From Potter's Field (36 page)

'He came in around suppertime and I said to him, "Where's your sister?"

'He replied, "She said she was going horseback riding."

'Well, we waited and we waited, and she didn't come back. So Luther and I went out to hunt for her. We found her horse still saddled up and wandering about the stable, and she was there on the ground with all this blood everywhere.'

He wiped his face with his hands, and I could not describe the pity I felt for this man or for his daughter, Jayne. I dreaded telling him his story had an ending.

'The doctor,' he struggled on, 'figured she just got kicked by the horse, but I was suspicious. I thought Luther would kill the boy. You know, he didn't win a Medal of Honor for handing out mess kits. So after Jayne recovered enough to leave the hospital, Luther took her back home. But she was never right.'

'Mr. Gault,' I said. 'Do you have any idea where your daughter is now?'

'Well, she eventually went out on her own four or five years ago when Luther passed on. We usually hear from her at birthdays, Christmas, whenever the mood strikes.'

'Did you hear from her this Christmas?' I asked.

'Not directly on Christmas Day, but a week or two before.' He thought hard, an odd expression on his face.

'Where was she?'

'She called from New York City.'

'Do you know what she was doing there, Mr. Gault?'

'I never know what she's doing. I think she just wanders around and calls when she needs money, to tell you the truth.' He stared out at a snowy egret standing on a stump.

'When she called from New York,' I persisted, 'did she ask for money?'

'Do you mind if I smoke?'

'Of course not.'

He fished a pack of Merits from his breast pocket and fought to light one in the wind. He turned this way and that, and finally I cupped a hand on top of his and held the match. He was shaking.

'It's very important you tell me about the money,' I said. 'How much and how did she get it?'

He paused. 'You see, Rachael does all that.'

'Did your wife wire the money? Did she send a check?'

'I guess you don't know my daughter. No way anybody is going to cash a check for her. Rachael wires money to her on a regular basis. You see, Jayne has to be on medicine to prevent seizures. Because of what happened to her head.' -

'Where is the money wired?' I asked.

'A Western Union office. Rachael could tell you which one.'

'What about your son? Do you communicate with him?'

His face got hard. 'Not a bit.'

'He's never tried to come home?'

'Nope.'

'What about here? Does he know you're here?'

'About the only communicating I intend to do with Temple is with a double-barrel shotgun.' His jaw muscles bunched. 'I don't give a damn if he is my son.'

'Are you aware that he is using your AT&T charge card?'

Mr. Gault stood up straight and tapped an ash that scattered in the wind. That can't be.'

'Your wife pays the bills?'

'Well, those kind she does.'

'I see,' I said.

He flicked the cigarette into the mud and a crab went after it.

He said, 'Jayne's dead, isn't she? You're a coroner and that's why you're here.'

'Yes, Mr. Gault. I'm so sorry.'

'I had a feeling when you told me who you are. My little girl's that lady they think Temple murdered in Central Park.'

'That's why I'm here,' I said. 'But I need your help if I'm going to prove she is your daughter.'

He looked me in the eye, and I sensed bone-weary relief. He drew himself up and I felt his pride. 'Ma'am, I don't want her in some godforsaken pauper's grave. I want her here with Rachael and me. For once she can live with us because it's too late for him to hurt her.'

We walked along the pier.

'I can make certain that happens,' I said as wind flattened the grass and tore through our hair. 'All I need is your blood.'

18

Before we went inside his house, Mr. Gault warned me that his wife did not have good coping skills. He explained as delicately as he could that Rachael Gault had never faced the reality of her offsprings' blighted destinies.

'It's not that she's going to pitch a fit,' he explained in a soft voice as we climbed the porch steps. 'She just won't accept it, if you know what I mean.'

'You may want to look at the pictures out here,' I said.

'Of Jayne.' He got very tired again.

'Of her and of footprints.'

'Footprints?' He ran callused fingers through his hair.

'Do you remember her owning a pair of army jungle boots?' I then asked.

'No.' He slowly shook his head. 'But Luther had all kinds of things like that.'

'Do you know what size shoe he wore?'

'His foot was smaller than mine. I guess he wore a seven and a half or an eight.'

'Did he ever give a pair of his boots to Temple?'

'Huh,' he said shortly. 'The only way Luther would have given that boy boots would be if Luther still had 'em on and was kicking Temple's butt.'

'The boots could have belonged to Jayne.'

'Oh sure. She and Luther probably wore close to the same size. She was a big girl. In fact, she was about the size of Temple. And I always suspected that was part of his problem.'

Mr. Gault would have stood out in prevailing winds and talked all day. He did not want me opening my briefcase because he knew what was inside.

'We don't have to do this. You don't have to look at anything,' I said. 'We can use DNA.'

'If it's all the same to you,' he said, eyes bright as he reached for the door. 'I guess I'd better tell Rachael.'

The entrance of the Gault house was whitewashed and bordered in a pale shade of gray- An old brass chandelier hung from the high ceiling, and a graceful spiral stairway led to the second floor. In the living room were English antiques, oriental rugs and formidable oil portraits of people from lives past. Rachael Gault sat on a prim sofa, needlepoint in her lap. I could see through a spacious archway that needlepoint covered the dining room chairs.

'Rachael?' Mr. Gault stood before her like a bashful bachelor with hat in hand. 'We have company.'

She dipped her needle in and out. 'Oh, how nice.' She smiled and put down her work.

