“Just a feeling, I guess. The way they stand when they’re talking to each other, you know? The way he looks at her.”
DeMarco wrote Tex on his tablet. Then Moby. “And Moby?” he said. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Just that he’s a sweetheart. Oh, and that he’s Bonnie’s brother.”
“So what makes him such a sweetheart?”
“He just is. I mean it used to worry some of the girls, him being so scrawny and sweet and all.”
“Why would that worry them?”
“Until Tex came, I mean. Everybody feels safer now with him upstairs this past couple of months. Moby couldn’t hurt a fly, but Tex…”
“Tex is new?”
“I don’t know the exact date when he started, but it wasn’t more than two, at most three, months ago.”
“Okay, good. Thank you for this. One last thing.”
“Am I going to get in trouble with Bonnie for talking to you?”
“Are you going to tell her you’ve been talking to me?”
“No way.”
“No way will I either, Danni.”
“You promise?”
“You have my word.”
“Because I need this job. Just a little while longer. Just until I start my student teaching. Then I’m going to have to quit anyway. I mean I can just imagine what could happen. Parent-teacher conference in the afternoon…”
“Champagne room conference with the father that night.”
“There you go.”
“So listen,” he said. “Final question. The night Huston didn’t show up as usual.”
“Two Thursdays ago.”
“Right. Did all of the other regular girls work that night?”
“Geez, I don’t know. They sort of come and go, you know?”
“Try to remember, okay? Was there anybody missing the same night as Thomas? Anybody who is usually there when he is?”
Silence for fifteen seconds. Then, “I’m pretty sure that was the night Bonnie missed too.”
DeMarco felt something slam into place. A piece of the puzzle. “Bonnie didn’t show up that night?”
“I’m pretty sure it was that night, yeah.”
“Any chance you’d know why she wasn’t there?”
“According to Wendy, her grandmother was really sick and she had to take care of her. Bonnie’s grandmother.”
“And Wendy is…?”
“One of the dancers. She’s like forty or something. Three kids. I guess Bonnie had asked her to watch the bar that night. And it’s not like Wendy brings in the big tips anyway. She said later she’d tend the bar every night if Bonnie would let her.”
“And that same night. Was Tex at the club?”
“Yes, he was.”
“And Moby?”
“Yep. Moby’s always there.”
“So the only two regulars who weren’t there were Thomas Huston and Bonnie.”
“As far as I can remember, yes.”
DeMarco pursed his lips, nodded, and filed that information away. “The next Thursday,” he said, “the last time you saw Thomas. When he told you he’d missed a night because of business out of town. Did he get any more specific than that?”
“I remember I teased him a little. I asked if it was monkey business. I thought it was kind of strange that he didn’t laugh at that, you know? I mean he was always a very upbeat kind of guy.”
“But not that night?”
“Usually he came with a question or two he wanted to ask me. Like, did the girls talk about sex much? Did they like men? Did they hate men? Did their boyfriends and husbands know what they were doing? Trying to understand our psychology, you know? All of our messed up psychologies.” She delivered the last line with a tone that smacked of self-contempt. DeMarco knew the sound well.
He said, “Yours doesn’t seem so messed up to me, Danni.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“I’ve known a lot worse.”
“I guess you would, being in the business you’re in.”
He thought, Right. The business of being human. “So that last Thursday night,” he said. “Thomas wasn’t as upbeat as usual? How would you describe his mood that night?”
“I don’t really know,” she said. “Kind of subdued? Pensive?”
“Like he had something else on his mind?”
“Exactly.”
“But you don’t know what?”
“I wish I did.”
“You sort of liked him, didn’t you?”
The question obviously took her by surprise. DeMarco waited out the silence.
“The truth is,” she finally said, “I did look forward to seeing him. He made me feel… I’m not sure if you can understand this or not.”
“Try me.”
“Most times I leave that place and I’ll come home and sit in the tub for an hour. Then I climb out and I still don’t feel clean. I mean, it’s not like I’m proud of what I do, you know? But where else can a girl make a thousand a week dancing? And that’s all I ever do. Unlike some of the girls there.”
“But with Thomas, you felt different.”
“I guess I felt like everything was going to be okay. Like I really would get my degree, get a job, end up with money in the bank instead of being in debt the rest of my life. And that someday I’d be able to forget all about this past year or so.”
He envied her optimism, her capacity for hope. He had hope too, but of a whole different nature than hers. She hoped for a happy life. He hoped for a good night’s sleep and an occasional dulling of the pain. “I appreciate you talking to me like this,” he told her. “I’ll try not to disturb you again.”
“Actually I don’t mind it at all now that I’m not scared anymore. You’re sort of like Thomas in that way.”
He said nothing.
“I just can’t believe he’s responsible for what happened.”
“You know,” DeMarco began, but left the rest of it, neither can I, unsaid. “You call me if you think of anything important. Anything at all.”
“I will,” she said.
He held the phone to his ear a few seconds longer, listening and waiting. Then he lowered it and hit End.
