Second Chance (19 page)

I went down to the emergency room and was told that
Phil Pearson had been transferred to ECU on the top floor. I took the
elevator back up.

Shelley Sacks was sitting with Cora Pearson in a
white shoebox of a waiting room, just outside the ECU door. Through
the picture window on the far wall you could see the parking lot,
dotted with mercury lamps that had begun to burn like little torches
in the sunset. High on the right wall a television set flashed
pictures of a game show.

The woman didn't see me as I came into the room, but
Sacks did. He stood up with effort and walked over to where I was
standing.

"Hello, Stoner," he said. His round face
was grey with fatigue. His voice spiritless.

"How is he?" I asked.

Sacks shook his head. "Not good. He's in a coma,
just barely clinging to life."

"I'm sorry."

He nodded sadly. "So am I. Terribly sorry for
all of He glanced at the mother, sitting glassy—eyed and still in a
far corner of the room. "Cora is going to need a great deal of
support before this is through."

"How's Louise doing?"

"A rock," he said admiringly. "As
always. She's in with Phil. Did you want to see her?"

He gave me a funny look that almost made me blush.

"No," I said, feeling guilty because I did
want to see the woman and a little paranoid because I thought Sacks
knew why. Louise was fairly open about her love affairs, and I felt
as if he'd somehow guessed that I was standing next in line. "I
don't need to disturb them right now. You could relay a couple of
messages for me, if you would."

"
Certainly."

"The police need to know Kirsty's blood type."
I thought of the cryptic message on the crumpled notepaper and added:
"They need to know her blouse and dress size, too."

Sacks grimaced. "Louise told me about the car
and the clothing. The police think that Ethan and Kirsty may be . . .
?"

"Nobody's sure, yet."

He sighed heavily. "I don't suppose there's any
good news?"

"I'm afraid not. I have learned that Kirsty and
Ethan stopped at Ethan's motel room yesterday. Apparently Ethan tried
to get in touch with a psychiatric nurse named Rita Scarne."

"Rita Scarne?" Sacks said with mild
surprise. "She was the nurse who took care of Estelle."

"So I understand. I talked to her this
afternoon. She seemed to feel a lot of bitterness toward the
Pearsons—especially Ethan."

"That's not entirely surprising. Part of Rita's
job was to keep Ethan apart from his mother for a few hours every
day. In fact I suggested that she do that."

"Why?"

"Because he was smothering his mother with
attention and making Rita's life miserable. Estelle was simply too
weak to say no to Ethan, so I instructed Rita to say no for her.
Ethan became quite upset with Rita because of that—and with me,
too, I think. When Stelle died he blamed both of us."

"Was she in any way to blame for the woman's
suicide?"

"Of course not. In fact, she wasn't even at the
house on the day it happened. She'd called in sick with flu early
that morning."

Sacks' round blue eyes clouded up, and his voice
caught in his throat. I knew the excess of emotion wasn't just
because of the past—it was partly because his friend was dying a
few feet away from us. But it was also because of the woman, Estelle
Pearson. He must have cared a great deal for her.

"I thought Stelle would be all right without
supervision for one day, especially since she was scheduled to see me
that afternoon. I phoned her twice that morning, once right before
she was getting ready to leave for the appointment."

He raised an arm as if he were reaching out to guide
the dead woman through his office door, then dropped his hand heavily
against his side. "As you know, she never made it to the office.
She drove to the river instead."

He took a deep breath and brushed at his wet eyes.
"Her VW was found very near the place where Ethan's car was
found. They didn't find her body until several days later."

The fact that Ethan's Volare had ended up near the
same spot as his mother's VW, thirteen years after her death, was a
damn strange coincidence, if it was coincidence and not something
else. It had bothered me since Parker had tied Talmadge to the car. I
could see Ethan driving to the river with Kirsty. What I cou1dn't see
was Herbert Talmadge going along for that ride. Not unless he'd been
tricked or forced into coming along—or had followed the kids there
on his own. But if he'd followed Kirsty and Ethan to the clearing,
then my whole line of speculation went out the window. If he'd
followed them, then it was conceivable they hadn't found
Herbie—Herbie had somehow found them.

There was a third possibility—one that I'd been
trying to shoot down since I first saw Ethan's collection of
clippings. But it kept popping back up like a duck in a gallery.
Whether they'd found him or he'd found them, it was conceivable that
Herbert Talmadge had ended up in that clearing because he'd been
there before. Appearances to the contrary, suicides could be faked,
although that raised a helluva lot more questions than it answered.

"How soon after his mother's disappearance did
Ethan start talking about a murderer?" I asked Sacks.

"Immediately, as far as I know. In fact, Phil
called me on the day Stelle dropped out of sight to tell me that
Ethan was throwing a violent tantrum. We both agreed it was a
hysterical reaction."

"Did Pearson tell you what Ethan was actually
saying about his mother's disappearance?"

Sacks drew back a little, as if he'd been offended by
my question. "Ethan said he'd been watching Stelle from an
upstairs window. He saw a man come out of the trees and I get in the
car with her."

"Talmadge?"

"He had no name for this bogeyman."

"He didn't associate Rita Scarne with the
killer, did he?"

The man sighed. "Frankly, Stoner, I never heard
the boy talk about any of this. He didn't like me, remember. He
blamed me for not taking better care of his mother. I blamed me too.
It was a terribly confusing time for all of us."

"Did the cops follow up on the kid's story?"

"I'm not sure."

It was easy enough to check. All I had to do was read
through the police reports on Estelle Pearson's suicide when I got
back to the apartment. Sacks was beginning to look a little worn down
by the conversation—by the terrible memories it invoked. He had too
much else to cope with, so I decided to drop the subject of Estelle
Pearson's death.

