Carnival of Shadows

  Travis looked at Slate. Slate smiled. Then Travis started laughing, and he couldn’t stop himself. He laughed until Doyle had to slap him on the back to help him catch his breath.

  “Jesus, what was the joke?” Haynes asked as he approached the table bearing wine and glasses.

  “You had to be there,” Doyle explained.

  “They are just goading me further,” Travis said.

  “Well, someone has to,” Haynes replied. “You stay that serious for too long you… well, you’d just die of loneliness, right?”

  “So I am starting to believe,” Travis said.

  Haynes opened the wine, poured some for each of them.

  “To what shall we drink?” Slate asked Doyle.

  Doyle was quiet for a moment, and then he raised his glass.

  “To J. Edgar, to Mr. Dulles, to Gottlieb and Cameron and the whole stinking crew of them. May they burn in hell forever.”

  Slate raised his glass, Greene, Haynes, then Travis, and in unison they echoed, “May they burn in hell forever.”

  49

  It was Larry Youngman who first saw the convoy of cars making their way along the farm road to the west of the Seneca Falls town limits. There were at least three or four dark sedans and a black Lincoln Continental.

  Larry had been out to see a friend in Marion, up near the edge of the lake, and he returned southward along 7 and then cut back northeast on I-35. The cars he saw must have come in from Kansas, for that’s the only other way that 35 went. He was almost home when he saw them, and they sped by as if on some urgent mission. They were gone by the time he reached the slip road that would take him down to his own place.

  It was midafternoon, and yet the sky already held the promise of evening. It was cooler than the previous day, and Larry stood on the porch and looked back toward the highway. There was a sense of foreboding in his thoughts, though he could not have explained why. It was just a feeling, that was all, and he did not like it.

  As he turned back toward the front door, he heard someone calling his name. He glanced in the direction from which the sound had come, but he knew before he looked that it had been nothing more than his imagination. And as he entered the dark hallway, he thought of what had happened at the carnival, what he’d learned of his son, the fate of the man who’d killed him. He knew that the little guy had been bang on the money. There was no doubt in his mind. It had given him a sense of peace, no question there, but at the same time it had scared him a little. It had opened a door, and through that door he had seen something that made him aware of all he had missed. How he could have done with such information twenty years ago, even fifteen, ten. He had carried that weight for two decades, that mystery like a second shadow, and now it was over.

  The thing that had struck him after his conversation in the Tavern was that his own boy, eleven years old when he died, would now have been pretty much the same age as the man asking the questions. Special Agent Michael Travis, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hell of an intense young man, Larry reckoned, and had there been a couple of men like that on the case way back when, then maybe the truth of what had happened to David would have been discovered so much earlier. The guy who did it killed himself. He had been haunted by guilt, and he had done himself in. Was that any real form of justice? Larry Youngman didn’t believe so. He would have wanted to look that man in the eye and tell him what he thought of him. Accidents happen, sure. People make mistakes. But there is a hell of a difference between recognizing it and taking responsibility for it, as opposed to running like a frightened rabbit and never telling a living soul. You killed my boy. That’s what he would have said. You killed my boy, mister, and I want you to know that when you did that, you killed a little piece of me as well. Hell, you killed a big piece. You tore out my heart and threw it on the ground, you dumb son of a bitch. Then you done stomped on it with the biggest boots you could find. That’s what you done.

  But Larry Youngman never did see the man who had left his child for dead. No, that man had found himself some special hot place in hell before Larry even knew that he’d put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Larry paused. He was troubled. He shook his head as if trying to ease an insistent ringing in his ears, and then he took a deep breath.

  Something had happened here, and now something else was happening, and though he didn’t have the faintest clue what it might be, he still knew that it didn’t sit well with him.

  All he knew in that moment is that he felt impelled to go down there. That’s the only way he could describe how he felt. He needed to go down there—not to ask questions of Chester Greene, not to try to find out anything further regarding the man who had killed David. It was nothing like that. He just needed to go, and that was that.

  Larry Youngman hadn’t even taken his coat off. He simply turned and walked back out of the house, pausing momentarily to lift his rifle down from the gun rack in the hallway. Why he took it, again he did not know, but he felt he might need it. He also felt that he would take his time to get there, make a deal of it, use the scenic route, and thus when he eased up the hand brake and pulled away up the drive, he figured on getting out to the carnival after a good while. He believed he would know when to show up, and had you asked him why he believed this, he would have looked at you with an expression so vacant he might not have been there at all.

