tell him on that last day. His sense of identity seemed as obscure as before. He had followed the leads to Bellchamp, and had been sure that he and the Colonel were … but the Colonel had the evidence of the blood types and the fact that a small child had been discovered buried near Bellchamp.

How were Lockwood and Mary involved in all that happened? Why did the Colonel have such a ruthless interest in his destruction?

He stood and brushed new-mown grass from his trousers. It was time to go to Jan’s. He gave a salute toward Lockwood’s grave. “Poor bastard. It wasn’t much of a life for you. Never married, never held a job, and now you’re dead.” He turned toward the car.

But Lockwood had held a job, Brian suddenly recalled.

Lockwood had worked right here at St. James. For a brief period during the war, Lockwood had worked on these very grounds. He had bragged about it to Brian several times.

Brian began to walk the lines of headstones. It wasn’t a large cemetery, and he was unconcerned with the older graves predating his point of interest. Within twenty minutes he found the one he was looking for. He stopped before a small marble angel nestled near a towering family monument and read the inscription:

Roger Stalsworth

Age Two Years

1944–1946

He ran for the car.

“Where the hell are you?” Clinton was still in an ominous black mood.

“At Jan’s place. It seemed as safe as any.”

“I told you to come back to the motel before you got in any further difficulty. You can’t possibly imagine the mess I’ve been in trying to unravel what you’ve caused: conferences with the Massachusetts State Police, who, by the way, have got a pick-up order down in New York for that fellow Buxton. The New York police have staked out the Colonel’s place. What have you been up to?”

“Captain Ralston and Mrs. Wright were having an affair. The Colonel found out about it and …”

“Kidnapped his own child?”

“It didn’t happen quite that way.”

“Listen, and listen carefully, because I’m charging you three arms and a leg for this advice. Stay put. Do not pass go. Do not do anything. Do not leave the house. Do not speculate further.”

“What about arresting the Colonel?”

“At the moment, we have about as much chance of that as arresting the President of the United States.”

“That was almost done once.”

“There’s no objective evidence against him. For now, it’s your word against his. When we find Buxton and nail him for the Rubinow killings, maybe we can get the Colonel on a conspiracy charge.”

“I think I know what happened.”

“You thought that yesterday and almost got yourself killed. I need you tomorrow for a deposition with the Massachusetts people. We’ve got things screwed up enough without any further complications. Stay put! Understand? Don’t move from there until I see you in the morning.” The connection was abruptly severed. Brian slowly replaced the receiver in its cradle.

“Want to tell me about it?”

Jan was curled on the couch with her legs tucked under her. She wore a terry-cloth robe and her hair was loose—it made her appear younger.

“I think I know what happened thirty years ago at Bellchamp,” Brian said.

“Clinton didn’t seem very interested.”

“He’s mad as hell, but I’ll get through to him in the morning when I have further verification.”

“I don’t understand. Unless the Colonel’s lying about his blood type, you couldn’t be the Wright baby.”

“I don’t think he lied, at least about the blood type. It’s too easy to verify from his service records.”

“Then you aren’t a Wright?”

“Maybe.”

“He identified the body.”

“He identified a badly decomposed body of a small child, recognizable only by its clothing. The small-town doctor who was the medical examiner up there listed the cause of death as a head wound and didn’t bother with an autopsy. The Colonel insisted on immediate cremation.”

“Now you really are confusing me. That would mean there was another body … but whose?”

“Roger Stalsworth, who died here in Tallman. He was nearly the same age as the kidnapped child.”

“How in the world can you prove that?”

“I need to borrow a few things: a spade, flashlight and crowbar, if you have one.”

“I don’t have a crowbar, but the shovel and … Brian, you aren’t going to do what I think you are?”

“During World War II help was hard to get, so even Lockwood had a job. At St. James cemetery.”

“The Rubinows were accomplices in the kidnapping and, with the help of Lockwood, switched the dead child with the Wright baby. And Mary somehow ended up with you.”

“Accidentally. The Rubinows worked for Colonel Wright, and whoever set up the kidnapping probably wanted the child killed. At the last moment Martha wasn’t up to murder. They talked Lockwood into helping them. Mary found out what happened, but was forced into a position of not being able to tell anyone without jeopardizing Lockwood. It would have meant his execution.”

