Skin Deep

by Gary Braver

  The door to Lily’s room was closed, as it was the last time he was here; and tacked to it was a HAZARDOUS WASTE sign. The door was unlocked and he opened it.

  His first thought was that the sign was not a joke. Clothes, shoes, books, magazines, and a lot of other stuff were in jumbled heaps on the floor, a pile of laundry spilled from two plastic baskets on the bed. The walls were plastered with posters of rock and movie stars and a thousand other magazine cutouts, mostly of thin young celebs. A white chest of drawers had a pile of cosmetic stuff, and over it was a mirror with stickers, more cutouts, and photos taped to the glass. It looked like the room of a crazy person. Or a self-destructive teenage girl who was on a bunch of meds and who regularly saw a shrink.

  Steve closed the door and checked his watch—fifty minutes left.

  By contrast, the master bedroom looked as if it had been attacked by Merry Maids. The large oak sleigh bed was made, square-cornered, the spread folded neatly over the pillows, decorative pillows fussily arranged points up. A pair of men’s leather slippers sat under the bed table. Across from the bed was an oak bureau with bottles of aftershave, cologne, and lotions lined up, a small inlaid jewelry box, and a photo of Lily and Neil. Also a large container of aspirin.

  Above the bureau hung a large wooden crucifix with a carved Jesus. Steve wondered if the same man who prayed to that tortured Jesus did those things to Terry Farina.

  He went through the drawers from top to bottom. The top two contained men’s underwear—boxer shorts, white socks in balls in one drawer, colored in another. Pajamas and different tops in the third drawer, the bottom reserved for walking shorts. Nothing.

  But in one drawer he did find an old billfold under some T-shirts, and in it a photo of Neil and Terry Farina, posing in ski outfits on a slope. His arm was around her shoulder and both were beaming at the camera.

  “Hey,” Dacey said into his earpiece. “They’re coming out.”

  “Shit.” They were leaving ten minutes early. Maybe the doc had to cut it short, got an emergency call or something. Or maybe Lily flipped out. Whatever, if they were coming home, he had fifteen minutes tops. “Stay with him and tell me his route.”

  “Roger. Find anything?”

  “Negative.”

  The closet area contained garment bags hung and a chest of drawers sat in the back under pants and shirts hanging from a pole. But given the press of time, Neil’s office was a priority.

  Like his bedroom, it was a tableau to order—desk, file cabinets, bookshelves all neatly arranged—files stacked evenly on shelves, desktop papers arranged in wire baskets, large and small paper clips in little dispensers, a bowl with loose change. It was the self-defensive statement of a man taking control despite whatever emotional chaos raged around him. Or inside.

  At the far end of the room were a treadmill and a bench with some free weights arranged on a rack in ascending order of weight. What pulled at Steve was the closed laptop. He wondered at the evidence it held—correspondences with Farina before her death, even an e-mail that he was coming over the night she died. The only problem was that he didn’t know Neil’s password and didn’t have the software to crack it. To get what he wanted he’d have to bring it to the lab. Without a warrant that could not be done. And outright theft was out of the question since Neil would suspect an inside job, which could result in legal action against him, Dacey, and the department.

  He started with the desk drawers, which had the usual desk paraphernalia and papers, envelopes, pads. The filing cabinet had neatly arranged folders labeled for bills and IRS filings. There was a folder labeled Cards, and in it birthday and Father’s Day cards from Lily.

  Dacey called him back. “Hey. Good news. They’re pulling into the Westin garage on Huntington. Guess the kid’s got an appetite.”

  “Or maybe he’s buying her one at Neiman Marcus.”

  “Find anything?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God.”

  Thank God? Clear Neil, and hang yourself.

  “Yeah,” Steve muttered, and checked his watch. At minimum, they had picked up thirty minutes, more if they went shopping and dining.

  He finished going through the drawers but found nothing. He headed back into the bedroom.

  “Fuck!” shouted Dacey in his ear. “I lost him.”

