by John Moralee
He was not Noah. He was a scrawny man with ruffled brown hair and thick lips. His nose was red with the cold. He looked through the window, teeth chattering.
“Excuse me? I saw you asking about Noah,” he said. “My name’s Arnold Lewis. I’m Noah’s roommate in Sigma Delta Sigma. No – don’t look at me like that. I’m not one of them. I want to help. I don’t like those guys either. Can we talk somewhere?”
I didn’t trust him. But he didn’t look like a physical threat unless he carried a weapon or was a master at martial arts. He looked so nervous on the open street I opened the passenger door. He hurried inside, closing it with his pink fingers. “Thanks, man. It’s icy out. Can we go to a coffee shop or something? Somewhere off campus, though.”
“Yeah,” I said, watching him closely.
He did not try anything suspicious on the way to the coffee shop. He was shivering when we ordered our coffees.
“I wish I could smoke in here,” he said, tapping his pocket that had a square bulge. “I feel like a spy in a Cold War novel.”
“What do you know about Sigma Delta Sigma?”
“I got into Sigma Delta Sigma on my academic record – I was the top student in my state – that’s Iowa, so no great achievement there. Jokes aside – I know something’s going on here. There’s a group within the frat house different from the rest of us, an elite chosen by some kind of private initiation ceremony. I’ve never been invited, but Noah was because his father is in it. He sounded proud to be chosen. What they do is none of my business, but they act really … secretive. I mean, all frat houses have their quirky ceremonies, but this was something else. I’m sure they say some things in a code only known to them. Anyway, Noah went off to his initiation ceremony all happy and everything, but the next time I saw him, he was anxious. He jumped when I came into the room like he was hiding something. He was so pale it was like he hadn’t seen daylight for a year. You’d hardly have recognised him. I asked him what was wrong, but he laughed it off, saying he just had a cold. I didn’t push it, but then over the Christmas vacation he came in one night really late, four or five in the morning. I pretended to be asleep. I heard him crying, which was kind of spooky. He was his usual quiet self in the morning, but I found oak leaves and dirt all over the carpet. The cleaner had to shampoo it off. That was the last time I saw Noah. But I found this in his things.” It was a balaclava. “I’ve never seen him wearing it, so what was he doing with it? It’s the sort of thing you wear when robbing a bank.”
If Arnold Lewis genuinely didn’t know about the murder of the detective, I was not going to tell him. “Can I have that?”
He started to hand it over, but then stopped. “If he comes back for it, what would I say?”
“Tell him I borrowed it.” Though I seriously doubted Noah would come back for it. He reluctantly gave me the balaclava. “So you haven’t seen him since?”
“No.” Lewis sipped at his cappuccino. “Do you have any idea what’s going on? The truth is, I’m scared.”
I was tempted to tell him something, but I dared not. “Look, all I can suggest is you leave Sigma Delta Sigma while you can, Arnold.”
“I – I think I’ll do that. Yes. I think I will. Get a nice place off the campus. A nice safe place.” He didn’t finish his coffee. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Good luck.”
He exited in a rush. I hoped he would be all right. I looked at the balaclava in my hands. In the winter you saw a few students wearing them against the cold … but I knew this one had never been worn for a legitimate purpose.
Noah had killed a cop wearing it as a disguise.
*
“We’ve got to go to the cops,” Bridget said.
“With what? A balaclava?”
“Yes!”
“It proves nothing. It’s a piece of ordinary winter clothing. No - we need the actual weapon used in the shooting. I have a hunch they buried it in the woods somewhere – Lewis said Noah dragged in dirt and oak leaves on the night of the murder. The trouble is finding the spot.”
“It can’t be far from the frat house.”
“That narrows it down some, but not enough. The woods are dark and deep yada-yada-yada.”
“What about using a metal detector?”
“You are a genius,” I told her, meaning it. She loved compliments, and I loved the way she smiled with her eyes, as though she held an inner sun that brightened when she was happy. “Now, you wouldn’t happen to have one in your room, perchance?”
