Текст книги "A Shock to the System "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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Crockwell said nothing.

"Vernon?"

After a quarter-minute of labored breathing, he said, "Will you help me or won't you?"

"I don't know. I need to know more before I decide. What's the deal with you and Haig and Bierly? There's something you're not telling me."

No reply.

"You said that until yesterday you thought Bierly might be setting you up. Do you also think he killed Paul Haig?"

"I don't know."

"How does Steven St. James fit into this?"

"I don't know."

"Vernon, for a man on his knees begging for mercy, you're doing little of substance to gain my confidence."

"I'm offering you money," he whined, "and I'm not withholding any information that bears directly on the matter at hand. Can't you grasp that, Donald?"

"No, I can't. How do you know the information you're obviously withholding doesn't bear directly on the matter at hand? If you want me to work for you, I have to be the judge of that."

He let out a little moan of despair and hung up.

I sat for a minute waiting for the phone to ring again, but it didn't.

I called Al Finnerty at Division Two and caught him, he said, on the way out the door after a long but surprisingly productive day.

"Productive how?" I said.

"We think we've got the gun used to shoot Bierly, a mean little Raven MP-25, the weapon of choice for the playground criminals of America. Guess where we found it, Strachey?"

"In Crockwell's dumpster."

"You talked to Crockwell?"

"Just now. He's freaked, Al."

"So, Crockwell is your client? There's no harm done in getting that on the record. It won't change a thing, as far as I'm concerned. I'm just glad to know somebody's paying you a fat fee, Strachey."

"I'm not saying Crockwell is or isn't my client. I'm not saying the Infant of Prague is or isn't my client. I'm not saying because, for now, for a variety of reasons, I can't say. Do the ballistics check out on the gun?"

"Don't know yet. I can't get test results till Monday at the earliest."

"What about prints?"

"The same."

"But you're not charging Crockwell with anything?"

"Not just yet."

"How is Bierly doing?"

"Better. He's conscious. He wants to see you, Strachey."

"Good. I'll drop by. I take it he didn't ID who shot him."

"Nah. The shooter was crouched beside Bierly's car in the dark and fired across the roof of the car as Bierly was opening the door. Bierly thinks he was wearing a ski mask, but it happened so fast, he said, he wasn't even sure of that."

"That's not helpful."

"Bierly asked if we'd check on Vernon Crockwell's whereabouts last night. He said Crockwell ought to be our prime suspect. This was before we searched the dumpster. Bierly didn't know about the gun. Interesting, isn't it?"

"Yeah, interesting. Why did Bierly think it might have been Crockwell? Did he say?"

"He said Crockwell hated him for leaving his therapy group and taking Paul Haig with him. But that sounds weak to me."

"Me too, Al."

"Shrinks must have people coming and going and mad at them all the time. I've never heard of that leading to homicide."

"Me either."

"But Crockwell's still our best bet here. We've got the letter and the tape of him threatening Paul Haig, and he's got no alibi. Even if his prints aren't on the gun, if it's the one that shot Bierly, we'll probably have to charge him. I suppose all you gays will be delighted to hear that."

My grasp tightened on the receiver. I said, "That's not the strongest evidence to present to a jury, Al—a vague threat against a friend of Bierly's, the lack of an alibi, and a gun anybody could have tossed in Crockwell's dumpster. It's awfully circumstantial. Won't the DA need a little more?"

"Oh, we'll put it together," he said. "Especially if the ballistics check out. If Crockwell is your client, Strachey, I hope you got paid up front."

"I hope you're not being overly optimistic, Al." Or overly anything else.

"I want to close this out by the end of the month if I can. The worst that can happen is the DA will charge Crockwell, and

because he's a professional type with no previous record he'll want to deal—plead to aggravated assault instead of attempted murder. And if he didn't do it, that'll come out in the wash too, and the case will be thrown out or he'll be acquitted. I've got a lot of faith in our system, Strachey. However it shakes out, we'll all have done our best, and that's what counts."