  The second person to see that line of sedans and Lincolns was Danny McCaffrey. He was up on the second floor of the hotel, and for some reason had suddenly felt the need to look out of the window at the far end of the hallway. He caught sight of the third and fourth cars as they turned at the end of the road and headed out toward the fields. He knew where they were going, but he—just like Larry Youngman—did not know why. For some reason, he thought of Laura and the few awkward words he had shared with Michael Travis. He liked Travis, but he did not like what he represented. More accurately, he knew that Laura liked Michael Travis, and though he would never have attempted to dissuade her from pursuing what she believed was right for herself, he did not care much for the future she would find with such a man. From his own limited understanding, he appreciated that the lifestyle of a federal agent was in no way comparable to the lifestyle of a Sheriff’s Department deputy like his brother, Lester. From what he had seen in Travis, the man had been subsumed by the job. Such a thing was not in fact a job, but a vocation, akin perhaps to joining some strict religious order or taking a vow of silence. Danny did not believe that Laura—free-spirited as she was—would find much happiness there. But what could he say? What could he do? There was no governing the heart, and there certainly was no governing the heart of a woman. Knowing Laura, how impulsive she could sometimes be, Danny reckoned that if Travis showed up on her doorstep and told her to run away with him, she probably would. She’d certainly got it into her mind that there was something there. The man was under her skin, and Danny McCaffrey didn’t care much for the potential trouble of such an infatuation.

  Danny turned away from the window and went back to the business of preparing vacated rooms for new guests. For some strange reason he believed that something was about to happen that would take any such decisions and considerations out of Laura’s control, perhaps even out of Michael Travis’s. He believed this without any reason to believe it, and it unsettled him. He tried to push it out of his mind, but it would not go. It nagged at him, and he walked back to the window and looked down into the street. He did not see Travis’s car, but that was no surprise. As the days had elapsed, he had seen less and less of Travis. He did see Larry Youngman drive past, however, and he instinctively raised his hand, even though he knew that Larry could never have seen him there at the window.

  Larry’s car passed silently, and then the street was empty once more.

  For some reason Danny thought of old Monty Finch, how he’d died after he was robbed by someone with a pillowcase over their head. Laur
a had said it was someone that Monty knew, even someone related. And it had been. The darnedest thing. Creepy, to be honest. That kind of thing had never sat well with Danny, though Laura seemed ever more fascinated, especially now that these carnival people had rocked up in Seneca Falls. A good deal of things had been stirred up, and folks couldn’t stop talking about them.

  Danny hesitated at the top of the stairwell. He looked back toward the window, thought once more of Larry’s pickup passing in the street below, and he recalled what had happened that first night of the carnival, how that dwarf guy had told Larry about his kid. He remembered that Thin Man as well, Oscar something-or-other, and how he’d seen him twice now, and there was something about that man that made Danny feel like he was just as transparent as glass. In fact, all of them made him feel that way, as if they could see right through him. It was a scary feeling, but also strangely liberating, as if to have no secrets at all would give you some kind of freedom. People spent so much time worrying about what other people thought of them, even people they didn’t know, and if everyone knew everything, then there’d be nothing left to hide.

  Danny shook his head. He was thinking foolish things. Why was he thinking like this? These were the kind of thoughts he’d expect from Laura.

  Danny figured it was time to talk to Michael Travis, but this time a real conversation, a real man-to-man discussion about what was going on, what was likely to go on, and bring it to a head, one way or the other.

  That’s what Danny McCaffrey told himself as he searched for his car keys and found his jacket.

  In truth, he just felt compelled to go down there—not even to see Travis, not even to see the dwarf who had so fascinated Laura. Not even to see that human skeleton, Oscar whatever-his-name-was, and remind himself of how transparent the man made him feel. It was not one specific thing, but simply a sense of urgency that overtook his thoughts. Danny just felt that he had to go. And so he went, but he drove around the back way, the long route, and he took his time. For some reason he didn’t want to arrive too soon.

  Too soon for what?

  Danny shook his head, as if to flick his bangs out of his eyes, and he caught sight of his own reflection in the rearview. He looked anxious. That’s the only way he could describe what he saw. Anxious, even a little afraid, and for this he had no explanation at all.

  The last person to see that line of cars as they finally crossed the far side of town and made their way down toward the tree line that defined Seneca’s limits was Chas Rourke.

  Rourke had been sheriff of Seneca Falls for four years, and never during those past four years had he felt less like the sheriff than he had during the previous week. Ever since the arrival of the federal agent, he’d felt his position as the local law enforcement representative had not only been compromised, but overtaken. He had cooperated as requested, but had found that cooperation did not mean cooperation in the usual sense. It had been more like Stay out of it or Don’t get in the way. Since he’d first taken Travis down to see the body, Travis had barely shared a word with him. Save for that conversation about what had happened at the carnival. The thing about Bobby Alberstein. It had been obvious that Travis hadn’t believed a word of what he’d said, but that didn’t concern Rourke. What others thought was what others thought, and more often than not, anything you said merely confirmed what they had already decided.

  So, whether or not Special Agent Michael Travis of the Kansas City branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation considered Chas Rourke a nut or not was of no great concern to Rourke. He had carried the ghost of what he had done to Bobby Alberstein for a good many years, and it had been like a drag anchor on his heart. Kids could be vicious, downright evil in some instances, and that was not him. He was not a bad person, had never been a bad person, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t done a few bad things. Like that time with Mary-Ellen Faber at the drive-in outside of Eureka and how what he thought she was interested in and what she was actually interested in were two very different things altogether. Even now, the better part of twenty-five years on, he still felt the color rise in his cheeks when he considered that night. No, there were bad people, and there were good people who sometimes did bad things. Between the two there was a whole world of difference.

