Time's Witness (61 page)

I asked him if he meant he was quitting. He glanced around the large somber room, then finally he shrugged. “Maybe I won’t have a choice.” The buzzer sounded again. So I stood up while I said, “Are you saying you’ll back me if I use what you’ve given me?”

He told the voice nagging him on the intercom to hold off the chaplain and send in the parole board member. Then he pointed at the photo of Governor Wollston on the wall. “Bob Wollston gave me this job.” His lips thinned to a gray line. “Yeah. I’ll repeat what I told you if you need me to.”

“You know what I think now, Zack? I think Bobby Pym and Winston were
sent
to Smoke's that night to kill George.”

He rubbed the ugly face burn. “I never go into a man's personal case, unless he brings it to me, and George Hall never did. How much he was mixed in with, or knew about, what those rotten cops of yours were up to, or your city comptroller and his buddies were up to—well, I don’t know the answer. My business was, the State convicted and sentenced George. My business was, carry out the sentence for the State.” The warden's pale blue eyes had a puzzled grief in them, as he turned to face me. “But if there's no such thing as the ‘State’ that's better than you and me and Bob Wollston, then…what in God's heaven am I killing this poor dumb boy Joe Bonder for?”

As planned, Justin had met Purley at Catawba Mall, where he’d found him huddled on a bench by the “rainbow fountain,” looking as filthy, scrawny, and sick as the Raleigh waitress had portrayed him. He was almost dead from pneumonia. His skin was papery and bright hot, his breath ragged, and he was shaking so badly Justin had to get help walking him to the car. Purley passed out before he could be raced to University Hospital, but not before telling at least some of his “side of the story,” in what Justin described as nonstop delirious self-pity, the theme of which was that Winston Russell was crazy. That he used to look up to Winston, but now he knew: Winston was crazy. That Winston had put him through hell, running and hiding, hiding and running. Thanks to the newspapers and TV, the police were looking for them even in Georgia and Alabama. Winston wouldn’t let them stay in motels or buy groceries or even drive into towns. He stole them cars and food in out-of-the-way places. He made them hole up in three different abandoned cabins in wilderness areas, the last one in a national forest near Pisgah in the Appalachian Mountains. There, a hiker had stumbled on their camp, and Winston had
shot him and buried him.
He was crazy. Purley had tried to run away that night, but Winston had beaten him up. Winston was the meanest man that ever lived; he didn’t care that Purley was hungry and sick and scared out of his mind. He took all Purley's money. He told Purley he’d blow him away if he tried to turn himself in, just like he’d blown away Willie Slidell. Winston didn’t care about anything. He didn’t care that Purley kept getting sicker and sicker. He didn’t even care that Otis had killed himself; when they’d read the news, he’d called Otis a “chickenshit.” Winston had abandoned Purley weak and helpless in the cabin one day, barring the door while he drove off to steal food. He never thought Purley would be strong enough, with his high fever, to break through a window, or tough enough to walk thirty miles out of the mountainous forest, or smart enough to find his way to a road. But Purley had showed him, hadn’t he? And Purley was going to
talk
, because none of it was his fault, and nobody had told him it would be this bad, and all he’d done was go along, and he was just tired, too tired to run anymore, and Winston was crazy.

Standing by the foot of the bed in the intensive care unit at
University Hospital, I whispered to Justin, “Okay, go on.” We’d agreed that I’d keep out of the interrogation, because of Purley's strong (and reciprocated) feelings about me. Except it was (almost) hard to despise the jerk as he lay there, flushed, pupils shrunk to scared dots, the once pink beefy limbs now lank and gray, tubes in his arms and his nose. Pulling a chair up close, Justin punched on his tape cassette as he crooned, “Purley? You tell me if I’ve got it right.” There was a nod that didn’t lift the head from the pillow. Justin gave him a friendly pat, as he said, “Okay. Winston shot Cooper Hall. You weren’t there. He told you he’d done it. Right?”

Purley tried to wet his lips so he could speak; his voice sounded like someone talking long distance. “Willie Slidell told me. Willie was driving.”

