Primal Fear (14 page)

STAMPLER:
Y’know, startin’ courses.

VAIL:
Like freshman courses. English, things like that?

STAMPLER:
(Nods)

VAIL:
When did you start taking these courses?

STAMPLER:
Last fall. Th’ bishop said it were a waste not fer me to go on with m’ studies.

VAIL:
Do you like school?

STAMPLER:
Y’suh. L’arnin’ is my favorite thaing. ’Course m’ accent always has made folks laugh.

VAIL:
Is that why you were in extension?

STAMPLER:
N’suh … cheaper. ’N’ I always had some kinda job t’ do. So I couldn’t rightly go t’ reg’lar college.

VAIL:
What kind of jobs?

STAMPLER:
Right now I’m workin’ at the libury, cleanin’ up ’n’ all. Leastways I was, till this happened.

VAIL:
Aaron, did you and Bishop Rushman have
any
problems, personal or otherwise?

STAMPLER:
N’suh. He wanted me to join the Church and I were studyin’ about it. Watchin’ tapes of th’ services, ’n’ th’ altar boys, like that.

VAIL:
Aren’t you a little old to be an altar boy?

STAMPLER:
Were a good way t’ learn. ’Bout the Church, I main.

VAIL:
Did you discuss it with the bishop?

STAMPLER:
Y’suh. And I read books. Bishop lets me bona books from his libury whenever I want.

VAIL:
What books?

STAMPLER:
All of ’em. Any I wanted t’ borra. Read ever’thing.

VAIL:
But these discussions with the bishop, they weren’t angry talks, right? I mean, they were friendly discussions?

STAMPLER:
(Nods)
Y’suh. We talked ’bout different ways people believe.

VAIL:
So you weren’t brought up a Catholic?

STAMPLER:
N’suh.

VAIL:
Did you go to church?

STAMPLER:
(Hesitates and looks away)
Y’suh. Went t’ th’ Church of Jaisus Christ and Everlastin’ Penance.

VAIL:
That was the name of the church? I don’t think I’ve heard of that before.

STAMPLER:
Was jest a local preacherman, Mr. Vail.

VAIL:
So, to sum it up, Bishop Rushman helped you get into the college extension, helped you get into Savior House, helped you find a job, and talked with you about becoming a Catholic and maybe even an altar boy. Is that pretty much the way it was?

STAMPLER:
(Nods)
Y’suh.

VAIL:
And you two never had a fight or serious disagreement?

STAMPLER:
N’suh.

VAIL:
Even when you left savior house?

STAMPLER:
N’suh. He understood it were time.

VAIL:
Aaron, do you understand why you’re here?

STAMPLER:
Y’suh, they say I killed Bishop Richard.

VAIL:
Do you know what’s going to happen now?

STAMPLER:
Y’suh. Goin t’ Daisyland and they’re gonna decide if I’m crazy ’r not afore they gimme a trial.

VAIL:
And you understand the seriousness of all this?

STAMPLER:
O’ course. They main to execute me.

VAIL:
Tell me about the night the bishop was killed. You were in his apartment, right?

STAMPLER:
Y’suh. The altar boys went up thair. We looked at the tape. Then we had some refreshments—Cokes and cookies—and talked about, y’know, bein’ a Catholic, ’n’ all.

VAIL:
What time was that?

STAMPLER:
Well, I cain’t be positive ’cause I don’t have a watch. Sseems t’ me we went up thair ’bout… eight ’r so. We were thair about an hour and a half. So I reckon we left som’airs ’bout nine-thirty.

VAIL:
And who all was there, Aaron?

STAMPLER:
Peter, John, Billy, Sid and me. And the bishop.

VAIL:
Do they all live at Savior House?

STAMPLER:
’Cept fer Billy and me.

VAIL:
What are their last names?

STAMPLER:
Don’t use last names at th’ house, Mr. Vail.

VAIL:
You don’t
know
their last names?

STAMPLER:
(Shakes his head)
’Cept fer Billy Jordan.

VAIL:
Where does he live?

STAMPLER:
Has a stander down in the Hollers, jes’ like me.

VAIL:
All right, so you left the bishop’s place about nine-thirty. Why did you go back?

STAMPLER:
I din’t. Went downstairs to the office to borra a book.

