Irish Alibi (17 page)

Jimmy had not found the prospect of the second twin coming forward amusing when Phil warned him of what might be in prospect. “I'll charge them both.”

“Not with the same murder.”

Phil returned to police headquarters with Father Carmody with the intention of speaking to young Kincade. The assignment the old priest had given him when the toppled statue of Father Corby had been the center of events had been reactivated now that Kincade had confessed to the murder of Madeline O'Toole.

“What possible motive could he have had, Jimmy?”

“Ask him.”

Some ten minutes later, Phil and Father Carmody were in a visiting room with an insouciant Malcolm Kincade. The young man did not have the look of someone who had confessed to murder. There was a twinkle in his eye, and he had a way of mussing up his red hair as they talked.

“Did you know my father?” he asked Father Carmody.

“Of course. I haven't seen him for some time.”

“He's flying up.”

“Son, you didn't kill that woman, did you?”

“Why would I confess if I didn't?”

“How do we know you're Malcolm and not Euguene?”

Kincade got out his wallet to show Phil his Notre Dame ID card. Malcolm Kincade.

“How do I know this is your card and not your brother's?”

“Why would I have his card?”

“Malcolm, I know what you and your brother intended to do if things got sticky because of what you did Saturday night.”

“Tell me.”

Phil told him. “Look, this isn't just a campus stunt. A woman has been killed. I wouldn't be surprised if they hauled your brother in and charged him as well as you.”

Kincade grinned. “There are lots of people who were with Malcolm when all this happened.”

“Malcolm?”

“Eugene.”

So the trickery had already started. Phil would have been angrier if he could believe this young man had actually killed Madeline. He asked him how he had done it.

“It's all in the paper.”

“Son,” Father Carmody said, “why do you think your brother is in trouble?”

“My brother?”

“That's why you're doing this, isn't it? Who convinced you that your brother was a prime suspect and needed rescuing?”

*   *   *

Later, when they were leaving, they had the unnerving experience of seeing the clone of the lad they had just been talking to brought in, under arrest. Jimmy Stewart was mad. Father Carmody went up to the boy as he was being booked.

“Malcolm?”

“Eugene.”

“Where did you get that scratch?”

2

The scratch on young Kincade's face was featured in the exclusive story Grafton had written informing his readers that relentless and intrepid investigative journalism had enabled him to solve a case that had been causing consternation among local law officials for many days. He described the thinking that had led him to young Kincade. Of course, it was common knowledge that Kincade had been in the bar of the Tranquil Motel on Saturday and that he had returned on Sunday to take Madeline O'Toole to the noon Mass at Sacred Heart Basilica. No need to mention the role that Larry Douglas and, indirectly, the assistant coroner Sean Feeney had played in his thinking. Much of the story was cast in dialogue form, with your reporter putting a series of questions to young Kincade that had finally persuaded the young man that he was the prime suspect in the murder under investigation.

This called for a digression in which Grafton mused on the morality of stating the matter as he had. There were doubtless readers who would question the way he had purported to be conveying to Kincade the current state of the police investigation and the at-the-time fanciful suggestion that young Kincade was now the target of the investigation. To allay such misgivings, Grafton reviewed the steps in his thinking that had led him to the conviction that young Kincade was indeed the culprit.

First, there was the madcap incident on campus, pulling down the statue of Father Corby with the aid of a stolen tow truck. Such antics had suggested to him not the playful misbehavior of the young but a deep character flaw that could manifest itself in even more serious ways.

Second, there was the fact that the young man had fled to the Tranquil Motel, where in the bar he had met a woman he knew from Memphis, Madeline O'Toole. How much had the young man had to drink before going to the motel? Jackson, the aggrieved owner of the purloined truck, had described the young fellow who had wheedled him out of the cab and then hopped in and driven off in the truck as having “a snootful.” Many readers would perhaps recognize the term. It was certain that he had added many drinks to the sum he had consumed last Saturday during the convivial reunion with Madeline in the bar.

