Identical

by Scott Turow

  Evon went through the useless exercise of lying down in her bed, but she remained wide awake and heard her phone buzz. There was a text. “Look downstairs,” it read.

  She thought of replying, “No,” then decided that no response was better. But after lying still another second, she recognized an omen in the message and went to the living room window and peered down to the distant street. From this height, the avenue always reminded her of a scale model, with inch-high people and cars like crawling scarabs. She didn’t spy anything at first. At this hour, traffic was sporadic and on the sidewalk there were only a couple of pedestrians, both out walking their dogs, joined by early-morning runners who flashed by.

  Then she saw what she’d been intended to notice. Her BMW had been nosed into the street from the garage driveway. Heather still had that key, too, apparently. But even at that, Evon was confused. Was she supposed to beg to save her Beemer?

  In a second the car moved, inching forward at first. Then it shot straight across the breadth of the street in a blur and rammed into the old-fashioned iron lamppost on the other side of Grant Avenue. Heather had floored it. The front end of Evon’s sedan crunched like a soda can underfoot, and the lamppost leered to the side. The orange electric cables below it, which had been abruptly jacked out of the ground, appeared to be all that was keeping the streetlight from toppling. If Heather hadn’t put on her seat belt, which she frequently refused to do, she might be seriously injured.

  Barefoot and still in her robe, Evon descended in the elevator, completely uncertain about what she was hoping to find. There was smoke coming from the front end of the Beemer, but that was because the engine was still running, grating against some part of itself. When Evon pulled open the driver’s door, Heather was pinned in the seat. The airbag had deployed and the seat belt, which she’d fastened after all, had also retracted to hold her in place. Heather had clearly terrified herself and was crying with abandon. But her soft blue eyes were wide open and she turned them on Evon, even though she seemed slightly dazed.

  “Just tell me you never loved me. Just tell me that and I’ll leave you alone. But you can’t,” said Heather. “You can’t say that.”

  “I can’t,” Evon said. Then she crouched down so Heather and she were more or less eye to eye. She actually held her hand, a disconcerting act after not touching for months this woman whose every caress once had so thrilled her. But she folded her fingers tenderly over Heather’s. She had blamed Heather since January for being all kinds of crazy and hiding that from her, but something else was suddenly clear to Evon. “I can’t say that. But I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have fallen for you. And that was my fault. Not yours. I couldn’t accept you as you are, so I wanted to pretend you were someone else. And even worse, I wanted to believe I was somebody I’m not. It was so exciting. But I can’t be that person. I can’t. So you have to forgive me, baby. I wish I had known myself better.”

  There were sirens already. One of the dog-walkers, apparently, had called 911. A police cruiser arrived only seconds after the big square ambulance, both vehicles with lights flashing and their sirens sounding discordantly at two different pitches. The combined wailing was sharp and disturbing, like something used to keep prisoners awake during interrogations. Evon’s neighbors were going to be pissed.

  In instants, the paramedics had Heather out of the car and strapped to a stretcher, while the officer remained behind to question Evon. As the EMTs lifted Heather inside the rear of the ambulance, she cried out Evon’s name, then the doors closed and the ambulance screamed off toward County Hospital, the nearest facility.

  Evon responded to the officer tersely, but told him the truth. She shared as much of the story as the cop asked for. Yes, it was her car. No, she hadn’t given Heather permission to drive, but yes, she hadn’t bothered to retrieve the key, or the garage fob, so she wouldn’t file a complaint for auto theft, or break and enter. Her reluctance was not an obstacle for the cop. He had already had a whiff of Heather, and they’d be required to take blood from her at the hospital in order to treat her. Heather would be charged with DWI, reckless driving and malicious damage to county property. Then there was the protection order, which the cop learned about after recovering Heather’s purse from the car and calling in the information from her driver’s license to central command.

  “She’s also walked about a thousand bucks in parking tickets,” the cop told Evon. He was a tall black guy, calm by nature. He was going to bring Heather’s purse over to the ER while he waited for her to be checked out. If she was discharged soon, he’d take her in cuffs straight to County Jail.