VAIL:
How long were you there?

STAMPLER:
(Hesitating)
I’m … uh, not rail sure.

VAIL:
Why aren’t you sure?

STAMPLER:
(Becoming uncomfortable, restless)
’Cause … I jest don’t remember, not havin’ a watch. I were reading—it were
Poor Richard’s Almanac
by Benjamin Franklin. And I haird som’thin’ upstairs so I went out to the stairs and I called up but there were nary answer. I went up the stairs, callin’ out t’ th’ bishop. When I got t’ his door I could hear his stereo playin’ real loud. So I knocked on th’ door and cracked it open and … and …

VAIL:
And what?

STAMPLER:
I don’t remember.

VAIL:
You don’t remember what happened next?

STAMPLER:
Next thing I know, I was standin’ thair and I had that knife in m’ hand and the ring … and … and the bishop were … they was blood all over the place and on me and the bishop were on … the floor … ’n’ he was bleedin’ in the worst way.

VAIL:
Then what did you do?

STAMPLER:
I guess … I guess I kinda panicked and I started t’ run out only there was somebody downstairs and so I run out through the kitchen and thair was a police car comin’ down the alley so I ducked back into the church and … uh…

VAIL:
That’s when you hid in the confessional?

STAMPLER:
(Nods)

VAIL:
And that’s all you remember.

STAMPLER:
I swear t’ you, Mr. Vail, that’s all I remember.

VAIL:
Why didn’t you throw down the knife and call the police?

STAMPLER:
Because I were scairt, reckon. I were scairt so. And th’ bishop were all cut up … I don’t know why. Jes’ ran.

VAIL:
Aaron, who else was there in the room, when you went back upstairs?

STAMPLER:
(Looks down and shakes his head)
Don’t know.

VAIL:
You told me last time we talked that you were afraid of that person.

STAMPLER:
Y’suh.

VAIL:
But you won’t tell me who it is?

STAMPLER:
Don’t know.

VAIL:
You don’t
know
who it was?

STAMPLER:
(Shakes his head)

VAIL:
But you’re afraid of him?

STAMPLER:
(Looking up)
Wouldn’t you be, Mr. Vail?

Vail snapped off the machine.

“There you have it, Doctor. That’s the young man they claim did that.” He pointed to the pictures. Molly shifted slightly in her seat. She put the empty bourbon glass on the comer of Vail’s desk but said nothing.

“One question,” Vail said. “Is it possible his story is true? I mean, could it have happened that way?”

She stared at the pictures for a moment longer and nodded.

“Yes. He could have gone into a fugue state for three or four minutes.”

“What’s a fugue state?”

“It’s like temporary amnesia. An epileptic who has a seizure goes into a fugue state. A drunk who can’t remember what he did the night before was in what we call chemically induced fugue. In this case, Aaron could have been so shocked by what he saw that he withdrew into a fugue.”

“How long does it usually last?”

“Usually fairly short term. Five minutes would be average, I’d say. But I know of cases where subjects have gone into fugue for as long as six months.”

“Six months!”

“Yes. It’s a manifestation of certain types of personality disorders. I could go on for hours about this.”

“In time. The point is, you’re saying Aaron Stampler could be telling the truth?”

“Absolutely.”

FOURTEEN

Goodman stopped the car at the top of the hill, got out and looked around. Ahead of him, the road dropped sharply down between pine-laden walls that defined a narrow valley. Cramped into its confined floor was a single street half a mile long bordered on one side by a dark, thundering stream and a narrow-gauge railroad track and on the other by the natural wall of the steep ravine. Houses and stores lined the bleak roadway. Company stores and company shanties—sixty or seventy aged frame houses, Goodman estimated, before the valley curved and the settlement followed along. Years of black dust had obliterated paint and trim, and yet there was about the small settlement a look of neatness, a reflection of pride.

And something else. At first he could not put his finger on it. Then he realized the place seemed somehow out of place in time. Yeah, that was it. No television aerials. No neon, no billboards. It was if he had driven over the crest of the hill into another century.

