They decided to run even though it was late in the afternoon and she'd already played squash. Running seemed the only way to clear their heads. They changed and went outside. It was a good autumn day. In Central Park there were mothers wheeling baby carriages, youngsters walking dogs, old people bundled up in sweaters feeding pigeons or sitting on benches reading carefully folded copies of the Times.
"One thing I know," he said as they warmed up. "It wasn't any damn intruder. I never believed that. I told Schrader, but he said forget that part of it and concentrate on getting off. But it wasn't some stranger or a burglar or someone who just happened to stop by. Burglars don't walk into poolhouses, discover somebody sleeping there, pick up a pair of shears and stab a girl eighteen times."
She looked at him. He was talking about it at last. He had always avoided the subject when she brought it up; he had always said he didn't want to talk about it, or wasn't in the mood. Now, it seemed, he wanted to talk; she found that an encouraging sign. If he'd just tell her what happened that night, everything he could remember, then, maybe, she could begin to fill in the blank spaces that made her own recollections so vague, so like a dream.
"No," he said as they started to run, "the way I see it, whoever killed her had to know that she was there. He probably came by to see her, then something happened and set him off. That's what I always thought. I never thought it was premeditated. But whoever did it knew her, knew she'd be in there and knew his way around. He knew the house, the woods, all the ways on and off the place—otherwise he couldn't have slipped in and out without a trace."
They ran in silence for a while. She felt her perspiration begin to rise, the rhythm of her heart increase. She was dying to ask him why he thought Suzie brought it on herself but was afraid he'd stop talking if she did.
"Sex," he said, "it had to have something to do with sex. That's what Suzie was all about anyway. The way she was carrying on that summer, the stuff she was doing, the way she treated us—like shit, you know—like we were all shit, and she was. . .well. . . whatever she thought she was. Maybe someone couldn't take it, and got really pissed." He glanced at Penny. "It had to be a sex murder. Nothing else makes sense. It was someone who knew her, someone who was jealous or crazy or whacked out completely by what she was doing, what she'd done to him. Too many taunts. Too many humiliations. Couldn't take it finally so one night he steals in there thinking she might be alone. He didn't see me on the diving board, had no idea you were dozing by your window upstairs. So he creeps around the lawn and first thing you know he stumbles on those lousy shears. There were a couple of pairs of them around, remember? That fishy gardener, Tucker, with his iron-clad alibi—he was queer for shears. He had all these sets of them, remember, and he left them out all over the place even at night because he said your father was rich, and it didn't matter if they got rusted because your father could always buy some more."
She remembered that—Schrader had brought it out. He'd been trying to throw suspicion on the gardener in order, he'd explained, to muddy up the jury's mind.
"So he finds those shears, OK. Maybe he stumbles on them by accident in the dark and reaches down to see what's biting against his shoe. He picks them up, but then what's he supposed to do? Can't heave them away—might wake somebody up. You see I'm guessing he just came by to gaze at her. He's in love with her, so that's not so strange. But if he wakes up the dogs or someone in the house he might get spotted, and that wouldn't be too cool. So what's he supposed to do with those shears? He doesn't want to drop them back on the ground because he might stumble on them again when he leaves. In the end he just picks them up and carries them toward the cottage thinking maybe he'll set them down on the concrete or someplace out in the open, out of everybody's way. Or maybe it just feels good to have some protection in his hand in the dark. OK, he's creeping around the cottage now, the shears in his hand, and then he's gazing in at her through the door. He watches her sleeping in there with that weird angelic expression she always wore when she wasn't putting on her act."
He was getting angry, she could see. His face looked tormented. She reached out, touched him, and that seemed to calm him down. He shook himself as if he were shaking off his anger. They ran like that for several paces, hand in hand.
"He's gazing in at her for a while, a few seconds maybe or twenty minutes—we don't know how long. I was stoned and you were dozing, so we don't know how long it was between the time she went back inside and the time she moaned." Penny nodded.
