Max Collins - No Cure for Death

“Somebody I just met.”

“Christ,” John said, understanding, and covered his mouth, and looked away.

“So you told Brennan all of it,” John said.

“That’s right.”

“The bruiser at the bus station, Janet Taber’s story about the burning house, everything.”

“Yup.”

“And he just sat there. Didn’t say a thing.”

“Oh, he said something. He said, ‘Why don’t you go write one of your silly stories and leave me alone?’”

John was sitting across the table from me, wearing a blindingly orange turtleneck ski sweater. It was too early in the day to look at that sweater. John and I were upstairs in Brennan’s living quarters over the jail, a study in drab browns except for the yellow kitchen the two of us were sitting in. It was nine o’clock, give or take a few minutes; I’d waited till this morning to tell my story to Brennan, downstairs in his office-last night at the accident scene, things had been too harried for that.

“Didn’t he say at all what he’s going to do about it?” John spoke through a bite of the eggs and potatoes I’d stood and watched him cook for himself minutes before.

“Nope,” I said. “He’ll talk to the coroner and arrange an autopsy, I suppose.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I can’t picture this. He sat there and listened to that whole intricate story of yours, and then told you to get the hell out?”

“He wasn’t as polite as all that.”

“All ’round great guy, my stepdad.”

“I wasn’t supposed to come up here and wake you up, either. He’d like to ‘see the boy get rested up,’ you know.”

“Hell with it. I don’t know why I’m even staying here with him. If I had any sense I’d be over at my sister’s.”

“Sometimes I think Brennan doesn’t like me.”

“Perceptive. Very perceptive of you.” John got up and took his dishes over to the sink and dumped them in, ran water over them. It was a somewhat strange sight, as the window over the sink, the only window in this typical American kitchen, was barred and caged. He turned to the icebox and got out a jug of orange juice and asked if I wanted some and I nodded.

He poured me some juice and said, “How’d he react when he found out that phone call you made from the depot yesterday wasn’t a practical joke? That you really did have a hassle with a big black dude?”

“Like he reacted to everything else I told him. Like I’d said, ‘Nice day.’ He muttered something about never hearing of anybody around here who fit that description.”

“What about Janet Taber’s mother? Has he checked with Iowa City yet to see how the old lady’s doing?”

“Not yet he hasn’t. I assume he’s going to. I suggested it, anyway.”

“Mal.”

“What?”

“You aren’t satisfied, are you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean. You aren’t satisfied you’ve gone and done your duty. Paid off the obligation you feel you owe that girl on the basis of the five-minute relationship you had going with her.”

I sipped the juice. I was starting to feel awake; I could tell because my eyes could focus on John’s bright orange sweater without fuzzing up on me.

I said, “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I’m not satisfied.”

“All right. You’re not satisfied. Where do you go from here? I’m not auditioning to play Tonto to your Lone Ranger, understand-I’m just interested.”

“Well.” I took another sip of the juice. “This is how I figure it. I got a few days off now for Thanksgiving. Don’t have to register for new classes at the college till Tuesday. That gives me almost a week to do some nosing around.”

“What is this, research? So you’ve sold a few mystery stories. That doesn’t make you a… a private eye, you know. That’s a fantasy, Mal.”

“Give me a little credit, John. I’m just going to ask a few questions. If I turn something up, something your stepdad can’t ignore, I’ll toss him the ball, I promise.”

He shook his head. “Mal, I lost my father-my real father-a long time ago; and Mom not so long ago. You lost your folks. We both saw friends die, in the war. People dying is a thing we’ve both faced. Had to face.”

“Yes. That’s true.”

“So you know as well as I do that there’s no way to make the dead rest easier. Nobody’ll rest easier, Mal. Nobody.”

“I’ll rest easier.”

He thought about that; then something went across his face that meant he’d made some sort of decision. He leaned forward with an intense, knit-brow look and said, “Now don’t go getting excited or anything…”

“What? What are you…?”

“It’s maybe nothing. It’s something I’m not at all sure about, understand. It was dark last night and I was tired and I was full of beer.”

“What are you getting at, John?”

“I think I maybe knew that girl.”

“Janet, you mean? You knew Janet?”

“I’m not sure, Mal.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me this last night?”

“I wasn’t sure, I said, and you were flaky enough as it was. It was just too farfetched. I thought it was just power of suggestion, you know, you mention the name Janet and I subconsciously confuse her with a Janet I knew once.”

“Who the hell was this Janet you knew?”

“Just a friend of my sister’s, back when I was still in high school.”

“High school. Should I have known her?”

“No, this was after you graduated. You were a year ahead of me, remember.”

“No, hold on, this is impossible. My Janet lived in Des Moines. She only moved to Port City within the last few months.”

“That’s just it, Mal. My Janet lived in Des Moines. She was only in Port City for one summer.”

“How did your sister know her?”

“They worked together, at some summer job. I don’t remember what.”

“Christ, her last name, what was her last name, can you remember that?”

“Uh… Ferris, I think. I think her name was Janet Ferris.”

I sighed. I drained my glass of orange juice and poured another out of the jug. I was awake. “That clinches it then. You were just imagining things. My Janet’s last name was Taber.”

“Maybe that was her married name.”

“Don’t think so. This guy she lived with, it was just a common-law thing, I don’t figure she ever took his name. I…”

The clomp of footsteps in the hall cut in, announcing that the head of the house was on his way for a visit. Moments later Brennan’s bulky frame filled the kitchen doorway, and he said, “What the hell are you doing here, Mallory? I thought I told you to leave the boy sleep.”

“I was up, sir,” John said.

“Well, okay.”

I said, “What’d you find out?”

Brennan gave me his slow look, tension tightening his jaw muscles; he was getting ready to have another go at me, but John stopped him.

“Why are you coming down so hard on Mal, when he’s just trying to help you out?” John asked him, dropping the “sir” as though it had just occurred to him that Brennan wasn’t his commanding officer.

But Brennan ignored John and held his gaze on me. He was trying to keep an expression of control, of confidence on his face, but it wasn’t working out for him.

Finally he said, “Before you ask me any more questions, Mallory, I got something to lay on you: just keep your damn butt out of my business. And this whole deal is my business. You had some information, you delivered it, now go on home, damn it. Shoo.”

And I said, “I’m not a bystander, Brennan. Whether you like it or not, I’m an active participant. If you find any evidence of foul play, I’ll be a top prosecution witness, you know. So be nice to me, Brennan. Satisfy the curiosity of this concerned citizen.”