Pursuit
by: S.L. Kotar and J.E. Gessler
Chapter 12
July 6, 1964 10:00 A.M. – Monday
Interview with Donna Taft
There was more than one way to skin a cat.
Gerard stood on the front stoop and rang the doorbell. He had waited to call until ten o’clock to make sure Leonard Taft was gone to work. He wanted to catch her alone. He pushed it a second time before he heard the sound of footsteps coming from the rear of the house.
“Coming,” Donna called. The door pulled open just as she was saying, “Sorry. I was hanging out the wash –” Removing a clothespin from her mouth, she started to smile, then froze. “Oh. It’s you.” Her expression darkened.
“Expecting someone else?” he politely inquired.
“The mailman.”
“A letter from your brother, perhaps?”
“What do you want?”
He smiled.
“The same thing you do. To see Richard Kimble again.”
“You make me sick.”
She started to slam the door in his face, but it bounced against the foot he had placed on the floorplate and inched back.
“Mrs. Taft, I know your brother called you on Saturday.”
“Did he?” She looked genuinely surprised. For an instant he believed her. Her eyes hardened. “What did he have to say?”
“He called again Sunday. So did I. No one answered the phone. Not on Saturday and not on Sunday. Why not?”
“We were out all day on the 4th. The boys were playing in the yard and Len was grilling. Sunday,” she added with a defiant jut of her chin, “we go to church.”
“I gave it away, didn’t I? I parked where you could see me. Stupid mistake.”
“Yes,” she agreed, a grim expression of triumph lighting her stern features. “You gave it away.”
“You didn’t answer the phone because you were afraid the call would be traced and that information would be relayed to me.”
“Yes. That’s what I thought.”
“So, he does call here. I needed proof, you see. I didn’t get it over the holiday weekend but you’ve just admitted it.” He tipped his hat. “Thank you, Mrs. Taft. With that confirmation it’ll be easier for me next time. To get a court order for a wiretap.”
The color rose to her cheeks.
“You – you go away. I don’t want you on my property,” she cried in dismay. “You’re trespassing; you’re harassing me and my family.”
The detective might not have heard.
“What do you suppose, Mrs. Taft? That Dr. Kimble is lonely? That he wanted to hear a friendly voice? Maybe he wanted money. A Western Union check. Life can’t be easy for him. Working odd jobs; always on the move. No one to talk to – no one who could possibly understand. No one but you. And his father, of course. But he’s fragile; an old man. That puts the burden on your shoulders.”
“Why are you saying all this to me? I’m not listening!”
“Of course you are. I’m just repeating what you’ve said to yourself a dozen times. ‘Poor Dick. Life is so hard for him. I wish I could help. And you can, you know.”
“How is that?” she spat in bitterness. “By turning him in?”
“Seven months have gone by since he escaped. Already, he’s not the same man he was. He’s changed. Life on the run is hard. He’s forced to do things he would never have thought possible. Steal a wallet; roll a drunk. Maybe even break a store window and take something he can pawn.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I’m beginning to. I’ll know more as the days and the weeks drag on. The names he uses; the type of jobs he takes. Where he’s likely to go. Tell him, the next time you speak with him, that I have newspapers, too. I read them just as carefully as he does. He’s searching for a one-armed man and I’m searching for him. Eventually, out paths will cross. And I’ll get him.”
Her jaw quivered.
“Will they give you a medal of honor?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Why are you doing this? How can you be so heartless?”
“Because he murdered a woman, Mrs. Taft.”
“He’s innocent.”
“You keep on believing that. But the next time he calls – and the time after that – listen to his voice. Hear the hardness in it. A man does what he has to, to survive. One day you won’t recognize his voice at all. And then you’ll know.”
“Know-what?” she ground out between clenched teeth.
“That he’s committed armed robbery because he’s destitute; that he’s fled the scene of a traffic accident without trying to help because he knows the authorities have been called. That he’s killed a police officer trying to escape. Perhaps, you’ve already suspected something of the sort.”
“I don’t think like that.”
