Second Chance (18 page)

But she certainly didn't act that way. She acted as
if she were guilty as sin—and Herbert Talmadge was part of it. I
got up from the chair. "I may want to talk to you again, Ms.
Scarne."

"Souls in hell want ice water, too." This
time she did pick up the bottle and took a swig. "Get out of my
house before I call the cops."

I walked up the hall and
out the front door. As I got in the car I thought about the blond
nurse that Talmadge had been seen with—the one that Thelma Jackson
had mentioned. On the surface of it I couldn't see why a woman like
Rita Scarne would have toyed with a brutal, dangerous man like
Talmadge. But if she had it would certainly bring a blush to her
cheeks, even after thirteen years. It was something worth looking
into.

* * *

I drove away from the house but I didn't go far just
a few blocks north on Ridge to a convenience store with a phone booth
on its side wall. I parked by the booth, got out, and started to make
calls, looking for someone who could confirm a connection between
Rita Scarne and Herbert Talmadge.

I dialed Thelma Jackson first—to see if Rita's name
rang a bell. But it didn"t.

"Wish I could tell you she was the right one,"
Thelma said apologetically. "But I don't remember nothing 'bout
that nurse, 'cept her blond hair. Can't find nobody else who does,
neither. I been asking though."

I told her to keep trying, hung up, and dialed
Rollman's. Nurse Rostow was still on duty.

"Could you do me one more favor?" I asked
her.

"Again, Mr. Stoner?" she said in a
long-suffering voice.

"Do you still have Rita Scarne's employment
record from back in the mid-seventies?"

"Mr. Stoner," the woman said. "That's
not something I can show you, and you know it."

"I don't want you to show it to me. I just want
to find out where Rita was living in 1976."

"I guess the address would be all right,"
she said after thinking about it. "I mean an address from that
long ago would hardly be restricted information?

She went off the line for a second. "Two
thirty-four Terrace Avenue. There's also an address for her family in
Dayton, Ohio—516 Minton. I believe she was from Dayton originally."

I jotted both addresses down.

"The Terrace residence is in Clifton?"

The woman said, yes.

I had to call long-distance information to make my
last call—to Creve Coeur, Luckily, Dr. Isaac Goldman had a
published number for his psychiatric clinic on Westmoreland
Boulevard. I got a secretary who wasn't about to put me through until
I told her I was a cop, working on a life-and-death matter.

Goldman came on the line huffily, as if
life-and-death matters didn't much impress him unless someone was
paying for his time.

"I'm with a patient so please make this brief."

"
You were an intern at Rollman's Hospital, here
in Cincinnati in 1976. One of your patients was a black man named
Herbert Talmadge."

"Yes," he said after a long moment. "I
vaguely remember Talmadge. I think I recommended that he be sent to
Longview for further treatment."

"As a matter of fact you authorized his
release."

"You must be wrong about that. Talmadge had a
severe psychosis."

I let that much pass and asked him about Nurse Rita
Scarne. "Did she work with Talmadge while you were treating
him?"

"Yes. She worked with all the patients on the
ward."

"Would she have participated in interviews or
tests?"

"Probably. I really don't recall."

"She had no special relationship with Talmadge?"

"Not that I knew of. Anything e1se?"

"No," I said, letting the disappointment
sour my voice. The man hung up as if he couldn't care less about my
disappointments.

I'd accomplished next to nothing with the phone
calls, except for worming Rita's old addresses out of Nurse Rostow.
And that was a long shot. But it was the best shot I had at the
moment. So I got back in the car and headed for 234 Terrace
Avenue—looking to find somebody who'd lived there a long while,
someone who was a bit of a gossip and a bit of a snoop. Someone who
might have seen young, round-heels Rita with a solemn, ferret-faced
black man with a terrible kink in his psyche.

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Terrace Avenue was a short, narrow side street off
Clifton Avenue, full of old yellow-brick apartment houses and
red-brick duplexes. Like most of the side streets in that
neighborhood it was sedate, proper, and a little decrepid looking—a
home for students who could afford high rents and for older couples
who couldn't. Two thirty-four was the first duplex on the south side
of the street, a two-story bungalow with a bricked-in front porch and
a cracked driveway on its side. A fat old man with a square-jawed
face and short iron-grey hair was sitting in a rusty lawnchair in the
partial shade of the porch overhang. He was wearing a lumberjack
shirt, chinos, and a Reds baseball cap. The setting sun lit his face
from below like a monument.

"Howdy," I said as I came up the walk. "You
know the owner of this place?"

The man nodded. "Sure do. I'm the owner. Owned
it for the last twenty-three years. Why? You looking to rent?"

"No, I'm trying to find an old friend of mine
who used to live here."

"Now who would that be?"

"A nurse named Rita Scarne."

The man laughed hoarsely, falling forward over his
gut and grasping his legs as if that was a real knee-slapper. I
laughed, too, to make him feel at home.

"Christ, son, where've you been?" he said,
still laughing.

"That girl, Rita, hasn't lived here since . . .
oh, hell, must've been '76 or '77."

"I moved out of town," I told him. This was
the last place she lived before I went away. I sure would like to
find her."

"Rita was a hot ticket, all right. She and her
roommate. You know them nurses—had men coming and going."

He waved his right hand as if he'd burned it on Rita
Scarne's ass. It wouldn't have surprised me if he had. Up close he
was a bit disreputable-looking. Shirt misbuttoned, salt-and-pepper
beard on his chin, a nose that was a little too red even for that
kind of weather.

"Couldn't begin to count the visitors Rita had,"
he said, rubbing it in.

"Guess I was just one of a crowd."

"You were, son."

