The Throat (66 page)

"Oh, no. We
didn't adopt him. Fee was my sister's boy."

"Could you
tell me Fielding Bandolier's present location, ma'am?"

"Oh, I know
what happened," she said. "It must be, Bob died. Bob Bandolier, Fee's
dad. Is he the one who left that money to Fee?"

"Robert
Bandolier was our policy holder, that's right, ma'am. He was the
beneficiary's father?"

"Well, yes,
he was. How did Bob die? Are you allowed to tell me that?"

"I'm afraid
it was a heart attack. Were you close?"

She uttered a
shocked little laugh. "Oh my, no. We were never close to Bob Bandolier.
We hardly ever saw him, after the wedding."

"You said
that Fielding Bandolier no longer resides at your address?"

"Oh, no," she
said. "There's nobody here but senior citizens. Only about five or six
of us have our own telephones. The rest of them wouldn't know what to
do
with a telephone."

"I see. Do
you have a current address for the beneficiary?"

"No, I don't."

"How long did
he reside with you, ma'am?"

"Less than a
year. After I got pregnant with my Jimmy, Fee went to live with my
brother Hank. Hank and his wife, my sister-in-law, Wilda? They had a
real nice home in Tangent, that's about a hundred miles east of here.
They were real nice people, and Fee lived with them until he graduated
high school."

"Could I
trouble you for your brother's telephone number?"

"Hank and
Wilda passed away two years ago." She did not speak for about fifteen
seconds. "It was a terrible thing. I still don't like to think about
it."

"They did not
die of natural causes?" I heard a suppressed excitement in his voice.

"They were on
that Pan Am flight—103, the one that blew up right in the air? Over
Lockerbie, in Scotland? I guess they have a nice memorial over there,
with my brother's name and Wilda's on a kind of a
plaque
? I'd go over
there to see it, but I don't get around too good these days, with the
walker and everything." There was another long pause. "It was a
terrible, terrible thing."

"I'm sorry
for your loss." What probably sounded like sympathy to her sounded like
disappointment to me. "You said that your nephew graduated from high
school in Tangent?"

"Oh, yes.
Hank always said Fee was a good student. Hank was the vice-principal of
the high school, you know."

"If your
nephew went on to college, we might get his address from the alumni
records."

"That was a
big disappointment to Hank. Fee went down and joined up in the army
right after he graduated. He didn't even tell anyone until the day
before he was supposed to be inducted."

"What year
would that have been?"

"Nineteen
sixty-one. So we all thought he must have gone to Vietnam. But of
course we couldn't know."

"He didn't
tell your brother where he was assigned to duty?"

"He didn't
tell him
anything
. But that
wasn't all! My brother wrote to him where
he said he was going, for basic training? At Fort Sill? But his letters
all came back. They said they didn't have any soldier named Fielding
Bandolier. It was like running up against a stone wall."

"Was your
nephew a troubled boy, ma'am?"

"I don't like
to say. Do you have to know about things like that?"

"There's a
particular feature of Mr. Bandolier's policy that might come into play.
It allowed him to make smaller payments.What the provision states is
that payment of the death benefit is no longer in effect should the
beneficiary, I'm reading this right off the form here, be incarcerated
in any penal institution, on parole, or in a mental institution of any
kind at the time of the death of the policy holder. As I say, this
provision seldom comes into force, as you can imagine, but we do have
to have assurance on this point before we are allowed to issue payment."

"Well, I
wouldn't know anything about that."

"Did your
brother have any feeling for what sort of work our beneficiary was
interested in taking up? It might help us locate him."

"Hank told me
once that Fee said he was interested in police work." She paused. "But
after he disappeared like that, Hank sort of wondered if—you know, if
he really knew Fee. He wondered if Fee was truthful with him."

"During the
year he lived with you, did you notice any signs of disturbance?"

"Mr. Bell, is
Fee in some sort of trouble? Is that why you're asking these questions?"

