Behind the Bonehouse (16 page)

“Really!”

“Down the road, if it comes to it, would you be willin' to take a polygraph test?”

“Of course I would. I'm telling you the truth.”

“Good. I reckon you folks use some kinda gloves in the lab for doin' experiments?”

“Yeah. We use B&D plastic disposable syringes too, just like the one you showed me.”

“That saved me a question. Thanks. And I figure it's to your credit for bein' real straightforward.

“I didn't kill him, Earl. I've got nothing to hide.”

“I hear what you're sayin'. And I thank you for all the help. I better get movin', though. You willing to show me your clothes and your shoes? I'll set Pete to looking through your car. I'd like to see your desk too, along with the rest of the house.”

“Wherever you want to start.”

“Oh, yeah. One other thing. Were you an assassin during World War II?”

“It's not what I did, no.”

“Can ya tell me more than that?”

“You ever hear of Wild Bill Donovan?”

“He the guy who started some behind-the-scenes outfit that turned into the CIA? An intelligence group, kinda like the Brits had?”

“Yeah. I worked for him in Europe. Jo's brother did too. There were demolition groups in uniform. And intelligence agents who weren't.”

“Must still be pretty hush-hush. I never hear nothin' about it.”

“It is. I can't legally talk about it. But I didn't assassinate anyone.”

Earl left with the paddock boots Alan had worn the night before, and the black lace shoes he'd worn to work that morning. Pete Phelps took a sample of dirt from the driver-side floormat, and searched through every other part of the car, and might've taken something else—from what Jo could tell, as she watched from the porch, without any idea what was happening.

Alan came out, and was standing beside her, when Earl and Pete drove off—Earl in his sedan, Pete in his pickup, decals starting to curl on both Pete's doors.

“What's going on, Alan?” Jo had begun to feel sick, even before she stared at the hard closed-up worry that had taken control of his face. She'd never seen him at a loss before. But that's where he was now.

“Pray, Jo.”

“I will. For what?”

“Help. I don't know exactly. But I'm beginning to think Carl figured out a way to make it look like I murdered him.”

“What!”

“We need to give some thought to who we'd use as a lawyer if I need one. Somebody who does criminal work, not just civil.”

“Alan!”

“I know. I know. I'm sorry, Jo. We'll talk about it tonight. I've got to get back to work and tell Bob what's going on too.”

E
arl Peabody had called Jane Seeger at home shortly after he left Carl's house that morning. It turned out to be her day off, so he arranged to meet her at her house at two that afternoon.

She'd been a few years behind him in school, but he'd known her since they were kids, and he figured talking to her would be pretty straightforward. She'd started out as a down-to-earth sort of practical person, naïve in a way when she was young, but less so now, from what he could tell, since she'd moved back from Indiana. But then Earl figured you either learned the lessons of living longer, or got run over in the road.

'Course, he also figured if you stayed a cop long enough, you'd see so much crazy meanness you could start to thinking there weren't many decent folk left on top of the earth. It caused him to worry some, and question his wife too when he did or said something that scared him into thinking he was losing hold of his heart.

But when he was driving to the office from Alan's, he got to thinking about his dad. How he'd lost the farm and had to move to town because of the Depression with hardly a word of complaint. And then he started wondering how many young folks in 1964 knew how good they'd got it. Or would've been able to face hard facts the way folks before them had, too many days to count.

He knew he couldn't answer it. And he told himself to concentrate on organizing the evidence to get it driven up to Frankfort to the state police lab before the end of the day. He'd gather materials at Equine that afternoon too, and get them up there the next day, hopefully before noon.

Talking to Janie an hour later gave him more to go on, at least in terms of picturing Carl as a flesh-and-blood person. It surprised him in some ways too, because her divorce had just come through, and he'd expected a lot of emotion from Jane, and bitterness most likely too.

She seemed cooler than he'd figured. Analytical almost. Like she'd been figuring Seeger out over time, and had long ago lost the love and the illusions she said she'd had at the start. She told Earl she'd gotten to the point a long time before that she didn't expect hardly anything from Carl, and had stayed to honor her vows.

