Shoot the Moon (7 page)
A
fter Mark phoned Hap Duchamp to tell him about the missing documents, he started to call Charlene at home but hung up before he finished dialing.
If the sheriff had already spoken to her, told her Mark Albright was suspected of a series of burglaries in Oklahoma, she would be hysterical. And he couldn’t deal with Charlene’s hysteria. Not now.
He took a long baking soda bath, during which he removed two ticks from his groin and one from behind his knee, counted twenty-four chigger bites around his midsection and nineteen on his ankles.
While he soaked in the tub, he tried to make sense of the last forty-eight hours, reconstructing the events, putting them in order.
Until the past few weeks, almost everything in his life had gone according to plan. His plan. A sort of paint-by-numbers for living.
He had mapped out his future when he was sixteen, the result of a questionnaire prepared by his guidance counselor, the form asking, “Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten years? Twenty-five?”
Most of his classmates had responded by filling in the blanks. But not Mark Albright. He had spent days and nights composing his answers, finally turning in a ten-page blueprint for his life.
His plan included a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a DVM from Tufts. Marriage at thirty; a beautiful wife. Professional success in his own Beverly Hills clinic. A healthy investment portfolio that would provide a home in Malibu and another in Palm Springs, two vintage Jaguars, and membership in the Bel-Air Country Club. Trips abroad. All part of Mark Albright’s Life-by-Design.
Becoming Nick Harjo had not been in his plan.
When he finally pulled the plug on the tub and watched the water swirling down the drain, it seemed a metaphor for what had happened to that other life.
After he shaved and rebandaged his arm, he picked through his clothes. Not that he had much to look at—two pairs of slacks and two shirts, the total of what he’d brought with him. Twenty-five hundred dollars’ worth of Versace, Fendi and Valentino, some beyond salvage now.
He decided to wear the least torn, stained and smelly of the bunch, put aside his favorite shirt to see if the cleaners could resurrect it, then tossed the rest in the wastebasket.
He used a wet towel to clean his loafers, a pair of Guccis he’d bought in Milan, but they didn’t look much better when he finished. The leather looked like it had been clawed, and one shoe was missing a tassel. But he supposed Gucci hadn’t designed them for an overland expedition.
The lobby downstairs was quiet now, empty except for a black man standing near the door.
“Excuse me,” Mark said to the woman behind the reception desk.
“May I help you?”
“Yes, I had intended to check out this afternoon, but my plans have changed. I need to keep the room for a few more days.”
“Your name?” she asked as she stepped over to her computer.
“Mark Albright.”
“Room two twenty-nine?”
“That’s right.”
“No problem, Mr. Albright. Just let us know when you’ll be checking out.”
“Thanks. Is the dining room still open?”
“No, but you can get sandwiches in the bar.”
As he started toward the bar, the black man fell in beside him.
“Mr. Harjo?”
Mark felt a jolt of apprehension at hearing this stranger say his name, a name that still seemed alien to him, despite the revelations of the past few days.
“I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“My father.”
“Who are you?”
“Amax Dawson. Joe Dawson was my daddy.”
“I wish I could tell you more,” Mark said. “But that’s really all I know.”
Amax nodded, swallowed hard, then pushed back from the table. “Excuse me for a minute,” he said as he headed for the men’s room in the motel lobby.
Mark watched him walk away, noticing that he had a slight limp. He was a handsome man, with smooth mahogany-colored skin, eyes a light shade of green and long, thick lashes of the kind women bought at cosmetic counters. Though he had probably thickened some around the middle, he still had narrow hips, broad shoulders and arms rippled with muscle.
“Hey, you guys ready for another round?” the bartender asked Mark.
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
Amax came back to the table as the barmaid arrived with two bottles of beer, causing him to go for his pocket.
“You got the first ones.” Mark handed the woman some bills. As soon as she retreated to the bar, he asked Amax, “Are you okay?”
