(1995) The Oath (12 page)
DECEASED
—Margaret Angeline Clemens,
42
, died May
18
,
1903
, while traveling by train to San Francisco to visit her daughter. She is reported to have fallen from the train, but there are conflicting accounts . . .
Obituary in the
Oak Springs Register
May 20, 1903
T
RACY MOVED
forward as if approaching a timid deer, her hand outstretched. “Maggie. Hi. It’s Tracy Ellis.”
Maggie recognized her and took her hand. “Tracy.” Then her eyes looked past Tracy and Steve in horror. “Oh, my God! Close the door!”
Levi shut the door, careful not to slam it.
The room was stuffy and dark, and no wonder. The windows, even though they had blinds, were boarded up with plywood. If not for the one dimly glowing lamp beside the bed, the room would have been pitch black. The odors of the aging building, its yellowing wallpaper, dust-filled cracks, and seasonal mildew now mingled with the smell of tears, filth, sweat . . . and something else. Something dead, Steve thought, shuddering slightly.
Tracy kept hold of Maggie’s hand as she looked toward Steve and spoke gently. “Maggie, this is Steve Benson. He’s a wildlife biologist, and he’s here to investigate what happened up on Wells Peak.”
Steve tried his best not to appear threatening. He stooped down just a bit so as not to tower over the trembling woman and extended his hand to her.
She pulled away from both him and Tracy, her eyes locked on him as if he were a predator. “You’re Cliff’s brother!”
That threw Steve off balance. Who was this woman? “Uh, yeah, that’s right.” He immediately looked at Tracy, hoping for an explanation.
“How did you know he’s Cliff’s brother?” Tracy asked quietly.
Maggie’s hand went to her mouth again, and she cried through her fingers like a child. “You’re gonna hate me . . .”
Levi stepped forward and touched her shoulder. “Maggie, now, these folks don’t hate you, not at all.”
“They hate me.”
“No, they’re here to help you. We all are.”
“Nobody can help me. I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead!”
Tracy met Steve’s eyes. See what I mean? her expression said.
Steve was seeing and hearing, of course, but not understanding any of this.
“I’m no good,” Maggie whimpered.
“No, now that’s not true,” said Levi. “You’re a precious creation of God.”
She recoiled at that. “No I’m not! I’m nothing!”
Levi countered, “God loves you, Maggie.”
“No, He hates me!”
“God loves everybody!”
“Harold hates me! He thinks I’m ugly and filthy and dirty! He hates me!”
“Well, you don’t have to listen to what Harold says. God doesn’t hate you. He’s here, Maggie. He wants to help.”
“I’m sure He does,” said Tracy, just to bring that topic to a close. “But, Maggie, we need to ask you some very important questions.”
Maggie stared at them blankly.
Levi offered, “Talk to them, Maggie. It’ll do you good.”
Maggie calmed a little, wiping her eyes clear.
Tracy smiled to reassure her. “Some of these questions are going to be difficult, and I’m sorry, but I have to ask them, okay?”
Maggie didn’t react at all.
Tracy tried the first question, asking as gently as she could. “So, Maggie, you knew Cliff Benson?”
“Yes,” she answered directly. “You bet I did.”
Tracy couldn’t hide her surprise at such a direct answer. Steve braced himself. He could sense bad news coming.
Tracy probed for it. “Were you and Cliff . . . were you—”
“We were in love!” Maggie blurted as if defending herself. “Cliff loved me! He said he loved me! He said he’d get me away from Harold!”
There it was, just that quick, far quicker than Steve could prepare for it, much less believe it.
“It’s okay, Maggie,” Levi said. “You just get it out in the open. ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us—’”
“Maggie,” Tracy cut in, “were you and Cliff having an affair?”
Maggie showed disgust at the word. “It wasn’t an affair! It was more than that. It was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.”
Oh no, Steve thought. Not Cliff!
“How long, Maggie?” Tracy asked. “How long were you and Cliff seeing each other?”
“A couple months.”
“Until Harold found out?”
Maggie said nothing. She only nodded.
“And that’s why he kicked you out of the house.”
“Yes.” Maggie closed her eyes as if the confessions had exhausted her. “And now—now I’m gonna die.”
Tracy stroked Maggie’s shoulder. “You’re not going to die, Maggie. We’re not going to let anyone hurt you.”
