Ed Gorman: Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool

“It’s a term of respect. We’ve had our differences personally but I still respect the office.”

“You sure can sling the shit, McCain.”

I grinned. “Just about as well as you.”

He almost smiled. Almost. But then he caught himself, jammed a cigarette into his mouth and opened the door of the interrogation room. I followed him back in.

He stood next to David Egan.

“What if I let him go and he kills somebody else?” he said.

I looked down at David. “If he lets you go, are you going to kill anybody?”

“No,” David said. He smiled.

“There you have it,” I said. “His sacred word.”

“Game starts again in six minutes, Chief,” his patrolman said.

“People think I have such an easy job,”

Cliffie said to no one in particular. “Sit around and polish your badge and count your bullets and beat up a few deadbeats just for kicks. It might’ve been like that in the old days but it sure ain’t anymore. These days a chief of police can’t even find the time to squeeze in a

Hawkeye game on a Saturday afternoon.” He sneered at me. “Go ahead, McCain. Get him out of here. I want a fifty-thousand dollar bond on him. But if he kills anybody else, I’m really gonna be pissed.”

“And I wouldn’t blame you,” I said. “You shouldn’t be allowed to kill more than one person a week in this town. And this kid’s had his quota.

That is, according to you.”

“Just get the hell out of here.”

On the way back to my office, I said to David, “You need to tell me who you were with last night.”

“I wish I could. This is really getting serious, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Very serious.”

I called Judge Whitney. She was more than happy to grant bail and to put up the money herself. “Now,” she said, “you’ve got to find the real killer and humiliate Cliffie like you’ve never humiliated him before. You understand?”

Jack Coyle said, “Our girls want to move.” He tried to smile. “They think our house is cursed now.”

You could hear his twins playing basketball on a hoop near the garage. I’d watched them as I’d pulled up. They were as pretty as their mother but not anywhere near as delicate. They knew a lot of basketball’s most hallowed dirty tricks. Especially stuff to use when the other girl was going in for a layup.

“They saw a show like that on Tv once,”

Jean Coyle said. “Where the murdered person came back to haunt the people who lived there.”

“Damned Tv,” Jack said. “I wish it had never been invented.”

“Except for sports, of course,” Jean joked.

“Yes,” Jack laughed. “Except for sports.”

We sat in deep leather armchairs on a screened-in porch that ran the considerable length of the north side of the house. Like the rest of the house, the porch had been created with imagination and care, the leather couch and chairs complementing the pioneer artifacts placed perfectly around the tiled floor. The Shaker settee, the coffee grinder, the oaken ice box, the framed, faded photographs of Coyle ancestors let you escape the press of the present. And that was nice every once in a while.

“I imagine you’re doing battle with Cliffie,” Jean said to me.

“He’s letting David Egan out on bail.”

“Now there’s a surprise,” Jack said. “I didn’t think Cliffie believed in bail.”

“I just made the point that everybody he’d arrested for murder over the last few years was ultimately proven innocent.”

“I’m sure he liked that,” Jack said.

Then, the small talk portion of my visit over, he said, “So once again young Sam McCain, Boy Detective, leaps into the fray.”

His remark came out just harshly enough-there was more than a hint of condescension in it-t Jean shot him a surprised look when he said it.

But Jack didn’t back down. “This is going to be uncomfortable.”

“Jack,” Jean said. “What are you talking about? Sam was nice enough to stop out here to see how we were doing.”

Amazing how quickly the air in a room can shift from placid to tense.

“Sam came out here to question us, dear. A dead girl was found in our gazebo. Sam has a client whose name he wants to clear. And in order to do that he has to find somebody else to blame for the murder. The logical place to start is the place where the body is found. In fact, I can tell you what his first two questions will be. Did our twins know Sara Griffin at all? And did either you or I know her except in passing. That’s about right, isn’t it, Sam?”

He’d taken over the room. He’d asked my questions for me. He was in complete control. He was as good on his screened-in porch as he was in court. He sat there in his blue turtleneck with his carefully brushed graying hair, watching to see how I’d react to the clever way he’d undermined my visit.

“Is that true, Sam? You might think we’re involved in some way?” Jean sounded hurt. The beginnings of anger started deep in her lovely blue eyes. We were friends. Friends didn’t come out on a lazy football afternoon and play at an inquisition.

Jack smiled with a good deal of calculated malice. “Yes, Sam, why don’t you explain exactly why you’re here-if what I said isn’t true.”

“It’s just good investigative technique,” I said to Jean, “to talk to everybody involved.”

“We’re not involved, Sam. And I resent you implying that we are. I thought you were our friend.”

“God, Jean,” I said. “Please don’t think-”

“Sam McCain, Boy Detective,”

Jack said again. The smile was smug this time.

He’d managed to deny me any possibility of learning anything. And he’d probably caused permanent damage between me and Jean. He’d done a good day’s work and he’d done it in less than five minutes.

She stood up, magazine-ad perfect in her tan sweater and trim brown slacks. “We have a dinner party to go to tonight, Sam. You can finish your conversation with Jack.”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. A little more groveling wouldn’t get me anything.

“You’ve got balls, Sam, I’ll give you that,” Jack said after his wife left.

“That’s what Cliffie told me.”

“Before you start feeling sorry for yourself and thinking that I low-balled you just now, put yourself in Jean’s place. She goes out and finds a body in our gazebo. She’ll remember that the rest of her life. Jean is a fairly sheltered person.

There was nothing in her life to prepare her for something like this. The only dead person she’s ever seen was her father. And that was after the mortician got him all gussied up for public display. So here you come, less than twenty-four hours after this terrible event, and you want to ask us questions about the dead girl.”

“I wasn’t implying a damned thing and you know it.”

“No, I don’t know it, Sam. You took your criminology courses at the university, you’re up on modern police techniques, and you’ve had some luck as a private investigator. No, check that. That’s condescending. Luck wasn’t involved, or not much of it, anyway. So when you come out here and want to question us, how are we supposed to feel?”

“You’d do the same thing, Jack, and you know it.”

That was the first thing I’d said that seemed to impress him. He looked at me a long moment and said, “I suppose I would.” Then, “You went all the way through school with her, Sam.

You were always one of her favorites. She was rich and beautiful and she didn’t care a tinker’s damn that you came from the Knolls. She’s always loved you-and I mean that, loved you-and here you come all of a sudden, altering your entire relationship by asking her and her husband some pretty pointed questions.”