Deadline (27 page)

The light went out, plunging the room into darkness. My fifteen seconds was up.

It took a few minutes to find the scratch that was leaving the line, the enlarger's signature. I unscrewed the condenser cowling and took out the lens. The lens was about four inches across. Near the center was a barely visible scratch, about a sixteenth of an inch long. It looked like the lens might have been put down on a piece of sand or metal.

“It was here,” I said, startling myself with the sound of my own voice.

I put the enlarger back together, putting the piece of photo paper in my pocket. On the way out, I checked the sinks. There were four trays for processing film, three plastic and one aluminum for the acetic-acid stop bath. The faucet was dripping into the last tray, which was overflowing into the sink. I turned the cold-water handle and the drip stopped.

In the outer room, I picked my way with the flashlight. I looked behind the counter in the rubble and opened a metal cabinet along the wall. Beside the cabinet stood an aluminum tripod. It was dusty, with Arthur's name written on a piece of adhesive tape on one leg. The legs on this tripod were square. The holes in the snow had been round.

On the drive back, I decided it was time to go to somebody. Not the locals. Not Vigue. Maybe the DA's office. Maybe the AG. Neither prospect thrilled me, but if not them, who? There was no one else.

The lights were on in the office when I drove down Main Street. Vern's station wagon was out front, which meant that at least I would have a sounding board. I was afraid I had lost Roxanne for the duration.

I parked behind Vern. A car drove by and the driver beeped. I waved but didn't recognize the guy. It didn't really matter; this was a town of wavers and beepers. I wondered how that would work in Manhattan. A
New Yorker
cartoon in the making.

The door was open and I could hear Vern typing on the terminal out back. He typed like it was a typewriter, pounding on the keyboard in a way that probably voided the warranty.

I started toward the back of the office, but something caught my eye to my left.

“Hello, Mr. McMorrow,” a voice said.

I turned.

Pauline Wiggins had found her way home.

19

S
he was wearing a bright green ski parka over the same blue dress she'd had on when she came to visit me before. Her hands were on her lap and she was sitting in a wooden straight-backed chair. Her face was white as a mime's.

It was one of those awkward moments. Out back, Vern was typing furiously. I considered yelling. Maybe running out to get to a phone. Or even just walking calmly up to Pauline and telling her she'd have to go back to the hospital.

As usual, I did none of the above.

“How you feeling?” I said.

She pulled at her sleeve.

“I was hospitalized briefly for stress,” she said. “The treatment was of limited value, and I chose to leave and spare Mr. Wiggins the expense. I'll have to return this coat to the hospital as soon as I get home. I'll mail it. Or maybe UPS would be faster. What do you think?”

Again, no decision.

“This isn't easy for me,” Pauline said. “I've come to personally request that you not file homicide charges against me. I do not want
to spend the few years I have left in some squalid women's penitentiary. I don't think I could make that adjustment at my age.”

Her voice was strangely detached. Calm and almost childlike.

“Don't worry about it,” I said. She didn't seem to have heard me.

“It was not my intention to do you any harm. I am almost positive I did not fire the gun intentionally. I think I was startled and the gun went off accidentally. I must also say I have not come to apologize. Oh, no. I meant what I said. I did. Our relationship may normalize over time, but I will never have the respect I had for you before this unpleasant incident.”

Likewise, I'm sure, I thought. I took my parka off and sat on the edge of the table.

“Jack,” Vern called. “That you?”

“Yeah, it's me,” I called back.

“Keep it down, will ya, buddy? I'm trying to put out a newspaper back here.”

I looked at Pauline.

“Been home yet?” I asked.

“I'm on my way. Mr. Wiggins will be worried. He's a man of regular habits. Even in his years in the newspaper business, he managed to maintain a normal home life.”

She smiled weakly and I wondered if she was on medication.

“Arthur Bertin was a very hardworking man,” Pauline said. “But like many people, he had a flaw. He was weak. If life did not meet his expectations, he would alter it in his mind.”

“Like when he said he thought Martin was his father?”

“A fantasy. Another of his fantasies. Of course, he had no father. Martin was a father figure to him. It was natural for him to want him to be more.”

“Were there other fantasies?” I asked.

I sat very still on the table. She sat very still in the chair.

“Police, I think. Arthur wanted to be a policeman. One time, it was years ago, he came to Martin and said he had been made a reserve officer. He seemed so thrilled that Martin put the story in as a news item. To please him, really. Of course, the police chief, Brennan was his name then, called to say it wasn't true at all. Martin had to run a correction, which was something he always prided himself on not having to do. He prided himself on his accuracy. Arthur tried to explain his way out of it, but I think most people knew.”

Vern was on the phone now.

“Hey, Coach,” he shouted. “Heard your boys are ready to play some basketball at Lake Region next week.”

“So did Arthur get in trouble doing this stuff, Mrs. Wiggins?” I asked.

Pauline nodded and smiled. Her hair had fallen onto one side of her face. She didn't appear to notice.

“Especially when they involved romantic interests, I guess you would call them.”

“Dates?”

“No, not dates. Crushes. I suppose that's the word. Infatuations. And indecent photographs. One time one of these women—I knew who she was because I had her mother in school, the Holbrooks—used to have a big dairy farm out where the River Road is now, but she received one of these photographs and the police were notified. This is your character witness, Mr. McMorrow. This is the man who is condemning Mr. Wiggins. Remember that. How credible is your source for a story? Isn't that what you're supposed to ask? You'd know better than I.”

