Into the Web (21 page)

I smiled, but only as a way of covering the alarm I felt. “I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself, Dad,” I said cautiously. “You don’t have any real evidence
that Wallace Porterfield was trying to get control of Gloria’s inheritance.”

My father ignited. “Well, he sold off the house, didn’t he? That big old house and everything in it?” He gave a bitter snort. “Everybody figured he was doing it for Gloria. Selling it all, giving her the money. But he was doing it for hisself. And with Gloria locked up at Daytonville, he had a free hand. Wasn’t nobody to stop him after that. Not once Gloria was out of the way.”

“But she wasn’t out of the way,” I countered. “She was in Daytonville. But even then, she wasn’t there for long. If Porterfield had really wanted Gloria out of the way, wouldn’t he have kept her in Daytonville instead of allowing her to be released?”

“Released to some woman,” my father said, repeating what I’d told him a few minutes before.

“That’s right.”

“Then that there woman must have been the one that was in on what Porterfield was up to,” my father said triumphantly.

“There’s no evidence Porterfield was up to anything, Dad.” I sat back, stared at him, at the ire flashing in his eyes. “You hate Wallace Porterfield more than you ever hated anybody, don’t you?”

He pushed his plate away, plucked a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. “He ain’t fit to live, you ask me.” He lit the cigarette and took a long draw, his gaunt face ringed in wisps of feathery smoke. “We got to find out what Porterfield done to Horace Kellogg’s daughter. We got to go over to Daytonville and find out.” He crushed the cigarette into the mound of mashed potatoes that
rested, uneaten, on his plate. “I got at least that much left in me. The strength for one last trip.”

I might have argued that he didn’t, that the yellow had deepened in his eyes, that he no longer ate enough to sustain himself, that he was now in the last stage of his disease. I might have encouraged him to withdraw from this futile battle, seek, in the final days of his life, whatever serenity might be possible. But watching him at that moment, the way his eyes darted about, the twitching in his hands, I realized that it was not serenity my father longed for. It was the fire and sword of battle, the high hope of facing Wallace Porterfield as he had so many years before, repeating the words he’d blurted out then,
You’re a liar. And a thief.

A
nd so, as we set out for Daytonville, I knew that this final trip was in some sense metaphorical, a last voyage taken with my father across the charred landscape of his youth. I looked at his crooked hands, smelled the odor of cigarettes in his skin and hair, and sensed the brutal, smoldering core of him, the wrong he’d suffered, distant and unrightable, but which he now sought beyond all reason to avenge. To get Wallace Porterfield was his only goal, the one blaze that still burned in him, and for which he seemed perfectly willing to devote whatever energy was left in him, the flame of retribution so greedy and voracious, so much the firestorm that propelled him, that I took it for the only one.

“I been thinking about something you told me,” he said as we turned onto Route 6, the road that would finally wind its way through the mountains, then across a narrow valley, and terminate in Daytonville.

“What’s that?”

“Porterfield that night,” my father answered. “In Horace Kellogg’s house. Was he in there a long time? By hisself, I mean. Before Doc Poole come by?”

“About thirty minutes, I guess,” I said, trying to recall what Porterfield had written in his report.

“Thirty minutes,” my father mused. “Wonder what he was doing all that time.”

“It could have been anything, Dad. He went through the whole house, I imagine. And Gloria was in a terrible state. He probably spent a little time trying to calm her down before he called Doc Poole.”

“Left Archie settin’ outside in his car all that time. Handcuffed and just settin’ there.” He looked at me. “Never even called for Charlie Groom. That deputy he had back then. Don’t that seem peculiar? Here he is, Sheriff Wallace Porterfield with two dead bodies, a girl clear out of her mind, and the guy that did the killing settin’ in a car, and he don’t call for no help. Don’t call nobody for thirty minutes. Why not, Roy?” Before I could answer, he added, “Because he didn’t want nobody in that house with him, that’s why. Because he was up to something.”

“Up to what?”

My father seemed annoyed by the question. “All I know is, Porterfield didn’t call his deputy, and that seems mighty peculiar to me.”

“Maybe his deputy was sick,” I offered. “Or maybe he
was out of town. You’d have to ask this Charlie Groom if you—”

“Charlie Groom’s been dead ten years,” he said.