There was a kind of sad yet serene beauty here. It was hard to imagine that under these green rolling hills and deep ravines coal mines dipped deep into the earth, manufacturing deadly gasses and black-lung dust.
Truly heaven and hell,
thought
Goodman, and he was abruptly swept back in time for a moment. To Gary, Indiana, twenty-five years ago, a place different from this place in size and accent, and yet strangely like it. Dominated by smokestacks instead of hills, its colors black and gray instead of green, Gary nevertheless had the same grim, redundant sense about it. In Gary, they boiled steel in giant furnaces; here they dug coal from pits in the earth. In both places, danger was a persistent partner. Goodman’s father had died under a scalding cauldron of molten steel. Broken, body and spirit, by years of physical punishment, he just couldn’t move fast enough. When his father died, Goodman, then nine, and his mother moved to the city. They had never owned anything. Everything belonged to the company. What pride they had they left behind, for it was an emotion manufactured by the company and manifested by bowling teams and football games, high school bands and Fourth of July picnics.

So Goodman knew what to expect. Gaunt, suspicious of strangers, the people would be leather-hard from a lifetime of fighting weather, poverty and geography. They would be simple people, their vision confined by mountains, fog and fear of the outside; their dreams trapped in airless, lightless, anthracite tombs; their tenuous job security in itself a death sentence. Caveins, explosions, disease and climate were the Four Horsemen of their existence. And yet he knew they would be ferociously patriotic, God-fearing, loyal people, their faith nurtured in the fundamentalist church, their fervor in the flag, their loyalty to a company that would exploit them to their graves. Salt of the earth.

He also knew there would be one talker down there. There’s a talker even in the smallest town.

CRIKSIDE, KENTUCKY, POPULATION
212, the small white sign said, the number painted over and reduced several times. Sign of the times—kids leaving to find a better life outside. Aaron Stampler had been one of them.

This is what Stampler had escaped. One oddball kid, probably. Smart, frustrated, driven by a vision born in his imagination until he finally crossed the mountain into the real world. Maybe it was too much for him. Had something unleashed repressed rage inside him? Sometime, somewhere—between this forlorn valley and Archbishop Rushman’s blood-drenched bedroom—had something terrifying and obscene exploded inside Aaron Stampler?

The answer would start here.

He drove slowly into the hollow. The road ran between the railroad and Morgan’s Creek for a hundred yards or so, then curved over the tracks and back to become the main street of Crikside.

The hardware store was a long, squat building with a tin roof and a dim interior, and pickaxes, oil lamps and harnesses displayed on a sagging porch that ran the length of the building. There followed Walenski’s Drugstore, the city hall—a narrow, two-story wooden structure with a spire that made it look more like a church than the political center of Crikside. There was a rambling grocery store, a dry goods shop called Miranda’s Emporium and three old buildings that leaned on each other for support—a small restaurant in the center with a bar on one side and a liquor store on the other, and a sign that read
EARLY SIMPSON’S CAFE AND BAR.
There was also a frame house with a sign in front that said
AVERY DAGGETT LEGAL ADVICE AND OFFICE SUPPLIES
, although Goodman wondered what a lawyer would do in this tiny hamlet. Draw up wills for folks who had nothing? Divorces? Unlikely. Suits against the company? Hell, the company probably owned Daggett and everything else in sight.

A town where a game of checkers could cause gossip.

He decided to start at the drugstore but it was empty, and the proprietor, a severe woman who did not look at him, had nothing to say when he tried to start a conversation. A small brass plaque beside the front door said simply
LEASED FROM KC&M.
The same thing happened at Miranda’s Emporium. There were two women in plain wool dresses who stood in the rear of the place and stared at him from between the shelves. The owner, a large woman with her hair in rollers, was pleasant but turned to ice when he mentioned Aaron’s name. She shook her head and walked back to her customers. He left, stared for a moment at a similar brass plaque and stood with his shoulders hunched against a chill wind that whined through the sluice. He walked across the street to the grocer. Same brass plaque. KC&M owned the town all right. Everything was leased. Nobody owned anything. Anybody causes trouble, they are banished forthwith and empty-handed.

