“I’m not really sure,” Fletch said. “I think he had sort of a nightmare knowledge of them. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing. But the mornings after, he had enough knowledge, or nightmare sense of them, to tear these articles from the newspapers.”
The governor leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands over his face. “My God.”
“When I saw his collection of articles,” Fletch said, “it suddenly dawned on me he hadn’t been wearing a necktie all day. He told me he had left it in a car somewhere. The woman the night before, Mary Cantor, had been strangled with some kind of a soft cord, such as a necktie. When I thought it might be Walsh doing this, doing these things, I felt perfectly sick.” Sitting in the chair, Fletch felt sick again. He waited for the moment to pass. “And there had been that incident overseas, I understand, of threatening a superior officer. A female superior officer.”
“Hit her,” the governor said, head still in hands.
“What?”
The governor stood up and walked slowly to the windows. “He hit her. Several times.”
Fletch said, “I see.”
“I had friends in the Pentagon. Well, I had pull. Enough pull to get him out of there quick, get him home, get him assigned to some statistical job in Washington. To keep the incident off his record. I guess I shouldn’t have.”
“There was so much at stake, Caxton,” Doris Wheeler said.
“Yes,” the governor said. “There was a lot at stake.”
Cautiously Fletch asked: “Did you suspect Walsh? Were you protecting him by refusing to permit an investigation?”
There was a long moment before the governor answered. “It was a dreadful thought. I didn’t really let myself think about it. It was inconceivable.”
“But you did conceive of it,” Fletch said.
Another long moment before the governor said, barely audibly: “Yes.” He turned around. Even with the light behind him from the windows, tears were visible on the governor’s cheeks. “He really went berserk when he beat up that major overseas,” he said. “So the witnesses said.”
“He had been under pressure then, too,” Fletch commented. “More pressure than a man should bear.”
“There is no such thing,” Doris Wheeler said, “as ‘more pressure than a man can bear.’”
Fletch ignored her.
He said to the governor: “I thought you might have been protecting Flash.”
“Flash?” The governor shrugged. “Never thought of him, to tell the truth. Oh, I guess the idea did cross my mind. You know, I’ve watched that man harvest nuts for squirrels and chipmunks.” The governor smiled. He wiped the tears off his big face.
“The primary election system,” Fletch said. “It’s too much pressure for everybody. It’s too long. It goes on for six, eight months. It’s crazy. Even one of the reporters, Bill Dieckmann, is in the hospital this morning with some kind of a nervous disorder. What’s it all supposed to prove?”
“Just that,” the governor said easily. “That one can take the pressure. It seems strange for me to say it this morning, but the system is good. If the candidate, and his family, and his team, can’t take the pressure, it’s better that it show up on the campaign trail than on Pennsylvania Avenue.” He had gone to a sideboard. He picked up some papers beside an open briefcase. He dropped them into a waste-basket. “I must say, though: I think I was beginning to say some interesting things. Even if I didn’t win, I was beginning to voice some interesting questions.”
On the divan, Doris Wheeler shifted uncomfortably. She held a wet handkerchief to her face. “Oh, Caxton, can’t we go on? Isn’t there some way …?”
“I will resign the governorship. I plan to be with Walsh through this. Try to see he gets whatever treatment he needs to make him whole again, in hospital, in prison, whatever, now and forever, I guess.” The governor’s voice was low, but strong. “I’ll do anything I can to try to make restitution to the families and loved ones of those women….”
On the divan, Doris Wheeler sobbed into her handkerchief.
There was a kind of an animal noise from the governor’s throat, or his chest.
Fletch said: “There isn’t much of anything you can do for Walsh right now. The judge who was on the platform with you last night did the unusual thing of opening his court at three o’clock this morning. To avoid a three-ring circus, he said. He sent Walsh away for thirty days psychiatric observation. Walsh has already gone.”
“Psychiatric observation,” the governor repeated from across the room. “Walsh …” When he turned around, fresh tears glistened on his cheeks.
There was a tap on the door.
Flash entered the little hall. In one hand he carried his own suitcases and his black topcoat.
In the other hand he carried a sheaf of yellow telegram sheets.
“I still can’t figure out precisely what I’m doing here,” Fletch said. “I can’t figure out whether Walsh asked me to join the campaign to protect him—you know, when the first crime writer, Freddie Arbuthnot, showed up? Or whether, way deep in his mind somewhere, he had the idea I might rescue him again.”
Doris Wheeler stood up. “Either way,” she said, “you didn’t do a very good job, did you?”
Flash said to the governor, “I’ve got a car. A comfortable car. I rented it myself. I figured we wouldn’t want to go through any airports.”
“That’s right, Flash,” the governor said.
Flash held out the telegrams. “These are from the President, the other candidates …”
The governor pointed at the wastebasket. “Put them in there, Flash.”
Flash dropped the telegrams in the wastebasket.
Caxton Wheeler took his wife’s arm.
“Come on, Mother,” he said. “It’s time we went home.”
36
“Going my way?” Fletch asked the girl with the honey-colored hair and the brown eyes, standing next to her blue suitcase in the airport terminal.
“No,” she answered. “I’m on my way up.”
“I’m glad to see you,” he said.
He set down his own luggage.
After seeing Doris and Caxton Wheeler off in the dark, rented sedan, Flash driving away at a funereal pace, Fletch had returned to his room at Melville’s First Hotel and slept well beyond checkout time. His sleep was troubled. The hard edges of Walsh’s eyes when he first turned and saw Fletch in the auditorium basement penetrated every corner of his sleep. The pained crawl of the dark sedan carrying the Wheelers back across midland America weighted Fletch’s sleep with sadness.
Awaking, he ordered steak and eggs and orange juice and milk and coffee, made his travel arrangements by phone, then settled his hotel bill with the cashier, paying for his extra few hours use of the room himself.
“Yeah,” Fletch said to Freddie Arbuthnot in the airport terminal. “I lost my job again.”
“You’re good at that.”
“I think it’s what I do best.”
“Fletch,” she said, “I’m sorry about your friend. I’m sorry about Walsh.”
“I’m sorry about everything,” he said. “The women. Caxton Wheeler.”
A large group of people were waiting just outside one of the arrival gates. Some of them wore UPTON FOR PRESIDENT badges.
On the fringes of the welcoming group were Roy Filby, Tony Rice, Stella Kirchner. Andrew Esty stood separate from the others, his nose pointed at the arrival gate, wearing more the expression of a judge than a reporter. His heavy overcoat buttoned tightly around him, Boris Solov leaned against a car rental counter. His eyes were closed.
“Did you get your story?” Fletch asked Freddie.
“Yeah. Thanks for tipping me off to be at the courts at three A.M. There are some stories I’d rather not write.” She smiled at him. “But if a story has to be written, I don’t mind scooping the world with it.”