  “What?”

  “They got into an elevator and went up to the fourth. By the time I got up there they were gone. I checked the stores and restaurants but couldn’t find them.”

  She sounded out of breath. “Where are you now?”

  “…to the garage.”

  “Dacey, you’re breaking up.”

  “I’m heading back…garage…can’t fucking believe…”

  “Dacey, can you read me?”

  “Yes…batteries.”

  “Let me know if their car is still there.”

  “Affirmative.”

  But a few minutes later Dacey buzzed him back. “Can you read me? It’s still here.”

  “Affirmative, I read you. Good news.”

  “I’m getting back in.”

  He could hear her close the car door. “Stay with it. Better than running all over the mall.”

  “Okay.”

  The closet was a walk-in with men’s clothes on hangers and a wall rack for T-shirts, polo shirts, and various footwear—several pairs of running shoes to a line of black and brown dress shoes. Steve recognized some shirts and ties hanging from a wall rack. Again, everything was lined up and arranged according to some fastidious principle. And again he remembered what Neil had said about psychopaths being obsessively orderly. Maybe that was a confessional slip.

  On the top shelf was a steel box where Neil kept his service weapon. It was not locked. He opened it. The weapon was gone.

  At the far end of the closet hung two garment bags. He unzipped them. They were tightly packed with women’s clothes. Probably his wife’s favorite pieces Neil could not part with.

  “Oh…the kid…”

  “You’re breaking up, Dacey. Say it again.”

  “…in the car…girlfriend…”

  “Lily’s in the car with a girlfriend?”

  “Affirmative…is low.”

  “Where’s Neil?”

  Nothing.

  “Dacey, can you read me? Can you read me? Where’s Neil?”

  Nothing. Dacey’s PDA was dead. All he got was that she had spotted Lily and a girlfriend getting into Neil’s car. Maybe he was going to join them. Maybe they were just dropping off packages and were rejoining him for dinner. Or maybe they were going to swing around front to pick him up and bring him home. The latter was the worst-case scenario, which meant that he had no more than five minutes to finish and get out. If that was the case, Dacey would find a public phone to call him. He set his PDA on vibrate and zipped up the garment bags.

  Pushed into the corner was another chest with two small top drawers and three larger ones below. The top right was full of women’s underpants, all different colors and folded neatly. The left contained brassieres, slips, panty hose, camisoles, and other things he couldn’t identify. They were probably Ellen French’s, appearing not to have not been touched since her death. He could not shake a worm of discomfort for doing this—for violating the dead wife of his own partner. But he also reminded himself that he was doing this not to incriminate Neil but to absolve himself of the shuddering fear that he was a psychotic killer.

  He crouched down on his knees and opened the bottom drawer. On top he saw a folded pair of black stockings. His heart almost stopped. He put his hand on the sheer bottom to remove the garment when he heard something.

  “Find what you were looking for?”

  It was Neil, and his gun was two feet from Steve’s head.

  65

  “Do you have a paper, Lieutenant?”

  “No.”

  “Then I could kill you.”

  “Yes, you could. But it wouldn’t be a good idea.” Steve turned his head to look at hi
m.

  “Straight ahead and don’t move.”

  “Neil, let me up.”

  “You’re an intruder going through my things.”

  “Shooting your partner point-blank in the back of the head won’t stand up.”

  “It’s dark and I couldn’t make you out. All I have to do is flick the switch.”

  Like you did in Farina’s bedroom, he thought. “Neil, don’t do this. You’ve got a kid.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a kid.”

  “Let’s do this right. Let me up and put the weapon away.”

  Steve began to turn when Neil stopped him. “Put your hands on your head.”

  Steve put his hands on his head, thinking that in the next second a bullet would explode his brain. And Neil would stage it so he’d get away with murder.

  “How much have you creeped?”

  “Why’s that important?”

  “You’re wearing gloves. Did you go through all the drawers and desk? Look under the bed? Check the other closets? Do a full-blown process?”