Justin nodded. “Now back up a second. You’d followed Andrew Brookside to Lake Road Airport; you were keeping tabs on him for Otis. And when you saw Brookside meet up with Cooper Hall, you called Otis right away because you figured—”

With weary impatience, Purley interrupted in a low hurried voice. “I didn’t figure nothing. I told Otis I saw them, and he called up the farm, and talked to Winston. Winston comes and
says
Otis told him, ‘Take Hall out right now.’”

Justin nodded. “Now, you said in the car that Cooper Hall had phoned Otis early that morning and told him he’d found out about this videotape of Andrew Brookside. That he claimed he’d seen a copy. And that he also had information about Lewis's past affiliations that the press would be interested in. That he wanted Otis to set up a meeting with Lewis. Is that right?”

I looked over at Justin, surprised. So Cooper Hall had been going for a double squeeze, leaning on the left
and
the right, on the Brookside crew and the Lewis crew both, to grab as many guarantees for his people as he could. Christ, the man had the tactics of a ward boss and the guts of a saint.

Justin went on. “Otis was scared that Hall was really working for Brookside. Scared he’d gotten to somebody inside your group. Scared maybe somebody was leaking him stuff.”

“Winston
said
Otis was scared. Give me some water, Say-ville. I’m burning up….”

When Justin took the paper cup away, Purley weakly spread the spilled water from his lips up over his flushed cheeks. “Listen, Otis never gave any go-ahead to get rid of Hall. He never said it to
me
, and I was his
brother.
And Willie didn’t know about it neither. Willie fucking freaked when Winston shot Hall. He thought they were just tailing Hall. He tells me Winston just yells, ‘PASS HIM!,’ then he plugs Hall right out the window. Winston is crazy, Say-ville.”

“That's right, you’re right. Just lie back.” Justin got Purley's head back down on the pillow. “But Winston hated Cooper Hall, didn’t he, like you told me in the car? I mean, Cooper's brother had killed Bobby Pym, and Bobby was Winston's partner.”

Shaking his head, Purley mumbled, “I guess. I don’t know. Everything got messed up. It was the money. You know, in Raleigh? Somebody’d got it.”

Justin said, yes, we knew that. “So when Winston got out of Dollard, he went to check the locker at the bus station. Bobby had had the key to the locker in his wallet and Winston had never been able to track it down.”

“Winston went straight to Lana—”

“Did he think Bobby's widow was holding out on him? Did he think
she
had the money?”

Purley's breath was getting shallow, broken by a hacking gasp. “At first.…But he was paying a guy in baggage at the bus station. To, you know, watch the locker for him. And…this baggage guy calls Winston at the farm…says this little bum that's been around a lot— we find out it's a guy named Gilchrist—that he's just come back, opening up the locker for…Hall. Winston
freaked.
”

“How did this baggage man know it was Cooper Hall?”

“Recognized him.…Seen him on TV.…So I bust into Hall's Subaru while he's up in the plane, and there's Bobby's locker bag in there okay, but it's empty.” Newsome was wheezing pretty badly.

“And before you left the airport you gave that suitcase to Winston, and he destroyed it, right? And you had also checked Hall's car for a copy of the videotape but didn’t find it?” There was a weak nod from Newsome. “Purley? Come on, Purley. Tell me about the Brookside videotape. After Winston killed Slidell, you
two couldn’t find the original of the tape either, is that right?”

“Couldn’t find tape.…Willie hid it. Wouldn’t tell. Wanted to turn us in. I said, ‘Don’t kill him, Winston. Don’t.’”

“Did
Otis
have a copy of the video?”

“Don’t know. Leave me ’lone.” Purley's big head turned fretfully side to side, as he gasped, “Can’t breathe…can’t breathe….”

Justin turned off the tape and left to find a doctor.

“Newsome's not going to die, is he?” I asked this question half an hour later of a young doctor who gave me a skeptical look, as if she suspected a lack of sympathy in my interest. I returned the look. We stood out in the hall, leaning against the I.C.U. desk. I said, “If his condition is critical, we’re going back in there right now with the tape recorder.”

