by Jane Haddam
“There’s still the question of what they were doing in Henry’s drawer, in this house.”
“Maybe that silly Conchita put them there herself,” Margaret said. “Oh, I hate these women who come from South America. They’ve got no sense, and they’ve got no sense of proportion. Maybe she was absentminded and put them there by mistake.”
“Her own underwear? Two pairs of it were her own. And what about the rest? They weren’t mine or yours. They weren’t Conchita’s.”
“You have no way of knowing if they were Conchita’s or not,” Margaret said. “Oh, why do we have to bring all this up again? Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?”
“It’s going to get worse,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t see why,” Margaret said. “They can’t possibly hold him. They’ve got no evidence. Not real evidence. Even the blood was just—well, you know—just a mistake. Because he saw the woman there on the ground and tried to help her, and he got blood all over himself while he was doing it; and then people on the street saw what they thought was a homeless man all covered with blood, and it all got out of hand from there.”
“Do you really think Henry touched that woman because he was trying to help her?”
Margaret wished very much that she could end this conversation and go somewhere. She could go up to her own room and have tea brought in and sit by herself for the rest of the afternoon, looking through the albums of photographs she was the only one who cared about anymore. She didn’t have anything up there that could disturb her, no television, no radio, no computer, no newspapers. Even Elizabeth didn’t come into her room anymore.
“I have to go lie down,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”
“It’s barely noon.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m exhausted. And I’m—it’s all her fault, you know. It is. That woman’s. I’ve tried and tried to understand what Father was thinking when he married her, and I just can’t get it.”
“I get it,” Elizabeth said wryly.
Margaret flushed. “It couldn’t have been that, could it? When that’s what men want they don’t marry it, they just use it and throw it away when they’re done. Nobody would have begrudged him something like that. I wouldn’t have. Mother had been dead a very long time.”
“I don’t think you can blame Henry’s mother for Henry, Margaret.”
“Why not?” Margaret said. “You can’t blame Father. He was a good and decent man. You can’t blame any of our side of the family. If there’s one thing we don’t have, it’s alcoholics. Never mind street bums. Homeless people. What rot. It makes them sound like the victims of Simon Legree, but they’re not. They’re just street bums. And that’s all Henry is. It’s shameful enough, but he’s not a murderer.”
“Maybe not,” Elizabeth said.
“I have to go lie down,” Margaret said again. “I think you’re going to regret it, hiring this man we don’t know to do a thing like this. He’s going to get into all our secrets, and then what will happen? He’ll sell them to the newspapers, and Henry won’t be the end of it.”
“Do you really think we have any secrets the newspapers would care about? Do you think the newspapers would care about us, these days?”
“I have to go lie down,” Margaret said yet again, too aware that this was the third time and she hadn’t yet managed to make herself get moving. The air was patterning and bending in front of her eyes again. She knew something Elizabeth did not know, something she had never told anybody. And that was the key. She had never told anybody; and nobody else had found out about it because if they had, it would have come out when Henry was arrested the first time.
It was wrong of Elizabeth to say that it didn’t matter what kind of a person Henry’s mother had been. Of course it mattered. Heredity was far more important than most people gave it credit for. Besides, Henry had that woman’s eyes, and it was the eyes Margaret remembered from that day in his childhood when she had found him in the back near the utility shed where he was not allowed to go. None of them were allowed to go there because that was where the chemicals were kept to clean the back courtyard and to deal with things in the house that required something stronger than soap and water. He’d had blood on him that day, too. He’d had blood all over his face and arms and down the front of his shirt, and the only reason nobody ever found out about it was that he’d burned the shirt when he was done. She could remember the little fire he’d made, just into the alley, when he thought nobody was looking. She could remember him rolling around in the mud puddles there to disguise what it was he had smeared all over him like war paint on an Indian.
She turned away from Elizabeth and started across the foyer to the stairs. She would go up and take off her stockings and call for some tea and look at her photographs, and after a while she wouldn’t remember anything about any of it at all.
2
Dennis Ledeski had been following the news since it first hit, but there was a deep and insistent part of him that was convinced it was all a sham. He’d been expecting a sham for some months now, although nothing as elaborate as the arrest and detention of Henry Tyder seemed to be. Now he was sure that the police must see Henry Tyder the way he himself saw him. Certainly Rob Benedetti—he’d met Rob Benedetti, and you didn’t get to be district attorney of the city of Philadelphia by being an idiot—didn’t believe this latest thing, would know by looking at him that Henry Tyder could not be the Plate Glass Killer. Of course, there was the bit about the confession. Some of the confession tape had even been leaked to one of the news stations. It was impossible to keep anything secret anymore. But the part of the confession tape that had been leaked could have been faked. The whole charade could have been staged to see which of the real suspects started to jump. There could be a police shadow on him right now. All he had to do was look in the wrong direction, and it would be over.
It was impossible to keep anything secret anymore.