Maggie opened her eyes again and glared at Tracy as if she’d said something stupid. “Don’t you know what happened to Cliff?”
Tracy lifted her hands. “Maggie, no, we don’t know what happened to him. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. That’s why we’re here.”
Maggie sat up on the bed. “He got eaten! Eaten alive! Everybody knows that!”
“Now we don’t know that for sure,” Tracy said, as if Maggie had said nothing unusual.
Maggie looked toward a boarded-up window as if something lurked outside. “And now it’s gonna happen to me!”
This must have something to do with the superstitions Tracy was talking about, Steve thought. And Tracy wasn’t kidding. The terror in this woman was so real it chilled his blood as well.
Levi consoled her, “It don’t have to happen, Maggie! You can get free of that sin right now!”
And here was Levi’s religious quirk, another thing Tracy had warned him about.
“Levi.” Tracy glared at the man to silence him. Then she turned back to the woman. “Maggie, do you know—”
“It was a beautiful thing!” she repeated defensively. “I don’t know what I did that was so wrong! Cliff loved me and I loved him and—” she looked at Steve. “—I just wanted to be happy. I didn’t wanna hurt anybody. I just wanted somebody to love me, that’s all.”
Tracy nodded with understanding. “I hear you, Maggie. I hear you.”
Maggie softened as she saw the kindness in Tracy’s eyes. “You know how it is.”
“Sure I do.” Tracy took Maggie’s hand again. “Harold’s been pretty rough on you, I know.”
“I’ve tried to be good to Harold.”
“Mm-hm.”
“But he’s a mean man, Tracy.”
“Yes, he is.”
“And Cliff made me feel good. He treated me like I was somebody, like a lady.” Now Maggie looked at Steve. She was trying to make him understand. “Cliff was a good man, and he treated me right.”
Trying to be helpful, Steve answered, “I’m sure he did,” and then felt uncomfortable for saying it. Cliff should have been treating Evelyn right, he thought.
“I met him at Charlie’s,” Maggie volunteered. “He said he wanted to take pictures of the mining towns, and so I started going with him, showing him around. I liked him right away. And he kept coming back to take more pictures. Sometimes he didn’t even take pictures; he just wanted to be with me.”
Steve didn’t know if he could listen to much more of this. Cliff and this woman. It was unthinkable. It was all he could do to hide his shock and disgust as he thought of Evelyn and the boys and what this would do to them.
But confession did seem good for Maggie’s soul. She was calming down with each new piece of information she shared. Tracy knew it and was determined to draw out more.
“Maggie, where were you the night Cliff was killed?”
“At home, having a big fight with Harold.”
“And that’s the same night he kicked you out?”
“Uh-huh. He found out about Cliff. He was mad.”
“So about what time did he kick you out?”
“I don’t know. About ten.” Well, that let Harold off the hook, Tracy thought. Unless he had had some of his cronies kill Benson, which would be difficult to prove.
“And that’s the last you saw him?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you ever meet Evelyn Benson, Cliff’s wife?”
“No.”
“So you were never threatened by her, you know what I mean?”
Maggie shook her head. “I never saw Cliff’s wife.”
“Did Cliff ever give any indication that his wife knew about you, or was upset about it, or might want to get even if she did find out?”
Maggie shook her head. “Tracy, Cliff’s wife didn’t kill him. I know.”
Tracy hesitated, braced herself, and asked, “What about Harold? Did Harold say he would kill Cliff?”
Maggie shook her head.
“Did he say he would kill you?”
Her eyes became vacant, and she shook her head in despair. “He didn’t have to. It’s just going to happen, that’s all. It’s only a matter of time.”
“No, it’s not going to happen,” said Tracy. “We’re going to get you out of here, right now.”
“It won’t help!”
“How do you know?”
“It won’t help,” Levi agreed. “The problem’s in Maggie’s heart, so it goes with her. It don’t matter where you move her.”
“Well, it can’t hurt to try, now can it?”
Levi shook his head in frustration. “Tracy . . .”
“Deputy Ellis,” she corrected him.
“Deputy Ellis. That’d just be running, and you can’t run from this.”
“Maggie has to get out of this town before she gets hurt,” Tracy said in a tone that made it an order. “Maggie, would you like to come with me? I’ll get you a room somewhere safe, somewhere nobody will know about.”