"Come to think of it, I do remember one other
guy that Rita ran with. I think his name was Talmadge, Herb Talmadge.
Feisty little black fella with a goatee?"

The man shook his head decisively. "Nope. No
niggers. Not in this house."

"
Maybe I got it confused."

"Most like."

He stared at me suspiciously, as if I was that odd
breed of animal—a white man who palled with blacks. Or maybe he was
wondering whether Rita had actually pirated a black man into the
house, like a puppy or a hot plate.

"Well, I don't know where the girl's gone to,"
he said, still eyeing me. "Christ, we must have rented that
upstairs apartment ten or fifteen times since then. Me and the
missus."

The man nodded at the stout, iron-bound door to the
house as if it were a portrait of the wife. He raised up and sat down
again like an automatic pin-setter. I assumed that was my cue to
leave.

"You know I'd completely forgotten Rita had a
roommate," I said, trying a new tack.

"How could you forget that one?" He pursed
his thin lips and made a silent whistle. "Man, she was pretty.
Only lived here a few months, back in '75. But I never forgot her."

"You don't remember her name do you?"

"Carla Chaney," he said nostalgically. "She
wasn't real fast or flashy like Rita. But she was a beauty. She and
Rita were both beauties."

"You don't know where Carla went, do you? Maybe
I could get in touch with Rita through her."

The man lifted his cap and raked his hair with the
tips of his lingers. "I think she moved back to A1buquerque,"
he said, pulling the hat back down over his forehead smartly.
"Leastways that's where she was from. Albuquerque, New Mexico."

I thanked the man and started back to the street.
About halfway down the walk I looked back at him and said, "You
know I think I remember Carla after all. She was a blond girl, wasn't
she?"

"Blond and
blue-eyed," the man called out. "Just like Rita."

* * *

I drove half a block to a Steak N' Egg on Clifton and
phoned Albuquerque information from a booth in the corner. They had
no listing for a Carla Chaney. But there was a listing for a Nola
Chaney on Mesa Drive. I dialed it and had to wait ten rings before a
woman answered. It was hard to tell over the phone, but she sounded
drunk. Her voice was slurred and brassy, like a muted horn.

"Yes? What is it?" she said irritably.

"Mrs. Chaney?"

"Yeah. This is Nola Chaney."

"I'm an old friend of Carla's, Mrs. Chaney,
calling from Cincinnati, Ohio. I've been trying to get in touch with
Carla, but I don't know where she's living now. I was hoping you
could tell me."

I The woman laughed bitterly. "That's a rich
one." She laughed again, stretching it out for effect. "Mister,
I haven't seen Carla in sixteen years."

"
You haven't seen her since l973?"

"How about that?" Nola Chaney said as if it
was even more preposterous when I said it. "Hasn't even called
me on the phone. Her own mother. Her own flesh and blood."

"She was doing some nursing the last time I saw
her."

"Well, I wouldn't know about that," the
woman said.

"Carla was a smart girl-maybe she did become a
nurse. I always thought she'd end up in L.A. Become a model or
something. Had her take tap lessons and elocution and everything."

The woman sighed heavily.

"But she pissed it away getting married so
young. Just like me. I fell for a no-good one when I was no more than
seventeen. Carla saw what happened. Lord knows, she saw what happened
when a girl makes that kind of mistake. So what does she go and do
when she's just barely out of high school? Runs off with another
pissant son of a bitch no better than her dad Paul was. Not a dime in
his pocket. Mean as a snake. But Bobby had the looks all right—and
I guess that's all that counts when you're young."

"I didn't realize Carla was married."

"Might not be anymore, if I know my own blood."

"Her husband's name was Bobby?"

"
Bobby Tallwood. Airman at the air force base
out here."

The woman's brassy voice mellowed slightly, as if she
was reliving the distant past. "She and Bobby lived in a nice
little house out near the base for a couple, three years. Had a kid
named Joey. Cute little kid. Bobby didn't treat him right though, and
I told him so. Hell, when he got drunk Bob was just as mean as
Paul—always used his fists, you know? Don't know how many times
Carla come running on home with the baby after Bobby gone on a
rampage. But she always went back to him after a day or two. When
you're getting it that good, I guess you go back no matter what.
Anyway Bobby got transferred to Wright-Patterson in Dayton in '73.
Moved down there to Ohio. And that's the last goddamn thing I heard
from either one of them."

"Maybe I'll try up in Dayton," I said.
"Could be she's still living there?"

"If you find her let me know, huh?"

But she'd hung before I
could say that I would.

* * *

I called Dayton information, asked for listings for
Bobby Tallwood or Carla Chaney, and drew a blank. I tried Cincinnati
information on the same two names and didn't do any better. Wherever
Carla Chaney was, it didn't look as if I was going to find her
easily.

It was close to six when I got off the phone. I
hadn't touched base with Louise Pearson in several hours, so I
decided to drive to the hospital before going home. In the back of my
mind I was thinking that Shelley Sacks might still be in the Bethesda
emergency room. Since the Scarne woman had admitted to looking after
Estelle Pearson in 1976, Sacks would certainly have known her at that
time. And there was an off chance that Louise knew something
about her too.

I knew it was a terrible day for the Pearsons family
and friends—and I hated to pester them with questions. But until I
was certain that Kirsty was dead was going to continue to track her.
Even if she was dead in the river I knew I'd stay with it. I owed the
girl that chance.

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It was almost six when I pulled into the Bethesda
North lot. By then the sun was setting in earnest in high bands of
color across the western sky. It made me think of the sunrise that
morning, hours earlier. Of the cold desolate clearing with the river
running beneath it. They'd been dragging that river all day—Parker
and his men—looking to catch something paler than fish belly,
puffed up like risen dough.