Phantoms

Robine sighed. He looked at Kale. “Don't answer unless I say it's okay.” Worried now, Kale nodded.

Frowning at Bryce, Robine said, “Go ahead.”

Bryce said, “When we arrived at Mr. Kale's house last Thursday, after he phoned in to report the deaths, I noticed that one cuff of his slacks and the thick bottom edge of his sweater both looked slightly damp, so as you'd hardly notice. I got the notion he'd laundered everything he was wearing and just hadn't left his clothes in the dryer quite long enough. So I had a look in the laundry room, and I found something in interesting. In the cupboard right there beside the washer, where Mrs. Kale kept all of her soaps and detergents and fabric softeners, there were two bloody fingerprints on the big box of Cheer. One was smeared, but the other was clear. The lab says it's Mr. Kale's print.”

“Whose blood was on the box?” Robine asked sharply.

“Both Mrs. Kale and Danny were type 0. So is Mr. Kale. That makes it a little more difficult for us to—”

“The blood on the box of detergent?” Robine interrupted.

“Type O.”

“Then it could have been my client's own blood! He could have gotten it on the box on a previous occasion, maybe after he cut himself gardening last week.”

Bryce shook his head. “As you know, Bob, this whole blood-typing business is getting highly sophisticated these days. Why, they can break down a sample into so many enzymes and protein signatures that a person's blood is almost as unique as his fingerprints. So they could tell us unequivocally that the blood on the box of Cheer — the blood on Mr. Kale's hand when he made those two prints — was little Danny Kale's blood.”

Fletcher Kale's gray eyes remained flat and unexpressive, but he turned quite pale. “I can explain,” he said.

“Hold it!” Robine said, “Explain it to me first — in private.” The attorney led his client to the farthest corner of the room.

Bryce slouched in his chair. He felt gray. Washed out. He'd been that way since Thursday, since seeing Danny Kale's pathetic, crumpled body.

He had expected to take considerable pleasure in watching Kale squirm. But there was no pleasure in it.

Robine and Kale returned. “Sheriff, I'm afraid my client did a stupid thing.”

Kale tried to look properly abashed.

“He did something that could be misinterpreted — just as you have misinterpreted it. Mr. Kale was frightened, confused, and grief-stricken. He wasn't thinking clearly. I'm sure any jury would sympathize with him., You see, when he found the body of his little boy he picked it up”

“He told us he never touched it.”

Kale met Bryce's gaze forthrightly and said, “When I first saw Danny lying on the floor… I couldn't really believe that he was… dead. I picked him up… thinking I should rush him to the hospital… Later, after I'd shot Joanna, I looked down and saw that I was covered with… with Danny's blood. I had shot my wife, but suddenly I realized it might look as if I'd killed my own son, too.”

“There was still the meat cleaver in your wife's hand,” Bryce said, “And Danny's blood was all over her, too. And you could've figured the coroner would find PCP in her bloodstream.”

“I realize that now,” Kale said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his eyes. “But at the time, I was afraid I'd be accused of something I'd never done.”

The word “psychopath” wasn't exactly right for Fletcher Kale, Bryce decided. He wasn't crazy. No r was he a sociopath, exactly. There wasn't a word that described him properly. However, a good cop would recognize the type and see the potential for criminal activity and, perhaps, the talent for violence, as well. There is a certain kind of man who has a lot of vitality and likes plenty of action, a man who has more than his share of shallow charm, whose clothes are more expensive than he can afford, who owns not a single book (as Kale did not), who seems to have no well-thought-out opinions about politics or art or economics or any issue of real substance, who is not religious except when misfortune befalls him or when he wishes to impress someone with his piety (as Kale, member of no church, now read the Bible in his cell for at least four hours every day), who has an athletic build but who seems to loathe any pursuit as healthy as physical exercise, who spends his leisure time in bars and cocktail lounges, who cheats on his wife as a matter of habit (as did Kale, by all reports), who is impulsive, who is unreliable and always late for appointments (as was Kale), whose goals are either vague or unrealistic ('Fletcher Kale? He's a dreamer.'), who frequently overdraws his checking account and lies about money, who is quick to borrow and slow to pay back, who exaggerates, who knows he's going to be rich one day but who has no specific plan for acquiring that wealth, who never doubts or thinks about next year, who worries only about himself and only when it's too late. There was such a man, such a type, and Fletcher Kale was a prime example of the animal in question.

Bryce had seen others like him. Their eyes were always flat; you couldn't see into their eyes at all. Their faces expressed Whatever emotion seemed required, although every expression was a shade too right. When they expressed concern for anyone but themselves, you could detect a bell- clear ring of insincerity. They were not burdened by remorse, morality, love, or empathy. Often, they led lives of acceptable destruction, ruining and embittering those who loved them, shattering the lives of friends who believed them and relied on them, betraying trusts, but never quite crossing the line into outright criminal behavior. Now and then, however, such a man went too far. And because he was the type who never did things by halves, he always went much, much too far.

Danny Kale's small, torn, bloody body lying in a heap.

The grayness enveloping Bryce's mind grew thicker, until it seemed like a cold, oily smoke. To Kale, he said, “You've told us that your wife was a heavy marijuana smoker for two and a half years.”

“That's right.”

“At my direction, the coroner looked for a few things that wouldn't ordinarily have interested him. Like the condition of Joanna's lungs. She wasn't a smoker at all, let alone a pothead. Lungs were clean.”

“I said she smoked pot, not tobacco,” Kale said.

“Marijuana smoke and ordinary tobacco smoke both damage the lungs,” Bryce said. “In Joanna's case, there was no damage whatsoever.”

“But I—”

“Quiet,” Bob Robine advised his client. He pointed a long, slim finger at Bryce, waggled it, and said, “The important thing is — was there PCP in her blood or wasn't there?”

“There was,” Bryce said, “It was in her blood, but she didn't smoke it. Joanna took the PCP orally. There was still a lot of it in her stomach.”

Robine blinked in surprise but recovered quickly. “There you go,” he said. “She took it. Who cares how?”

“In fact,” Bryce said, “there was more of it in her stomach than in her bloodstream.”

Kale tried to look curious, concerned, and innocent — all at the same time; even his elastic features were strained by that expression.

Scowling, Bob Robine said, “So there was more in her stomach than in her bloodstream. So what?”

“Angel dust is highly absorbable. Taken orally, it doesn't remain in the stomach for very long. Now, while Joanna had swallowed enough dope to freak out, there hadn't been time for it to affect her. You see, she took the PCP with ice cream Which coated her stomach and retarded the absorption of the drug. During the autopsy, the coroner found partially digested chocolate fudge ice cream. So there hadn't been time for the PCP to cause hallucinations or to send her into a berserk rage.” Bryce paused, took a deep breath. “There was chocolate fudge ice cream in Danny's stomach, too, but no PCP. When Mr. Kale told us he came home from work early on Thursday, he didn't mention bringing an afternoon treat for the family. A half-gallon of chocolate fudge ice cream.”

Fletcher Kale's face had gone blank. At last, he seemed to have used up his collection of human expressions.

Bryce said, “We found a partly empty container of ice cream in Kale's freezer. Chocolate fudge. What I think happened, Mr. Kale, is that you dished out some ice cream for everyone. I think you secretly laced your wife's serving with PCP, so you could later claim she was in a drug-induced frenzy. You didn't figure the coroner would catch you out.”