He wore the white smock over his slacks. A stethoscope sagged around his neck like a tired snake. He held up my card and smiled. “A private investigator. I sure never thought I’d ever have one of you guys in my office.” He sat down. “I can give you five minutes. Then I’ve got to get back to the grind. The flu season is starting early this year.”
“Then I’ll get right to it. Karen Hastings.”
He nodded. He put his hands on the desk. They were big hands and now they were tightening into fists. “I was sleeping with Karen Hastings for three, four months. She’d been a patient of mine. There was a lot of cancer in her family. She was something of a hypochondriac. She came in with a mole she was very worried about. Basal cell carcinoma. I had it biopsied—state law if you take anything off—and we found out it was nothing to be worried about. Most basil cell carcinomas don’t spread or metastasize. They stay pretty much where they are and never become anything to worry about. That’s how it started. Then one day I was downtown for a quick sandwich and I ran into her. We had a Coke. Three nights later I was sleeping with her. I probably would still be sleeping with her if her brother hadn’t started blackmailing me. He’d taken photos of me entering and leaving her place. Then he got a couple of shots of me taking her into a roadhouse. It was the usual bullshit. He’d mail them to my wife if I didn’t pay him.”
“How much?”
“Three grand.”
“Did you pay him?”
“Did I have any choice?”
“Did you keep on seeing her after that?”
“Are you kidding? I figured she was part of it.”
“When was the last time you talked to her?”
He thought a moment. “Week ago. She called to say how sorry she was about her brother. That she hadn’t had anything to do with the blackmail. She wanted me to come over and see her. She said she was in love with me.”
“Did you believe that?”
“No. Or at least I didn’t care if she was telling me the truth.”
“Why’s that?”
He made a face. “Why’s that? Well, I’m forty-four years old, I have an enviable medical practice, my peers tell me I’m damned good at what I do—and most of all I’ve got a wife and two daughters I love more than anything on this earth. And when I finally woke up and realized that I was jeopardizing it all—I just wanted out.”
“He would’ve kept blackmailing you.”
“I know.”
“That’s a pretty good reason for killing somebody.”
“I know that, too. Ever since I heard about her being killed—and then him on top of it—I can’t relax. I have to force myself to concentrate on my work. I just keep waiting for the knock on the door. The police. I’ll be a murder suspect and it’ll all come out and I’ll be ruined. Like those four stupid bastards who put up the money for her.”
“Why ‘stupid’?”
“Are you kidding? How long did they think before it’d get out?”
“You spent time with her.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t put her on the payroll.” Then: “Whether you noticed it or not, I’m scared shitless.”
It was one of those moments when somebody sort of forces you to like them against your better judgment.
“She was beautiful,” he said, “and I’d never had sex like that. Never once. Hell, I wasn’t even attractive to women until I got in my forties. I think it’s being bald. I’m not kidding you. I lose my hair, women suddenly start showing interest in me. I was always the best friend, the blind date, the guy who couldn’t get to first base when everybody else was hitting home runs. And then I lose my hair and women seem to like me.”
“Maybe it’s the ’vette.”
“I’ve thought of that, believe me. Or maybe it’s the combination.” He covered his face with his hands and took several deep breaths. A relaxing technique. He took his hands away and said, “Think the police’ll find out about me?”
“I don’t know. But I’d get a lawyer right away.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Right now this thing is spinning out of control. Not everybody was playing by the rules. She was seeing you and maybe a few others besides her benefactors. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more names get tossed into the ring. But I’d get a lawyer. I’d prepare for the worst.”
“If I can prove I didn’t kill her will my name come out?”
“In other words, can you make a deal with the cops? Probably. As long as you’ve got a damned good alibi. I think they can arrange to keep it quiet.”
“I was at a county medical board meeting the whole night. Then we ended up at this after-hours place. Sort of a dive. And I was with another doctor the whole time. Paul Kendrick. He had the car. I rode with him. I couldn’t have slipped away even if I’d wanted to.”
“Kendrick’ll vouch for you?”
“I’ll call him right now if you want me to.”
“I’ll take your word for it. The cops won’t.” Then: “One final thing. You ever see her upset—afraid, angry, anything like that—and couldn’t figure out why?”
He leaned back and gave it some thought. “Once, I guess. She kept looking out the window. She seemed agitated about something. I had the sense somebody was out there.”
“In a car, you mean?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just—she kept looking out the window and then she’d be very uptight for a while. Chewing her lip. Not paying attention to what I was saying. Chain smoking. I’d never seen her act that way.”
“Did you have any sense of her life outside of you?”
“That was the funny thing. No, I didn’t. She never mentioned another person or a job or even what she liked to do. And she was more worried about people seeing us out and about than I was. I’d ask her about it of course but she’d just laugh and say ‘I’m a mystery woman.’ And she wasn’t kidding.” A glance at the wrist watch. “I really should call a lawyer?”
I said, “You really should call a lawyer.”
I sat in my car with a Pepsi and some smokes listening to Ross Murdoch’s press conference. He made a brief statement announcing his resignation for “personal reasons” and said that he was very sorry for what this would do to his political party. He said he would take no questions and he meant it. He had already put a prominent criminal defense lawyer named Richard Spellman on the payroll. He was from Chicago and he was good. Spellman took the questions. I’d just heard the national news a few minutes earlier. Still no word from Russia. But their ships had yet to turn back. They were still churning toward the distant blockade.
I’d come out to the now-closed park for a long walk. The Murdoch story was so lurid that it had become more interesting to locals than the possibility of nuclear war.
I looked out at the river below. The last of the autumn’s motor boats raced up and down the blue water. The birches on the far shore looked white and clean and pure. Staggered up the hill were oaks and maples, peacock-splendid in their colors.
I shut off the radio and got out of the car for my walk. I took my pocket-sized spiral notebook along, flipping back through my notes as I went. I still hadn’t interviewed Peter Carlson, which I wasn’t looking forward to. I wasn’t sure I could even get to him. He would have hired a smart lawyer by now.
I walked ’till dusk. The cornfields were a dirty golden color now that the crop had been picked, the stalks like fallen soldiers.
On the drive back to town I thought about Mary and Pamela. My folks’ generation was the last to be dutiful mates. My generation was already setting records for divorces. Innumerable sociologists had already written innumerable tomes on the subject. I suppose it had something to do with how a lot of us had been raised. Virtually everything in our lives was disposable. Very little lasted very long—certainly not our cars, our appliances, our homes. So we got new ones. Why should spouses be any different? There were plenty of those around, too.