"I'm trying
to give him five thousand dollars." Tom gave her a good, hearty
insurance man laugh, the laugh of a member of the Million Dollar Round
Table. "That may be trouble to some, I don't know."

"Could I ask
you a question, Mr. Bell?"

"Of course."

"If Fee is
somewhere like you say, or if you flat can't find him, does that
insurance money go to the family? Does that ever happen?"

"I'll have to
tell you the simple truth. It happens all the time."

"Because I'm
the only family left, you see. Me and my son."

"In that
case, anything you can tell me could be even more useful. You said that
Fee went to Tangent, Ohio, when you found you were pregnant?"

"With my
Jimmy, that's right."

"Was that
because you did not feel that you could cope with two children?"

"Well, no."
Pause. "That was why I asked about, you know. I could have brought up
two children, but Fee was like a boy who—like a boy a normal person
couldn't
understand
. He was
such a little boy, but he was so
private
.
He'd just sit staring into space for so long! And he'd wake you up
screaming at night! But never talk about it! So closed-mouthed! But
that's not the worst."

"Go on," Tom
said.

"Well, if
what you say is right, my Jimmy could use that money to help get a
downpayment."

"I
understand."

"It's not for
me. But that money can come to the family if Fee is like you say.
Incarcerated."

"We'll be
going over the policy to make that determination, ma'am."

"Well, I know
that Fee took a knife from my knife drawer once and went outside with
it, and that same day, I mean that night, one of our neighbors found
their old dog dead. That dog was cut. I found the knife under Fee's
little bed, all covered with dirt. I didn't think he killed that dog,
of course—he was just a little boy! I didn't even connect it with my
knife. But a while later, a dog and a cat were killed about a block
away from our house. I asked Fee right out if he was the one who did
those things, and he said no. I was so relieved! But then he said,
'There isn't any knife missing from the drawer, is there, Mama?' He
called us Mama and Papa. And I just, I don't know, felt a chill. It was
like he knew that I counted those knives."

The quavery
voice stopped talking. Tom said nothing.

"I just never
felt right about Fee after that. Maybe I was wrong, but I couldn't
stand the thought of bringing a baby into the house if he was still
living with us. So I called Hank and Wilda."

"Did you tell
them anything about your doubts?"

"I couldn't.
I felt terrible, having all these bad thoughts about my sister's boy.
What I said to Hank was, Fee wasn't screaming at night anymore, which
was the truth, but I still thought he might upset the baby. And then I
went and talked to Fee. He cried, but not for very long, and I told him
he had to be a good boy in Tangent. He had to be a normal boy, or Hank
would have to put him in the orphan home. It sounds just awful, but I
wanted to help him."

"He did well
in Tangent, didn't he?"

"Just fine.
He behaved himself. But when we drove over to Tangent, Thanksgivings
and such, Fee never looked at me. Not once."

"I see."

"So I
wondered," she said.

"I
understand," Tom said.

"No, sir, I
don't think you do. You said you're in Millhaven?"

"At the
Millhaven office, yes."

"That Walter
Dragonette was on the front page right here in Azure. And when I first
heard about him, I just started to shake. I couldn't eat a bite at
dinner. Couldn't sleep at all that night— I had to go down to the
lounge and watch the television. And there was his picture on the news,
and he was so much younger, and I could go back up to my room."

Tom did not
say anything.

"I'd do the
same thing I did back then," she said. "With a new baby in the house."

"We'll be in
touch, ma'am, if we cannot locate the beneficiary."

She hung up
without saying good-bye.

Tom had
tilted himself back in his desk chair and was staring at the ceiling,
his hands laced together behind his head, his legs straight out before
him and crossed at the ankle. He looked like a bored market trader
waiting for something to show up on his Quotron. I leaned forward and
poured water from a crystal jug on the table into a clean glass. On
second thought, he looked too pleased with himself to be bored.

"Extraordinary
place names they have in Ohio," he said. "Azure. Tangent. Cincinnati.
They're positively Nabokovian. Parma. Wonderful names."