“Then, you had better start. I have. Because I know men, studied them. It’s part of my job. I’ve seen what desperation can do. It turns them into beasts. Survival becomes primal. The boy you grew up with; the man who studied medicine because he wanted to help the suffering of others is dead, Mrs. Taft. If you want to cherish the idea that someday he’ll find that phantom killer, that’s your prerogative. I can’t stop you. I just want you to keep in mind what privation and hopelessness does. Go to Indianapolis; meet him in Chicago. I can’t follow you everywhere. And when you do see him, look into his eyes. There will be guilt there. Guilt from all the petty crimes he’s committed; small transgressions that will eventually add up to major ones. And then ask yourself if ‘freedom’ is so precious that it’s worth any price.”
“We’re not talking about freedom, Lieutenant. We’re talking about his life.”
“Oh, I understand that. But, what’s life without honor and dignity? He made one grievous mistake. Now, he’s compounded that tenfold. In another six months, a year – if he lasts that long – it’ll be multiplied a thousand times. Do you want that for him? Does he really want that for himself?”
“What are you asking me to do? Turn him in?”
“I’m asking you to convince him to turn himself in. Pay the penalty before it’s too late.”
“You’re sick.”
He tipped his hat a second time.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Taft. The next time I come, I’ll have a warrant, so you won’t have to accuse me of trespassing.” He started to leave, then turned back. “I suggest next Sunday when you go to church and you’re not at home to answer his call, you ask God to forgive you. Because whatever crimes he commits along that long, lonely road of his, will weigh heavily on you.”
She slammed the door on his back.
From inside the house he could hear her weeping.
*********************************
Pausing after writing a long, run-on sentence, Gerard scowled, re-read the words, then crossed the entire line out with dark, Number 1 pencil. He was tired, it was late and he wanted to go home. Rubbing the taut muscles in his neck, he let his eyes roam the office. They settled on the wall calendar across the room. In contrast to the black and white of the police station, the bright, cheery photograph of several enormous orange pumpkins seemed out of place. The image had actually startled him as he turned the page from September to October, 1965.
That had been three weeks ago. It was now almost Halloween. The ostensive holiday came on a Saturday this year. That was the best day of the week for trick-or-treating. Friday, the kids got to wear costumes to school and after lunch, lessons were suspended and they played games until the dismissal bell rang. Then, the following morning they planned to be up early, begging to be let loose on the neighbors.
“It’s never too early to go out,” Phil, Jr. had already announced. He had his scheme already in place. After an early breakfast he’d put on his costume – a werewolf, complete with a rubber mask from Woolworth’s – and hit the streets. Three or four hours later, with his pillowcase stuffed with candy, he’d return home for lunch, inspect his haul and change his clothes.
He had purchased the second mask, this one the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with his own money after Marie tartly informed him, “One costume is enough.”
“But, Mom,” he had protested in that whiny voice pre-pubescent boys had, “that would spoil everything!” Withdrawing a dog-eared notebook from his pocket, he held it out for inspection. “I’m going to take notes on who gives out the best candy and hit them again! I can’t go back wearing the same costume or they’ll recognize me and send me away empty-handed. But if I’m dressed differently, I’ll get what I want. Once I’ve checked off all the good places, I’ll start on streets I haven’t been on, yet. This is gonna be the best Halloween, ever!”
“‘Going to be,’ not gonna,” Gerard had corrected, coming in on the tail end of the conversation. “And no, you’re not going to go out twice. Some of the fellows at the office were discussing this Saturday Halloween and they said no one permitted out thick-or-treating before 6 P.M.”
“And your father is going with you,” Marie added.
“No, he’s not. I’ve been out by myself before. He can take Franny.”
To cover his distaste of the idea, Gerard asked, “Has she decided on a costume, yet? Is it to be a princess, a cowgirl or a butterfly?”
“She wants to go as a nurse.”
For some particular reason he couldn’t place at the time, his daughter’s choice had disturbed him and he let the subject drop. Now, sitting at his desk ruminating about the costume, the answer became obvious.
Richard Kimble was a doctor and his wife had been a nurse. With a shiver, he wondered if it was too late to change her mind. Resting his hand on the phone, he almost picked it up, then let it go. Depriving Frances of her fantasy was cruel and… obsessive. She wouldn’t understand if he tried to explain he didn’t want her ending up like another nurse of his acquaintance.