“I want a drink,” Jan said abruptly and left the couch for the kitchen. She returned in a few moments with glasses and a bottle of cognac. She poured a large drink and handed it to him. “Let’s drop it. There’s nothing to be gained. The hell with it.” She drained her drink.

“It’s almost over.”

“Make it all over. Now!” She put her glass on the coffee table and wound her arms around his neck. “Please.” Her voice was low and whispery. “I’m frightened. Let’s go somewhere away from here.” She pressed against him. “Please.”

“I have to find out if I’m right.”

She broke away from him. “You’re a fool then. It’s not worth it.”

“Can I borrow those things?”

A heavy cloud formation had moved across the Tallman sky and spasmodically obscured a half-moon. Brian circled the cemetery and parked along a residential street that ran behind the burial sites. Carrying the shovel and flashlight, he climbed a low fence and walked toward the child’s grave.

With the cutting edge of the spade, he levered out even squares of sod in rectangular shapes.

When the squares of grass were placed neatly to the side for eventual replacement, he began to dig in earnest. The hole was waist deep when the shovel clanged against the lid of the concrete vault. He dug carefully until the outline of the vault was fully exposed, and then bent to brush the remaining dirt away with his hands. Straddling the vault lid, he bent and inserted his fingers under the edge and slowly lifted the concrete slab off the rim and placed it by the side of the grave.

He took the flashlight from his back pocket and flipped the switch. The beam jutted into the empty vault. The coffin was gone.

Brian’s shoulders shook as he buried his head on his arms by the side of the grave.

“Crouch in the hole,” the low, guttural voice from above him said.

Brian swiveled the flashlight until the tilted beam caught the bulk of the man pointing the gun at him. “Buxton!”

“You heard me, boy. Scrunch down.” The voice was low but commanding. Buxton glanced sideways and kicked a clump of sod. “Neat job. Hand me the shovel, I’ll be needing it. Easy now, nice and easy.” Buxton leaned down and extended one arm, while the other aligned the revolver toward Brian’s head.

Brian automatically handed the spade to the man by the grave, then stepped into the vault and began to sink to the flooring. It was a cool place with narrow sides, and he found it difficult to breathe. The smell assailed him. The smell of rotten things, a dank smell that he knew so well. His body convulsed as spasms rocked through him.

One time, long ago, hands had grasped his kicking limbs and restricted his pummeling fists. Something had been placed over his head as he had been carried down a ladder and placed in the narrow thing with the dank smell. The dream had filled his nights with nightmarish screams, and now he knew what they had placed him in, and where it had come from.

The coffin that had carried him as a child had been taken from this very grave. He knew the dank smell as part of his being. Buxton extended his arm in careful aim.

A thousand nights of terror propelled Brian as he hurled himself upward out of the grave. Two thunks of the exploding gun drove bullets into him as his shoulders caught Buxton at the knees and knocked him backward.

Brian’s choking cry echoed in the night as his hands grasped for the gun. He lay on Buxton as the larger man threw himself to the side in a vain attempt to break Brian’s grip. Brian held the gun and felt quick spasms as it erupted in his hand again and again.

The body beneath him contorted as the silenced thunks of the shots tore through it until the hammer fell on empty chambers.

Chapter Fifteen

Jan sat in the kitchen wearing the terry-cloth robe and nervously smoking a cigarette. An occasional hand ran through her hair and then snapped abruptly back to her lap. She tensed as the back door opened behind her. “Is it over, Bux? No details, just yes or no.”

“It’s over.”

The cigarette slipped from her fingers to fall to the floor. Slowly, she turned to face Brian with a low, drawn-out, “Oh, my God.”

He stepped inside and elbowed the screen and outer door shut, then reached back with one hand to throw the bolt. He kept the revolver pointed at her. “Buxton is dead.”

“There’s blood on you. Let me tend to it.” She started toward him solicitously until he waved her back with the gun.

“You have the resilience of a two-dollar whore.”

