Part 11 (2/2)
”I was, before she grew away from me. I brought her up after her mother's death.” Her voice became flat again: ”Does Tom McGee have anything to do with this new killing?”
”He may have. He's in town here, or he was.”
”I knew it!” she cried in bleak triumph. ”They had no business letting him out. They should have put him in the gas chamber for what he did to my little sister.”
She was choked with sudden emotion. I waited for her to go on. When she didn't, I said: ”I'm anxious to go into the details of that case with you, but I don't think we should do it over the phone. It really would be helpful if you could come here tomorrow.”
”I simply can't. There's no use badgering me. I have a terribly important meeting tomorrow afternoon. Several state officials will be here from Sacramento, and it will probably go on into the evening.”
”What about the morning?”
”I have to prepare for them in the morning. We're s.h.i.+fting over to a new state-county welfare program.” Latent hysteria buzzed in her voice, the hysteria of a middle-aged spinster who has to make a change. ”If I walked out on this project, I could lose my position.”
”We don't want that to happen, Miss Jenks. How far is it from there to Pacific Point?”
”Seventy miles, but I tell you I can't make it.”
”I can. Will you give me an hour in the morning, say around eleven?”
She hesitated. ”Yes, if it's important. I'll get up an hour earlier and do my paperwork. I'll be at home at eleven. You have my address? It's just off the main street of Indian Springs.”
I thanked her and got rid of Alex and went to bed, setting my mental alarm for six-thirty.
chapter 11.
Alex was still sleeping when I was ready to leave in the morning. I let him sleep, partly for selfish reasons, and partly because sleep was kinder to him than waking was likely to be.
The fog was thick outside. Its watery ma.s.s overlay Pacific Point and transformed it into a kind of suburb of the sea. I drove out of the motel enclosure into a gray world without perspective, came abruptly to an access ramp, descended onto the freeway where headlights swam in pairs like deep-sea fish, and arrived at a truck stop on the east side without any real sense that I had driven across the city.
I'd been having a little too much talk with people whose business was talking. It was good to sit at the counter of a working-cla.s.s restaurant where men spoke when they wanted something, or simply to kid the waitress. I kidded her a little myself. Her name was Stella, and she was so efficient that she threatened to take the place of automation. She said with a flas.h.i.+ng smile that this was her aim in life.
My destination was near the highway, on a heavily used thoroughfare lined mainly with new apartment buildings. Their faddish pastel colors and scant transplanted palms seemed dingy and desolate in the fog.
The nursing home was a beige stucco one-storied building taking up most of a narrow deep lot. I rang the bell at eight o'clock precisely. Dr. G.o.dwin must have been waiting behind the door. He unlocked it and let me in himself.
”You're a punctual man, Mr. Archer.”
His changeable eyes had taken the stony color of the morning. I noticed when he turned to shut the door behind us that his shoulders were permanently stooped. He was wearing a fresh white smock.
”Sit down, won't you? This is as good a place to talk as any.”
We were in a small reception room or lounge. I sat in one of several worn armchairs aimed at a silent television set in one corner. Through the inner door I could hear the rattle of dishes and the bright voices of nurses beginning the day.
”Is this your place, doctor?”
”I have an interest in it. Most of the patients here are mine. I've just been giving some shock treatments.” He smoothed the front of his smock. ”I'd feel less like a witch-doctor if I knew why electric shocks make depressed people feel better. So much of our science, or art, is still in the empirical stage. But the people do get better,” he said with a sudden grin, too sudden to touch his watching, waiting eyes.
”Is Dolly?”
”Yes, I think she's somewhat better. We don't have overnight cures, of course. I want to keep an eye on her for at least a week. Here.”
”Is she fit to be questioned?”
”I don't want you to question her, or anyone else remotely connected with the--the world of crime and punishment.” As if to remove the curse from his refusal, he flung himself loosely into the armchair beside me, asked me for a cigarette and let me light it.
”Why not?”
”I do not love the law in its current primitive state, where sick people are trapped into betraying themselves in their sickness and then treated by the courts as if they were well. I've been fighting the situation for a long time.” He rested his ponderous bald head on the back of the chair, and blew smoke toward the ceiling.
”What you say suggests that Dolly is in danger from the law.”
”I was making a general statement.”
”Which applied specifically to Dolly. We don't have to play games, doctor. We're both on the same side. I don't a.s.sume the girl is guilty of anything. I do think she has information which may help me to clear up a murder.”
”But what if she's guilty?” he said, watching for my reaction.
”Then I'd want to cooperate with you in getting charges reduced, finding mitigating circ.u.mstances, making a case for merciful treatment by the court. Remember I'm working for her husband. Is she guilty?”
”I don't know.”
”You have talked to her this morning?”
”She did most of the talking. I don't ask many questions. I wait and I listen. In the end you learn more that way.” He gave me a meaningful look, as if I should start applying this principle.
I waited and listened. Nothing happened. A plump woman with long black hair straggling down the back of her cotton robe appeared in the inside doorway. She stretched out her arms to the doctor.
He lifted his hand like a weary king. ”Good morning, Nell.”
She gave him a bright agonized smile and softly withdrew, like a woman walking backward in her sleep. Her outstretched arms were the last I saw of her.
”It would be helpful if you told me what Dolly had to say this morning.”
”And possibly dangerous.” G.o.dwin crushed out his cigarette in a blue ceramic ashtray which looked homemade. ”There is after all a difference between you and me. What a patient says to me is a professional confidence. You have no professional standing. If you refused to repeat information in court you could be jailed for contempt. I could, under the law, but I'm not likely to be.”
”I've sweated out contempt before. And the police won't get anything out of me that I don't choose to tell them. That's a guarantee.”
”Very well.” G.o.dwin nodded his head once, decisively. ”I'm concerned about Dolly and I'll try to tell you why without any professional jargon. You may be able to put together the objective jigsaw puzzle while I'm reconstructing the subjective one.
”You said no professional jargon, doctor.”
”Sorry. First there's her history. Her mother Constance McGee brought her to me at the instigation of her sister Alice, a woman I know slightly, when Dolly was ten years old. She wasn't a happy child. In fact she was in some danger of becoming really withdrawn, for good reason. There's always good reason. Her father McGee was an irresponsible and violent man who couldn't handle the duties of fatherhood. He blew hot and cold on the child, spoiled her and punished her, constantly fought with his wife and eventually left her, or was left, it hardly matters. I would have preferred to treat him instead of Dolly, since he was the main source of the trouble in the family. But he was unreachable.”
”Did you ever see him?”
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