by Saul Black
Rachel came back inside and closed the door behind her.
“Let’s go into the lounge,” she said.
Valerie followed her back out across the hall and into the big room at the front of the house. No hospital bed now. Just the original minimalism, the vast white corner couch, the paintings, the discreet technology. Neither of them sat down.
“So?” Rachel said.
Well, yes, exactly: So? They were facing each other.
“I know you killed Dwight Jenner,” Valerie said. “And I know you killed your husband.”
Rachel didn’t answer. But after a moment she lowered her eyes, turned, walked to the window and looked out. The green lawn, the maples, the high blue sky. She held her elbows. Valerie studied her from behind, the slender neck and wispily chopped red hair still smelling of the salon. She ran the footage, the only possible footage. This woman, here, now, in this house. What she’d found it in herself to do. The willpower that would have required.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rachel said.
Valerie crossed the room and stood alongside her, studying her profile. “Yes, you do,” she said.
“Are you arresting me?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I don’t have anything else to say.”
“That’s quite an understated response to an accusation of murder. Double murder, in fact.”
“I find I don’t get easily overexcited these days.”
“You use a timer for the photographs?” Valerie asked. “Or was that Jenner?”
Rachel smiled, sadly, didn’t take her eyes from their glazed survey of her lawn.
“Why don’t you say what you have to say and then leave?” she said. “You can come back when you’re ready to arrest me.”
Valerie felt her own tension leave her. “All right,” she said. “Fine. You killed your husband because he sexually assaulted your daughter. Either she told you or you found out about it some other way.”
Pause. No discernible change in Rachel. Then she very slightly shifted. Straightened her back, slowly released her grip on her elbows and let her arms hang loose. Valerie looked at Rachel’s feet in the heels. No tremor.
“Coming to us wasn’t an option. Maybe you didn’t want to put Elspeth through it. Or maybe life with Lawrence Garner did away with any trust you might have had in the police.”
Rachel closed her eyes. Breathed. Opened them again.
“You started an affair with Dwight Jenner. Incognito. Sophia. You knew he was out, because as the relevant prosecutor Adam would have been notified. The photographs were for us. To build the narrative that Adam and Jenner had a woman in common, as rivals. You point us to strip clubs and establish an independent witness, Gigi at X-quisite to confirm that Sophia was a real person. You called Jenner on Adam’s phone, which as far as we’re concerned is “Adam calling Jenner. That’s the link we’re looking for so that’s the link we find. The truth is Jenner was never anywhere near your husband. On July thirty-first you drove Jenner to the Campbellville house and killed him. We have you in the Volvo on camera with him, albeit as Sophia. You cut off his hands and feet, kept them, buried his body in the desert. I have to assume marking him with the Lucifer symbol was an insurance policy, since I can see no reason why you’d want the body found. And you knew about Lucifer because Adam had the case files here in the house. Or you saw them at the office. At any rate you saw them, and you knew the killer had never been caught. I guess you didn’t need the feet, just the hands…” Valerie shrugged. “You probably took the feet just to beef up the apparently ritualistic nature of the murder.”
She paused again. She couldn’t believe she was going to get through this without Rachel responding to something. But so far the composure was untouched.
“With Jenner dead and buried, you used his hands to lay the prints, the DNA, the all but incontrovertible physical evidence. What did you do—keep them on ice?”
Rachel lowered her eyes. Smiled. Said nothing.
“If you did, you kept them here. The big freezer in the utility room would do the job. And yes, there’s a team on its way. We have the requisite warrant.”
Rachel looked at her. Her eyes were calm.
“Oh, I don’t imagine they’ll find anything,” Valerie said. “You’ve had weeks to get rid of the dead meat and scrub up. The props too. I’m not expecting to dig out a blond wig or a black ski mask. We know you took the boat out. It’s a big ocean. We know Adam was living on the boat, too, after you kicked him out.”
A young mother and her son walking a tan Labrador went past the driveway entrance, talking very seriously about something. The neighborhood was bright and still. Valerie didn’t recall seeing a single scrap of litter anywhere, not even a cigarette butt. Pacific Heights.
“On August fourth you call Adam—as his phone proves—and persuade him to come home,” she continued. “Easily enough done, I guess, since you had him pretty much by the balls. One way or another you get him in the bedroom. Which is where you killed him. Can’t have been easy keeping the prints you planted clean. With Adam dead you get into the burglar gear and put in an appearance in the Lyles’ backyard. You know you’ll be seen because Vincent Lyle’s your insomniac literary buddy. It all helps the narrative: crazy Jenner getting into your property from the rear. Obviously the burglar alarm’s not armed. It’s the kind of night where the standard domestic routine’s suspended—or you just switch it off yourself. In the end we’re looking for two ghosts: Jenner because he’s already dead and Sophia because she never existed in the first place. The one person we’re not looking for is you. Why would we be? As far as we’re concerned you’re collateral damage from the dirty side of your husband’s life.”
The smallest flicker. At the word “dirty.” Valerie regretted using it. “I don’t know how you found the guts to stab yourself, Rachel, but that’s what you did. You have my admiration.”