  “I’d bet you’ve seen the last of her. Violating a protection order means she can’t just sign a recognizance bond. She’ll have to wait in a cell for a bail hearing. In the tank, she’s going to be meeting some different kind of chicks. The judge will tell her straight out they’ll jerk her back in there if she comes anywhere near you. That’ll be part of her sentence, too.”

  Wearing a used jumpsuit was probably going to be the worst part for Heather. Yet whatever the deterrent, Evon knew the cop’s prediction was almost certainly correct.

  She thanked the officer for his efforts, then went upstairs. She waited until nine to call Mel Tooley at home. Mel groaned sympathetically as she told him the story. He said he’d send an associate over to the jail. It was early enough that, assuming Heather wasn’t held too long in the ER, they’d probably be able to get her a bail hearing by late afternoon. Those hearings, these days, were conducted by TV, with the judge in a courtroom upstairs in the jail, and the prisoners below parading before a camera.

  “And her with no makeup,” said Evon.

  Mel chuckled, but Evon, as it turned out, couldn’t laugh at her own joke.

  35.

  Truth—June 1, 2008

  Nella and Francine had a cabin on Lake Fowler and Evon spent Saturday and Sunday with them. Nella, another former jock, had been trying to convince Evon to take up golf. She’d thought initially that the game was too sedentary, but she was starting to warm to the challenges, and they ended up playing both days.

  Driving back into town Sunday night, Evon decided to pay a call on Aunt Teri. It was past 9, but Evon had been waiting to see the old lady. The doorman downstairs put Evon on the phone and Teri invited her up. The old woman in a brocaded caftan was at the door with her cane, her face averted so she could hear the sound of Evon’s approach. Teri’s face was a glistening pond of cold cream, and she’d put up her hair for the night. The tiny pink plastic curlers were wrapped tight, exposing the elderly woman’s pale scalp, except on the back of her head where she’d covered the mess with a sheer net. Without her sunglasses, Teri’s eyes proved to be surrounded by pouches of brown flesh that looked like used tea bags.

  Teri touched her head. “Well, I suppose if you came to get laid, this jinxed it.”

  Despite herself, Evon laughed. “Sorry, Teri. Timing is everything.”

  She didn’t mind the banter with the old lady, but the truth was that Evon had always been slow to get to the point of sex with anyone. The bar scene never held much charm.

  Teri used her cane to orient herself and clumped along to her golden living room. German had apparently roused himself when he heard Teri moving about and was standing there in his paisley silk robe, still looking tidy with his fuzz of cropped gray hair. Teri told him he could go.

  “Watches those ridiculous reality shows,” she told Evon once he left. “People eating goats’ eyeballs and seeing who can stand the most paper cuts. So fucking stupid. What about a drink?”

  Evon seldom indulged, except at parties, more or less out of deference to her father who’d never taken it up, but she thought the old woman might be more relaxed if she had company. Evon said she’d have whatever her hostess was drinking. Teri made her way with her stick to the tea cart holding a troop of brown bottles, and then handed a cut-glass crystal tumbler to Evon, while she settled herself on her overstuffed sofa.

  �
��OK, shoot,” said Teri. “Ti yenaete?” Hal often used that phrase, which apparently meant ‘What’s up?’

  Evon realized she had not planned what to say, but she told Teri that Tim had finally cornered Cass Gianis.

  “He says he didn’t kill Dita. And I have a feeling you have a good idea who did.”

  “Ah.” Teri took a healthy sip.

  “The first thing—I guess the most important thing—is I need to be sure that it wasn’t Hal.”

  “Hal? Oh no no no.” Teri found the idea amusing. “My nephew might be better off if he had a little more killer in him. The best I know is that he was still out necking with Mina when Dita was murdered. He walked in to find that crazy scene. He’s the one who called the police, if I’m remembering. Tim didn’t recall that?”

  Tim probably never knew. By the time he took over the case a week later, the family members had all been cleared because their blood didn’t match what had been spilled in Dita’s room.