  Steve didn’t answer.

  “You’ve been trying to pin this on me since day one.”

  Neil’s voice sounded flat, without affect. No anger or guile. Just flat.

  “That’s not true. When you admitted that you and Farina were lovers you became a witness.”

  “And I somehow graduated to suspect. How’d that happen?”

  “Put the gun away and let’s do this right.”

  “There is no right. You told the papers I was taken off the case. That I was given a temporary suspension. And there’s speculation of improprieties—that I’m a suspect.”

  “Where the hell did you hear that?”

  “Calls from the Globe and Eyewitness News.”

  “That was probably Pendergast’s lawyer—maybe getting back for his death.”

  “You don’t bullshit well, Steve. Never have. That was you because no one else wants to discredit me.”

  “Why would I want to discredit you?” Steve’s mind scrambled.

  “In fact, you could be planting evidence for all I know.”

  “Jesus, man, what the hell would be my motive?”

  “To keep them off you. You knew her. You had a thing for her. And you may have been the last person to see her alive.”

  Steve felt goose skin flash up his trunk. “What’re you talking about?”

  “I knew you were after me so I did some snooping of my own. Does Conor Larkins ring a bell?”

  “Conor Larkins?”

  “Don’t go stupid on me.”

  “You mean the pub?”

  “Yeah, the pub right across from Northeastern. I knew she liked to go there to do her homework. So I asked around, showed her picture. Seems that she was there the afternoon she was killed and she wasn’t alone. Nope. With a guy who may have been you.”

  Steve felt as if he were walking through a minefield. “If you thought it was me, why didn’t you bring it to Reardon?”

  “Because I only found out today, and when I showed the waitress your picture she wasn’t too sure, but she said it could have been you. It’s been three weeks and her memory was fuzzy. But I’m thinking that maybe it was you after all. You had all the answers,” he said. “You did her and decided to try to hang it on me. Maybe get a medal and make up for the Portman shit.”

  Steve’s s breath had bulbed in his throat. “I didn’t kill her.” The words rose up without thought.

  “Yeah? Then maybe it was Pendergast after all,” Neil said. “But, you know, I really don’t give a shit. I really don’t fucking care. My wife is dead. My daughter’s a fucking mess, I’m under suspicion for murder by my own colleagues. Life’s short, but at least it sucks.”

  Steve’s heart froze. He had seen Neil in despair when Lily once overdosed on sleeping pills, but he had not been so low as this. His voice was dead and he was thinking that he had little to live for—the prospect of trying to prove his innocence and possibly spending the rest of his life behind bars. What Steve could hear was hopelessness. And in that hopelessness he wanted to take Steve with him. It’s what people suffering clinical depression did—go to the office and shoot everybody who ever looked cross-eyed at them.

  This is my death, Steve told himself. He’s going to kill me. Then he’s going to kill himself. My punishment, and such sublime irony.

  “Freeze! Lower the gun, Neil.”

  Steve turned. Dacey. She was in a stance with her hands on her weapon and aimed at Neil’s back.

  Neil looked over his shoulder at her.

  “Drop it, Neil. Drop it.”

  For a brutal moment Neil stood frozen with the gun at Steve’s head and Dacey with hers at Neil’s. In the tiny window of awareness, Steve imagined Neil fulfilling the existential moment and blasting Steve and taking Dacey’s fire. And he held his breath and waited for the explosions.

  Instead, Neil swung the weapon around so Dacey could take it. She did and stuffed it into her belt behind her. Steve got to his feet.

  Dacey moved to snap her cuffs on Neil, but Steve stopped her hand. Neil was staring down at the still open bottom drawer of his dead wife’s clothes. Dacey’s weapon was still on him. She began to utter a command when Neil moved past Steve and bent down. “Is this what you want?” he said, and pulled up the black stocking.

  But it was not a stocking. It was one leg of a folded set of panty hose.

