The Case Against Owen Williams (24 page)

“You don't think it was the soldier got Sarah in trouble?” he asked when they were out of earshot of his wife.

“No,” Dorkin said.

MacMillan considered.

“You're thinking it may have been Dan,” MacMillan said. “I've been wondering.”

“Do you think Dan murdered her?”

“I don't know,” Dorkin said, cautious.

“That would be awful hard on everybody,” MacMillan said.

“Yes,” Dorkin said.

He hesitated, afraid of pushing too hard.

“Have you any idea how far things went with Sheila?” he asked.

“She never talked to me about it, just Fern, and Fern didn't say too much. I think he just kept hanging around her and trying to peek at her when she was getting dressed. Or outside. Things like that. And trying to get alone with her when Matilda wasn't around.”

“Nothing more?”

“I don't know. You may have heard already. He got into trouble once years ago because of a girl twelve or thirteen years old. She lived down the road from his place, and her father beat Dan up.”

“Was it taken to court?”

“No, they just let it go at that. I guess they figured it would be too hard on the kid to have it spread around any more than it was already.”

“Was she pregnant?”

“No,” MacMillan said. “I don't think it ever got that far.”

“I see,” Dorkin said. “Well, that's interesting to know.”

“If Dan did do it,” MacMillan said, “how would you ever prove it?”

“I don't know,” Dorkin said.

“I wouldn't want Fern to have to go into court,” MacMillan said. “Nor Sheila.”

“I can promise you that that won't happen,” Dorkin said. “I just wanted some information for guidance.”

“You'd guessed some of it anyways.”

“Yes,” Dorkin said. “Some of it.”

It was dusk by seven-thirty now, and as Dorkin rounded the corner onto Broad Street, he saw that the lights were on in Bartlett's little bungalow, brighter light at the back where the kitchen was, dimmer, more orange light on the porch where Dorkin guessed that a kerosene lamp must be burning. It was Saturday night, and Bartlett and his old comrades would be starting their weekly get-together. From the tin pipe that served as a chimney, a wisp of smoke ascended to become part of the faint smokiness that tinged the air from the autumn's first bonfires.

He parked in Bartlett's drive and lifted out the case of twelve pints of beer, which he had chilled in the big icebox in the armoury kitchen. Bartlett opened the door and was waiting for him as he mounted the steps with the case under his arm. Behind him, in the warm lamplight, two other men watched.

“Well, now,” Bartlett said, “what have we got here?”

“A few bottles of beer,” Dorkin said. “I thought we might have a sip and another talk about some of the things we were talking about earlier. If you wouldn't mind?”

“No, I don't mind. I got a couple of the boys in here, but there ain't nothin' I know that they don't know. Or that anybody else don't know for that matter. You may be wastin' your beer.”

“It won't matter. You're welcome all the same. Somewhere or other the world must owe you at least one free case of beer.”

“Well, as long as you feel that way about it, there ain't no harm done.”

“This here's Lieutenant Dorkin,” he announced when they were inside. “Who you've all heard about by now. And this here's two old pals of mine from a long ways back. This here's Earl Scourie. And this here's Herb MacClewan. They're old soldiers too. And ain't none of us died yet anyways.”

They got up from their chairs, awkward in the presence of the officer's uniform, unsure whether to shake hands or not. Earl was a little man, completely bald, with a wide mouth, so that he looked like the man in the moon in a cartoon. Herb was bigger, tougher, with fading red hair, a red face, and big red hands.

“Earl,” Bartlett said. “You got two good legs under you. Why don't you take this beer out to the kitchen and pour us out a little and put the rest to keep cool.”

Earl went off, and Dorkin sat down on one end of the old couch that Bartlett used as a sofa. They cut some of the edges off the awkwardness with talk of the coming of fall until Earl came back with the beer.

“Down with the Kaiser,” Herb said, and they all drank.

“Were you together in the war?” Dorkin asked.

“No,” Bartlett said. “Earl here was at Vimy, but we was in different outfits. Herb didn't come over until after I was on my way home. He got wounded in the leg at Cambrai. Didn't break nothin'. Earl here never got a scratch.”

“Got gassed a little once,” Earl said. “That's all.”

“So,” Bartlett said, “what's the news?”

“No real news,” Dorkin said. “But I'd like to ask you some more about Dan Coile.”

“Sure,” Bartlett said. “Don't know whether we'll be able to answer.”

“I hear that he had a hankering after little girls,” Dorkin said.

Bartlett and the others exchanged glances.

“Yes,” Bartlett said. “Ain't no secret about that. There was some trouble a few years ago nearly landed him in jail. You heard about that?”

“Yes,” Dorkin said. “I hear he's also had trouble with his own girls.”

More glances.

“What kind of trouble?” Bartlett asked.

“I'm not sure. But some of the things I've heard make me wonder if things might not have gone on there as well that could have landed him in jail if it got around.”

Bartlett whistled.

“Boys,” he said, “you been gettin' an earful.”

“He's a dirty old son of a bitch,” Earl said. “No doubt about that.”

“One thing I did hear out at the garage one day,” Herb said, “is that the older girl's got a boyfriend, and he's supposed to have told Dan that if he ever comes near that girl again, he's gonna shoot him.”

“Any idea why?” Dorkin asked.

“Well,” Herb said, “I heard that Dan figures she should be home helpin' her mother. But I wonder if there ain't more to it than that. But I ain't never heard nothin'.”

“You're thinkin' that Dan maybe knocked that girl up who got murdered,” Bartlett said.

