Murder on High (31 page)

“I know the guy,” he said.

“Is he a customer?” she asked.

“He comes in sometimes. He used to come in three or four times a week. Now he only comes in once a month or so. He’s been off the sauce for a couple of years now, so he doesn’t come in as often.”

“I was wondering if he knew one of your other customers.”

“Who might that be?”

“Someone named Mack Scott.”

“Sure, he knows Mack. They used to pick together sometimes. Before he stopped drinking, Coley used to hang out on the river bank with the canned heaters. That’s what they call themselves. It’s a joke. They don’t really eat Sterno. They drink more classy stuff. Like Thunderbird.” He laughed.

“And Mack hung out with them too?” she asked.

“Mack doesn’t drink,” he said. “Do you know Mack?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Then you know that he’s an eccentric. He lives in an old horse trailer right down the street, across the tracks from where the canned heaters hang out. They’ve got a hobo camp down there.”

“Then he was socializing with the neighbors.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you could call it that.” He looked at her more closely. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

Charlotte was uncharacteristically slow in coming up with a reply.

“Well, I guess it’s none of my business,” he said cheerfully.

“Is there a pay phone around here?” she asked.

“At the Mobil station just up the street.”

She thanked him and left.

She was headed back to her car when she noticed a footpath on the other side of the tracks that appeared to lead down to a peninsula that jutted out into the river; she could see the tops of the trees sticking up above the tracks. Concluding that this was the site of the hobo camp, she crossed the six rows of tracks and followed the path down into the grove of trees. She wanted a close-up look at the magnificent river that was second in importance only to Katahdin in the eyes of the Penobscots. The path emerged at a circle of cast-off chairs surrounding an old oil drum, which was probably used for a fire when the weather got cold. There was also an old picnic table, which looked as if it had been carted away from a highway rest stop. One would have expected to find such a spot littered with whiskey bottles and beer cans, but there were only a few; the rest had probably been turned in at the redemption center.

It was a lovely spot that the canned heaters had picked for their camp, shaded as it was by the overhanging willows, which were now tinged with gold by the low-lying sun. Subject to flooding, though, Charlotte thought as she felt the squish of the muddy black earth beneath her feet, and not exactly quiet. She was just turning back when she noticed a turnoff leading through the trees to a clearing. And there, in the clearing, was an old straw archery target mounted on a metal stand. So this was where Mack had honed his archery, skills! It also appeared to be the point of disembarkation for his fishing trips: tied to a tree on the river bank was an old wooden rowboat.

She was headed back up the path when she ran into Mack himself. He was carrying a garbage bag full of bottles over his shoulder, and looked, with his bushy beard, like Old Saint Nick with a pack full of Christmas toys. A pang of fear shot through her at the sight of him, but it subsided the moment she had a chance to think. Mack had been a conceptual killer: his murder of Iris had been like a work of art, carefully planned for years in advance. He wasn’t a murderer who would act on impulse.

Or so she hoped. She remembered with some degree of apprehension his statement that the only reason Iris hadn’t dropped him too was that his behavior was so far beyond the pale that there was no point in even trying to hold him to civilized standards.

“Hello,” he said, pleasantly enough. “I was just going to rinse these bottles out in the river. Richie told me that you were inquiring about me.”

His eyes told her that he knew that she knew. Why else would she have been asking Richie about Mack’s connection with Coley?

“Yes. How did you know I was here?” Now that she knew who he was, she could see some resemblance to his mother. But he also had his father’s long, straight nose, and pale skin, which, like his father’s, was weather-beaten and sprinkled with freckles.

“Richie said he saw you come down here.”

Standing aside to let him pass, Charlotte said, “I didn’t tell you my name when I met you last week. I’m Charlotte Graham, the actress. I knew you when you were a little boy.”

He stared at her. “Lottie,” he said, using the name that he had used for her as a child. “You used to bring us gummy worms. ‘For your little chicks,’ you used to say.” He paused. “You haven’t changed much.”

“You have,” she said.

He looked at her appraisingly. “So you know,” he said.

She nodded.

“Lieutenant Tracey called me in when he found the photographs of me in the locked room at Iris’. I’ve been on your trail for over a week now. I just figured out the last piece: how you knew about Coley’s camp.”

“I’ve got to put this bag down,” Mack said. Continuing on down the path, he set the bag down in the middle of the clearing, next to the oil drum. Then he took a seat in a rusted folding chair.