  Neil held it up to Steve’s face. “This what you’re looking for?”

  Steve could think of nothing to say.

  “How about this?” Neil said, and pulled out more panty hose, then some letters bundled together. Then a small red photo album. “Or these?”

  Then Neil yanked out the whole drawer and dumped the contents at Steve’s feet. Then the next drawer and the next, until there was a pile of Ellen Gilmore French’s intimate apparel spilling over the feet of Steve and Dacey, who stood there as if they’d each been shot with a stun gun.

  Neil looked back at them. “Lily five seventeen ninety-one.”

  For a moment Steve said nothing. Then he put it together. “Your daughter’s birthday.”

  “And the password to the laptop.”

  Before Steve could think of a response, Neil turned and left. They heard the front door close behind him.

  Steve looked down at the pile of garments on the floor. “Shit,” he muttered.

  He looked at Dacey. He didn’t know what she had heard, but her eyes were huge and fixed on him.

  66

  FALL 1975

  “She was so beautiful.”

  Becky’s mother gave him a tearful squeeze. “I’m so sorry.” Her husband said basically the same thing and shuffled on to his aunt and uncle who made up the rest of the receiving line and with whom he would have to live until he was eighteen. The thought of moving to Fremont added to his numbness. Another sweet little surprise in Lila’s legacy.

  The Tollands were the last of the guests at the two-hour wake. It was the same funeral home and the same mourners who had attended his father’s wake the week before. The same receiving line except Lila was now in the casket.

  Festooned with roses and shiny sympathy banners, the casket was closed, of course. She apparently was dead for nearly twelve hours, and her face was already disfigured and bruised from Kirk, made worse by the noose. She was dressed in her favorite black lacy sundress and a large gold crucifix with the detailed full-body Jesus, his feet snugly tucked in the upper reaches of her cleavage.

  At his insistence a small bouquet of white roses was placed in her hands along with the set of rosary beads from her confirmation. She also wore a pair of black nylon stockings with lacy elastic tops. Wolfords. The choice of her death wardrobe was his.

  Becky was the last in line. She gave him a long close hug. “What can I say?”

  “Nothing.”

  As they embraced, he looked over Becky’s shoulder to the tawny red cherry casket, almost the same color as Lila’s hair. And even though he could not see her, he
felt something radiate from those frozen shut eyelids within.

  Even unto death I shall be with you.

  Lila’s favorite hymn passage.

  He tapped Becky on the back to release the embrace—an embrace that would be the last real exchange with a female for years. Of course, Becky could not know that Lila had usurped his passion. And that Lila would be in his system forever like one of those childhood vaccines whose preventive effects would last a lifetime once in your blood. This was her legacy. This and a black lace-top stocking.

  “If there’s anything I can do, just call.”

  He nodded and Becky left to join her parents outside.

  It was nine P.M., time to go. His aunt and uncle were waiting in the other room. All the chairs were empty. The funeral was tomorrow morning at Holy Name Church in Derry.

  For the last time he stood at the casket. Yes, she was beautiful. And now she was something grotesque and hard.

  He knelt on the low padded stool. He wasn’t religious, so he didn’t pray. He closed his eyes, and like a movie projected on the inside of his skull, he saw her laughing, reading from a script in front of the mirror. Giving him smirky looks. Crying. Fighting with his father. Folding into her funk; angry, bitter, wounded. He saw her give him those withering looks, then the far askew stares, and the sulking mask that scared him more than death itself.

  He also saw her cupping his face and kissing him to make some hurt go away. And like flicking channels, there she was dancing before him in those maddening, forbidden black nylons, peeling off one then the other and drawing it teasingly from his body to hers, entwining their sexes.

  My mommy, my Salome.

  And he saw her radiant with happiness in the Algonquin Room.

  He saw her at the bathroom mirror, brushing that glorious burnt rose mane. He knew he would never ever see or smell that hair again, so before the police cut her down he snipped off a lock.