Fog of Dead Souls

by Jill Kelly

  She pulled herself to sitting, then got out of bed. She put on the new robe over the soft flannel gown Sandy had bought for her and slipped on socks against the autumn chill that had settled into the quiet house. She padded silently down the carpeted stairs and wandered around until she found the kitchen. There was grapefruit juice in the fridge and she drank three glasses before her thirst was quenched. Then she sat down at the small table in the bay window and looked out at the night.

  Fog blanketed the garden, wisps and tendrils of white streaming across the lawn, skirting the old oak, which was ringed with benches.

  For the first time in years, she thought of Danny, long gone from her life, his love of sitting in silence in the night, the firefly glow of his cigarette, the clink of ice in his glass. He liked to watch her sleep. Claimed it calmed him to know that one of them could do it.

  She felt clearer in her mind. The afternoon before, she’d put the Valium away. She was afraid to get hooked, and she knew she couldn’t put off the thinking forever. She inhaled deeply, then opened her mind to the questions she had been keeping at bay. In the space of another two breaths, the breakfast nook was crowded with them.

  11

  Wednesday morning Detective Hansen showed up at the B&B with Ellie’s purse and her suitcase, which the police had hung on to. Sandy answered the door, then went upstairs to get her friend. A few minutes later, the two women emerged. Ellie had put on a pair of black knit slacks and a gray turtleneck, which had been in the suitcase. As she came down the wide staircase, Hansen suddenly felt as if he were in a movie, watching the love interest make her big entrance. He had an inexplicable urge to take her in his arms and embrace her.

  Instead, he nodded at her solemnly, then asked Sandy where they could talk in private. Sandy showed them into the dining room, almost as if she were the maid, and then closed the pocket doors behind her as she left.

  Hansen held out a chair for Ellie, then sat down across the table, his chair pulled out so that there was more distance between them. He didn’t want her to feel pressured by his presence.

  He asked how she was, then said, “Tell me everything you remember about Saturday. Anything and everything, details and all.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I woke up about at seven-thirty. I could hear the shower running. Then I went back to sleep for a while. When I woke up again, Joel was dressed and sitting across the room—in that same chair.” She paused. “He was reading the paper and drinking coffee.”

  “Paper cup?”

  She looked at him and shook her head. “His travel mug.”

  “He’d been out?” Hansen said.

  “No, I don’t think so. He asked if I wanted some. I said no, not yet, but there was coffee in the hotel’s coffeemaker when I went into the bathroom.”

  “What time was that?”

  Ellie frowned. “Eight-thirty, maybe. I took a shower, dried my hair. When I came out, he was still reading the paper.”

  “Could he have left while you were in the shower?”

  “I suppose so. I was in the bathroom about fifteen minutes. But it didn’t look like he’d been out.”

  “Okay, then what?” Hansen made a note in a little notebook.

  “We met Sandy and Arlen downstairs for breakfast. Do you want to know what I ate? I had two eggs over easy, hash browns, sausage. Do you want to know what Joel had?”

  Hansen smiled in spite of himself. “Sure, why not?”

  “He had oatmeal with butter and white sugar and skim milk. He always eats oatmeal.”

  “Who picked up the check?”

  “Joel. Joel always picks up the check. It’s a thing with him.”

  Hansen made another note and then looked up at Ellie.

  She sighed. “Then we went to the battlefield. Arlen had …”

  Hansen held up his hand. “Did either of you come back to the room before that?”

  “Sandy and I did. I used the bathroom. She did too. I got a warmer jacket because it was damp and foggy out. That took maybe ten minutes.”

  “And Arlen and Joel?”

  “I don’t know what they did.” Ellie frowned. “I assume they waited downstairs. They were in the lobby gift shop when we came down. Arlen was buying gum. Juicy Fruit. I hate the way that smells.”

  “Go on,” said Hansen.