I said, "But even if Crockwell is innocent and sooner or later he's cleared, the chances are, once you shove him into the sausage machine he'll come out sausage, in the sense that he'll be ruined professionally."

"Well, I've heard the psychology field is overcrowded," Finnerty said, and I shuddered.

Before I left for my dinner appointment in East Greenbush, I gave Timmy a quick rundown of my conversations with Crockwell and Finnerty.

He said, "So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Some choices you've got. You can work for Crockwell, who's probably being sandbagged unfairly but who's a social menace who should be put out of business, though not for all the wrong reasons. You can go with Bierly, who's been victimized in all kinds of ways and deserves support, except he's apparently pathologically fixated on Crockwell in a way that clouds rather than clears the air. Or you can sign on with Phyllis Haig and use her money to get to the bottom of this thing, even though Larry Bierly probably didn't kill Paul, and she'd be paying you to prove that he did. Or, of course, you could just back away from the whole thing and let the Albany cops handle it in their inimitable fashion—with lives smashed to pieces in a random and whimsical way, law enforcement as theater of the absurd."

"That nicely sums up the hopelessly paradoxical nature of the situation, Timothy. Thank you."

"So which is it? Not to be overly pushy, but I guess now you have to go one way or the other."

"Not yet," I said. "I don't know enough yet. There's been so much evasiveness and dissimulation by all the parties in this

whole affair that I'm sure there's a larger picture I'm not seeing and that's critical to my understanding the little I do know– about Paul Haig's death, and Larry Bierly's shooting, and Crockwell's fear and his odd attempts to hire me, of all people, and Phyllis Haig's attempts to blame her son's death on Bierly, and– Steven St. James. How is St. James connected to Bierly and Haig and, apparently, Crockwell? And what about Moody and Stover, the violent homophobes in the therapy group? There's just too much I need to know before I can be sure which way to head, and in whose employ."

"It sounds as if you should have a staff of fifty investigators working on this," Timmy said. "I hope it doesn't take you six months to sort it out."

"It could be time-consuming, I guess. But I'll take it one day at a time. I mustn't let myself become a slave to the temporal realm."

"True, true, but the mortgage is due on the first of June. Keep that in mind, will you?"

It was hell loving a man who got all his values from dead white European males, but to have done such was my complex destiny.

12

I saw no single men seated either at the bar or in the dining room of Would You Like to Take a Wok. But a male-female couple at a rear table seemed to be waiting for someone, and when they saw me peering quizzically, the man got up and came my way.

"Would you be looking for Gene Cebulka?"

"Yes, I'm Don Strachey."

"Glad to meet you. I brought my wife along. I hope that's okay."

"Sure, that's up to you."

He was a well-scrubbed, ruddy-faced man in his late twenties in crisply laundered khakis and a pale pink polo shirt that matched the restaurant linen. He had a broad grin and a country-boy lope, and he could have passed for a soda-fountain boy on a Saturday Evening Post cover from 1952 had it not been for his ravaged head. Cebulka's honey-colored hair was thick in spots but in others it was missing altogether. This was a result not of disease, it soon became apparent, but of Cebulka's habit of absently tugging at clumps of his hair as he spoke. This seemingly pleasant young man with a look and demeanor as wholesome as any I'd run into in recent decades was, clump by clump, pulling his hair out by the roots.

"And this is my wife, Tracy," Cebulka said, smiling, as he twisted and tugged at his head. "Tracy, this is Mr. Strachey."

"Don. Nice to meet you, Tracy."

She was freckled and pretty and slight under a mainsail of

permed hair broad enough to launch a brigantine. She looked scared to death of me, but squeaked out, "Hi."

"Tracy thought if I was going to meet a good-looking man in a restaurant, she better come along and keep an eye on me," Cebulka joked, but Tracy just looked embarrassed. I probably did too.

