What does he remember about the guy? The posture first, the stiffback way he held himself. He picked up on that even before the guy crossed the street. Then the way he hesitated a second on the motel side. Then the way he ran – no, not ran but loped across and into the parking lot.
He remembers the feel of the vinyl seat against his sweaty back as he slipped down a little so as not to be seen. He remembers how he worried the guy might spot him. He remembers noticing a vertical bulge in the guy's raincoat as if he were hiding a gun there, not a sidearm but a shotgun maybe, because that's what the shots sounded like they were from.
There was a moment when the guy stopped cold in the lot, actually froze for a second between a Chevy and a Buick, and Jerry wondered which car he'd get into. That's when he saw the guy's eyes. They weren't the eyes of a pro killer or the cool eyes of a veteran who'd seen combat in Korea or ‘Nam, rather they were wild, frightened, the eyes of an amateur, a guy who'd never shot anyone before, and now he'd done it and now the only thing on his mind was to get away, hide, not get caught.
Jerry approves of the set of eyes I've drawn. He recognizes them, he says. Now, he says, all we gotta do is fill in the rest of the face.
I like the sound of that. Jerry thinks he's the one making the drawing and I'm just there to lend a trained artistic hand. In fact he's right, my drawing hand's now connected to his brain. The planchette effect has taken hold. With each stroke of my pencil, the shooter's face comes more clearly into view.
Jerry remembers how the guy's eyebrows were arched, that his eyelashes were long, that his chin and lips were delicately modeled. Yeah, there was something sensitive and boyish, even pretty about the guy… if you can use a word like that. Kinda funny, since, as it turned out, he'd just blasted two people, spattered their brains and guts all over the motel room walls.
Jerry remembers more: The guy had a narrow nose. You couldn't see the top of his eyebrows on account of his hat, couldn't see the tops of his ears either. The ear bottoms were small, evenly rounded. But the eyes and chin are what stick most in Jerry's mind. And the mouth – yeah, that's coming more clearly now. A longer mouth than most peoples', and the lips thin and delicate. And when the guy opened his mouth – ‘cause he was breathing hard, breathing from his mouth when he paused there between the cars like a scared deer looking for a place to hide – you could see his teeth weren't in good shape. Surprising for a guy that young. Yeah, he was young, twenty-five, twenty-six at most. The skin under his eyes was smooth like a kid's.
I draw, refine, fill in. Jerry watches amazed as a face slowly comes clear on the paper the way a photographic image will slowly emerge in a tray of developer.
"Yeah!" he says when I set down my pencil. "Yeah, that's him! I can't believe it! That's the guy I saw!"
"Do you know him?"
Jerry shakes his head. "I don't think I've seen him in all the years since. But he's the shooter, I'm sure of it."
Mace comes over, stands behind me.
"Interesting… I think I may have seen this man."
"We've all seen him," I tell him. "He was young back then. He's changed a lot since. Back then he was lean, wiry, had a full head of hair – not that Jerry could see his hair what with that stupid, slouchy hat he wore. There was a hunger in his eyes back then, a wildness like Jerry says. But I don't think it was fear, more like a lust for power and success. He looks different now, but if you look carefully, you can see the underlying structure, the set of the bones beneath the flab. Now he's sleek, bald, middle-aged, plump, content. But every once in a while, his eyes flash and you can see that old hunger in them still."
Mace is getting annoyed. "Quit stalling, David. What's his name?"
"You know him, Mace. You too, Jerry. Everyone in Calista knows who he is. He's Waldo Channing's old flunky… toady… lap dog… lickspittle. His name's Spencer Deval, and this is how he looked twenty-six years ago."
17
"He must have done it for Waldo," I tell Mace. "You read Barbara's diary. That's the only explanation."
We're heading back downtown. The sun beats harshly on the streets. A group of children, clustered around an open fire hydrant, play in the stream of water. Mace, driving, stares straight ahead. After a burst of exuberance back at O'Neill's, he's gone morose and silent.
"I know what you're thinking," I tell him. "A sketch based on a fifteen-second glimpse recollected after twenty-six years – any defense attorney could tear that to shreds. And even if Kate Evans looks at my sketch and says, ‘Yeah, that's the guy!’ it won't do you any good. She already worked with me, so she's contaminated."
Mace grins. "So what am I left with, David? An uncorroborated ID by a sleazy ex-cop who only happened to be there because he was trying to blackmail one of the victims. Two unrelated crimes taking place at the same time. Three if you count what Cody did to the Steadmans.
Not to mention that Jessup and Barbara were up to their ears in that, too. I tell you, I could really puke. But I'd still like to nail Deval."
He takes me to a dark, working-class pub in Irontown that smells strongly of ale. A Forgers-White Sox game is playing on the TV. A small group of out-of-work laborers sit in gloom at the bar gazing up at the screen. We order beers, carry them to a booth, then stare past one another trying to figure out what to do.
I'm the one who breaks the silence.
"Waldo must have thought he was in an impossible position – his threat to expose Barbara's new affair to Andrew balanced by her threat to expose his blackmail schemes. A stalemate based on the prospect of mutually assured destruction. But a stalemate wasn't good enough for Waldo."
Mace scratches his goatee. "So he turns to his flunky, Deval, gets him to be his triggerman. How? What did he have to offer Deval to get him to do a thing like that?"
"Only Deval knows and he won't be telling." I try to cheer Mace up. "The way I feel about it, even if there's never an indictment, there're other ways to bring a guy like that down. Like a wrongful death suit by the Fulraine boys. Rumors, disgrace, all the stuff Waldo was afraid of."
"Yeah, that'd be nice, I guess… but me, I'd prefer an indictment."
When he goes to the bar to fetch us two more beers, I turn toward the window. The strong light outside is nearly blinding. Suddenly I flash on a possible motive. When Mace comes back, I try it out on him:
"According to the rumors, when Waldo met Deval he was a hustler on DaVinci. Waldo cleaned him up, then sent him to England for a year to learn how to talk. They lived together, Deval acting as Waldo's errand boy. Then there came a time when Deval started getting co-writer credit on Waldo's column. In smaller letters, of course, but still a byline. So I'm wondering – could that be what Waldo had to offer?"
"Kill two people for a byline?"
"Not a bad deal if you're hungry enough. Think about it: Tough Street Kid gets his hooks into Toney Society Columnist. Columnist picks up tab while Kid learns social graces. Then when Columnist feels threatened, Kid exacts his price: He'll do dirty job Columnist doesn't have the stomach for, in exchange for an assured future. He'll receive co-byline on future columns, inherit column when Columnist retires, plus house and fortune when Columnist dies. That's a deal a guy without too many scruples could go for."
Mace nods. "I'll check when Deval started getting the byline. But even if it was right after the Flamingo, it won't make for any kind of evidence." He stares at the TV above the bar. "Still, it's nice finally to know, I guess."
To finally know may be nice for him, but it's far from enough for me. I want Deval to know I know, want nothing less than to see him wriggle and flinch.