Mind Tryst

  “I thought Lawler lost his job over screwing a patient?”

  “He was suspended with pay pending an ethics investigation. He was too sick to go back to work until after treatment. The next time he worked again was in Oregon. The real Lawler is legitimate and he’s not worried about being cleared. He’s worried about the murderer never paying for the crime. There’s a big difference.”

  “What did Nielson say when you told him I thought I knew Lawler?”

  “He said it’s impossible. He said it’s either a mistake or you got yourself a fraud. Jack, there ain’t no mistake. Your man looks like Lawler, says he’s Lawler, and has exaggerated his story from printed information available on the Lawler. He’s made it more dramatic, more exciting. There is a worm in the potato.”

  “Why would anyone pretend to be someone with Lawler’s past? It’s so shocking. So grim —”

  “Gets so much pity, so much petting. The poor man, innocent and falsely accused. Maybe this guy just picked Lawler out of the L. A. Times and thought, ‘Wow, what a great story. And I even look like him.’ The first time I heard that psychologist-pretend-carpenter story, I thought it was a get-me-laid line. Did I ever tell you about that guy who pretended to be a general?”

  This imposture couldn’t all be for sex. For dates. It was more serious than that.

  I couldn’t think. I kept shaking my head. I’d been used somehow and I knew it, but I did not know what the payoff could possibly be. I’d been tricked. Duped and manipulated. He must be damned good, which made him damned dangerous in my mind. Hadn’t I known all along that he was a liar? That he was not honest and did not tell me the truth? That he was odd, the kind of odd that made me shiver and be afraid, though in a subtle way that never made sense to me?

  Now I couldn’t ignore what was happening. Now I couldn’t convince myself I had overreacted or that my not understanding him didn’t mean he was bad. I was only unsure about how bad.

  “Jack?” he was saying. “Jack, you there?”

  “I feel helpless,” I said weakly. “I’m the only person who gets bad vibes from this guy. Everyone loves him to death out here.”

  “Maybe I should come out there again —”

  “I have to know who he is. Don’t come, not yet. Just the sight of you makes him ornery. He’s got his eye on me. Here’s what I didn’t tell you yet. He’s back in town and I ran into him at the decorator shop. He played his game with me again; he’s sorry he was an ass and of course he understands that I was only doing the sensible thing and it wasn’t my fault. Then the very next thing, after he forgives me, is he’d like me to understand just why he is so weird with the chicks, huh? Oh damn, when he doesn’t piss me off he scares me to death. He’s had these peculiar things with women; these bad breaks. He’d like to show me he isn’t like that all the time. Mike, I watch his eyes when I say ‘No thanks’ and I think he hates me.”

  “He threaten you at all?”

  “No. I had to physically move him away from my car, and he had that expression on his face again — that poorly concealed rage. Listen, I want to know who this asshole is and what he wants with me. And I want to know as soon as possible. How can we do that?”

  “Well, Jack, there are some ways that are slightly outside the law to get stuff on him, like going into his house and going through his private stuff, huh? That is not a smart thing for a skinny little strawberry blonde to do, even if she has a gun. So, I have this idea...”

  “I hope to God I like this idea,” I said, and again, it was a genuine prayer.

  “Okay, it isn’t bad. You know that fingerprint kit I gave you? Get me a print, okay? If this guy has ever done time or military service, we’ll get a match off the NCIC system.”

  I sighed. NCIC pronounced “nicees,” is the National Crime Information Center. My prayers, I believed, had not yet been answered. That match would take a long time, and getting a print without going into his truck or house was not going to be easy.

  “What do you suggest I do?” I asked irritably. “Perhaps I should invite him to spend the night and get the print off my boob? I don’t want to get close to this guy! I’m not going to invite him to dinner and print the wineglass!”

  “Will you calm down? You better stay cool, Jack, since we don’t know who we’re messing with here. Get the print off something glass or metal. Steal his coffee cup from the cafe. Or get him to push somebody’s car. Maybe you could talk to Bodge about this; you better, now that I think about it. I don’t know if Bodge would print him for you; he hasn’t done anything wrong. Lying about who you are isn’t a crime unless you defraud someone or set up a con.”

