Margaret Maron - The Right Jack

"I'll be right there." She paused in the doorway of the study. "John's last notes are there on the tape recorder, Lieuten

– Sigrid. You might want to listen to them. Feel free to poke around in his desk, too. Maybe you'll see something I've missed. Oscar, don't you want something to eat or drink? People brought so much food. And wine. I won't have to buy any rosé or Chablis for a year," she said wanly. "Or there's coffee."

"Go kiss your kids goodnight," ordered Nauman gently. "We can fend for ourselves."

When she had gone, he asked Sigrid if she wanted anything. "Coffee would be good," she said and circled the desk to push the tape recorder's play button.

John Sutton had possessed a pleasant baritone voice and an easy style of delivery that helped explain why he'd been such a popular teacher. On this tape he'd been enthusiastic, factual, and confidential all at once, with touches of humor or self-deprecation to lighten the heavy spots. Although older and presumably wiser, he didn't belittle the idealism of the late sixties and early seventies. He could acknowledge its weaknesses, but he had also been superb at communicating the excitemento f the times, the almost tribal closeness and heady optimism of kids who believed they could change things for the better, could make a difference, could replace guns with flowers and politicians with statesmen.

As the tape unwound, Sigrid studied the collage behind John Sutton's desk. It was like a multilayered scrapbook. Among the things that caught her eye were several old Doonesbury cartoons, a copy of the famous Kent State photograph, a banner headline NIXON RESIGNS!, and, over on the edge, a simple white button inscribed Imagine … 1940 – 1980 .

Sigrid turned from the collage feeling depressed. Her arm hurt, she was tired, and she wished that the year wasn't heading into winter. Just then Nauman came through the door bearing a tray with cups of steaming coffee and wedges of warm apple pie beneath melted cheddar. "Room service," he smiled at her.

On the tape, John Sutton orally reminded himself, 'Check with Sam and Letty. Find out if anybody ever really saw Fred Hamilton or the Farr girl after Red Snow blew themselves up.'

FRED HAMILTON and the Farr girl?" Sigrid asked. "Brooks Ann Farr," said Val Sutton, who had returned from settling her children for the night and now nursed a hot cup of milky tea. Sigrid sat with her note pad balanced on the arm of the deep leather chair across from Val's.

"Her family was supposed to be quite wealthy," said Val. "I remember hearing that Brooks Ann went to a prep school in Switzerland and that she'd been accepted at Vassar and Wellesley both, but she'd fought with her parents and decided to go to McClellan to spite them."

"What was she like?"

"A nebbish." Val shrugged. "Bright enough, I suppose, but mostly average: average height, a little on the heavy side, mousy brown hair, round face that usually had a sour look on it. She was always finding fault with everything and everybody.

"Except Fred. Fred Hamilton walked on water. She was an absolute doormat for that man. Half the things Fred got credit for. Brooks Ann did. He'd be mouthing off, throwing out all these theories about what SDS should be doing, and the next day she'd have mimeographed a stack of position papers based on what he'd spouted the night before.

"I doubt Fred gave a damn about her, but he was a user and he certainly used her. John said she used to cash the monthly allowance check her parents sent and give it all to Fred. I was in a drugstore once and saw her steal a box of tampons because she didn't have enough money to buy them. John used to spend time with her. I think he felt sorry for her because she was so crazy about Fred and Fred was always quoting Ben Franklin behind her back."

" Reasons for Preferring an Elderly Mistress ?" asked Oscar.

"Only John said that Fred changed it to homely mistress or doggy mistress."

"'Eighth and lastly, they are sog rateful,'" Nauman quoted for Sigrid's enlightenment.

There was a pensive silence. A lump of coal slipped through the grate and fell upon the hearth in a shower of glowing sparks.

"Poor Brooks Ann," Val sighed. "She probably was grateful. Fred was a leader. He could stir kids up, make them ready to storm the barricades. And he certainly was sexy."

She watched Sigrid jot a few words on her pad. "Most of this is second hand," she warned. "I barely knew either of them except for what John told me over the years. I never went to any SDS meetings and I'd only been seeing John a month or two before Fred went underground. Brooks Ann was just one of several girls hanging around him. The others were prettier, more verbal-Brooks Ann sort of faded into the woodwork."

She spoke with the unconscious condescension of one who had never faded into any background. Anne Harald would probably enjoy photographing the dramatic angles of her catlike face, Sigridt hought, or those eyes, deepened into dark pools by the skillful application of mascara. Val's beauty lay in the way she held her head, in the way she moved, in the innate knowledge of her sexuality. As a child she must have been odd-looking as I was, Sigrid thought despairingly, so how did she end up with so much assurance?

She drew a heavy line across the width of her note pad and carefully printed Fred Hamilton's name beneath.

"I got the impression that Hamilton was a little older?"

"He was," Val nodded, her heavy dark hair swinging forward. "Older than most of us anyhow. He was a senior, but more like twenty-four or twenty-five because he'd dropped out years before to join the Peace Corps. I think his father was an executive in chemicals or defense contracts and Fred couldn't get along with him, so he wouldn't ask his parents for money when he came back."

"He took his girlfriend's money instead," Sigrid observed.

"Put like that, it does sound hypocritical," Val admitted, "but nobodyt wisted Brooks Ann's arm. And remember, it seemed like poetic justice back then to let the Establishment support the protesters, too."

She stood and moved to the tray on the desk to pour herself another cup of tea. Her slender body was stooped with fatigue.

"It all gets so confused," she said, adding milk and sugar to the blue porcelain cup. "Sometimes I think I must be getting old. They say the older you get, the more conservative you become. I remember when the first bombs went off in a Brooklyn draft board. I wasn't particularly radical, but I thought, Hey, right on! Let them get a taste of warfare. But today, when abortion clinics get bombed, I'm outraged."

"Because you condone abortion and you didn't condone the draft?" Sigrid suggested.

"Or because they're on the Right and we were on the Left?" Val mused, turning to face her. "I don't think so. We were trying to stop the killing."

"Pro-lifers say the same," Oscar observed mildly.

"Oh God, Oscar, you're not going to equate abortion with the draft? Young men were forced to go to Vietnam. Women aren't forced to have abortions. It's not the same."

"I didn't say it was," he protested. "I happen to think women have a right to their bodies."

"So do I," Sigrid said slowly. "Even so, I can't quite reconcile some parts of it. I don't believe abortion's murder; yet if someone assaults a pregnant woman and kills her unborn child, I do think that's manslaughter. I guess I don't have a good definition of when life begins. Not like the right-to-lifers."

"I hate that term!" Val said passionately. "When villages full of babies were carpet-bombed in Vietnam, where were the right-to-lifers? When babies starve all over Africa, when babies go hungry right here in our own rat-infested slums, where are these so-called life-lovers? They care nothing about the quality of life once a baby's born, just that it gets born. They're so sure God's on their side!"