killer.’
‘That’s different,’ insisted Art Moran. ‘That’s a rumor, isn’t it? And around here there’s always going to be rumors like that even if I’m not investigating any thing. In this case we want to leave it to the killer – if there is a killer, remember – to figure what hehears is just gossip. We’ll just let rumor work for us, confuse him. And anyway I’ve got to be asking questions. I don’t have much choice about that, do I? If people want to guess what I’m driving at it’s their business, I can’t help it. But I’m not going to have any announcement in the newspaper about any sheriff’s investigation.’
‘Sounds like you think whoever it is, he lives right here on the island. Is that what – ’
‘Look,’ said Art Moran, halting. ‘As far as the San Piedro Review is concerned there is no “whoever”, okay? Let’s you and I be clear on that.’
‘I’m clear on it,’ said Ishmael. ‘All right, I’ll quote you as calling it an accident. You keep me posted on what develops.’
‘A deal,’ said Art. ‘A deal. I find anything, you’re the first to know. How’s that? You got what you want now?’
‘Not yet,’ said Ishmael. ‘I’ve still got this story to write. So will you give me a few answers about this accident ?’
‘Now you’re talking,’ said Art Moran. ‘Fire away. Ask.’
5
After the morning recess had drawn to a close, Horace Whaley, the Island County coroner, swore softly on the courtroom Bible and edged into the witness box, where he seized the oak armrests between his fingers and blinked behind steel-rimmed spectacles at Alvin Hooks. Horace was by inclination a private man, nearing fifty now, with a sprawling portwine stain on the left side of his forehead that he often fingered unconsciously. In appearance he was tidy and meticulous, storklike and slender – though not so thin as Art Moran – and wore his starched trousers high on his narrow waist and his scant hair slicked from right to left with pomade. Horace Whaley’s eyes bulged – his thyroid gland was overactive – and swam, too, behind his spectacles. Something attenuated, a nervous caution, suggested itself in all his movements.
Horace had served as a medical officer for twenty months in the Pacific theater and had suffered in that period from sleep deprivation and from a generalized and perpetual tropical malaise that had rendered him, in his own mind, ineffective. Wounded men in his care had died, they’d died while in his sleepless daze Horace was responsible for them. In his head these men and their bloody wounds mingled into one recurring dream.
Horace had been at his desk doing paperwork on the morning of September 16. The evening before, a woman of ninety-six had died at the San Piedro Rest Home, and another of eighty-one had expired while splitting kindling wood and had been discovered sprawled across her chopping block, a milk goat nuzzling her face, by a child delivering apples in a wheelbarrow. And so Horace was filling in the blanks on two certificates of death,and doing so in triplicate, when the phone beside him rang. He brought the receiver to his ear irritably; since the war he could not do too many things at once and at the moment, busier than he liked to be, did not wish to speak to anyone.
It was under these circumstances that he heard about the death of Carl Heine, a man who had endured the sinking of the Canton and who, like Horace himself, had survived Okinawa – only to die, it now appeared, in a gill-netting boat accident.
The body, on a canvas stretcher, its booted feet sticking out, had been borne in by Art Moran and Abel Martinson twenty minutes later, the sheriff wheezing under his end of the load, his deputy tight-lipped and grimacing, and laid on its back on Horace Whaley’s examination table. It was wrapped by way of a shroud in two white wool blankets of the type issued to navy men and of which there was a great surplus nine years after the war,
‘That’s different,’ insisted Art Moran. ‘That’s a rumor, isn’t it? And around here there’s always going to be rumors like that even if I’m not investigating any thing. In this case we want to leave it to the killer – if there is a killer, remember – to figure what hehears is just gossip. We’ll just let rumor work for us, confuse him. And anyway I’ve got to be asking questions. I don’t have much choice about that, do I? If people want to guess what I’m driving at it’s their business, I can’t help it. But I’m not going to have any announcement in the newspaper about any sheriff’s investigation.’
‘Sounds like you think whoever it is, he lives right here on the island. Is that what – ’
‘Look,’ said Art Moran, halting. ‘As far as the San Piedro Review is concerned there is no “whoever”, okay? Let’s you and I be clear on that.’
‘I’m clear on it,’ said Ishmael. ‘All right, I’ll quote you as calling it an accident. You keep me posted on what develops.’
‘A deal,’ said Art. ‘A deal. I find anything, you’re the first to know. How’s that? You got what you want now?’
‘Not yet,’ said Ishmael. ‘I’ve still got this story to write. So will you give me a few answers about this accident ?’
‘Now you’re talking,’ said Art Moran. ‘Fire away. Ask.’
5
After the morning recess had drawn to a close, Horace Whaley, the Island County coroner, swore softly on the courtroom Bible and edged into the witness box, where he seized the oak armrests between his fingers and blinked behind steel-rimmed spectacles at Alvin Hooks. Horace was by inclination a private man, nearing fifty now, with a sprawling portwine stain on the left side of his forehead that he often fingered unconsciously. In appearance he was tidy and meticulous, storklike and slender – though not so thin as Art Moran – and wore his starched trousers high on his narrow waist and his scant hair slicked from right to left with pomade. Horace Whaley’s eyes bulged – his thyroid gland was overactive – and swam, too, behind his spectacles. Something attenuated, a nervous caution, suggested itself in all his movements.
Horace had served as a medical officer for twenty months in the Pacific theater and had suffered in that period from sleep deprivation and from a generalized and perpetual tropical malaise that had rendered him, in his own mind, ineffective. Wounded men in his care had died, they’d died while in his sleepless daze Horace was responsible for them. In his head these men and their bloody wounds mingled into one recurring dream.
Horace had been at his desk doing paperwork on the morning of September 16. The evening before, a woman of ninety-six had died at the San Piedro Rest Home, and another of eighty-one had expired while splitting kindling wood and had been discovered sprawled across her chopping block, a milk goat nuzzling her face, by a child delivering apples in a wheelbarrow. And so Horace was filling in the blanks on two certificates of death,and doing so in triplicate, when the phone beside him rang. He brought the receiver to his ear irritably; since the war he could not do too many things at once and at the moment, busier than he liked to be, did not wish to speak to anyone.
It was under these circumstances that he heard about the death of Carl Heine, a man who had endured the sinking of the Canton and who, like Horace himself, had survived Okinawa – only to die, it now appeared, in a gill-netting boat accident.
The body, on a canvas stretcher, its booted feet sticking out, had been borne in by Art Moran and Abel Martinson twenty minutes later, the sheriff wheezing under his end of the load, his deputy tight-lipped and grimacing, and laid on its back on Horace Whaley’s examination table. It was wrapped by way of a shroud in two white wool blankets of the type issued to navy men and of which there was a great surplus nine years after the war,
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