  At that moment Wahl’s truck drove slowly past my office. The door is half glass and I didn’t spot him quickly enough to see whether he looked in.

  “He drove by. He’s probably going to the coffee shop or the hardware store. I don’t like being on the same street with him.”

  “If you get a print, come back to L.A. and sit it out.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I might call Bodge myself; I just don’t know how he’ll react to me helping you play detective on this guy. He might get exasperated, tell me to mind my own business.”

  “I’ll tell Bodge. Listen, Peggy is just walking in. Can I call you back in a little while? Soon as I have something to say? An idea or an update?”

  Peggy waddled in with a six-pack of cola and a bag of chips. I looked up and smiled a hello while on the phone. She walked past my desk to the back room to put her soda in the refrigerator.

  “Be careful, Jack. If you don’t get any support from Bodge, try Krump. Maybe he’d help. Don’t take any chances at all with this guy.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  I hung up and sat there, stunned. He wasn’t Tom Lawler. Everything about him was a lie; he had never given me any history that didn’t apply directly to Lawler.

  My desk faces the street; Peggy’s is right inside the door. She walked from the back room to her desk, picked up a magazine, and went to the back again. I heard the lavatory door click. Peggy was going to sit down for a while.

  The storeroom behind our desks holds a sink, a counter for coffee and a microwave oven, some cupboards, and a small toilet closet. I heard the fan in the bathroom whirring, blocking out noise for the person who sat behind the closed door.

  I got up and leaned against the door to look down the street and could see the back end of Tom’s truck parked at the cafe. There wasn’t any traffic; there weren’t people on the sidewalk. There was a big file box that I was supposed to take to Roberta’s house later because she wasn’t coming in — she was in court all day.

  I had an instant plan. I picked up the file box in my arms and smashed it against the window. The damn glass did not break. I tried it again. The box made a loud thunk and I froze, listening. I didn’t think Peggy would have heard, not with the bathroom fan running. The glass was tough as iron. I leaned the box on Peggy’s desk and picked up Peggy’s ceramic flowerpot, which had a sad-looking geranium in it. I said a prayer: Please God spare this pot or I am cooked. I whacked the glass and the window popped. Ahhh, tempered glass. It cracked, it broke, and it snowed to the ground.

  For effect I said, “Damn it!” I was ecstatic. The glass would have to be replaced before close of business; Tom was handy and obviously not overbooked today or he wouldn’t be loitering in the cafe. Peggy was a slob and wouldn’t clean the glass and I would get a print. I would worry later about how to dust and lift it with the tape without being seen by anyone.

  I was standing beside my desk when Peggy emerged with her magazine in hand. “You will never believe what I’ve done,” I said. “Look at that.”

  “What the heck happened?” she asked.

  “I was trying to get out the door with that big file box Roberta wants and I guess I bumped the glass too hard. And I’ve got to leave. Listen, do this for me — run down to the cafe and ask George or Lip if one of them could possibly replace that glass for me before t
hey get to work this morning. It’s gotta be nine by now... neither one of them ever heads out before nine-thirty. Ask someone pretty please. I’ll happily pay for it; I’ll give whoever does it time and a half. I’ll sign a check before I go.

  “Oh,” I added, as an afterthought. “Don’t mention that I had to leave.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because...” I began, knowing I couldn’t tell her that Tom would eagerly fix the window if he thought he’d run into me. That was my assumption, since he’d been pursuing me again. “They like any excuse to tell tales. I’ll be the incentive; they know I’m a good ear for gossip. If you say I’m out, they’ll all turn too busy.”

  Peggy frowned, insulted. Had I just implied one of the guys would fix the window for me and not for her? Hardly anyone joked with Peggy; she didn’t have much of a sense of humor and wasn’t one to pal around.

  “I mean... you know...”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’ll get it fixed.”

