Second Chance (24 page)

He opened the door then looked back over his
shoulder.

"You know those papers in the fireplace?
Forensic says they could be pages from a diary. Some kind of
manuscript, anyway. Does that ring any bells for you?"

"The Pearson girl was writing a book about her
life. She was looking for an ending."

"Well, she found one," he said as he went
out the door.

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I spent a few more minutes talking to Foster before
going home. He knew the case wasn't as cut-and-dry as Parker wanted
it to be. But he also knew that most of the questions I'd raised
would never be answered. There was no one left to answer them.

"Thirteen years is a long time, Harry," he
said. "There are bound to be loose ends when a thing stretches
back that far. Parker's got to make a case for the coroner's jury.
And there's enough circumstantial evidence to do that."

"It isn't right, Al," I said, shaking my
head.

"
Maybe not. But unless you come up with
something more than hearsay or a hunch, I'm going to have to stick
with Park."

"Do me one favor, will you? Just run the Chaney
girl through CID. Okay? Carla Chaney." I gave him her old
addresses on Minton Street in Dayton and on Terrace in Cincinnati.
"See if you come up with anything."

Al sighed. "Like what?"

"I'd settle for a current address"

He wrote down the girl's name, then got up and went
to the door. "You better start resigning yourself to the fact
that the Pearson case is history. Or you're going to end up wasting a
lot of your time—and mine."
 

I should have phoned Louise Pearson as soon as I got
back to the apartment. But I was too depressed to make the call.
Larry Parker had been right about one thing. If I'd told the cops
about Rita Scarne, she'd have been in custody at that moment. Instead
I'd played it as if it was my case—mine alone. And now Rita was
dead. And whatever she had known had died with her.

I lay down on the bed and
eventually fell asleep. But it was troubled sleep—full of my own
guilt and other people's deaths. The woman in the car with her head
split apart. The grey Plymouth with the dark river below it, making a
roar like traffic. Kirsten's book, turning fat and black in the
fireplace. Talmadge, leaking blood on a battered kitchen floor. A
world without second chances.

* * *

The alarm woke me around eleven that Wednesday
morning. There was sun outside and cold blue sky. I sat in bed for a
while, letting the dreams clear out of my head. Dragging myself into
the kitchen I fixed coffee, pouring a little Scotch in the cup to
brace myself for what lay ahead.

Officially the Pearson case was almost over for
everyone but me and the Pearsons. However many of them were left
alive on that winter morning.

I took a hot shower, shaved, dressed, and managed to
make it out of the apartment and into the car by noon. Phil Pearson
would be coming out of surgery about the time I got to Bethesda
North, if he'd survived the bypass. With what I had to say it might
have been better for him if he didn't survive.

I got to the hospital at twelve-thirty. The woman at
the reception desk on the Erst floor told me that Pearson, P. was in
ICU recovery. His condition was critical.

I took the elevator up to the top floor and followed
arrows to ICU. The Pearsons, wife and mother, were sitting in a
waiting room outside the recovery room door. Pale sunlight coming
through the plate·glass window cut across their feet and climbed the
far wall, turning it brilliant white. The air was still and cool and
full of that quiet that isn't really quiet, just a holding of breath.
I felt like holding my breath, too.

The mother saw me first. She had been crying, and
powder had run down her cheeks like salt tears.

"
Louise," she said in a deadened voice.

Louise leaned forward in the chair, and her face came
into the sun. Like the mother, she looked haggard and sick with
waiting.

"Hello, Harry," she said.

"Hello, Louise."

Louise glanced at Cora Pearson then stood up slowly,
as if she didn't want to alarm the older woman with sudden movements.
She came over to me and took my hands in hers.

"I'm very glad you're here," she said with
feeling.

"How is he?"

She shook her head. "We don't know. He just came
out of surgery twenty minutes ago. Five hours. That's how long it's
been."

"Wasn't anyone else here with you?"

"Shelley. He had an emergency a few hours ago.
He said he'd be back as soon as he could." She forced a smile.
"Now you're here."

l ducked my head. "I have something to tell
you."

"Is it about the kids?"

I nodded.

Louise looked back over her shoulder at Cora.
"Mother, I'm going to go talk with Mr. Stoner. I'll be right
back."

The older woman didn't move—she didn't hear Louise.
All her energies were concentrated on the door to ICU Recovery.

We went down the hall to another empty waiting room.
Louise closed the door behind us. Taking my hands in hers she drew me
close and laid her head wearily on my shoulder. Outside in the
corridor an elevator bell went off melodiously, like a shipboard
gong.

"Are you going to be okay?" I asked her.

"I guess I am," Louise said, almost as if
it surprised her. "Yes, I am. At least, for now. What is it you
want to tell me?"

"It isn't good, Louise. Are you up to it?"

Her face went white. "They found the children's
bodies," she said, pulling away from me.

"Not yet. But you better brace yourself for it
eventually. Rita Scarne committed suicide last night and left a note
implying that Kirsty and Ethan were dead. Murdered by Talmadge."

Louise's eyes filled with tears. "I expected
it," she said, fighting to control her voice. "I guess we
all did. That's why Phil's lying in there now."

She went over to a chair and sat down heavily. For a
while she simply stared at the stippled wall.

"How did Rita know they were dead?" she
asked after a time.

I explained the whole thing—at least as much of it
as I could explain. I saved the part about Rita, Talmadge, and
Estelle's death for last. When I told her what I suspected, her face
filled with shocked surprise.