Charlotte followed him, reassured by the fact that Tracey was on his way. If Richie had told Mack where she had gone, he would tell Tracey too. She sat down in another chair. Two chairs for friendship, she thought with irony.

For a moment, Mack stared out at the river, the pale eyes under the brim of his engineer’s cap unreadable. “Have you reported me?” he asked.

“No,” she lied.

“I could kill you now too,” he said, echoing her thoughts. “Toss your body in the river. No one would ever know.”

She quoted from
Walden
: “‘Life is sweetest closest to the bone,’” she said flippantly, as if they were having a normal conversation. In reality, she was poised to up and run.

He smiled. “Touché. I know you reported me,” he said. “Richie told me you made a phone call from the Mobil station.”

“Why don’t you tell me about Iris?” she said.

“Okay,” he replied, and proceeded to tell his tale. “Brent and I had the best father in the world,” he said. “He was the one who raised us.” He looked over at her. “As you well know. Then she got sole custody. That was in 1952, after his HUAC testimony.” He spoke bitterly. “Never mind that the committee never proved he was a subversive, never mind that it wouldn’t have mattered to us if he’d been Stalin himself. It was the ammunition my mother needed to keep him from seeing us. Not that she really cared about us. She just wanted to get back at him. That’s how screwed up she was. She’d take off to God-knows-where and leave us to fend for ourselves. We subsisted on TV dinners, if we were lucky. Sometimes she didn’t even leave us anything to eat. Then she married Scott in 1955. He’d get drunk and rough us up. We would run away, but they would always catch us. Once we tried to hitchhike to the ranch. It was our dream to be reunited with Dad, a dream that was kept alive by our infrequent visits with him. But as time went on, we realized that that wasn’t ever going to happen. Nor was it the same when we were with him; he was a broken man.” He paused for a moment, and then said, “Then came that day.”

“April twenty-sixth, 1957,” said Charlotte.

He nodded. “We were at the Chateau Marmont. He had a meeting with Harold Ames to talk about a project. We were waiting in Ames’s suite for him to arrive. Dad had just finished filming
Red Rocks
, which was his first film in—I don’t know—three or four years.”

“Four years,” said Charlotte.

“He hadn’t been feeling well—he said he thought he was coming down with the flu—but he was in a great mood nevertheless. Ames’ interest had confirmed his feeling that
Red Rocks
was going to be his comeback picture. We were having a wonderful time. He ordered up banana splits from room service.”

“I remember those banana splits they used to make for you at the Marmont,” said Charlotte. “They were enormous.”

“Then
she
arrived. I didn’t know who she was, then. All I knew was that they had an argument. Dad sent us into the bedroom to watch television. I even remember the show: it was Kate Smith; she was singing ‘When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.’ I guess he didn’t want us to hear what they were saying.”

“Were you listening?” she asked.

He nodded. “We turned Kate down so we could hear. I never could stand that woman, anyway.” He smiled. “Dad was very angry. There was shouting; it was ferocious. Then there was silence. We were afraid to come out: he’d told us not to.”

“Or else,” said Charlotte, remembering Linc’s disciplinary tactics.

He nodded. “Or else. When we finally did open the door, he was lying there on the carpet. I’ll never forget the color of his skin, how gray it was. A heart attack, the hotel doctor said. But she was the one who killed him.”

Leaning over, he picked up a whiskey bottle and put it into his bag. “Some of my best picking’s right here on my doorstep,” he said.

Charlotte leaned over and picked up another one for him.

“Thanks,” he said. Then he continued. “It was in that moment that all hope disappeared from our lives.
Poof
.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. Dad was dead. There was no chance that we’d ever be reunited. It was only a few years after that that my mother was committed. We stayed on with our stepfather. Or rather, I stayed on with him. Brent was lucky enough to get away.”

“Your Aunt Elaine told me,” Charlotte said. “I went to see her.”

“Then you know the rest. Bleak, bleak, bleak. Except for one spot of brightness: the hope that some day I would find out who the woman was who had ruined our lives, and avenge Dad’s death. It was that thought, and that thought only, that’s kept me going for thirty-three years.”

“How
did
you find out who she was?” Charlotte asked. “Through the article about HUAC in the L.A.
Times
?”

He waited for the sound of couplings clashing from the railroad yard to subside before he answered.

