Chase: Roman

room, a short man, slight of build. His hands shook when they were not resting on the arms of his easy chair, and he could not look directly at Chase, but stared slightly over his left shoulder.
        Chase and Glenda sat on the sofa, leaning away from the back, distinctly uncomfortable in a room of slipcovers, antimacassars and prominently displayed Bibles. Mrs Karnes kept casting disapproving glances at the expanse of bare legs showing from beneath Glenda's miniskirt, while Mr Karnes studiously pretended that he didn't even know Glenda was a woman. The whole mood was vaguely similar to that in a funeral parlour.
        When they were finally done with the thank-yous and Chase could change the course of the conversation, he said, ‘The reason I came by was to ask you a few questions about Mike. You see, I don't believe the police are looking into this very thoroughly, and I'm anxious to see it settled - seeing as how the killer might well have a grudge against me.’
        ‘What sort of questions?’ Mrs Karnes asked.
        Somewhere in an upstairs hallway a grandfather clock chimed, the brass notes hollow and faint, like scraps of an agonizing nightmare.
        ‘Mostly about his schoolwork,’ Chase said.
        ‘He was a good boy,’ Mr Karnes said. ‘He was good in school, and he was going to college too.’
        ‘Let's not lie to Mr Chase,’ Anne said, speaking twice as forcefully as her husband. ‘We know that isn't right.’
        ‘But he was a good boy,’ the old man said, but sounded as if he were trying to convince himself as much as her.
        ‘He went wild,’ Mrs Karnes said. ‘He went wild, and you'd not have thought he was the same boy from one year to the next.’
        ‘How did he go wild?’ Chase asked.
        ‘Running around,’ Mrs Karnes said. ‘Out later than he should be, and usually with a girl. You know where he was killed, in that sinful place they call a park.’
        Not wanting to pursue that line, Chase said, ‘I came mainly to ask you about a tutor Mike had in physics during his senior year in high school.’
        ‘He was out every night, and his grades went bad,’ Mrs Karnes said. ‘We tried everything we knew. What he needed was a good whipping, but he was bigger than either me or his father. When a boy grows up and loses respect for his elders, what can you do? He'd worked, and he had money for the car. Once he had that, there was no holding him down.’
        Mr Karnes said nothing, but turned and stared at the television set, where a dog act was progressing in tediously predictable fashion.
        ‘Who was his physics tutor?’ Chase asked.
        Mrs Karnes looked at the television as a dog leaped through a hoop and as another poodle did a back flip. As the unseen audience applauded, she said, ‘I can't remember his name. Do you, Dad?’
        Her husband looked away from the set and stared over Chase's shoulder. ‘I never met him,’ he said.
        ‘Did you pay by cheque? You'd have had to make out the cheques to someone.’
        ‘Paid in cash,’ Mrs Karnes said. ‘It was eight dollars for a two-hour session every Saturday morning, and Mike took the money with him. After a while the tutor got interested in Mike's physics ability and offered to teach him free.’
        ‘Mike was a smart boy,’ the old man said. ‘He could have been something someday.’
        ‘If he hadn't gone wild,’ his wife half agreed. ‘But he did go wild, and he wouldn't have settled down enough to accomplish beans.’
        Chase felt Glenda's foot brush against his, and he knew that she was as bothered as he was by the low-key, continuing argument between the husband and wife - and by their unsympathetic approach to their only child's weaknesses, if weaknesses they were.
        He said, ‘How did you go about locating a private instructor - or was he someone from Mike's high school?’
        ‘We got his name from the high school,’ she said. ‘They have a list of recommended tutors. But he didn't teach there. I think he taught in a Catholic school.’
        ‘It was a private school,’ Harry Karnes said, rallying a bit, ‘not a Catholic school. One of the academies in the city.’
        ‘A boys’ school?’ Chase asked.
        ‘I believe so.’
        ‘I'm still sure it was a parochial school,’ his wife said.
        She stared at the old man as if to force him to retract his statement.
        ‘You don't, by chance, remember the