Despair
Thirty-Nine
This is Sergeant DeMarco, Nathan. Do you have a minute to talk?”
“Did he…? Have you found him?”
DeMarco stared at the legal tablet on his desk. Only seconds before telephoning the student, he had added Nathan’s name to the others. “Not yet,” he said.
“Christ, I’ve had this awful feeling lately.”
“What kind of feeling?”
“Just that something’s happened to him. Something bad.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” DeMarco said. “Meantime, I wonder if you could help me out with something.”
“Sure, anything.”
“What I’m trying to figure out are Thomas’s routines, patterns of movement, things like that.”
“I’ll tell you whatever I know.”
“For example, the way a writer works. The way he comes up with things, I mean. Thomas was working on a novel, and a novel is fiction. So he was making the story up, am I right?”
“Well, that’s the nature of fiction, yes.”
“But he can use things that actually happened too.”
“Sure. Real experiences are often the foundation for stories.”
“So he might take, for example, an actual meeting he had with somebody. The first time he met Annabel, let’s say. But for the novel he’ll change where that meeting took place.”
“Sure. I mean look at Hemingway. Most of his work was in some way autobiographical. A fiction writer takes what’s real but changes it around, makes it more dramatic, more intense and interesting.”
“But there’s no way of knowing which parts actually happened and which are made up.”
“Not unless the writer tells you.”
“Okay. That’s what I thought. A couple more things. As far as you know, was it Thomas Huston’s habit to be up at dawn, maybe take a drive somewhere, find a quiet place to sit and think? I mean he had a big, beautiful house, an office there and one at the university.”
“Sure, but… Can you hold on for a second? Let me just pull something up here on my computer.”
“Take your time.” While he waited, he looked over the names on the yellow legal pad. Danni, Bonnie, Huston, Moby, Tex, Nathan, Conescu, Denton. He drew circles around the first and sixth names, the only individuals he believed he could trust.
“Here it is,” Nathan said. “Let me read this to you, okay? Thomas sent me this note, must have been like the second week of the semester. I actually fell asleep in workshop one night, but he was very understanding about it. He just teased me a little and then we moved on with class. Afterward, I apologized and told him I’d been having trouble sleeping, story ideas rushing through my head all night, things like that. He didn’t say much at the time, but next morning I found this note in my campus mailbox. I scanned it onto my hard drive. Can I read it to you?”
“Please do,” DeMarco said.
“Okay, this is what he wrote. ‘Dear Nathan, For the first few years, you might look upon your insomnia as a romantic affliction common to your profession, a creative badge of honor. Maybe you even enjoy it in a perverse sort of way, because after all, it is the ideas that are keeping you awake, all those potential stories and poems and novels, more validation that you have been chosen and gifted. But trust me, after you have lain awake a thousand or so nights, exhausted and longing for sleep, foggy and dulled throughout the day, the glamour of insomnia wears thin. The sooner you learn to discipline your hammering mind with meditation and progressive muscle relaxation, the more productive you will be. It would be quicker to take a sleeping pill or half a bottle of vodka, but then you would be ruined for work the next morning. You might even try soothing music or reading the work of some of your duller classmates. The thing you must never do is to reach for a pen or you will be awake and scribbling until dawn, then have to struggle all week long with a maddening kind of narcolepsy. Establish and maintain a discipline, Nathan. There are a lot of writers with talent but not a lot of talented writers with discipline. Good luck, keep writing, but get some sleep. Thomas.’”
“Sounds like he knew what he was talking about.”
“That’s just it. Later that day I thanked him for the note, and he admitted that he had never been able to put the advice into practice. He said he’s been a polyphasic sleeper most of his adult life. But a reluctant one.”
“Polyphasic. Sleeping in phases?”
“Right. What he told me is that he and Claire would go to bed around ten or so every night, watch a little TV, do what married couples do, I’m sure. Sometimes he would fall asleep after an hour or so, and sometimes he wouldn’t. He never slept for more than two or three hours. So whenever he could in the afternoon or after dinner, he’d catch another hour or so.”
“And when he was awake in the middle of the night. What would he do then?”
“Write. Read. Do research. If he was feeling especially restless, he might even take a walk or a drive.”
“So for him to end up thirty miles north of here at dawn some morning, sitting in a little park somewhere…”
“Not at all unusual. He told me that often he would use those times to scout out locations, like in a movie, you know? Except in his case for a novel. He liked to be able to visualize a scene in his head before he wrote it. It was a way of creating a strong sense of authenticity.”
“This is very interesting, Nathan. Thank you.”
“You know about his family history, right? About what happened to his parents?”
“I do.”
“So you can imagine how hard it must be for him to sleep.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Listen, you don’t think… I mean I don’t even want to consider this but…”
DeMarco waited.
“What happened to his parents. You don’t think it might have finally tripped something in his brain, do you? Caused him to just… Jesus, I hate myself for even thinking such a thing.”
“He was a troubled man. He hid it very well, probably channeled most of the grief into his writing. Even so.”
“But he was so fucking kind. To take the time to write me that note. To show such concern for me.”