"OK, he's gazing in, and then he starts to react. Suddenly there're all these conflicting feelings rising up inside. Like the way she treated him. The way she made him feel special, made him feel she cared. Then the way she kissed, the soft way she'd bring up her lips, the cushioning of them, the warm slow teasing lapping of her tongue. Jesus, she was something! Not like you—not at all. You're real. You're a person. She was just this thing, this hot teasing cunt. It's an ugly word but that's really what she was. Cunt. Pure cunt. Just oozing sex, oozing it out all over us. We saw her, felt her, kissed her, fucked her and then we were blind to everybody else. It wasn't that I ever consciously sat down and decided I was going to dump on you. There wasn't any choice. Suddenly she was there. I stopped thinking; everything was centered on my cock. She could lead me around and there wasn't anything I could do about it. We were her victims. That's the way I felt." He sighed. "So this guy, this creep in the bushes, he's the same way. He's staring in at her, gazing at her incredible angelic sleeping face, and he's thinking about all the things she's done to him, the way she's led him around, what a cock-teasing cunt she is, and all the pleasure he got out of it, too, and then the way she treated him afterwards, after she let him stick it in her a couple of times, the shitty way she made him feel. And he feels like such an asshole now, and what the hell, he asks himself, what the hell am I doing out here creeping around her cunty cottage, hiding in the shrubs at night, gazing in on her—I mean what kind of weird power does she have over me anyway? Why am I doing this? Why am I being such a jerk? And then something happens. He starts getting really mad. He starts hating her because she's turned him into such a jerk, and there's nothing he can do about it. And the worst part, the part that hurts the worst, is that he knows he's acting like an asshole, and if he knows it then, he knows, everybody else knows it, too, and it's all her fault, it's all the fault of that fucking little cunt in there. So he starts to move in. He's not thinking 'I'm going to murder the bitch.' No, nothing like that. It's not a conscious, premeditated thing. It just starts happening to him, this weird crazy blend of fury and lust and lust for blood. Maybe he thinks he's just going to pounce on her. Like he's thinking 'I'm going in there and rape her. I'm going to fuck the shit out of her, then I'm going to slap her around a little and walk out of there and that'll be the end of it. Then I'll be free.' Maybe that's what's in his head—I don't know. Maybe he just wants to scare her or something innocent like that. Anyway he starts in, and he's still got the shears in his hand, and he's not thinking anymore, just crazy with this wild lust. Then before he knows it he's standing over her, and he can't control it anymore. It gets too powerful —I don't know why. Maybe the anger just gets too big. Something happens, though—something snaps for sure. Instead of his cock he plunges at her with the shears, and then it's all confused, he doesn't know what he's doing. It's just blind rage, hatred, lust, the whole bit combined, and he stabs her—again, and again, and again—"
They were running hard, pounding the path, nearly sprinting, and Penny looked at him and was scared. It was as if every time one of his feet hit the ground he was imagining he was stabbing Suzie, too.
Chapter Three
Why doesn't he pay attention anymore? After everything, everything—why now so cool? Doesn't he know that forgiveness isn't necessary? That we operate on another level? That we're special people? Lawless people? That when you're gods the rules don't apply?
It was strange the way his story, his imagined tale of how Suzie had been killed, st
uck with her over the next few days. He seemed to understand it so well, as if the emotions were part of him, as if he'd felt them himself. There was something chilling about that, as if, living with the crime all these years, he'd solved it in his imagination, and now only lacked the killer's name. If she hadn't seen that figure, seen the flashlight beam and then the person who'd paused at the poolhouse door, she might think he understood the murder too clearly, had solved it all too well.
