Two Days Gone

by Randall Silvis

  I am reminded of Nabokov’s contention that there are always two plots at work in a story. The first is the plot of the story, but above it, hovering ominously like a fat, black-bellied cloud, is the writer’s consciousness, which is the real plot of everything he writes. If a book is filled with love, it is because the writer longs for love. If the book drips violence, it is because the writer burns to levy justice, to decimate his enemies. The writer composes such books as a means of survival. Otherwise, his psyche would unravel. And the unraveling, depending upon its form, can be either pitiful or disastrous.

  The next entry was even more chilling:

  But doesn’t every guilty man hide his deeds behind his words and hide his thoughts behind his smile? Or behind other deeds? Doesn’t the pedophile hide behind the Little League team he coaches or the school bus he drives or the Masses he conducts? And doesn’t the wife beater hide behind the sidewalks he cleans for the old lady next door, and behind his punctuality and efficiency at work? The pornographer, the rapist, the serial killer—the predatory stockbroker, the ambulance chaser, the Medicare-bilking physician—the congressman, the senator, the president—don’t they all cloak their evil behind silk ties and thousand-dollar suits?

  Why would you expect any less from me?

  The last troubling entry had been made some time on the Saturday immediately following Bonnie’s abortion in Cleveland. Suddenly the two short paragraphs assumed new meaning:

  I keep wondering how long it will be before I can become reconciled to what I have done. What right did I have to do such a thing? Though it is true that I was merely an assistant, a facilitator, does this absolve me of all guilt? What we did goes against the grain of all I believe. Then why did I do it? Because she asked. She had no one else to help her.

  I see both of us now in a wholly different light. Her complete absence of regret, her relief that the thing is done, is abhorrent to me. But maybe this feeling is the result of a simple case of transference. It is not Annabel I should hold in contempt but myself. I feel certain that the other man would agree.

  “The other man?” DeMarco said aloud. A shiver rattled his spine. He read the passage again, slowly. And again.

  “The other man? What other man?”

  And then it dawned on him. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “She lied again.”

  Forty-Five

  At 7:59 that morning, DeMarco strode up to Trooper Morgan as he stirred powdered creamer into his coffee in the break room. DeMarco shoved a sheet of folded paper between two buttons on the trooper’s shirt. “Run these through the DMV ASAP. Get me copies of all the photo IDs.”

  “Okay if I take a sip of coffee first?”

  DeMarco was already on his way out the door. “No,” he said.

  In his office, DeMarco went online, typed in the website he needed, found the phone number and office hours. The female who answered with a question on the third ring sounded sleepy and young, as if her first cup of chai tea had not kicked in yet. “Cleveland Women’s Center?” she said. “How can I help you?”

  “This is Sergeant Ryan DeMarco of the Pennsylvania State Police,” he told her. “I’m investigating a multiple homicide here in Mercer County, and I have reason to believe that a recent patient of yours is involved.”

  “My gosh,” she said.

  “Here’s what I need. Do you have a pen to write this down?”

  “Oh,” she said. He heard a desk drawer being pulled open, a hand rummaging inside, the rustle of paper. Then, “Okay, ready.”

  “Her name is Bonnie Marie Harris, but she probably registered under a false name, possibly Bonnie Jean Burns. Possibly with the first name of Annabel. She’s five foot nine, forty-one years old, weighs approximately 145, brown hair, green eyes. She would have been very early in her pregnancy, no more than six weeks probably, and she would have paid for the procedure with cash. What I need to know is if it’s your practice there to ascertain the blood type of the fetus, and if you did, what that blood type is. And I need that information ASAP. This is a matter of some urgency.”

  “Uhh,” she said, “Sergeant? I’m not sure I can give you that information. We have a confidentiality policy and we’re not supposed—”

  “Let me speak to your supervisor,” he said.

  “Uhh, there’s just me and the nurse and the doctor right now.”

  “Nurse or doctor, either one. Now. Thank you.”

  “Okay, uhh…may I put you on hold?”

  “No you may—” he managed to get out before the Muzak began, an orchestral version of the Lennon–McCartney song “Here, There and Everywhere.” “Fuck,” he said. “No respect for authority.”

  As he listened to the Muzak, he was reminded of his favorite cover of the song, the one by Claudine Longet, former French wife of the balladeer Andy Williams. Then she had been arrested for the murder of her lover, the Olympic skier Spider Sabich. Longet had beguiled the jury and the judge, and spent thirty days’ worth of weekends in a plush cell for negligent homicide, a misdemeanor. As far as DeMarco could recall, her singing career had ended with the bullet that went into Sabich’s belly. DeMarco had been just a boy at the time, but he could still picture the singer’s waifish and fragile beauty, could still hear her whispery voice. She had been one of his first infatuations. Even then, apparently, he had been attracted to murderers.

  “Sergeant Ryan?” a deep male voice said.

  “Yes. Who am I speaking with?”

  “This is Dr. Atwater. I’m the physician on duty today. Jolynn has passed on your request to me, and I’m sorry to say that our policy prohibits the release of personal information.”

