Galileo

by Ann McMan

  He didn’t respond to her greeting.

  “Do you mind if I sit down here?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply, so she carefully pulled out a molded plastic chair and sat down across from him. The table top was covered with little piles of puzzle pieces. There was also a bright green plastic bowl, half full of small candy bars. Snickers. Milky Way. Twix. It looked like a stash of leftover Halloween candy. A pile of wrappers littered the table directly in front of him. It triggered a memory. Miller had a sweet tooth. She recalled commenting about his penchant for candy bars in her vetting report to Marcus. “He’s always eating candy bars,” she wrote. “Probably uses them as bait to attract the kids he preys on.”

  Fat lot of good that insight did . . .

  “What kind of puzzle are you working?” she asked him.

  He held up a tiny piece and showed it to her.

  Evan studied it and the section of the puzzle he’d already assembled. It looked like part of a painting—one she thought she recognized from someplace. She could make out the tops of a couple of heads, and part of a red building. The real mystery was the way Miller was working the puzzle—from the center out. Granted, she didn’t have that much experience with jigsaw puzzles. But Stevie had loved them when she was a kid, and she believed that the easiest way to complete them was to work from the outside in. “The edges with the flat sides and the corner pieces are the best ones to start with,” she explained. “Once you get all those in place, it’s a lot easier to figure the rest out.”

  Apparently, Miller favored a different approach.

  “Is this a painting?” she asked.

  He nodded. “They’re little stars.”

  “Really? From here, they look like people.”

  He regarded her like he was seeing her for the first time. “I know you.”

  Evan nodded. “You did once.” She noticed that Miller had something clenched in his left hand. “What are you holding onto?” she asked.

  He opened his palm and showed her the tiny puzzle piece that rested there. It was sky blue and had two flat sides. “The end.”

  “The end? Of the puzzle?”

  “Of everything,” he said.

  Evan wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe talking with him was like playing the slots? You always stuck with a hot machine. “Do you like this puzzle?”

  He nodded again. “It makes sense.”

  “It’s good when we find things that make sense. A lot of things in life don’t.”

  “I know you.” He looked at her with a blank expression. “You found out.”

  Evan was surprised. “I found out about what?”

  “Aquarius.”

  “Aquarius?”

  “The stars.” Miller looked up and seemed to study a nonexistent sky.

  Okay. This was going off the rails. “You mean the zodiac? The constellation?”

  “Aquarius got punished. He carried the water but he got punished.”

  Miller took another mini-candy bar out of the bowl and unwrapped it.

  Evan could tell he was running out of steam. The machine was going cold. Time to try something different.

  “Eddie?”

  He stared at her while he swallowed the Snickers bar—apparently without chewing it. Evan watched the bulge of chocolate work its way down his throat.

  “Do you remember working as a clerk for Judge Cawley?” she asked. “In Philadelphia? Right after you got out of law school at Villanova?”

  Miller’s expression didn’t change. It was still as empty and vague as it had been when she first sat down.

  “Judge Cawley?” Evan repeated. “J. Meyer Cawley.”

  “Jupiter punished me,” he said.

  Evan wasn’t sure what he meant. “Who punished you?”

  “I carried his water, and he punished me.”

  Evan stared at him trying to make sense of what he was saying, knowing it was probably a fool’s errand. There likely was no sense to what he was saying.

  “Who is Jupiter?” she asked.

  Miller picked up a random puzzle piece from one of the piles. Miraculously, it snapped into place perfectly. It was another little chunk of the red building.

  “Jupiter stole the light.” He looked at her. Evan thought she saw a flicker of recognition, but it came and went so fast she wasn’t sure. “Aquarius comes up in the cold.”

  “I don’t know what that means, Eddie.”

  “The stars,” he said. “All the little stars. Jupiter stole their light, but they all come out when it’s time.”

  “I should look at the stars? Is that what you mean? I’ll find Jupiter in the stars?”

  “Aquarius got punished.” He reached for another candy bar.

  “Eddie?”

  He ignored her.

  “Eddie? I don’t know what you mean.”

  He didn’t reply.

  Evan sat back in her chair while Eddie swallowed another chocolate bar. It was clear that he was finished talking to her. “He’s crazy,” Ping had said.

  Boy, was that ever the truth.

  Her heart sank. Coming here was a dead end. A colossal waste of time—hers and his.

  What Miller had done was contemptible. He deserved to pay for the harm he’d inflicted on those kids and their families. But he never should’ve been reduced to this. No one deserved this kind of punishment.

  Ever.

  She looked at her watch. With the snow, it probably would take her more than two hours to make it back to Erie—if she were lucky, and her damn wiper blades stayed on. She’d have to hustle to make it back in time to check in for her flight. And that was if her flight outta this little corner of hell even happened.

  “I’m gonna go now, Eddie. I’m glad I got to see you.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Okay.” Evan pushed her chair back and stood up. “Good luck with your puzzle. I hope you find all the missing stars.”