Third, there were the complaints of other residents in the motel, roused at an ungodly hour by Kincade's pounding on the door of the woman who had captivated his inebriated heart. An exchange Grafton characterized as warm, promising, and whispered had gone on before she persuaded the boy to go.

Fourth, he was back the following day with the preposterous suggestion that he take her to Mass on campus. Doubtless the police would determine where in fact the infatuated lad had taken the older woman after picking her up on Sunday just before noon. Not even the resilience of youth would have overcome so soon the effects of all his drinking the night before into the wee hours. It was a smitten, headstrong youth who would not be denied that Grafton put before his readers.

Confronted with these facts, as well as others that would be developed in subsequent articles, young Kincade had broken down and confessed to your reporter. Fortunately, he was persuaded that the only honorable thing to do was to turn himself in. Grafton had accompanied him to police headquarters.

*   *   *

The pride of authorship rivals that which caused the fall of the angels. Before his article appeared in print, Grafton had read it over again and again on his computer screen. Once it was in print he could read it through the eyes of subscribers and feel the power of what he had laid before his readers. How could he not dream of what might now come his way as a journalist? For years, he had scrounged around the paper, doing odds and ends, largely obituaries, in the pressroom but not of it. Persistence had paid off at last. And now, with this story, any hesitation that there had been in hiring him would be definitively swept away.

Larry Douglas, of course, was sarcastic in his praise. “Thanks for mentioning where you got the idea.”

“I wasn't sure you wanted your role revealed.”

“You could have asked.”

“I will feature your part in the follow-up piece that will appear tomorrow.”

Larry Douglas lit up.”You mean it?”

“If a source permits it, of course I will name him. How about Sean Feeney?”

“I can't speak for him.”

“Of course not.”

“I liked the way you handled the scratch.”

Grafton could have hugged him. The suggestion that the overpowered and frantic Madeline had raked Kincade's face with her nails in an effort to defend her honor had been unmistakable in his account and yet oblique. The mark of Cain was on the boy. The scarlet letter.

“Should I mention your fiancée as well?”

“No, don't do that.” He looked away. “Laura is shy.”

With a gesture, Grafton conveyed to Larry that his fiancée's reticence would be fully respected by him.

“It's just a trial engagement anyway.”

“I understand.”

“I wish Laura did.”

Grafton loitered at headquarters; at the paper he walked among his colleagues as if lost in thought. From time to time, he would take out his cell phone and carry on imaginary whispered conversations with his far-flung sources. South Bend seemed too small a stage for one of his talents. Before leaving, he talked to the girl who edited the paper's Web page, to make certain his story was displayed prominently there. Who might not read it in its now global availability? The thought was dizzying. At the round earth's imagined corners his story would be read on monitors—in England, France, Germany, Italy. Upward-bound lads in Third World countries would gaze at their monitors. Who knew what ambitions would be awakened?

3

Talk at the Old Bastards' table in the University Club dining room centered on what Armitage Shanks sardonically called the Romulus and Remus caper. The Kincade twins had been the toast of the campus after the toppling of the statue of Father Corby. It was not that rebel sentiment in the historical sense ran high among the student body, but a brash and daring deed, and one that ran the risk of expulsion, commanded fairly universal respect. But now both twins apparently were in deeper trouble, and the mood was more ambiguous. Ambiguity was of course a constant at the OB table.

“How can one murder have two murderers?” asked Potts. “It violates the principle of causality.”

“Have you ever heard of several people pushing a car?”

“Has the tow truck been returned?”

Grafton's story had been subjected to close and critical reading by the occupants of the table.

“Baroque,” grumbled Plaisance. “The man could write for the
Jupiter
.”

Clarification was demanded.

“Don't you know Trollope?”

A reminiscent expression came over the face of Armitage Shanks. “‘Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.' Johnson.”

