The Suspect - L R Wright (18 page)

Alberg stood very still.

He thought about going through the door and looking
around the living room, automatically filing things away. He did it
all the time, everywhere he went; it was instinct, by now; he
imagined his brain filled with little slots, each crammed with
observations, some useful, some not.

He fixed his concentration, his drink forgotten.

And he remembered.

He had stood in the doorway again just last night and
had looked around, puzzled. And now he knew why. Now he knew what had
been different about George Wilcox's· living room. He put his glass
down carefully on the table next to the wingback chair. He struggled
hard against leaping to conclusions.

But he got his jacket from the hall closet, pulled
the living room curtains closed, turned on the porch light, and left
the house.
 

CHAPTER 18

George was spooked by the place.

He felt when he arrived at Carlyle's beach as though
he'd skulked his way there, although he hadn't. He had walked
upright—as upright as the weight over hisshoulder would permit—and
hadn't tried to crunch quietly across the rocks, and hadn't hastened
crablike and stealthy when he'd had to walk past a lighted·up house.
But now, arriving on Carlyle's quiet silver beach, he felt furtive,
all right. His heart thumped in his chest, irregular beats of alarm.
He had to stop to rest. He sat on Carlyle's silver lawn with his back
against a tree, the burlap bag beside him. He felt rough bark against
his shoulders and the back of his head. In a circle beneath the tree
a permanent layer of needles had killed the grass. It was a thin
cushion for him to sit upon. From the branches above came the scent
of pine.

He stayed there for several minutes, looking across
the lawn at the high laurel hedge that grew all the way down to the
beach, taking occasional uneasy peeks at the house. It was out of
range of the moonlight but it had a slight glow anyway, it seemed to
George, but he knew that was just the whiteness of its paint against
the blackness which surrounded it. He waited until he felt somewhat
restored, then got up and carried the burlap bag over to the rowboat.
He dragged it off its four-inch wooden blocks without great
difficulty. The oars which were stored beneath the seats clanked, 
and clanked again when he tipped the boat over.

The tide was high, but there were some sharp-looking
rocks on the strip of sand between the lawn and the water's edge.
George cleared these away, put the burlap bag in the bottom of the
boat, and set to work dragging it, bow first, down the gentle slope
of lawn and into the water. He took it slowly, sometimes no more than
a few inches at a time. He was making some noise, all right, but he
didn't think it was enough to be heard by anyone living in the houses
above the beach. Of course, somebody could be standing at an upstairs
window this very minute, gazing out at the moonlit sea before closing
his bedroom curtains and climbing into bed. It it happens, it
happens, thought George; but he couldn't prevent himself from
glancing up. And of course it was Carlyle's house which looked back
at him, still and curious; he tried not to imagine malevolence.

It was about ten feet long, Carlyle's aluminum
rowboat, and looked to be in good shape even though it must have been
a couple of years since George had seen him use it. Carlyle used to
go out fishing in it. Sometimes while George was in his garden he'd
see him rowing away out there. Sometimes he'd plant himself in the
sea right off George's garden and sit there, puffing on his goddamn
pipe, wearing a big straw hat, holding that stupid fishing line over
the edge of his boat.

George stopped and leaned against the rowboat,
mopping his forehead with his big handkerchief. He took off his pea
jacket and tossed it into the boat and rested for a minute. Then he
began again, pushing at the stern, then trudging around to pull for a
while at the rope attached to the bow. Eventually he felt hard wet
sand beneath his feet and looked over his shoulder to see the ocean
reaching for his shoes. He went back around to the stern and pushed
hard three times, stopping to rest between pushes, and felt the bow
become suddenly weightless.

He got hold of the rope,
threw it inside, and cautiously gave two more pushes. Then he
clambered in from the stem and sat on one of the rowboat's two seats.
He fumbled for an oar, stood up and pushed himself off, then sat down
quickly and got the other oar, fixed them both in the locks, and
began to row.