“No, you’re not.” This young woman came up to about my waist, the sleeves of her white jacket drooped over her knuckles, and she actually still wore braces on her teeth, but she had the self-assurance of Attila the Hun. “No one's going in there. Mr. Newsome's temperature's one hundred and three point two, he's on oxygen now, his condition's unstable and quite serious.” Folding her arms around her clipboard, she added, “He is not, however, going to die.”

I asked her if she were
sure
, and she said that all she was sure of was that no more policemen were going inside the I.C.U. today.

I said, “Tomorrow?”

She said, “Tomorrow is conceivable.”

I gave her a sigh. “Doc, all of civilization's been based on that very same assumption.”

“Then why shouldn’t it satisfy you, Captain Mangum?”

“Why?” I tapped the tiny portable TV on the desk, where Channel 7 was hyping the news. “Because history's just one big old messy junkyard of inconceivable civilizations.” Noticing she had an Andrew Brookside button on her jacket collar, I pointed at it, and added, “And their conceivers.” Maybe we could have gone on shooting the philosophic breeze this way, but suddenly a male nurse burst through the unit's double doors behind us, and yelled at her, “Doctor! Got a cardiac arrest!” Pushing past me, the tiny doctor took off like a sprinter. Seated by the doors, where he’d be keeping
guard all night, Wes Pendergraph had to jerk his legs out of her path.

I said, “Well, hell,” to Justin, who was squatting against the wall looking miserable. “Okay, let's go on downtown. Try here again later. So where's that damn original videotape?”

No response.

I tried again. “You know, I think it's kind of sweet how old dick-head Purley doesn’t believe Otis called the shot on getting rid of Cooper. But you can bet your Reeboks Otis
did
call it. Winston is crazy, but he's not dumb. He wouldn’t have killed Coop to spite George unless he
knew
George had fingered him, and he wouldn’t have blown away what might have been a lead to the money just for kicks. And most of all, he wouldn’t have done it with Slidell sitting right next to him, not unless they were both already on the same payroll. Right, General Lee?”

Justin still didn’t answer, and I nudged his leather sneaker. “Come on, perk up! Purley's given us a direct link to Otis and his political pals. And Carpenter's visitors’ log corroborates. Plus, we know Winston's vowed to kill me and Purley both, and me and Purley both are right here in Hillston. And I’ll bet you my photo-mural of Cape Hatteras, Winston's pissed enough to come here gunning for us. That's when we’ll get him.”

Justin nodded without much interest; he didn’t even bother reminding me how much he hated my photo-mural, or predicting that Russell would gun me down before we got him. As we left the hospital (walking under a painting of Justin's dad in the entrance lounge), I tried talking about the Hall trial. Did Isaac Rosethorn really have the chutzpah to make a case that George had never run stolen goods for the Pym/ Russell crew at all? And if so, was he going to keep George off the stand, so Mitch wouldn’t get a shot at him?

Justin just mumbled a few I don’t know's, and got in my car. Driving downtown, I pointed cheerfully at the stone side wall of the Hillston Playhouse, now lavender with wisteria vines. “Yeah, it's pretty,” he said without looking.

“My my, your sprezzatura's got a sag in it, son. Why, things are finally looking good for our side. Now I want you to get in touch with Boone, help them find that cabin, and dig up that poor
camper's body.”

“All right.”

“What's the matter with you?”

He shrugged, shaking his head. I gave up. I figured he’d been upset by memories of University Hospital, which Justin's father had not only run, but died in. Not to mention the man had had a heart attack while in a car accident with Justin drunk at the wheel. Then, a few years back, Justin himself had lain for months in the same hospital, getting over a bullet that took off a bit of his skull. All in all, just being there was probably enough to cause the sunk look on his face.

But, as he finally decided to tell me, turns out that U.H. wasn’t the problem, neither was Purley, and neither were the two other homicides he was investigating now. He was “upset about what happened to Alice.”

My whole body went cold as sleet, and staring at him, I missed the turn off Haver onto Main. “Oh God, no,” Justin explained fast. “She's fine, the baby's fine—we just had sonar. No, no, it's nothing
that
bad. It's Brookside. She met with him late yesterday.” Justin's
jaw set tight. “He's decided to go with Harold DeWitt for lieutenant governor instead of her.”