“That’s not fair, and a horrible thing to say, when I’ve been sitting here crazy with worry while you run around some cemetery with a shovel. You’re back, mostly in one piece, and that’s all that matters.” She began to open and close cabinet doors with great rapidity. “I’m going to forget what you just said. I have a first-aid kit here somewhere.”

“I shot him with his own gun and covered him in the grave meant for me. But you know that.”

She shook her head violently. “No … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were the only one who knew where I was going tonight. I was careful to make sure I wasn’t followed. Clinton and Gordon didn’t know. Only you, Jan. You were the one who contacted Buxton and told him where to find me.”

“No, Brian. I swear to you.”

“You’re a liar.”

Her fingers plucked agitatedly at the edge of her hair as she shrank back against the kitchen counter. “I was so frightened. I thought he was going to kill me. After you left, I came in the kitchen for a cup of coffee and he was standing in the doorway with that gun.” She began to cry. “He put the gun to my head and said he was going to shoot me. I told him … I didn’t mean to, but I told him where you were.” Her hands went to her face as her shoulders shook.

“God only knows what else you’ve lied about,” he said softly. He inserted the gun barrel between her palms and pushed her hands aside. “I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

Her composure immediately returned as she stepped away. She ground out the burning cigarette on the floor with her heel and lit another. Exhaled smoke streamed toward his face. “So, you’ve shot a hired killer. Willie might believe you, let you plead self-defense and get away with it. You can’t kill me. Not in my own home with a gun while there are people right next door. You’ve done your thing, you have your revenge. Now get out of here! Go back to Canada where you belong, under some rock.”

He grabbed her chin and tilted her head while thumbing the pistol’s hammer to firing position. “This makes less noise than a cap gun, and I’m going to tell them I found you dead. That he killed you before coming after me. It’s either that, or tell me who hired you.”

For the first time her eyes widened in fright. “Martha. Martha Rubinow started it. It seemed so innocent in the beginning. All she wanted me to do was to see that while Mary was in the hospital she didn’t say certain things. I was there anyway, working night shift, and I couldn’t see any harm in it.”

“How much did they pay you?”

“A hundred a week to begin with.”

“What was Mary going to say?”

“Martha said she had some wild ideas about your birth, and that for the family’s sake everyone wanted it hushed up. That’s all I did, at least until you came.”

“And then?”

“The day you returned to Tallman, Buxton was here in the house when I came back from seeing Gordon. He was sitting right there when I came in the door.” She pointed to the dinette chair. “You know how big he was. He scared me to death … he looked so ominous … that’s when the money got bigger.”

“How much bigger?”

“A lot, more than a lot. More than I had ever seen before. It still seemed harmless enough. He said they only wanted information about you. They paid me to report everything you said and did. They told me to get as close to you as I could.”

“How did you contact Buxton?”

“He left a phone number. That’s all there was to it. Or so I thought.”

“And then someone put a pillow over mother’s face.”

“Martha Rubinow,” she said quickly. “You’ve got to believe that I had nothing to do with it.”

“You never hurt anyone, you were just a font of information. Until tonight. You knew what he was going to do to me.”

“He said he had to have a talk with you, that there was so much money involved that you could be bought off.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You have to.”

“You never had any contact with the Colonel?”

“No. Only Buxton and Martha. Buxton’s the one who brought me the money.”

“Who killed Lockwood?”

“Buxton.”

“The dead are blamed for everything.”

“He was a killer, Brian. A hired gun that would do anything. He frightened me, and once I became involved, there didn’t seem to be anyway to become uninvolved. Look what happened to the Rubinows.”

“The Rubinows got scared after Lockwood died and ran away. And yet Buxton found them.”

“I didn’t know he was going to kill them. He said he had to make a final payoff to them.”

“That he did. And I suppose you’re the one who turned me in for Mary’s death and the desertion charge?”

“I did that on my own. It was safer for you. I thought you’d be in jail a few weeks or months, safely out of the way until everything was over.”

“Why, Jan?”