Before leaving I did ask him how it happened that
Rita Scarne had been hired as Estelle Pearson's nurse. Given the
woman's spotty employment record it was something that had bothered
me.

"Phil liked her," he said simply. "So
did Stelle. Rita has a no-nonsense manner that appeals to many
people. And then Stelle worked with her once."

"I thought Estelle never practiced medicine."

"She didn't. But for a couple of years she
worked as a nurse. Phil was interning, and they needed the money
desperately."

"She didn't work at Rollman's, did she?" I
said, taking a wild shot. "Say in the mid-seventies?"

"No. Stelle was a surgical nurse at General. In
'68 and '69, I believe."

I sighed. For all I knew Talmadge was still in the
army in '68 and '69.

"Were you aware that Rita Scarne had some
trouble at Rollman's Hospital—trouble that got her fired in 1976?"

"No, I wasn't," Sacks said, looking
surprised. "Phil did part of his residence at Rollman's. If
there was trouble, it couldn't have been the kind that reflected on
Rita's professional competence or he would certainly have known about
it."

"I guess that's it then," I said, starting
for the door. "Tell Louise I'll be in touch."

23
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Cold night had fallen by the time I got to my car in
the hospital lot. Beyond the haze of the mercury lamps and the
fluorescent glare of the fast-food joints on Reed-Hartman, a full
moon, red as October, climbed the eastem sky. Shivering in the wind I
stared at it for a moment—a harvest moon in a winter sky.

I thought about paying
Rita Scarne another visit. But until I could confront her with solid
evidence connecting her to Talmadge she wasn't about to talk to me. I
headed back to my apartment instead-to see if I couldn't find some of
that evidence buried in the police reports of Estelle Pearson's
suicide, buried in the past.

* * *

The manila envelope containing the photos of Estelle
Pearson's last remains was sitting on the living room couch—just
where I'd left it the night before. 'Throwing off my topcoat I
scooped the folder up, sat down at the trestle table in the bay
window, and began to go through its contents, starting with the
investigating officer's first report. I was looking specifically for
Ethan Pearson's testimony—anything he might have said tying Rita
Scarne to the man who'd kidnapped his mother.

I didn't expect to find much—maybe a sentence or
two that would look different in light of what had happened over the
past few days. But the cold fact was I didn't find anything at all.
Nothing about a black man hiding in the trees. Nothing about Estelle
being kidnapped. Nothing about Rita Scarne. Nothing about Ethan
himself. The cops had obviously taken their cues from Phil Pearson
and Shelley Sacks and ignored the boy. I couldn't blame them. The boy
was hysterical, and there was real tragedy going on all around them.
And yet cops were creatures of habit. Crazy or not, Ethan's
accusations should have been routinely logged if only to be. Which
meant that someone had specifically requested that the boy's
testimony be omitted from the record—someone with a powerful
interest in the case. Given the circumstances I figured that someone
had to be Papa Phil Pearson.

I could see it happening. If Ethan had been making a
violent scene, Phil might have been small enough to feel it
personally, as he had when Kirsty had her breakdown thirteen years
later, as he had when he'd hired me. Moreover, he had reasons of his
own for not wanting his kid to shoot his mouth off around the police.
If the cops had been led too far afield, the investigation could have
spilled over into the rest of Pearson's life—exposing his affair
with Louise, exposing any number of ugly family secrets. Louise had
hinted that Phil had played a larger part in driving his wife crazy
than anyone realized. Even if she'd been exaggerating, it would have
been one more reason for Phil to hold the line, to limit the
investigation to a suicide watch.

Of course, it was just as possible that Phil Pearson
had been trying to protect his son on that terrible September
afternoon, doing the best that a man with his heightened sense of
shame could do to keep Ethan out of the public eye. The truth was
probably somewhere in between—where it usually was.

I took a look at the coroner's report after I
finished with the police folder. A couple of grisly pictures of
Estelle Pearson's body were clipped to the front—one taken at the
river, one at the morgue. After ten days in the Miami River the
woman's nude body was badly decomposed. The coroner found deep cuts
on the face and neck and what he termed "severe accidents"
to buttocks, anus, pubes, and pelvis. The injuries might have raised
suspicions of rape—especially when coupled with the fact that her
body had been found nude—had the woman not jumped into a flooding
river. The Miami's current was particularly strong that September,
following a week of stormy weather. According to the coroner,
driftwood and rock had done the damage to Estelle Pearson's body and
the strong current had torn away her clothes. Shreds of her skirt and
blouse were later found downstream in a backwater.

The coroner's autopsy revealed traces of Thorazine
and alcohol in Estelle Pearson's blood. The Thorazine had been
prescribed by Sacks. The booze was her own idea. After the autopsy
the cops rand a cursory check of the bars in the Miamitown area on
the off chance that someone had spotted Estelle tanking up. But she'd
apparently done her drinking alone—perhaps as she sat in her car in
the deserted field above the river. According to the coroner, the
combination of Thorazine and liquor was probably potent enough to
kill her. However, there was water in her lungs, so she was alive
when she jumped—even if she'd been close to unconsciousness.

The only question raised at the coroner's inquest was
why Estelle had killed herself on that particular afternoon. Shelley
Sacks testified that the woman had been making progress since her
breakdown in June. But he went on to say that violent mood swings
were typical of her manic-depressive illness, and that the
combination of alcohol and Thorazine had probably precipitated a
psychotic reaction.

He was begging the
question of why she'd taken all those drugs in the first place, but
the coroner didn't pursue it. It was pretty clear from the rest of
his testimony that Sacks didn't really know what had prompted Estelle
Pearson to get high and throw herself in the river. As he'd once said
to me and said to the coroner, she was simply "doomed" to
take her own life.