Odd way to express that, he thought. I never knew Helen Kimble in life. It’s just that it seems… I know more about her than I do my own family.
Birth date, death date and everything in between.
Everything but her thoughts on that last, fateful night. I’ve had his version a dozen times, but not a word from her lips. I know what she was wearing, what she had been drinking; I know how far the base of the lamp depressed her skull. I can identify the items scattered around her body. I can quote the autopsy report verbatim.
Closing his eyes to prevent them from being drawn to the pumpkins, his lips pursed.
Nineteen-sixty. Her son would be five years old now. The perfect age to go trick-or-treating. What costume would he select? A doctor, like his father? Lawyer? Indian chief?
The idea of policeman would never occur to the Kimbles.
What different worlds we come from, he mused. Would I trade places with him? The answer to that was simple. Not now.
His musings were more prophetic than anticipated, for as he got up and started to cross the room to retrieve his coat, the phone rang. For more than a moment he debated letting it ring: the way Donna Taft had on that fateful afternoon two long 4th of Julys ago. But such was not his nature. With a reluctant shrug he retraced his steps, picked up the handset and brought it to his ear.
“Lieutenant Gerard.”
“Lieutenant Phillip Gerard?”
“That’s correct. To whom and I speaking?”
“My name is Sheriff Lyman. I’m calling from Bennington, Vermont. You’re the police officer looking for Richard Kimble? The man wanted for murdering his wife?”
Gerard’s expression reflected no emotion. He had been down this road before.
“That’s right.”
“I have your man.”
Only the quickening of his pulse betrayed him.
“You have him? In custody? Or, you have a report of him called in from a little old lady from…” His mind went black and he couldn’t think of any towns in Vermont. When one finally came to him, he heaved a silent sigh of relief. “Montpelier? Who saw him while she was out walking her dog; or spotted him at the Post Office and had time to compare the man in line ahead of him with the wanted poster that has sixteen newer ones thumbtacked over it?”
Sheriff Lyman chuckled.
“I didn’t take you for a jokester.”
“I’m not,” came the taciturn response. “You have him in custody?” he repeated.
“I have him, but not exactly in custody.”
“I can’t come on the vague report of a third-party sighting. Not all the way to Vermont. I’m sorry but if you can’t give me something more substantial –”
“How about a set of fingerprints?”
Instantly alert, all thought of going home vanished.
“You have his fingerprints but you don’t have him in jail?”
“Oh, I have him, all right. Just not in jail.”
“Where-is-he?”
“In the morgue.”
Gerard had expected it; anticipated it. One day he knew the call would come: either Richard Kimble would be held behind bars and he’d be summoned to come and get him, or he’d be informed by local authorities he had been shot while trying to escape. Feeling his stomach muscles tighten, he maneuvered the short cord enough to permit him to sit. The chair hinges creaked as he settled down. For some odd reason it reminded him of a bell.
Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for you.
A small corner of Phillip Gerard’s soul died.
“How did it happen?”
His voice sounded foreign; distant. If he hadn’t known better he would not have recognized it.
“Traffic accident.”
Not shot while trying to escape.
There was a peculiar comfort in that realization. He didn’t want to think of him as being gunned down in the street.
“Explain, please.”
Politeness in the face of death.
“The weather’s bad up here, Lieutenant. Early snow squall. Happens, sometimes. A woman and her child were crossing the street. The little boy slipped and fell; she stopped where she was to help him. A truck skidded on the icy pavement. This stranger was just getting off work, saw the tragedy unfolding. He dropped his lunch pail and made a mad dash into the street – pushed them to safety. But he didn’t have time to save himself. The oncoming car caught him square in the chest. Ran him over. A clerk in one of the shops called an ambulance. DOA.”
Gerard’s throat constricted.
“Go on.”
“Since the body wasn’t carrying any ID we ran a check on his fingerprints. Routine. Imagine our surprise when they came back positive.”
Nothing to the surprise I’m experiencing.
“I see.”
“Your boy died a hero, Lieutenant.”