“I'm wondering if it might not be possible,” Dorkin said.

“And if he was the one who murdered her?”

“I don't know.”

“Boys, oh boys!” Bartlett said.

“It's only speculation,” Dorkin said. “I'd rather you didn't talk it around.”

He knew even as he was saying it that they would. But he didn't have time to be cautious. And it crossed his mind again that it might not be a bad thing to throw a scare into Dan Coile—if it was Dan Coile.

“You didn't see his truck around that night?” he asked.

“No,” Bartlett said, “I don't think so. We was all here, and I don't remember noticin' it. Either of you boys?”

They both shook their heads.

“Lots of stuff goes by here on a Saturday night,” Herb said, “but we'd probably have noticed Dan if he went by. Everybody in the country knows that old truck, and nobody ever drives it but Dan.”

“If he'd gone by, we'd have remembered it, sure,” Earl said.

“You didn't see him any of the next three nights?” Dorkin asked.

“No,” Bartlett said. “I'm sure I'd have remembered it if I had.”

“And you never saw anybody else driving down into the pit?”

“No. I'd have remembered that too. But half the town could have gone down there, and I wouldn't see after dark.”

“What about Clemens?” Dorkin asked. “You didn't see him driving around that Saturday night?”

“Not as I noticed,” Bartlett said.

“But that's different,” Herb said. “His car's just an ordinary Ford. We probably wouldn't pay much attention to it.”

“Tell me about Clemens,” Dorkin said. “Who is he? Where does he come from? How long has he been here?”

“I heard he come from down in the States to begin with,” Bartlett said. “I don't recall where. May never have heard. And he was somewheres up the Miramichi before he came here. He's been here four, maybe five years.”

“Did he start that church?” Dorkin asked.

“No,” Bartlett said. “That church has been there twenty years or more. A man named Sidlaw built it first, but there's been half a dozen since him. They don't seem to stay very long. It didn't amount to much for the last ten years before Clemens came, but he's built it up. He's got quite a congregation there now.”

“Some of them women think he's God,” Herb said. “He's supposed to have cured one woman that the doctors had given up on just by prayin' over her. Maybe so. But I don't believe it.”

“He makes a good livin' out of it anyways,” Earl said. “Lots more than any of us will ever see.”

“They say he gouges them ladies pretty good,” Bartlett said. “But I don't suppose they have to give him money if they don't want to.”

“Go straight to hell if they don't,” Herb said.

“The Coiles go to that church,” Dorkin said.

“That's right,” Bartlett said. “If he never did nothin' else, he got Matilda off the booze. They say she hasn't touched a drop in three years.”

“And Dan?”

“Well, he don't drink as much as he used to,” Bartlett said. “But every once in a while, he goes on a tear. I saw him in town one day last winter so drunk he couldn't hardly stand up.”

“Does Clemens have a family?” Dorkin asked.

“Yes,” Bartlett said. “He's married. His wife's a skinny little woman never leaves the house hardly except to go to church. And he's got a daughter twenty or so, maybe more. She wouldn't be a bad-lookin' girl if she was dressed up in some decent clothes and prettied up a little. But I guess that would be a sin. You don't see her around much either except in town sometimes when he takes her in to buy groceries and stuff. I think they get a lot of stuff—eggs and the like—from the congregation.”

“Do you think Clemens would lie to protect Dan Coile?” Dorkin asked.

“You're thinkin' about what he said about seein' the girl that night with a soldier,” Bartlett said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe. I don't know.”

“They're a pretty tight crew, that congregation,” Herb said. “I think that Clemens has got them all believin' that they're right and everybody else is goin' straight to hell. I doubt if he'd put himself out much just for Dan himself, but he might do it for Matilda's sake.”

“But if Clemens didn't see them,” Bartlett said, “how would he know that Sarah had ever been with a soldier at all that night anywhere?”

“Clemens didn't describe anything that he couldn't have picked up from hearsay,” Dorkin said. “He didn't go to the Mounties until two days after Williams was arrested. By that time, it was all over town.”

“Maybe Dan told him everythin' he needed to know,” Earl said.

“Maybe,” Dorkin said. But he doubted if it would have been that crude. And for Clemens, it would have been catastrophic if Dan were arrested and it all came out. If he were lying to protect Dan— and not just to hang Williams—he would probably be doing it on his own because he had guessed what had happened. More likely, Dorkin thought, he had deceived himself before he had deceived anyone else, and the easiest way to get at his testimony might be to call into question his estimate, vague at best, about what time he had left the Salcher place.

“Clemens was supposed to have been on his way from visiting a couple named Salcher when he saw Sarah and the soldier,” Dorkin said. “Have you ever seen him driving by here at night?”

“I see him now and then.” Bartlett said. “He does a lot of chasin' around visitin' people. I never paid much attention.”

“Tell me about Salcher.”

“Nothin' much to tell. They live up near Dan. He'd be seventy nearly. She's about the same, and she's a little simple. Has been for a long time, and now she's got somethin' wrong with her so she can't walk except maybe across the room.”

“Clemens testified that he visited them fairly regularly.”

“Could be. I never heard.”

“Seems an odd time to be visiting.”

“I guess so. But they're an odd outfit. Maybe you should go talk to Salcher and see what he says. Maybe Clemens was never there at all. Anyone ever check?”

“No,” Dorkin said. “Not that I know of.”

“Well, well,” Bartlett said. “Now ain't this all somethin'.”