Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

“Skip it for now. You’ve got enough on your mind.”

“I prefer not to skip it.” Irene Chalmers rose and moved toward me. She had dark circles under her eyes; her skin was yellowish; her lips moved uncertainly. “You can’t be accusing my son of another shooting?”

“I simply asked a question.”

“It was a terrible question.”

“I agree.” John Truttwell got to his feet and came over to me. “I think it’s time we got out of here. These people have put in a hellish night.”

I gave them a semiapologetic salute and followed Truttwell toward the front door. Emilio came running to let us out. But Irene Chalmers intercepted him and us.

“Where did this alleged shooting take place, Mr. Archer?”

“In the local hobo jungle. Apparently it was done with the same gun that killed Harrow.”

Chalmers came up behind his wife. “How can you know that?” he said to me.

“The police have ballistic evidence.”

“And they suspect Nick? Fifteen years ago he was only eight.”

“I pointed that out to Captain Lackland.”

Truttwell turned on me in surprise. “You’ve already discussed this with him?”

“Not in the sense that I answered his questions. He’s the source for most of my information about that earlier killing.”

“How did it come up between you?” Truttwell said.

“Lackland brought it up. I mentioned it just now because I thought I should.”

“I see.” Truttwell’s manner to me was smooth and neutral. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to discuss this in private with Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers.”

I waited outside in my car. It was a bright January day, with enough wind to put an edge on its sparkle. But the weight of what had happened in the house, and what had been said, lay heavily on my mind. I was afraid the Chalmerses were going to fire me off the case. It wasn’t an easy case, but after a day and a night with the people involved in it, I wanted to finish it.

Truttwell came out eventually and got into the front seat of my car. “They asked me to dismiss you. I talked them out of it.”

“I don’t know if I should thank you.”

“Neither do I. They’re not easy people to deal with. They had to be convinced you weren’t playing footsie with Lackland.”

He meant it as a question, which I answered: “I wasn’t. I do have to cooperate with him, though. He’s been on this case for fifteen years. I’ve been on it less than one day.”

“Did he specifically accuse Nick of anything?”

“Not quite. He mentioned that a child could fire a gun.”

Truttwell’s eyes grew small and bright, like little pellets of ice. “Do you think that really happened?”

“Lackland seems to be playing with the idea. Unfortunately, he has a dead man to back him up.”

“Do you know who the dead man was?”

“It isn’t definitely established. It may have been a wanted man named Eldon Swain.”

“Wanted for what?”

“Embezzlement. There’s one other thing which I hate to mention but I have to.” I paused. I really did hate to mention it. “Before I brought Nick in yesterday he made a sort of confession to a shooting. His confession fits the old shooting, the Swain shooting, better than the shooting of Harrow. Actually he may have been confessing both at once.”

Truttwell rapped his fists together several times. “We have to get him back before he talks his life away.”

“Is Betty at home?”

Her father glanced sharply at me. “You are not going to use her as a decoy, or a bird dog.”

“Or a woman? She is one.”

“Before everything else she’s my daughter.” It was one of Truttwell’s more self-revealing statements. “She’s not getting mixed up in a murder case.”

I didn’t bother reminding him that she already was. “Does Nick have any other friends I could talk to?”

“I doubt it. He’s always been pretty much of a loner. Which was one of my objections–” Truttwell cut himself short. “Dr. Smitheram may be your best bet, if you can get him to talk. I’ve been trying to for fifteen years.” He added dryly: “He and I suffer from professional incompatibility, I’m afraid.”

“When you say fifteen years–?”

Truttwell answered my half-finished question: “I remember that something did happen involving Nick when he was in second or third grade. One day he didn’t come home from school. His mother phoned me and asked me what to do. I gave her some standard advice. Whether or not she followed it I still don’t know. But the boy was home the following day. And Smitheram’s been treating him off and on ever since. Not too successfully, I might add.”

“Did Mrs. Chalmers give you any idea of what happened?”

“Nick either ran away or was abducted, I think the latter. And I think–” Truttwell wrinkled his nose as if at a bad smell –“sex was involved.”

“So you said yesterday. What kind of sex?”

“Abnormal,” he said shortly.

“Did Mrs. Chalmers say so?”

“Not explicitly. It was everyone’s deep silence on the subject.” His voice trailed off.

“Murder makes for even deeper silence.”

Truttwell sniffed. “An eight-year-old boy is incapable of murder, in any real sense.”

“I know that. But eight-year-old boys don’t know it, especially if the whole thing is hushed up around them.”

Truttwell moved uncomfortably in the seat, as if he was being crowded by ugly images. “I’m afraid you’re jumping to conclusions, Archer.”

“These aren’t conclusions. They’re hypotheses.”

“Aren’t we getting rather far afield from your initial assignment?”

“We always expected to, didn’t we? Incidentally, I wish you’d reconsider about Betty. She may know where Nick is.”

“She doesn’t,” Truttwell said shortly. “I asked her myself.”

I dropped Truttwell off downtown. He told me how to get to Dr. Smitheram’s clinic, which turned out to be a large new building on the fashionable borders of Montevista. “Smitheram Clinic, 1967” was cut in the stone facing over the main door.

A handsome woman with dark-brown hair came out into the windowless waiting room and asked me if I had an appointment.

I said I hadn’t. “There’s an emergency involving one of Dr. Smitheram’s patients.”

“Which one?”

Her blue eyes were concerned. There was a slash of grey in her brown hair, as if time had thrust a loving hand through it.

“I’d rather tell the doctor,” I said.

“You can discuss it with me. I’m Mrs. Smitheram, and I work professionally with my husband.” She gave me a smile which may have been professional but felt real. “Are you a relative?”

“No. My name is Archer–”

“Of course,” she said. “The detective. Dr. Smitheram has been expecting you to call.” She scanned my face, and frowned a little. “Has something else happened?”

“All hell has been breaking loose. I wish you’d let me talk to the doctor.”

She looked at her watch. “I simply can’t. He has a patient with him, with half an hour to go. I can’t interrupt them except in a serious emergency.”

“This is one. Nick’s run away again. And I think the police are getting ready to make a move.”

She reacted as if she was Nick’s co-conspirator: “To arrest him?”

“Yes.”

“That’s foolish and unfair. He was just a small boy–” She cut the sentence in half, as if a censor had come awake in her head.

“Just a small boy when he did what, Mrs. Smitheram?”

She drew a deep angry breath and let it out in a faint droning sound of resignation. She went through an inner door and closed it behind her.

Eventually Smitheram came out, enormous in a white smock. He looked slightly remote, like a man coming out of a waking dream, and he shook hands with me impatiently.