Stillness & Shadows John Gardner (nice books to read .txt) 📖

museum with his aunt Harriet; he might even have worked out why it was that he thought of just that, just then; but Gerald Craine did not believe he retained any memories from childhood; plagued by blanks, he shrank in distress, with a thousand excuses, from the very idea of memory; and in his tingling alcoholic panic—a chronic state at the moment grown acute—he did not think at all. The doctor glanced up at him, lifting his head with the elegance of a prince so that he could see through the lower lenses of his bifocals, and smiled still more brightly, nodding. He stood with his head thrown slightly forward, like a man looking into a fire or across a vast desert or out at the sea. Craine approached. The person in the stacks—person or snake coiled to strike; he was suddenly uncertain—did not move.

“Morning, Doctor,” Craine said, trembling, mustering all his courage. He raised his right hand toward the brim, of his Stetson, then, because of the violent trembling, reconsidered and, attempting to disguise the gesture, reached into his inside pocket, got his pipe out, carefully not disturbing slips of paper there, and with almost imperceptibly shaking fingers stuck the pipe between his teeth.

The doctor seemed to notice none of it. “Well, well! Hello there, Detective!” he said. “Any progress on those murders?”

“Murders?” Craine said, giving a jump. Then, seeing what the man must have in mind, he grinned and bleated, “I’m not in on that.” He let out a bitter laugh. “No doubt the police are doing all they can.” In the flood of relief, he nearly remembered where it was that they’d met, what it was they’d talked about, but then at once the memory slipped back into shadow, out of reach.

They shook hands, an easy, automatic gesture on the doctor’s part, awkward on Craine’s—partly because he had to shift the pipe to his left hand, partly because the doctor had stumbled onto one of Craine’s oddities: like a raw-skinned old farmer, he disliked shaking hands. He squeezed hard, as if to make up for his reluctance, then quickly drew the long, skinny hand back and wiped it on his coat. The rough cloth grated against the numbness in his fingers.

“It’s a terrible thing,” the doctor said. “Right here in Carbondale! What is it, five now? Five, I think.”

“You might be surprised,” Craine said, pedantic. “Murder’s very common in Carbondale. Been that way for years.” The conversation was academic, one of those tedious labors of politeness. There hadn’t been a murder in three, four months. Chances were it was over, like the Hollywood strangler thing.

The doctor nodded. “Yes, that’s so, so I’ve heard.” He looked at Craine with interest. “One of the highest murder rates in the nation, right here in Little Egypt, as they say. Mine wars, lynchings, slot-machine wars … But five young women in one year—”

“Everything’s old hat in Little Egypt,” Craine said. He realized at once that he’d sounded impatient. He added, “One of them was up in her sixties—the professor’s wife.”

The doctor nodded, and, with a look of distress, putting his pipe in his mouth, Craine nodded too. The professor—some man in economics, Craine recalled; computer expert—had come home to his house out on Lipes’ Ridge Road at five o’clock—that was his story—and had found the house strangely quiet, as if empty. He’d gone down cellar and there was his wife, stark naked, tied up in a chair. She’d been beaten, then stabbed in the neck and chest. On the floor there were twelve empty beer cans.

“You suppose it’s all one man?” the doctor said. His concern was personal, not ghoulish. He had a wife of his own, no doubt. She’d be home alone right now.

“No telling,” Craine said.

“No, no telling,” the doctor agreed.

It was not quite true. Craine could narrow it down, he had a feeling, if he put his mind to it. The twelve beer cans, the woman beaten and stabbed and tied up afterward… But it was none of his business. The police had all the help they wanted; even hired a university specialist, it said in the paper. They’d stumble along as usual, trying this and that, following false leads—maybe even shadowing poor miserable Craine, if what Carnac said was true—and possibly sooner or later, by accident … Craine scowled, trying hard to concentrate, but abruptly, as if shaken loose by the shudder that now rocked through him, the whole thing fell out of his mind.

He drifted with the doctor toward Tully’s desk. The girl in the cape was gone now. Light shot in through the transom above the door, tinted green by the glass, giving the room a kind of underwater look, the light shaft aswirl with motes. The grandfather’s clock behind the desk read one fifteen. The pendulum wasn’t swinging. On the glass of the pendulum chamber a chipped, ornate golden legend read Time Lost Can Ne’er Be Recaptured.

“Don’t forget what I tole you!” Two-heads Carnac called from behind him. “They watchin you, brother—gettin ready to jump—so mine your p’s and q’s!

Craine’s jaw tightened, cracking the pipe bit, and his mind flashed an image of chipped, ornate p’s and q’s. Except for the tightening of his jaw he showed no sign of hearing. One fifteen, he thought, gazing fixedly at the clock, which gazed fixedly back at him. He tried to remember if he’d had lunch.

“Fascinating mind,” the doctor said, and smiled again, tentative, as if meaning to imply some question. He cocked his large head sideways to see the title of Craine’s book. Craine, misunderstanding at first, held his arm up so the doctor could read his watch, then, seeing his mistake, tilted the spine of the book so the doctor could read it.

“Sanskrit?” the doctor said, and briefly met Craine’s eyes.

Craine nodded vaguely, only now registering the doctor’s observation—“fascinating mind”—and scowled, thinking about Carnac’s wrecked brain. Raising his left hand, book and all, he took the pipe from his mouth. “Sometimes you’d swear he’s