Amax hesitated, then cleared his throat. “The day the gravediggers were shoveling out a hole for Dad’s casket, O Boy Daniels had a crew on our land digging for a dead baby.” Shifting his gaze to the mirror behind the bar, Amax stared at his own reflection, as if trying to put a name to the face looking back at him.
“I knew my daddy didn’t kill anybody, knew he couldn’t do a thing like that. But now and then . . .” Amax pulled at his lip. “Some kid at school would make a remark. Or I’d have a dream about my dad, see him on his hands and knees scooping out a hole down by the pond or behind the barn. Or maybe I’d just catch a stranger looking at me, his eyes telling me I was too young, too simple, to see the truth.
“And I’d wonder, you know? I’d think, What if . . .” Amax ran a thumb around the rim of his beer bottle. “But I couldn’t talk about that. Couldn’t admit that sometimes I had doubts. I had to keep that to myself, keep all that guilt inside.”
He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Sorry. I haven’t talked about this in a long time.”
“You don’t owe me an apology.”
An outburst of laughter at the bar provided a brief distraction.
“Mind if I ask you a question?” Mark said.
“What’s that?”
“How did your father know her?”
“Your mama?”
Mark nodded, acknowledging a word as strange as one from an undiscovered language.
“Daddy knew everybody in the county, I guess. He was a farmer who preached . . . or a preacher who farmed. Depended on what time of year it was.
“In the winter he was always out knocking on doors, promoting a revival or a new Bible study class. Praying with folks who were going through a bad time.
“Summers he’d show up at those same doors with a mess of okra or onions when we had extra. Tomatoes, corn. Whatever the drought didn’t kill.” Amax grinned. “Farming in Oklahoma might be a bigger test of faith than preaching.
“So he’d go by her trailer now and then. One of us would usually go with him. My mom, sometimes my sisters.”
“Did you ever go?”
“Couple of times. Mostly I stayed busy trying to become the next Jim Brown.”
“I was going to top Nolan Ryan in the record books.” Mark smiled. “Just didn’t have a curveball. Or much of a fastball, either.”
They were quiet then, Mark sipping his beer, Amax peeling the label from his bottle.
“Hey, Streak.” The voice belonged to a tall, heavyset man passing the table.
“How you doing, Darrell,” Amax said.
When the man joined a woman at the bar, Mark said, “Streak?”
“A name I picked up in another lifetime. I played ball at OU, then spent a couple of years with the Chargers. Punt returner. But I tore up a knee, so I came home, got a job coaching at the high school.”
“I’m surprised.”
“That they’d hire the son of a killer, or that I’d want to come back here?”
“Well, I—”
“This is Oklahoma. Sooner country. They don’t care who you are as long as you can give them what they want. And that’s a winner.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. I was part of it. But that’s not why I came back.” He took a swallow of beer, then stared at the lights of a jukebox. “I had some crazy idea that I could uncover the truth. Clear my dad’s name.
“So I spent the next five, six years chasing dead ends. My wife finally made me stop. She thought I was going over the edge. But I think she’ll see things in a different light now.”
“How’s that?”
“Because of you.”
“You think my showing up is going to make much of a difference?”
“It might. See, I’ve always believed that whoever killed your mama lives here.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Whoever did it knew my dad, knew how to get hold of his knife. And if the killer’s still here, still alive, he’s not going to be real happy when he hears Nicky Jack Harjo has turned up.”
T
he domino boys could have been the first to spread the news that a man claiming to be Nick Harjo had been plucked from the pool hall and carted off to jail. After all, they’d been witness to the scene, heard most of what was said, and watched O Boy take the man away.
The only problem was that two of the boys didn’t quite get the story straight. And the two who did, didn’t tell it.
Lonnie, his hearing aid low on battery power, had been able to follow most of the conversation about the dog bites on the fella’s arm. But when Teeve whispered Nick’s true identity to the sheriff, Lonnie had mistaken the name
Harjo
for
Cujo,
causing him—a longtime Stephen King fan—to conclude that the stranger had been attacked by a rabid dog.