* * *

Alberg sat at his desk with the Burke file in front
of him, absorbed in the autopsy report. He wanted to be absolutely
sure—and he couldn't be, of course, until he got the shell casing
and turned it over to the pathologist. "Well, what do you think,
doc?" he'd say. "Is this it? Is this the thing came
crashing down on old Carlyle's skull and put out all his lights?"

He couldn't understand why the old man hadn't gotten
rid of them earlier. Maybe, not so deep down, he wanted to be caught.

Alberg's sense of exuberance was very strong. He was
trying to dampen it—let's have the Nordic caution, here, he told
himself—but it was the other part of him that wanted to handle
this. His Irish mother's genes were screaming, "Get moving, you
cold-headed bastard; prudence never got you anything but another
night in the same room." He marveled at it. He could actually
hear her.

He put everything neatly back in the folder and put
the folder neatly in the filing cabinet in exactly the right
alphabetical slot. He read a cryptic note from Isabella: Vet says
don't worry, a parrots not a bat. He turned out his desk lamp, put on
his jacket, and left his office. He even stopped to have a few words
with the constable on night duty. He was absolutely under control.

But as he unlocked his car he was hot in the cool of
the evening, and felt light on his feet, as if he'd lost twenty
pounds, and he did not for some reason dare to take a deep breath.
Nowhere in his mind was there room for George's roses, or George's
unsteady old hands pouring three glasses of lemonade from a crystal
pitcher.
 

CHAPTER 19

George rowed in a southwesterly direction out into
the bay, at an angle from Carlyle's house, which had not been his
intention. He had originally decided to paddle straight out from the
beach almost due west, drop the bag when he'd gone about three
hundred yards, then row straight back. But on second thought he
hadn't liked the idea of Carlyle's house watching him as he carried
out his task, as if some part of it—the drainpipes, for
instance—might raise themselves from the ground and commence to
point, accusingly. A man can't always control his imagination, he
thought, especially when he's physically weary and somewhat
distraught. He thought it not a good idea in this case to try. So he
rowed southwest, and Carlyle's house was soon out of sight behind the
black mass of the laurel hedge.

It was extremely quiet out on the water. George could
see no other boats. Every once in a while he raised the oars and
drifted for a few seconds, listening. He was almost out of earshot of
the sea's insistent caressing of the shore, and the only other noises
were those of an occasional bird and, from far away, a large vehicle
gearing down for one of the highway hills. Soon even these sounds
were 'so smudged as to be indecipherable, and all he heard was his
oars dipping, pulling, rising through the black water, and, when he
paused now and then to rest, the dreamy sensuous lapping of the sea
at his little boat.

He was rowing straight out from shore, now. The land
receded, slowly, and the light from the stars and the moon
intensified. He looked left and saw that he'd gone only about half
the distance he needed to go; he wanted to row out until he was even
with the end of the spit which formed the northem edge of the bay. He
figured that was about three hundred yards, and at that point the
water ought to be deep enough to gulp down the shell casings and
swallow them whole. He had to get out there as quickly as possible,
before the tide turned; he wasn't sure there was enough strength in
his arms to try to row against it.

It was a relief not to be able to see Carlyle's
house. It had looked so vacant, even though it was still full of
Carlyle's possessions. He remembered that they were his possessions,
now, and this came again as a terrible shock. He tried to imagine
himself sitting on the white piano stool, his hands poised above the
ivory keys of the white piano; it had candleholders, he suddenly
remembered, sticking out from the front of it .... He recalled one
night when Carlyle had put candles in them and turned out all the
lights and sat down and played. George couldn't remember whether this
had happened in Sechelt, before Myra died, when they sometimes went
to see Carlyle, or in Vancouver, a long time ago. Carlyle's hair had
been pale in the candlelight, he remembered; but before it was white
or gray it had been blond, so that didn't help. He couldn't remember
Carlyle's hands on the keyboard—his fingers had moved too quickly.
But he remembered the music: Chopin, it was. And when he finished,
Carlyle had quick put his hands in his lap and spun around on the
stool, a big smile on his face. The candles made funny shadows.
Carlyle had looked like he had no eyes.