He’d been sitting in the office for nearly an hour, watching the news on his small portable television and not going for his cell phone. It wasn’t his regular cell phone he was worried about. That one wasn’t even expensive, and it had no more technological capability than any other phone. He still remembered, though, thinking the whole thing through: the need to get rid of the actual machine in the event he was found out; the need for “plausible deniability,” as they put it in politics. He was sweating. Thick rivulets were trailing down his skull and the back of his neck, making the collar of his shirt damp. He thought it would feel good, strangling a woman. He could imagine himself doing it to his ex-wife and all three of her best girlfriends. Every single one of them fit the victim profile for the Plate Glass Killings.
Now he sat forward abruptly and turned the television off. He couldn’t go on like this. Whether Henry Tyder was the real thing or a sham, Dennis himself was going to have to do something to resolve his own situation, and do it soon. It was too dangerous to keep the damned thing around the office, even if they hadn’t found it the first time. It was too dangerous to go on hiding himself from clients and friends, too. Eventually, the business would drop off, as if it hadn’t already done it.
He made up his mind. The door to his office was locked. He’d been locking it automatically all morning and trying not to think of what Alexander was making of that. He got up and went to the closet. The closet was used to keep records these days, not clothes, but it was a walk-in and big enough to use for another room, if it had only had some kind of ventilation. He went to the back of the closet, to the place on the wall where there was what looked like a heating vent that had been blocked up. They had taken that off the wall when they searched. They had pulled up the carpets, too. Where did they learn to do these things?
There were two tall cabinets in the back, one of metal, one of wood. Neither of them held files. All the files were on computers now. He went to the wood one and pulled it away from the wall. He shoved it until it was standing just a little sideways to the wray it had been. The wood cabinet h
ad belonged to his father. He had no idea why he still had it. He had never particularly liked his father. He got down on his knees and ran his hand against the place where two pieces of wood met at the bottom. He rubbed and rubbed until he felt the upper one pop. Then he used his fingernails to pry it out. He was worse than sweating now. His bowels had gone liquid and his head was pounding. He got the cell phone out and held it in the palm of his hand.
There were two things he couldn’t allow himself to forget about this hiding place. First, that it had been a good idea because it had worked. The police had torn the office apart. They’d gone through all the files. They’d turned the furniture upside down. They hadn’t found a thing. Second, that if the police ever did find the cell phone in that particular place, his life would be over. There would be no way to claim that he “didn’t really” know the cell phone was there, or that it belonged to somebody else, or that it had been dropped by a client.
He got the wood pieces back in place and then put the cabinet back in place, too. He went out into his office proper and sat down at his desk. He had no need to be this frightened. Even if the Henry Tyder confession was a sham, the police wouldn’t pounce before he’d actually done something to make it worth their while. He opened the cell phone and began punching buttons. Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. It needed to be charged. It had probably needed to be charged for weeks.
Dennis had gone beyond feeling sick. He was hyperventilating. All he needed to do was to have a heart attack now, here, with the door to the office locked. They probably wouldn’t get to him on time. They probably wouldn’t even realize he needed to be got to. Or, something worse, they would find him alive and find the extra cell phone on him and charge it up and see what was on it. Could they do that? Would the material he’d downloaded from the Internet still be on the phone after all this time? He wished he knew more about computers. Part of him was convinced that every single thing he’d downloaded would be ready and waiting for the police as soon as they wanted to access it, but not available to him because he wouldn’t know how to get to it. He wanted to get out into the air. He wanted to go downtown and find something, find someone, find a place to be.
He managed to get himself to stop shaking. There was nothing he could do about the state of his clothes. Sweat was sweat. It seeped into everything and made it wet. He made sure the cell phone was tucked away in his inside jacket pocket. He could recharge it when he got home. He didn’t want to do it here. He wondered what it would be like to be able to have it again. It gave him the ability put his hand out and touch soft, uncorrupted flesh. He wanted to see himself in the eyes of a boy who thought he was God. He wanted to be God, if only for a day. He would change everything.
He got his briefcase up off the floor, put it on the desk, and opened it. There was a little pile of paper inside, but nothing he recognized, and nothing he cared about. It didn’t matter. He closed the case and made sure it locked. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, hoping that he wouldn’t have to make a mad dash for the bathroom. It wasn’t fair. What Alexander was, that was a perversion. Grown men with grown men. Grown men coupled with grown women. That was evolution in action. That was the way the way the human race made babies. That was how we continued ourselves. What he did was not like that. It was not about sex. What he did, what he wanted, that was spiritual.
The churning in his bowels had finally calmed down. He didn’t think it would be for long. He got up with the briefcase in his hand and headed for his office door. He unlocked it and stepped out into the corridor. He could hear Alexander’s voice in the reception area being polite to someone on the phone. Suddenly he resented everything about Alexander. He didn’t just despise it; he’d always despised Alexander. That was easy. What else could you do but despise a man who came to work in lavender shirts? What he felt now was something else. Gay marriages, civil unions, gay pride parades, what had happened to the country? How could sensible, ordinary Americans, the ones who made up the Bedrock of the Nation, how could those people possibly fall for this utter crap that people like Alexander were their own kind of normal. He was the one who was normal. He was the one following in a great and civilized tradition and being persecuted for it only because the Bedrock of the Nation had rocks instead of brains inside its head.