  Like the guy who ran down Larry Youngman’s kid. Okay, he did a bad thing, a seriously bad thing, but the mere fact that his own guilt had driven him to suicide said a great deal about his inherent nature. Truly evil people, irrespective of whether or not Chas Rourke had ever met one in person or not, wouldn’t have thought twice about killing someone. He’d seen things on the TV, read stuff in magazines. There were folks who didn’t seem to possess an atom of goodness in them, and for a man to feel sufficient a burden of guilt to take his own life told Rourke that there must have been some good in him despite what he did.

  Like these carnival folks. Okay, so there’d been a good helping of noise and fuss when they turned up, but in reality they’d been no trouble at all. Okay, so someone had died, but something told him that those folks didn’t have anything to do with it. Hell, if they had been real suspects in a homicide, Mr. Six Foot of Starch Travis would never have permitted them to open up the carnival again. And Jack Farley had told him that the corpse had been taken away by federal people the very day after Travis’s arrival. No, the carnival people—freak show though they might be—did not seem to him to be bad people at all. He had made no effort to really try to understand what they’d done or how they’d done it, but they’d managed to not only make people feel good about them, but about themselves as well. Larry Youngman, laconic though he was, was visibly happier. He really did look like a man who’d gotten a load off. And himself? Knowing what he now knew about Bobby Alberstein (and yes, he had been tempted to make a call, to even drive out there and see the man and shake his hand and offer to buy him a drink, but in the long run of things had decided that it would be better to just let it be), even he had felt lighter. Like he’d been carrying around a suitcase full of bricks and someone had told him it was okay to leave it behind.

  Something important had happened here, and it seemed that something was still happening. The convoy of dark sedans he’d seen was about as out of place driving through Seneca Falls as the Carnival Diablo had been when it first rocked up.

  This was his town. He was the sheriff, after all. If something was awry, if some kind of law enforcement business required attention, then it would be him doing the attending. Federal these people may be, but that did not give them license to depose him and negate his authority. This was the United States of America. There was a Constitution, there was a Bill of Rights, and no one had the authority to overturn such things. Not even the FBI.

  And so Sheriff Chas Rourke, determined to know what was going on in his town, put on his hat and went to find Lester McCaffrey. It would be a little while before he located him, out there in the diner where his sister worked, taking some kind of unauthorized break, it seemed.

  “ ’S up, Sheriff?” Lester asked him, wiping mayonnaise from his chin with a napkin.

  “Off down to see the carnival folks. Want you to come with me.”

  “Some trouble down there?” Laura asked.

  “Laura… I need you to stay here. I’m taking your brother ’cause he’s my deputy, but there ain’t no such thing as deputy’s sister now, is there? Not officially speaking.”

  “I’m just interested, Sheriff, that’s all,” Laura said.

  “Well, I have no doubt that Lester will give you the full lowdown as and when there is any lowdown to give, right, Lester?”

  Lester seemed offended. “What d’you mean, Sheriff? I don’t go discussing police business with my sister.”

  “And you’re here just interrogating that chicken salad sandwich about a bank robbery and that there glass of root beer as an accomplice. Get your hat, Lester. We’re taking a drive.”

  Lester looked at his sister. Laur
a shook her head and just took the plate and the glass from the table and disappeared in back.

  “What’s going on?” Lester asked as he slid out from the booth seat and set his gun belt right.

  “Could be something, could be nothing,” Rourke said. “Just seen a convoy of cars head down toward the carnival fields, and we’re going to go look see what they’re up to.”

  “Good enough,” Lester said, and followed Sheriff Rourke out of the diner and across the street.

  Laura came from the kitchen and stood watching as both the sheriff’s car and that of her brother pulled away from the opposite curb and headed for the highway.

  She knew that Michael Travis was not at the hotel. She had been over there a little while earlier helping Danny clean up, and Travis’s car had not been evident in its absence.

  Laura did not herself drive, and so she called Danny. There was no answer on the private apartment phone, nor the phone in the kitchen. Even the desk phone in reception rang out before being answered.

  So she called Jack Farley at the morgue, told him that something was happening and that she wanted to go down to where the carnival was pitched. It took a while for him to understand what she was saying, but he got it, said he was more than happy to help, would pick her up from the diner in fifteen minutes. He did as he had promised, and Laura McCaffrey was outside the diner with her overcoat and her purse as he pulled up.

  Farley shoved Wolf back into the rear seat, and Laura got in.

  “What’s going on, then?” Farley asked her.

  “I have no idea, Jack,” she told him, “but I can’t help feeling the way I did when old Monty Finch got robbed.”

  Jack didn’t say another word. He tugged the car into gear, turned back the way he’d come, and headed out the same way as Rourke and Laura’s brother had done just a little while before.