Archer - The Chill Part 11

"What for?" He was a good boy, but a little siow on the uptake.

"Judging by tonight, your main problem is going to be to prevent Dolly from talking herself into deep trouble. That means keeping her out of the hands of the authorities, in a place where she can be properly looked after. A good lawyer can be a help in that. Lawyers generally don't wait for their money in criminal cases."

"Do you really think she's in such danger--such legal jeopardy? Or are you just trying to put the iron in my soul?"

"I talked to the local sheriff tonight, and I didn't like the gleam in his eye when we got on the subject of Dolly. Sheriff Crane isn't stupid. He knew that I was holding back on him. He's going to bear down on her when he catches on to the family connection."

"The family connection?"

"The fact that her father murdered her mother." It was cruel to hit him with it again, on top of everything else. Still it was better for him to hear it from me than from the dreary voice that talks from under the twisted pillow at three o'clock in the morning. "Apparently he was tried and convicted in the local courts. Sheriff Crane probably gathered the evidence for the prosecution."

"It's almost as though history is repeating itself." There was something approaching awe in Alex's voice. "Did I hear you say that this Chuck Begley character, the man with the beard, is actually her father?"

"He seems to be."

"He was the one who started the whole thing off," he said, as much to himself as to me. "It was after he visited her that Sunday that she walked out on me. What do you think happened between them, to make her do that?"

"I don't know, Alex. Maybe he bawled her out for testifying against him. In any case he brought back the past. She couldn't handle the old mess and her new marriage together, so she left you."

"I still don't get it," he said. "How could Dolly have a father like that?"

"I'm not a geneticist. But I do know most non-professional killers aren't criminal types. I intend to find out more about Begley-McGee and his murder. I suppose it's no use asking if Dolly ever talked about it to you?"

"She never said a word about either of her parents, except that they were dead. Now I can understand why. I don't blame her for lying--" He cut the sentence short, and amended it: "I mean, for not telling me certain things."

"She made up for it tonight."

"Yeah. It's been quite a night." He nodded several times, as though he was still absorbing its repercussions. "Tell me the honest truth, Mr. Archer. Do you believe the things she said about being responsible for this woman's death? And her mother?"

"I can't even remember half of them."

"That's not an answer."

"Maybe we'll get some better answers tomorrow. It's a complex world. The human mind is the most complex thing in it."

"You don't give me much comfort."

"It's not my job to."

Making a bitter face over this and the last of his whisky, he rose slowly. "Well, you need your sleep, and I have a phone call to make. Thanks for the drink." He turned with his hand on the doork.n.o.b. "And thanks for the conversation."

"Any time. Are you going to call your father?"

"No. I've decided not to."

I felt vaguely gratified. I was old enough to be his father, with no son of my own, and that may have had something to do with my feeling.

"Who are you going to call, or is that a private matter?"

"Dolly asked me to try and get in touch with her Aunt Alice. I guess I've been putting it off. I don't know what to say to her aunt. I didn't even know she had an Aunt Alice until tonight."

"I remember she mentioned her. When did Dolly ask you to make the call?"

"In the nursing home, the last thing. She wants her aunt to come and see her. I didn't know if that was a good idea or not."

"It would depend on the aunt. Does she live here in town?"

"She lives in the Valley, in Indian Springs. Dolly said she's in the county directory. Miss Alice Jenks."

"Let's try her."

I found her name and number in the phone book, placed the toll call, and handed the receiver to Alex. He sat on the bed, looking at the instrument as if he had never seen one before.

"What am I going to say to her?"

"You'll know what to say. I want to talk to her when you're finished."

A voice rasped from the receiver: "Yes? Who is this?"

"I'm Alex Kincaid. Is that Miss Jenks? . . . We don't know each other, Miss Jenks, but I married your niece a few weeks ago . . . Your niece, Dolly McGee. We were married a few weeks ago, and she's come down with a rather serious illness . . . No, it's more emotional. She's emotionally disturbed, and she wants to see you. She's in the Whitmore Nursing Home here in Pacific Point. Dr. G.o.dwin is looking after her."