Then it was my turn to put my foot in it. "So, how long have you honeymooners been married? Six months? Six weeks?"

"Eleven years," Tracy said sadly.

"Oh. So—you were already married then, Gene, when you went into Vernon Crockwell's program. I'd have guessed you were younger."

"I'm twenty-eight," he said, "and Tracy's twenty-seven."

"Ah."

"I just figured," Cebulka said brightly, "that I better get my ducks in a row before Tracy and I started a family. If you catch my meaning." He winked.

I was about to come up blank but was saved by the waiter, who arrived with red-tassled menus the size of the gates to Nanking. The three of us set about studying these and after a time summoned the waiter and placed our order for an assortment of multicolored edibles in cornstarch. Tracy Cebulka glanced at me nervously, and Gene smiled and twisted his hair.

When the waiter was gone, I said, "Gene, I guess your experience with Vernon Crockwell's program was a happy one. And it achieved the outcome you desired."

"That's true," he said, his fingers busy above. "I used to be turned on by men, but that was strictly no-win. I had a chance to be straightened out, so to speak, and I availed myself of the opportunity. Fortunately, Dr. Crockwell's way did the trick."

"Now Gene plays Softball with the guys," Tracy said.

This was followed by another silence. After a moment, I said, "It's hard to argue with success."

They both looked at me, Tracy unmoving, Gene twisting away at a recalcitrant clump.

"Although," I said, "Crockwell's therapy apparently doesn't do

the trick for everybody. Paul Haig and Larry Bierly, for instance. Their departure from the group was a bitter one, I'm told."

"I saw on the news Larry was in a shooting," Cebulka said. "I hope he's going to pull through. That's a terrible tragedy after Paul passing away and all."

I said it looked as if Bierly was going to be okay.

"I'm glad," Cebulka said. "Larry's sincere in his beliefs. I guess he turned into a kind of gay libber, didn't he?"

"Kind of."

"I'm broad-minded. If that's what makes a person happy, I say, hey, go for it. But going with guys never made me happy. It just made me feel guilty as heck."

"Gene used to come home late at night from Albany and just sit out on the porch feeling like a total asshole," Tracy said. "Even if it was ten below."

"Now I never go to Albany at all anymore," Cebulka said. "I don't need to. I haven't set foot in the place for—it'll be seven months next Wednesday."

"He's turned into a real stay-at-home," Tracy said. "Which I happen to like."

"A real couch potato," Cebulka said with a laugh.

"Of course, it would be nice if he got off the couch once in a while too," Tracy said, her hopeful look fading. "Especially like not falling asleep downstairs every single solitary night of the week."

"I'm hooked on Jay Leno," Cebulka said with a sheepish grin. "What can I tell you? Jay just cracks me up."

More silence. Then I said, "But tell me, Gene. Back when you were still in the group, I've gotten the impression that things didn't always go so smoothly for everybody. That there was a certain amount of tension and conflict."

"Well, naturally there was going to be," Cebulka said. "Here we were, dealing with a lot of heavy-duty stuff from our formative years. Deformative years, in our cases. Since homosexuals don't bond with their fathers normatively, they have to learn later on how to bond with other men in a normal way. That's what we

were trying to do all the time, and it was no Sunday-school picnic, believe you me. It was hard work, and we were all working a double shift—getting rid of our old habits of trying to get into guys' pants and practicing at the same time how to be a buddy and a pal and—you know—getting in touch with our true guy-ness. People would blow off steam sometimes, which is understandable. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it can be a dickens of a time getting it back in."

They both looked at me. Cebulka had a tight grip on a knot of hair and was working it loose.

I said, "Gene, when you heard about Paul Haig's suicide, did it surprise you?"

"No," he said without hesitation. "I was sad to hear it, but it didn't really surprise me."

"Why not?"

"Because I think what Paul really wanted in life was the love of a good woman. And when he quit Dr. Crockwell's treatment program, he probably figured he was dipped, as far as a woman."