Ron John O’Reily, still in the early stages of dementia, told quite a different tale. Though he knew what he’d heard when he heard it, by the time he reached the Quik Trip to buy a tin of snuff, his excitement was surpassed only by his confusion. Nevertheless, he was the center of attention when he announced to one clerk and five customers that he had seen Nick Nolte in the pool hall not more than an hour ago.
The Standingdeer brothers, Jackson and Johnny, were afflicted with neither hearing problems nor memory loss but were quiet, solitary bachelors who shared both an isolated cabin and their belief that talk led to trouble. Johnny, the least talkative of the two, occasionally went through entire days without speaking except to bid in the domino games. So after they left Teeve’s Place, they went home, ate a supper of fry bread and beans, then watched the Cardinals game on TV, unaware that a lot of folks in town were penning up their dogs while even more were scouring the streets hoping to spot Nick Nolte.
But the fear of rabies and the search for a movie star would soon give way to the real story: Nicky Jack Harjo had returned from the grave.
That news was passed by a phone call from Olene Turner, a dispatcher in the sheriff’s office, to Amax Dawson. Olene had been in love with Amax since she was sixteen, when he’d taken her to their junior prom. And though she’d been married and divorced three times in the past twenty-two years, her feelings for her high school sweetheart had never changed.
Amax, after spending time with Mark in the motel bar, had taken the story home to his wife, then called his sister, Zoe, who arrived at his house within minutes. They talked until mid-night, but before Zoe left, they agreed to keep the news inside the family, at least for a while.
At home, Zoe waited for her husband, Foster, to come in from his Saturday night poker game. Foster, himself not a Dawson, did not feel bound by the family agreement, so he felt no sense of betrayal when, the next morning, he whispered the news to his best friend, Jolly Strange, just after services ended at the AME Church.
Jolly and Foster, best friends since childhood, worked together at the plastic factory, but Jolly was also self-employed. He owned and operated a one-man business called Strange Lawncare, and on this particular Sunday he was doing Martha Duchamp’s place.
Martha, bleary-eyed and shaky, poured herself an eye-opener of Jack Daniel’s when she heard Jolly fire up his mower in her front yard. By the time he finished, she’d knocked back three more.
While Jolly waited at the kitchen door for Martha to retrieve her cash from the sock hidden in her freezer, he told her the story he’d heard from Foster Arnett, who’d heard it from his wife, who’d heard it from her brother, who’d been told by Olene Turner.
As soon as Jolly drove away, Martha poured herself a tumbler of bourbon, being it was past noon, and got on the phone.
The story, on the loose now, raced through the community like an unbridled child. Rumors climbed over backyard fences, skipped from street to street, romped down the aisles of Wal-Mart, tumbled through the Laundromat and cartwheeled through the park.
And like carriers of a virus, those who heard passed it on to others, causing an epidemic of gossip to spread from neighbor to neighbor, child to parent, doctor to patient, friend to friend.
Later, no one would give much thought to the path the news had traveled, but more than a few would be amazed at the speed with which the story sprinted past the city limits, jumped the river, galloped over eight counties and dashed across the state line.
M
ark answered on the first ring, a call that jerked him from sleep.
“Good morning.” The man’s voice on the other end of the line, vaguely familiar, had a homogenized quality, stripped of accent, polished. “This is Arthur McFadden. I saw you yesterday at the radio station, but we weren’t introduced.”
Mark, never at his best before his first cup of coffee, mumbled a less-than-enthusiastic response.
“If you have time, I’d like to talk to you.”
“When?”
“I’m downstairs now.”
“Here? In the motel?”
“I go to early mass. St. Andrew’s is just a block away, so . . .”
“I’ll need a few minutes,” Mark said.
“Fine. I’ll be on the patio.”
Mark pulled on the same clothes he’d worn the day before, reminding himself that he still had to make his way to Wal-Mart.