But that was impossible. She knew he hadn't done it. She'd seen the other man. Their stories were perfectly matched. It was all so strange as she tried to play the moments back. She'd tried so many times, and always the action had been the same: that rapidly moving light, that stranger pausing outside the door. Thinking of it was like watching a movie, fascinated by a horrible thing that was happening to someone else. She'd seen replays of boxing matches on TV when they'd played the knockout punch over and over in slow motion so the viewers could see the fist smash against the face, the mouth twist back in agony, the legs wobble, the body begin to slump. Over and over, slower and slower, until sometimes they froze the frame at the moment of supreme impact. What if Robinson was right and she had in fact blinked at a crucial instant—and had lost something, a definitive frame, a moment that could have told her who he was? Jared had to be right. It had to have been one of Suzie's lovers. But which one? Which one?
She could barely remember their faces, let alone their names. When she tried to recall them, she could only come up with a composite, someone whose first name was Ashton or Carter or Prescott, who went to Princeton or Dartmouth or Yale, whose hair was dirty-blond and whose body was tanned and sleek and lean, unlike the paunchier, hairier Bar Harbor townies who pumped the gas and mowed the lawns. She tried to list them, even wrote down several names as they came to mind but she knew the task was hopeless, that they'd been interchangeable even then.
What would Lillian Ryan's imaginary reporter friend do now, she wondered, if he were going to write a nonfiction book about the case? How would he go about it? How would he scrounge up their names? Lillian said he was looking for an inside source; she was supposed to play that role. But she didn't know anything beyond what she'd seen that night—that unrecognizable figure, that intruder, whom she'd barely glimpsed and could never identify.
It was then one morning later that week, riding to work on the subway, that it suddenly struck her that there was someone who knew them, someone who'd known them very well. She was standing near the door swaying back and forth, squeezed from six different directions by fellow strap-hangers as the train hurtled its way to midtown when, for no particular reason, she thought of Cynthia French. Cynthia had been Suzie's closest friend that summer, had known all the boys, had probably slept with most of them, had even taken part in orgies with Suzie several times. No question—she'd be the perfect source. What had happened to her? Where could she be found?
She'd left Bar Harbor right after the murder. Her family had a place up there, but she hadn't stuck around. There was talk at one point of calling her as a witness, but the prosecution hadn't bothered, and Schrader said it wouldn't be worth the time and expense to dig her up and interview her since she hadn't been there that night and couldn't contribute positively to Jared's defense. Penny doubted she'd thought about Cynthia two or three times in the intervening years. Where was she from anyway—Philadelphia? Wilmington? She'd done some modeling at college; maybe she'd taken that up as a career.
When the subway reached her stop, she fought her way out, then let herself be pushed toward the exit by the mob. She started right in at work when she reached the office, and it wasn't until she took a break at eleven that she thought of Cynthia again. On a hunch she opened the Manhattan directory. There was a C. French at a Greenwich Village address.
"C. French"—that meant a woman listing herself ambiguously to avoid the sickies who get off making obscene calls. It could just be Cynthia, though there was no particular reason to think she was living in New York. Penny wrote down the number on a B&A message slip, and stuffed it in her purse.
The whole day she contemplated the possibilities: what would happen if she called and it did turn out to be Cynthia after all? Suppose they arranged a meeting, got together, talked. How was she going to explain what she wanted without appearing foolish, sounding like an amateur sleuth?
She waited until five, and then, after the office was deserted, she took the slip out of her purse, dialed the number and let it ring. No answer, which wasn't surprising—"C. French" probably had a job like everybody else, in which case she was probably still en route home from work. Penny waited fifteen minutes then dialed again. This time someone answered.
"Hello?" It was a girl's voice, but not Cynthia's—she was sure of that.
"Yes, hello," said Penny. "I'm trying to reach Cynthia French."
"Uh-huh—"
"Is this her number?"
"She lives here—yeah."
The girl sounded petulant. Penny wasn't sure, but she thought she might be black.
"Could I speak with her please?"
"Not just now, sweetie. Leave your name and number. She'll buzz you when she gets in."
"When would it be convenient to call her?"
"So—we're playing those kinds of games."
She was trying to think of what to say to that when the girl suddenly giggled. "OK, honey. Have it your way. Cindy ought to be back and available for personal calls let's say after eight." She clicked off.
