“Maybe he was admitted.”
“Maybe. And they’re moving a lot of people out of here.” A pause. It sounded as though Carlson was talking to someone else. “I’m going to have to go,” he said when he got back. “What did you want to talk to Mr. Fisher for?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’ve got enough to deal with right now. Hang in there, okay, Angus?”
“Yeah,” Carlson said. “Thanks, Barry.”
I could have returned to the hospital and hunted for Walden Fisher, but it would still be chaotic there-especially now that there had been a shooting there-and even if he was in the building, it could take a long time to locate him. I decided it might be more expedient to go by his house first, in the event that he’d been treated and released.
When I parked out front of his place, I could see through the porch’s screen door straight into the house, the main door wide open. It didn’t necessarily mean he was home. He probably hadn’t taken time to lock up the house when he came running out, sick. What had he told me at the hospital? That he’d nearly been run over by an ambulance.
I scanned the surface of the road, and sure enough, I saw what looked like the remains of someone’s stomach contents. The kind of deposit one often saw on the sidewalk outside any Promise Falls bar on a Friday or Saturday night.
I went up to the door, rapped lightly, and called through the screen, “Mr. Fisher?”
The sound of a chair being pushed back. I could see down a short hallway to the kitchen, and several seconds later, Walden appeared. He walked very slowly to the screen door, pushed it open.
“Oh,” he said. “Hey.”
“You’re home,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I threw up a cow. They kicked me out of the ER, wanted me to go to Albany to get checked out.”
“You’re back already?”
“Didn’t go,” he said wearily. “Didn’t have it in me. I hadn’t died yet, so I figured I wasn’t going to, but I’m still kind of shaky.”
“Can I come in?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. I was just sitting in the kitchen staring out the window. I’d offer you a coffee, but I think that’s what got me in trouble in the first place.”
As I followed him back into the kitchen, I asked, “Did a doctor even look at you?”
“Some lady gave me the once-over. But there were people way worse than me, people keeling over dead, and she had to go tend to them.”
“You’re feeling better?”
Walden nodded. “Yeah. I only had a couple of sips of the coffee I’d made myself. Guess that’s what saved me. I make kind of lousy coffee anyway, never drink all that much of it.” A weak grin. “Bad coffee saved my life, I guess.” He waved his hand at the kitchen, the dirty dishes in the sink, an open cereal box on the counter. “Place is a bit of a mess.”
“That’s okay.”
“I got beer in the fridge if you’d like that, maybe a can of pop or something. Some lemonade? In a carton, not something with tap water in it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you know how long it’ll be before we can drink the water again?”
I shook my head. “No. Mind if I sit?”
“Be my guest.”
I pulled out a chair and dropped myself into it. Walden Fisher sat opposite me. A metal nail file sat on the table. He picked it up, slipped it into his shirt pocket. His fingernails looked ragged from biting. He’d said something to me once about his nerves being all shot to hell these last few years. Not very surprising.
“How’d you get home from the hospital?”
“Victor gave me a lift,” he said. “So, did you come by just to see if I was okay, or is there something else on your mind?”
“We talked the other day, about Olivia,” I said. “I wanted to talk some more.”
“Shoot,” he said.
“We haven’t given up trying to find out who killed your daughter.”
Walden shrugged. “So you say,” he said.
“I can’t get into specifics, but there’ve been times when I thought I had an idea who it might be. Individuals who were already in custody, or possibly even deceased.”
“Like who?”
“As I said, I can’t get into that. But I’m less sure of that now.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just that. That he’s not someone we’ve picked up for some other offense.”
Walden leaned in. “Has he done it again?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. The reason I’ve come to see you is to learn more about Olivia. Tell me about her.”
He leaned back. “She was wonderful. She was smart. She was everything to me and Beth. She would have been somebody. She already was. But she’d have shown the world how amazing she could be if she’d been given the chance.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Olivia was never mean to anyone. She never held a grudge. She was always happy when something good happened for someone else. You know how some people, they don’t like it when someone else has a success. They’re bitter or jealous or whatever. But she wasn’t like that.”
“She grew up here?” I said, casting my eye about the kitchen.
“Yup. Beth and I were living here when we had her. This was the only place she ever lived. She didn’t bunk in at Thackeray. Didn’t make any sense, and it was a heck of a lot cheaper to live at home when she went to school.”
“Of course.”
“She’s still got her room upstairs,” Walden said. “Haven’t touched it.”
“Really?” I asked. I might have sounded surprised, but I wasn’t. Grieving families often left the rooms of those they’d lost untouched. It was too painful to go in there. Cleaning out a bedroom was a final acknowledgment of what had happened. And even if the bedroom could be used by another family member, who wanted to be the relative that moved into it?
“Beth wouldn’t touch a thing in there, and since she’s died, well, I haven’t felt the need, either.”
I couldn’t imagine that seeing the room would help me any, but I wanted to just the same. So I asked.
“Sure, why not?” Walden said. “You might want to lead the way up the stairs. I’m still feeling pretty weak. I’ll catch up to you. It’s the first door on the left.”
I found my way.
The door was closed. I turned the knob, opened it slowly. The air inside was stale. Olivia’s bedroom was maybe ten by ten, a double bed taking center stage. The walls were pale green, what Sherwin-Williams would probably call “foam green” or “seaweed.” Puffy yellow spread on the bed. One wall was dominated by a magnificent framed photo of a whale breaking the surface of the water.
“When she was a little girl,” said Walden, who’d caught up to me and was standing in the hall, “she loved that movie Free Willy. You know the one? About this little boy who wants to free a killer whale from an aquarium because they’re going to kill it?”
“I know it.”
“She cried every time she saw it. Had it on videotape, then on a DVD. Had the sequels, too, but even Olivia had to admit they were pretty lame. That was her word for them. ‘Lame.’”
The other pictures on the wall were not as large as that one, but they all featured sea creatures. Photos of a pod-I think that’s what they call them-of dolphins. A sea horse, an octopus, a photo of Jacques Cousteau.
“She hated Jaws,” Walden said. “Just hated it. That shark, she said, was just being a shark. It was just doing what it naturally does. It wasn’t a monster. That’s what she said. Made her mad when people said they loved that movie.”
I noticed several unopened envelopes on the desk, some with the Promise Falls municipal logo in the corner.
“What’s all this?” I asked, picking them up, leafing through them.
“She still gets mail,” he said. “Like a credit card statement, or an ad, something like that. Companies that don’t know what happened. Beth got so upset when something for Olivia came in the mail, she’d just put it there on her dresser like Olivia was going to come home one day and deal with it. And I haven’t got the energy to tell those idiots that it’s been three years. What really gets me is that the town doesn’t even know.”