He nodded. “Brent saw it. He wanted to track her down too. He didn’t want to kill her. I don’t even think he wanted to see her. He just wanted to know what had become of her. If she’d been rich and successful he might have wanted to expose her for the stool pigeon she was.”

“But knowing what had become of her wasn’t enough for you,” said Charlotte. “You wanted vengeance.”

“Yes, but in a special way. I didn’t want to just polish her off; I could have done that a million times. I wanted the satisfaction of planning and executing a murder that was suited to her crime.”

“That’s why you insinuated yourself into her life.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It wasn’t hard. One of the things I’d inherited from Dad was his old copy of
Walden
, with his favorite passages underlined. I had read it a lot over the years, and its philosophy had always made a lot of sense to me, too. To pass myself off as a Thoreauvian was a natural.”

“Then the dogeared, marked-up copy of
Walden
that you talked about last week was Linc’s,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. He cocked his curly head in the direction of the road. “It’s on my bookshelf at Heritage Farms.”

“I always wondered what had happened to it.”

Mack continued. “Once I’d found out about her, I became even madder. If ever there was a woman whose life was a contradiction of everything that Thoreau stood for, it was Iris. And here she was passing herself off as a Thoreau authority. It infuriated me.”

And what about his own life? Charlotte wanted to say. She was reminded of what the docent had said about Thoreau’s radical individualism being used to justify all kinds of immoral behavior. Mack was a perfect example.

“Is that why you chose to kill her on Katahdin—because Thoreau had written about it?” she asked.

“Yes. Her annual climb was symbolic for me of her arrogance, not only before Thoreau and the natural world, but before the people she had ratted on as well. Thoreau said Pamola was always angry with men who had the daring and insolence to climb to Katahdin’s summit.”

“Weren’t you worried that she’d recognize you?” Charlotte asked. “You said she had good eyesight—for aluminum, anyway.”

“She did have good eyesight, but I was behind her. Just to make sure she wouldn’t spot me, though, I took off this hat, and put on a balaclava hat that covered my beard; it was cold enough up there for one. I also put a windbreaker on over my green and black plaid jacket.”

“And why did you ditch the crossbow at Coley’s camp?”

“I didn’t want to get caught with it, of course. I also didn’t want it to be found. I figured no one would find it there.”

“And if they did, the murder would be blamed on Coley?” she asked, thinking of what Coley had said about Indians always being the scapegoats.

“Something like that,” he replied.

Charlotte also remembered the subtle way in which Mack had directed their suspicion toward Jeanne; and, for that matter, Keith.

But Mack’s attention was no longer on their conversation; it was as if his mind had been carried off by the swift current of the river.

Finally, he spoke. “Iris’ mistake was that she only paid lip service to Pamola. You can’t just climb up to his lair once a year, offer him a bottle of rum, and then slam the door on him. He’ll pester you to death. What you have to do is invite him down to meet your friends, and to dine at your table.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “But after you’ve made your peace with your demon, you have to kick him out. Otherwise, he’ll move right in and take over.”

Mack looked over at her. “Maybe there are people who
like
having a demon around. Sometimes a demon is the only friend you have.”

For a moment they sat in silence, looking out at the wide, gray river, swollen with the snowmelt from Katahdin’s stony flanks.

Then the silence was interrupted by the crunch of tires on gravel. A state police cruiser had just pulled over next to the tracks. A door slammed and Tracey and Pyle came hurrying down the path.

“I guess that’s my ride,” Mack said.

When Tracey called him about Mack’s arrest, Brent Crawford booked a seat on the next plane out of Colorado, braving the East’s congestion for the second time on his brother’s behalf. He sat now in Tracey’s office, having just returned from a trip to Bangor to visit Mack at the Penobscot County Jail. He was a tall, lanky man with his father’s clear blue eyes, narrow nose, and pale, freckly skin, which, like his father’s, had been cured to the color of rawhide by the strong sun and harsh winds of the Rockies. It made Charlotte’s heart melt just to look at him, so strongly did he resemble Linc. He even dressed the way Linc used to: cowboy shirt, dungarees, work boots. Charlotte remembered the first time she had looked in Linc’s closet. There had been a dozen cowboy shirts, neatly lined up on hangers, and that was it! If ever there was a man who had taken to heart Thoreau’s admonition to beware of enterprises that require new clothes, it was Linc. “If I need anything more,” he had always said, “I can get it from the wardrobe department.”