  Eddie looked up at her then. For a second, his eyes seemed more focused.

  “Galileo,” he said.

  Evan wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “What?”

  “Galileo finds the stars.”

  He dropped his eyes back to the table and reached out for another puzzle piece.

  “The stars?” She asked. “Do you mean the children?”

  He didn’t reply.

  She tried again. “Who is Galileo?”

  No answer.

  “Eddie? Who is Galileo? What did Galileo do with the stars?”

  Miller ignored her.

  Evan deliberated. Continuing to press him was pointless. Everything about his demeanor told her he was finished with their interview. She knew she’d be unable to get him to focus again . . . on anything.

  Leaving was her only option.

  “Bye, Eddie. You take care of yourself.”

  She crossed the room toward the water fountain and the waiting phone that would summon an escort to see her out.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Outside the hospital in the parking lot, Maya sat slouched behind the wheel of her rental car and watched as Evan Reed made her way through the falling snow toward her own vehicle.

  Well, well. Score one for you, Mr. Cohen.

  The DNC had obviously hired Reed to do some light-speed oppo research on Cawley. There was no other way to explain her presence here. That little tidbit made this work a whole lot more interesting.

  And challenging.

  Reed was the best. If it occurred to her to come to this godforsaken place to check Miller out, it wouldn’t be long before some other enterprising gumshoe figured it out.

  On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that Miller would be able to give Reed any useful information—even if he were inclined to do so. According to Zucchetto’s sources, he was no longer mentally fit enough to function independently, and would likely live out his days in this, or some other mental institution—probably as a ward of the state.

  Not too shabby for a serial child molester.


  Nice work if you can get it.

  Judging by the small amount of snow visible on the windshield of Reed’s car, she hadn’t been inside very long. That surely suggested that her visit with Miller hadn’t yielded anything significant.

  That would be no surprise. The guy was certifiable. Driving up here had been a ridiculous waste of time—an entire day in the damn car. But flying was too risky and would leave too much of a trail. Witness Reed being here at practically the same time. They would’ve been on the same damn flight.

  Wouldn’t that have been cozy?

  It was clear that this little jaunt wouldn’t yield anything. But Zucchetto had been adamant about the need to “tie off this loose end.”

  The only loose ends related to Edwin Miller were the frayed ones that dangled between his ears.

  Still. In for a penny, in for a pound. A job was a job. And this job promised a big damn paycheck. Half now. Half when things were . . . sanitized.

  Once Reed started her car and had safely exited the parking lot, Maya got out and trudged through the accumulating snow toward the asylum entrance.

  With luck, this errand wouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Julia called her assistant to book a flight to Boston on Thursday. That would allow her to spend Wednesday night at home with Evan, take care of business in Boston, and be back in Philadelphia on Friday, in time for Evan’s dinner party welcoming Stevie home.

  She was forced to make this Boston trip because of failed negotiations with their current problem child: an up-and-coming fiction author whose last book had shortlisted for a PEN/Faulkner award. That was a notable distinction, to be sure. But the contract department at Donne & Hale had thrown up its hands when the escalating demands of the upstart author and her literary agent led discussions related to a new contract to grind to a halt. Julia generally tried to stay out of this aspect of author relations, but securing the rights to this next book was important for D&H—not simply because it was expected to be as well received as its widely lauded prequel. The company now was very focused on expanding its catalog of books written by women. That effort had been a particular objective of Julia’s when she took the helm as publisher. Her father, and his father before him, had been more focused on continuing to churn out the same mixture of books and monographs written by and about men.

  Not that this previous, myopic trend had hurt the company’s bottom line. It hadn’t. D&H still benefitted from the stature acquired from having published some of the most seminal works in American literature. But Julia understood that keeping the business relevant and vital meant expanding its portfolio to address the needs and interests of a more diverse reading public—and that effort included dragging the company forward to embrace new delivery technologies. For many years, D&H had been proud of its refusal to publish books in electronic format. Julia had changed all of that—much to the chagrin and umbrage of its board, a collection of crusty old men who Julia privately referred to as Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild. But she persevered. There were new stories and different voices that deserved to be discovered and heard. This was the very argument she had continued to have with her father, ad nauseam, until he finally resigned from the board in a huff, and left full superintendence of the company in her hands.

  “Disagreeing with you is pointless,” he complained. “You are determined to degrade the mission of this company, one indifferent prose work at a time.”

  It didn’t matter to her father that those “indifferent prose works” included one National Book Award winner, three Pulitzer Prizes in literature, and more than a half-dozen PEN awards. Already, D&H had politely declined lucrative offers to merge with two different companies that made up part of the Big Five in publishing. No. To Lewis Donne, his daughter had been and would always be, only as good as her next failure.

  None of that rattled Julia. Not anymore. She’d grown up without any expectation of support from either of her parents—for anything she did. But there were times, lately, when this model for business-as-usual wore thin.

  She was tired. Tired of all of it.

  Within the space of twenty-four months, she’d lost both her husband and her father.

