Extenuating Circumstances (23 page)

"I am, Millie."

"Well, he sure didn't act that way. He cussed me like a Marine and went piling on out of here."
"Where did he go?"

"I don't know." Millie gave me a wounded look.

"What the heck's going on, Mr. Stoner? Why is everybody so riled up?"

"It's a long story, Millie. But if it's any consolation, you did the right thing telling me."

"I sure hope I did," she said uncertainly. "But I ain't sure. I ain't sure what none of this means."
 
 

I drove from the plastics plant to Riverside Drive on the off chance that Trumaine had gone back to Janey's house. But I didn't see his Volvo on the street, and when I got up to the terrace I found Janey all alone, sitting in a cane chair, sipping a glass of whiskey and staring out at the river. She was wearing a blue silk dress and her face was carefully made up, but the expression on it was sullen and abstracted. She didn't look drunk yet, but she was obviously working on it.

"Mr. Detective," she said in her flat voice. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for Len? Is he here?"

"Was. This morning." She took another sip of whiskey. "We had some business to transact at the bank. He needed my signature, I guess, to withdraw money from Ira's account. I can't think of why else I was invited." She looked off in the distance. "He must be having some trouble with the business. I don't begrudge him the money. He's been very good to me -all my life. I was more than happy to pay him off."

It was an odd thing to say, and she said it oddly, as if she had nothing other than money with which to repay Trumaine's devotion.

"You don't know where he is now, do you?"

"I think he went to the Court House -to have some documents notarized."

"All right," I said. "If you see him later this afternoon, tell -him to call me."

I started to go.

"Mr. Stoner?" the girl said.

I looked back at her. "Something's going on, isn't it?"

"No," I said, "I just need to talk to Len."

Janey laughed disgustedly. "You're lying. So was Len. It's all lies now. Lies and excuses and looking the other way."

"Did Len say something to upset you, Janey?"

She laughed again. "Oh, Len would never do anything like that. He loves me too much to upset me."

I ducked my head embarrassedly. "He does love you, Janey."

"Yes?" she said defiantly. "And what am I supposed to do about it? Love him back? I can't. I never could. He knows that, but he won't . . ." She tossed her head, looking away from me. "What are you supposed to do with a love that you have no use for, Mr. Stoner?"

I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

She turned back to me with a tragic look on her face. "I don't want anything bad to happen to him. I just don't want him to . . . I tried to tell him today, but he didn't hear me. He didn't understand. He thinks I'm holding a grudge against him for the past. He doesn't understand, Mr. Stoner, that I never held the past against him. It never was that. I just don't feel about him the way he feels about me."

I'd been there myself, God knew. Where Trumaine was with Janey. And I could feel for him. For her too.

"And now I'm afraid he's going to do something stupid," she said, sinking back into her chair with a fearful look. "Something dangerous."

"What makes you say that?"

"The way he was acting. The way he was talking about . . . about the past and about Ira." The girl's face lit up weirdly and her voice rose, as if she wanted to scream. "Something is happening! And he won't tell me, and neither will you."

"He doesn't want to hurt you."

"What could hurt me more than not knowing?" she asked. "Please, Mr. Stoner. Tell me what's happening."

I didn't know what to answer. Like everyone else in the Lessing case, I'd lost my taste for the truth.

"It's not for me to say, Janey," I said, knowing the words were wrong as I spoke them, seeing the girl sink beneath them, as if that were her lot -to be betrayed by those she trusted. "But I promise you -no harm will come to Len. Tomorrow he can tell you. And if he won't, I will."

But the girl wasn't stupid and she wasn't reassured. She stared at me with that damaged look of betrayal on her face and said, with absolute certainty, "Something's going to happen. Something awful."
 

33

What Janey said was true -something was about to happen, and despite my promise to her, I wasn't at all sure I could control it. Not without help. I felt concerned enough to stop at a phone booth on my way to the Court House and call Jack O'Brien at his office.

It was well past noon, and I figured that O'Brien had talked to Art Finch by then -and gotten an answer about Chard.

As it turned out he bad talked to him, but the answer wasn't what I'd expected.

"He said no dice, Harry," O'Brien said unhappily.

"For chrissake, why not?"

"He says there's no evidence to connect Chard to the deaths. But that's not the real reason. The real reason is that he doesn't want to pick Chard up as a suspect in an aggravated homicide right before the Carnova trial. It would give me something to use in Terry's defense -and I would use it, believe me, no matter what Terry says."

"Did you tell the kid about Kitty?"

"Not yet. I was busy all morning with Finch and the D.A." He laughed bitterly. "They both acted like they'd never heard of Tommy T."

"They've heard of him, all right," I said with disgust. "Finch has known for months that Chard was tied to Lessing. Christ, he had the same leads I had. He just didn't follow up on them."

"Can you prove that?" O'Brien said.

"You mean can I prove a conspiracy to obstruct? Not without the testimony of a whole bunch of people who aren't willing to appear in court."

"Are you including yourself in that group, Harry?"

I said, "What do you mean?" Although I knew exactly what he meant.

He said it for me: "You were a witness to Terry's first confession."

"We still aren't sure what happened on the night of Lessing's murder, Jack."

But it didn't persuade me anymore. And it sure as hell didn't persuade O'Brien. "You're going to let Terry fry, aren't you, Harry? After all this horrible crap, you're going to let the kid go to the electric chair and let the -other one go free."

"I'm going to find Chard," I said to him. "Count on it."

"And then what?" O'Brien said. "The cops won't arrest him. No one's left to testify against him. We probably couldn't even get a grand jury interested not without the sort of proof that only you can supply. It's up to you, Harry. It's entirely up to you."

