Oregon Hill Read online

  I imagined the Stones sitting around pondering the possibility of an ebony grandchild. They needn’t have worried. Poor Artie Lee. His imprint has all but disappeared. About all he gave me was a good tan and a big nose. Andi, she’s all Stone.

  Or maybe they thought I’d turn into Peggy, who had to get spectacularly shitfaced, out of sheer nerves, I suspected, whenever she was in a social setting with the Stones.

  Or maybe they just saw what a train wreck marrying me was going to be.

  Jeanette majored in sociology and wanted to save the world, which I thought was cool. She thought I wanted to save the world, too, I guess. I never told her I went into newspapering not because of any altruistic motives, but because I just flat out liked it. The thrill of the chase was what hooked me, not the effects of exposing bad deeds.

  We got married in 1982, as soon as we graduated. It was all good for four years, what seems now like a long time. So many memories were packed into those first married years, before we stopped “putting it off” and Jeanette had Andi.

  With Jeanette at home with the baby, I had more time on my hands and she had less. I found it was easier to spend extra hours at the paper than be a parent.

  Up to that time, other than one brief slip, I’d been faithful.

  Chandler Holmquist came to us straight out of Harvard. We usually didn’t hire them that young, but she was good. She’d been a top editor at the Crimson, and nobody figured she’d be around Richmond very long.

  She had long, straight hair, so blonde it hurt your eyes. She had perky little tits and a nice, firm ass, and they put her under me, so to speak. I had been covering the legislature for three years, and for a brief moment, I knew more than Chandler Holmquist did.

  I was not unhandsome at that age, and I wore the same pants size I’d worn in college.

  Soon, Chandler and I were sleeping together, although sleeping was a euphemism. She was, I discovered, more insatiable in bed than I was, which at that time was going some. I’d come home at three A.M. with some kind of bullshit story I didn’t even have to tell, because Jeanette was already asleep, unless she had to get up and feed Andi.

  Did I feel guilty? Yeah, but Mr. Johnson almost always won out.

  The worst, before the absolute worst? I called home on Jeanette’s birthday to tell her I was going to be a couple of hours late because I was working on a big story. She had to cancel dinner reservations. While I was talking to her, Chandler Holmquist was straddling me, naked and grinning like a possum.

  The absolute worst, of course, was when I left. Jeanette is smarter than I am, and she knew the basics of what was going on, had even confronted me when Chandler and I were seen at an after-hours club. I promised to do better.

  I was convinced, and I think Chandler Holmquist was, too, that this was some kind of kismet bullshit. I’d mention Jeanette and Andi, and Chandler would brush her hair back, run her hand up my leg and tell me we were meant to be.

  Jeanette and I only had one raging argument—about Chandler, of course—and when I stormed out, she didn’t stop me. The look on Jeanette’s face that day won’t ever leave me. If she had fallen on the floor and begged me to stay, I probably would have, because all along I wanted to have it both ways. But, to her credit, she didn’t.

  After the separation turned into divorce, Chandler and I both felt that the only thing to do was get married. Otherwise, it wasn’t Romeo and Juliet. It was fucking.

  Which it was. It took us about a year to figure that out, and another year to get divorced. She got a job at the Boston Globe and moved back to the land of her people, to the great relief of her high-born parents, whom I saw exactly three times.

  Jackson has never had much good advice, but in that thin volume, what he told me when he knew I was marrying Chandler certainly has a prominent place.

  “Willie,” he told me, after we’d drunk enough to be honest, “the even-numbered marriages, they never work out.”

  Since Jackson himself has never married, I didn’t give him the credence he deserved.

  Chandler and I didn’t speak for a year or so after the divorce; and then she called one day, and we were civil, but then we always were. Even the note she left me the day she took off was civil. And I was civil enough not to call her in Massachusetts, and call her a conniving bitch who had helped me ruin my life.