  Last year, her father had finally succumbed to the combined ravages of gout and congestive heart failure. To Julia, it was an ironic understatement that Lewis Donne actually died stewing in his own juices.

  And the surreal circumstances behind her husband’s death had been so steeped in high-level conspiracy that she’d never shared all the gruesome details with either of her parents. That was just as well. They hadn’t needed to understand what all had transpired. Nor did they need to know that Julia had already resolved to divorce Andy long before a sickening chain of events led to his murder.

  No. His assassination—carried out on the night he had shown up in disguise at her apartment, intending to kill her because he believed her decision to end their marriage would ruin his bid to run for president.

  But Evan had been there to stop him. Evan had taken her place at home that night. And Evan had been the one hit by the same bullet that ended Andy’s life. A bullet fired from the gun held by Andy’s mistress, Maya Jindal—the woman who had always been a shadowy third party in their marriage.

  Thinking about the aftermath of all of that still made her cringe. It had been a waking nightmare. One she never would’ve survived without Evan.

  But survive, she did. And she was learning that surviving was a process. It required care and loving attention—not unlike teaching an abused shelter animal to trust that you won’t hurt it. Evan had her own struggles with this concept and, on some days, Julia was the one who offered the coaxing and reassurance. They were both wounded. But together, they were working their way toward something better. In fact, Julia had a few ideas about what shape “something better” might take. And she planned to share those ideas with Evan when she got home from this damn trip.

  Thank god her time in Albuquerque was winding down. Her last meeting was tonight—a dinner in the hotel with other conference organizers. Then she’d be finished, and on her way back to Philadelphia tomorrow morning.

  It couldn’t come soon enough.

  She had only one remaining errand to take care of: calling her mother to discuss selling the Delancey Place townhouse and the Park Avenue apartment. That was a conversation she’d been dreading. But it needed to happen. She was going to have to make a trip to Paris, whether she wanted to or not. So, she needed to lay the groundwork for it, and at least open the discussion with her mother.

  She looked at her watch. It was nearly 3 p.m. in Paris. With luck, her mother would be between social engagements.

  No time like the present . . . .

  She picked up her phone and placed the call. It took a full minute for it to ring through.

  “Oui.” Her mother sounded harried. But that wasn’t unusual.

  “Hello, Mother. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “Julia. How lovely to hear from you. Is it my birthday already?”

  Julia sighed. “Not for another three months. I thought I’d surprise you.”

  “You certainly have. To what do I owe this delightful event?”

  It made no sense to try and talk around the reason for her call—it wouldn’t make her mother’s reaction more favorable. It was best to cut to the chase. “I need to plan a trip to Paris. I wanted to see if you had any thoughts about a good time for us to schedule a visit.”

  “Schedule a visit? With my own daughter? Why? Are we negotiating a treaty or something?”

  You had to hand it to the old gal. She didn’t pull any punches.

  “Or something,” Julia said. “I want to see you, of course. But there also are some business matters we need to discuss. I’d rather do that in person—with your permission.”

  “Julia. You know I have little interest in business. I always left those matters to Joey.”

  Only Katherine Hires Donne ever got away with calling Julia
’s father “Joey.” The stalwart J. Lewis Donne disdained nicknames. He only tolerated this one because of his perfect indifference to his wife and her whims.

  “I understand that, Mother,” Julia said. “But ‘Joey’ is no longer with us, and it falls to me to manage our business and family affairs. Sadly, there are times that doing so requires your participation. This is one of those times.”

  It was her mother’s turn to sigh—dramatically. “When were you thinking about coming over?”

  “After the holidays. If that works for you?”

  “I’ll be with Binkie and Albert at their lake house in Annecy until the 28th. They’re coming back to Paris for New Year’s Eve. Why don’t you plan on joining us? Gerald will be there, too,” she added with emphasis.

  Gerald? Seriously?

  “I don’t think so, Mother.”

  “Oh, come now, Julia. It’s been more than two years since the incident with Andy. It’s time for you to come out of your shell.”

  Incident? That was one way of putting it . . .

  “Mother, I have no desire to spend New Year’s Eve, or any holiday, for that matter, with Gerald Lippincott.”

  “But you grew up together. And you always had so much in common.”

  “Not since I quit eating paste.”

  Her mother didn’t reply. Since she was rarely silent, this was a certain indication that she found Julia’s flippant response annoying.

  Julia didn’t really care. She was more concerned with shutting down any ideas her mother had about rekindling a relationship with Gerald—or anyone else. And the best way to do that was to tell her mother about Evan.

  “Well,” she began, “this touches on another thing I need to discuss with you. I hope you’ll be happy to learn that I have moved on. I’m now in a relationship with someone.”

  “Really?” Her mother sounded intrigued. And suspicious. “Would this have anything to do with your decision to move to Philadelphia?”

  “Yes.” Julia saw no reason to deny it.

  “So, he lives in Philadelphia? Is he from a family we know?”