William Lashner - Fatal Flaw

“I don’t know. Who the hell knows? But I’d sure as hell like to learn who the padre is ringing up on the parish phone right about now.”

THE LOGCabin was a rough-looking roadhouse on the way to Clarksburg, just a gray shack off the side of an empty two-lane highway. The windows were dark, so you couldn’t see whether or not there was anyone inside, but the sign advertising LEGAL BEVERAGES was lit, as was the neon MAC’S LIGHT sign. A few scattered vehicles were parked willy-nilly on the gravel parking lot that spilled out to the side of the building. I walked from my car, across the gravel, and patted the dented front wheel well of a black Chevy pickup. Then I loosened my tie, rubbed my eyes, mussed my hair, and headed inside.

The place smelled of sawdust and old smoke, of spilt beer and too many long nights that should have ended early. When I entered into the smoky red darkness, heads swiveled to get a look and then swiveled away with a distinct lack of interest. There was a couple drinking quietly in the corner, there was an old man at the bar hunched over an empty shot glass, there were two kids in a booth in the back, baseball caps drawn low, long legs stretched out arrogantly on the wooden seats. And then there was the man I had come looking for, sitting in the middle of the bar, sinking softly into middle age, a cloud of despair about his head. I had dismissed him as a possibility the first time I glanced his way, thought maybe my man was one of the kids in the corner, but then I realized those kids were not long out of high school. In my mind that’s what Grady Pritchett still looked like, young and arrogant in jeans and baseball cap, full of piss and vinegar, even if with his family’s money the vinegar was balsamic, but time works its black magic on us all. I eliminated one by one the other possibilities and was left with my man at the bar. I hitched up my pants and sauntered over to a stool one away from him.

“What’ll it be?” said the bartender, a stocky gray man with a dented nose, who looked like he had seen trouble in his life and pounded it into submission.

“A draft,” I said, pulling out a twenty from my wallet, “and keep ’em coming.”

The barkeep nodded, and a moment later a coaster was spun in front of me, a full glass set atop the coaster, and the twenty changed into a pile of lesser bills and coins.

“Tough day?” said the bartender.

“They’re all tough.” I took a long draught and kept draining until the glass was emptied. I dropped it down upon the coaster. It wasn’t a moment before the glass was filled again.

The bartender drifted to the end of the bar with the television turned to some lurid local news. The kids in the booth laughed out loud. I turned to the man next to me and said, “You know any good places to eat around here?”

“Where you headed?” said Grady Pritchett.

“Clarksburg.”

“The Rib-Eye up the road a ways. They make a steak almost worth eating.”

“Thanks,” I said and took a long drink of my beer.

When the bartender came over to refill the beer, I gestured him to give the man next to me whatever he was drinking.

Grady Pritchett had a paunch and his hair was going. You could see he had once maybe been good-looking, but his face was now all bloated and shiny. He wore gray dress pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a tie, and there was a ring on his finger, but he was in no hurry to get home to the wifey-poo. Life had happened to Grady Pritchett in the worst way.

“Thanks, man,” he said to me when a fresh Scotch and soda was placed before him. “Where you from?”

“Chicago.”

“You come down this ways much?”

“First time.”

Grady Pritchett raised his glass. “Welcome to paradise.”

I was an investigator, working for a Chicago law firm that specialized in trusts and estates, seeking out missing heirs. That was the story. Generally we could do what we needed over the phone or on the Internet, but sometimes you just had get out there yourself and check the records that needed to be checked or, more important, meet up with the heirs and review with them their options. I dreaded these trips, the long roads and cheap hotels, the dust in the old county record rooms, the local lawyers who started sticking their noses in something that was none of their business. I didn’t tell him all this in one swoop of words, that’s not the way it’s done. But it was there, the whole story, there in the sighs, the silences, the weary slump of my back. In Charleston I found the death certificate I was looking for. In a few small towns along the way I had talked to some people who needed talking to. In Clarksburg there was a lady who refused to tell me over the phone the whereabouts of another lady who was up for a pretty nifty sum. In Gettysburg I needed to check on a old man who’d disappeared from his nursing home six months ago. And then in Philadelphia I had the lovely task of trying to sift through three generations of Olaffsons to find the one that really mattered. I had been putting it off, this trip, letting the work pile up until I could put it off no longer. There were deadlines looming and commissions due, if certain parties that I found signed certain documents. So here I was on Route 19, making my way from Charleston to Clarksburg and thinking for the thousandth time I should find myself a more congenial line of work, like slaughtering pigs.

“You know any places to eat in Clarksburg?” I asked.

“The Holiday Inn ain’t all bad.”

“How about Gettysburg.”

“Never been. They got that Civil War battlefield there.”

“Yes they do. I’ll be taking pictures for the kiddies. What about Philadelphia, you ever been in Philadelphia?”

“Sure. Lots of times.”

“Business?”

“Sort of.”

“That’s the best kind, isn’t it? I used to have a girl from Philadelphia with a mouth like wet velvet. I never been there, but it got so every time I heard the name Philadelphia I popped a woody.”

“What happened to her?”

“Who, the girl from Philadelphia?”

“Yeah.”

“Dead.”

Grady Pritchett’s face paled for an instant, and his mouth quivered.

“Cancer,” I said. “It just ate through her insides like it had teeth, but she was married to someone else, so I was glad to let him hold her hand through it to the end. Still, when I hear Philadephia…”

There was a long silence, where Grady and I just sat and drank. Maybe he was thinking about an old girlfriend in Philly who now was dead. Maybe he was thinking about how it was that he had caused it. See, I had come up with a theory about Grady Pritchett. What if Hailey Prouix, in her youth, had concocted an alibi for Grady Pritchett in exchange for a college and graduate school education from his wealthy father? And what if, later, when pressed by Guy Forrest for some missing cash, Hailey Prouix had gone back to the source that had worked so well before, the Pritchetts, to fill her empty accounts? And what if Hailey Prouix had told Grady she needed the money and would recant the alibi if he refused, and what if Grady had decided that enough was enough, and what if he had gone to Philadelphia himself to finish the job? They say after the first killing it gets easier, and it seemed to me that maybe Jesse Sterrett was the first for Grady Pritchett, and so killing Hailey Prouix might not have been so hard after that. It was just a theory, sure, but I had to contain my anger as I sat beside the man who might have murdered Hailey Prouix.

“You from around here?” I said.

“You won’t find too many tourists in this place. I live in Weston.”

“Born there?”

“No.”

“Where?”

“Pierce.”

“Pierce? Pierce, West Viriginia? Now, how did I hear about Pierce?”