Bingham was reminded of Chink Johnson, who had played hockey in Minneapolis before the war.

“The Civil War?”

“That is a contradiction in terms.”

It was the contrast between the apparent Southern romanticism behind the grounding of Father Corby and an admission by one of the twins that he had killed a Southern belle from Memphis that did not sit well with the table. The death, even of a stranger, brought on a lugubrious mood.

Debbie, the hostess, pulled up a chair and joined them. She explained the current theory about the twins. After one of them confessed, the other would come forward to say that he had done it. The result would be a legal impasse. Bingham, late of the law school, waxed indignant at this assault on the sanctity of the law.

“Tell it to O. J.,” Debbie advised.

“I'm drinking gin and tonic.”

Debbie flagged down their waitress, and another round was ordered.

“Prosecute them both.”

“One has an alibi.”

“Which one?”

“That is the problem.”

“The husband has been released,” Potts observed.

“What was the charge?”

“He had written a book.”

“They should arrest this Grafton.” Shanks fluttered the pages of the local paper.

The father of the twins had arrived in South Bend from Memphis and had objected to Grafton's tendentious account. He was threatening to sue.

“Nonsense.”

“The license of the press.”

“It all turns on the scratch on the boy's face.”

“His brother also has a scratch.”

“Hang them both,” Bingham said.

“Better well hung than ill wed,” Shanks mused.

“Johnson?”

“Shakespeare. A translation from the German translation.”

“You're making that up.”

Bingham sat forward and began to tell of a precedent in the law, but only Potts paid attention, and he couldn't hear.

“Someone murdered that woman,” Debbie said sternly. “They've turned it into a joke.”

4

Father Carmody and Mr. Kincade had conferred in the old priest's room in Holy Cross House. Under other circumstances, it might have been a joyful reunion, but Mr. Kincade was concerned about his sons.

“They're no more guilty than I am.”

“Of murder.”

A faint smile. “Thank you for taking care of the Corby statue incident, Father.”

“I had had practice. Have you spoken to the boys?”

“My main concern has been to find a good local lawyer. Some sort of charge will be brought against them. And rightly so.”

Fauxhall, whatever private doubts he might have, was proceeding on the basis of the veracity of Malcolm Kincade's claim to have killed Madeline. Jimmy Stewart tried to dissuade the assistant prosecutor by pointing out that the boy gave a very vague description of how he had killed the woman. Fauxhall demanded that the other twin be arrested, and he had been. Now Jimmy was once more a frequent presence at the Tranquil Motel, interviewing everybody one more time.

Maria Concepción seemed to have forgotten any English she knew, and Kitty, the bookkeeper, acted as translator.

“I had hoped to be a missionary,” Kitty explained. “To Latin America.”

Her dream had been to rescue the huddled masses in the Southern Hemisphere from the superstition of Romanism, something she said as if Jimmy would agree. There was a Spanish edition of the Bible on the bookkeeper's desk. Her mood was not improved by the rosary that Maria Concepción twisted in her fingers while she looked at Jimmy with wide and fearful eyes. Jimmy wanted to hear again just what Maria Concepción and Rosita had come upon in the bedroom of suite 302 last Monday. Kitty's translation was much longer than the frightened woman's answer.

Kitty explained. “She's afraid you'll send her home.”

The bookkeeper's description of the scene was more helpful. She had accompanied Michael Beatty to the suite after the cleaning ladies had spread the alarm.

“Why do people act as if God's law did not apply to motels?” Kitty asked. “The things that go on here.”

“Madeline O'Toole certainly had quite a time here.”

Kitty's eyes closed as if in pain. “And then to find that the woman wrote filthy novels.”

“Well, novels.”

“Filthy novels. She left one in the bar when she dragged that bearded man back to her lair. Phyllis passed it on to me.” Kitty opened a drawer of her desk and brought out a gaudy paperback. She held it by a corner of its cover before dropping it on the desk. “
Dancing in Charleston
!”