Piper (21 page)

I closed the file and slipped it back into the drawer between “Printer” and “Public Auctions” where I'd found it. I ran my fingers across the rest of the tabs in the drawers looking for anything that might bear a relationship to child molestation or sodomy or Dirk Thurgood. I found one file with letters to Dad from his brother Seamus, but decided it was none of my business the way John Carlisle and Dirk Thurgood were. I held my wristwatch under the lamp—it was six-twenty—and calculated how long it would take Dad to drive back from Seattle. Then, it hit me. The computer! Dad's investigation would be on the computer.

I swiveled my chair sideways and felt around the edges of his computer until I found the power switch. The screen crackled with shards of green light, the processor hummed, the monitor filled with a gray page full of unintelligible codes, and finally the gobbledy-gook cleared and the cursor blinked in the lower left-hand corner of the screen behind the words “User password.” Damn! I sat there with my fingers on the keyboard staring at the pulsing cursor, thinking of those monkeys locked in a room with typewriters, wondering how long it would take them to type the Gettysburg Address. I typed Dad's last name, his first name, the month, day, and year of his birth, and each time the computer said, “Error.” I tried “Herald” and “Pulitz,” all with the same rejection. Then I went monkey and started typing in swear words. Still nothing. The computer was laughing at me.

I rested my hands in my lap, closed my eyes, and tried to transport myself into Dad's head. At first everything was blank and it was so quiet I could have heard my eardrums stretch. Then I heard his voice singing some Irish ditty in the shower about “Crazy Jane and her virginity.” He had a good tenor's voice, a lot like Dennis Day's on those old seventy-eight records in the attic, but that was so long ago. I hadn't heard him laugh, much less sing, since Mom died. His singing voice always warmed me, so did his poetry voice when he'd ask us to fold our hands and close our eyes at the dinner table and he'd recite a Yeats poem instead of grace:

She carries in the dishes,

And lays them in a row.

To an isle in the water

With her would I go.

There was romance and derring-do in Tom Scanlon, but Mom's death had smothered it like a mudslide.

Dad always said don't use a long word no one understands when there's a short one they do. The password had to have something to do with Mom. I opened my eyes and typed in “Cooper,” her maiden name, the name he would have courted to and recited poetry to when his love for her was fresh. The computer came alive, humming like a grasshopper quartet through tobacco leaves.
Dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, plunk, dit, dit, plunk, dit
.

Computer Science was mandatory in second-year and I'd cribbed my way through Mrs. Oliphant's course, trying not to be so good I would predestine a career for myself as a typist or a data processor. I'd rather rake leaves or pick up litter using one of those poles with a nail on the end of it than numb my brain in front of a computer screen all day. But I found the list of files on the “C” drive. It felt like I was walking around in Dad's brain, each file another circuit to explore. I scrolled quickly to the end of the list and then returned to the beginning. There were hundreds of them, alphabetized by six-letter titles that made me guess at their contents. Many involved John Carlisle, including speeches Dad had written for him to deliver at Kiwanis and Cascade County Democrat lunches. There was no end to the slavery Dad had been subjected to in his service for the Carlisles.

“JCINVS” turned out to be the file I wanted. At the top of the first page, it said: “CONFIDENTIAL: HOLD UNTIL TRIAL!” The piece was entitled: “The Rest of the Story.” My Geiger counter was racing again and I squeezed my eyes shut to do an examination of conscience, the kind Sister Graziana had taught us. “You're little house cleaners,” she'd always said, in that sickly, Hansel and Gretel witch's voice. “Swish your brooms into every nook and cranny, girls.” Before she paraded us across the asphalt playground and through the side door of St. Augustine's for First Friday confessions, Sister made us put our heads down on our desks for fifteen minutes of sweeping. Since then, I'd become a faster sweeper and I managed to finish this examination in seconds. I was going to read whatever Dad had written. I'd learned a long time ago it didn't take any more work to confess the big dust balls than the micrococcal.