Why do you call him ‘my boy’? I have a boy. He’s home setting the table for dinner. Or, getting his costume ready for Halloween.
He asked himself that question; even came up with a retort, but didn’t bother verbalizing it to the sheriff. Dr. Richard Kimble was not “his boy.” The age difference between him and “Richard” was too close. 1918:1927. He couldn’t even be his bastard.
Gerard had never thought about the age difference before. Of all the things he had considered, comparing himself to the doctor had not been one of them; much less appraising a father-son relationship.
He’s not my boy.
Except, in a very real sense, he was.
Not in flesh and blood.
Adopted.
The word caught him cold. Tears came to his eyes.
Adoption.
What Kimble and his wife had been arguing about the night she died.
It’s all over. ‘My boy’ died a hero.
He was glad. The end had been predetermined from the start. There would be no second train ride; no more chance of accident. No handcuffs. No last cigarettes. The result was the same but the getting there had changed.
A life for a life.
Richard Kimble had redeemed himself. If not in the eyes of the law, he had balanced the scales of morality.
I wonder if he thought about that as he lay dying on that cold, unfamiliar Vermont street?
He dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter to Dr. Kimble, now. The fact it mattered a great deal to the man “obsessed with his capture” was more than he could account for.
“All right. I’m coming.”
“Thought you would.”
The sheriff sounded cheery. Gerard decided he did not like the man. One life had been taken; another’s diminished. There was nothing in which to be pleased.
What do I do, now? Now that it’s over?
Thoughts for another time.
He was not looking forward to the airplane flight. Too much time to think.
I have to go home and pack.
The old Gerard was pleased. That sounded cold. Logical. Professional.
The new Gerard was lost in time and space.
“What do you want to go for?” Captain Carpenter demanded, his voice reflecting a pique Gerard had not expected.
“It’s my duty.”
“To bring back a corpse?”
“To put closure to it, then.”
“The fingerprints did that.” Carpenter, hands behind his back, paced away. He went once around the desk before coming to a stop further away from his officer than he had before. “I see you’re taking this news badly, Phil. If you tell me now you thought him innocent, I’ll retire tomorrow and we’re through with one another. Professionally and socially.”
The fact the Carpenter and Gerard families had never been close on a personal level only underscored the captain’s ire.
Gerard stared at him a long beat before answering.
“I hardly think now is the time or place to discuss Dr. Kimble’s guilt or innocence. That was decided for us. I am dedicated to supporting the… system.”
“And juries make mistakes.” A hand went to his head as he felt a headache coming on. Eye strain, Carpenter told himself. From seeing a man I knew in a different light. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation, Phil.”
“I believed him guilty.”
The stiff-backed man he addressed noted the past-tense.
“He got to you, didn’t he?”
The strain showed on Gerard’s face. The bags under his eyes were darker; the crow’s feet at the corners deeper. He looked as though he hadn’t slept well – in six years.
“I still can’t believe his one-armed man slipped through my fingers all those years ago. I did everything humanly possible to find him. He simply did not exist. I therefore have to believe Dr. Kimble made him up.”
“Because if he didn’t, you were responsible for his conviction.”
The figurative shot struck Phillip Gerard dead center. Not between the eyes but in the heart. However, he knew a slap in the face when he staggered back from one.
“I think you’ve been on the job too long, Luke. You’re tired; burned out. The man I knew six years ago would never have said that to me. He would fully comprehend that I was only one of many officers on the Kimble case. Yes, I was in charge of it, but I’m dependent on those under me to do the leg work. Even those policemen outside my jurisdiction. We scoured the area within a hundred miles – far more than the supposed killer could have traveled within the time frame we were looking at. We didn’t find him.”
Gerard crossed to the Halloween-themed wall calendar and stared at the two pumpkins front and center. Somehow, in the intervening hours, minutes and seconds that had elapsed since the phone call, they had changed. Instead of happy plump gourds posing for their photograph used to inspire children and adults alike to anticipate the upcoming October holiday – which wasn’t actually a legitimate holiday to begin with – banks were still open and the mail delivered – they appeared rotten on the vine.