They were silent for a while.
Then Rachel turned and looked at her. “Come with me,” she said.
“What?”
“Come with me.”
Baffled, Valerie followed Rachel upstairs and into the master bedroom.
“Inside,” Rachel said, pointing to the en suite.
Incredulous, Valerie reached for her gun.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rachel said. “Just show me you’re not wearing a wire.”
“I’m not wearing a wire.”
“Show me. I have things to say to you. But not to a recording device. Take off your clothes. You can keep the gun.”
“I’m not wearing a goddamned—”
“Fine, then get out.”
Valerie laughed. “Are you serious?”
Rachel just waited, breathing through her nose.
Jesus Christ, Valerie thought. She was picturing the interrogation of Rachel Grant. Two realities: First, Rachel would do or say nothing that would concede her daughter’s molestation. Second, she’d have the best lawyers money could buy. And there was plenty, plenty of money. Dan Kruger would probably do it for free. They could question Elspeth, of course. But even if Elspeth told them what had happened to her, it wouldn’t convict her mother. They didn’t have the evidence to prove Rachel killed Jenner, and if they couldn’t prove that, they couldn’t prove Jenner didn’t kill Adam Grant. Not only beyond reasonable doubt, but nowhere near a point where doubt would face any kind of serious challenge. All there would be was doubt. The physical evidence at the scene—right there in the bedroom—was overwhelming. Certainly more than a match for a handful of grainy images which might or might not be Rachel Grant in disguise.
Valerie got undressed, awkwardly, since she’d decided not to relinquish the Glock. She stopped at her underwear. Rachel unhooked a white toweling robe from the back of the door. “Everything,” she said. “This is freshly washed.”
There would be no negotiation, Valerie knew. Either she would comply or Rachel would simply tell her to get dressed and fuck off.
Rachel held out the robe and, not without a little absurd flicker on the ether between them, turned her back.
Valerie removed her underwear and put on the robe, which, she had to concede, smelled of nothing but floral fabric softener. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, still holding her firearm. This is going to make some story tonight, she thought. Hey, Nick, guess what: I got naked in front of a woman this afternoon. Except the thought reminded her that they weren’t exactly in joking mode at the moment.
“Are you decent?” Rachel said.
“Yes.”
Rachel turned, gathered up the clothes, and took them out across the landing to the reading room. Dumped them on the bed and returned. Closed the bathroom door behind her.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” she said to Valerie.
“By which you mean…?”
“By which I mean you can’t prove any of it.”
“That’s for us to—”
“I’m not stupid,” Rachel said. “I know you’ll try. But you won’t find any of the things you need. You haven’t a hope in hell.”
Valerie found herself smiling. “Well, let’s see,” was all she said. She wasn’t sure what Rachel expected her to say. “Tell me something,” she said. “Do you have any doubts?”
“About what?”
“About Elspeth.”
“Do you mean do I have any doubt that she told me the truth?”
“Yes.”
“None whatsoever.” They stared at each other.
“Did you suspect anything?” Valerie asked. “Before she told you?”
Rachel didn’t (perhaps couldn’t) answer immediately. There was another smile on the lovely mouth, now. Disappointment—in herself. The failure—of herself. Because obviously, she hadn’t suspected anything. No matter what she’d done, now it would never be enough to atone for this sin of her own blindness.
“Are you married?” Rachel said.
“Yes.” It was still a surprise to Valerie that she was, that they’d actually bothered with a ceremony (albeit a civic one) and a boozy party afterward. In the last two years she’d had to use the phrase “my husband” perhaps a dozen times. Always with a little mental dissonance, as if she were hiding under a fraudulent—and preposterous—identity.
Rachel opened her mouth to say something—then didn’t bother. Valerie imagined the bitter cautionary lecture—You think you know him? You don’t. But she saw too that Rachel Grant was past bothering, past caring. The predicaments of other women, other wives, other mothers, were of no interest to her. In fact, Valerie now realized, Rachel had always struck her as politically indifferent. Whatever had happened to her had made her singular, left no room for the extension of her identity into anything larger. She was a unique wild animal. Her world was the world of her own flesh and blood. What mattered was her daughter. Even her own survival was secondary.
“Adam rescued me,” she said. “I never really knew why.”
Valerie raised her eyebrows.
“Oh, sure, I was something at eighteen,” Rachel said. “But that’s nothing. He could’ve had his pick. At any rate, he wasn’t under any illusions about me. He took the difficult case on purpose. Not just me. The job. The cloud of ethics with the nucleus of horror. Even if he didn’t know himself, his soul did. It was all a compensation. Subconscious. Preemptive. His soul knew what was coming. I realize none of this makes sense to you. It didn’t to me until after it had happened.”
Valerie thought perhaps she did understand. Pour enough energy into the moral life and it might just turn out to be the antidote—to yourself.
Or not, depending on the strength of your nature, the ferocity of your needs. The natural things are disgusting.