  I left then, carting that big box out to the car. I took it home instead of to Roberta’s house. I picked up my little field kit and put it in my briefcase. When I got back, the exact thing I had hoped for had actually happened.

  “Did Lip fix the glass?” I asked Peggy.

  “No,” she said, sipping her diet pop. “Tom did it. He was right there and said he had the time and could use the money.”

  I looked at the glass and disappointment surged through me. My heart nearly broke. “It almost looks like he cleaned it.”

  “He did. He has Windex and paper towels in his truck. He always leaves a job cleaner and better than he found it.”

  Damn, damn, damn. The dustpan, I hoped. “He swept up the glass?”

  “Oh no, I did that before he even got down here.”

  Peggy, for the first time in her life, did something tidy to our office. Figures. “How thoughtful. Thank you,” I said, hiding the sarcasm.

  “He’s so sweet, Tom is. He’s always asking about Warren and the kids. He only charged ten dollars’ labor, and it took him an hour. He had to take off the molding, scrape out all the old putty, get George to cut the glass at the hardware store. It seemed like it took all morning.”

  I slumped into my chair, disappointed and tired. You’d almost think he knew I had a fingerprint kit in my briefcase, I thought. “What a peach of a guy,” I said, lethargically.

  “He asked about you. Asked if you were seeing anyone.”

  I perked up. Cheeky bastard, wasn’t he? “I hope you didn’t divulge anything personal.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t,” she said, mocking an insulted tone. “But you aren’t seeing anyone, are you?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  “Peggy,” I said patiently. “It’s not only none of his business if I’m seeing someone, it’s also none of his business if I’m not seeing anyone.”

  She looked at me with a wrinkle between her eyebrows that told me she was confused by this logic. I sighed, got to my feet, and headed for the back room. I’d be a hundred years old by the time I knew something for sure about this guy. I decided a diet soda would help, and then I saw it: Sitting in the sink, not rinsed out by my one-time-only-tidy secretary, was a coffee mug. I stuck my head out of the back room.

  “What was the total Tom charged?” I asked.

  “Seventeen-fifty,” she said.

  “Well. I hope you gave him a cup of coffee at least,” I said.

  “Sure I did,” she replied.

  I lifted the mug by putting a pencil through the handle, placed it in a plastic bag with as much efficiency as Columbo, put it in my purse, and ran water in the sink as though I’d been doing dishes. Then I had to leave the office again. At home I dusted the cup and lifted three good prints with tape — a thumb and two fingers, I think — put the tape on the glossy side of the index cards, wrote on the back “Tom Wahl, coffee cup,” and Express Mailed them to Mike Alexander.

  ***

  I rang the bell at the Scully house at three o’clock. Sue came to the door and must have known from one look at my face that I was on the verge of panic. “Jackie! I didn’t hear your car. Something’s wrong.”

  “I need your help,” I said. I had run into skepticism from Bodge on the issue of Tom’s mysterious past, his suspicious behavior. Sue, I believed, wouldn’t blow this off.

  She put on coffee, though I could have used something stronger. Sue knew about my reaction to the finger incident: blaming Tom and telling Bodge about his past. Now I explained that I had conducted my own investigation in Los Angeles and had come to the conclusion that Tom Lawler was innocent of any wrongdoing — though that research had not helped me explain away his unpredictable and questionable behavior toward me.

  “I don’t think you ever mentioned that he talked to you that way,” she said. “Setting you up like that, coming on to you and making you feel like you wronged him.”

  “I told Mike, I told Bodge, and I felt they believed me. Neither of them knew what to say besides, ‘So, stop seeing him.’ I left Mike with one final chore when I left L.A. I wanted him to see Tom’s attorney and pass on what I’d found, the substantial evidence suggesting Tom is innocent. When he did that, he learned Tom Wahl is not Tom Lawler at all. It’s all a lie.”

  “What?” she said. “Now, what?”

  “Tom Lawler is a practicing psychologist living with his second family in Oregon. Mike saw a picture of him; there’s more of a resemblance-between our ‘Tom’ and the young Dr. Lawler than between the young Dr. Lawler and himself twelve years later. He’s gained weight, he’s balding, he wears glasses.”

