Strangers (25 page)

It had all come too fast; the feeling I had was like that of being subjected to a low-voltage electric shock. I believed it now. Some things people tell you have an unassailable veracity; you can't refute them, and if you try, you end up deluding yourself.

“You been here, what, four or five days now,” Hatcher said. “Nobody told you about her in all that time?”

“No, nobody told me.”

“She never made a pass at you?”

“No, she didn't.”

“Come on. Anything in pants, and you came running when she called you.”

“No pass,” I said. “I told you before how things were between Cheryl and me. They haven't changed.”

“Well, maybe she decided to be good with you for old time's sake. Or she figured you're too old, too married.”

No offense intended in the words, and none taken; Hatcher and I were beyond that. I said, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why does she do it? Why a string of one-night stands instead of a relationship with a man who loves her?”

Hatcher's mouth pulled tight and crooked. “Ask her.”

“I'm asking you. Four years, you said. Since she became a widow?”

“Yeah. Since Glen died.”

Something in the way he said that made me ask, “Why won't she have anything to do with you? Because you're his brother?”

“You really want to know?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then I might as well tell you.” Bitterness soaked those words, and the ones that followed. “It wasn't always this way between us. Not always. Glen worked long hours, left her alone a lot. She got so she needed somebody, and not just anybody back then. She knew how I felt about her.”

“You had an affair with her? While he was still alive?”

“Three months. First time she cheated on him, swore it and I believed her. I didn't want it to happen. My brother's wife. But I couldn't help myself and neither could she. Don't think it was cheap, a fling, because it wasn't. I loved her more than Glen did—loved her from the first time I saw her. She loved me, too, once we started.”

“Then why won't she have anything to do with you now?”

“Because,” Hatcher said, “we were together, here in my bed together, the night Glen had his heart attack and died.”

*   *   *

I sat in my car, still parked in front of Hatcher's house, my hands gripping the steering wheel. He was gone, on his way to the hospital. He couldn't stay away from her, especially now when she'd been hurt and might conceivably need him again. Not much chance of it, but vestiges of hope still lived in him. And likely always would.

I kept trying to come to terms with Cheryl's promiscuity. After her first husband's betrayal, I would not have thought her capable of similar behavior. Twenty years ago she probably hadn't been. But adversity changes people, sometimes in dark ways, and she'd been through so much of it—her brother's crimes and suicide, the unsatisfactory second marriage, her mediocre existence in this nowhere place, Glen Hatcher's sudden death and the circumstances of her affair with his brother. Cheryl Hatcher the middle-aged profligate widow was not Cheryl Rosmond the young cuckolded wife, at least not as I remembered her. Time changes your perception of others, too, especially old lovers; creates an idealized image, like the ones conjured up by the poor saps who watch movies and fall in love with actresses and think they know them through the roles they play. We'd had such a short time together in San Francisco that I hadn't really known her. No surprise, then, that I didn't know her at all now.

There'd been enough little things, hints from her and others in the past few days to indicate how much she'd changed, the woman she'd become, if I'd been in a frame of mind to connect those dots, too. Cheryl having no women friends after a dozen years in this town, and why locals were willing to vilify her along with her son. Felix taking it for granted the night of the fire that I was staying with her. Jimmy Oliver's mother righteously lumping her and Cody together as wicked sinners deserving of God's wrath. Hatcher wanting to know if she'd asked me to spend the night, warning me not to have sex with her, making other veiled allusions. The deputy, Evans, winking slyly at me Thursday afternoon when I mentioned Cheryl's name. The snotty comment Cody had made about her and me in the interrogation room yesterday.

And most suggestive of all, the portion of the argument between Hatcher and Cheryl that I'd overheard at her house.

Hatcher: “… Dammit, if you'd just give me a chance—”

Cheryl: “You know why I can't.”

Hatcher: “Four years, for God's sake. Four years! Why can't you get over it?”

Cheryl: “I can't, that's all. I can't.”