“Were there any other deputies?”

“Not steady ones. If Porterfield needed help, he’d just call a guy in and deputize him. Like Lonnie done you, sending you after Lila. Getting you to help him find dirt on her.”

“What makes you think he was trying to find dirt on Lila?”

“Maybe ’cause he wanted her for hisself,” my father answered with a terrible certainty that he was right, that the Porterfields of Kingdom County sat on the satanic throne, pouring ruin into the cup from which all others drank. “Lila wouldn’t pay Lonnie no mind. Went with you instead. So Lonnie wanted to get even with her. That’s why he said that to her on the road. ’Cause he wanted to hurt her and make you look small.”

And he had done that, I thought with a terrible sense that I’d fallen into the trap Lonnie Porterfield had set for me. Suddenly I found myself imagining life in the same way as my father imagined it, an evil agency sleepless at its core, forever plotting schemes of dark entrapment. It was not a vision of things I wanted to accept.

“I don’t think Lonnie was ever interested in Lila,” I said.

“ ’Course he was,” my father countered. “Lonnie knew you was aiming to marry Lila and he was jealous of that. That’s why he yelled at her that night with you right beside her. So she’d have second thoughts.”

There was no point in arguing the matter, so I said, “Well, one thing’s for sure. I never had any second
thoughts. Not about Lila. I just wanted to marry her and raise a family. That’s all I wanted.”

“I didn’t know that, Roy,” my father said. “That you wanted that more than anything.”

“What did you think I wanted?”

“To get away,” he answered. “Seemed like that was always on your mind. Getting away from … me.”

I understood then how personally my father had taken my determination to leave Kingdom County, and thus how during all the time he’d watched me plot the route, he must have thought of it as a flight from himself.

“It wasn’t anything against you,” I said. “My needing to leave here.”

My father nodded. “Didn’t know that,” was all he said.

We arrived at Daytonville State Asylum at just after one in the afternoon. By then my father looked considerably more weary than he had at the beginning of the trip. The long flight of stairs that led from the street to the building’s high wooden entrance seemed beyond his power.

“I’d better just sit here in the shade,” he said after I’d brought the car to a halt beneath a large oak. “You go on in.”

Doc Poole had called ahead, and so I was quickly ushered into the office of Dr. William Spencer, who served, according to the sign posted on the door, as the asylum’s administrative director.

Spencer was a short, middle-aged man with a rounded belly that spilled over the front of his trousers.
He wore a light serge suit with the jacket unbuttoned, his pants held up by wide black suspenders. The degrees that hung from the wall behind his desk made it clear that he’d had a formidable education, medical school at Tulane, special training in psychiatry at Vanderbilt, and more postgraduate work at Emory in Atlanta. His tone was predictably professional and matter-of-fact.

“Dr. Poole says you work for the Coroner’s Office,” he said, offering his hand. “An investigator.”

I nodded.

“And that you’re looking into a murder case,” Spencer went on. “The Kellogg murders.” He waited for me to give a reason, for this interest. When I didn’t, he said, “Well, have a seat, Mr. Slater. I’ll help you all I can.” He picked up a folder that rested on the desk in front of him and handed it to me. “This is all the information I have on Gloria Kellogg. As you can see, it’s pretty slim. Miss Kellogg was only here for a month or so. Not much time to get to know her. Psychologically speaking, I mean.”

There’d been only one formal report, I noticed as I flipped through the pages of the file.

“L. P. Mitchell,” I said, glancing at the name signed at the bottom of it.

“Dr. Mitchell, yes,” Spencer said. “He was in charge of the hospital in those days.”

“Where is he now?”

“Dr. Mitchell retired not long after Miss Kellogg was released,” Spencer answered. “He lived to quite a ripe old age, but unfortunately he died two years ago.”

“Did you ever talk to Gloria Kellogg?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, I did. I was right out of college. Dr. Mitchell was my boss at the time. He sent me in to see Miss Kellogg. Pretty much a test, as he told me. Of my powers of observation.”

“What did you observe?”