  Sue reached for the phone on the counter and picked it up. “This is positively the case?”

  “Mike’s a police detective, Sue.” She dialed. “I don’t want Bodge called on the radio to come here to see me,” I warned. “I don’t want anyone to know I’m talking to anyone about anything. I’m nervous.”

  “No problem, Jackie.” Her voice was calm. “Hey, Sylvie,” she said cheerily. “How you doin’? Great. Great. Do me a favor, Syl? Let me talk to Bodge. Oh? Okay, sugar, then radio him and tell him his mama dropped in and would love to see him. Be sure to tell him not to run the siren or his mama will have a stroke.” She laughed into the phone. “Yeah, he should call if he can’t run by the house. Thanks, Syl.”

  She hung up and shrugged. “It’s a code. If I need him but I’m not in any danger, his mama drops in. If I’m in trouble or scared, his aunt Bertha drops in.”

  “What if his mama really does drop in?”

  Sue made a face. “Bodge’s mother lives in Hartsel and drives Bodge crazy. She’s seventy-five, speeds because her son is the sheriff, and criticizes him constantly. He wouldn’t want to be called home to visit with her.”

  “What’s Bodge going to say about this?” I asked. “I’ve told him some strange tales about Tom and he acts as though he wishes I’d drop it, get off it already.”

  “That may be how it seems. It isn’t that way with Bodge. It’s more that he’s prudent. He may tell you he can’t make an arrest if that’s the case. He’ll tell you he doesn’t have evidence if he doesn’t have evidence. Don’t ever think Bodge ignores what you say. His mama and Raymond are the only two people Bodge brushes off. He’s thinking all the time. This town may seem like a speck on a map, this county a little old mountain valley, but Bodge isn’t backward or dumb. He’s a damned smart professional.”

  “Tom is slick,” I said. “He hasn’t crossed himself up once. Now I’m scared.”

  “You know why you’re scared, Jackie?”

  “He wants me for something. I can’t imagine what.”

  When I heard the car I went to the window. I saw Bodge hurry toward the house. He wasn’t frantic in his pace or looking frightened. He was efficient. Comical, too. He held his sidearm so it wouldn’t bounce. His pants crawled up his inner thighs toward his crotch and his belly strained at a button on his shirt. His hair, as usu
al, was sticking out from under his hat in uncontrollable wisps.

  He saw it was me when he opened the door. He stopped short, stared at me for a second, then said, “Damn it all. It’s Tom Wahl again.”

  “How did you know?” I asked, wondering if he had just stumbled on some information of his own.

  “I don’t hear a worried sound out of you all winter and a few days after he’s back you’re upset again.”

  Bodge told me that he’d seen for himself that I wasn’t one to overthink things. He didn’t judge me as the kind of woman who liked to complain or stir up trouble. He’d been watching and remembering since that finger business; Tom seemed to single out one person at a time to aggravate... and he was careful that no one ever witnessed it. Like with Wharton. Tom was sweet as could be in front of the boys, but Bodge had never known Wharton to get himself in such a dither over small problems. My case was similar; I had these confusions and irritations to report when no one else in Coleman had ever seen or heard Tom be anything but cooperative and helpful.

  Bodge listened to my details. I wished he’d taken notes, but he did stop me to ask a lot of questions. About our conversations, about Tom’s mood swings, about his description of what he’d done last winter, about talking to Beth, about his dogs and horses, the road, Wharton, his “cases.” Everything.

  “I slept with him,” I said. “That ‘apology dinner’ at his place. He got down on the gut level about this horrendous murder of his — I mean Lawler’s — family and I reciprocated. I told him about Sheffie’s death, how awful it was, how broken I’d been. He comforted me and seduced me. I wasn’t forced and I didn’t feel coerced at the time. It’s clear to me now that he laid a good trap for me with his ‘problems.’”

  “Anything about that you think I should know?” Bodge asked.