Behind the Bonehouse (20 page)

“Actually, we didn't find one. And consider that a concession on my part to pass on that information.”

“I do. Thank you.”

Earl pulled a legal pad off his desk and handed it to Alan. “You write down your side of things. Your history with Carl Seeger, when you went to his house like ya told me before, and all-and-everything, and what you was doin' the day and night of the fifteenth. Then Pete and me, we'll sign it after you as witnesses that it's your words.”

“Crap, Earl!”

“You can wait for your lawyer if you want. If you—”

“No. I'll write it now. I don't have anything to hide.”

“One thing I will tell ya, that I don't have to, is that the final ortopsy report got real delayed. The M.E. from up in Franklin who did the preliminary examination, after I talked to him that morning, he was in a real bad car accident on his lunch hour. They doubt he'll be out of the hospital for another week or ten days. They don't have nobody else to fill in. So it ain't been finished.”

“That seems fairly outrageous. That they'd only have one doc.”

“The other one they used some turned out to be a drunk, and they fired him not too long before all this happened, and he up and moved outta town.”

“Still seems unprofessional.”

“Well, we're kinda small potatoes around here. We don't get hardly any unexplained deaths, and there's never been a big need. The doc had no doubt Carl's death was caused by the injection, and his blood was on the needle and all, and the cat'd been injected too. He found that before he got hurt, but we'll have to wait for the rest.”

“But you know they're going to set bond for me?”

“I reckon they will, yeah. You're not much of a flight risk, with your family and job and all. 'Course, this bein' late in the day, I reckon you'll have to spend the night, but tomorrow your lawyer can go to work, and the bond'll get set, and then Jo can talk to the bank and all, and get ya out after that.”

“Not tonight?”

“I'd be surprised. And you better prepare yourself for this bein' all over the papers. This is real big for Woodford County. Lexington and Louavull, they'll be on it too. We ain't had a murder case like this in Versailles, premeditated and all, pro'bly since 1949. This ain't no knifin' outside some bar late some Saturday night.”

“Except for the one two years ago.”

“Right.”

“When can I take the lie detector test?”

“Takes awhile to schedule it. Earliest next week.”

“Jo does
not
need to go through this, Earl. She knows everybody in a fifty-mile radius, and it's bound to be horrific for her.”

“I reckon that's true, but it cain't be helped.”

“Still—”

“You may be kinda a newcomer 'round here, but everybody's gonna know you now, that's for darn sure.”

It was past two when Alan woke up and threw the blanket off his face. He sat up shivering, sweat pouring through his shirt, his jeans sticking to his thighs, trying to see where he was.

He'd been back in France, running from a train they'd booby trapped with plastic explosives, and it was night, and there was machinegun fire behind him, and Gary Prescott had just been blown apart fifteen feet to his right.

It'd changed then the way it always did, to him running across a stone square in a tiny village up near Amiens, where he saw a guy from the French Resistance lob a grenade at a woman who'd been posing as a collaborator, but had worked with Alan and the OSS before American troops moved in.

He could see the grenade flying toward her—the perfect arc, the effortless throw—Marie not seeing it as she walked away from him. And then Alan was running faster and faster, screaming at her back. And then he felt himself stumble on a chunk of rubble and hit his face on the edge of a curb—where he watched her get ripped apart against a café window that shattered on her as she fell.

That's when he woke up, shivering and sweating, and told himself to open his eyes.

He wasn't in France.

There wasn't a grenade.

The woman he'd been trying to save had been.

He'd been ten feet away. And he hadn't stumbled.

And the war was over and done with.

He was in Versailles, Kentucky.

In jail for murdering Carl.

That made Alan laugh—and not be able to stop for longer than he could explain—before he pulled his threadbare blanket up around his shoulders, and told himself to calm down and take a deep breath.

There was light in his cell, from a streetlamp, falling on the concrete floor through the bars on the one high window in the wall on his right where he sat on his metal cot. There was light from a bulb too, in a wire cage, in the hall ceiling beyond the two-foot square of bars in the door on his left.

He heard another door open at the end of the hall, and the clap of hard-soled shoes hitting concrete, heading toward his cell.

The footsteps stopped outside his door, and he looked up and saw a small guy with yellowish skin, holding a mug of coffee in his hand, staring at him through the bars. “You okay in there?”

“Sure. I'm fine. Nothing to worry about here.”

The deputy didn't answer. He blew on his coffee and took a sip, then walked back to the end of the hall and closed the door behind him.

Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro's Journal

Friday, May 1st, 1964

W
e debated taking out a second mortgage on the farm to make bond, which they set as half the value, which means we had to pay ten percent of that. Neither one of us wanted to put the farm in jeopardy, and put more pressure on Toss with the horse business, so we pretty much emptied the savings account, hoping we've got enough left to pay all the legal fees. Whatever they may end up being.

Alan's been unnervingly quiet. He never talks just to hear himself. If he has something to say, it's something worth listening to—but this quiet is different.

He spent a long time in the shower when he got out of jail, then shut himself away to write up what he knows about the whole situation to give to Garner Honeycutt, who's agreed to represent him.

We did talk at dinner, which came as a relief. I don't do well with uncomfortable silences. But we're both so much in the dark, the only good it does is to get it out in front of us.

We met with Garner at the jail today, when he asked Alan to write that report, and he's filed some sort of paper, telling the County Attorney (which is the same thing as a prosecutor), and I assume the District Court Judge, that he's representing Alan, and that Alan pleads not guilty. This will eliminate a preliminary hearing. Whatever that is.

