The Murder Book

CHAPTER 38

Bert Harrison placed a hand on the shoulder of the man in the wheelchair. The man rolled his head and hummed. I saw my image doubled in his mirrored lenses. A pair of grim strangers.

I said, 'My name's Alex Delaware, Mr. Burns.'

Willie Burns smiled and rolled his head again. Orienting to my voice the way a blind man does. The skin between his white beard and the huge lenses was cracked and scored, stretched tight over sharp bones. His hands were long and thin, purplish brown, the knuckles lumped arthritically, the nails long and yellowed and seamed. Across his legs was a soft, white blanket. Not much bulk beneath the fabric.

'Pleased to meet you,' he said. To Bert: 'Am I, Doc?'

'He won't hurt you, Bill. He will want to know things.'

'Things,' said Burns. 'Once upon a time.' He hummed some more. High-pitched voice, off-key but somehow sweet.

I said, 'Bert, I'm sorry I had to follow you-'

'As you said, you had to.'

'It was-'

'Alex,' he said, quieting me with a soft palm against my cheek. 'When I found out you were involved, I thought this might happen.'

'Found out? You sent me the murder book.'

Bert shook his head.

'You didn't?' I said. 'Then who?'

'I don't know, son. Pierce sent it to someone but never told me who. He never told me about the book, at all, until the week before he died. Then one day, he brought it to my house and showed it to me. I had no idea he'd gone that far.'

'Collecting mementoes.'

'Collecting nightmares,' said Bert. 'As he turned the pages, he cried.'

Willie Burns stared sightlessly at the treetops, humming.

'Where'd Schwinn get the photos, Bert?'

'Some were his own cases, others he stole from old police files. He'd been a thief for quite some time. His characterization, not mine. He shoplifted habitually, took jewelry and money and drugs from crime scenes, consorted with criminals and prostitutes.'

'He told you all this.'

'Over a very long period.'

'Confessing,' I said.

'I'm no priest, but he wanted salvation.'

'Did he get it?'

Bert shrugged. 'Last time I checked there were no Hail Marys in the psychiatric repertoire. I did my best.' He glanced at Willie Burns. 'How are you feeling today, Bill?'

'I'm feeling real good,' said Burns. 'Considering.' He shifted his face to the left. 'Nice breeze coming in from the hills, can you hear it? That plunking of the leaves, like a nice little mandolin. Like one of those boats in Venice.'

I listened. Saw no movement among the trees, heard nothing.

Bert said, 'Yes, it is pretty.'

Willie Burns said, 'You know, it's getting kinda thirsty out here. Maybe I could have something to drink, please?'

Bert said, 'Of course.'

I wheeled Burns back into the green board house. The front room was barely furnished- one couch along the window and two bright green folding chairs. Pole lamps guarded two corners. Framed magazine prints- garden scenes painted in Giverny colors- hung askew on plasterboard walls. Between the chairs, a wide pathway had been left for the chair, and the rubber wheels had left gray tracks that led to a door at the rear. No knob, just a kickplate.

Push door. Wheelchair-friendly.

The kitchen was an arbitrary space to the right: pine cabinets, sheet-metal counters, a two-burner stove upon which sat a copper-bottomed pot. Bert took a Diet Lemon Snapple from a bulbous, white refrigerator, wrestled with the lid, finally got it loose, and handed the bottle to Willie Burns. Burns gripped the bottle with both hands and drank down half, Adam's apple rising and falling with each gulp. Then he placed the glass against his face, rolled it back and forth along his skin, and let out a long breath.

'Thanks, Dr. H.'

'My pleasure, Bill.' Bert looked at me. 'You might as well sit.'

I took one of the folding chairs. The house smelled of hickory chips and roasted garlic. A string of dried cloves hung above the stove, along with a necklace of dried chilies. I spotted other niceties: jars of dried beans, lentils, pasta. A hand-painted bread box. Gourmet touches in the vest-pocket galley.

I said, 'So you have no idea how the murder book got to me?'

Bert shook his head. 'I never knew you had anything to do with it until Marge told me you and Milo had been to visit and talked to her about an unsolved murder.' He began to lower himself onto the second folding chair, but straightened and stood. 'Let's get some air. You'll be okay for a few minutes, Bill?'

Burns said, 'More than okay.'

'We'll be right outside.'

'Enjoy the view.'

We walked into the shade of the surrounding trees.

Bert said, 'You need to know this: Bill doesn't have much longer. Nerve damage, brittle diabetes, serious circulation problems, hypertension. There's a limit to how much care I can give him, and he won't go to a hospital. The truth is no one can really help him. Too many systems down.'

He stopped and smoothed a purple lapel. 'He's a very old man at forty-three.'

'How long have you been taking care of him?' I said.

'A long time.'

'Nearly twenty years, I'd guess.'

He didn't answer. We walked some more, in slow, aimless circles. No sound issued from the forest. Not a trace of the music Willie Burns had heard.

'How'd you meet him?' I said.

'At a hospital in Oxnard.'

'Same place you met Schwinn.'

His eyes widened.

I said, 'I was just over at Marge's place.'

'Ah.' Once a shrink… 'Well, that's true,' he said. 'But Pierce's being there wasn't really a coincidence. He'd been tracking Bill for a while. Not very successfully. And not very consistently, because his amphetamine habit had rendered him pretty much incapacitated. Occasionally, he'd grow lucid, convince himself he was still a detective, make a stab at investigating, then he'd binge and drop out of sight. Somehow, over the years- through his criminal contacts- he managed to figure out that Bill had come up the coast. He knew Bill would need medical care and eventually, he pinpointed the hospital, though not until well after Bill had been discharged. But he began hanging around, checking himself in for spurious reasons. They had him tagged as an addicted hypochondriac.'

'He was trying to get access to Burns's records.'

Bert nodded. 'The hospital staff thought he was just another down-at-the-heels junkie out to steal drugs. As it turns out, he was really ill. An on-call neurologist who didn't know him ordered some testing and found a low-level seizure disorder- petit mal, mostly, some temporal symptoms, all due to drug toxicity. They prescribed anticonvulsants with mixed results, admitted him for short-term care several times, but I was never on duty during those periods. One day, he had a grand mal seizure out in the parking lot and they brought him into the ER and I was on call. One thing led to another.'

'Willie Burns needed medical care because he was burned in a house fire.'