It's not quite time for a change of rating. This chapter will more or less wrap up the casefile and then we can move on to other things - good things - very good things - things J and S!
I'm going on a trip to the States on Monday and I'll be gone for almost two weeks - there will be much more of this story after that. Thank you for sticking with me! I'll try to make it worth your while - eventually ;-)
Tomorrow
by Serataja
-Chapter 5-
Interludes and Examinations, Part 3
September 2001
They sat on the trunk of a fallen tree. Nick was smoking another cigarette. His gun rested in Jack's right hand. He had checked it and discovered that it wasn't loaded.
"If I had been carrying a gun, you would have been dead by now," he told Nick.
Nick grinned sheepishly, rubbing his eyes. "The world would have been a better place."
"I would have to live with having killed an unarmed man."
"I wasn't exactly thinking about your well-being."
"You could just have told me what you knew. There was no need to-"
"I wanted to know what kind of man you are," Nick said wearily. "I didn't want some dumb shit without any notion of compassion to go after Pat."
"So to that end it was necessary to threaten Agent Spade?"
"That her name? Reminds me of that movie with Humphrey Bogart. I bet she's a tough one when push comes to shove."
Jack didn't reply.
"You'll never forgive me for that one, huh?"
"No," Jack said.
There was a short silence.
"Pat's father was an asshole," Nick said. "I should know. Spend a good deal of my life growing up with him in this place. He always had a temper. And he never liked Trevor Barnes."
Jack didn't ask any questions. Twenty years of silence were about to spill over; there was no need to rush anything.
"He started to run a charter business out of somewhere in California. Ambitious, just like me. Failed, just like me. When he came back he had that wonderful woman with him. Blonde, gorgeous Californian beauty."
He smiled at the memory.
"We all took a liking to her, of course. She was great. And she loved it here. She really loved the place."
He made a motioning gesture behind him.
"She liked spending time in the woods. That's why Marc, that's Pat's father, built that cabin. All was well. Pat was born and then the twins."
He stopped as if debating with himself, whether to go on. Finally he said:
"Mind you, the guy had a temper and not all was well in that marriage. I think she took a beating a couple of times. Very independent minded that one and not afraid to speak her mind. Well, I guess she could handle it."
He gave Jack a grin.
"That pretty colleague of yours reminds me of her. And she seems like a handful, too. I bet it's not easy to keep her in line, either."
He didn't miss the veiled look of fury in Jack's eyes.
"You don't like me speaking about her that way, do you, Agent Malone? Boy, you've got it bad. Let me tell you - women like that are nothing but trouble."
"Why don't you keep your opinions of women out of it?" Jack said, hardly able to contain himself.
Nick decided that it might be wiser to stick with the story. The man seemed to have a dangerous temper and he had been pushed far enough.
"Anyway, Trevor took a liking to her, too. He was my cousin. Died a couple of years back due to pancreatic cancer. Bad one, that. Now, I don't know if Pat's mom liked him or not. Some people claim they had an affair. But Katrina says no way and I'm inclined to agree with her. It's hard to keep anything from her."
He thought for a while.
"She's a good woman. My brother did well marrying her. Shame, though, about the kid. Died in the womb, and she was never able to have another one."
He took a deep breath.
"Oh well… I guess I have to get that story told… It'll start to get dark soon… So one day Trevor went to Marc and told him he couldn't live without her, and all that sort of stuff. At least that's what some people say. No one witnessed that scene, of course. It was June and she was up in the cabin with the kids. Marc must have thought there was something between them. He lost his mind, took his rifle and went up there and shot them. He should have shot Trevor instead. Would have been better for all of us. We heard a couple of shots down here, but no one thought anything about it. People do hunt in the woods. A couple hours later Pat comes back. She's covered in blood and she's carrying the rifle, crying like I've never seen anyone cry, not before, not after. The only thing she managed to say was that she had shot her father. Poor kid, she was barely 16 years old. We went up there and found them like that. Figured that Marc had shot his wife and the twins, she'd walked in on them, gotten the rifle somehow and shot him."
Jack raised his eyebrows.
"We never knew, what really happened. She wouldn't talk about it, and a couple of months later she ran away. John went looking for her, but didn't find her. She had gone for good."
Jack felt the story get to him. There was a familiar tightness in the back of his throat. The only cure for that was to go home, open the door to his daughters' bedroom and see them sleep, untouched by the harm of the world, secure.
"What did you do?" he asked.
"We brought them back to town, prepared them for burial and on the next day I went and got the Chief over in Carson."
"He can't have been happy."
"We told him Marc had killed his wife, his sons and himself and Pat had heard the shots, but when she came back to the cabin it had all been over. She was in shock. He accepted our explanation, wrote a report and that was that. No one wanted to ruin Pat's life further. It was ruined enough the way it was."
"Sometimes the best way to deal with things is dealing with them and not covering them up," Jack said. He was thinking about a 16 year old boy who had come home from school one day and had sat down in the living room, watching television until it had gotten dark outside and his father had come home. It was then that they had discovered Doris Malone in the garage, the motor of the car running. She had gassed herself. It was not the first time she had tried to do that, but Jack would never tell his father. He never spoke about it at all, to anyone.
"Things that are covered up start to rot," he told Nick Scopes and the man nodded, understanding from own experience. "I will have to confirm your story by talking to others who were there," Jack continued. "Can you tell me exactly who went up to the cabin that day?"
000
John Scopes was mad at his brother. He'd never suspected that he would be the one to spill his guts. He was also surprised by the sense of relief that spread through the small community in the course of the evening. The concept of your conscience bothering you because of the things you had hidden, of things covered up starting to fester, was alien to him. Scopes, who believed himself to be a man of God, was so firmly grounded in his own superiority that his conscience had never bothered him at all in his life. He hardly knew it existed. In a way Scopes did not really believe in God - he believed in himself.
