Mind Tryst

  Finally the doorbell rang. It was nearly eight p.m. I let Bodge Scully in.

  “Hiya, Bodge. Thanks.”

  “I gotta admit, Jackie, I’m starting to feel like I work for the KGB.”

  “I’m sorry. It happened again. And this time I don’t want anyone to know. I know you told Roberta about the first time; she wouldn’t purposely set me up for another incident by talking about it. What the hell, you know the worst thing you can do is mention it to anyone.”

  “What happened this time?”

  I told him about the locked doors, the clock-radio. And where I was for the evening. I was suggestive, implying intimacy without actually saying Tom and I had had sex. Bodge made the fourth person to know I’d been on a date with Tom.

  “Listen, Bodge, can we have a conversation that is completely confidential? Without error?”

  “We could try,” he said. “Let me look at the door locks.”

  “Yeah, please. I bought some more new locks. I went all the way to Lincoln to get them — and I’ve got a tool box; will you put them on for me? I don’t want to call the locksmith.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “So, how well do you know Tom Wahl?” I asked.

  “Tom? Oh, hell, I know Tom pretty good. I had him help me add on the rumpus room at my house and he took a bunch of kids from the junior high on a trail ride last year. Two-dayer. He’s a decent guy, Tom is. I see him a couple times a week in town, either buying or delivering or stopping at the cafe or Wolf’s.”

  “How long has he lived here?”

  “Ah, I dunno. Jackie, this lock looks okay to me. I’d have to bet on a key.”

  “Couldn’t a good B and E man get in?”

  “B ‘n’ E?”

  I shrugged lamely.

  “You just a lawyer, Jackie, or you with the FBI?”

  I grinned and kind of rocked back on my heels. “Now, Bodge, that would be Bureau business... right?”

  He got a chuckle out of that. “You said a few things that make me think you have a little police background.”

  It occurred to me to tell him that I had a little detective in my background. Tonight wasn’t the right time to explain Mike. “All lawyers are investigators, Bodge. I’ve hired private investigators and worked with the police. Maybe that’s why I’m so gritty on this — I know I’m not dreaming this up. It’s spooky, especially since the Porter woman was found killed the way she was killed.”

  “What way?”

  “With her clothes intact, her jewelry on.”

  “What’s that mean to you?”

  I offered up a silent prayer. Please, God, let Bodge be legitimate, trustworthy.

  “That it wasn’t a sexual assault and was probably premeditated,” I said. “Someone took her a long way from home and he had a shovel with him. That implies a plan. Since she had taken her child to preschool and hadn’t made arrangements for someone else to pick him up, she didn’t know she was going far. But she went willingly.”

  “Oooo-weeee. Well. Motive?”

  “If I knew the motive, I could hand you her killer, now couldn’t I? Unless the motive was to kill her. Period.”

  “Meaning?” he asked. The look in his eye suggested he was prepared for my answer, perhaps also the only answer he had come up with.

  “Meaning, her killer was looking for someone to kill, and that’s about all.”

  “I hate the sound of that,” he said. “But what we found makes it look possible.” He paused, and his expression darkened. “You and Roberta are already on my list of people who know a few forensic details. I never thought to tell you to keep your mouth shut; don’t have to tell Roberta. I reckon you know better than to talk about it.”

  “You bet. I wouldn’t want to help inspire a copycat.”

  “Her hands were bound behind her back with twine; there was a clear plastic bag tied over her head. Her jaw was broken; I think someone knocked her cold before killing her. Now, that could’ve happened anywhere. Could’ve happened right in her house and she was carried to a waiting car; could’ve happened somewhere between Coleman and Canon City.”

  “Leah thinks she was having an affair with the kind of man Nicole calls real illegal. What kind of guy does that represent to you, Bodge?”

  “Senators and priests.” He shrugged. “Get your tool box.”

  “You bet.”

