I sat back down in the chair and leaned my forearms over the bed’s rail. “That’s crazy. You’re the best man I’ve ever known.” And I wasn’t just saying that, either. Charlie Thatcher was an honorable, unselfish man. He was a loving father and husband. He was a Boy Scout leader and a Little League coach. He spent one night a week serving soup in a shelter down on Market Street. He had been a Big brother to dozens of underprivileged kids. “Hell, Charlie,” I said, “you’re the guy that every sleazeball politician in the country pretends to be. What do you mean, you’re not a good man?”
He turned to me, and the rims of his eyes stood out red against his yellowed complexion. “I’m not, John. I wanted to be. I tried to be.” He turned his head toward the window and looked into the darkness of his large backyard. “I wanted to make up for what I had done, but there was no making up for it.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
He turned back to me, and the pain I saw in his face was not pain caused by his sickness; it came from something else. “I’m a murderer, John. Thirty-five years ago, I killed a man.”
I’m not sure how long it was before I stammered out, “You’re kidding, right?” Of course the question was so stupid, Charlie didn’t even bother to answer it.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told. But now it’s time I tell everyone. Father Delaney—” His voice broke. “—Jane, the boys. I should have told them long before now.”
“What happened, Charlie?” I asked. I still didn’t believe him. I couldn’t picture Charlie Thatcher being a murderer; the image just wouldn’t come.
He dropped his head back to the stack of pillows behind him and stared at some spot on the ceiling. “When it happened,” he began, “I was in the navy. I was drinking in a bar in East San Diego, and for some reason — I don’t remember why — this guy wanted to fight. I was a tough kid with a hot temper, so we stepped out into the alley.”
I asked, “It happened in a fight?”
“Not really. The guy was my size or even bigger, but he wasn’t a fighter.” Charlie looked at me, and I knew what he was saying was true. “I punched him a couple of times, and he hit the ground hard, smacking the back of his head. It could’ve ended there, but something in me clicked, you know? I had this — I don’t know — this rage, and it took over. There was no stopping it. I knocked this guy down, and then I was on top of him driving my fist into his face over and over and over. When I came to my senses, I started running, and I didn’t stop until I was back at the ship. The next day I heard on the radio that the guy was dead.”
“Were you ever questioned by the police?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t know the man. There was nothing to connect me to him. I don’t even remember how the argument started in the first place. We’d only talked for maybe ten minutes in the bar, and I guess no one had noticed us. San Diego was a pretty rough place in those days, especially in that part of town. There was a story in the newspaper a couple of days later. His name was Duane Tragovic. He was a petty criminal. He’d been arrested a dozen times. There wasn’t much of an investigation. I don’t think this guy’s death was real high on the cops’ list of things to do.”
We both sat silent for a moment. “I tried to just forget about it,” Charlie finally said, “but I couldn’t. Maybe Tragovic was a criminal, but it didn’t matter what he was; what mattered was what I was, and I was a murderer.
“The paper said that Tragovic had a wife. Marlee was her name, and for some reason I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I’d not only committed a crime against Tragovic, but I had committed a crime against her as well. It got to where I couldn’t stand being in San Diego. I thought if I could get out of town, I could put this behind me, so I volunteered for duty on a river patrol boat in Vietnam.” He fixed me with his rheumy eyes. “But I could never stop thinking about it, John.” He lifted his hand and formed a fist. “Every single day for the last thirty-five years, I have remembered the feel of hitting that man — beating him. Not a day went by that I didn’t think of him and his wife. I wanted to find her and tell her how sorry I was, but I couldn’t do it. I knew if I ever found her, the truth would come out, and I couldn’t face what that would mean. Eventually I had a family of my own, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell them.” His eyes filled, and he shook his head. “I was too much of a coward to let them know what kind of a man I really am.”
As soon as he said that, he gave a gasp, and his body jerked. He clenched his eyes and sucked in a quick, shallow breath. It was clear he was in severe pain.
“Charlie,” I said, “what can I do?”
He didn’t answer. He just lay there with his eyes clasped and his teeth gritted. After a bit he seemed to relax, but when the pain passed, he looked thinner and even more frail. The angles where the sheet touched his body seemed sharper. In a matter of seconds the pain had come and gone, but when it left, it had taken a piece of Charlie with it. It seemed that there was less of him lying in front of me now than there had been only a moment before.
Slowly he rubbed his eyes, but there was a shadow there — a darkness — he could not rub away. “I tried to be good,” he said in a raspy whisper, “but it didn’t matter what kind of a man I tried to be, I could never change what I became that night so long ago.”
There was a faint rapping at the door, and a middle-aged man wearing a white clerical collar stuck in his head.
“Father Delaney,” Charlie said, “give us another second, would you?”
The man nodded. “I’ll be right out here when you’re ready.” He stepped back into the hall and closed the door.
“I need to make my confession, John.”
I stood and looked back toward the door that led into the hallway. “Sure, I’ll leave and send the priest right in.”
“No, no,” he said, “that’s not what I mean. I am going to confess to Father Delaney and to Janey and the kids, too, but that wasn’t what I meant when I said I need to make my confession. What I meant was I need to make my confession to Marlee Tragovic. I have to tell her what I did to her husband and beg her to forgive me.” He lifted his eyes to mine, and I saw the sadness that had always been there. I had seen it before, but I had never recognized it for what it was. “I want you to find her for me,” he said. “I want you to bring her here.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “My God, Charlie, it’s been thirty-five years.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and the shadow in his eyes darkened. “Thirty-five long years.” He swallowed hard. “You can do it, though, John. I have faith in you. But you better hurry. I’m not getting any younger.” Then he added with a feeble smile, “Or much older, either, for that matter.”
I avoided the freeway and went home the long way around Mission Bay, through Pacific Beach, La Jolla, and past the cliffs at Torrey Pines. The constant gear shifting, stopping, and starting provided the activity I needed to prevent myself from thinking. But as I rolled down the ramp into the underground garage at my house in Del Mar, despite my best efforts, the thoughts flooded in.
I doubted I was the right person to do the job Charlie asked. I had been out of the business for over three years, but it was more than that. This was important to Charlie, and I was afraid I would let him down.
I climbed the stairs from the garage into the house, dropped an old Crusaders CD into the player, sloshed some brandy into a glass, and sat down in front of the computer. The e-mail was the usual junk. I trashed it all and clicked on to the ‘Net. I did a search for “Marlee Tragovic” and got nothing. It didn’t surprise me, really. After so long, if she were still alive, it was likely she had remarried. Even these days, more often than not a woman took her husband’s name, and the divorce rate being what it was in the last thirty-five years, it was possible her last name had changed more than once.