Arthur McFadden stood, offering his hand when Mark, squinting against the sunlight reflected off a small swimming pool, joined him at a table shaded by a faded umbrella.
“Sorry for barging into your day at this hour,” he said as soon as Mark took a chair. “Coffee?” He offered a carafe.
“Thanks.”
As Arthur filled a cup, he said, “I’m afraid I might have seemed brusque yesterday when you came to Kyle’s office.”
Mark sipped his coffee but made no response.
“I suppose my behavior was prompted, in part, by surprise. You’re not the sort Kyle usually gives audience to.”
“And what sort is that?”
“Aging hippies. Bizarre musicians with green hair and dirty fingernails. Drug dealers. Anyone looking to make a score.” Arthur curled his lips in what was intended to be a smile. “Prevailing parlance, I believe.” He inhaled deeply, held the breath for a moment, then said, “So. What did you think of my stepson?”
“Well . . .”
“I don’t suppose I have to tell you that he’s a troubled man.”
“I wasn’t with him long enough to make that kind of judgment.”
“But you must admit that he’s hardly in control of his emotions.”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.”
“Let me come right to the point, then,” he said as he stubbed out a cigar in the ashtray. “What is your business with Kyle?”
Mark guessed that Arthur’s tone—demanding, superior and authoritative—found in his stepson a soft and vulnerable target.
“It’s really a private matter.”
“I rather thought you’d say that. Under other circumstances, I might agree. But in Kyle’s case, his business is my business.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“Kyle is unstable. Manic-depressive. Alcoholic, addict since he was sixteen, seventeen. In and out of rehab, jail. Tens of thousands of dollars wasted, but . . .”
Mark could almost see dollar signs flashing in Arthur’s eyes.
“In 1980, I was appointed by the court as his legal guardian, an arrangement of his mother’s choosing, not mine. Because of her decision, I am responsible for Kyle. I trust that explains my interest in your dealings with him.”
Mark helped himself to more coffee, less for the caffeine than to buy time as he decided how to play this.
“I’m an attorney, trying to settle an estate that leaves a piece of property to—”
“No, sir. You are not. You’re here either because you’re an impostor or because you actually believe yourself to be Nick Harjo.”
“You mind telling me where you heard that?”
“The news is all over town. Nothing remains secret in DeClare for long.”
“Apparently not.”
“But my purpose in seeing you this morning is not to attempt to determine your identity.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Kyle said you were questioning him about Gaylene. I want to know why.”
“I thought he might have some idea about who fathered her child.”
“He denied knowing who that was, didn’t he?”
“He expressed strong feelings for her, but he said their relationship was platonic.”
“Well, Kyle doesn’t have much of a grasp on the past.”
“Meaning what?”
“Drugs have provided him the unique ability to rewrite history, and in doing so, he’s made Gaylene a saint. He’s probably convinced himself her conception was immaculate.”
“So you’re saying they were lovers?”
“I would have no way of knowing that, but she obviously had more in common with Mary Magdalene than with the Virgin Mary.”
“You knew Gaylene well?”
“No, not especially. I gave her a job at the station when she was a senior in high school, but that proved to be a mistake on my part.”
“Why?”
“Gaylene was lazy. Totally without ambition. And she wasn’t particularly bright.”
“That’s odd. No one else I’ve talked to made those kinds of observations about her.”
“Then maybe she didn’t work for them. But I’ll give her this: She was shrewd and beautiful. A combination that makes men like Kyle easy prey. Kyle had access to money. His mother is quite wealthy. So when I found out he and Gaylene had established a relationship, I had to let her go.”
“But they continued to see each other.”
“Unfortunately.”
“If Kyle is the father . . .”
“He told you he wasn’t.”
“Nevertheless . . .”
“Kyle’s quite upset. He was incoherent after you left the station yesterday and became unmanageable as the day wore on.”
“I hate to hear that. Maybe if I talked to him again, I could—”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
“Why?”