  “We drove—we took Arlen’s car—to the battlefield. He had a fancy guidebook of the different sites and battles—skirmishes, he called them—over those three days of fighting, and we drove and got out and looked around and he’d read a bunch of stuff, some of it pretty interesting actually, and then we’d pile back in the car and drive some more. I would have preferred to just walk—I like to walk—but Sandy has a bad hip so we got in and out of the car. It became pretty tedious, especially because the fog never lifted. It was cold and damp and unpleasant.”

  “Anything else you remember?”

  Ellie shook her head. “Arlen took a lot of pictures. He has a scrapbook of battle sites. Frankly, the patches of grass and woods all look a lot alike to me—I guess if I was a botanist, I could tell the difference between the trees and grass in the various places, but I can’t.”

  “Did Richardson ever leave the group? Did he get a phone call or step away to make a call?”

  Ellie shook her head again. “No, but Sandy and I did stay in the car at one of the stops. Arlen wanted to walk up a fairly steep hill and Sandy didn’t want to, so we just stayed in the car and talked about how hungry we were and how we’d had enough.”

  “How long were they gone?”

  “Twenty, thirty minutes maybe. I don’t know.”

  Hansen wrote in his notebook and studied Ellie a moment. He could tell she was growing weary, but whether of talking or remembering he couldn’t tell. “Just a few more questions. What happened after that?”

  “We went to a deli and had lunch.”

  “Anybody drink?”

  “Joel and Arlen each had a beer.” She paused. “Arlen had two.”

  “Joel didn’t have a second?”

  “No, he doesn’t … didn’t drink much. I couldn’t have been with him if he did.”

  Hansen looked her in the eye for a moment, briefly wondering what her whole story was, and then he looked down at the notebook.

  “Okay, tell me about the rest of the day.”

  “After lunch, Arlen and Sandy dropped us at the hotel. That would have been about three, I guess. I was really chilled and I took a hot bath and soaked a long time. Joel watched a football game on TV until I was through. We read and napped a little although I didn’t really sleep. I don’t think Joel did either. We watched CNN for a while, got dressed, went to dinner about seven.”

  “Anything unusual happen at dinner?”

  “No. Arlen drank a little too much maybe. He and Joel split a bottle of wine and Arlen seemed to drink most of it. Arlen and Joel got into a discussion about the Civil War. Joel was defending the South and the right to secede. Arlen got pretty heated but nothing came of it. Arlen had been showing off with all his Civil War facts and I suspect that made Joel feel, well, I don’t know. Joel didn’t like to be wrong.”

  Hansen closed the notebook. Even though they’d been talking less than a half hour, he knew it had probably felt like an eternity for her. While he’d learned a few things that might prove helpful, she wasn’t a good witness because of the drugs she’d been given that night—and the ones she was probably still taking. And that meant they’d probably have to do this all again.

  “I haven’t been much help, have I?” Her face was full of worry.

  “Yes and no,” he said after a moment. “Everything helps us see the whole picture, so all these details are important. It’s just hard to know exactly which ones hold the key.” He waited another moment. “You sound pretty clear about Saturday.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do. I remember it, up until we left the restaurant.” She looked out the French doors onto the back garden. “I remember it, but I don’t understand it.”


  She turned to look at Hansen and he saw the terrible darkness in her eyes that he’d come to recognize in the victims of sex crimes. “I tell my students that there are almost never answers to ‘why’ questions, that we can only ever really know ‘how’ something happens. And I do want to know how this happened, but that’s not good enough. I want to know why and who. Who did this to us? And why would he?”

  Hansen’s eyes never left Ellie’s face as she said all this, though he kept his own look neutral. But inside, his heart and lungs felt squeezed by her pain and what she didn’t understand, and he felt both ashamed and angry, dirty somehow, and outraged.

  12

  Five days after they met at the Maverick Bar, Ellie and Al drove over to Flagstaff, where they stood before a justice of the peace. The bride wore red—a red cashmere sweater, a skirt of red and black that she had found at the thrift store in Farmington, a pair of red and black cowboy boots that Al gave her as a wedding gift. The groom wore black—black jeans, a black leather jacket, a crisp white shirt. Her gift to him was a black-and-red bowtie, so he’d know she had a sense of humor. “Now we look like we belong together,” she said.

