Max Collins - Midnight Haul

“In our garage. Shut himself in there, stuffed all the air openings with cloth, turned on the car and lay down near the tail pipe. He went to sleep and never woke up.”

She said that matter-of-factly, but there was a tremble under it.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Price.”

“I’m sorry about Mary Beth. I’m sorry for you. She’d have been a wonderful wife. Now. Excuse me, please, Mr. Crane, but what exactly brought you to me? Is it simply the fact that we both have suffered the suicides of someone we loved? If so, I will try to help. But I’ll be frank: time won’t heal the wound. You’ll learn to live with it, but you won’t forget it, and it won’t heal over. I’m sorry, but that, I’m afraid, is the reality of it.”

“Mrs. Price, your advice is appreciated, and taken to heart, believe me. But it’s not why I’m here. I’m here because there is something your husband and Mary Beth had in common beyond suicide.”

She nodded. “They both worked for Kemco.”

“You knew that?”

“Of all the students I ever had, Mary Beth was my favorite. Of all the teachers she ever had, I was her favorite. I kept track of her. She kept in touch with me. Of course I knew she was in town this summer, working for Kemco. Of course I knew that.”

“I think Mary Beth may not have committed suicide, Mrs. Price. I think it may have only looked like suicide. I think it may have had something to do with Kemco.”

“I see.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I don’t know what I am. But ‘surprised’ isn’t it.”

“Then you had similar suspicions about your husband’s death?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“And?”

“I eventually dismissed them.”

“Why?”

“It’s natural to want to explain away the suicide of your husband. Or wife, or fiancée. It’s human to want to reject the notion that someone you loved, someone that loved you, would want to end his or her life.”

“So you decided your suspicions were groundless?”

“Not groundless. But I did decide that they were just suspicions and nothing more.”

“Why do I sense there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“There’s much I’m not telling you.”

“Mrs. Price, this is very important to me. I think you can understand how important.”

“Of course I can. But I don’t want to encourage this... excuse me, obsession of yours.”

“Do I sound obsessed?”

“No. You seem rational. In control. But that’s your outward appearance. I believe that, inside, you’re avoiding reality. That you will do whatever you have to to convince yourself Mary Beth did not take her life.”

“Was your husband the sort of man who would take his life?”

“Yes. He did, after all.”

“And you’re convinced of that.”

“I am. I can see there’s no way around this. I’m going to have to share something personal with you. I’d like not to. But I will if you insist. And I’m going to make you insist, Mr. Crane.”

“Please, Mrs. Price.”

“If you insist. My husband, George, had a problem. The problem was my first husband. My late first husband, by whom I had two children, boy in college, daughter married and here in town with children of her own. I married just out of high school, and it wasn’t until my first husband died, fifteen years ago, that I went to college. You see my first husband’s name also was George. George Waters. I loved him very much. He died of cancer, when he was just thirty-seven years old. You know he seemed so much older than me when we were married; I always thought of him as being so old. And now I’m forty-seven, ten years older than he was when he died. Well. So three years ago my other George came along. A sweet, caring man. When we were just seeing each other, we had no problems. After we married, well... the coincidence of having the same name as my first husband started to bother him. He didn’t like it when my friends would talk about my late husband, referring to him as ‘the first George,’ or ‘George the First.’ He came to resent my two children, both of whom were grown by the time he came into my life. He was jealous of a memory, which to make it worse had his same name. He seldom would discuss his frustrations about my late husband; he just brooded about it. Sometimes he drank. For the year before he took his life, he was quite depressed.”

“All because he and your first husband shared the same first name?”

“And the same wife, don’t forget. And similar jobs.”

“Oh?”

“Both of them worked in maintenance at Kemco. My first husband didn’t have as good a job as my second, who was head of the maintenance crew. But it was in the same area. And the coincidence of it bothered him.”

“I admit it’s kind of strange, but why get obsessed with it?”

“George — the second George — worked at another chemical processing plant in the Midwest, before coming to Greenwood. It wasn’t a Kemco facility; I believe it was Monsanto. He felt Kemco was... this is what I hesitate to get into with you because I’m afraid it will only serve to reinforce your obsession.”

“Mrs. Price. Please go on.”

“He felt Kemco was borderline negligent. At the other plant he worked at, when the government would hand down a pollution level, for example, the company would set its own, stricter policy, well below what the government would allow. But at Kemco, George said, they would push it to the limit, and beyond, if they felt they could get away with it.”

“I see.”

“And he generally felt that the safety procedures at the local plant were lax. He and other workers had been exposed to dangerous chemicals, hazardous substances. But he could never do anything about it. Neither management nor union seemed to care. He said.”

“I’m still not sure if I understand how this relates to his obsession about your first husband.”

“Simple. He thought he was getting cancer.”

“Was he?”

“I have no way of knowing. He would never see a doctor about it.”

“Was there an autopsy?”

“Yes, and nothing was turned up.”

“But cancer wasn’t what they were looking for.”

“If it was advanced, they’d have found it.”

“If it was in beginning stages, they might not.”

“Possibly. But it was probably all just the delusion of a jealous, neurotic man. The ‘other’ George caught cancer working at Kemco, so now the same thing was happening to him. He thought.”

“Do you think there could be any truth to it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know a friend of Mary Beth’s named Anne Boone?”

“Yes, I’ve met her. She’s doing research of some sort, gathering data on Greenwood itself. She interviewed me, several months ago.”

“But you didn’t tell her all of what you’ve told me.”

“No. Judging from the questions she asked, she would’ve been interested in hearing about my husband’s concerns about safety and other problems at Kemco. But I didn’t tell her.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“I don’t really know. How do you happen to know about my conversation with Ms. Boone?”

“I’ve heard the tape of it.”

She stiffened. “Oh really?”

“It’s all right — I’m working with Ms. Boone. We’re compiling evidence that may show Kemco negligent in several areas... including the areas that concerned your husband. Are you aware that the cancer rate in Greenwood is well above the national average?”

“No...”

“And the same is true for birth defects, and miscarriages. Not to mention the suicide rate: five suicides in not much more than a year. All by Kemco employees.”

“I take it you don’t believe they’re suicides.”