“Extreme withdrawal,” Spencer replied. “She was correctly oriented, as we say, to time and place. She wasn’t hallucinating. But beyond that, if you don’t mind a vulgar phrase, there was nobody home.” He shrugged. “Of course, I saw her for only a few minutes on the day she was admitted. Dr. Mitchell spent more time with her after that, but it was not a case I recall ever discussing with him.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry to rush, but I have to see a patient in another wing.” He rose. “Take as long as you like to look over the file. If you need to talk to me again, let me know, but to tell you the truth, Mr. Slater, I really don’t have any more information on this matter.” He shook my hand again, walked to the door, then turned. “By the way, wasn’t the boyfriend executed?”

I saw my brother as Wallace Porterfield must have seen him the morning he came back down the corridor to Archie’s cell, a body dangling from the bars, head down, face blackened.

“No,” I said. “The boyfriend hung himself.”

Something rose in Spencer’s mind. “Had that already happened when Gloria came here?”

“Yes, it had.”

He considered this for a moment, then said, “I suppose that’s why she was kept on suicide watch, then. Not only what she’d been through, but the fear that she might have entered into some kind of death pact with
her boyfriend. Teenagers do that sort of thing, you know.” He shrugged. “Well, like I said, take as long as you want with the file.”

With that, he stepped from the room and closed the door, leaving me alone.

The admission form of Daytonville State Asylum was the first paper in the file.

According to its record, Wallace Porterfield had arrived with Gloria at ten o’clock on the morning of February 15, 1964. At that time Gloria’s possessions had been carefully inventoried. They’d consisted of a small suitcase, two nightdresses, a bag of toiletries complete with soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, and shampoo. Gloria had also packed several blouses, a wool sweater, and two pairs of denim jeans. She’d worn a watch, which was taken from her, presumably because its metal band was considered dangerous. She’d also brought along the gold locket Doc Poole had mentioned to me and which upon admission was also taken from her.

By ten-thirty, according to the admission form, Gloria had changed into the pale blue dress mandated by the asylum, and had been taken to Room 316 in an upstairs ward designated as “Secure.”

Briefly, I tried to imagine the girl I’d known, Archie’s girl, sitting alone on a stripped mattress, facing the bare plaster walls of the Daytonville State Asylum. I saw her thin body draped in the blue institutional dress, her hair falling uncombed to her shoulders, her eyes locked in the terrible inwardness she’d fallen into since that snowy night when she’d waited for my brother to come for her, claim her, sweep her away to distant Nashville.
Never had she seemed more lost to me, more frail, more completely and eternally destroyed.

And yet there was far worse in store for Gloria, a fate duly recorded in her file, and which I asked Spencer about when he returned to the room an hour later.

“They gave her Haldol,” I said. “That’s a pretty powerful drug.” I glanced at the file. “It probably made her condition much worse.”

Spencer returned to the chair behind his desk. “No one knew that at the time, of course. I’m sure Dr. Mitchell believed that it was in Gloria’s best interest, given her condition.”

“How would you describe her condition?”

“Stricken,” Spencer answered. “I believe that’s the word I used in my note to Dr. Mitchell. You no doubt read it in the file there.”

“Stricken by guilt. That’s what you wrote.”

“The guilt she felt for what happened. The murders. Particularly her father.”

“Why her father?”

“Because he suffered so much. Evidently he was shot quite a few times. Of course, it was Gloria’s boyfriend who’d actually murdered her father, but she blamed herself anyway.”

“Did she say anything else about the murders?”

“No.”

“How about the boyfriend?”

He shook his head. “We never got around to talking about him.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, her guardian came into the room and she got very quiet after that.”

“Her guardian. Wallace Porterfield.”

“Yes,” Spencer said. “He sat down on the bed beside her, and the two of them just sat there until I left the room. I don’t believe I ever spoke to her again.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was Dr. Mitchell’s patient,” Spencer replied. “I’d see her in the dayroom from time to time, of course, but I never talked to her again.”

“Did Porterfield ever show up again?”

“Not that I know of. At least, not until that last day. The day Miss Kellogg left.”

I glanced down at the file. “Gloria was released to a woman named Mavis Wilde. Do you know who she is?”

“No, I don’t,” Spencer answered. “But I know she came with Sheriff Porterfield that morning. When Gloria was taken out of the hospital.”