  They ate at a little diner in town and then drove on to the lodge at the Grand Canyon. Al had reserved two rooms. There had been hand-holding and hugs and some chaste kisses, but he wasn’t sure what kind of honeymoon they would have. Ellie’s bravado had disappeared with her drinking, and it had been replaced by an animal skittishness that both endeared her to him and left him unsure.

  Ellie was grateful to have a room of her own, although the pine walls and pastel bedspread were too bland to be welcoming. The West at its most tedious, she thought. Al was happy to ride for long stretches in silence and they had found plenty of the present to talk about—the ranch and how he worked it, what Farmington was like as a community. They each had dead parents and that was also safe ground, and Ellie talked some of her growing-up years in the rainy winters of the Northwest and Al of his decision to come back to New Mexico after college. But the long hours of driving, of constant togetherness, had worn on her.

  After she unpacked, Ellie took a shower, standing for a long time in the hot water. Then she dressed in more of her new clothes—soft, loose chocolate brown pants and a white sweater. She knew it was not fair to submit Al to the mourning black she had worn this last year, and she hoped the colors would make her feel new and look new to herself. So far it was not working.

  He knocked on her door at seven, a red rose in his hand, the grin she already liked so much playing around his mouth. “Hey honey,” he said. “You look great.”

  That look of understanding that she craved was in his eyes, and she suddenly felt more hopeful, less damaged, and she slipped her room key into his jacket pocket and took his hand.

  They sat with their bodies mirrored by a large wall of windows, candles flickering between them. The great black night of the high desert and the great black void of the canyon pressed in on them and created an intimacy that she had not imagined she could feel again.

  Their meals too arrived as if by magic, the waiter silently pouring sparkling cider into their glasses. Al raised his, seemed to smile with his whole being, and said, “To our lives from now on.” The simplicity of his words and the promise they carried soothed her and she repeated them aloud and drank to his toast. After dinner, the waiter brought a small cake with two candles. On top of the chocolate frosting were two small plastic figures, an Indian maiden and an Indian brave. It was so corny, she burst out laughing and Al grinned at his joke.

  The conversation had gone all right while they ate. They talked mostly of the Canyon. She had never seen it. He had spent a summer working in the Park in his early twenties. He gave her the tour guide’s spiel as he remembered it and told of youthful escapades that he and his buddies had undertaken on their days off. But she worried that he would notice how little she said, that he would find her long pauses awkward. Anxiety washed over her in intervals, mounting towards panic and then subsiding as he held her hand. She wanted desperately to order a drink, to retrieve her gutsy self. She was terrified of the night to come and his reactions to her body.

  13

  Two days after her interview with Hansen about the Saturday at the battlefield, Ellie heard the voices of the detectives downstairs as she sat writing in her room. Sandy came in a few minutes later and asked if she felt up to coming down to speak with them again.

  Hansen stood talking to Arlen when she entered the room, the detective’s air of fatigue deeper and stronger than before. Skopowlski stood at the French doors looking out at the garden in the sun. Arlen stepped away and started to usher Sandy out, but Ellie asked them to stay, so they stood by the archway that led into the hall.

  Hansen pulled out a chair for her at the dining table. She sat down and he sat across from her. She noticed for the first time how big a man he was—big hands, big wrists—and how handsome. She wondered reflexively if he was married.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m less … I’m okay.”

  He nodded. “Good, I’m glad to hear that.” He paused, looked over at Skopowlski, then looked directly at her. “We still don’t know everything, but we know more and we’re surmising the rest. As you suspected, you were raped, but probably not by Richardson. There was only one semen sample and preliminary results show that it did not match his DNA.”

  He fell silent and she wondered, in that odd space she was in, if he was gauging her reaction. To accommodate him, she said, “So someone else was there that night.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “The good news is that the semen was clear of AIDS or other STDs.”

  “So this other person, this man, he killed Joel?”