No one had taken them home; no large hands had taken the family carving knife and slid around their tops, opening it up for the removal of the ten million, forty-seven thousand and eleven seeds. No discussion had taken place over which side offered the best opportunity for carving; the face most likely to scare or amuse.
What do you say, son? Big, triangular eyes? A grinning mouth with three square teeth? That’s traditional. Or would you prefer round eyes and an oval mouth. That indicates surprise. What about slanted eyes and fangs on either side of the mouth? An evil genius. Or, a clown face? We could try one of those although I’m not sure how to go about it?
These pumpkins were now the only ones left in the field. All the others – their lesser companions – were gone, the land bare and desolate behind them. Why had these two, attached at the umbilical vine, been left to rot? Because they were more expensive than the rest? Paid for by the pound, they would have cost a frugal parent ten cents times fifty. Five whole dollars. A smaller one would only cost twenty cents; thirty tops.
Perhaps they had been too heavy. Neither one would have fit in the back seat of a sedan. Or, even pass through the rear gate of a station wagon. By becoming the biggest and the best pumpkins in the field and the darling of the farmer’s eye, they had outgrown their usefulness. Instead of triangles and ovals, they sported irregularly-shaped splotches of black rot. Sides had caved in and the thick and vibrant stems, once pulsating with life, had shriveled, revelations of death in the womb.
A tragedy of immense proportions had come to the pumpkin patch and there was no one left to mourn. Even their ostensible father, the farmer, had left them for the squirrels or the birds to peck on and deface. Instead of centerpieces, they had become scarecrows destined to be plowed under in the spring. There, new seeds would be sown, new lives engendered by the soil and the sun and the rain, with no thought to the old.
It was the cycle of life and death, meant, in its own way, to be cruel.
“Who’s going to pay to have the body shipped back?”
Startled at the sound of the voice, for he had been listening to another’s, Gerard snapped out of his reverie.
“What was that?”
“Why should the Stafford police department have to pay for transportation of the body? He didn’t die here, after all. When you go – and I suppose I’ll have to let you –”
“For the last time,” Gerard quietly interrupted.
“Make sure you stress the fact it’s up to – where was he?”
“Bennington. Vermont.”
“What the hell was he doing all the way up there? In the winter, no less.”
“It’s fall.”
Gerard was not feeling obliging.
“Winter, fall. He had no business being so far away from –”
“Home?”
“I don’t appreciate that, Phil. I’ve been more than generous with you.”
Carpenter was genuinely annoyed. He had started the conversation as a means of shaking his lieutenant out of the doldrums, but it had turned an ugly corner and his temper had gotten the better of him. He didn’t blame Gerard for not finding the one-armed man. No one could have. What was, was. What was, was meant to be. He had resolved that question years ago. He didn’t control fate. That belonged in the hands of a higher power. They were all actors on a stage. What he blamed him for was this terrible depression he seemed to have sunken into. It was Halloween and he wanted to go home.
It was late and he wanted to retire.
He was old and wasn’t feeling well.
It was enough the case had been closed.
“If they won’t pay for it, I suppose we’ll have to. Get the proper papers while you’re up there and contract the railroad. They ship coffins. Call the office with the ETA and there’ll be a meat wagon waiting.”
“Morgue wagon.”
One. Two. Three. Four.
Counting did not assuage his temper.
“His.” It might have been either Carpenter or Gerard going up the numerical scale.
“You had better notify the family.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
The avowal was as much truth as falsehood. The idea had not occurred to him. And if it had, he would have done so when he returned.
“They have a right to know. I suppose,” the captain thoughtfully added in a tone that sounded on the low side of smug, “they still have the burial plot they bought all those years ago.”
“I’d rather wait.”
“I think not. Once you ID the body, it belongs to the family. Let them pay for the morgue wagon. Let them select the funeral home.”
Parlor.
Another correction. Even in death, words mattered. Or, especially so. The lieutenant had never been a wordsmith, before.
Home is for the hunted.
Richard Kimble’s home was now with the angels.
Phillip Gerard knew enough of hell on Earth to believe God forgave all sins.
Even his.
“His” being an all-inclusive word.
Link to Chapter 13