Son of Fletch

“Hardly,” Fletch said.

“That story you gave her. The biggest scoop of her life. It established her.”

“I never gave your mother a story.”

“The story about the murder of the big newspaper publisher, Walter March, during that journalism convention at Hendricks’ Plantation. Because she had the story, she got the job at The Boston Star. That story won journalism prizes for her.”

“Your mother was more than capable of getting her own story, anytime, anywhere, about anything. And of winning her own prizes.”

“She said you gave the story to her. The whole thing. She scooped the world with it. She said she never could figure out how you put together that story, every detail, so well and so fast. Especially seeing it seemed to her you spent almost all your time at the resort in your hotel room.”

Fletch recalled the suitcase full of electronic listening devices he kept under his bed at Hendricks’ Plantation.

Jack chuckled. “Mother says you not only gave her a child, me, you arranged it for her so that she could afford to have the child, me. Support me well, educate me.”

“Your mother always loved to tell stories about me,” Fletch said. “Just because she tells a tale doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Jack Saunders says so, too: you got her that job at The Boston Star. From there her career soared.”

“You know Jack Saunders?”

Jack was a newspaper editor Fletch worked with for years.

“Sure.”

“How?”

“Mother and he still keep in touch. I told you: I spent some time in school in Boston. It’s only natural I should know him.”

Fletch had in mind several simple questions to ask. He asked none of them.

Instead, he said, “Jack’s retired now.”

“Yes. ‘Reluctantly retired and delightfully discontent,’ as he describes himself. He insists the fourth estate has slipped badly since it’s had to do without him.”

“He’s right. You ever hear him speak of his wife?”

“Oh, yes. I believe Mister Saunders has spent his best energies thinking up terrible, rude, hilarious things to say about her.”

“He has.”

“I know her, too,” Jack said. “They had me to dinner several times. She loves him truly, deeply, wonderfully.”

“Of course. And he loves her totally.”

“He says you were pretty good at your job, too.”

“He does?”

“Yeah.”

“He never told me that.”

“Sure,” Jack said. “He’s told me stories about you.”

“Everybody tells stories about me,” Fletch said.

“And none of them is true?”

“None of them,” Fletch answered. “Not one.”

They were silent a moment.

His head clearing, Fletch said: “I do believe this young man is trying to tell us something, Carrie.”

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Slowly, Fletch stood up.

He stood still a moment, while dizziness cleared his head.

When his vision cleared, he saw that Jack and Carrie were both standing as well.

“Well,” Jack said, “I guess I’ll leave you here.”

“Come with us?” Fletch asked.

“No.” The answer was immediate and crisp.

Jack turned on his heel. Hands in the back pockets of his shorts, he walked away from them, back toward cabin headquarters.

Fletch and Carrie watched him go.

Carrie asked Fletch: “What do you know now you didn’t know before?”

Fletch said: “I know we’ve got to get the hell out of here. Right now.”

17

Closely followed by Carrie, Fletch worked his way behind the trailers toward where they had parked the station wagon and truck.

Although having to go along the edge of the woods, in and out of them, he gave the place where he had left the sheriff as wide a berth as possible.

He had considered walking all the way around the opposite side of the encampment, but he feared his head, pounding at every footstep, his legs, still wobbly, could not take such a long hike.

He did not want to collapse again.

“FLETCH!”

“Ohhhh,” Fletch said in disappointment. There was a wire around his neck. It was being pulled taut against his throat from behind. He had thought he was going to succeed in getting Carrie safely out of the encampment.

While trying to get his fingertips under the wire at his throat, Fletch was flung around to his left.

In a blur, he saw Carrie sitting on the ground like a rag doll on a shop’s shelf. Her legs were pedaling to get herself up.

His ears flooded with a gurgling noise.

His eyes closed.

Suddenly, still moving sideways, he was falling freely.

On the ground, he sat up.

His fingers tore the wire from around his throat.

There was a dark bulk on the ground.

A slim figure stood over it.

Bending his knees, the young man crouched and put his hands out to the bulk. He turned the bulk over.

The heavyset man on the ground was totally inert.

“Jack?” Slowly Carrie was approaching the two figures, the big, heavy man on the ground, the slim, light man crouched over him.

As she reached them, she put her hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Jack …”

Fletch got up.

He went to them.

“Dead,” Carrie said. “Poor Francie.”

Still crouching, his hand on Sheriff Joe Rogers, with an ashen face Jack looked up into Fletch’s face.

Jack said to Fletch: “What do you know? I’ve killed a cop.”

TOGETHER, JACK, CARRIE, and Fletch continued to walk toward where the station wagon and farm truck were parked in the woods. Now they did not bother to keep to the shadows.

At first, they said nothing.

They had left the sheriffs body in the woods, well away from any natural path.