Hatcher: “So instead, you turn yourself into a—”

Cheryl: “Stop it! You're only making things worse.”

Hatcher: “What do you want me to do?”

Cheryl: “Nothing. Nothing. Just accept things the way they are and me the way I am.”

Puzzling then, perfectly clear now. The idealized image had rendered me deaf and blind. I would probably still be deaf and blind, and not so blissfully ignorant, if it weren't for what had happened to Cheryl this afternoon.

One of her pickups, Hatcher had said. Locals, strangers, didn't make any difference to her. But he'd also said she never brought any of them home, always did her trysting elsewhere. Why would she break that rule now, especially now with her son's future in jeopardy and me on the scene? Was she so sex-starved that she'd risk everything on a one-night stand in her own bed, even with somebody she knew?

Somebody she knew.

All-nighter Saturday? Sunday nooner? Unlikely in both cases.

There had to be another explanation.

Some other things crawled out of my memory then, more little hints—and one not so little.

That two-inch gash on Cheryl's cheek. A man's fist alone doesn't cause a wound like that. It takes a rough-edged object made of metal, stone, or both to do it.

Like a ring, a turquoise and silver ring.

 

25

I found him in his office.

Only it wasn't much of an office anymore. He'd wrecked it—systematically, from the looks of things, in an alcohol-driven, self-destructive frenzy. Desk, chairs, tables overturned, all the law books pulled off shelves and flung helter-skelter, a couple of framed pictures and his law degree torn down and smashed, papers strewn around over everything like sheets of dirty ice. But he hadn't been drunk enough or wild enough to put himself completely out of business. His computer, and his assistant's computer in the anteroom, appeared to have been left undamaged.

He was sitting in his chair in the midst of the wreckage, sweat slicking his pudgy face, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck and his bow tie askew and his jacket pulled down over one arm, a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam clutched to his pear-shaped middle. Staring off into space until he heard me come in. Then he blinked and peered up at me in a blearily owl-eyed way.

“I'm a goddamn disgrace,” he said.

“That's right,” I said. “To yourself, the legal profession, and human decency.”

“Guilty as charged.” He took a pull from the bottle. The turquoise and silver ring winked dully in the glare of the overhead lights. Crusted red flecks were visible on its surface; he hadn't bothered to clean it. Or to treat the scabbed marks on his red-furred knuckles. “You know what happened this afternoon,” he said then. “See it in your face.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Where's the sheriff? Expected him, not you.”

“He's busy. And the assault hasn't been reported yet.”

“Hasn't? Why not?”

“Cheryl was in no condition, and I haven't had the chance. I wanted a piece of you first, or thought I did.”

“Piece of me.” A laugh that wasn't a laugh. “Go ahead, I won't try to stop you. Quid pro quo.”

“No. I don't beat up worthless drunks, any more than I beat up defenseless women.”

His face screwed up as if he were about to burst into tears. But he hadn't quite reached that stage of self-pitying remorse yet. He said, more or less lucidly, “I didn't mean to hit her. Honest to God.”

“Then why the hell did you?”

“Shouldn't have happened. I'm not a violent man.”

“Yeah.”

“She didn't want to see me today, didn't want me coming to her house. But I couldn't stay away, I had to see her. Told her I had important news, only way she'd let me in.”

“You told her about Cody, all of it? After we agreed I would?”

“I thought … relieve her mind about the assaults. Good news better than the bad news, wasn't it? But she took it hard … took out her disappointment on me. Said she didn't want me anymore, she'd get herself a new lawyer, better lawyer. Tried to reason with her, but she wouldn't listen. Too upset, crying. I put my arms around her, tried to comfort her—that's all. Comfort her. But she thought I wanted…” Grimace. “Struggled, pulled away. Said, ‘Leave me alone, you fat pig' and slapped me. That's when I lost my temper. Fat pig. After all I did for her. Fat pig.”

All he'd done for her. Christ.