“I had Kyle transported to a facility late last night. He won’t be receiving visitors. Or phone calls.” Arthur checked his watch, then pushed back from the table. “Well, I’ve taken enough of your time.”
“I’m in no rush.”
“But I am. Mass begins shortly.”
“Before you go, let me ask you one question.”
“I don’t have any answers for you. And neither does Kyle.”
Mark watched Arthur walk away, his shoulders hunched like he was moving against a strong wind, a burden balanced precariously on his back.
Following Hap’s directions, Mark turned right at the first road past a one-lane bridge, then at a red mailbox took a left onto a graveled driveway bordered by blue spruce and magnolias. The drive climbed to the top of a hill, ending in front of a two-story log house with a broad wraparound porch.
As Mark was getting out of his car, Hap stepped through the front door and came to the porch steps to meet him.
“Sorry to be late,” Mark said.
“We don’t keep to a schedule around here, especially on Sunday. Slept late myself.”
“I had the same idea, but Arthur McFadden paid me an early morning visit.”
“What was that about?”
“Kyle Leander. I had a conversation with him yesterday; McFadden sent him to rehab last night.”
“Is there a connection?”
“McFadden seems to think so.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“Kyle seemed agitated all right, but I got the impression that’s not new. He’s a pretty tense guy.”
“He’s been a mess since he was a boy, trundled from one institution to another.”
“Yeah, so I was told. But I believe McFadden’s trying to make sure to keep me away from Kyle.”
“Wonder why?”
Just then a tall, angular man appeared in the doorway.
“Mark, this is my partner, Matthew Donaldson.”
“Hi there.” Matthew offered an open smile and handshake that could cause damage. “Hope you’re hungry. I’m fixing brunch.”
“Sure.”
“Great. Just need a couple more minutes.”
When Matthew went back inside, Mark said, “Does he know about me?”
“He knows you’re a client from out of town. That’s all.”
Mark nodded, but it was an absent gesture, his eyes following a hawk circling high overhead.
“So, how are you doing, Mark?”
“Oh, better than yesterday, I guess.”
“You’re not sure?”
“The day’s young. Still plenty of time for your sheriff to haul me back to jail . . . or break into my room again.”
“Well, I have my doubts about O Boy being behind that little stunt.”
Mark looked puzzled.
“If he wanted a copy of your birth certificate,” Hap said, “he could get one from the Department of Records. No reason for him to take it from you. No, I don’t think O Boy had a thing to do with it.”
“Then who? Who else would want to see my damn birth certificate. Teeve? Ivy? Amax Dawson? No, I don’t think—”
“Amax? How the hell did he find out?”
“A friend who works in the sheriff’s office gave him a call.”
Hap shook his head. “Amax tried for years to clear Joe’s name, but he never got anywhere with it.”
“He seems to think I’m proof that his father’s innocent.”
“You’re proof that Joe wasn’t a child killer, but proving he didn’t kill Gaylene’s another matter. After all these years, he’ll—”
They looked up when Matthew rapped on the window and motioned them inside. As they started for the door, Hap said, “Listen, I should have mentioned this earlier . . .”
“What?”
“Uh, Matthew’s cooking is . . . well, unusual.”
“An adventure in eating, huh?”
“Yes, you could say that.”
The first floor of the house, open and spacious, dominated by a massive fieldstone fireplace, was furnished with worn leather couches, heavy oak tables and large canvases of western art. Timbered beams crisscrossed the vaulted ceiling, Navajo rugs covered the floor.
“Nice place,” Mark said.
“Thanks. We enjoy it.”
The kitchen, permeated with the smell of pumpkin, was bright, the walls hung with knotty pine cabinets. In the center of the room a table was set for two.
“Are you sure you were planning on my joining you?” Mark asked.
“Absolutely,” Matthew said. “I take lunch to the station every Sunday. I’ll eat there.”
“Matthew’s a retired fireman,” Hap explained, “but he hangs out there more than he did when he was getting paid for it.”