"You mean Ethan was right? Stelle really was
murdered?"

"I don't know for sure. But there is that
possibility. There's something else, too. The cops don't seem to care
about it but I do."

"Go on."

"Thirteen years ago Rita Scarne was paid a good
deal of money. The cops think it was for a drug sale. But I don't. I
think it was connected to someone's death, quite possibly Estelle's."

"Why do you say that?" Louise asked. "Why
would someone pay Rita off for what Herbert Talmadge did in a drugged
fit?"

"Someone may have wanted to keep the whole thing
quiet. To keep what had really happened a secret."

"You're not serious?"

"I'm very serious."

She laughed nervously. "But that's crazy. I mean
you sound like Ethan—that's how crazy it is."

When I didn't laugh, she stared at me incredulously.
"Even if this was true, who would want to do such a thing? I
mean who would profit by it?"

It was something I hadn't wanted to think about,
especially that morning. But there was one obvious candidate—a man
who had already showed me how readily ashamed he was of his children
and his past.

Louise caught what I was thinking, and her eyes went
dead. "You're not suggesting that Phil . . . ?"

"It's possible," I said uneasily. "I
have a hunch he kept Ethan's testimony about Talmadge out of the
police report. It's possible that he paid Rita to shut up, too."

"
To cover up murder?" Louise shook her
head, no. "It's true that he wanted Estelle out of his life.
After all those years of hell he wanted to be done with her and start
fresh. But he didn't connive at her death, if that's what you're
saying. My God, all he had to do was divorce Stelle to be rid of her.
In fact, that's precisely what he intended to do at the end of the
year."

I sighed. "Well, someone died because of that
money. At least that's what Rita told her sister. And I'll tell you
something else—Rita acted as if there was another person involved,
somebody who was capable of killing." I stared at Louise for a
moment. "The name Carla Chaney has popped up a couple of times.
Does it ring any bells for you?"

"I've never heard of her. Who is she?"

"A nurse, a friend of Rita Scarne and Herbert
Talmadge. She might be dead, too, as a result of this thing. If not,
she's probably the one person left who can unravel it."

Louise stared at me thoughtfully. "The police
are going to try to find her?"

"I'm going to find her," I said. "The
police think the case is closed."

"Perhaps it should be closed. So much death."
She glanced toward the door. "Even Phil. He's going to die—I
know it in my gut."

"He may survive."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I
know he won't. I've simply got to prepare myself for it. For all of
this."

Someone knocked on the door. Louise straightened up
quickly. I straightened up, too. It was Saul Lasker, he of the
Porsche and the mansion house and the fixed, paltry smile. He was
still smiling when I opened the door, although his grin wavered for a
second when he saw me and Louise, as if the current that ran it had
momentarily failed.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I," he
said with a smooth sort of nastiness.

"
No, Saul," Louise said flatly. "When
did you get here?"

"
A few minutes ago. I was talking with Cora when
the nurse came out of ICU. There's news about Phil." He put the
smile away and put on the deeply earnest number. "The surgeon
wants to talk to you."
 
Louise
looked at me. For just a second her face trembled with fear.

"Do you want me to come with you?" I said
to her. She shook her head, no. "I've come this far alone. I'll
see it through."

She put her hands to her face as if she was gathering
her strength, then dropped them to her sides.

"
I'll be there in a second," she said to
Lasker.

He nodded and walked oil down the hall.

Louise came over to me and put a hand to my cheek.

"
You'll call me tonight?"

I didn't have to think about it. "Yes."

She started for the door,
then looked back over her shoulder. "Let the police handle this
from now on, Harry. There's been too much death. Stirring things up
won't bring Kirsty back to life. Or Ethan. It won't change any of it.
From what you've told me, it was too late to change anything, anyway.
Too late by thirteen years."

* * *

I went back to the office and just sat behind the
desk for a while, staring out the frosty window at the sunlit city
and the cold blue December sky. There were things I could have
done—calls I could have made to jog the cops. Instead I sat there
waiting, as if I were still sitting in that mulled hospital room.
Around one-thirty Lasker phoned to tell me that Phil Pearson had died
in recovery.

"Louise asked me to call," he said.

"
How's she taking it?"

"She's fine. It's Cora we're worried about . . .
she collapsed when she heard about Phil. They have her in ECU right
now."

"Christ", I said.

"They're doing everything they can," he
said lamely. "I'll call again if there's any further news."

I hung up the phone and stared stupidly at the
desktop. The whole Pearson family was dying or dead. Something out of
the past had risen up and killed them, and I hadn't been able to do a
thing to stop it. All I'd done was make mistakes.

It was the girl that bothered me most. I'd had a
chance with Kirsty—if I'd stayed in Marnee's apartment for a few
minutes longer, or come back a few minutes earlier, or found that
Evanston motel sooner in the day. But she and her brother had managed
to keep a few ticks ahead of me, as if they were operating on a
different kind of time than I was—a ruthless, malevolent kind of
time. A time with murder in its heart. And now there weren't going to
be any second chances for her.

Something was very wrong. I knew it in my gut. Taking
Parker's case against Rita as gospel it had all been accident,
coincidence, mad, vengeful error. Kirsten Pearson had died because
Talmadge had impulsively murdered her mother, because Rita Scarne had
hidden a guilty secret rather than go to the cops, because Ethan had
seen something that no one believed, because thirteen years later all
four of them had collided again like a car wreck, with Kirsten riding
in the backseat.