"Do you have a particular woman in mind?"

"What? You mean besides Tracy?"

"I mean for Paul."

"Oh, I don't know who it would be. That would be up to Paul. But Larry was—I think he could keep being a homosexual and it wouldn't bother him. He sure was one tough nut to crack for Dr. Crockwell. Poor ol' Crocky. But I think Paul could have been saved if Larry hadn't led him down the garden path. Paul didn't have the willpower to resist temptation, though, and I guess he was so ashamed, he could no longer go on living. And I can relate to that. Paul has my deepest sympathy. Without Dr. Crockwell's help and Tracy's supportiveness, there but for the grace of God go I, possibly."

Tracy placed her hand on Cebulka's free one and gave it a squeeze.

I said, "Some people think that Paul's suicide wasn't any such thing, but that he was murdered."

"Whoa."

"And that someone in the group or connected to the group in some way is the killer."

"Holyjehelka!"

"Ever hear of a Steven St. James?"

"No. Who's that?"

"I'm not sure yet. Gene, did anyone in the group ever threaten anyone else in the group or show signs of becoming violent?"

He screwed up his face. Tracy was big-eyed. Cebulka said, "When you called me up earlier, and you said you wanted to talk about Paul's suicide and Dr. Crockwell's program, I figured you were with Dr. Crockwell's insurance company or what have you, maybe some type of malpractice lawsuit, and I could put in a good word for the doc—happy to help him out after all the help he gave me. But now you're telling me somebody thinks somebody murdered Paul? Where in the world did a crazy idea like that get started?"

The waiter approached and set plates of two egg rolls each in front of Gene and Tracy and a bowl of hot-and-sour soup in front of me. When he was gone, I said, "There is some circumstantial evidence pointing to Dr. Crockwell's involvement—in Larry Bierly's shooting and maybe even Paul Haig's death. It's possible he'll be charged."

Cebulka stared at me and momentarily ceased his labors above. Tracy said, "But Dr. Crockwell has done so much good for people. How can they do this to him?"

"Who else in the group might have wanted to hurt Paul?" I asked. "Or shoot Larry Bierly? It's not clear yet, but the two events might be connected."

Tracy perked up. "Tell him," she said, "about—what's-their-names? Those two guys."

Cebulka was twisting away again with one hand, attempting with the other to cut a hunk off the end of an egg roll, which appeared to have been manufactured from a shingle-like material.

"You mean Dean and Roland?" Gene said.

"Yeah."

He abandoned the egg roll. Tracy ignored hers. I sipped at my smooth soup.

Cebulka said, "There were two guys in the group named Roland Stover and Dean Moody. They were always pretty down on gays—very negative, if you know what I mean. Gays are sinners, et cetera. They always talked like that in the group. Then when the group ended last December, I thought, one good thing is, I'll never have to listen to their hot air again. But then, lo and behold, I ran into them—about a month ago, I think. Over at Pizza Hut. Tracy was even with me. I introduced her to those two bozos. Jeez."

I said, "They were together?"

"Yeah, their table was right near our booth. Dean had salad bar and Roland was eating off of it too, and I'll bet Dean went back three times if he went back once. I think it says right on a sign, no sharing. The waitress saw it too, but she never let on."

"And you spoke to them?"

"For a minute."

"What did they have to say?"

Cebulka shook his head, a complicated maneuver. "Roland said, did I hear about Paul Haig? And I said yes, wasn't that too bad. And then do you know what Roland said?"

"No."

"He said, 'Paul had it coming.' "

"That's all?"

"No. He said, 'He who lieth with another man shall be put to death.' And then Dean said, 'Larry should die too,' and something about if American civilization is going to survive, it has to purge itself of people like that."

I said, "But this condemnation didn't include you—or themselves, of course."

"No, why should it? We all had our certificates by that time."

"You were certified heterosexual?"