“I’ve heard firemen are great cooks,” Mark said, a comment that caused Hap to roll his eyes.
“We’re not bad.” Matthew ladled a watery orange liquid into soup bowls, where bits of something gray and slick floated to the surface. “Pumpkin squid bisque,” he announced. “Enjoy.”
Hoping to disguise his reluctance, Mark filled his soup spoon and brought it to his mouth, inhaling an unpleasant, vinegary odor. But with both Hap and Matthew watching him intently, he couldn’t think of any way out.
His first and final taste of bisque, so bitter that his eyes teared, contained two chunks of squid that defied chewing as they swelled into rubbery globs, forcing him to swallow them whole.
“What do you think?” Matthew asked.
Managing a weak smile, Mark said, “I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”
“That’s because it’s one of my original recipes.”
“Well, you’re certainly inventive.”
“Like I told you,” Hap said, “Matthew’s cooking is truly an adventure in eating.”
Matthew beamed. “I’ve made spinach salad with yogurt dressing, cold fish mousse and a lima bean soufflé.”
“Sounds wonderful, Matthew,” Hap said, “but I know you need to get down to the station. Those guys will be getting hungry.”
“Right.” Matthew gathered up several grocery bags and headed for the back door. “Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a mayonnaise cheesecake in the fridge.”
“Go on. I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay. Bon appétit, gentlemen.”
Hap went to the kitchen window and watched until Matthew’s pickup pulled away. When he returned to the table, he picked up the soup bowls and emptied the bisque into the garbage disposal.
“Let’s go back to my study, Mark, unless you’ve worked up a hunger for lima bean soufflé.”
“I think I’ll deny myself that pleasure.”
Mark followed Hap to the far end of the house to a small room comfortably cluttered with law books, file folders, magazines and newspapers.
“Have a seat,” Hap said as he removed a stack of legal journals from a worn wingback chair. Then he opened an unlocked wall safe, pulled out a brown paper sack and—beaming like a kid showing off his Halloween loot—dumped the contents on his desk. Candy bars, peanuts, Twinkies, pretzels, cookies, Pop-Tarts and chips.
“Breakfast is served.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Wait!” Hap bent to a minifridge behind his desk, produced two bottles, popped the tops and handed one to Mark.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never tasted a Chocolate Soldier.”
“Afraid not.”
“Oh, you are in for a treat.”
Hap opened a package of Twinkies and handed one to Mark, who studied it with the look of a man about to bite into a frosting-filled grub worm.
“And this is . . . ?”
“A Twinkie! You mean to tell me you’re twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and you never—”
“We didn’t have junk food in our house.”
“Junk food?” Hap frowned. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings.”
Mark hesitated.
“Trust me. This will help you get past the taste of pumpkin squid bisque.”
“Okay.” Mark bit into the Twinkie, then took a swig of the chocolate milk.
“So?”
“Delicious.”
“See? Lawyers never lie,” Hap said as he peeled the wrapper from a Hershey bar. “Okay, let’s try to figure out where to start.” He grabbed a legal pad and pen. “You discovered this birth certificate after the death of your father. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And you had no idea until then that you were adopted.”
“None. And the name on the birth certificate didn’t mean anything to me, but the date of birth, the same as mine, had to be more than coincidence. Then, when I saw the decree of adoption, of course I knew.”
“You have the decree?” Hap’s excitement was obvious.
“No. It was clipped to the birth certificate. Whoever took that got them both.”
“Did you make a copy? Before you left California?”
“No, but there was also a statement from the attorney, dated February 2, 1972. It was for the adoption of a baby boy named Nicodemus Jack Harjo. The attorney was J. W. Downing; the charge was twenty thousand dollars.”
Hap whistled through his teeth. “That was a hunk of money back then. Did you try to contact this Downing?”
“He retired in ’83, died in ’85. And his office was in a building that was demolished in ’92. It’s a parking garage now.”