Later at the apartment, after dinner when Penny and Jared were lying on the floor watching the evening news, she turned to him and asked if he remembered Cynthia French.
"Who?"
The news was a gory story about a hillside strangler in L.A.
"The blonde one—Suzie's friend."
"Oh yeah, that one—sure."
"She's living in New York now."
"Big deal for her." He turned to her, smiled. "OK, babe, let's hear it. What's up with Cynthia French?"
"She knew all Suzie's boyfriends. I thought of calling her, getting her to help me make a list."
"Forget it," he said. "You won't get anywhere with that."
"Maybe not. But I thought I'd try anyway."
He shrugged, turned back to the TV. A little after eight she went into the bedroom, closed the door, and dialed Cynthia again.
"Penny Berring—I don't believe it." It was Cynthia all right, the same snooty Main Line accent, the same hard emphasis that reminded Penny of corridor talk at a college dorm.
"I've changed my name now."
"Yeah, heard about that. Just read something about you, too—the other day. Well, well, when Fiona said some cutie called, I sure didn't expect her to turn out to be you."
"Fiona?"
"My roommate. She thought you were some kind of trick."
Cynthia must have turned away from the phone; Penny could hear her talking to someone else. "Yeah," she was saying, presumably to Fiona, "a girl I used to know. A voice out of the past." She came back on the line. "Sorry," she said, "Fiona's a little paranoid. Thinks I hang out at the Sahara picking up models, or something." Penny could hear giggling in the background. "So—it's really been a long time. What's on your mind? Don't be shy, Child. Speak up."
She called her "Child," as only Suzie had used to do. Was there something about herself, she wondered, something diminutive and cuddly that made people call her "babe" and "Child" and "kiddo", an aura perhaps that inspired the kind of affection people normally lavished on children and little dogs?
She said she wanted to get together, discuss something she couldn't talk about on the phone. Cynthia paused, then leapt for the bait. "Come on down tomorrow after work," she said. "We'll sip some wine, talk about old times."
When Penny returned to the living room Jared was lying on his back watching a game show in which second-rate celebrities, seated in boxes, made jokes and squirmed while colored lights flashed on and off.
"Ever hear of the Sahara, some sort of pickup spo
t?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. "It's a fancy lesbian joint."
That fucking pussy-eater Cynthia—she really ticked me off today. Couldn't keep her cotton-pickin' hands off me, couldn't keep her dykey tongue inside her mouth. "Love you so much, Suze. Love you so much. Just want to kiss you all over. Just want to lap you up." Pig! Caught her staring when I was playing tennis with Paul. Turned around suddenly and there she was sprawled out on her sunchair, legs spread, hand resting on her yucky crotch. When our eyes met she wagged her tongue around, slurped it over her lips. I could have killed her. It was a hell of a big mistake letting her get off on me all those times. Now she's panting after me like all the other assholes around here. Tried to sic Carol T on her but it didn't take. Shit! Thing is I got to stay cool, not let that creep mess up my plans—
The building was an old West Village tenement on Bank Street near Abingdon Square. The place looked run-down, and though it didn't exude an odor of cats like the lobby of her brownstone, there was a certain essence present in the hall that spoke of unfinished novels and unsold paintings, films that would never be shot and music that would never be performed. It was the smell of Greenwich Village: stagnant pot smoke, decayed plumbing, lasagna casseroles. Penny was surprised to find Cynthia living in such a place, a long way from Bar Harbor, she thought, a long way from the Main Line.
Cynthia greeted her from behind a chainlock. "My God—it's really you." She unlocked the door, took Penny in her arms. She was braless in a boy's white T-shirt, tight faded jeans and battered Wellington boots.
The apartment was humbly furnished. There were a few throwaway pieces, the sort of stuff people in the Village pick up off the streets, and big blowup posters of butch-looking women in leather jackets astride huge motorcycles. There was a board-and-bricks bookcase stuffed with the usual books on acupuncture and vegetarian diets, ecology, Carlos Castenada, and novels by Erica Jong and Gael Greene.
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