The respect had been the first to go, because she'd seen for herself, a couple years in, that he was kind of a vortex of a person. Which made no sense to Earl, and he'd asked her what that meant.

“He took a tendency that's a part of all of us, and shrunk himself down so it was all there was. He saw the whole of life—every person, every object, every opportunity, or kindness, or slight, only as it applied to him. Nobody was seen for who they were on their own, but only in terms of how they affected him—beneficial or harmful, one thing or the other.

“When Carl met me back in Bloomington, he saw that if he married me, my sister's husband could help him get a scholarship to IU, and provide a place for us to live rent free. So he went ahead and married me, with no more thought than he'd give to buying a pair of shoes.”

Jane said she'd also seen years before that he'd lie when it suited him. When something he wanted would come of it, or something unpleasant would be avoided. “And when I asked him to do the one thing for me that would've meant the most to me, the answer was no, the instant I asked, and hasn't wavered since.”

Janie didn't tell Earl what she'd asked for, but he could see it was still an open wound. And he asked if she'd been surprised when Carl stole the formula, partly just to change the subject.

“That was simply the last straw. That, and his total lack of guilt, much less a sense of thankfulness to Bob Harrison for choosing not to prosecute. But even so, I don't hate or despise Carl. I feel nothing much but weariness when I think of him, and regret that I stayed so long.”

She said she hadn't talked to him for more than a month, and she was glad Esther Wilkes had decided to quit. Carl spoke to Esther with such condescension and impatience, it was time Esther was actually appreciated for the fine work she did.

When Earl asked if she knew Alan Munro, she said she'd met him only once, but she knew Jo slightly, and liked the little she'd seen. “Bob Harrison I do know, and he certainly behaved with professionalism and consideration. He was determined to put the situation behind him as quickly as possible without excessive legal entanglement, and I can understand that. But it might've done Carl an unintended disservice. It protected him once again from the painful results of his own behavior.

“He's been running from those his whole life long, and going to court might've helped him. Losing his job was something, but he rationalized it, and explained it away to his own satisfaction so he didn't have to take any blame.”

Earl asked what she knew about his death. And if Carl brought chemicals home from the lab. And if Alan Munro had seemed hostile, or threatened Carl in anyway.

Jane stirred her coffee before she answered, and then stared down at her hands. “Suicide would be a surprise. Other than that I can't say. I never knew Carl to bring substances home from the lab, and as far as I know Alan Munro never treated Carl in any way that was anything but professional. Carl fought against Alan from the day Alan arrived at Equine. Primarily because, from what I could tell, Carl was secretly afraid Alan knew more than he did, and he wouldn't be able to keep up.”

When Earl asked how the divorce had gone through as fast as it had, she said, “Because I asked for nothing. Not the house, not the furniture, no money whatsoever. I took two rose bushes and three camellias and an antique stone dog from the garden beds in back, and left the rest of my past behind.”

Jane gave Earl a sample of her handwriting, and let herself be fingerprinted, and agreed to come to the office on Friday to give him a formal statement.

Then Earl finally asked where she'd been the night before.

“I was working on the research desk in the history library at UK from one p.m. until nine.”

She'd said it quietly, before sipping her coffee, a furry brown puppy asleep by her feet, and she'd looked to Earl like a woman who'd settled into her own life exactly the way she wanted. Like she'd thought a lot about what mattered, and found some sort of peace that didn't depend on anyone else, but facts she'd faced herself.

That's what Earl told his wife on the phone that afternoon, when he'd called to say he'd be late coming home. That when he'd asked Janie how she felt about Carl's death, she'd looked at the wall behind him for a minute, then opened a drawer in the table by her chair and pulled out a spiral notebook.

“I feel nothing about his death for me. I'm not sad, or glad, or relieved. The tragedy was his. He wasted what he was given. He never saw that anything
was
a gift. Or there was any better way to live.”