“No – but I have the next best thing.”
“What’s that?”
“A friend in the archaeology department. She has access to metal detectors when she’s on a site. She’ll let us borrow one this afternoon, with spades and things to dig with.”
“I love you,” I said.
“Huh!” she grinned. “All you want is my mind.”
*
It was dark in the woods, though it was a bright beyond the trees. Light streamed down onto the hard earth in pencil-thin beams. I carried the spades while Bridget operated the metal detector. We found a few beer cans quite easily, but finding anything more incriminating was something else. Luckily, the deeper we went, the less metallic junk we detected. I found the clearing by following a patch of white light. The clearing was carpeted in leaf mulch. I could not see any obvious place where it had been dug, but the detector went wild. There was something fairly large under the ground. Something the size of a gun. They could have used the leaves to cover it. I scraped a shovel over the leaves, dragging them into a pile. Underneath I uncovered impacted grass, flattened by the recent snow – and bare earth. The bare earth was in a large rectangle. A body-length rectangle. My mouth filled with sour saliva.
“You don’t think …?”
Bridget swallowed. “Noah …”
We started digging. The ground was very hard. Our breaths froze as soon as they came out, forming an ephemeral, blue haze like we were two heavy smokers.
We dug down three feet.
It took hours.
There was a large black bag in the hole.
Bridget passed the metal detector over it. The metal object was in there. But it looked like a body was also inside.
I stood back, wiping sweat from my eyes. “Should we open it or call the cops?”
“It could be garbage,” Bridget said.
“And it could be Noah. I don’t want to see him if he’s all decayed.”
“It’s been so cold recently that he won’t have decayed,” she said. “He’ll be frozen solid. He won’t smell, if that’s any consolation.”
“It’s not,” I said.
“I’ll do it,” she volunteered.
“No,” I said. “He was my friend.”
I was wearing gloves, so I wasn’t too squeamish about opening the bag. I grabbed the plastic in both hands and tore it open along its length and looked at the contents.
There was a handgun on the chest. The body was on its side in a crushed foetal position. The eyes were glassy with ice crystals. He had frozen, just as Bridget predicted.
But it wasn’t Noah.
*
“Lewis,” I said.
“Yes,” said a voice from behind me.
I looked up from the hole and saw Noah and his Sigma Delta Sigma friends surrounding the grave. There were six of them. They were wearing black, shiny plastic raincoats. The two Aryan men had a hold of Bridget. One had a knife to her throat, the other held her from behind. Their cold eyes glittered in the winter light like diamonds.
Noah spoke again. “We’ve been watching you since you survived the auto incident. You really should have listened to my father, Clive. You should have stayed out of it.”
I reached down and picked up the gun, keeping it out of sight. The gun was in my left hand – and I wanted it my right - but that could not be helped. It would still fire at this distance. Apart from the man with the knife, no one else looked armed. I got up, switched the gun from left to right, and ra
ised it. I pointed it at the one with the knife. My rage steadied my hand and I could tell he knew I would kill him. I would kill them all, given the chance.
But they had Bridget.
“Let her go or I’ll shoot.”
Noah said: “Then shoot.”
He didn’t think I would do it.
He was wrong.
I aimed at the knife-holding man’s head and pulled the trigger. The safety was not on, but the gun did not go off. There was a click, but no gunshot.
“Yes,” Noah said. “It’s not loaded. We wanted you to dig it up. We wanted you to find Lewis. You see, you are going to be charged with two murders – Lewis and your girlfriend here. Lewis died by having his throat cut with the knife you are looking at. And so did she.”
I was grabbed by two men and pushed towards Bridget. At the same time the knifeman swept the blade across her throat, stepping aside as her bright red blood arced out and covered my face in hot wetness.
I shouted in horror and despair and the sound carried throughout the woods.
The men released Bridget and she fell down, clutching at her throat. Her beautiful eyes looked at me one last time. She needed me to save her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
She was dead in thirty seconds.