I’m being completely incoherent, Dennis thought. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t do this anymore, without some kind of outlet. He was going to have to go home and recharge this phone, or go out to some of the places he knew to see if there was anything going on. It was broad daylight. Probably not. When you had something society made you hide, you had to do it in the darkness. You couldn’t even join one of those groups that was dedicated to making the world better or “educating” the public. Dennis was willing to bet that every single man on the membership list of the North American Man/Boy Love Association had an FBI tail.
By the time he got out into the reception area he was much calmer, if more than a little damp. There were sweat stains all over his shirt, on the front as well as on the back. If Alexander noticed, he didn’t indicate it.
“I’m going out,” Dennis said. “I need a breath of fresh air.”
“What time should I say you’ll be in, if somebody calls?”
“Tell them I’m out for the day. You can be out for the day. Pack up and go home. We’re not going to get anything done here today. I’m sick as a dog, and I’m just not up to it.”
“I’ve got some work to clear up,” Alexander said.
Dennis wanted to tell him to forget it, but he didn’t dare. He’d seen those true-crime programs: American Justice, City Confidential, Forensic Files. He could hear the narration in his head. “Alexander Mark thought it was very odd that Dennis Ledeski would be so insistent that he had to leave the office in the middle of the day; and as it turned out, the police thought it was odd, too.” Dennis just bet they would. He bet they’d find everything about him odd. He’d bet they were the same themselves, too, just better at hiding it or denying it.
“Whatever,” Dennis said. “Are you still watching the story?”
“Not really. There won’t be much of anything for a few days, and then the best coverage will be in the paper. You really don’t look well.”
“I’m not. I’m going home. I’m going to take some stuff and go to sleep.”
Alexander said nothing. Dennis didn’t know what he wanted him to say. He held tightly to his briefcase, even though he couldn’t remember what was in it, and headed for the front door and the vestibule and the street. He was beginning to hyperventilate again. He had to get outside before Alexander saw him. He had to get somewhere and do something.
There really were times when he wanted to strangle somebody, when he could feel himself pulling at the soft flesh of a neck. They said there was a kick in that if you did it right. You strangled and strangled and got your partner just up against the edge of death and then you released it and him, too. There would be semen everywhere. There would be revelation.
Out on the street, he started to walk. He didn’t want a taxi. He didn’t want a bus. He didn’t want anything that could make somebody remember him.
He was not going home.
3
Tyrell Moss was having one of those days. He really wasn’t one of those black guys who could join up with the Republicans. He had a lot of respect for Colin Powell, and Condileeza Rice, and even Thomas Sowell. He understood why the pastors of some of the churches around here had switched allegiances. He had no idea what those idiot white-boy organizers from the University of Pennsylvania thought they were doing posing around like revolutionaries and calling gangsta rap—gangsta rap!—the “authentic revolutionary voice of the struggle.” Even so, it was the Democratic Party that had delivered on Civil Rights, and it was the Democratic Party he had been able to count on for all these years to come through with things like after-school programs for kids who had no place to go that was anything like home and special initiatives to teach kids who couldn’
t read why they could. He also believed in the justice of affirmative action—firmly believed in it—and there was nobody he could count on in the Republican Party for that.
Today, though, was one of those days. It was one thing to believe in Civil Rights, which he did. It was one thing to believe that black Americans were behind in the race for the American Dream because generations of legalized discrimination had put them there. That was something he believed, too. It was another thing to assume that your behavior had no effect on the way your life worked at all, or that the fact that your great-great-grandmother had once been a slave in South Carolina meant you could do anything you wanted and be okay with it. That was what Charles Jellenmore seemed to believe, and Tyrell was about to kill him.
They were in the little utility room at the back. Tyrell could see through the door to the main security mirror over the counter and to the counter itself, which was necessary because the cash register was there. Charles was sitting on a packing crate, looking sullen. Tyrell was standing up. The store was empty.
“What were you thinking?” Tyrell demanded. “Were you thinking? Did thinking even occur to you? Two of those guys are on parole, for God’s sake. You’re on probation. One phone call from me and you go right to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Which, by the way, is about what was in the till last night when I closed up. And you didn’t get it. Or anything else. Lord Almighty, Charles, you’re not even a good thief.”
Charles mumbled something. Out in the store, the front door bells tinkled. Tyrell looked up at the mirror and said, “What?”
“Z-bok said you was an old man,” Charles said, suddenly very loud. “He said even if you was here, it wouldn’t be any trouble—”
“On my worst day,” Tyrell said, “on my oldest, most rheumatoid, most decrepit day, I could take your friend Z-bok and twist him into a pretzel. And what’s with the grammar this morning? You spend a night with Z-bok, you don’t know verbs anymore?”