  We talked while he put the new locks on the doors and accused me of building a prison. I asked him about Billy; he said he thought Billy was square as a block and easy to watch should he, in the most extreme situation, become any kind of suspect. Billy, Bodge said, was incapable of such a complex crime — as he was incapable of breaking into houses and lying on beds. “If you knew the number of times we’ve had to get into his house for him or open his truck for him, you’d never even ask.”

  I asked about local law-enforcement people, local judges, and fast as a whip he said, “Don’t you worry too much if Bud pinches your ass. Turn around and coldcock him once and threaten to call his wife; that’ll fix him.”

  “You know about him?”

  “Mrs. Scully offered to turn that stallion into a gelding with one shot; she ain’t dealt with him since. He’s harmless. Kind of hard to believe such a smart man could be such a fucking idiot. Oops. Sorry ‘bout that.”

  I laughed in spite of myself; I might have been laughing to think of Bodge’s wife getting pinched. She must surely be a female version of Bodge, overweight, sloppy, and painfully homely.

  Bodge was unprepared for my request that the windows on the ground floor be nailed shut. “Aren’t you getting extreme here, Jackie? What if there’s a fire?”

  “I’m capable of breaking a window if necessary,” I assured him. With my head, if need be. It was certainly hard enough.

  I told him what Nicole said about Kathy Porter falling off on her soaps, shopping alone, doing her housework at night. He grunted, nodded; he was up to date on that.

  “You think there’s a killer around here, Bodge?”

  “If there’s a murderer here, I don’t know why I don’t smell him. Kathy Porter’s the only woman ever missing from this town found dead, and if we have a killer on our hands, he’s a lazy one. Nope, Jackie, what bothers me is thinking someone passed through, chose Kathy as a victim in a random search, and we’ll never get him.”

  “I didn’t mean a serial killer; maybe a man who murdered a woman because she got in the way or she was going to tell something on him.”

  “Jackie, half the men in this town got a woman in the way or one who’ll tell secrets. We can’t call them all suspects.”

  “Well,” I attempted, “then you have to find out who has the biggest secret. Or is the best manipulator and liar.”

  “Listen, Jackie, don’t go stirring up Nicole or I ain’t never going to get any work done. I’m sorry you got some strange stuff going on here, but I don’t think there’s any connection between what you got and what Kathy got. She could have been walking to the library, took a ride, and —”

  I was shaking my head. Her car was in the driveway; she’d been keeping secrets about how her days were spent; she’d been growing discontented with her marriage; she’d lost some weight. “Bodge, she knew her killer. She had to. How many friends did she have out of town that she’d have gone off with on a whim while her kid was in a three-hour preschool?”

  Bodge sighed. “I agree. She knew him.”

  “Why do you think that?” I pushed contrarily.

  “Because she knew she was going. She got her housework all done first so she wouldn’t have to rush around later. She had everything done and meat was thawing for supper. She thought she was going for a ride. A short enough ride to get back in time to pick up her son. And she took her purse. We never found her purse.”

  You should never underestimate a man’s powers of deductive reasoning because he seems simple, ordinary. Bodge had the appearance of a dummy, to get honest. He was overweight, unobtrusive, and homely, and had poor grammar att
ached to a drawl. He seemed sloppy. These aren’t usually thought of as characteristics of brilliance, of canny thinking. Bodge was canny.

  “She knew who she was going with.”

  “I think so,” Bodge said. “Unless there’s some angle I can’t dream up. I think about this all night, all day.”

  “You are looking for a killer here!”

  He waited a moment to answer me, studying my eyes. “What’re you after here?”

  “I don’t know. Relentless curiosity. I think you’ve got yourself a killer somewhere around here. He might be in the next town; he might be a hundred miles away. I have a nagging feeling that Kathy Porter found herself with a questionable character — someone whose dark side she didn’t sense — and he meant to kill her all along.”

  “I’m looking around,” Bodge said slowly.