“Money. In the beginning, money for information, and later it got complicated. But there was always the money. Such a simple thing to you, you’ve always had enough. Can you imagine what it’s like growing up in Tallman when your father was usually passed out when you came home from school? You remember where I lived in those days, hardly any furniture, dressed in cast-off clothes that the good ladies of the town brought by. Then, after high school, when I went into nurse’s training, I worked as a cocktail waitress for the tips middle-aged men who pinched my rump gave me. Money, Brian, an awful lot.”

Her face had sharpened with the intensity of her feelings. He looked down at the gun as if it were something he had found in the street a few moments before. He slipped the weapon in his belt and leaned back against the kitchen counter. His body arched in fatigue and pain. “Money,” he said softly.

“Would you like a drink?”

“I guess.”

“It’s in the other room.” She left the kitchen as Brian stared bleakly toward the far wall. He heard an almost imperceptible click. It took several seconds for the sound to register. He jerked erect and ran for the hall door leading to the garage. When he flung it open, he saw her running down the street.

He caught her several houses down. His hand pressed against her mouth as he bent her backward. The night was dark, and few lights were on in the surrounding houses. He dragged her back through the garage and into the house. Her teeth bit deeply into his palm as he increased the pressure.

He took her into the bedroom and threw her across the bed, his hand still pressed over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

“Listen and listen carefully.” She shook her head as best she could under the pressure of his hand. “We’re going to New York to see your employer. You are going to drive. If anything happens, if you try anything at all, I will shoot you.”

She, shook her head. “You’re choking me,” she managed to mumble.

He took his arm away and stepped back. “Get dressed.” As she sat up in bed, undid the robe and let it slip off her shoulders, he glanced down at his wounds. The two bullets had grazed the flesh and missed bone contact. The wound in his forearm still bled slightly through the handkerchief he had knotted over it, but the wound in his side had stopped. He looked back toward the bed, where she sat naked looking toward him with parted lips.

“You wanted me before. We made it together. You want me. I know you do.”

He looked down at her nude body without desire. “Get dressed.”

They were silent during the drive to New York City. Brian, with the gun on his lap, leaned against the door. She hunched over the wheel, driving with extreme concentration. Every few minutes she glanced toward him with apprehension. He felt regret, and wished there were a conceivable way to obliterate past events.

They reached the outskirts of the city and drove through the ravaged ghettos of the South Bronx. “Where are we going?” she finally asked.

“Go down the East River Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ll give you directions from there.”

“I don’t think I care to meet Colonel Wright.”

“He still owes you a final payment for services rendered. But then again, I don’t believe you have a choice.”

They lapsed into silence until she drove across the bridge, and he directed her down State Street. “That’s it, but go around the block,” he said as they passed the Wright brownstone.

“There’s a parking place over there.”

“Around the block.”

They circled the block twice before he saw what he had been watching for. A briefly lit match held to a cigarette revealed two bulky men in a dark Chevrolet parked down the block from the brownstone. He knew they were city detectives staked out for Buxton. “You can park now,” he told her.

She walked ahead of him up the steps of the house. His elbow momentarily pressed against the reassuring weight of the gun tucked into the waistband of his trousers. She hesitated at the top step until he poked the small of her back. “Ring the buzzer.”

Her extended finger, as if afraid of an electric shock, gingerly pressed the buzzer. In a few moments the door was opened by a uniformed maid.

“Colonel Wright, please.”

“The Colonel is not receiving visitors this evening.”

“Tell him that I have a message from Buxton.”

“One moment, please.”

As they waited on the stoop, Brian glanced down the street toward the two waiting detectives. They had parked away from street lights, and without a match or cigarette glow, the car’s interior was too dark to see them. The front door opened again.

“Please follow me.”

They were ushered into a downstairs room that Brian hadn’t seen on his prior visit. The walls were lined with military texts, while three deep leather chairs were comfortably grouped in the center of the room. A large mahogany desk, covered with mementos, was placed at an angle to dominate the room.

Jan sank sullenly into one of the chairs, and Brian glanced over the clutter on the desk. Cartridges and small shells of various calibers were aligned in neat rows before an intricate design of crisscrossed daggers.

“Do you find them interesting?” Colonel Wright said from the doorway. He held the cane at waist level with both hands.

“Will there be anything else, Colonel?”

