"At
least by sight. I don't get around to the shut-ins as much as I
should. These days, we use the TV program for that, but I'm sure I'd
remember you if you were."
"You
attended the University of Wisconsin?" He leaned slightly
forward. "Briefly." "Played football?"
He
was genuinely amused. Not in the least threatened, just curious.
"Also
briefly. You seem to know quite a bit about me, Mr. Waterman. May I
ask what you do for a living?"
"I'm
a private investigator."
"From
Seattle?"
"Yes."
I
pulled my license from my pocket and slid it across the desk, where
he gave it a cursory glance before sliding it back.
"May
I ask what it is that you are investigating?"
"I'm
not quite sure, Reverend. It could be—"
Over
my left shoulder, next to the wall of windows, the door at the far
end of the room swung open. His eyes moved to the door.
"Excuse
me, but I'm—" the Reverend said.
A
tea cart tinkled as it pushed through the opening, followed by a
woman in a white blouse and a denim jumper. She was tall, her long
dark hair streaked with gray.
"Oh,"
she said when she looked up and saw me. "I'm sorry. I'll come
back. I was—"
She
was the dark-haired beauty in the banquet picture.
"Oh,
it's you. No. No. Come in," he said.
He
turned to me.
"This
is my wife, Katherine."
We
exchanged long-distance greetings as she pulled the cart the rest of
the way into the room to her husband's side with an elegant economy
of motion usually only seen in models.
"Mr.
Waterman here is from Seattle. He's a private investigator."
Like
many suburbanites, Swogger spoke of the city like it was a distant
planet, rather than twenty minutes from his front door.
She
perched on the edge of his desk. "Really. I thought those were
just in the movies," she said.
"He's
here to investigate us on a personal matter."
She
smiled as best she could and gently picked lint from her husband's
shoulder. "Are they on to us at last?" she said in mock
despair.
"I'm
afraid so," he said. He turned his attention back to me. "You
were saying—"
"I
was saying—" I started. "I. . . oh hell. Excuse me, I—"
He
waved me off. "Not to worry. I am familiar with the word."
She
left her hand on his shoulder as they waited. I rummaged about for an
opener, failed, and started babbling.
"Nineteen
eighty, the University of Wisconsin fall sports banquet. The girl
who—" I blurted.
"Oh
dear," she said. "That crazy girl."
"Has
something happened to her?" he asked.
"I
don't know," I answered.
For
the first time, the Reverend Swogger seemed mildly annoyed.
"I
don't mean to be rude, Mr. Waterman, but could you perhaps start at
the beginning? I'm afraid you've got me completely confused."
I
did. I gave them an abridged edition, starting with Allison Stark and
moving backward, through Lake Chelan, all the way to Madison. Leaving
out the possible murder and mayhem, making it sound like a routine
skip trace. She absently rubbed his shoulder as I laid it out.
When
I'd finished, the Reverend Swogger unlaced his fingers and asked,
"And your friend didn't believe that she was killed in the
boating accident with his son?"
"No,
he didn't."
"And
you?"
"I'm
keeping an open mind."
"You
said the police are treating it as an accident."
"Yes,
they are."
"And
after investigating, you think otherwise?" "I think it's
possible."
"You
think all of these people, over all that time, with all of these
different identities, are the same person."
"Also
a possibility."
"Now
that sounds like the movies," Katherine Swogger said.
"I
can't disagree with you there," I said. "But it's all I've
got. I'm hoping that maybe if I can find out who she started out to
be, I can fill in some of the blanks arid maybe put this thing to
rest once and for all."
"What
can we do to help?" he asked after a moment.
She
began picking lint again.
"I've
gotten as far as nineteen eighty and that night at the sports
banquet. That's as far back as I've gotten."
He
placed his hand over hers on his shoulder and nodded.
"I'm
afraid we're not going to be of much help. I've thought about that
night many times since then. I do quite a few high school functions,
convocations, banquets, you know, that kind of thing. Every time
I do one, I wonder what I might have done differently that night and
whatever became of that poor girl. I mean"—he spread his
hands—"the road not taken and all of that."
"It's
not the kind of thing a person forgets," I offered.
"Most
assuredly not.'
"Had
either of you ever seen her before?"
"Never,"
they answered together. "And since?" "Never," he
said again.
"And
you have no recollection of seeing her or running into her or
anything back when you were playing high school football?"
"I
played B-8 football, Mr. Waterman. For Hamilton, in the North
Cascade League. That's a long way from the bright lights."
I
had to agree. My parents had, for most of my childhood, maintained a
summer getaway another twenty miles up the Cascade Highway at Ross
Lake. Every August, the old man would tool the Buick up from Seattle
for a glorious week of watching my mother clean the cabin. Just about
the time she got the place what she considered to be fit for human
habitation and had finally stopped mumbling, it was time to go back
to the city. The joys of youth.