Suddenly she stood up.

“I'll call Martin,” I said.

“Oh, no. I can get along quite well without your help,” Pauline said. She was suddenly cool, as if she'd just remembered that we were supposed to be enemies. With her head held high, she walked slowly to the door, opened it, and went out, turning up Main Street.

I grabbed the phone and dialed Martin's number. He answered.

“Pauline was here, Martin,” I said. “Just now. She's going up the street toward Woolworths. No, she's fine. Just talking a little funny. She's wearing a bright green jacket. I can see her right now.”

I waited in the window. In five minutes, Martin's old Chevy went by. It pulled up near the fire station and the interior light went on. I saw one figure get out and two figures get in. When the car had pulled away, I called the police. As I waited for somebody to answer, I remembered what Vigue had said.

That they're all nuts. Just the right push and they go over the edge.

I didn't sleep well that night. When I called Roxanne after ten, there was no answer. I dreamed that she was murdered and I saw it on the six o'clock news. Vern was the anchorman because the regular guy was out sick, and I was allowed to sit on the set but not to speak.

It was beginning to get light when I finally fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up, it was after eight. It had snowed four or five inches and the rooftops looked like a Currier & Ives print. Snow-covered town with mushroom cloud hovering paternally overhead.

I parked a block down from the paper, on Court Street again, but hadn't gone ten feet from the car when I was waylaid by a man named Park who was shoveling snow in front of his insurance office.

“What is this I hear about you and Martin Wiggins's wife?” Park said, leaning on his shovel. “You had some kind of trouble?”

“A misunderstanding,” I said. “Just a misunderstanding. It was unfortunate.”

He wanted more but I smiled and moved on, and kept my head down until I got to the office. I was a moving target, and the Main Street gossips let me slip through, but Cindy did not.

She was made up like a geisha and she met me inside the front door, standing so close I could see the flecks of mascara on her eyelashes. The top two buttons of her blouse were unbuttoned and a pearl pendant hung in the shadow of her cleavage.

“I have to talk to you,” she said, confidentially motioning me over from the door to the front window. “I heard Pauline Wiggins is back. She escaped from the hospital. She's home, and I guess nobody is doing anything about it.”

“Somebody must be doing something,” I said.

“No, Jack,” Cindy insisted. “I mean the cops. I heard they aren't going to send her back or anything.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“At the Pine Tree. Jo told me. Martin called the police himself, and they told him not to do anything.”

I thanked Cindy and told her not to worry. She said she was worried, and I told her she had no need to be. I did not tell her that I wasn't worried about a nut with a shotgun. I was worried about somebody much more calculating, more rational, more dangerous.

There were messages on my desk but no plain brown envelopes. No express mail from New York. I saw that Wheeler had called, along with a couple of names I didn't recognize. Taking a deep breath, I tried to begin the process of getting organized.

Paul had gone out on the road selling, but he'd left me a memo. It said he'd sold three hundred inches of ads and had commitments for another hundred and sixty. The Christmas rush was on, and Paul predicted a record week. I planned to go twenty-four pages, and if Paul was on the mark, we'd have as good an ad line as we'd had since I'd been at the paper.

I asked Cindy about classifieds and she said they were light. People were shopping, not selling used cars, Marion said without looking up from her keyboard. Vern was on the phone, but when I asked him how many pages he'd need, he held up five fingers, indicating five wide-open pages. I made a note to call North Conway to see when they'd need the stuff for the basketball section.

With the plan taking shape, I took a look at the dummies, then sat down to write the story about the Route 2 accident. I had to check with the hospital to get a condition report on Lori Gamache, and I had to see if the driver, El Scumbag, had bailed. Wouldn't want him to miss Christmas because of a little fender bender.

I tried Roxanne at the office and they said she was out on an evaluation. I left a message, relieved that she was safe in the company of an alleged child molester, somewhere in the wilds of Cumberland County.

With a few minutes to spare, I decided to run down and check the cop log and find out about the accident charges. I pulled my parka back on and was on my way out the door when the phone rang.

Cindy called that it was for me and I grabbed the phone.

“Jack McMorrow,” I said.

“Mr. McMorrow,” a youngish-sounding guy said. “Yeah. Hey, I don't know if you're interested, but I thought I'd call you. My buddy
and I figured, you know, that you might want a picture in the paper and everything. We didn't know, but we thought you might want it.”

“Want what?”

“A coyote. Big son of a whore, too. Must go forty, fifty pounds, easy. I'm not shittin' ya. Big male. We thought you might want to come and take a picture, maybe put a write-up in the paper.”

Great. Another dead animal photo. News, features, and taxidermy.

“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “We're kind of on deadline right now, and I don't really have anybody I can break free to send out there. Could you bring it in and we could see what we could do here?”

He snorted.

“Sure. I mean, shit, it's up to you, but I gotta warn you. He ain't too fond of people.”

“He's alive?”

“Shit yes. Alive as you and me.”

“What did you do, trap him?”

“Live-trapped him. Bacon grease, sheep guts, some hamburger. I think there was something wrong with him. He was hanging around near my uncle's farm, you know, on the tree line, never went away. Got so hungry he screwed up.”

“I thought they were smarter than that,” I said.

“I did, too,” he said. “Like I said, I think there's something wrong with this guy. But I ain't gettin' close enough to look him over.”

“The game warden there yet?”

“He's coming, but they said it would be a while.”

A live coyote. Now that was worth a picture. Dead ones we saw once a month. Live and snarling was something else.