“You may go for the night, Mrs. Wilson.” The maid gently closed the door as she departed. “And to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“This is Jan Wholly, one of your employees.”

“The Wright enterprises have many, and it’s a rare occasion when I have opportunity to meet an individual employee. However, I really must ask you to leave. I believe we settled matters most conclusively during your last visit. If you still feel, by some skewered reasoning, that you have a claim against the Wright money, please contact my lawyers.”

“Buxton is dead.” Brian expected a reaction, but the Colonel’s gaze remained unchanged.

“Buxton? I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

Brian drew the gun and gestured toward a chair. “Sit down.”

Colonel Wright looked at him for a long moment before moving stiffly toward one of the leather chairs. “Mrs. Wilson has left by now, but I am sure she could easily identify you in the event that anything happens to me. And I’m quite sure Mrs. Wholly doesn’t wish to become involved in further violence.”

“I shot Buxton and buried him in the child’s grave.”

“Did you really? Then I owe you a token of gratitude. Captain Buxton’s financial demands were becoming quite excessive. His last request for payment was outrageous. So, you have saved me a considerable fee. A pity about the captain but, unlike works of art, men like Buxton can be replaced.”

“This is the weapon used to kill the Rubinows. I’m sure a ballistics test will prove that.”

“Perhaps it would. The captain was thorough in many ways, but too attached to his hardware. With Buxton dead, there is no way a connection can be established between myself and certain unpleasantries. The authorities will undoubtedly be pleased to close their files on the Rubinows without my involvement.”

“I have talked to Mrs. Wright.”

The Colonel eyed him speculatively before crossing the room to pour a sherry from a cut-glass decanter. “Alisha has so few visitors these days, but, unfortunately, I am sure you found her most uncommunicative.”

“And I have talked to Sergeant Henry.”

“It must amuse you to widen your circle of acquaintances.”

“And Jan tells me you hired her.”

“Quite mistaken. I have never been in Tallman. My servants would be quite willing to testify to my recent whereabouts. Sherry, Mrs. Wholly?”

“No, thank you.”

“I think I have enough to hang you.”

“Really, Brian. For what? Mrs. Wholly has never seen me before, isn’t that right, my dear?”

“Yes.”

“The charge will be conspiracy to murder.”

“I think not. I may be an old man, Lieutenant, but I am not a foolish one. With Buxton gone, there is no way a conspiracy charge would even be brought to trial. I’m a wealthy man, and money buys a good deal of insulation from such nonsense. And why, for heaven’s sake, would I wish to destroy the Rubinows, Mary Dwight and that half-wit uncle of yours?”

“Once you talked of revenge. But I know better now, Colonel. I know what really happened at Bellchamp.”

“The kidnapping was an unfortunate incident best forgotten. And it will be. Drink, Brian? I’ve heard that you sometimes have a certain predilection for the grape, in addition to your other problems.”

“I said, I know what happened.”

“So do a hundred million other Americans. The case was well covered by the newspapers at the time.”

“What really happened.”

“Perhaps you might enlighten me.”

“It didn’t fit that you’d wait nearly thirty years to kill the Rubinows. You left them alone, you allowed them to prosper with the money you gave them.”

“Actually, they did quite well in that area.”

“You didn’t even think of them again, until you heard that they hadn’t fully carried out their end of the bargain. You arranged that kidnapping, Colonel.”

“There have been a great many speculations over the Wright case through the years, but this, I confess, is most unusual.”

“You invited Captain Ralston and Sergeant Henry to stay at Bellchamp on recuperative leave. When you returned home, Henry told you about your wife’s affair with Ralston. Wilton Henry even told me how you beat the captain. Later, when a child was born, you assumed it was yours until …” Brian faltered. “Somehow, you discovered the child was not yours.”

“I raised the child as my own for two years,” the Colonel said with the first traces of bitterness. “It might have continued to this day except for an accidental discovery. The boy developed a minor stomach problem, something to do with the duodenum, which required surgery. In the event a blood transfusion might be necessary, the usual blood and cross-match tests were run.” The Colonel’s left lip twitched downward. “As the doting father, I followed everything most carefully. That’s how I discovered the little bastard wasn’t mine. I’m sure you’ve noticed the scar on your right abdomen, Lieutenant.”