Now he sat across from Agent Malone, at his own kitchen table, and told the man everything that he knew. Scopes was not a fighter and he liked to talk. It hadn't taken much persuasion.
There was a knock at the front door and Katrina went to answer it.
Scopes had been especially frustrated when he had noticed how elated his wife was that the truth had come out. Now she came back with her crazy sister, Suzanne. John didn't like Suzanne, partly because Suzanne didn't like him and partly because she was said to have second sight. Scopes claimed he didn't believe in the supernatural, which was, of course, a contradiction in itself, but secretly he feared Suzanne. He feared her, because she was so often right. He feared her, because he considered her a heathen and not a true Christian at all.
"Agent Malone," Katrina said, "My sister needs to speak to you. Do you think you could spare her a minute?"
Jack looked up.
"Sure," he said. "We're finished anyway. Thank you, Mr. Scopes for your cooperation."
Scopes was not happy. He had a lot more to say, now that he had finally started to talk. But apparently the agent thought he could do without his insights. Well, it was his loss. Scopes retreated sulking to his study. He had a sermon to work on.
Jack turned his attention to Katrina's sister. Suzanne looked sensible and down to earth. At home she had three kids and she liked to spend time out on the river, operating the fishwheel with her husband. Jack had never seen a device like that before coming to Alaska. It didn't even look remotely like a boat and was used to scoop up fish from the river.
He invited her to sit. What he really wanted to do was to go upstairs and look after Sam, even though Katrina had told him not five minutes ago that she was asleep again. She had been awake in the course of the afternoon, eating a little soup,but being far from well.
Suzanne sat down across from him, looking at him with a smile.
"Don't you usually wear black?" she asked, looking at his olive green sweater.
Jack looked not so much surprised, as irritated.
"Yes," he said in a tone that invited no further comment, but Suzanne didn't notice or maybe didn't care.
"I've seen you coming for a while. You looked like a prophet." she said.
Jack sighed. He felt extremely worn out and he had no patience for this kind of crap. First Scopes with his cries of 'Praise the Lord', and now this.
"You'll have to explain that further," he said tersely.
"In my mind's eye I've seen you approaching for a while. You seemed like a prophet of doom, carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. I dubbed you the 'black man'. I was afraid of what you'd bring." She laughed. "Now I see that the bible is right."
She pointed out of the window, into the falling night, in the direction of the landslide.
"Great catastrophes foreshadow great light."
Jack started to rub at his temples.
"Oh, you poor man," she said. "You have no idea what I'm talking about. Luke says: 'And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh'."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Suzanne saw her sister standing behind the agent, in the door to the living room. She was shaking her head.
"I'm sorry, Agent Malone," Suzanne said, "I get carried away sometimes. You brought us the truth and it will mean redemption for this whole town. You could call it closure." She hesitated for a moment. "It's too late for Pat, you know. She will have to seek redemption in another world."
Jack felt despair clench his stomach. If he couldn't get Felicia Felton or Pat - as people in Crossville called her - back to her family, then the whole notion of redemption was lost on him.
"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice not much more than a croak.
"I saw her last night."
Suzanne had seen a light out in the woods, late last evening. There was nothing psychic or supernatural about it. It was just a flashlight, wandering up creek in the direction of the cabin. In the night she'd had a vivid dream of Pat, wandering through the woods, searching for her lost family. The roar of the landslide woke her. She was certain it had been Pat out there. The cabin had been buried, and she was sure Pat had been buried with it. Suzanne looked at the agent's stricken face.
"I'm sorry," she said, as if he was the one who needed comfort. "Our men will go and try to dig out the cabin in the morning," she added.
"You can't do that. There's tons of dirt covering it," Jack told her.
"If she's there we'll find her," Katrina said behind his back. Jack turned around. She had crossed her arms over her chest and looked absolutely capable of moving a few tons of earth to find someone she had once cared about.
000
Later that night John Scopes found Jack still in the kitchen, bent over Felicia Felton's file. Jack had been upstairs to look in on Sam, but she had still been deeply asleep. He felt lonely.
"Are you satisfied?" Scopes asked
"No," Jack said, hardly looking up from his notes.
"Why not? We've told you everything."
Jack sighed and raised his head.
"There are questions that only Pat can answer," he said.
"Come on then," Scopes said. "I think I have one more answer for you. Katrina told me to give it to you."
He led Jack up some creaking stairs, past the room Sam slept in, until they came to the attic. He went over to an old chest of drawers, opening the bottom one, taking out something wrapped in a large piece of oilcloth. Putting it down on top of the chest of drawers, he folded back the flaps of the old cloth. Inside was a hunting-rifle, still bearing smears of dried blood.
"That's the murder weapon," Scopes said, secretly enjoying himself.
Jack was stunned for a moment.
"The Chief didn't take it?" he asked.
"Those of us, who were there, when Pat came out of the woods, agreed that the weapon might compromise her. We told the Chief we didn't know what had happened to it. He didn't ask further."
"Some Chief of Police," Jack said dryly.
"He was a good man. He understood what we were trying to do."
Jack felt heartsick. In the end the past had still caught up with Pat. In the end she had been alone, as if the twenty years lying in between had never happened.
"Are you satisfied now?" Scopes asked.
Thoughts of exhumations, ballistics, fingerprints and DNA were running through Jack's mind. With the rifle found, a lot could still be done to clarify what had happened back then. But that wouldn't be his job.
"A step closer," he told Scopes, wrapping the rifle back in the oilcloth.
TBC