Maybe the grocer was the gathering place for the town elders. He entered a dismal, large, crowded room, manned by one man who was placing canned goods on a shelf. Goodman strolled to
the back to a large soft drink chest. The storekeeper eyed him and finally walked over. He was a rail of a man with a gray beard and dull eyes and the pasty complexion of a man who did not spend much time outside. He wore a red flannel shirt and thick wool pants held up by black galluses and protected by a clean, starched apron. His hand was so thin Goodman could count the veins and sinews crisscrossing through the back of it, and the skin was stretched tight over long, bony fingers. He appraised Goodman with the fierce eyes of an evangelist, his expression never changing.

“Got a cold Coke in that box?” Goodman asked cheerfully.

“Royal Crown’s all. Jerome supposed to be hair yest’day, didn’t make ’er.”

“Royal Crown’s fine.”

The storekeeper spoke with the quaint, peculiar lyric dialect of the Appalachians—a kind of mixture of old English and Davy Crockett in which
TV
would become “tay vay,”
hair
became “h’ar,” and
year
would be“yair,” and superfluous letters would fall by the wayside. There was little slang spoken among the elders.

The storekeeper popped the top on an opener attached to the side of the chest and wiped the rim of the bottle with his apron before he handed it to Goodman.

“How much?”

“Fifty cents. Jes’ went up a week ago.”

Goodman handed him a dollar. There was an openmouthed jar on the counter next to the soft drink box with what appeared to be a section of a Polaroid photo cut out and Scotch-taped to it. It was a picture of a rather burly-looking man with a cautious smile. A handwritten note was attached below the picture: “For Zachariah Donald’s funeral Died Monday Feb 14 Heart attack.” No commas or periods. A simple statement of fact. The jar was nearly full of coins of every kind and a half dozen bills of different denominations, one a ten. Goodman dropped his change into the jar.

“Know Zach, did ye?” the storekeeper asked.

“Never had the pleasure.”

“Well that’s right gen’rous of ye, then, trav’ler.”

“Least a person can do.”

“I s’pose. Not many strangers would, don’t reck’n.” He spoke in a flat monotone. No inflections, no emotion. Just words.

“You get many strangers through here?”

“Yer the third since the yair changed. All lost their way. Had to p’int ’em back towards Kreb’s Knob ’r up to Zion. You lost?”

“Nope.” Goodman took a deep swig from the bottle. The storekeeper moseyed about making work, whistling an aimless ditty to himself. As he straightened things out on a shelf, he said, “Zach farmed, didn’t work the mines. Up ’airs on Sackett’s Ridge. Ye’ll pass his place, ye go south. Kept a nice place, he did.”

“Must be pretty tough farming hereabouts,” Goodman said.

“True ’nuff. Old man Donald—that be Zach’s grandaddy—he star’d the place. Couldn’t braith down in the hole, ’s what they say. Afore my time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Want sumpin’ t’ go with that? Cheese crackers, sumpin’?”

“Crackers might be good.”

“Got malt with peanut butter ’r round uns ’n’ cheese.”

“Peanut butter’ll be fine.”

The keeper snapped a package of crackers from a display and laid them in front of Goodman.

“Be ’nother forty ceynts.”

Goodman gave him another dollar and once again put the change in the jar.

“You stay long ’nuff, trav’ler, we might kin bury old Zach t’morra,” he said without humor.

“How much is it going to take? For the funeral, I mean?”

“Don’ rightf’ly know. This time o’ yair, Charlie Koswalski, who does our undertakerin’, gets ice offa Hoppy’s Pond, up on th’ flat. That’s what he got Zach packed in over t’ the fun’ral parlor. Reck’n when the ice melts round ol’ Zach, Charlie’ll gather up these here jars—they’s all over town—that’ll be what ’t takes t’ bury him.”

“Very practical,” Goodman said.

“Well, Charlie sure ’s hell cain’t keep Zach over ’air much longer. Been gone four days a’ready.”

“Good point.”

The storekeeper nodded down the street. “Near’st roomin’ house be next holla over—Morgan’s Crik. They got th’ name afore we did.” He smiled, which was probably as close to a laugh as he would ever get.

“I’m not looking for a rooming house. I was hoping to talk to Mrs. Stampler. Guess you know her?”

“Yess’ree,” he said, nodding, then after a moment or two, “Yer a mite late.”

“What do you mean?”

“She passed. Were, lessee, March …? Yep, ’most a yair ago. Ain’t kept in very good touch, air ye?”

“Afraid not.”