George checked the shore far away on his left and
tried to row harder. Clouds had begun to gather in the west.

It must have been in Vancouver, he thought, because
Audrey was there. When Carlyle spun around, smiling, she went up to
him and put her hand on his shoulder, tentatively; Carlyle had lifted
her hand to his lips and kissed it, and patted it, and then looked at
George and winked.

What the hell did that mean? thought George
furiously, rowing. What the hell was the meaning of that wink? He
tried to sort this particular memory from the others that were
crowding into his head, clamoring to be heard and seen, but it faded
on that wink ....

Next he remembered Carlyle sitting on a bar stool.
George was sitting next to him. Carlyle was holding a glass of beer
in both hands. He was slumped over. George was filled with distaste
and alarm; he was afraid Carlyle was going to burst into tears and
wondered if they'd below, racking sobs or silent, just salt water
pouring noiselessly down his face into his drink. It'll ruin that
beer, George remembered thinking. He had put his hand in his pocket,
ready to haul out his handkerchief. But Carlyle hadn't cried after
all. He shook his head and gave a kind of a laugh and then he looked
up sideways at George.

"
You don't know what the shit I'm talking about,
do you, fella, do you, George, old sock, old buddy, old pal. "
George couldn't remember what the hell either of them had been
talking about. Again he glanced to his left. He seemed to be making
progress. He was sure the end of the spit wasn't as far behind him as
it had been the last time he looked ....

One morning in autumn, during a spare period, he had
left the staff room to go to the office. He'd walked down the middle
of the wide hallway lined with lockers. Drones and murmurings issued
from the classrooms as he passed them. The floor gleamed in the light
from the big glass front doors at the end of the hall, and George had
a secret inside him; he'd applied again to teach in Germany. (He was
almost unbearably excited at the possibility of living in another
country. He couldn't talk about it much to Myra, couldn't hope out
loud that this time they'd get to go, because it meant too much to
him. For Christmas she gave him a set of luggage. He was furious with
her at first, because he thought she had tempted the gods. But she
told him he didn't have enough faith, and in January his application
was accepted. He had felt a new and different kind of respect for
Myra, from then on.) He was walking along the shiny waxed floors
holding onto his secret and looking down the long hall at the
sunshine coming through the glass at the end of it when a door burst
open ten or fifteen feet in front of him and a student hurtled out,
stumbled, and grabbed at the opposite wall. Before George could get
himself together to go to the boy's aid Carlyle strode out, banging
the door behind him. He yanked the boy around; Carlyle was a tall
man, and the boy only came up to his chin. "You little punk,”
said Carlyle, in a raspy whisper that echoed down the hall. He seized
the boy by the shoulders and banged his head against the wall. "You
son-of-a-bitching little punk," he said.

And then, gripping the student's shirtfront with one
hand, with the other Carlyle. took the boy's left wrist and twisted
his arm back into an awkward, unnatural position. He kept pressing
and pressing, his eyes on the boy's face. George watched, stupefied,
for several seconds before he managed to uproot himself and walk
quickly toward them.

"
What's the trouble?" he called out in what
he hoped was an authoritative tone.

It was as though they hadn't heard him. They were
looking directly into each other's eyes. The boy's face was creased
with pain and fear and was very white; his freckles stood out like
blood blisters. Carlyle's stare was intent and curious as he pressed
the arm back, and back—

"Hey!” said George loudly. He put a firm hand
on Carlyle's shoulder. He saw Carlyle's pressure on the boy's wrist
relax, allowing the arm to fall forward. Still Carlyle held his
wrist, and the front of his shirt. The boy's eyes rolled toward the
ceiling. His lips were quivering.