She'd said, “This may sound strange to you, Earl. And I surprised myself when I did it. But after I left Carl I copied out every reference to forgiveness in the Bible in this notebook. And when I was done, I was done with it. With the hurt, and the anger, and the wanting him to suffer I'd felt before.”

It'd made Earl feel real uncomfortable. Like it was something extreme, and too personal to hear about. But his wife had said, “That musta been hard for her, and I'm real glad it did her good. I'd like to have her over for supper, when you're done workin' on this case.”

Earl had said, “Sure. I guess.” And hung up the phone, hoping Jane wouldn't bring it up, if she did come over to eat.

Bob Harrison's secretary ushered Earl into Bob's office at four thirty-five, and said he'd be there as soon as the lab meeting finished.

Earl walked around from wall to wall reading the captions to a collection of black-framed black-and-white photos—some big, some small, the early ones faded and grainy.

The first showed Bob in 1930, the year he graduated from Ohio State's vet school, hunkered down by a cow's udder. The next showed him in 1934, working in a vet practice, standing beside a draft horse whose ribs were sticking out and whose head was hanging low. That was followed by a shot two months later when the Percheron looked fat and happy and Harrison was beaming.

The next photo showed him in 1939 sitting at a desk in Rahway, New Jersey, in Merck's Institute for Therapeutic Research, a masters diploma in pathology hanging above the desk.

The one after that showed him in a big plant during WWII with rows of covered metal tanks, where a whole group of pharmaceutical companies were working together to develop something called “submerged fermentation” to produce penicillin for America's troops.

Earl was looking at the photo of Bob in 1950, staring down the throat of Hill Prince, that year's Horse of the Year, with someone named Dr. Elvis Doll from the UK vet school—when Bob walked through the door.

They shook hands, as Bob said, “Well, at least we have one thing in common. Your glasses are exactly like mine. Your wife pick yours too?”

They both laughed as they sat down in the two chairs in front of Bob's neatly organized black metal desk.

Earl reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out his notebook, as he said, “Looks like you've had a real interesting life.”

“I've been very fortunate. If businessmen in Plain City, Ohio hadn't gotten together and helped me go to college, my life would've been entirely different.”

“Bet that don't happen too often.”

“Those men assisted several. Eight members of the Chamber of Commerce, they got together and helped pay my way. And because of the start they gave me I was able to learn from some really outstanding scientists, before and after the war.”

“How you'd end up startin' Equine?”

“I got frustrated being a large animal vet in the thirties. We could diagnose fairly well, but there wasn't much we could treat. I wanted to help develop drugs and treatments. And ended up wanting to have my own business so I could control my own work. Took me a good long while to get it up and running, though. Antibiotics and the new vaccines? They've revolutionized the world.”

“They have. They surely have. Penicillin alone.”

“So anyway, Alan came to me after lunch and told me about Carl's death. It was a big surprise to both of us, Alan as much as me. Especially since the Dylox must've come from here. The UK vet lab might have some, but with Carl having worked here, I presume this is where he got it.”

Earl said, “You're figuring it was suicide then?”

“I don't have enough data to have an opinion. But I can't imagine anyone else from Equine, including Alan, murdering Carl.”

Earl laid his huge hands on his knees and leaned toward Bob Harrison. “Do I have your permission to examine your laboratory for materials that might be pertinent?”

Harrison folded his arms across his rib cage—his gray eyes studying Earl behind the thick lens. “You do have my permission, but I wonder if you could give me some idea what it is you're searching for.”

“Surgical gloves. Typing paper. Glass vials and plastic syringes to compare to those at the scene. I can come back with a search warrant, but—”

“No, we'll cooperate in any way we can.”

“Thank you. I decided I oughtta come late in the day 'cause I figured it might be easier for y'all if I went through the lab after the lab folks left. It'd be less disruptive, if ya see what I mean. Not get everybody talkin'. 'Course I'll most likely have to come back another time to interview a couple a people, once I see my way clear.”