Cebulka nodded vigorously, and a good-sized clump of hair

came out in his hand. We all looked at it.

After a moment Tracy said, "Gene has a scalp condition." Cebulka shrugged. "I guess it runs in the family. I have an

uncle with the same condition."

13

I parted company with the Cebulkas around nine and headed back into Albany. I told them I might need to be in touch again and they said fine. Gene said next time I should bring the wife along. I let it go.

Following the revelation about Moody and Stover, not previously known to be a pair, I'd asked Cebulka about the session where Bierly and Haig had walked out of therapy amid a crossfire of recriminations. But Cebulka remembered the event only hazily and said Crockwell's outburst, while unusual, didn't have any lasting effects. After Haig and Bierly left, the group just picked up and proceeded without them.

Visiting hours at Albany Med were over, so I'd have to wait until morning to talk to Larry Bierly. I went home and called my machine. Nothing from Crockwell or Finnerty, but Phyllis Haig had left a minute's worth of breathy pauses and slurred imprecations.

While Timmy read a travel book called Around the World by Yak and Kayak, by Maynard Sudbury, one of the Peace Corps old boys Timmy knew from his long-ago but fondly remembered days in Andhra Pradesh, I tried to reach Roland Stover and Dean Moody, the only two surviving members of the therapy group I hadn't met yet.

I got no answer at the number I had for Moody, but just as I was about to hang up, a man breathing hard picked up the phone at Roland Stover's residence.

"Yes?"

"Is this Roland Stover?"

"Yes, and who is this?" He sounded tense and mean, fitting the consensus description I had.

"Hi, Roland, I'm Don Strachey, an investigator doing some work that might be of assistance to Dr. Vernon Crockwell. Dr. Crockwell didn't give me your name, but it was provided by another member of the psychotherapy group you were in. Could we get together some time soon so that I could ask you a couple of questions about the group? Dr. Crockwell might be having some legal problems, and there's a chance you could shed some light on the situation."

"What kind of legal problems?" Stover growled. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, if we could sit down over a cup of coffee—"

"And who has the right to give you my name? That is a breach of medical confidentiality, and I demand to know this minute who gave you my name!"

"Larry Bierly did. He thought if I talked to you, Roland, I might come away with some insights into Dr. Crockwell's therapy group and who his friends and enemies in it are."

"I can tell you right now," Stover snapped, "that I am Vernon Crockwell's friend and Larry Bierly is his number-one enemy. Anyway, I heard on TV that somebody shot Larry, so how did you get my name from him?"

"He gave it to me before he was shot."

"Is he dead?"

"No. It looks as though he'll recover."

"Too bad. Sorry to hear it. Did you know Larry was an unrepentant sexual deviant?"

"I'm aware that he did not successfully complete Vernon Crockwell's course of therapy. But you did, I understand."

"Yes, I did. Dr. Crockwell along with the Holy Scriptures saved me from a life of moral corruption."

"I'd like to hear about that, and whatever additional information you'd be willing to share about Dr. Crockwell's mission. Could we meet somewhere?"

A pause. "Did you say you're a private investigator?"

"Yes, I am."

"Who is employing you?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't divulge that. My client must remain anonymous for now. I can tell you, however, that in this matter and many others I have a strong interest in moral truth." I was looking across the room at Timmy, whose eyes came up from his book.

"Well, what exactly are you investigating?" Stover said. "Devi-ancy?"

"That might play a part in it. Incidentally, there's another member of the Crockwell therapy group I haven't been able to get hold of. Are you in touch with Dean Moody, by chance?"

"Yes, I'm in touch with Dean."

"Perhaps we could all get together and I could pick your brains—I mean yours and Dean's—about deviancy. For this investigative study I'm doing." Timmy placed his book in his lap and watched me.

"Well, then, what about tomorrow after work?" Stover said. "I'm a sales associate at Wal-Mart on Route 4, and I get home around five-thirty." He gave me his Albany address.