  We talked and then emailed back and forth for a while, but then it just kind of died. The Christmas card—excuse me, season’s greetings card, in case I might have become a Jew or Buddhist since last December—I got this year had no personal message, just a photo of her, her second husband (even numbers seem to work with her) and their three kids in Vail or Aspen or some damn where. I don’t send cards anymore.

  I told myself I wanted to do right by Andi, but I never did. I’d get her on weekends, and Chandler would usually find somewhere else to be. Whenever Jeanette wanted one of the weekends back, I was only too eager to forfeit Andi’s company.

  Jeanette and I had talked about having two or three kids, me hoping there’d be a boy in there somewhere to whom I could impart the manly Hill arts of my youth. I had blown up an entire family before it really got started.

  Mostly, I’d blown myself up, as it turned out. Jeanette—by the time I would have spent the rest of my life on a bed of nails to get her back—was being courted by a decent, devoted, hardworking man.

  Once, after I was on my way to Divorce No. 2, I told Jeanette that she’d been the love of my life, which was true, but I tried to say it in a jokey kind of way, trying to keep it light.

  Jeanette frowned, then leaned toward me. We were standing inside her front door, and I’d just returned Andi, who would have been about five then. I thought we were going to kiss, I mean really kiss. But then, as I moved forward, she slid to one side and gave a peck on the cheek.

  “We had a great time, most of the time,” she said. It was forgiveness, but it was goodbye, too, to any chance of putting all the pieces together. She and Glenn would be married in a year.

  Andi has a couple of stepbrothers, eight and ten years younger, whom she adores.

  I’ve always loved my daughter, swear to God, but as she got older, I liked her more and more. It’s a little too late, though, when you weren’t there for first words and toilet training.

  We’ve been through some stuff. She hit a stretch in her midteens when we wondered if she’d ever see twenty. I remember the night that Jeanette, Glenn and I sat in the waiting room at MCV while Andi had her stomach pumped. I think she was fourteen. But she’s coming around, I think. Part of that willfulness is a strong backbone, a certainty that she knows what she’s doing and won’t be swayed. She knows she’s going to turn out all right. I just hope her certainty has some basis in reality.

  If there is a day of reckoning, the only mitigating evidence I have to offer is this: I insisted from the start that I’d pay for Andi’s college education. It probably isn’t necessary. Glenn is a successful contractor who was smart enough to get into commercial work when he saw that the housing bubble was going to burst all over us, and he and Jeanette are comfortable. But they do have the two boys, too.

  More than once over the years, Jeanette has tried to let me off the hook, but I’ve been putting that money aside, every paycheck, for almost eighteen years now. Had big arguments with Chandler and Kate over it.

  Give me a chance at redemption, I told Kate the last time it came up. Everybody gets a chance to do at least one thing right.

  Andi tells me that she has a dog, actually one that she and someone named Keith take turns taking care of. I know not to blurt out, “Who’s Keith?” In the androgynous world in which she lives, he could be a gay friend or some guy who’s shagging her every night. Best not to know, at this point. OK, I hope he’s gay.

  She surprises me by thanking me for paying for her tuition and fees and a few other things.

  I give her my standard line.

  “Least I can do, considering.”

  She picks up her
napkin and wipes her mouth, then looks at me. It startles me, somehow. She doesn’t often look at me straight on, I realize, maybe afraid of what she might see.

  “I’ll make you proud of me someday,” she says. “I swear I will.”

  I clear my throat and tell her that I’ll try to make her proud of me, too. It’s about as close as we’ll come, probably, to really sitting down and having it out about what a chump I was.

  One sign of being a grown-up, I’ve come to think, is forgiving your parents. It took me until I was in my thirties to have a sense of humor about Peggy. I think Andi is getting there faster, something I don’t deserve.

  I pay the bill. She knows the waitress, both part of the network out there. When I try to leave three dollars to cover our nineteen-dollar tab, she tells me not to be a cheapskate. I leave another buck, looking to her for approval. She nods her head and smiles.

  I watch her walk away, toward VCU, while I head toward my uncertain fate in the managing editor’s office.