I scrolled down until the screen was filled with text:

(Stampede, wa) The rape and sexual misconduct charges against John Carlisle have shocked a county and challenged a way of life in this hidden corner of the world where people want to raise their children.

There is an ebb and flow to these revelations that has been as predictable as the tides and the fractions of the moon. First there was the denial as people insisted, “It couldn't happen here. Not in my town. Not with my children. Not by one of our most revered citizens.” The denial was followed by self-doubt as each citizen explored his and her own flaws and once again became humbled by the frailty of the human condition. “Maybe it could have happened. I always wondered why he was such a loner.” Now we are caught up in the third and most cynical phase of the cycle, where folks just heap it on in a desperate attempt to differentiate themselves from the accused. This is when nervous parents corner their kids and almost demand their participation. “Are you sure he didn't touch you while you were shopping? What about when you saw him at the swimming pool? How can you be sure?”

Unfortunately, such accusations are like smoke and once they are made they can't be put back in the bottle. True or not, they float among us, leaving an enduring odor of suspicion, especially when something as dear as the safety of our children is at stake. Like Salem, Stampede has become the breeding ground for unfounded accusations against a decent man.

There is something else that should be as dear to a town as the safety of its children. And that is the reputation of an innocent man.

The light in the hallway went on.
Damn, it must be Dad
! There was no time to get out of the file so I just flipped the computer off, punched the halogen lamp switch, and as quietly as I could lifted myself out of Dad's chair and placed, not walked, my feet one foot in front of the other until I was in my own cubbyhole office next to his. I could hear somebody moving in the hallway. What if he turned on the computer to work on the investigation and the file was already open, or lost? I hadn't paid close enough attention in Mrs. Oliphant's class to know what happened when you shut the computer off in the middle of something. She'd always made sure we didn't do that, with her baby-step directions, proving my point once again that you learn best by making mistakes, rather than avoiding them. What would I say I was doing down here? I never set foot in the paper after hours, unless it was to drag Dad home, which Mom made me do sometimes. I could say I was doing homework, a paper, better yet a thesis.
Sorry, Dad, I know I should have asked first, but you were gone
. Anything was okay as long as he didn't know I was into the John Carlisle article, which wasn't really an article as much as an editorial. “The good editorial captures the voice of a whole community,” he'd told me.

Dad had never hit me but I knew he'd do it for breaking into his computer. Confidentiality and protection of sources were sacred to the journalist. The dust balls were beginning to roll out of reach of my broom. How would I explain why I was in the dark? I should have left the lights on. Maybe he was just down here to pick up some copy to read at home. If I turned the lights on now, it was a guaranteed confrontation. I'd have to have some excuse.
Oh, Dad, I must have passed out from the bad air. I haven't been eating well. Willard gave me some putrid meat. I'm fasting to cleanse my systems. I fell asleep and didn't realize everyone else had left
.

“Anyone home?” The ceiling light in Dad's office flashed on, but it wasn't Dad's voice. It was an older man, not someone I recognized. I was sitting on the floor in the dark, leaning into the chairs stacked against the wall of my office. The edge of a molded seat was digging into my back, but I didn't dare move for fear the whole stack would shift. Maybe it was a security officer and he'd shoot me if I surprised him.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us thieves and sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen
.

Squeaky wheels entered Dad's office. There was the banging of something and whistling and I recognized the hollow sound of a wastebasket. It must be the night janitor! I was fine. I could go back and finish reading the file. I'd tell him I was working on a story. I just had to transition gracefully from hidden to visible. I'd wait until he was finished doing whatever else he was going to do, but he seemed to take forever as he lifted pictures and paperweights off the desk and dusted and fussed. Then he dragged the vacuum into the office and did the carpet. I could hear the rubber guards on the sides of the brush hood bumping into furniture and walls. Everything had to be perfect for the editor-in-chief. Then he shut off the vacuum and punched in someone's number on the phone. I had him now. If he squealed on me, I'd squeal on him. Whoever he was calling must not have been home because he cleared his throat and left a message.