“Tore her cheek with your ring when you punched her,” I said. “Knocked her down and she banged her head. Then you just went away and left her there, hurt, bleeding. Hit and run.”

“Scared. I wasn't thinking straight. The blood, the way her eyes rolled up…” Parfrey shuddered, sucked at the bottle again. It was almost empty now. “I called for an ambulance,” he said then.

“Sure, after you got over your panic. That's a piss-poor defense, counselor.”

“I know it, you think I don't I know it? How is she? She'll be all right, won't she?”

“Pretty damn late to be asking about her welfare.”

“Please. How is she?”

“Concussion. Cuts and bruises. Might have a scar on her cheek where your ring sliced it open.”

“Oh, Lord, I never meant to hurt her. I only wanted her to … to…”

“To go on giving you what she was giving all those other men. That's it, isn't it, Parfrey?”

“… You know about that, too?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. I'd told him I didn't hit drunks, and that was right enough, but I had to resist an urge to yank him upright and spit in his face. “After her for a long time, weren't you? Kept going into the restaurant to see her, but she wouldn't give you a tumble.”

“Once she did. Once, a year ago. Incredible…”

“And you wanted more.”

“Yes. I wanted more.”

“So when she came to you about representing Cody, you didn't take her case pro bono. No, not you. You knew she'd do anything to help her son so you made a little deal with her. Sex in exchange for your legal services.”

“Fair exchange … seemed like it at the time. She couldn't afford to pay me, none of the other attorneys would help her. Quid pro quo.”

You miserable son of a bitch, I thought. Quid pro quo, my ass. Blackmail. Taking advantage of a mother's desperation, the worst kind of sexual harassment. That was what she was doing after work Wednesday night and Thursday night, why she'd been so late getting home—paying off her part of the bargain. The only difference between Parfrey and Rick Firestone was that his rapes were consensual.

“Know it was wrong,” he said, “but I couldn't help myself. Wasn't just sex. I cared for her, I still do—”

“Don't say it, Parfrey. Don't you dare tell me you love her.”

His face screwed up again, and this time the bloodshot eyes leaked wetness. He rocked back and forth making little blubbering noises. “I belong in jail. Take me to Felix, put me in jail.”

“I'm not taking you anywhere. If I had to look at you one more minute, I'd puke all over you.”

The blubbering noises followed me out and down the stairs. I didn't feel steady again until I was outside in the cold gray rain.

*   *   *

Sheriff Felix was back from Lost Horse and working in his office. I told him what had happened to Cheryl and why, and where I'd left Parfrey, and he said he'd take care of it. Poker-faced as usual; the incident and its underlying motives seemed in no discernible way to stir him. I asked him about the wounded deputy: condition stable, the shoulder damage relatively minor, full recovery expected. As for Max Stendreyer, all Felix would say was that enough evidence had been found at Stendreyer's trailer to link him to the robberies and to Rick Firestone and Firestone's murder. That was enough for me; I didn't ask for details.

The exchange took less than ten minutes. At the end of it he said, “Hell of a long, rough day for both of us.”

“Make that a long, rough week.”

“You must be anxious to head home. You're free to leave any time. There'll be some paperwork for you to sign, a deposition at some point, but that can be done long distance. We know where to find you.”

Felix and I shook hands, solemnly, and that was the end of that. Nothing else to say to each other, not even good-bye.

Too much had happened, and mutual respect only goes so far. He was done with me and I was done with him.

*   *   *

At the hospital they wouldn't give me a report on Cheryl's condition. All they'd say was that she was being kept overnight for observation and tests and could not have visitors until morning. That was all right; it was too late for me to get on the road tonight, and I wouldn't have left this soon anyway because I was very tired and the rain was coming down hard again. Still, I would have preferred to get the one last session with her over and done with tonight, rather than have to stew about it another twelve to fourteen hours.

I took another shower when I got to the motel, a long, hot one. But it did not make me feel any cleaner.