  “Have you checked around to see if there have been any other murders like that one? Or any phantom-type invasions like are happening to me? Want me to check when I’m at the courthouse or state police —”

  “Jackie, we got teletype. We aren’t goddamn hicks. And no, we haven’t found any connections yet.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you, Bodge. Never mind, I guess I ought to let you do your job... Bodge, don’t make a report on this visit, okay?”

  “We have never had a problem with police reports before.”

  “You ever have one of your nice little housewives buried with a plastic bag over her head before?”

  “I’m telling you, I think you’re safe. I think you’re safer with Tom around than you would be with me around.”

  This was the entree I’d been looking for. “Want to know what I know about Tom? He checks and doesn’t check. He says his name is really Tom Lawler; he says he’s really a Ph.D. psychologist who came here to start a new life after his wife and daughter were killed by some psychopath he testified against in court.

  “Every guy I’ve ever been involved with had connections to other people I knew and trusted. He worked with people I worked with or maybe was the cousin of my best friend’s husband. Tom? He doesn’t connect with anybody. And nobody knows about his trouble except me and Roberta. He asked me not to tell anyone and Roberta is silenced by attorney-client privilege. Now do you understand why I have the willies?”

  “Jeez. Tom?”

  “See? That’s it. I actually feel sorry for him; it’s a helluva thing. That hideous crime was not his fault, either, and no reason it should follow him around. Oh, he feels it was his fault in the way that he wasn’t paying attention, his work endangered his family... the way a cop might feel if the bad guy gets away and hurts someone. You know what I mean; he was probably helpless to prevent it.

  “Or what if what he was put through really messed him up? What if he is off-balance? Huh?”

  “You’re going out with him; you aren’t scared of him.”

  “I’m unsure about him. Some of his behavior is suspicious. He’s very persistent, very possessive. I invited him to dinner Saturday night and I’m going to cook. I hope to convince him to give me more space, leave me alone a little. I don’t feel good about Wharton, either. He’s all alone out there next to Tom and he’s an old fart; unfriendly, withdrawn, scowling all the time like he hates the world. He has a mean look in his eyes — you gotta admit that.”

  “Wharton? Hell, he’s had that look in his eyes since I met him forty-odd years ago. He’s just a pain in the ass, that’s all. He’s a good guy. Now, of that I’m sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I knew his family; I’ve known them all for years. He’s no different them he was in the fourth grade, and he isn’t one drop mean. Wharton will help out a neighbor before I will.”

  “He doesn’t like his neighbor now, I hear.”

  “Wharton gets like that sometimes; he’s stubborn and narrow.” He winked at me. “I keep my eyes and ears open. All the time.”

  “Me, too. And I’m always checking details. I guess that’s why I’m already aware of Tom’s bad past, Wharton’s mean eyes, Bud’s clumsy come-ons. Single women who are smart pay close attention to the men who enter their lives.”

  “Well,” he said, pausing to think, “you should, I guess. Yeah, you should. You gotta understand, Jackie. I don’t know squat about what it’s like to be single. We got domestic trouble and I don’t understand any of it. I arrest.”

  “Small towns are worse in the domestic-trouble department, I think, than big cities. That’s my conclusion after a few months in Roberta’s office.”

  “Nicole or Roberta tell you about the Tray family?”

  “No.”

  “Roberta wouldn’t. Roberta’s the only woman I know who doesn’t talk. Harry talks, so Roberta even quit talking to him. The Trays. He was a painter. They moved here from White Plains, New York, to be peaceful and have a ‘natural’ lifestyle with their eighteen-year-old daughter.

  “Trays stayed isolated. They never really settled. They bought that big old run-down Millborn ranch on the south ridge and kept to themselves. My nose was working real good and I smelled trouble, but I didn’t see anything. After about a year we had ourselves a murder-suicide. And it was her. Killed her husband and daughter. Left us poor folks a forty-seven page suicide note.” He wiped his forehead with his hand. “After I read it, I wanted to commit murder-suicide. Nothin’ but bad stuff.”

  “What kind of bad stuff?”