  Again Hansen looked at his partner before speaking. “No, we’re pretty convinced that Richardson killed himself, that he gave himself the pentobarbital. His fingerprints were the only ones on the syringe.”

  “Could this man have forced Joel to do that, to kill himself?” she asked.

  Hansen’s eyes were full of sympathy. “We thought about that, but we don’t think so. We think that Richardson and the second man were in this together.” He paused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sure that’s hard to hear.”

  No, I hear you fine, Ellie thought. The room seemed suddenly to have grown very cold.

  Arlen spoke up. “Why do you think that? I don’t understand. This all seems crazy. I knew Joel. He wouldn’t do anything like this. There has to be another explanation.”

  Ellie wondered if Arlen thought he was speaking for her.

  Skopowlski spoke for the first time. “We don’t think so. To begin with, there was no evidence that Richardson was tied up or restrained in any way. And the only significant drugs in his system were marijuana and pentobarbital. Next, the bartender at the Three Coins remembered him. He came up to the bar about nine and ordered two glasses of club soda. No big deal in itself, of course, but she saw Richardson put drops into one of the glasses and she wondered if something was up. But then he took a sip from the glass he’d put the drops in and she assumed it was a medication for him.”

  “We think he drugged you then,” said Hansen, looking at Ellie. “That explains why you don’t remember anything after leaving the restaurant and why there’s no evidence of that in the room.”

  “I remember the club soda,” said Ellie. “The waitress disappeared after we had paid the bill and I wanted something to drink. Joel offered to get it for me. I was thirsty and I drank it right down. And we left not long after that.”

  “Yes,” said Sandy, “about nine-thirty.”

  Hansen nodded. “Time is a factor.” He turned back to Ellie. “Your bruises and burns were at least twelve hours old when the doctor examined you at the hospital, meaning the abuse occurred sometime not long after midnight, but Richardson died between six and eight in the morning—a number of hours later. His involvement explains the gap.”

  “Explains it how?�
� said Arlen. He sounded indignant. “Couldn’t he have gone out, Joel, I mean, and then come back and found Ellie, and killed himself from shock?”

  “Instead of calling the police, you mean? Instead of calling an ambulance? Do you know something we don’t, Mr. Gerstead?” Skopowlski had turned from the window and Ellie saw the interest in his eyes.

  “No, no, I’m just guessing.” Arlen seemed to shrink away. “I … I just can’t imagine he would sit there and watch while someone tortured her. That’s unbelievable.” He wiped the tears from his face. Sandy took his arm and steered him over to the other end of the table where she helped him into a chair and then sat beside him with her hand on his arm.

  Hansen shifted his body so he was facing Arlen. “You’re a drug salesman, isn’t that right, Mr. Gerstead?”

  “Yes,” said Arlen. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Do you have access to syringes? Do you carry samples of pentobarbital?”

  “No, I don’t.” Arlen’s voice sounded defensive, vehement, even to Ellie, and she wondered why he felt that way. “Barbiturates are a whole different class of drug than what I deal with. I deal in asthma drugs and anxiety medications, things like that. Pills and capsules. I don’t have samples of anything that would be injected.”

  “Okay,” said Hansen. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

  Ellie suddenly felt she counted for little or nothing in this conversation. She reached across the table and touched Hansen’s sleeve. “Tell me everything you’re thinking. I want to know.”

  “It isn’t nice.”

  “None of this is nice,” Ellie said. She wondered at her own detachment.

  Hansen gave one of his tired smiles. “Okay,” he said. “We don’t think this was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” He let that sink in.

  “That’s why he didn’t want you two to stay here at the B&B with us,” Sandy said, looking at Ellie.

  “Makes sense,” Hansen said. “We think he either knew someone here in town or the guy followed you from Pittsburgh. At first we thought Richardson might have passed him a key at the restaurant so that he was in your room when you returned or Richardson could have let him in once you got back to the hotel. But that doesn’t match the security camera tapes. No one was seen entering or leaving your room other than you two, and the other activity in the hallway was into and out of rooms quite a ways from yours. There were two waiters on room service duty, but they didn’t service any rooms on your floor.”