  “I understand that, Doctor. And I’m sure you realize that if necessary I can obtain a court order and—”

  “Sergeant? If I could finish, please.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “If I were able to provide such information, and if a patient fitting your description did avail herself of our services on the day specified, it would most likely be the case that our services were limited to an ultrasound and the administration of the prescription drug RU-486 to induce termination of the pregnancy. In which case, the patient would have undergone a miscarriage some time during the next twenty-four hours or so.”

  “Are you telling me that this was the case with Bonnie?”

  “I am telling you that if a patient came here only six weeks into her pregnancy, RU-486 would have been administered. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”

  DeMarco said, “Okay. Thank you, Doctor.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be more precise.”

  “I understand. Would you be able to tell me anything about the man who accompanied her?”

  “Not even if I knew anything.”

  “Okay, well…thank you for your cooperation.”

  DeMarco had hoped that the clinic performed routine tests on all aborted fetuses, and that, in this case, the blood type could be matched to Huston’s. Given the commonality of blood types, Huston would not be entirely ruled out or definitively identified as the father, but it was a hunch DeMarco had had to play. Now he was left with only the unsubstantiated certainty that Huston’s phrase the other man had no relevance to the novel in progress. It applied only to Huston’s own certainty that he had not fathered another baby. And there were only two ways to account for that certainty. Either Huston had never had sex with Bonnie, or he was no longer capable of producing children.

  “The in-laws,” DeMarco said. He grabbed Huston’s file off the corner of his desk, slapped it down on the blotter, and started flipping pages until he found the home phone number for the O’Patchens. DeMarco hoped that Rosemary would answer, and she did.

  “Would you happen to know,” he asked after his greeting, “if your son-in-law ever had a vasectomy?”

  Rosemary’s voice remained as flat as the first time he’d heard it. “How i
s that important now?” she said.

  DeMarco cautioned himself to slow down, to take his time with her. She had been delivered a blow from which she would never recover. If for no other reason than that, she deserved whatever patience he could muster. He said, “In your heart of hearts, Rosemary, you don’t really believe that Thomas could ever have hurt his family, do you?”

  “Ed says I have to accept it. That I need to see things as they are. But I just can’t get my head around such an idea. I can’t.”

  “Well, I’m working on a theory that might prove you right.”

  “You are? What… I mean can you tell me what it is?”

  “Not just now I can’t. I’m sorry. But I will when I can, I promise you that. In the meantime, about the vasectomy…”

  She said, “Right from the start they both wanted a boy and a girl. And it worked out exactly the way they’d planned. First Thomas Jr. and then Alyssa.”

  “But ten years later, along came another one.”

  “Ever since Alyssa, he’d intended to have a vasectomy. But Claire was on the pill, so…”

  “It just never happened?”

  “They changed their minds. After Alyssa started school, I think it was.”

  “They changed their minds about…?”

  “Only wanting two.”

  “Ah. And so…”

  “I think they waited until the seventh month. Seventh or eighth, I’m not sure which. Until they knew that the baby was healthy and everything would be okay. That’s when he had it done.”

  “Are you telling me that Thomas did have a vasectomy?”

  “They had a barbecue that night. As stiff and sore as he was afterward, he insisted on making steaks for us. Ed teased him unmercifully.”

  Her voice was quivering now, growing weak and hoarse.

  “Thank you,” he told her. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes, it is. And I’m sorry I had to call. I know how painful this is for you.”

  “Do you?” she said. “How can you really?”

  He said, “I lost my own boy when he was just a baby. His name was Ryan too. Ryan DeMarco Jr.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

  “So I have a sense, you know, of what you’re going through now.”

  “It’s all so terrible,” she said. “How did it happen?”

  “A car accident.”

  “Oh no.”

  “He was in his safety seat and everything. All buckled in. But even so.”

  “Oh my good Lord, Ryan. And your wife? Was she hurt?”

  “Not visibly. But she left me not long afterward.”

  “It’s all just too much,” she said, sobbing now. He could feel her shoulders shaking, could feel the heavy, black ache in her chest. His left eye started to water. He put a finger to the moisture and dragged it away.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t mean to add to your troubles. I just wanted you to know that…I do understand how you’re feeling right now. I really do.”

  “It never leaves you, does it?” she said. “Ed keeps telling me it will get better, but I know it won’t. We can expect to feel like this for the rest of our lives, can’t we, Ryan?”

  What should I tell her? he wondered. He searched his mind for the right words, but his mind was a blank, empty of everything except the heart-emptying truth. “I suspect we can,” he said.

  • • •

  “Okay,” DeMarco asked himself, “what do you know?”

  He stood in front of the whiteboard in his office, black marker in hand. Under Bonnie’s name he wrote abortion. Under Thomas Huston, vasectomy. “So Thomas took her to Cleveland for the abortion,” DeMarco said. “He probably even paid for the abortion, but it wasn’t his baby. He knew it wasn’t his baby. So why the fuck would he do it?”

  He wrote The other man? and underlined it twice.

  DeMarco was still staring at the whiteboard when Trooper Morgan appeared in his doorway. “You better have what I need,” DeMarco told him and snatched the packet of printouts from the trooper’s hand. On each page was a photocopy of a driver’s license, owners of the vehicles parked at Whispers the previous night. One was registered to Bonnie, four to dancers, and four more to men who bore no resemblance to Tex, the bouncer.