They held me and forced the knife into my gloved hand. Then they disarmed me, letting the knife drop fall. I was held down while the killer removed his blood-speckled raincoat. He collected the raincoats from the others, leaving the men dressed in their normal suits. Taking the gun, he hurried away, no doubt to destroy the forensic evidence.
Noah bent down beside me. My face was pressed into the damp earth. I could just see him with one eye.
“This is what happened,” he said. “You suspected my roommate of having an affair with your girlfriend, so you killed him. Then when she got suspicious, you killed her. One of us heard her scream from the frat house, so we came out to investigate. We found you burying them. We managed to subdue you before the police arrived. They are on their way right now.”
He stood up, brushing the leaves from his pants.
“What a cold day for killing someone,” he said. “You must be mad, Clive. Heh. Maybe you should try that as a defence?”
*
I was charged with two murders. In court, I saw Noah wearing his Sigma Delta Sigma ring when he testified against me. It was like he was rubbing it in my face. His father, impassively observing the trial, wore his ring, too. And so did the DA prosecuting me for murdering Bridget and Lewis. And so did the judge. And the foreman of the jury.
They wanted me to know they had the power.
Against my lawyer’s wishes, I was going to testify. I was going to tell the world about Sigma Delta Sigma. I had nothing to lose now. Maybe someone would believe me. Maybe someone would do something. Maybe.
The Enigma of Lucy Ash
“You’ll never guess who I saw stepping off the Greyhound at two this afternoon?”
“Elvis?”
“Nope.”
“John Lennon?”
“Nope.”
“Give up.”
“Lucy Ash.”
That was a name I hadn’t heard in what? Thirty years? In high school she’d been this almost mythical figure, a girl so beautiful all the guys loved her and all the girls hated her. At 16 she was tall, strawberry blonde, with a body nobody could ignore. She was also in the honours class, destined to MAKE SOMETHING OF HER LIFE. Everything had stopped when Lucy Ash appeared in a room, just as though she controlled time and could turn it off at will. Her gentle blue eyes and soft Southern accent had made her special in this boring town in Maine. I’d always wondered how she’d picked up the accent when, as far as I could remember, she’d lived in Paradise all her childhood.
I studied Carson’s face to see if he was lying. Carson had a habit of telling bold-face lies just to gauge your reaction, like his version of humour. Carson was 48, with male-pattern baldness and a bulging gut he was proud of achieving. He worked at the mall as a security guard. He was dressed in his blue uniform and baseball cap. We were on the sidewalk outside the high school where I was a music teacher.
“How can you be sure it was her?”
“She looked like the yearbook photograph. And I went up to her and asked.”
“She confirmed it?”
“She did more than that. She told me she was coming home. She’s staying at the Farrel’s bed and breakfast until she finds a house to buy. She said she’s real interested in seeing who’s still in town that she knows. You had a thing for her, didn’t you?”
“Didn’t everyone?”
“Yeah, guess so. But she ignored me. She liked you. You impressed her with your guitar playing.”
“Did she mention me?”
“No.”
“Did you mention me to her?”
Carson shrugged. “I had to go on duty. I was kind of stunned to see her. Time hasn’t stolen her looks, Brody. Seeing her is like being eighteen again.” He looked down at his paunch. “Well, for some of us.” He shook his head as if dislodging a fly. “Anyway, we on for the poker game?”
“Yeah,” I said. Carson walked to his car and drove off. I located my car in the staff parking lot. It was Wednesday night – poker night with the guys, Carson, Ted, Steve and Ripper – and I wasn’t due home until eleven, so I decided to drive around for a few minutes, clearing my head with the windows down and the cool air rushing inside. I thought about high school. I made up my mind that I would see Lucy Ash. I was curious about two things: Did she look as incredible as thirty years ago? And what had she been doing since?
Lucy Ash was an enigma.