Rachael Gault once had been a fair beauty with light skin, eyes and hair. I was fascinated that Temple and Jayne had gotten their looks from their mother and their uncle, and I chose not to speculate but to attribute this to Mendel's law of dominance or his statistics of genetic chance.

Mr. Gault sat on the sofa and offered me the high-back chair.

'What's the weather doing out there?' Mrs. Gault asked with her son's thin smile and the hypnotic cadences of a Deep South drawl. 'I wonder if there are any shrimp left.' She looked directly at me. 'You know, I don't know your name. Now, Peyton, let's not be rude. Introduce me to this new friend you've made.'

'Rachael,' Mr. Gault tried again. Hands on his knees, he hung his head. 'She's a doctor from Virginia.'

'Oh?' Her delicate hands plucked at the canvas in her lap.

'I guess you'd call her a coroner.' He looked over at his wife. 'Honey, Jayne's dead.'

Mrs. Gault resumed her needlework with nimble fingers. 'You know, we had a magnolia out there that lasted nearly a hundred years before lightning struck it in the spring. Can you imagine?' She sewed on. 'We do get storms here. What's it like where you're from?'

'I live in Richmond,' I replied.

'Oh yes,' she said, the needle dipping faster. 'Now see, we were lucky we didn't get all burned up in the war. I bet you had a great-granddaddy who fought in it?'

'I'm Italian,' I said. 'I'm from Miami, originally.'

'Well, it certainly gets hot down there.'

Mr. Gault sat helpless on the couch. He gave up looking at anyone.

'Mrs. Gault,' I said, 'I saw Jayne in New York.'

'You did?' She seemed genuinely pleased. 'Why, tell me all about it.' Her hands were like hummingbirds.

'When I saw her she was awfully thin and she'd cut her hair.'

'She never is satisfied with her hair. When she wore it short she looked like Temple. They're twins and people used to confuse them and think she was a boy. So she's always worn it long, which is why I'm surprised you would say she's cut it short.'

'Do you talk to your son?' I asked.

'He doesn't call as often as he should, that bad boy. But he knows he can.'

'Jayne called here a couple weeks before Christmas,' I said.

She said nothing as she sewed.

'Did she say anything to you about seeing her brother?'

She was silent.

'I'm wondering because he was in New York, too.'

'Certainly, I told him he ought to look up his sister and wish her a Merry Christmas,' Mrs. Gault said as her husband winced.

'You sent her money?' I went on.

She looked up at me. 'Now I believe you're getting a bit personal.'

'Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid I have to get personal.'

She threaded a needle with bright blue yarn.

'Doctors get personal.' I tried a different tack. 'That's part of our job.'

She laughed a little. 'Well now, they do. I suppose that's why I hate going to them. They think they can cure everything with milk of magnesia. It's like drinking white paint. Peyton? Would you mind getting me a glass of water with a little ice? And see what our guest would like.'

'Nothing,' I told him quietly as he reluctantly got up and left the room.

'That was very thoughtful of you to send your daughter money,' I said. 'Please tell me how you did it in a city as big and busy as New York.'

'I had Western Union wire it, same as I always do.'

'Where exactly did you wire it?'

'New York, where Jayne is.'

'Where in New York, Mrs. Gault? And have you done this more than once?'

'A drugstore up there. Because she has to get her medicine.'

'For her seizures. Her diphenylhydantoin.'

'Jayne said it wasn't a very good part of town.' She sewed some more. 'It was called Houston. Only it's not pronounced like the city in Texas.'

'Houston and what?' I asked.

'Why, I don't know what you mean.' She was getting agitated.

'A cross street. I need an address.'

'Why in the world?'

'Because that may be where your daughter went right before she died.'

She sewed faster, her lips a thin line.

'Please help me, Mrs. Gault.'

'She rides the bus a lot. She says she can see America flow by like a movie when she's on the bus.'

'I know you don't want anyone else to die.'

She squeezed her eyes shut.

'Please.'

'Now I lay me.'

'What?' I said.

'Rachael.' Mr. Gault returned to the room. 'There isn't any ice. I don't know what happened.'

'Down to sleep,' she said.

Dumbfounded, I looked at her husband.

'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,' he said, looking at her. 'We prayed that with the kids every night when they were small. Is that what you're thinking of, honey?'

'Test question for Western Union,' she said.

'Because Jayne had no identification,' I said. 'Of course. So they made her answer a test question to pick up the money and her prescription.'

'Oh yes. It was what we always used. For years now.'

'And what about Temple?'

'For him, too.'

Mr. Gault rubbed his face. 'Rachael, you haven't been giving him money, too. Please don't tell me . . .'

'It's my money. I have my own from my family just like you do.' She resumed sewing, turning the canvas this way and that.

'Mrs. Gault,' I said, 'did Temple know Jayne was due money from you at Western Union?'

'Of course he knew. He is her brother. He said he'd pick it up for her because she hasn't been well. When that horse threw her off. She's never been as clearheaded as Temple is. And I was sending him a little, too.'

'How often have you been sending money?' I asked again.

She tied a knot and cast about as if she had lost something.

'Mrs. Gault, I will not leave your house until you answer my question or throw me out.'

'After Luther died there wasn't anyone to care about Jayne, and she didn't want to come here,' she said. 'Jayne didn't want to be in one of those homes. So wherever she went she let me know, and I helped when I could.'

'You never told me.' Her husband was crushed.

'How long had she been in New York?' I asked.