Second Chance (9 page)

There was a death notice the following day, an obit
with a large picture of Estelle, taken when she was younger and less
troubled. And about a week later one final paragraph detailing the
findings of the coroner's inquest. Not surprisingly the coroner had
ruled Estelle Pearson's death a suicide by drowning. There was no
hint that she might have been murdered.

Ethan's drawing was the last item in the folder.
After I'd read the brief history of his mother's life and death, the
line sketch looked less like an anonymous bogeyman to me and more
like a picture of how the kid himself must have felt following the
suicide-jagged, frightened, full of rage.

Skimming through his chapbooks only confirmed that
feeling. I didn't read all four of them—the poems were mostly of a
piece, anyway. Sentimental elegies for his mother and his lost
childhood. Angry jeremiads about social ills, full of violent
adolescent gripes and not so veiled references to his father and
other father figures—men who said they knew best but constantly let
Ethan down. There was a love poem dedicated to his wife, and one very
odd poem called "The Anniversary?

When we meet again, as we will
We'll
talk about that last fall day
And the smell
of burning leaves
The sunlight on the lawn
The sound of the wind in the trees
Where
I met you.

Seeing is a meeting, after all
Even
from a high window
Myself a child of ten
taking leave
Of her in the smell of burning
leaves
The sunlight on the lawn
The
sound of the wind in the dark trees
Where you
waited

We'll meet again where you waited
In
the trees; in the burning,
in the darkness,
in the sound of the wind
And the child will
be there too
In the darkness where you waited
A knife blade in the darkness where he's waited
To commemorate this anniversary.

I wouldn't have bet money on it, but I had the
feeling that the poem was addressed to Estelle Pearson's murderer.
Even if it wasn't, it had a nightmarish resonance to it. just the
thing to drowse over.

11
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I didn't get much sleep, maybe three hours. Enough to
leave me logy on the flight back to Cincinnati. In a way it was a
blessing to be that tired. I didn't have enough energy to get scared
about the plane ride.

We landed at Cincinnati International around nine,
having lost an hour on the way back. After a cup of coffee at the
airport cafeteria I picked up the car in short-term parking and drove
to town.

It was a mild, blue December morning. A bit of snow
from the previous day's storm still laced the hillsides along the
expressway, in the crannies that the sun hadn't yet touched. It would
melt within the hour. The day was that warm, like false spring.

I stopped at the office first—to phone the State
Patrol and Al Foster at CPD. The grey Volare hadn't been spotted,
although Al had managed to get a Kentucky plate number and
registration. The car was registered to Hedda Pearson. The address
she'd given was 1245 Hidden Fork Road, in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky. There
was a phone number on the registration.

I dialed the number and got the manager at The
Bluegrass Motel and Motor Court. The name Bluegrass Motel rang a
bell, but it wasn't until after we'd begun talking that I remembered
that the last of Ethan's postcards was addressed from the place.

 
The manager, a man named Wilson, was
officiously polite in the bow-and-scrape tradition of southern
hospitality. I asked him if Ethan Pearson had checked in or out, and
he said neither. The Pearsons had left town, but their room was paid
up through the end of the month and he expected them back soon. I
told him who I was, gave him my phone number, and asked him to call
immediately if Ethan did come back. I made it sound important, so
Wilson would feel
important. He said he would
surely call.

I called the Pearsons next—to see if they'd heard
from their wandering children. Louise Pearson answered the phone.

"We haven't heard a word, Mr. Stoner." She
sounded exhausted, but then she and her husband had had a rough
night. "Phil's worked himself into quite a state. This business
about the police . . . it would help if you could come out and talk
to him. Give him a sense that he's participating in the process and
not just sitting back and letting it happen around him. It's the
feeling of helplessness that's getting to him—getting to all of us.
It . . . well, it stirs up bad memories."

I'd read about those memories the night before. Up to
that moment it hadn't hit me that Pearson had been down this road
before—waiting for the police to discover what had happened to
someone he loved, someone self-destructively crazy. The woman didn't
make the connection explicit, but the change in her tone of voice—the
change from the backbiting bitterness of the previous day to genuine
concern for her husband—was itself telling.

"All right," I told her. "I can make
it out there in about an hour."

"Bless you," she said.

There were several Mercedeses parked in the Pearson
driveway, when I pulled up around ten-thirty. Two of them had
physician's plates. The other one had a bag from Saks in the
backseat. I walked around to the front of the house and knocked on
the door.

A smart-looking woman with snow-white hair answered.
She was in her sixties, immaculately dressed in a Chanel suit and
pearls.

"Yes? What can I do for you?" she said
coolly.

"My name is Stoner. I'm here to see Dr.
Pearson."

Her blue eyes lost their "No Vendors" look.
"You're the detective, aren't you?"

"
Yes."

"I'm Cora Pearson," she said, holding out
her hand and withdrawing it before I could shake with her. "I'm
Philip's mother. Please come in."

I followed her down the hall to the grey sitting
room. The woman walked as if she were balancing a book on her head,
which was probably the way she'd been taught. Louise Pearson was
sitting in one of the red armchairs by the fireplace. She smiled
familiarly when she saw me come in.

"It was so good of you to do this, Mr. Stoner,"
she said, smiling gratefully.

"I wish I had something good to report."

She made a gesture with her hands, as if she were
shushing a heckler. "Believe me, just talking to Phil will
help."

