But Sarah was already dragging herself and Glenna to their feet and didn’t respond. I think that she was as tired of Stalin’s daughter as Jamie and I were.
“I’ll talk to you soon, Sam.”
“Thanks, Sarah. And thank you, too, Glenna. I appreciate you helping us like this.” You crazy bitch. But of course that was a thought meant only for me, myself, and I. Like Sarah, I had to abide Glenna’s nastiness in order to ensure her testimony.
At the door, Sarah turned back and gave me a frown, a shrug and a nod toward Glenna, who was preceding her into the hall. I wished she had drawn an invisible circle around her head, the way people do to indicate that somebody is nuts. But then Glenna just might have been packing a flame thrower and melted Sarah down on the spot.
After we heard the outside door open and close, Jamie said, “That woman scares me. And she shouldn’t have talked to you the way she did.”
“Well, she’ll be helpful to us if Richard was involved as she claims.”
“Turk thinks hippies should be put in prison. He says they don’t contribute anything to society. And he says boys with long hair are nothing but girls anyway and make him sick.”
Let’s see. Turk the wife-abuser, Turk the willfully unemployed, Turk who lives off his wife’s work, Turk the leader of Iowa’s only surfer band, thinks hippies should be sent to prison. It seemed that the ones who hassled hippies the most were the bikers, the local thugs, and the hillbillies from the Hills-you know, the cream of local society. No surprise that Turk was among them.
“I just say live and let live, like most people around here do.”
As I was passing her desk, I bent over and kissed the top of her head.
“Gee, thanks, Mr. C.” The blush just made her all the cuter.
I was about out the door. In fact, I was one step over the office threshold when the phone rang. When I was four steps over the threshold and making my way to the outside door, Jamie said, “It’s Mr. Federman. Do you want to talk to him?”
“Hey,” he said. “I call at a bad time?” The people at the Wilhoyt agency were always polite.
“No. It’s fine. Just real busy.”
“Well I found out two things that might interest you. Eve, original name Sharon Carmichael, has been named in two different divorce cases by very unhappy wives. She has also been married to two wealthy older gentlemen. She got a small sum from one when he kicked her out for cheating on him and nothing from the other one because he threatened to send around the photos his private investigator snapped of her. Her name was variously Sharon Downes and Sylvia Tralins. I got this from two newspapermen. Just thought you’d like to know. Should I keep digging?”
“Definitely. I just wonder if Mainwaring knew about any of this.”
He laughed. “The way you described how hooked he is-you think it would’ve made any difference?”
18
The commune was busy. Four or five people worked the sprawling garden, two two-man units were fixing drainpipes and a front door and two women were washing a van vivid with peace symbols in various colors. Grace Slick was urging people to violence (from her safe posh digs on the West Coast, of course) and a dog was yipping his disagreement. I wanted to shake his paw.
As I walked to the front porch of the nearest house a few people looked me over and apparently decided I wasn’t worth even sneering at. A Negro kid named Jim Ryan came out the front door carrying a toolbox. He was tall and fleshy but not fat. A few of the more ardent racists in town had hassled him many times. One time he decided to hassle them back. It turned into another case where Cliffie wanted to charge him but the county attorney’s office said no, he’d just been defending himself. The good people of the town, who far outnumber the bad, wrote many letters to the newspaper talking about the “riffraff” that had picked on Ryan and given Black River Falls a name it didn’t deserve.
Ryan had been one of those rare perfect clients-bright, quiet, amenable to following my instructions. Today he wore his “Power to the People” T-shirt and jeans. He smiled when he saw me. “Lot of people around here don’t seem to like you much.”
“It’s the same in town, Jim.”
He set the toolbox down. “I used to build homes in the summers. I collected a lot of stuff. You lookin’ for Sarah?” He was talking loud, over Grace Slick.
“Donovan.”
His dark eyes changed expression. “He’s been in his room since early last night. He doesn’t want anybody to bother him. I knocked once last night and he called me a bunch of names. Pissed me off. He’s a nasty son of a bitch, way he runs this place. I’ll be moving on pretty soon. Can’t hack it here any more with him around.”
“Any idea why he’s holed up?”
“You’re askin’ the wrong guy, Mr. McCain. I never could figure him out except he’s a jerk. I admit we need a leader here just to keep things running right. But we don’t need an egomaniac.”
A woman came out wearing a craftsman’s denim apron. She must have been in charge of the music because it died just as I heard a “See you in the barn, Jim.” She glanced at me. Her lips flattened into displeasure. She hurried on.
“Another admirer.”
“They think you didn’t defend us very well from all the bad publicity. Not all of them think that, not me and the majority. But some of them. They’re lookin’ for somebody to blame because they think maybe they’ll all have to move because of some of the people in town. I kept tryin’ to tell them that there wasn’t anything you could do. But you know how stoners are.”
“I guess I don’t.”
He grinned. “Sometimes they make me ashamed I enjoy drugs as much as I do.”
The interior of the house had been cleaned up and painted. The furnishings in the front room came from the Salvation Army or someplace similar. The old stuff has faces-the weary couch, the tortured chair, the wounded ottoman. It was no different upstairs where air mattresses and sleeping bags ran three or four to a room. The smells ran to pot and smoke and wine and sex. A kitten so small she would have fit in the palm of my hand accompanied me as I tried to find Richard Donovan. The walls of the hallway were colorful and baleful with posters of Che, Bobby Rush, Nixon, and Southern cops.
My search ended at the only room with a closed door. I tried the doorknob and found that it was also locked. I knocked: “Richard, it’s McCain. Open up.”
So our little game began. I’d knock and he’d stay silent. I had my usual rational reaction to impotence; I kept rattling the doorknob. It would magically open; I just knew it.
Finally, he said, “I don’t feel like talking. Just go away.”
“If I don’t talk to you, I’ll talk to Mike Potter.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?”
“I’ve got a witness who saw you arguing with Vanessa right before she was killed.”
The silence again.
“You hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you all right and I bet it was that bitch Glenna who told you, too.”
“Doesn’t matter who it was. Now open up.”
After a long minute he was in the doorway, shirtless, barefoot and sullen. He was doing a James Dean, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. From what I could see, his room was clean and orderly, almost military in the precise way he’d laid it out. “So we argued a little. That’s all it was.”
“What did you argue about?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m told she shoved you and started to walk away but you grabbed her by the arm and then followed her into the barn shouting her name.”