  I think, as she disappears around the corner, about Isabel Ducharme. One year, Kate and I went to Tuscany. This one town, San Gimignano, had a torture museum with all the medieval nightmare apparatuses, many of them with a disturbing sexual undertone. There was nothing there bad enough for the man who cut off an eighteen-year-old girl’s head and mailed it to her father. I wonder how Philippe Ducharme, whatever kind of man he might be, can bear it. I have an urge to speak with him.

  I manage to smoke half a Camel, crushing the rest out on the sidewalk before I trudge up the steps. The clock in the lobby says ten thirty. I’m on time for a change.

  I see the publisher in Wheelie’s office. He and Wheelie are talking with the door closed, which always gets the newsroom rumor mill going. I pass Baer, and he gives me a smirk that I’d like to slap off sometime.

  Wheelie frowns when he sees me and looks at his watch, although it can’t be more than 10:32 by now.

  There’s a seat, next to the publisher. Wheelie motions toward it with his head, but I tell him I prefer to stand.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” Wheelie says, to open the dialogue.

  Mal Wheelwright usually doesn’t curse, and it passes through my brain that he wants the publisher to think he’s the stereotype of the hard-bitten, seen-it-all newspaperman, which he is not.

  The publisher is half-turned, looking at me. He looks even paler than I remember. I believe you could read our newspaper through his long, blue-veined hands if the light was right. I’ve known him since he was a pup reporter, not long out of Indiana University, but he prefers that we don’t call him by his old newsroom nickname, “Grubby.” I’d rather stick needles in my eyeballs than call him “Mr. Grubbs,” so I don’t call him anything.

  “The Web guy said to go outside the box,” I explain, knowing how lame it sounds but not having a better answer.

  “We’ve gotten eighty-two responses so far,” Wheelie says, “most of them wondering why we don’t put this crap in the paper.”

  “I offered to,” I remind him.

  “And I told you not to! This case has already been solved. We don’t deal with rumor and innuendo.”

  I think about some of the scuttlebutt that some of my cohorts have put on the newspaper’s site under the guise of journalism. One of the Sarahs (but not Goodnight) has been running a kind of R-rated lonely hearts thing that all the old guys in the newsroom follow religiously.

  Grubby really is sampling our Web site at three in the morning. Either that or some of these folks have actually come back from Planet Web long enough to pick up a telephone and call the publisher. Our corporate masters love reader feedback, especially if it comes from the magical world of cyberspace. They pay people to lecture us about the need for another “platform” for our “product,” but in the newsroom, we’re mostly trying to put out a newspaper, silly as that sounds.

  So Grubby sees it and wakes up Wheelie, who’s now playing managing editor. Maybe my number’s up. Maybe the company’s ready to lose another human asset to make its budget this month.

  Wheelie continues to hector me for a bit about going against his direct wishes, and then the publisher kind of clears his throat, just enough to make Wheelie stop talking and look at him.

  “Well, Willie,” he says, “we seem to be in a bind here, because of you. I don’t like surprises. But if it’s out there, we’d better do something about it. Between you and I, I don’t like doing business this way, though.”

  Between you and I. Goddamn, Grubby. If the man had spent a little more time actually learning his native tongue, maybe he’d have been a good enough reporter that he wouldn’t have traded his fucking soul for an MBA.

  I’m one smartass remark from severance pay, so I dummy up. The publisher doesn’t say anything else, enigma that he is.

  Finally, Wheelie breaks the silence.

  “Uh. What, exactly . . . ?”

  The light bulb goes on.

  “You want me to write something for the paper tomorrow.”

  The publisher pins me with a stare and then slowly nods his head, and I see Wheelie scowl. He will get me for this.

  “Just be sure that it’s right, and be sure I see it before it runs.” He looks at Wheelie when he says this. I’m sure Grubby’s not happy, but it’s my belief that he’s seen the Big Picture: We can sell some papers if we reheat Isabel Ducharme’s murder and serve it to our salivating readers as a still-unsolved case. Our publisher is not averse to justice if it improves the bottom line.

