“Even after his nephew was killed?”
“I think Val’s dad was planning to go after Griswold himself,” Crow said. “He never said as much, and I don’t have anything but a gut feeling about it, but that’s what I believe.”
Val sipped her coffee, said nothing.
“So,” Newton said in a summing-up tone of voice, “the Bone Man sees and recognizes the killer as the guy he used to work for, is rebuffed by the local cops when he tried to make a police report, and probably got a noncommittal answer from your dad, Val, when he shared his suspicions with him. Okay, so then what? He goes out as some kind of vigilante? I’m not feeling it. A guy who ran from the draft because he didn’t want to carry a gun? That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? I mean, do people change their character just like that?”
“Some people do. Sometimes an event can change a person’s entire nature and personality,” Val said, sharing a significant look with Crow. Newton had the impression, though, that she was referring to something else as well, but he let it go.
He said, “Crow, didn’t you tell your father that you’d seen Griswold’s face, and that you could identify him?”
Crow’s face darkened a little. “Sure, I told my father. I told him everything I saw, and once I remembered whose face it was I’d seen I told him that, too. He beat the shit out of me for lying. Laid into me so hard I was sick for three days. People just assumed I was shaken up by the attack, but it was because of my father, and he told me to keep my mouth shut, to never say anything about it to anyone. Ever.”
“Why? I would have thought he’d have wanted some kind of payback for what happened to his sons.”
“The matter is a little more complex than that. You see, if I’d named just about anyone else in town as the guy who’d attacked me, then my dad would have rounded up some of his redneck cronies and gone out and killed the guy. No question. But when it came to Griswold all bets were off because dear old dad all but worshipped Griswold. There were a handful of guys who used to hang out at Griswold’s place. Young turks, mostly—high school age all the way to early thirties. My dad would have been the oldest, probably, at thirty-two. Youngest would have been Vic Wingate who works at Shanahan’s. Also around the same age you have Stosh Pulaski, Phil Teague, and then a little bit older was Jim Polk, who’s a local cop now, and our esteemed chief of police, Gus Bernhardt,” Crow said, “who was ten years younger than my dad but already a cop, and maybe one or two others that I didn’t know at the time. All of them were either closet-Klansmen or something like it. Don’t forget, Newt, that we have more KKK members here in Pennsylvania than in any other state.”
“I’d heard. Something to be proud of.”
“You Jewish, by the way?” Crow asked.
“Only my mother’s side, which I guess makes it official.”
“So you probably have the same opinion of these boneheads as I do. So, then we have Griswold who was very probably of age to have been a soldier in World War Two—and who is German—and you have an interesting little clubhouse out in the woods where these redneck mouth-breathers can drink and raise whatever brand of hell they thought was fun. No way any of them would turn on Griswold, even if they believe he was guilty, which most of them probably did not.”
Newton was shaking his head. “This must have traumatized you.”
Val nodded and reached out to touch Crow’s shoulder. “It did.”
“More than I can express,” Crow agreed. “Every part of that autumn traumatized me, and it took me a long time to get over it. It’s one of several reasons why I had such a long love affair with the bottle. When you drink, you always have something to blame for your nightmares. And the booze hides them.”
“But you don’t drink anymore,” Newton said, “so what about the nightmares?”
Crow glanced at Val again, and then shrugged. “They’re back, and I have to face them without the support of my old friends Jim Beam and Jack Daniels. That’s one of the reasons I’m being so candid with you, Newt. I guess it’s a kind of therapy for me. What’s the word? Cathartic?” He shrugged again. “I’m doing it to myself, and, I guess,
“What happened?”