The words lashed at Brian as the first absolute proof of his identity. He struggled to speak. “And for that you wanted me destroyed?”

“You overestimate your worth. The discovery of your parentage was only the final culmination of several events. The infidelity was a relatively simple matter to handle. I made Alisha suffer appropriately in countless ways. As for Ralston, of course he wanted to stay in the service after the war, but friends and former classmates of mine were able to arrange his discharge. Eventually, he moved to this city for work, but, remarkably, he was somehow unable to hold the most menial job for more than a few weeks.”

“Through your intervention.”

“But of course. Then there was the child. Yes, the child. That was a different matter. They had lied to me, you see. They had told me he was mine, and for two years I raised him as a Wright. That, of course, was unforgivable.”

“You had ruined the captain. You could have divorced your wife and thrown her and the baby out.”

“And have the three of them together? Allow her to join him and hide from me, to forge some other life? After what they’d done? My own aide, whom I’d befriended, had taken my wife, my child and my career.”

“Your career?”

The Colonel walked stiffly to the desk and yanked open the center drawer, as Brian tightened his finger on the trigger of the pistol. Colonel Wright held a small jewelry box in his hand, clicked open the top to look inside and then threw it across the room toward Brian. “That’s what he stole from me.”

Brian looked down at the small case by his feet, on which two silver stars, of a general officer lay imbedded on the cushion. “Then it was Ralston who made the report to Eisenhower about the prisoner massacre.”

“He took my life, my career, my future. He took my wife and impregnated her and then called the baby a Wright. For that, they had to be destroyed. Both of them, utterly destroyed for all time.”

“And you arranged with the Rubinows for a false kidnapping which was to be a murder. Then you planted part of the ransom money on Captain Ralston.”

“It was a flawless operation until the Rubinows turned faint-hearted. The timing was exquisite. I arranged for a rigged poker game to be played for Ralston’s benefit. The marked money was eventually traced to him, as I knew it would be. He could never explain how an unemployed man living in a furnished room could be in possession of that much money, won in a poker game whose participants had long since disappeared. He tried to tell the police, but of course they didn’t believe him. I had the satisfaction of knowing he died with the knowledge that I had arranged it all.”

“And then broke your wife’s mind.”

“Hardly difficult with her massive guilt.”

“Later, when a child’s body was discovered near the estate, you identified it as yours?”

“‘Yours’ is a poor choice of words, Lieutenant. However, I honestly thought it was the child who had been masquerading as mine. It wore your clothing, and although badly decomposed, it had a large skull fracture. For thirty years I thought you were dead. Dead like your father.”

“Harry Rubinow must have been the one who told you I was still alive. Why? Blackmail or fear?”

“Both. When his call came through, it took me a moment or two to even recognize his name. Then, he kept repeating over and over again that ‘the child is alive, the child is alive, and Mary’s going to tell him everything.’ I didn’t even know who Mary Maston was until we made some discreet inquiries.”

“Once my mother—I mean Mary—was convinced she was dying, she told Martha Rubinow that she was going to tell me everything. But still, it had been over thirty years. Why did Harry panic?”

“There’s no statute of limitations on a capital crime. That worried the little janitor. Like many people, he put his own motivations into others. Since I had never disavowed the child—you—there was a possible claim against my eventual estate. Mr. Rubinow intended to collect handsomely from me by removing that possibility. He’d done well financially, but, for some, there’s never enough.”

“Then Martha Rubinow killed my mother.” Brian still found himself unable not to use the term.

“No. The Rubinows, for the second time, were not able to follow instructions. An indiscretion they eventually paid for. Buxton made the necessary contact.”

The room seemed to partially dissolve around Brian. All that he could see through tunnel vision was the impassive ex-Colonel recounting events and conspiracies that he had used so easily to destroy so many. He felt the palm of his hand perspire as he gripped the weapon. For the second time, he wanted to kill this diminutive monster before him.