  “Well, Tim’s pretty sure it wasn’t Lidia.” She repeated to Teri what Cass had told him.

  “Same as Lidia told me.”

  “Right.” Evon took a second. “That’s one reason I’m here. I figured from what you said last time that you probably talked to Lidia about Dita’s murder.”

  “Not immediately,” Teri said. “But she finally put it all on the table with me maybe three months after Dita was killed. Lidia was just in a state. You know, we spoke every morning in those days. And every day it was the same thing. She couldn’t finish her sentences. She burst into tears over nothing. Finally, I said, ‘Afto einae anoeto!’ ‘This is craziness!’ ‘You have to tell me what’s going on.’ We met at St. D’s and sat in the pews in the sanctuary and talked for hours. Oh, and she cried. Cried and cried. And so did I, of course. Dita was my only niece and I saw more than a little bit of myself in her.”

  In the church, Teri said, Lidia had told her about Zeus and the twins, and Lidia’s plan to ask Dita to stop seeing Cass. “I understood why she couldn’t tell her sons. But why not come to me? If anyone could talk sense to Dita, I was the best one to try. But I guess Lidia was embarrassed that she’d kept the secret from me for so long. Maybe she was afraid I wouldn’t believe her after all that time. Anyway, Dita had smart-mouthed her way into getting slapped. Probably would have done my niece some good if that happened more often, but not that hard. Apparently, Lidia caught her with a full swing. She shocked herself.”

  Evon asked if Teri believed that Lidia had hit Dita only once. She did, Teri said, but not for the reasons that convinced anyone else.

  “Lidia wouldn’t have done that to me,” said Teri. “Hal and Dita, they were all I had. She wouldn’t have taken either one from me, no matter how angry she got. But when I asked Lidia who else could have beat up Dita, I thought she was more evasive.”

  “She believed Cass had killed her?”

  “Well, if Dita was OK when Lidia ran out of the house and dead when Cass left, it seemed fairly obvious to me. And it must have worried her, too. When I heard a few months later that Cass was pleading guilty, I wasn’t surprised. He was always the more excitable of the two boys. My heart broke for Lidia, of course.”

  “Tim doesn’t believe Cass did it either. Not any more.” Evon picked up her drink but only so she could look down into it. “I guess that means your brother killed his daughter.”

  Teri didn’t answer, but even without much sight, she was reluctant to face Evon. The old woman was silent some time, which made for an unusual moment.

  “Do you think we have obligations to the dead?” she asked Evon.

  “I visit my parents’ graves when I go home. Is that what you mean?” That was almost a lie, since she prayed a lot longer over her father.

  “Not really. Here,” she said, and raised her tumbler but only to gesture with it. “Truth told, I never knew exactly what to make of my brother. Of course, I loved him like crazy. You had to. He was the biggest thing on earth, so grand, and he carried it off. He was a good brother, loyal, always looked out for me, and a good father to Hal, who looked up to Zeus so much. Zeus had his points. But he was too much like our father, who I may have told you was just a big stinking turd.” Teri wound her head around in lingering contempt and disbelief, then paused again to reflect.

  “I sometimes think,” Teri said, “we’re all sort of like twins—who we want to believe we are, and the person others see. They look alike, but you know, most folks probably make out someone in the mirror a little more appealing than how it might strike somebody else. But my brother, that was an odd thing with him. He knew the worst about himself. Didn’t face it often, and forgot it as fast as he could. But it was always there stuffed down inside him somewhere, like a loaded musket. And he was dead set on never letting anybody else find out. So do I ignore that?”

  Evon told her the truth. That was Teri’s decision.

  “Sure it is,” said Teri. “You bet your ass. But here’s the problem. As you might have noticed, dear, I’m old. And what I know—it could matter if this blame parade starts up again somehow. So I’ll trust you. But this is a truth that would hurt a lot of people.”

  “Hal?”

  “Especially. So you need to keep this to yourself, unless there really is no choice.”

  “What if I tell Tim?”

  “I’ll leave that to you. But Tim’s definitely another of the folks who would be hurt.”

