for me, Max. Go tell Erin, so she doesn’t find out about this from somebody else. Tell her I love her no matter what and not to worry.”
“Is that all you want me to do? Jesus Christ, man! Don’t you want me to get you a lawyer or something?”
“I don’t need a lawyer, Max. I don’t want a lawyer. Just go talk to Erin. Do that for me, please.”
By then the other officers were ready to lead him away, and Madsen went without protest. Max stood on the porch watching them go, shaking his head in stunned silence. He didn’t speak until the last of the three cars had disappeared around the curve in the street.
“How come you called Pete by another name?” he asked at last.
Considering the situation, I figured I owed Max at least a partial explanation.
“Because John David Madsen is his real name, Max. Pete Kelsey is a fraud, a phony. He’s lived under an assumed name for as long as you’ve known him.”
“No,” Max said, and then, a little later, “Why would he do a thing like that?”
“Who knows?”
“But he’s my best friend,” Max objected, as though he hadn’t heard me. “Why would he pretend to be someone he wasn’t?”
“I intend to find that out, Max, and when I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“I guess I’d better do like he said and go tell Erin.”
“First I’m going to need a statement from you.”
“About what?”
“About last night. About what happened when he came here.”
Max nodded. “All right then, but let’s go inside before I catch pneumonia.”
We went into the house and he led the way into the furniture-crowded living room where we had sat the day before. I took out my notebook.
“What time did he get here?”
“I don’t know. Seven-thirty, eight. I don’t know for sure. I was reading and not paying any attention.”
“And how did he get here?”
Max shrugged his shoulders. “I thought he came by car, but I didn’t see it outside on the street anyplace this morning, and it’s not there now. All I can tell you is that it was dark when he turned up on the doorstep, and I let him in.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if he could stay over. He said Erin was staying with her grandparents, but that the phone calls and the reporters were driving him crazy. He had to get away.”
“What did you do?”
“Got drunk. Sat around and talked and got drunk. Not roaring, just enough to dull the pain a little.”
Some pains take more dulling than others. I know that myself from firsthand experience. “What did you talk about?” I asked.
“Mostly Marcia,” Max answered. “Marcia and Erin. That’s all he wanted to talk about, his family, especially the old days when they first got married and they were so happy together. Pete talked. All I did was listen.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing really. Nothing and everything. I didn’t know until last night, though, that they must have been having lots worse troubles than either one of them let on. He said that before she died, he knew he was losing her. He had worried about what kind of effect a breakup would have had on Erin-he’s always been more concerned about Erin than himself.”
“Even though the parents were having their difficulties, you’d say he still had a good relationship with his daughter?”
Max nodded. “He’s always treated Erin like she was made of spun glass. Nothing’s too good for his Erin. That’s the way it’s always been. You’d think being raised like that, with two adoring parents, that Erin would be spoiled rotten, but she isn’t.
“Anyway, to go back to him and Marcia, he said that he wouldn’t have liked losing her, but that he could have accepted it eventually. He said he wished to God she were still alive.” Max broke off, sniffling into a fresh was of Kleenex he pulled from a box on a nearby table.
“It’s this damn cold,” he mumbled. “My nose just keeps running.”
I knew it wasn’t only his cold that was making Max’s nose run and eyes water. The Kelseys were Maxwell Cole’s good friends, his best friends, and slowly but surely they were being wrested from him. Max was just about at the end of his rope, but I had to press on anyway. Besides, I suspected that keeping him talking was actually doing him a favor. Answering my questions was the only thing preventing him from falling apart completely.
“So he said he knew he was losing his wife. Did he say how exactly?”
Max shook his head. “No, and I didn’t push him, and you wouldn’t have either. He was grieving, J.P. He was in pain, actual physical pain, I think. I listened to what he had to say, but I didn’t pry, although after what I read in the paper this morning, maybe…” Max’s voice drifted into a troubled silence without finishing the sentence.
“You said you didn’t know we were looking for him until this morning?”
“That’s right. As soon as he got here last night, he asked me to turn off the radio and leave it off. He also asked me not to answer the phone. He said he was afraid people might track him down here, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone else.”
“Tell me what happened when he saw the paper this morning.”
“Now, that was scary,” Max declared. “In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never heard Pete Kelsey say a cross word, never heard him raise his voice in anger, but when he read that article, the libelous things that security guard’s wife said, I thought he was going to lose it completely. He picked up that brass poker over there by the fireplace. I was afraid he was going to rip the place apart.”
“What stopped him?” I asked.
Maxwell Cole, flabby and perpetually out of shape, would have been no match for the work-hardened muscles of Pete Kelsey.
“I talked him out of it,” Max said gravely. “I told him to think about Erin instead of himself. And that’s when he agreed to turn himself in. Just like that. He put down the poker and sat down and told me to go find you. He was very specific about that. He said he’d talk to you and nobody else.”
“Why? There are two detectives on the case. Why not Detective Kramer?”
“Pete didn’t say. Maybe he liked you better, thought he could trust you or something. There’s no accounting for taste, you know.” Max gave me a feeble grin.
“While you were talking, did he mention anything about going to the school district office Sunday night looking for Marcia?”
“No.”
“Or looking for her anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything at all about that night?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Did he ever mention Vietnam to you?”
“No. Why should he? He was a Canadian citizen. My mother sponsored him when he applied to become a citizen. Why would he have had anything to do with Vietnam?”
“What was his first wife’s name?”
“His first wife? Why do you want to know that?”
“It might be helpful.”
“I don’t remember,” Max said. “That’s a long time ago, you know. I’m not sure I ever knew her name. I don’t think he ever told me. It was such a tragedy that he didn’t talk about it. I think it hurt him too much to think about it.”
“Or else it never happened,” I suggested grimly.
“You mean you think that was a lie as well?”
Gradually the full extent of Pete Kelsey’s betrayal was beginning to sink into Maxwell Cole’s consciousness. A friendship of twenty years’ standing was tumbling down around his ears like a house of cards.