The panorama of the thirty-year-old plot was now clear. A young Harry Rubinow, “in service” to Wright, had no doubt been as rapacious then as he was later in life. The offer of so much money had been far too tempting. Initially, Martha had probably rebelled against the plan, and to satisfy her qualms Harry had devised the switch of a dead child for the live one. Lockwood’s job in the cemetery had been convenient for them. His uncle’s near-childish naiveté had allowed the Rubinows to manipulate the gentle man.

Lockwood took the child to his sister with a disjointed but transparent story. Mary would have pieced the events together and accosted Martha. Her friend had told her of the unhappiness in the Wright home, and Mary had made the decision to save her brother from imprisonment and possible execution. She had sacrificed her engagement to Wilton Henry, as he would have demanded too many answers about where the child came from. She had raised Brian as her own, creating a weave of falsehood to protect him and the others. When Mary became ill and wanted to tell the truth, Harry was torn between panic and greed. The tangle of destruction had begun again.

The words were difficult, nearly impossible to mouth. “If Martha didn’t … who killed my … my mother?”

“Martha wouldn’t perform the feat. However, Mrs. Wholly was most accommodating.”

“That’s a lie!” Jan yelled.

“Do not diminish your accomplishments, Mrs. Wholly. Your performance has been excellent.”

She turned to Brian. “She only had a few days. She could have gone any time … she was in pain. She welcomed it.”

“Sit down,” Brian said.

“You will find it a good rule, Lieutenant, to know that when you have people doing unsavory things for you, that the more contaminated they become, the more reliable they are.”

“They forced me,” Jan said.

“Oh, come, come, my dear. You are remarkably adept. Pillow over the face, wasn’t it?” He pushed himself erect with the cane and opened another drawer.

Brian followed him with the gun. “Watch it.”

“Money.” He held a bound stack of bills and tossed it across the room to the floor near Jan’s feet. “Pick it up, my dear. It’s yours. The final payment Buxton would have delivered, eventually, had he been able.”

Jan looked at the currency by her shoes and then slowly pulled it to her. “Thank you,” she said softly.

“I like good breeding,” Colonel Wright said. “I am afraid this whimsical tale we’ve spun will come to naught. It’s highly doubtful that Mrs. Wholly will discuss the matter with anyone beyond this room. Isn’t that true, Mrs. Wholly?”

“We can go away, Brian. We both have enough money so we can go somewhere and he can never find us.” She ran her fingers along his cheek. Brian continued staring at the Colonel. “It’s over now. You’ve proven what you wanted. We can leave—here, Tallman, the country.”

“Now that Brian has satisfied his identity crisis, I think the whole matter is closed. If you two will be kind enough to go.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Brian said.

“I think not. You may have done something to Buxton, but I am sure it was under entirely different circumstances. You won’t kill me, Brian. For the same reasons you deserted, you won’t shoot me. I would shoot you, but you’re a coward. No fruit of my loins, no seed from the Bellchamp line. No, you are the offspring of a weak officer and a woman who now babbles hopelessly in the mountains. Now, get out! Out before I call the police and have you arrested for trespass.”

Brian aligned the pistol sights directly on Colonel Wright’s forehead. The old man looked at him with cold eyes as Brian’s finger tightened on the trigger.

He couldn’t fire.

He glanced at Jan hovering by his side. “Do you still want to go with me?”

“Yes. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll do anything you want.”

He handed her the gun. “It doesn’t make much noise. Give me two minutes to get out of the house and around the corner. Then kill him. Understand? Kill him.”

She nodded and took the weapon.

Brian hurriedly left the room and the house, leaving the front door open. He ran down the block toward the nondescript car containing the two bulky detectives. As he approached them, they glanced at each other quizzically and opened the car door.

“She’s going to kill him,” he shouted. “For God’s sake, hurry! She’s in there with a gun.”

The detectives fumbled for holstered pistols as they sprinted toward the open door. Brian followed them into the study.

The body lay sprawled across the carpet near the chair, its neck bent awkwardly to one side. Eyes stared unseeingly at a bundle of currency a foot away from the dead face.