A
hint of nostalgia surfaced now in him.
"This
was places like Lyman and Hamilton, Birds-view, Concrete, Rockport,
and Marblemount. A six-team league. Ten games. We played everybody
twice. Believe me, mostly it was just our families in the stands."
"You
must have been pretty good to have gotten a major college scholarship
from a B-8 school."
"I
had my fifteen minutes of fame," he admitted.
"Oh,
don't be so modest, Jeffrey. You made All-State," she scoffed.
"Everybody knew who you were. You were a star."
"In
Skagit County maybe, but that was about it." He turned to his
wife. "What was the most people you ever saw at one of our
games?" he asked quickly.
Katherine
Swogger thought it over.
"He
does have a point, Mr.—"
"Waterman
"
"If
she'd been at his games, I'd surely have seen her," Katherine
Swogger said. "I never missed a game. On a good night, there
were maybe three hundred, if both towns showed up in force.
Sometimes when the weather was terrible, it would be more like
fifty people total. I don't see how she could have developed such an
obsession about Jeffrey without me seeing her."
Swogger
nodded agreement. "Believe me, my high school football career
was no big deal."
"She
seemed to think so."
"All
the more frightening," he said.
"Is
that why you stopped playing?"
He
considered this at length.
"I
suppose—with the aid of hindsight—that's probably part of it,"
he hedged. "I didn't realize it then, but I suppose that's true.
At the time, it seemed like it was more of a matter of having another
set of priorities."
He
smiled up to his wife, who returned his gaze.
"But
there's no denying it, Mr. Waterman. Even with other factors at work,
that night at the sports banquet had a major effect on my decision to
give up football. It certainly wasn't my fault or anything, but. . .
somehow, just the fact that it worked out that way—that scene
happened at all—left a taste in my mouth that I just couldn't get
rid of."
"You
were the victim," I insisted.
He
wagged his curly head.
"I
don't believe in victims, Mr. Waterman. I believe that people are
responsible for their lives. Not just for what they intended to
happen but for what happens. Somehow, wittingly or not, I was part of
that moment. I had engendered something that I had not intended
and which I could not control. All I could think of was not to put
myself in that position again. I'm at a loss for words."
"Interesting,"
I said again.
"Oh,
the tea," said Katherine the tea."
She
turned to me. "Could I offer—"
"No.
No thanks," I said. "I've got to be going."
Katherine
Swogger wheeled the rattling cart across the room and began fussing
with the service, laying out cream and sugar cubes in cut crystal,
setting a steaming amber cup before her husband, pouring a cup for
herself, and then hovering with the pot. I put my hand over the third
cup.
"Thanks
anyway," I smiled.
I
pecked away at them for another couple of minutes. Prying,
looking for any dimly remembered fact. Like the others, however, that
night had not skulked off into the gloom but was still bright in
their minds. No help there.
"I'm
sorry you've come for so little, Mr. Waterman. I wish there were more
I could do for you," he said when I ran out of gas.
"One
does what one can, Reverend."
"Are
you sure—" She reached for the pot again.
I
pulled myself from the seat.
"I'd
better be going."
She
leaned in close to me. I could smell Ivory soap.
"You
will keep in touch with us, won't you? We'd very much like to know if
you find out anything about that poor girl."
I
lied and said I would.
I
Kept moving around the kitchen, trying to stay warm. As Jed had
predicted, the city was shutting them out. Yesterday the phones,
today the gas. Words became steam in the cold morning air. I kept my
hands in my pockets as I paced.
"Who
found the place?" I asked.
"The
Speaker," said George. George sat, arms akimbo, impervious to
the cold, bolt upright in his customary chair, wearing only a
yellowed sleeveless undershirt, a wadded pair of plaid boxer shorts,
and black Reeboks.
"How
in hell does a guy who doesn't talk find anything?"
"He
talks," said Harold, who had the oven on full-blast, door open,
leaning close, wrapped head to toe in a green army blanket.
"When?"
I asked. "I've known the guy for ten years and never heard him
say a word."
"He
used to talk to Buddy," said Ralph, whose ribbed neck protruded
from the folds of a thick, red-velvet bathrobe.
"Now
he only talks to George," said Harold.
"I
inherited him," George sneered.
"Like
the house," added Ralph.
"Only
him we get to keep," Harold said.
Unaccustomed
to participating in this part of the day, they were slack-faced and
sullen. I'd spent the last half hour rousting them out of bed,
handing out cash, and making it clear to them that the jig was about
up on the house. Sometimes I admired their ability to ignore nearly
anything, to put anything they didn't want to think about completely
out of mind. Not this morning. This morning, I'd gotten
finger-pointing nasty with them. This time they listened. They didn't
like it, but they listened. They were pissed at me and not
volunteering anything.