  Evon was too startled to respond. Teri looked up to the ceiling, where there was a gilded molding she could probably no longer see, then said abruptly, “All right. Let’s get this done.” She adjusted her position on the sofa and took another solid mouthful from her drink.

  “You probably know, from the time of Dita’s death, my brother wanted to rebury her on Mount Olympus.”

  “So she could be among the other gods and goddesses?”

  “Whatever. He certainly thought that was where he belonged when his time came. Zeus, he really sometimes seemed to believe in the Greek gods. At least when it suited him. What he liked was that so many of them behaved so badly, so often. Nothing like Jesus. Zeus, if he got drunk enough, would tell you Jesus was a wimp. Zeus, the god Zeus? He truly was my brother’s role model. All-powerful and full of vices.

  “At any rate, on the fifth anniversary of Dita’s death, Hermione and he thought they could bear the trip. Hal and Mina had three small children at home, but I went. Most of Olympus is a national park, but my people, they build churches everywhere, and Zeus had found a little chapel there with a graveyard. The old priest came out to say some prayers. It was a beautiful ceremony. A few of Hermione’s Vasilikos relatives had come up to Thessaly from different parts. And Dita’s casket was returned to the earth. In my bedroom, I’ve got some thyme I picked out of the rocks there to remember her.

  “Afterwards, we went back to the villa Zeus had rented. Hermione’s relatives and some locals came to pay their respects, but they weren’t there long. Pretty soon it was Zeus and Hermione and me. My brother was in an absolutely black mood. ‘I am a bad man,’ he said as he sat there on that sofa. That was not the first time I’d heard that from him, by the way, but I doubt he’d ever made those kinds of remarks to that silly little clothes rack he’d married. But now he looks up and says, ‘I killed our daughter.’ Just like that. Like, ‘It snowed.’”

  Teri, now that she’d decided to share this, was engaged by the storytelling. She had scootched herself forward on the sofa and was waving her whiskey around now and then as she spoke. Zeus’s description of the killing was brief. Lidia’s visit had caused Dita to make some awful comment about her father, which Zeus never specified, but which he admitted led him to strike his daughter in rage.

  “Afterwards, of course, he was mortified he’d be discovered. So he weaseled around so that the police put your friend, Tim, in charge, figuring Tim was bound to be more unsuspecting of Zeus. And afterwards, he gave Tim a healthy retainer every year, just to be sure he kept seeing Zeus in a kindly light.”


  “God,” Evon said. She now understood Teri’s warning that the truth could wound Tim. She finally took a nip of her drink. To her it would forever taste like gasoline. She said to Teri, “I know Zeus didn’t realize Cass was his son, but did he care at all that a twenty-five-year-old was doing his time?”

  “Oh, he said something silly at one point, that no expert could say for sure that it wasn’t Lidia’s slap that caused Dita’s death. As if that justified sticking Cass in the pokey. But, no, like I said, Zeus was a lot like our father. He just convinced himself that bad stuff he’d done hadn’t happened. But reburying Dita had waked it all in him and he said he had decided to turn himself in as soon as we got back.

  “It was a minute before either Hermione or me could react, but then she started carrying on. I’d never seen her act like that, throwing things and screaming. She spit on Zeus, smacked him. He just sat there. Not that she wasn’t entitled. He’d killed their daughter. But once she was done calling him a monster for that, she said that what he was going to do would only make things worse—abandoning her in old age, bringing shame on their family, and shattering Hal. And why? In order to spare Lidia, who Hermione always somehow felt he loved more than her.

  “I just left her to the screaming, and tried to sleep. As far as I could tell, they were up all night.

  “The next morning, Zeus seemed to have settled her down enough that she’d agreed to take a walk with him back to the graveyard. So off they went, and no more than an hour later, I hear all this shouting and hear sirens up the mountain. The servants in the villa were in a tizzy and dragged me out with them. And there was Hermione telling the police about these strange men who had followed Zeus and her. She said she was walking alone, fifty paces in front of him, when she heard Zeus scream. Next she sees is these men tearing off and Zeus way down below, broken on the rocks like a child’s toy.”