“Whore! Slut! Rotten bitch!” The cane lashed out again over the lifeless body. The old man held the cane with both hands as he bent over Jan’s corpse. Spittle drooled from the corner of his mouth as his face contorted in rage, and the cane struck again. “You gave yourself to him. To the man who ruined me! You opened your legs to him. Die. Die!”

Brian realized what had happened. When he ran from the house and left her with the gun, Jan had squeezed the trigger again and again, but the hammer fell on empty chambers. She had tried to fire until the cane lashed out.

“He’s broken her goddamned neck,” a detective said.

The second plainclothes man stepped toward the Colonel and caught the handle of the swinging cane. “All right, old-timer. You’ve done it. She’s dead.”

Chapter Sixteen

Clinton Robinson was in a happy mood as he floored the accelerator to careen around a curve.

“What a mess,” he chortled as the car rocked back to stability. “First, of course, there are the charges against you, which we’ll fight tooth and nail. Let’s see, they’ll probably hit you first with killing Buxton.”

“That was self-defense,” Brian said, as he shifted his arm to a more comfortable position in the sling.

“True. And the weapon you took from him has been identified as the gun that killed the Rubinows. However, certain people think you were a little overzealous in burying him afterward.”

“What do you think they’ll do to the Colonel?”

“At last report, during the commitment hearing he was giving orders to nonexistent troops. I can’t imagine he will ever stand trial, nor will he ever leave the hospital. Which raises another forty or fifty million problems that will make a lovely case. In fact, we might even make law over that one.”

“The Wright money?”

“They’ve appointed a temporary conservator for both the Colonel and Mrs. Wright, but we’ll petition the court on your behalf. After all, you are the legal issue of Mrs. Wright.” He chortled again. “The legal fees will be astronomical.”

“I had the feeling they might be.”

“I believe I’ll have to give up the rest of my practice to devote full time to your affairs.”

“Do you think the Colonel caused his wife’s break-down?”

“You met the gentleman. What do you think?”

“I think he’d drive a saint mad.”

“It didn’t leave Mary much choice, did it? In addition to protecting Lockwood, she also rescued the child from an intolerable situation that she had seen firsthand.”

“I still think of … of me in the third person, as ‘the child.’ It’s going to take a long time to assimilate.”

“The dreams?”

“Gone. You know, Clinton, they caught Ralston with the money that was marked, but the Rubinows and Mary had most of the money and were able to feed it into the economy.”

“Years later. As nearly as I can detect from Mary’s financial records, they waited almost ten years before unloading any of it.”

“A bit at a time.”

“When they felt safe. Matter of fact, I don’t believe Mary ever spent any of Lockwood’s share, but invested all of it.” The car skidded to a halt and rocked back and forth on the shocks. “We’re here. Want me to wait?”

“I’ll catch a bus back.” Moving painfully, his side bandaged, Brian got out of the car and walked over to the driver’s side to lean in the window. “Ah, Clinton, I want to thank you for all your help, but let me ask you one question.”

“Hurry up. The clock’s running, and I’m probably the most expensive chauffeur you’ll ever hire.”

“Was it all for the money—your fees?”

Clinton reached abruptly for the car ignition and switched it on, before turning to Brian with the faintest trace of a smile. “Good God, boy, it beats blowing up toy boats in lakes.”

Brian watched the car as it spun from the parking lot and turned south toward Tallman. Then he headed for the meadow.

He knew she would be in the high meadow gathering a bouquet for the table. As he walked toward her, he saw a light breeze ruffle her hair as she stooped to pick a wildflower.

He wanted to hold her, but that would take time. Months or years, there would be a way and he would find it.

As Brian Maston approached the woman on the hill, she turned toward him with a smile and offered him a flower.

About the Author

Richard Forrest (1932–2005) was an American mystery author. Born in New Jersey, he served in the US Army, wrote plays, and sold insurance before he began writing mystery fiction. His debut, Who Killed Mr. Garland’s Mistress (1974), was an Edgar Award finalist. He remains best known for his ten novels starring Lyon and Bea Wentworth, a husband-and-wife sleuthing team introduced in A Child’s Garden of Death (1975).

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1980 by Stockton Woods

Cover design by Andy Ross

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3798-3

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

About the Author

Copyright Page