The young man was weeping now—DeMarco could hear it in the quality of his voice, the hoarse deepening of sorrow.
“We’re almost done here, Nathan, and then I’ll let you go. Two weeks ago. You wouldn’t happen to know how Thomas Huston spent that particular Thursday evening, would you?”
“Thursday two weeks ago,” Nathan said. “He didn’t go to the club that night? The one with Annabel?”
“He didn’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Wait a minute. Was that the night he gave a reading at Cincy State? I think it was.”
“He was in Cincinnati that night?”
“Right, he did a reading Thursday night, then met with some classes there the next morning before coming back to campus here.”
“And you accompanied him there?”
“I would have gladly. Most of the class would have. I mean, we had done it before, even took a university shuttle bus once to Case Western. But he didn’t tell us about the one in Cincy that Thursday until afterward, at the next workshop.”
“Do you find that unusual? That he didn’t tell his students about it beforehand?”
“Honestly…yes. In fact I was a little bit hurt by it. A lot of us were.”
“And this reading he did. It would have been through the English Department at CSU?”
“Through the MFA program in the English Department, right. Did something… Is there something about that particular night that interests you?”
“Just trying to account for his movements prior to last Saturday night.”
“He did give a reading, didn’t he?”
“I’m sure he did. Thank you, Nathan, for indulging my curiosity about the writing process.”
“He wouldn’t have lied to us about the reading, would he? Is that why he didn’t tell us about it until afterward?”
DeMarco paused to gather his thoughts. “As far as you know,” he finally said, “did Thomas appear to take a special interest in any particular female student?”
“He took special interest in all of his students.”
“You know what I’m asking, Nathan.”
“I never saw any evidence of it. Not once.”
“He never confided in you about his interest in anyone?”
“No.”
“Okay. Then tell me this. Do any of his female students have a serious illness? Maybe a terminal illness?”
“What? No. Why would you ask that?”
“How about a slight limp? Can you think of any female student who walks with a slight limp?”
“I don’t… No. No, none of that. He wasn’t having an affair. Why are you asking me these things?”
“Take care, son,” DeMarco said, and he ended the call.
• • •
DeMarco was working on a feeling now, the kind of thing people call a gut instinct, though with DeMarco the feeling was lodged a good eight inches above the gut, just below his sternum, something with the heaviness of metal, warm, and irregularly shaped, as if he had swallowed a chunk of lead steak and it was lodged there, making both swallowing and breathing difficult.
Perhaps the heaviness sat like a lump of lead in DeMarco’s chest because he was a hundred percent certain that a telephone call would reveal that Huston had not give
n a reading in Cincinnati on the Thursday night in question. He was certain that Huston had been with Bonnie that night. Shacked up somewhere? If so, he wouldn’t have wanted the motel charge showing up on his credit card statement. So before DeMarco looked up the telephone number for the English Department at Cincinnati State University, he made a short visit to Trooper Carmichael’s desk.
“Do me a favor and pull all of Huston’s bank records for the past three months. What I’m looking for are any withdrawals made on Wednesdays or Thursdays during that time. From all checking accounts, joint or otherwise. Probably from an ATM. Let me know when you have something.”
In his own office again, DeMarco opened Cincy State’s website, clicked his way to the English Department, MFA program, director Alice Bramson. She wasn’t in her office so he left a voice message asking her to return his call ASAP. Then he tapped the side of his thumb against his desk, thought about walking down the hall for another cup of coffee, knew he didn’t need it, didn’t want it pooling atop the lump of lead steak working its way up into his throat. “I hate fucking waiting,” he said aloud. It didn’t relieve any pressure. “I hate fucking waiting!” he shouted. That felt better, but it didn’t accomplish anything except to bring Trooper Carmichael to his threshold.
“You just gave me this a minute ago. I’m working as fast as I can.”
Softly, DeMarco told him, “I wasn’t speaking to you. Thank you very much. Please close my fucking door.”
Forty
By midafternoon, DeMarco knew three things.
Fact one: According to Dr. Alice Bramson, Thomas Huston had not given a reading at Cincinnati State University since the publication of his second novel. She would have loved it if he had appeared there more regularly; she adored his work; she still had fond memories of his previous visit. Nor had he given a reading anywhere in Cincinnati that night, guaranteed; otherwise, she would have been in attendance, her copy of his latest novel in hand, awaiting his signature.
Fact two: On each of the nine Thursdays previous to the death of his family, Thomas Huston had made withdrawals from an ATM approximately twelve miles from his home. All were made not from his and Claire’s joint checking or savings accounts but from his personal checking account. All of those withdrawals but one had been for eighty dollars, all made within twenty minutes of 7:30 in the evening. The other withdrawal, made two Thursdays before his family’s deaths, occurred at 6:42 in the morning and was in the sum of three hundred dollars, the maximum withdrawal allowed per day. On the day previous to that withdrawal, at 4:16 on Wednesday afternoon, he had made a similar withdrawal of three hundred dollars.
Two Days Gone Page 18