  “Bad family stuff: brutality, incest, pornography. The girl wasn’t eighteen but fourteen. She didn’t go to school. This letter the woman left was terrible, a chronicle. I knew something wasn’t right about them. I felt odd about the way they acted, and I knew it was all wrong, and I was right, but Jesus. What could I do?

  “Jackie — there ain’t anybody in Coleman I don’t understand at the moment. ‘Cept maybe Raymond, my eighteen-year old. He’s a jackass if ever. At the jackass age, too. So here’s the ticket — I’m not thinking about Tom or Wharton, because there isn’t any reason to. I won’t say anything about your locks or our talk, and I’m a humble man. You get me a murder suspect and I’ll be very grateful. Just for God’s sake be careful what you do and where you do it.”

  “Believe me, I will.”

  “You’re locked up tight; I don’t worry that this is going to keep happening. If you have anything valuable, I’d suggest a deposit box or vault.”

  “There’s only me,” I said. “Which is why, I guess, Kathy Porter’s murder interests me.”

  “I don’t know why you gotta get into this.”

  “Curious. Women aren’t safe. The safest woman isn’t as safe as the average man. Women, children, puppies: By being who they are they become victims. Somebody’s going to a great bother to upset me, scare me. I’d like to know who and why, and I’d like to know what happened to Kathy Porter. I hope you’re right, Bodge. I hope there’s no connection.”

  I had a strong and deep sense of apprehension. I foresaw two possibilities. One, that I was diving into a private investigation that would yield me a feeling of foolishness and maybe find out some benign character — like a kid or a senile old man — had been in my house. Maybe it would simply stop with new locks. Or, second possibility, find out that the psychologist was off-balance, in which case he would be put away for a long rest.

  At ten-thirty Tom called. He had changed his mind about the paperwork, had been in the workshop with the sander and saw running. He wanted to get all the dirty work done before his shower; when he did come upstairs to the house, he never looked at his machine — he showered, ate, and got started on paperwork. He was sorry to be calling so late. He felt terrible. What if I had needed him?

  “Don’t be so silly; what if I needed you when you were on your way to Salida or Colorado Springs? If I’m not capable of taking care of myself at this point, having you sit by the phone for my next urgent call isn’t going to help me. So, what would you like to eat?”

  “Anything you like, Jackie. It’s your dinner.”

  ***

&n
bsp; My neighbor to the south was an elderly woman who lived alone, Mrs. Wright. She wasn’t friendly. She opened her door just wide enough to show her thin face, pursed lips, and furrowed brow. I explained that a bouquet of flowers had been delivered and they weren’t from a florist; I had a secret admirer and was curious whether she had seen anyone come to my house.

  “I saw the police car there,” she said.

  “Oh, that was something else altogether,” I said. “I should explain; I’m a lawyer and work for Roberta Musetta. You might see the sheriff now and then, bringing me paperwork or picking some up. There are things like restraining orders or subpoenas that have to be coordinated through the county sheriff. Sometimes we don’t get it all done during business hours...”

  The neighbors on the north side, a couple in their thirties with two youngsters about ten and twelve, were friendly and wanted me to come in for coffee or a beer. Sybil and Matt Dania. Sybil worked in the cafeteria at the grade school and Matt worked for the telephone company. I went through the same drill about the flowers, explained they might see a police car for the reason of legal papers. They had seen nothing. They were apologetic about not getting over to introduce themselves; they gave the vibrations of potential friends.

  Roberta missed work on Friday. She called Peggy and gave no explanation. Being self-absorbed at this point, I didn’t contact her and ask if anything was wrong; when dealing with someone as tough and resilient as Roberta, one tends to think there are never problems. This time there were. They had nothing to do with me.

  Saturday night had all my attention. The evening itself was okay. Tom happened to like talking about himself.

  I handed him a glass of wine. “Your fingernails look pretty,” he said.

  “That reminds me of something curious I wanted to ask you. Nicole said you and Wharton don’t get along. Isn’t he that old man in the baseball cap who sits with the guys — scowling the whole time — at the kafeeklatsch at the cafe?”