Maggie looked at Tracy. Maggie’s expression was disbelieving.
Levi insisted, “It’s in her heart, Deputy Ellis. Her sins are gonna follow her no matter where she goes!”
Tracy put her finger an inch from Levi’s nose and snapped, “Shut up!”
“I’m trying to—”
“You’re only filling her head with crap, Levi! Now if I’m going to help Maggie at all, it’ll have to be in the real world; you got that? We’re not dealing with fantasies here.”
“You don’t think sin is real?”
She seemed about to slap him, but reined herself in with great effort and tried to sound calm but firm. “Levi, under the present circumstances, if anybody gets her killed it’s going to be you and your stories. So please, just be quiet, all right?”
Tracy took a moment just to breathe before addressing Maggie again. “Maggie, I’ll get you out of the valley for a few days, take you someplace where nobody can find you.”
Maggie had no answer.
“I’ll come back in a few minutes. If you want to get out of here and come with me, then be ready. Levi, you help her, you understand?” He was about to protest. She nailed him with a voice that jolted Steve. “You’ve got another man’s wife in your house, Levi, right in your bedroom! I will use that, so help me! Now help Maggie get her things together and have her ready by the time I get back. Is that clear?”
Levi looked at Maggie and spoke softly, “We better do like she says, Maggie.”
Tracy rose, and following her cue, Steve went with her down the back stairs and outside.
Steve was disturbed, brooding, and bewildered all at once. “I had no idea—”
“Don’t look,” Tracy interrupted, “but there’s a man under that lean-to over there, and I think he’s watching us.”
Steve didn’t look as he asked, “Watching us? You mean spying?”
Tracy headed for her car, acting casual, her conversational tone covering the gravity of what she was saying. “There are people looking for Maggie, trying to keep tabs on her. Guess they’ll be keeping an eye on you too—and me.”
Steve managed a corner-of-the-eye glance. Across a vacant lot and under a rickety lean-to, a thin little man in blue mechanic’s coveralls appeared to be working on an old Willy pickup.
“That’s Carl Ingfeldt,” said Tracy. “He doesn’t live there, and that isn’t his truck. I don’t think he works for Harold Bly, but Harold’s the kind of man he’d want to do favors for. It won’t be good that we were seen together at Cobb’s.”
Tracy finally caught the little man looking their way and waved, shouting a friendly greeting, “Hey, Carl!”
Carl waved back, but not happily, and then walked away, leaving the Willy sitting there with the hood open.
Tracy sighed. “Well. They know what we’re up to.”
Steve paused by the patrol car.
“Who is this Harold Bly, anyway?” Steve asked.
Tracy snickered derisively. “He’s the local godfather. He owns the mining company and most of the town, and there are some pretty strong superstitions about him and his family. People are afraid of him, and I think he uses that to his advantage.” Then she added, “And he’s not much of a husband, you may have gathered.”
“So you think maybe Harold—”
“Steve,” Tracy cautioned, “we’ll have to talk about this later. Right now, you need to get out of town. I guess you can see, there could be more to your brother’s death than a bear attack, which means I have quite a bit of work ahead of me. Now listen to me, I mean this, my job’s going to be hard enough. I don’t need any more skirmishes like we had in Charlie’s.”
“But you know what you’re saying, that someone actually did that to Cliff.”
“Steve, I’m not saying anything one way or the other. All I can do is try to find out what really happened and why, and—” She considered it a moment. “—no matter how it all turns out, I know it’s going to be ugly through and through, and I’m not going to like it.”
“Well I certainly don’t like it. The whole situation is overwhelming.” An understatement deserving a trophy, Steve thought.
Tracy nodded regretfully. “Just take it one step at a time. Go ahead and—I don’t know, talk to Marcus again. By all means, talk to Evelyn. Maybe you’ll find out something that’ll change the whole picture. I really hope you do.”
“But if this is the work of—of people . . .” He was trying to sort it out. “Maggie said Cliff was eaten!” Then he shrugged. “She was really out of it, though. I guess she means the bear. Levi obviously told her about it.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Tracy said. She opened the door of her patrol car, then looked over the roof at him. “Steve.”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe it was a bear.”
Steve realized there was no comfort to be found in any possibility. No answer would ever be the right one. No answer would ever bring back his brother. “Maybe,” he said, and opened the door.