She glanced at the mother, who was standing by the
sideboard, taking the conversation in over her shoulder. The older
woman nodded as if she agreed with Louise.

"You've met my mother-in-law, Cora Pearson?"

"Yes."

Louise Pearson stood up a little shakily and started
across the room to the door. The mother-in-law touched Louise's left
hand sympathetically as she passed, and Louise smiled at her.

"It'l1 be all right," Cora Pearson
whispered.

"I'm going to go see about Phil," Louise
said. "He's in with Shelley right now. They should be done
soon."

"Shelley?" I asked.

"Sheldon Sacks. He's Phil's best friend. Sort of
a family counselor. He's been seeing Kirsty, too. I mean—he saw her
over the summer."

She didn't say it, but he'd also been Estelle
Pearson's psychiatrist. I'd seen his name in the newspaper clippings.

"It might help if I could talk to Sacks about
Kirsten," I said.

The woman bit her lip. "They don't usually talk
about their cases. It would breach their code of ethics."

There was a hint of sarcasm in the way she said "code
of ethics." But it was slight compared to the way she'd spoken
about her husband's profession the day before. Everything about her
had changed slightly from the day before, even her looks. She hadn't
made up her eyes or mouth, and she was dressed down in jeans and a
white blouse. The sunlight pouring through the undraped window washed
her complexion out even further, making her seem younger and
more vulnerable. In any light she was strikingly
good-looking.

Louise left the room. The elder Mrs. Pearson stared
after her with concern.

"She doesn't deserve this," she said in a
bitter voice. "She's been such a rock." The woman looked
down at the silver tea service as if it were all that remained of the
family fortune. "None of us deserve this."
 
I wasn't sure she was talking to me, so I didn't
reply. Mrs. Pearson poured coffee and, as an afterthought, asked me
if I'd like a cup.

"Yes," I said. "I've been living on
the stuff for the last thirty hours."

She didn't look impressed.

"There is something you should know," she
said, handing me the cup.

"Yes?"

"My son has a heart condition. He doesn't like
to dwell on it. He resents illness of any kind, as most doctors do.
But the fact is he was hospitalized once already, this past summer
when Kirsten acted up. If this current tumult doesn't end soon, the
children may succeed in killing him."
 
She
said it as if that was their intention.

"I'm doing what I can to end this, Mrs.
Pearson," I said. "But unless we can find them . .  "

She threw a hand at me. "They'll be found. They
want to be found. And if no one comes to look for them, they'll make
their presences known. Attention is all they want. It's all they've
ever wanted. I know whereof I speak. After Estelle's death I had the
two of them on my hands for almost a year, until Louise relieved me
of the burden. They were spoiled then, and they're spoiled now. No
one's life goes smoothly. Do you think my life has gone smoothly? No
one made that promise. One picks up and continues."

She sounded like she was reading from that book she
was carrying on her head. I could imagine what life had been like at
Grandma's.

"
Self-indulgence is a sin. Harboring resentment
against your father is a sin. My son has sacrificed his life for
other people. First when his own father died. And then when Estelle
killed herself. He's owed a little peace, a little simple gratitude."

Her face flushed and she turned away. I thought she
was overcome with anger until I realized that someone else had
entered the room. A paunchy, balding man in a rumpled business suit
was standing in the doorway, looking vaguely embarrassed.

"Are you Stoner?" he asked.

I nodded.

"I'm Shelley Sacks." He came in and shook
with me.

"Louise'll be along in a minute. She's still
talking to Phil."

He glanced at Cora Pearson. "Are you all right,
Cora?"

"Fine," the woman said without turning
toward him.

The man arched an eyebrow skeptically. He had a round
face, round mouth, snub nose, round blue eyes, a round bald spot on
the back of his head—like a kid's drawing of Dad. His roly-poly
paunchiness made him look younger than he probably was, judging by
the grey in his hair.

"Has there been any news?" he asked me.

"None."

"I guess I don't have to tell you that this
isn't a good situation," he said grimly.

"Do you have any suggestions?"

"I'm not a detective. But from what I've been
told I think it would be a good idea to find this man Ethan has
fixated on—as quickly as possible."

"That's what I intended to do."

"I think you might keep a watch on this house.
Perhaps on Stelle's grave. On places Ethan associates with her."

"Like your office?"

The man looked surprised—unpleasantly so, as if he
didn't like surprises.

"What do you mean?"

"You were Estelle's psychiatrist, weren't you?"

He, nodded slowly. "How did you know that?"

I told him about Ethan's clippings.

"That's very sad," he said thoughtfully, as
if he found it more interesting than sad. "Obsessions are always
sad. They trail the past endlessly, like beggar children."

"Obsessions aren't always this dangerous, are
they?"

"No. Usually they only damage the one who has
them. Ethan's case is special."

"This may be a stupid question, but is it
possible he really did see someone on the day his mother died?"

"Quite possible. Someone on the street. In a
car, in a newspaper photo. It isn't the seeing that's at issue. It's
the connection he made to his mother's suicide."

"No question it was suicide?"

He shook his head, no. "Estelle was a deeply
disturbed woman. I believe she was fated to end her own life."

I winced at the words-at the echo of Kirsten's
words—wondering if Sacks was where she first heard them. It was
certainly a convenient way to rationalize your failures.

"I didn't mean to sound cynical," he said,
as if he had read my mind. "But there is a fatality to mental
life, to certain disorders in particular. We can ameliorate
schizophrenia, palliate. But we can't cure. In all too many cases, we
can't even help."