"I'd be pleased to drop by then," I said. "I hope Dean can make it too."

"I'll have to check with him," Stover said, and hung up.

Timmy said, "Wasn't that a little misleading?"

"Yep."

"Which one were you talking to?"

I said it was Roland Stover, and I described Stover and Dean Moody and their feverish homophobia and their apparent status as a twosome of some sort.

"Do you think maybe they killed Paul Haig?"

"No, probably not."

"Or shot Larry Bierly?"

"Maybe, but I doubt it. It's possible they did one or the other, or both crimes, assuming Paul Haig's death was even a crime, which hasn't been established. But so far I'd have to say I doubt either Stover or Moody was involved in either event. They both

sound hateful and deranged enough to hurt people badly, maybe even physically. But so far there's no real connection I've heard about between either of them and Paul and Larry, except for two things: in the group they had hissy fits over Paul's and Larry's gay-and-proud departure, and of course there's their glee over the death and misfortune of the two brazen sodomites. But they don't act guilty of actual murder or assault. They're completely open and unashamed about their hatreds, and they're probably no more than a couple of obnoxious gasbags. People like that can be psychopathic killers—I know, it wouldn't be unprecedented—and I'm going to stay alert and open to the possibility. But what I'm really after now is a clearer picture of Crockwell, Paul Haig, Phyllis Haig, and Larry Bierly and some weird dynamic among them that none of them has been forthcoming about. I think that's where the key lies to Paul Haig's death—whether it was murder or suicide—and maybe to Larry Bierly's getting shot. And it seems this Steven St. James—Mr. You-Don't-Want-to-Know—fits in somewhere too. Though as to where, beats me."

"So tomorrow you're meeting this Stover thug posing as an investigator on deviancy?"

"Something like that."

"I could come along and vouch for your interest in the subject."

"Right, and my expertise."

"If he asked about your scholarship, I could say, 'His life is his treatise.' "

"You don't really want to come along, do you? This is all in jest."

"No," he said, "I don't want to get anywhere near Stover or Moody. They may not be as interesting and mysterious and murky in their motives as Crockwell and Bierly and the Haigs and this other guy, but they do sound truly dangerous."

"Maybe you're right. I'm not sure what to think. Bierly is conscious now. I'll talk to him tomorrow. That might help."

"Maybe he'll shed some light."

"Yes," I said, "if shedding light is anything he really wants to come out of all this. Nailing Crockwell at any cost seems to be his main aim. Nobody really seems to want to shed light, and I've got to find out why."

14

Saturday morning at ten, before heading over to Albany Med, I phoned Phyllis Haig.

"Well," she said, "you're goddamned hard to get ahold of. I've been trying to reach you for days. I'd've had better luck trying to get a rise out of Dick Tracy than getting one out of you. So, Don, what's your pleasure? Are you gonna rob me blind and go to work for me and put that little fairy Larry Bierly behind bars where he belongs, or am I going to have to go out and find a real man for the job? Say, I see somebody shot Bierly and put him in the hospital. Too bad. I'd much rather see justice take its course. It wasn't you that shot him, was it? Jay Tarbell never said you were a hit man, which wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Though you call a lawyer these days and you never know what kind of stunt they're going to pull, just so they can charge you top dollar for it."

I didn't think she'd started drinking yet—my guess was she observed the proprieties of her class by holding off until 12:05– but otherwise she was in vintage form.

I said, "No, Phyllis, I didn't shoot Larry Bierly. Did you?" "No, I didn't, Don. I didn't drive out to Millpond at midnight the other night brandishing my forty-four and plug Bierly in the gut. At least, not as far as I can recall, I didn't. So if I didn't do it, and you didn't do it, what was it, a mugging?"

"It doesn't appear to have been. Nothing was taken." "The little homo probably staged the whole thing. Everybody knows what a conniver he is."

I said, "Why would he do that, Phyllis?"