  Grubby looks at his watch, tells us he has a meeting at eleven, then stands. I’d forgotten how short he is. I resist the urge to tell him to avoid direct sunlight.

  After he leaves, Wheelie lets me know exactly what kind of backstabbing SOB he thinks I am, and I take it. I really didn’t mean for him to get caught in the middle, but I don’t intend to leave Martin Fell to face official justice devoid of all the facts, either.

  If he killed Isabel Ducharme, hell isn’t hot enough for him. But if he didn’t, I don’t want some bastard to get away with destroying two lives.

  I have about three hours to kill, so I check my email, my voice mail, even the paper stuff that some troglodytes still send.

  Nothing much there. That Nigerian prince still wants to make me rich, and somebody keeps asking me if I want a longer penis. I always answer yes, but nothing happens. The first four phone messages are two hang-ups and a couple of broadcast reminders that any unauthorized person parking in the assigned spots in the company parking garage will be publicly hanged.

  The fifth and last one is from David Shiflett.

  “We need to talk,” the voice says, and gives me his number at the police station.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He answers on the second ring.

  David Shiflett sounds cordial, almost friendly. He says he thinks it’s time we do what I suggested the other day.

  “You know, have a drink, talk about old times on the Hill. That kind of shit.”

  I note that he didn’t seem that taken with the idea last time I mentioned it.

  “Well, I was kind of focused, on the case and all. Plus, I want to talk to you about a couple of things.”

  One of those things, I’m sure, being a certain blog. People really do read that crap.

  He suggests that I drop by his place after work.

  “It’s only in the next block from your momma’s.”

  I tell him I won’t get off work until after one. He says not to worry, that he doesn’t usually get to bed until three or so.

  “Sometimes,” he says, “I just watch an old movie, or get on the Internet. I don’t need much sleep.”

  I tell him I’d rather just come by the station and talk there, that I need plenty of sleep.

  He laughs and suggests that I come on over now.

  “I’m gonna give you a rain check on that visit, though,” he says. “We can catch up, like you said.”

  I’ve dropped by Fourth Precinct headquarters a couple of times sinc
e I started my second stint on night police. Cops are much more likely to talk to you at the crime scene if you had a cup of coffee with them and they kind of know your name.

  I haven’t seen Shiflett there, though. When I find his office, I realize that it’s because he usually has the door closed, as it is now.

  I knock, and Shiflett opens it, leads me into an office only big enough for his chair, a desk and the chair facing him on the other side. He is almost comical, trying to fit his massive frame into the tiny room. His shoulders are nearly as wide as the little desk. He was always a big boy. He’s about six-four, and he must go 280, without any noticeable fat. I do not see doughnut crumbs on his desk. At Thomas Jefferson High, he was all-region offensive and defensive tackle, and he looks like he could kick that kid’s ass right now, even if he is fifty-two years old. His hair has a little gray, but he could pass for ten years younger.

  He gets us some coffee, closes the door again, then sits there and tries the old cop trick of keeping quiet until the suspect can’t stand the silence any longer.

  Trouble is, it’s an old reporter trick, too, and we wait each other out.

  “Well,” he says at last, then lets it sit there.

  I give in.

  “What’s up?”

  “Just wondering about a couple of things,” Shiflett says.

  He pauses again and gives me The Stare. He could, as a kid, head off just about any fight he wanted to head off by just looking at the other guy. There was something in David Shiflett’s eyes that sent a warning signal nobody but a drunken masochist would ignore. I used to try to emulate it, practicing in the mirror when I fancied myself a tough guy, too, but it never really worked. I always had to use my fists to get the point across.

  The thing is, sometimes he didn’t want them to back off. I knew a boy in the same class as David—so three years ahead of me—who lost an eye because he wouldn’t back down when Shiflett challenged him on some matter so minor that nobody could remember later exactly what it was.

  “Somebody told me about that thing you put on your blog. About Fell not being guilty and all.”