  “That’s it?” DeMarco said. “This is all of them?”

  “All but your car and mine.”

  “And these four guys?”

  “No priors for any of them. I checked with Carmichael and he confirmed that these were the four customers inside with us that night.”

  DeMarco shoved the papers against Morgan’s chest. “I told you to get what I need. This isn’t what I fucking need.”

  The trooper remained calm. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go away and let me think.”

  Morgan turned toward the door. Then DeMarco said, “Wait a minute. Get a car and meet me out front.”

  “Squad car?”

  “Fuck no.”

  Alone again in his office, DeMarco studied the board. “So no car for Moby. No car for Tex. Moby, I know…” he said, then stepped within a foot of the board, stared so hard at the other name that the letters blurred, “but who the fuck are you? And who gave you a ride to Whispers?”

  Forty-Six

  Bonnie Marie Harris’s home was a small brick ranch in a seventies subdivision in the town of Linesville, twelve miles east of Whispers. DeMarco, dressed in the wrinkled chinos and OSU sweatshirt he kept in his office, scanned the windows.

  Morgan had parked the undercover car on the opposite side of the street. “Looks like nobody’s home,” he said.

  “Unless she’s sleeping.” DeMarco reached for his cell phone. “Where’s that number?”

  Morgan handed him the notepad.

  “You’re sure this is the landline?” DeMarco asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  DeMarco punched in the digits. The number rang four times, then went to Bonnie’s voice mail.

  “Just what I thought,” Morgan said.

  “Tell you what,” DeMarco said and popped open the passenger door. “Stop thinking. Just sit here and keep your eyes open.”

  DeMarco crossed briskly to the front door and rang the bell. The sound echoed throughout the house. He cupped his hands to his eyes and peered inside through one of the glass panels alongside the door. The foyer was small and empty and dark. No lights on anywhere in the house as far as he could determine. He tried the door. Locked. A bronze Schlage lock, matching the Schlage dead bolt three inches above it.

  Without looking over his shoulder to see how many busybodies might be peeking out from behind their curtains, he strode across the front of the house as if he knew where he was going. He knew enough to know that the back door would be in the back. Ten seconds later, he found it more or less where he’d expected it to be. It opened onto a small wooden deck, empty but for a single inexpensive patio chair—no patio grill, no garden hose, no wind chimes or hummingbird feeder. The outer aluminum door was unlocked; the wooden door with three diamond inserts of glass at eye level was not. He peered into the kitchen. An Amana refrigerator, gas stove, the corner of a small breakfast table. By all appearances, uncluttered and clean. He raised a fist to the door and rapped five times.

  The house remained silent. He lowered his gaze. No dead bolt. He considered his options. The rear decks of two other houses had views of this back door, but was anybody watching? The entire neighborhood was quiet, the kind of bedroom community that had once been fashionable but was now home to high school teachers and small-business owners and factory workers, middle-aged, middle-class, and struggling first-time homeowners. He hoped that everybody was too busy making a living to pay any attention to the man leaning close to Bonnie’s back door, the man usi
ng his body to conceal the credit card he was sliding along the doorjamb.

  A minute later, he was inside with the door closed behind him. He stood motionless in the corner beside the door and listened for the sounds of movement. The refrigerator hummed. The wall clock ticked.

  Walking heel to toe, he crossed the kitchen to stand on the threshold of a long, narrow living room. He stepped just inside, grateful for the ugly shag carpeting, a pale, lifeless green. The living room opened onto a short hallway, and he kept his eye on that dark corridor as he crossed toward it. He told himself that if Bonnie was in the house, she would be in a bedroom. He could only hope that no one else was in there with her.

  There were three bedrooms in all: one completely empty, another with nothing but a bare futon on the floor, the other fully furnished with a suite of heavy pieces—mission style, a fumed oak dresser and chest of drawers, two nightstands, and an unmade bed. A dozen clothes hangers lay scattered on the floor, the closet door standing open.

  He turned on the bedroom light. Indentations in both pillows. The closet half-empty, another tangle of hangers on the floor. The room smelled of cigarette smoke. Was Bonnie a smoker? Huston, he felt certain, was not. And if that was not the indentation of Huston’s head on the second pillow, whose was it? He shut off the light and returned to the living room.

  On the coffee table in front of the sofa were two empty beer bottles. Bud Light. To the left of the farthest bottle, a saucer with three cigarette butts in it. “Possibilities,” DeMarco said. “Bonnie smokes, Huston doesn’t. Or some other man doesn’t. Or some other man does and Bonnie doesn’t.” He could detect no lipstick on the filters.

  After he returned to the car, DeMarco telephoned his station commander. “I’m going to need a search warrant ASAP,” he said, “and as soon as you get it, send a team from the nearest barracks over here to collect the prints. Somebody was with her when she bugged out. They left a couple beer bottles and a plateful of cigarette butts behind in the living room.”

  “And just how do you know this?” Bowen asked.

  “I peeked in the fucking window. How do you think I know?”