"Is there a
point to this, or are you just enjoying yourself?" He closed his eyes.
"Everything about this moment is extraordinary.
Fee Bandolier
is
extraordinary. That woman, Judy Leatherwood, is extraordinary. She knew
exactly what her nephew was. She didn't want to admit it, but she knew.
Because he was her sister's child, she tried to protect him. She told
him he had to act like a normal child. And the incredible child could
do it."

"Aren't you
making a lot of assumptions?"

"Assumptions
are what I have to work with. I might as well enjoy them. Do you know
what is really extraordinary?"

"I have the
feeling you're going to tell me."

He smiled
without opening his eyes. "This city. Our mayor and chief of police get
up on their feet at April Ransom's funeral and tell us that we are a
haven of law and order, while, against odds of about a million to one,
we have among us two very dedicated, utterly ruthless serial killers,
one of them of the disorganized type and only recently apprehended, and
the other of the organized type and still at large." He opened his eyes
and brought his hands forward and clasped them in his lap. "That really
is extraordinary."

"You think
Fee killed April Ransom and Grant Hoffman."

"I think he
probably killed a lot of people."

"You're going
too fast," I said. "I don't see how you can pretend to know that."

"Do you
remember telling me why Walter Dragonette thought he had to kill his
mother?"

"She found
his notebook. He made lists of details like 'red hair.' "

"And this is
pretty common with people like that, isn't it? They want to be able to
remember what they've done."

"That's
right," I said.

There was an
anticipatory smile on his face. "You wouldn't want anyone else to find
your list, would you?"

"Of course
not."

"And if you
kept detailed notes and descriptions, you'd have to put them in a safe
place, wouldn't you?"

"As safe as
possible."

Still
smiling, Tom waited for me to catch up with him.

"Someplace
like the basement of the Green Woman, you mean?"

His smile
widened. "You saw the impressions of two boxes. Suppose he wrote
narratives of every murder he committed. How many of these narratives
would it take to fill two boxes? Fifty? A hundred?"

I took the
folded paper from my shirt pocket. "Can you get into the Allentown
police records? We have to find out if this woman, Jane Wright, was
murdered there. We even have an approximate date: May 'seventy-seven."

"What I can
do is scan the Allentown newspapers for her name." He stood up and put
his hands in the small of his back and stretched backward. This was
probably Tom's morning exercise program. "It'll take a couple of hours.
Do you want to wait around to see what turns up?"

I looked at
my watch and saw that it was nearly seven. "John's probably going out
of his mind again." As soon as I said this, I gave an enormous yawn.
"Sorry," I said. "I guess I'm tired."

Tom put a
hand on my shoulder. "Go back to John's and get some rest."

Paul Fontaine
stepped out of a dark blue sedan parked in front of the Ransom house as
I walked down the block from the spot where I'd left the Pontiac. I
stopped moving.

"Get over
here, Underhill." He looked almost incandescent with rage.

Fontaine
unbuttoned the jacket of his baggy suit and stepped back from the
sedan. I smiled at him, but he wasn't having any smiles today. As soon
as I got within a couple of feet of him, he jumped behind me and jammed
his hands into the small of my back. I fell toward his car and caught
myself on my arms. "Stay there," he said. He patted my back, my chest,
my waist, and ran his hands down my legs.

I told him I
wasn't carrying a gun.

"Don't move,
and don't talk unless I ask you a question." Across the street, a
little white face appeared at a downstairs window. It was the elderly
woman who had brought coffee to the reporters the day after April
Ransom was killed in Shady Mount. She was getting a good show.

"I've been
sitting here for
half an hour
,"
Fontaine said. "Where the hell were
you? Where's Ransom?"

"I was
driving around," I said. "John must have gone out somewhere."

"You've been
doing a lot of driving around lately, haven't you?" He made a disgusted
sound. "You can stand up."

I pushed
myself off the car and faced him. His rage had quieted down, but he
still looked furious. "Didn't I talk to you this morning? Did you think
I was trying to
amuse
you?"