“I haven’t answered your question,” Rachel said. “No, I had no idea. We weren’t happy, but only in the unsurprising ways. We were bored, we got on each other’s nerves. But we laughed, too. Last couple of years he was impatient with Elspeth, irritable. As if her adolescence was bringing his own back. I didn’t make much of it. I didn’t make enough of it, obviously.”
Valerie sat with the Glock heavy in her hand. She was thinking of her own father, who had loved her and her sister without complication. She was thinking of Nick. Could she ever be wrong about him in that way? Intellectually you had to concede that you could. Other women’s mistakenness entailed, by way of logical possibility, your own. Intellectually, yes, it had to be admitted. You could be willing to bet your life on how well you knew someone: There was always the possibility you would lose the bet.
That wasn’t what mattered, she thought. What mattered was being willing to place the bet in the first place. In the absence of certainty there was only trust. The only way to avoid the betrayal of trust was to trust no one. And what kind of a life would that be?
“How did you find all this out?” Rachel asked.
“I didn’t,” Valerie said. “Not until right now. But I had the thoughts. Elspeth’s behavior. The shoplifting, the attempted promiscuity. Adam’s…” Leave that. Adam’s what? Sexual nullity when she, Valerie, had him in bed? She shook her head. “Do you think Elspeth has any idea it was you?”
“Of course not.”
“She doesn’t wonder what you and Adam were doing in bed together the night he was killed?”
“She doesn’t know we were. She won’t, either, unless you tell her. In which case I’ll say he forced me. She won’t have any trouble believing that.”
It was a curious relief to both of them to be speaking truthfully to each other. It allowed a mutual respect which had hitherto seemed irrational. Under different circumstances, Valerie knew, they could have been friends. Rachel Grant had a spartan strength that matched her own. They had both been formed by suffering. Valerie as a daily witness, Rachel as a victim.
“Did Lawrence Garner rape you?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m sorry.”
Rachel leaned back against the door. Put her hands in her pockets. Sighed. “Jesus, I’m tired,” she said.
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“Do you blame me?” Rachel said.
Valerie didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to say because she didn’t know what she thought. If Adam Grant had raped his daughter, did she blame Rachel Grant for killing him? Well, did she?
“No,” she said. “But my not blaming you doesn’t make what you did legal.”
“I notice you don’t say it doesn’t make it right.”
Touché.
“There’s nothing,” Rachel began—then faltered, slightly. Recovered. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. I don’t expect you to understand.”
Because you’re not a mother, Valerie added, in her head. Well, technically …
“I can’t ask you what I’m about to ask you, but I’m going to anyway,” Rachel said. She was a little dreamy now, as if whatever extraordinary fuel she’d been running on was, at long last, reaching its end.
“What’s that?” Valerie said, though she knew.
“Don’t make her suffer. You don’t have to. You and I both know that even if she tells you what her father did it’s not going to put me away.”
“We don’t have enough to arrest you,” Valerie said. “Let alone get a conviction. It’s not in my power to decide whether Elspeth will face questioning.”
“Yes it is. Of course it is.”
Yes, it was. That was the truth. There was absolutely nothing to stop Valerie letting the case go cold. If it had been just Adam Grant she might have been tempted. There was a temptation even now, in the soft robe and the clean bathroom, in the tiredness that seemed to spread out from Rachel to her, like warm, rising water. Aqua Nova.
“You shouldn’t have killed Dwight,” she said. “I don’t blame you for killing your husband. I blame you for killing someone else to do it.”
“A convicted felon.”
“Who did his time. He has a family too.” You should know, her inner voice said. You nearly fu
cked one of them. “That wasn’t your decision to make,” Valerie said.
“I know,” Rachel said, still dreamily. “I know you’ll do what you have to do. And if you succeed, a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped by her father will lose her mother. That’s some moral math you deal in.”
“Someone has to.”
“I suppose they do. We all do. We just don’t get the same answers.”
Valerie got to her feet. “We’re done here, I think,” she said. “Get me my clothes, please.”
46
The CSI team found, not surprisingly, nothing.
“We should have bugged the goddamned house,” Will said, that evening at the station.
“We had no reason to,” Valerie said.
“Or installed a camera. At least that way we’d have got to see you strip.”
Valerie had, for the record, filed a report of her conversation, though it would count for nothing, since Rachel Grant would deny it ever took place. The fact remained: They had nothing except the traffic cam image of Jenner and a blonde they would never be able to prove conclusively was Rachel Grant. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be enough for a jury. Valerie had told Rachel the truth: The evidence didn’t justify an arrest, let alone a conviction.
“We’re going to talk to the daughter though—right?” Will said.
“That’s up to the cap. I know he thinks it’s a waste of time, and he’s probably right.”
“What’re you going to tell Jenner’s brother?”
“Half brother. I don’t know. Not the truth. I do that, he’ll go after her himself and we’ve got another vigilante killing. Plus I don’t think he’s got the resources to get away with it. The truth would be his ticket to San Q. He doesn’t deserve that.”
* * *
And thus the imperfections of the law, Valerie thought, driving home through the darkening evening. Some people got away with murder. The question was: Weren’t some people entitled to?
The truth was the law didn’t work. It was nothing more than the best failure civilization had on offer.