He paused again. There was sweat on his forehead. The voice at the other end went on for some time.

"She says she can't come tomorrow," he said to me; and into the receiver: "Perhaps Sunday would be possible? . . . Yes, fine. You can contact me at the Mariner's Rest Motel, or . . . Alex Kincaid. I'll look forward to meeting you."

"Let me talk to her," I said.

"Just a minute, Miss Jenks. The gentleman here with me, Mr. Archer, has something to say to you." He handed over the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Jenks."

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Archer. And who are you, may I ask, at one o'clock in the morning?" It wasn't a light question. The woman sounded anxious and irritated, but she had both feelings under reasonable control.

"I'm a private detective. I'm sorry to disrupt your sleep with this, but there's more to the situation than simple emotional illness. A woman has been murdered here."

She gasped, but made no other comment.

"Your niece is a material witness to the murder. She may be more deeply involved than that, and in any case she's going to need support. So far as I know you're her only relative, apart from her father--"

"You can leave him out. He doesn't count. He never has, except in a negative way." Her voice was flat and harsh. "Who was killed?"

"A friend and counselor of your niece's, Professor Helen Haggerty."

"I never heard of the woman," she said with combined impatience and relief.

"You'll be hearing a great deal about her, if you're at all interested in your niece. Are you close to her?"

"I was, before she grew away from me. I brought her up after her mother's death." Her voice became flat again: "Does Tom McGee have anything to do with this new killing?"

"He may have. He's in town here, or he was."

"I knew it!" she cried in bleak triumph. "They had no business letting him out. They should have put him in the gas chamber for what he did to my little sister."

She was choked with sudden emotion. I waited for her to go on. When she didn't, I said: "I'm anxious to go into the details of that case with you, but I don't think we should do it over the phone. It really would be helpful if you could come here tomorrow."

"I simply can't. There's no use badgering me. I have a terribly important meeting tomorrow afternoon. Several state officials will be here from Sacramento, and it will probably go on into the evening."

"What about the morning?"

"I have to prepare for them in the morning. We're s.h.i.+fting over to a new state-county welfare program." Latent hysteria buzzed in her voice, the hysteria of a middle-aged spinster who has to make a change. "If I walked out on this project, I could lose my position."

"We don't want that to happen, Miss Jenks. How far is it from there to Pacific Point?"

"Seventy miles, but I tell you I can't make it."

"I can. Will you give me an hour in the morning, say around eleven?"

She hesitated. "Yes, if it's important. I'll get up an hour earlier and do my paperwork. I'll be at home at eleven. You have my address? It's just off the main street of Indian Springs."

I thanked her and got rid of Alex and went to bed, setting my mental alarm for six-thirty.

chapter 11.

Alex was still sleeping when I was ready to leave in the morning. I let him sleep, partly for selfish reasons, and partly because sleep was kinder to him than waking was likely to be.

The fog was thick outside. Its watery ma.s.s overlay Pacific Point and transformed it into a kind of suburb of the sea. I drove out of the motel enclosure into a gray world without perspective, came abruptly to an access ramp, descended onto the freeway where headlights swam in pairs like deep-sea fish, and arrived at a truck stop on the east side without any real sense that I had driven across the city.

I'd been having a little too much talk with people whose business was talking. It was good to sit at the counter of a working-cla.s.s restaurant where men spoke when they wanted something, or simply to kid the waitress. I kidded her a little myself. Her name was Stella, and she was so efficient that she threatened to take the place of automation. She said with a flas.h.i.+ng smile that this was her aim in life.

My destination was near the highway, on a heavily used thoroughfare lined mainly with new apartment buildings. Their faddish pastel colors and scant transplanted palms seemed dingy and desolate in the fog.

The nursing home was a beige stucco one-storied building taking up most of a narrow deep lot. I rang the bell at eight o'clock precisely. Dr. G.o.dwin must have been waiting behind the door. He unlocked it and let me in himself.