The first hearing in District Court (which is different than what got waived) will be Monday, since they only meet on Monday in Woodford County, and Garner doesn't want to delay. This will be an open court with Alan there, when the County Attorney presents his initial case. If the judge thinks there's a “preponderance of evidence that shows probable cause,” he'll “kick the case up to the grand jury.”

The press will be there, and Garner wants to keep it short so Alan doesn't get run into the ground by the prosecution and let them prejudice the community any more than it probably is now. The news coverage has been awful. We've got reporters and TV folks camped out at the gate. And the queasy feeling around the boulder in my chest makes it hard to swallow.

Saturday, May 2nd, 1964

We took Ross with us, and spent the morning with Garner going over what we did the day Carl died, and what we know about Earl's evidence, and the questioning he's been doing. We won't get all the evidence the prosecutor has for some time to come apparently. Even the results of the autopsy,
if
the report's finally in.

I've never known much of anything about the procedures leading up to a criminal trial, and having to learn still seems surreal. But I've got to come to grips with it, and figure out how to help. Standing by and doing nothing, I've always been bad at that.

Alan went off on his Triumph about one this afternoon and was gone for five hours. He normally rides for an hour or so, and it scared me.

Tommy was killed on a bike because of somebody else's mistake, and whenever Alan goes off, I worry. Not cripplingly. I get over it. But when I see him drive in there's a definite sense of relief. He always wears a helmet (though Tommy did too, and it didn't help), which is how Alan got me wearing one when I ride horses. He calls it our anti-suicide pact.

It's also true that a Triumph Bonneville is notorious for losing its electrics. It's a great bike in general. Steve McQueen rode one in
The Great Escape.
But just a couple of weeks ago, Alan had to push it home when the electrical system went out.

And yet, now, with the murder charges, when he was gone for five hours, a small part of my overly wrought brain said, “What if he's run away?” Even though I know he wouldn't. And “What if he cracks the bike up on purpose?” When I'd pretty much stake my life on Alan never considering that.

That's what happens to the brain—or the heart—in traumatic situations. You call everything you know about someone into question because you're floundering in the unknown, tripping in the dark.

He was easier with himself when he came home. Less tense. More talkative. Though still not his usual self. And why would he be, with what he's facing? How could he not be changed?

I'm writing more in my journal. Getting it down on paper makes it easier to deal with, though why I don't know.

Monday, May 4th, 1964

“Dad! How can you be so blind! Alan Munro is an embarrassment to Equine Pharmaceuticals. He's been arrested for murder, and you still defend him.” Brad Harrison was standing in his father's office, his hands on his hips, glaring at Bob across Bob's desk.

“We need to cultivate the same approach we use in our scientific work. We can't jump to a hasty conclusion any more than we would when testing a new drug.”

“The District Court Judge just today took the evidence seriously enough that he's sent it on to the grand jury! What more do you want?”

Bob was sliding that day's correspondence into hanging files in a lateral file drawer with his back turned to Brad. “You're the one who studied law. Aren't we innocent until proven guilty?”

“I've never trusted Alan. I've told you that before.”

“No, you trusted Carl. Perhaps because you shared his animosity to Alan.”

“Now wait—”

“Carl's the one who stole Alan's formulas, and tried to start a business to compete with us! Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

“They were your formulas.”

“No. They were Alan's conceptions and formulas, based on a fungicide he brought to us. All I did was help with the very last raw material adjustments in two of the formulations.”

“But—”

“And what about Carl getting the IRS to hound us for months when there was no objective reason for us to be examined?”

“I'm not defending Carl. It's Alan's ability to harm Equine I'm concerned about.”

Bob swiveled his chair around to face Brad, and folded his hands on his desk. “You want my opinion on the overarching situation?”

“Yes.” Brad didn't look as though he did. His nearly chinless face with its small tight-lipped mouth looked startled, and maybe even marginally frightened, as he glanced down at his dad, then turned toward the wall of photos.

“I'm going to be more blunt than I ever have been with you, because I believe the time has come. You have always felt threatened by Alan because he understands the science
and
the business at Equine in ways you don't.”

“No, now when you say—”

“You've had your mother, who loves you very much, but doesn't comprehend the complexities of the business, telling you that you have a right to succeed me, and that you need to push me for faster promotion. Then you see Alan, standing in your way, and it makes you less than objective.”

That was followed by a stunned silence in which the ticking of Bob's father's old brass desk clock measured off the distance between them. “I'm sorry, Brad. But that's the way it looks to me. I have real respect for Alan Munro. I don't believe he's guilty of murdering Carl, and I'm not going to throw him to the wolves when he's in trouble. How would you feel if you'd been wrongly accused of a crime? He needs to be given a fair chance.”

“I'm being wrongly accused right now!”

“How so? You don't think you have a right to succeed me? Or you don't feel threatened by Alan?”

“If I'd taken the bar exam, you'd feel differently.”

“Only in the sense that then you would've followed through with your original career plan. Having passed the bar would not qualify anyone to direct a company like Equine. I think you do a very good job of managing the accounting department, and I give you credit for going back and taking the accounting courses you did. But that's not the heart of the business. It's the science that created and sustains it, and it always will be. Or if not, it will have evolved into a totally different company, based on a different market.
Assuming
it can survive at all. And that's a big if, with the well-established, very large pharmaceutical competitors we struggle against for survival.”

“And when Alan Munro gets convicted? What will you do then?”

“
If
he is, I'll find another chemical engineer with his kind of depth and breadth of background who can help develop the products, and the processes in the lab and manufacturing.”

Brad turned, and walked out the door.

Bob sat and watched him go.

Tuesday, May 5th 1964