"I'll handle it," I told him.
 
 

When I finished with O'Brien I drove over to the Court House. It was lunch hour and the lobby was deserted. I went up to the commission offices on the second floor, looking for Len. The young woman I'd met in Don Geneva's office -the pretty blonde named Gloria- was standing at the head of the hall thumbing through a manila folder. She smiled at me as I walked by, and I smiled back at her.

"If you're looking for Don, he just went out to lunch," she said.

"I'm looking for Len Trumaine. Do you know him?" The girl nodded.

"He was here about twenty minutes ago."

"Where?"

"In Ira Lessing's office. I gave him my key so he could get in." The girl combed her blond hair back from her face. "You know Mr. Lessing was a good friend of his."

"I know."

"I didn't see Mr. Trumaine leave. Would you like to take a look?"

I nodded. The girl folded up her legal work and led me down the hall to 210. She took a key ring from her pocket and opened the door.

Len wasn't inside.

"I guess he must have left, after all." "You think I could nose around in here?"

The girl said, "Sure. If you need me, I'm down the hall in 226."

When she left I sat down behind the desk. I didn't know what I was looking for -or what Len had been looking for. But I examined the desk thoroughly. Nothing appeared to have been moved. The picture of Janey was still on the right-hand side; the picture of Meg on the left. The calendar was still open to July 4. The stuff in the top drawer was untouched.

It occurred to me that Trumaine had simply stopped there to mourn his friend. The blow that Meg Lessing had delivered had to have hurt him deeply. And the night with Chard couldn't have been any better. The thing that frightened me was that he'd apparently personalized the situation beyond any debt he owed to Lessing. From what Janey had said, Len was viewing Chard not only as a threat to the family but as a threat to his own manhood. By confronting Chard he was going to redeem himself in the eyes of the girl, redeem the past. It was sad craziness, but it seemed to be real enough to him.

It got a lot more real to me when I opened the side drawer and found the chrome-plated revolver missing from its plush box.

I stood up and went down the hall -to 226. The girl read the troubled look on my face -I wasn't trying to disguise it.

"What's wrong?" she said with concern.

"We've got a situation here," I said nervously. I started to tell her about the gun, then realized there was no way to explain it without explaining the whole thing. And there wasn't time enough to do that.

"Is it Mr. Trumaine?" she asked.

"Yeah." I took out one of my cards and put in on her desk. "If you see him, or if you talk to Geneva and he's seen him, please give me a call. I've got an answering service and I'll check in on the hour."

"It sounds serious," the girl said, paling.

"Believe me. It is."
 

34

I spent the rest of that afternoon searching for Len. I went back to Sunset Avenue, to Meg Lessing's house, but the woman took one look at me and slammed the door in, my face. I guess I couldn't blame her. I'd forced the truth out of her, and I doubted if she'd ever forgive that -no matter who ended up in jeopardy.

From Sunset I drove back to Riverside Drive again, but Janey had either passed out or gone somewhere else, because no one answered the door. After that I tried the plastics factory -without any luck. And the Court House. I even tried the bar at Mike Fink's riverboat, but Trumaine wasn't there.

Every hour I called the office for messages, but there weren't any. Two or three times I thought about calling the CPD. But each time I balked at turning Len over to the cops, especially since I knew he was carrying a gun and was in the mood to use it.

As the day wore on the heat and my lack of sleep began to take its toll. By four o'clock I was almost stuporous with fatigue and soaked with nervous sweat. If I hadn't been so concerned about finding Trumaine, I would have gone back to the office and caught a few hours sleep. But I didn't trust myself to sleep. Not without knowing where and when that meeting with Chard was scheduled to take place.

So instead of sleep I stopped at a Frisch's along the riverfront and drank coffee until I was so wired I couldn't hold another cup. The fatigue was still there, but my head buzzed above it. I was suddenly full of hot ideas -foolish, dangerous ideas. The kind of things I wouldn't even have considered in a normal state. I could stake out Lytle Park, which is where the last meeting had been. And when Chard showed up I could take him before Len had the chance to do something stupid.

I wasn't thinking about how dangerous trying to take Chard on my own could be when I was in a wornout funk, with my reflexes out of commission and my mind half asleep. I just wanted to settle it before someone else was killed.

And then a phone rang somewhere in the back of the noisy restaurant, sharp and clear as a cymbal strike, and I thought, The hell with it-I'm calling the cops.

I got up and went to a phone booth in the lobby off the dining room, sat down on the little metal seat, and started thumbing through the book, looking for the CPD's homicide number. I went through it twice before I realized it was a Kentucky directory. I was about to let the book drop on its chain when it occurred to me that there was one other obvious place where I hadn't looked for Len Trumaine. I'd never been to that place, but it was certainly worth a shot. I paged through the directory again until I found what I wanted, then left the restaurant and drove to East Fifth Street in Covington.
 
 

According to the phone book, that was where Trumaine lived at 717 East Fifth. I knew I was on the right track as soon as I turned onto the block. Trumaine's red Volvo was parked on the street at the foot of a long, sun-drenched flight of stairs leading to an apartment complex.

It was a four-unit hillside apartment house built in terraces so that each apartment was set back from and above the one beneath it, like the tiers of a stadium. According to the mailboxes, Trumaine's apartment was the third in the row. I dragged myself up the steps to the third tier. A wooden gate opened off the stairway, leading to a fenced cut-stone patio. I walked across the patio to the front door and knocked.

A moment passed and, to my relief, Trumaine answered.

I could tell from the pink, puckered look of his eyes that he'd been crying. I could also see that he'd been drinking heavily.