"Well, how the hell should I know? You're the one who's supposed to be . . . Now look. I've done everything but hire a detective to get ahold of the detective—that's Y-O-U—who was supposed to let me know two days ago if you're gonna help me out on this goddamn thing or not. So, Mr. Hard-to-Get-Ahold-Of Strachey, what is the verdict?"

I said, "Sorry to have been out of touch, Phyllis, but I've been doing some preliminary snooping around before I decide whether or not to take your money. I'll let you know one way or another in a day or so for sure if I'm going to hire on with you. But first I've got some questions that need answering, and there are a couple of them that you can answer."

"Oh, really? What questions? I hope this isn't going to be some kind of third degree. Larry Bierly is the one you should be grilling, not me. So, what do you want to ask me?"

I said, "After Larry and Paul left Crockwell's therapy group, did Crockwell ever contact you?"

After a little silence, she said, "I don't know what that has to do with the price of tea in China."

"Before he was shot, I spoke with Larry Bierly, who said when he and Paul left the therapy group, Crockwell threatened to turn you against Paul unless Paul reconsidered and continued therapy. My question is, did Crockwell ever try to do that?"

Another pause. "Well, I don't remember exactly what Dr. Crockwell had to say to me at that point in time. I suppose we must have chatted."

"Uh-huh."

"I know I asked for my money back—I'd paid him a goddamned small fortune—and never got so much as a red cent out of that chiseler."

"When Dr. Crockwell spoke with you, was he critical of Paul?"

"He was none too pleased with the outcome, if that's what you mean."

"But who did he blame it on?"

"Crockwell accepted no responsibility for himself, I can tell

you that, Mr. Don, private eye. That would have left him open for a lawsuit, and for all he knew I could have been taping the conversation. Doctors don't pass gas anymore without checking with their lawyers first."

I said, "Have you secretly taped conversations in the past?"

"No, why on earth are you asking me that?"

"You said Crockwell might have suspected that you were."

"God, I can't even get my friggin' VCR to work."

"Did Paul ever record people's conversations that you know of?"

"No. Now what are you getting at? Does somebody have something on tape?"

"The Albany police were sent a recording of the therapy session that Paul and Bierly walked out of and never came back. The sender remains anonymous. Accompanying the tape was a note implicating not Larry Bierly but Vernon Crockwell in Paul's death. There's no proof, just the tape, on which Crockwell says a lot of nasty stuff about Paul's sexuality and threatens to come between you and Paul if Paul quits therapy. When Paul warns Crockwell not to interfere in his family life and says he won't allow Crockwell to mess things up between you and Paul, Crockwell proclaims that he will not be impeded in his noble work, and he tells Paul that if he gets in the way Crockwell will stop him dead in his tracks. Those are Crockwell's words: 'I'll stop you dead in your tracks.' Are you familiar with any of this, Phyllis?"

A silence.

"Moreover," I went on, "on Wednesday you told me that Larry Bierly had threatened Crockwell, and Crockwell had it on tape. But it wasn't Crockwell who sent the cops the tape, and it wasn't Bierly who was recorded threatening Crockwell. It was Paul."

She did not reply, and after a moment I became aware that Mrs. Haig was quietly weeping.

"Are you there, Phyllis? Are you okay?"

She sniffled and said, in a breaking voice, "I don't know who taped what. I just know what Paul told me. Oh, poor, poor Paul. I want Paul. I want my son back. I want my Paul."

"What happened is terrible for you, Phyllis. It's bad, I know."

Choking back tears, she said, "Paul didn't kill himself, did he? Am I right? I was—maybe I said the wrong things. Yes, I know I did, I know maybe I did. But Paul wouldn't kill himself over that. Paul was used to me." She snuffled and blew her nose next to the phone.

I said, "Phyllis, the police actually have some good evidence now showing that Paul could not have killed himself. And as for you and Paul—hey, it's clear from the tape, which I've heard, that you and Paul hit it off, and he was used to you and devoted to you."