A crunch was coming, he could feel it, and, he reflected, in a crunch Bo Scully had a way of protecting himself. He had learned a long time ago about his instinct for self-preservation – in Korea and afterward – and he had no doubt that, when the time came, he would do whatever was necessary to survive again. It wouldn’t matter who got hurt. It hadn’t mattered before, although he still sometimes dreamed about it, and it wouldn’t matter this time, either. He would do what had to be done.
Enda McCauliffe let himself into his office, hung up his coat, and flopped heavily onto the new sofa. He wondered how he had let himself land in the middle of all this. He got up and opened his new safe, got out the file and read through the document again. He didn’t want to know all this stuff. If he’d had any idea what had happened so many years ago, he might never have gotten mixed up in this, but now he knew nearly everything and suspected more. He stared at the other envelope in his safe, Bo’s signed and witnessed document. With some difficulty, he resisted the urge to rip it open and read the contents.
He knew that Howell was onto something, too. The priest, Father Harry, had told McCauliffe about his visit to the cabin and the questions asked. He hoped the lecture he had given the old man had put a stop to any more idle chatter from him. And to think it was he himself who had first put the flea in Howell’s ear. What a stupid, mischievous thing to do; but he hadn’t known that at the time. He had been out just to annoy Eric Sutherland, to pick at his scabs. If only he’d known more at the beginning, instead of now. If only Sutherland had told him the truth sooner.
The genie wasn’t going back into the bottle, he could feel that. Maybe he could, somehow, limit the damage. He didn’t see what else he could do.
31
Howell was as nervous as a cat. It was the morning of the ninth; Bo Scully’s shipment was due to arrive at three-thirty the following morning, and nothing was going right. He wished he had a few more days, another week, maybe, to bring it all together. The goddamned film hadn’t even arrived, and without it, Scotty wasn’t going to get any photographic evidence; in the circumstances, she could hardly use a flash. He had called Atlanta twice and had been assured it was on the way.
But what worried him even more was that he was stuck on the O’Coineen mystery, absolutely stuck. He had thought that, somehow, he could bring that to a head along with Scotty’s evidence against Bo, but it wasn’t happening. He was losing; he could feel it.
There were a couple of things he wanted to know, sure. But he didn’t know how to find them out. He had been to see the priest, Father Harry, but the old man had clammed up tight, after accepting a bottle of good Irish whisky. He suddenly didn’t want to talk about the O’Coineens again. Somebody had been at him, Howell thought.
He walked up to the mailbox and found a special delivery notice. At least the film had arrived; that lazy bastard of a postman might have brought it down to the house. Special delivery, my ass, Howell thought. Still, he didn’t mind going into town; he was too nervous to work. A letter had been forwarded from Atlanta, too: a New York Times envelope, hand addressed, the name “Allen” written in the upper left-hand comer. His old boss. Not like him to send personal notes, Howell thought. He ripped it open. “Dear John,” it said. “Don’t know what you’re doing with yourself these days. Nairobi’s opening up next month. You want it?” No closing; it was signed “Bob.”
Howard crumpled the letter and threw it as far as he could. Nairobi! The place that had been a running joke between them for years as the place in the whole world he would least like to work. You could always go back to the Times once, they said. This was that sadistic bastard Allen’s way of saying if he wanted to go back, he’d have to crawl. The letter wasn’t even worth replying to; Allen could go fuck himself. That sort of aggravation was all he needed today, with everything else on his mind.
The station wagon wouldn’t start. Howell tried repeatedly before he was able to admit to himself that he had let it run out of gas. He pounded silently on the steering wheel a few times, then he called Ed Parker’s filling station; Ed promised to send out some gas right away.
After a few minutes, Benny Pope pulled up in Ed Parker’s pickup truck and unloaded a five-gallon can from the back. “You run right out, did you?” he grinned. “Well, that’s what we’re here for.”
Howell watched the man empty the can into the station wagon’s fuel tank. He got behind the wheel and, after a few tries, the engine came to life again.
“Well, I’ll be getting back,” Benny said, and turned to go to the truck.
“Hang on a minute, Benny,” Howell said.
Benny stopped and came back, his usual grin in place. “Yessir, anything else I can do for you?”
“Benny, you don’t like it around here, do you?”
Benny looked puzzled. “Why sure,” he said. “I’ve never lived anywhere else. I was born and raised right here. I like it fine.”
“No, I mean right here, around this cabin, around this part of the lake.”
Benny’s grin disappeared.
Howell kept his voice friendly and gentle. “I remember a while back, you said you didn’t want to come up here at night, and the day you brought the outboard out here, you wouldn’t get onto the water. Why was that?”
“Well… the cove just makes me nervous, that’s all.”
“Something happen to you here, Benny, in the cove?”
“Yessir,” Benny said with no further hesitation, “you could say I’ve had a couple of experiences around here I wouldn’t want to go through again.”
“Something to do with the O’Coineens?”
Benny looked surprised. “You know about the O’Coineens?”
“Not as much as I’d like to. Tell me about your experiences.”
Benny leaned against the fender of the pickup and pointed out over the lake. “Well, I was out there one night, right out there, fishing, and I seen under the lake.”
“Benny,” Howell said, “I know it’s early, but let me buy you a drink.”
They went into the house and Howell poured them both a generous bourbon. Half an hour later Howell knew that he and Benny Pope had been sharing a vision; only for Benny, it had been the real thing.
“I know you’re sure it was Eric Sutherland’s car, Benny, but are you sure he was driving it?”
Benny screwed his face up tight with the remembering. “Well, now you mention it, I can’t say that I am. It was Mr. Sutherland’s car; I just reckoned it was him driving it.”
Howell leaned forward in his chair. “Now, Benny, what happened after the car drove away? Do you remember that?”
“Well, sir, you understand I was a little bit worse for the wear that night. I’d been at some shine for quite a little while. I used to come up here to the picnic place and have a few some nights.”
“Do you remember anything at all after the car drove away?”
“Just a noise. It was like a loud noise from a long way off. I guess I dozed off after that; I didn’t wake up until after daylight.”
“Did you look at the O’Coineen house again when you woke up?”
“Yessir, I did. Least ways I looked where it used to be. It was under the lake.”
Howell picked up the film at the post office and signed for the package. Then he began to drive south through the town. There were only two people who could tell him what he wanted to know about that night in 1952. One of them had already lied to him about it, he thought; now it was time to go and see the other one.
It would have only caused trouble to approach Eric Sutherland before, but now the Lurton Pitts autobiography was nearly finished; even if Sutherland got mad it couldn’t matter much. It occurred to Howell that if Sutherland had got rid of the O’Coineens, he might feel no compunction about getting rid of a nosy reporter. He felt it might be prudent to tell Sutherland that he had shared his suspicions with people in Atlanta. That would give him some sort of insurance. Confronting Sutherland might be an incautious thing to do, but Howell had the very strong feeling that it was now or never, that he was running out of time.