“She were al’ays a strange woman. Al’ays mumbling, like she were arguing with herself. Couldn’t buy an apple without she’d argue with herself about it.”

“Truth is, I wanted to talk to her about her son.”

“Samuel or Aaron?”

“Aaron.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Yer hair ’bout that trouble then?”

Goodman nodded. “Did you know him?”

“ ’Course. Been livin’ in Crikside fifty-four yair. Know ev’body—here, gone … and goin’.”

“What was he like?”

“Aaron? Diff’rent from most the young’uns.”

“How so?”

The storekeeper pulled up a straight-back wooden chair, sat down and leaned back against the wall, motioning to Goodman to sit on the drink box.

“Never satisfied,” he went on. “Always tryin’ sumpin’ new. Want’d t’ be a doctor, then a actor, gonna write po’try. Too smart fer his britches. Prob’ly Miss Rebecca’s doin’.”

“Miss Rebecca his mother?”

The storekeeper shook his head. “Teacher up ’t the school. Always were partial to Aaron. Even worked with ’im when he went to high school over t’ Lordsville. But, give ’im his due, good worker, he were. Did fer me couple yairs, worked for the doc. Always on time, not a complainer.”

“Did he have a bad temper?”

“Temper?” the storekeeper said, surprised. He thought a minute and shook his head. “N’ more’n anybody else. Ev’body gets riled up now and agin, ain’t that so?”

Goodman nodded and listened.

“Aaron was a thinkin’ boy. When he were no bigger’n a pissant, he come in, stand thair in fronta th’ candy tray—sometime five, ten minutes—makin’ his mind up. Same with readin’. Hell, he’d hang round back thair a hour at a time, trying t’ decide which book t’ take home.”

Goodman looked to the back of the store at several four-foot-high
stacks of paperback books, some Scotch-taped together to keep them from falling apart, accompanied by a sign:
BOOKS FOR BORROW
. 10
CENTS A DAY
.

“Big reader, was he?”

“Could read a book in a day. Two, ’twere a thick one.”

“Sounds industrious enough.”

“In some whys, reckon. Wouldn’t go in th’ hole, though. His daddy near wore ’im out, but he was steadfast. Weren’t no miner, that boy.”

“His father still alive?”

“No, no. Hole got ’im. Black lung. ’Bout four yair ago. Then his brother was kilt, lessee, that would be 1976.”

“In the mines?”

The storekeeper shook his head. “Car accident.”

“Bad luck family.”

“So ’twould appair, trav’ler. Ol’ Sackett’s Ridge got th’ h’ants, now.”

“H’ants?”

“Ghosts. Spir’ts. Were up thair a couple yairs back, in the summer? Come up over the hill with m’ dogs, they all a sudden set up a-bayin’, running around in little circles, got cold like th’ frost man were breathin’ on me. Hell, them dogs, they was scairt silly. Then I realized it was right thair, right where they found the car. Ain’t been back and I ain’t the only one’s had bad times up ’air.”

“Sackett’s Ridge, huh,” Goodman said. “Guess I’ll stay away from there.”

“Good idee, trav’ler.”

“Well, thanks for the hospitality,” Goodman said.

“Ye paid fer it,” the storekeeper answered, nodding as he left.

Goodman drove two blocks to what amounted to the edge of town. Beyond its limits, defined only by the last of the commercial places, rows of narrow two-story houses stretched on up the road a half mile or so and around the bend in the valley. On his right was a severe-looking two-story square building with a foreboding sign that announced:
DR. CHARLES KOSWALSKI, GENERAL MEDICINE AND FUNERALS
.

What was it the storekeeper said?
He wanted to be a doctor
and
he worked for the doc.
The house had two doors, one marked
DOCTOR
, the other marked
PARLOR.
He tossed a mental coin and went into the doctor’s side. A bell jangled over the door as he
entered, and he found himself in a small waiting room with a broken-down sofa and a couple of old easy chairs. There was a large wooden sliding door at the rear of the room, which smelled like a doctor’s office always smells—of iodine, vitamins and antiseptic. And there was something else. It was a minute or two before Goodman detected it—the nauseating odor of formaldehyde, which apparently wafted in from the undertaking side. The big door rolled back and a short, chubby man, bald as a paperweight, looked in the room.