“Hey pumpkin, it's your knight in shining armor. I was thinkin' about what you said and I'm ready to take you on. So get those sugar limbs warm, huh? And don't bolt the door.” So much for pleasing the boss.

He limped out of the room, singing “Hey look me over” to the accompaniment of the wheels on his cleaning cart.

He didn't close the door, so that was the first thing I did when I came out of hiding. Then I went back to the desk, found the switch to the computer in the dark and fired it up. It sounded like an overheated pot in a baking oven the way it swelled and cracked and finally advanced to the password test, which I nailed on first try. Before I could move on, however, it asked me if I knew there was another program running and I crossed my fingers and responded, “Okay.”

Relief! The file was still there. I quickly scrolled “Page down” until I found the place where I'd left off. I expected details about what Dirk had told the police, how many times he'd been assaulted, where it happened, when, but the author of this piece wasn't telling that story. It assumed the reader knew all of that. This was counterpoint. “Hold until trial,” it said. This was going to be Dad's
deus ex machina
.

The article went on to talk about John Carlisle's father and grandfather, material I would have deleted if I were the editor, and I skimmed it looking for the juicy stuff. Then I found it! But it wasn't about Dirk.

Kathryn Scanlon's patron in the arts was John Carlisle. Records show that he purchased no less than fourteen of her works, pieces ranging from landscapes of the Skykomish River to interpretive and revealing self-portraits, some of which were painted in the Carlisle mansion.

My skin was beginning to crawl. This was more than an editorial. It was a confession, someone else's confession, not Dad's. What did this have to do with the charges against Carlisle?

Like all relationships, theirs had to evolve, grow and become closer, or wither and die like the unwatered tendrils of a grapevine. On one of the very days that John Carlisle is accused of sodomizing the alleged victim, the record shows that he dined with Kathryn Scanlon at the Hush of the Lark. On that same evening, John Carlisle took the honeymoon suite. Yet there is no mention of the Hush of the Lark in the criminal charges. It strains the credulity of a reasonable man to believe that John Carlisle, a lover of creature comforts, would abandon the Lark's finest suite to grovel on the floor of his own wine cellar with a boy on the same evening.

This was making me nauseous as well as angry. Dad was practically offering up Mom as John Carlisle's alibi.
Sorry, folks, he was sleeping my wife that night, it couldn't have been him
. What kind of masochism was he engaged in that he would print this kind of stuff, even if it was true? Especially if it was true.

The blur of tears made it hard to read the rest of it, but masochism must have run in the family because I pushed on to the end.

Let those of us who are without sin cast the first stone. But cast it for the right reason. Don't call a thief a rapist. Don't call a heterosexual a faggot. And beware of fierce winds that blow stones back against those who cast them.

His mom was right. Dad was a priest, a cold-blooded one at that, and he didn't much care who he took down with his homily. As long as it sang.

“Hey, who're you?” I almost blacked out I was so surprised. It was the janitor, with a dustpan in his hand.

“I'm … Piper Scanlon, his”—I pointed to the chair I was sitting on—“desk. Daughter.”

He stepped into the room, his head tilted, rubbing the dustpan up and down the sides of his overalls. They were unbuttoned like he might have just come from the restroom. His face was still hard to make out because of the glare of the halogen next to me. “Prove it,” he said.

“You must be new,” I said. “Everyone knows me at the paper.” I pulled the wallet out of my back pocket. I didn't have a driver's license, but the student body cards had pictures on them. As I opened to it, I realized the picture was last year's, when I had a full head of scraggy hair.

When he leaned over to inspect the picture, I recognized him. He was the butler who'd let me in at the Carlisle open house. He looked up at my head, which because of Rozene I'd started to let grow again, and back to the picture. Finally, he straightened up. “Nice hair. Where were you earlier?”

I was going to make it, just one more white lie. “I must have passed out. The air is so bad in here.”

“Tell me about it. Hey, aren't you the one who got in the tiff over at Mr. Carlisle's?” Damn, he was going to squeal on me.