"You're a punctual man, Mr. Archer."

His changeable eyes had taken the stony color of the morning. I noticed when he turned to shut the door behind us that his shoulders were permanently stooped. He was wearing a fresh white smock.

"Sit down, won't you? This is as good a place to talk as any."

We were in a small reception room or lounge. I sat in one of several worn armchairs aimed at a silent television set in one corner. Through the inner door I could hear the rattle of dishes and the bright voices of nurses beginning the day.

"Is this your place, doctor?"

"I have an interest in it. Most of the patients here are mine. I've just been giving some shock treatments." He smoothed the front of his smock. "I'd feel less like a witch-doctor if I knew why electric shocks make depressed people feel better. So much of our science, or art, is still in the empirical stage. But the people do get better," he said with a sudden grin, too sudden to touch his watching, waiting eyes.

"Is Dolly?"

"Yes, I think she's somewhat better. We don't have overnight cures, of course. I want to keep an eye on her for at least a week. Here."

"Is she fit to be questioned?"

"I don't want you to question her, or anyone else remotely connected with the--the world of crime and punishment." As if to remove the curse from his refusal, he flung himself loosely into the armchair beside me, asked me for a cigarette and let me light it.

"Why not?"

"I do not love the law in its current primitive state, where sick people are trapped into betraying themselves in their sickness and then treated by the courts as if they were well. I've been fighting the situation for a long time." He rested his ponderous bald head on the back of the chair, and blew smoke toward the ceiling.

"What you say suggests that Dolly is in danger from the law."

"I was making a general statement."

"Which applied specifically to Dolly. We don't have to play games, doctor. We're both on the same side. I don't a.s.sume the girl is guilty of anything. I do think she has information which may help me to clear up a murder."

"But what if she's guilty?" he said, watching for my reaction.

"Then I'd want to cooperate with you in getting charges reduced, finding mitigating circ.u.mstances, making a case for merciful treatment by the court. Remember I'm working for her husband. Is she guilty?"

"I don't know."

"You have talked to her this morning?"

"She did most of the talking. I don't ask many questions. I wait and I listen. In the end you learn more that way." He gave me a meaningful look, as if I should start applying this principle.

I waited and listened. Nothing happened. A plump woman with long black hair straggling down the back of her cotton robe appeared in the inside doorway. She stretched out her arms to the doctor.

He lifted his hand like a weary king. "Good morning, Nell."

She gave him a bright agonized smile and softly withdrew, like a woman walking backward in her sleep. Her outstretched arms were the last I saw of her.

"It would be helpful if you told me what Dolly had to say this morning."

"And possibly dangerous." G.o.dwin crushed out his cigarette in a blue ceramic ashtray which looked homemade. "There is after all a difference between you and me. What a patient says to me is a professional confidence. You have no professional standing. If you refused to repeat information in court you could be jailed for contempt. I could, under the law, but I'm not likely to be."

"I've sweated out contempt before. And the police won't get anything out of me that I don't choose to tell them. That's a guarantee."

"Very well." G.o.dwin nodded his head once, decisively. "I'm concerned about Dolly and I'll try to tell you why without any professional jargon. You may be able to put together the objective jigsaw puzzle while I'm reconstructing the subjective one.

"You said no professional jargon, doctor."

"Sorry. First there's her history. Her mother Constance McGee brought her to me at the instigation of her sister Alice, a woman I know slightly, when Dolly was ten years old. She wasn't a happy child. In fact she was in some danger of becoming really withdrawn, for good reason. There's always good reason. Her father McGee was an irresponsible and violent man who couldn't handle the duties of fatherhood. He blew hot and cold on the child, spoiled her and punished her, constantly fought with his wife and eventually left her, or was left, it hardly matters. I would have preferred to treat him instead of Dolly, since he was the main source of the trouble in the family. But he was unreachable."

"Did you ever see him?"