After graduation day, she’d left town suddenly and dramatically. She’d taken her father’s Dodge and left it six hundred miles away, where it was discovered four months later, stripped down to the bare axles. (It was assumed thieves had done that, but maybe not.) Of Lucy Ash … no trace had been found.
Some people thought she’d been murdered.
Some thought she’d changed her name, becoming a movie star.
Some thought she’d been abducted (by aliens, a serial killer, Mickey Mouse – there were as many theories as people living in Paradise.)
The Enigma of Lucy Ash lived on, like the tall tales kids told in the woods of mad axe-murderers, haunted Indian burial grounds and monsters under the bed.
I cruised down Jefferson Boulevard, with its A-frame houses that looked like alpine cabins, slowing down when the B&B came into sight.
I didn’t stop directly outside. Something made me stop six houses short and sit there in the cool evening sunlight, smoking a cigarette.
I was afraid of seeing Lucy, as I could imagine myself falling hopelessly in love with her all over again. I thought about Nina and the kids, Beth and Tony, and I wondered if what I was doing constituted some kind of mid-life crisis. I was forty-eight in November. 48. I was not the man I’d been at eighteen, and I was not the man I’d wished to be at 48. I was a small-town teacher with most of my house paid for, a reasonably successful marriage, and two wonderful kids. It was not a bad life, but it wasn’t all that I’d wanted.
My Gibson guitar was hardly ever used outside the classroom. I didn’t write my own songs any more. I was too old to be discovered. I was that thing 99 out of a 100 people are cursed to be – ordinary.
Lucy Ash represented all of the things I had not achieved.
She was the unattainable dream.
It was 8.30 and the sun was fading in the lazy, gradual way of summer, shifting through shades of blue. I was thinking about forgetting it, when I saw her come out and start walking towards Main Street.
She was dressed in a white dress and suede jacket. She walked with a sway of her hips, almost like dancing. You could image her on a catwalk. She had that grace, that symmetry. Main Street was seven blocks away. I started up my engine and caught up with her. She looked at the car and actually recognised me. Her smiled reached into my chest and tugged at my heart.
&nb
sp; “Brody!”
“Hey,” I said. “Lucy Ash, if I live and breathe! I thought it was you. Can I give you a ride?”
I stopped the car, keeping it in neutral.
Lucy cocked her head to one side, smiling and nodding. I opened the passenger door and she climbed inside, smoothing down her dress as she drew her long legs into the car. I could smell Chanel No. 5. I moved off and asked her where she wanted to go.
“A bar. Any bar.”
“I know a good one. The Haven.”
“That will do.”
*
A kiss woke me. I opened my eyes and saw it was morning. Nina was above me, already dressed for work. Nina was a paediatric nurse at the JFK Memorial. She was tall and slim and I loved her more at that moment than I had when we first met at college. I loved her dark, frizzy hair and chocolate-coloured freckles and the way she grinned in the mornings, making me feel like it was worth getting up. She was about to walk away when I reached up, wrapped by hands around her slender neck, and drew her face towards mine. I returned the kiss, surprising her with the urgency and longing of it. When I released her, she stood back, licking her lips, touching them with her fingers.
“Wow.”
“I love you,” I said. It was something I didn’t say often enough. I vowed I would say it every day.
Nina grinned. “I would love to continue that kiss, but I’ve got to leave. Wake Tony and Beth in half an hour, will you?”
“Sure,” I said. Tony was our youngest kid. He was six. We’d been lucky to have him before Nina started her menopause last year. His big sister Beth was sixteen going on thirty. As a teenager Beth spent more time in bed than when she was a baby. Waking her for school was like disturbing a crocodile. Nina left and I got ready before the monumental task of waking the kids.
First, I knocked on Beth’s door and announced the time in a loud voice. She grunted and said she was awake. I knew it would take two attempts with Beth, so before doing that I woke Tony and supervised him cleaning his teeth and having a shower. Tony hated showers. You’d think the water was acid, the way he screams. I dressed Tony in his favourite T-shirt, Levis and Nikes. Then I tried waking Beth again.
