“He’s decided he wants to be found, for some reason. Found by you.”
The words might have chilled Tess more if she hadn’t repeated them to herself, over and over, since the death of Julie Carter. She stared into the bottom of her glass. She was drinking wine as if it was water, and yet she couldn’t feel its effects. Fear was a great sponge for alcohol.
“Let’s go back to that original list,” Tess said. “There are three deaths since Mary Ann Melcher’s boyfriend ”disappeared‘ at sea. Julie Carter, shot and killed this past Friday night. Alan Palmer once dated her, although he left when she wouldn’t kick her drug problem. Okay, that makes sense. But the other two don’t. Hazel Ligetti, a forty-something spinster, burned up in a house fire. And Dr. Michael Shaw, hit by a car while jogging. Not young women, not gunshot victims.“
“Doesn’t sound like our guy, does it?”
It made her feel safer, somehow, to have Carl back, to have him speak as if they were partners. Carl, after all, had seen this man in person. With Carl at her side, how close would he dare to come?
“No, it doesn’t. Then again, maybe he knew he had to change the pattern. Or maybe these were people who could have identified him, who knew what he had done.”
“So where do we start?”
“The emergency room at Union Memorial, to make sure you haven’t screwed up your knee again. You’re no good to anyone if they put you on crutches.”
“Can I ask you one thing?”
They were driving through Tess’s neighborhood, the passenger seat pushed back as far as it could go, so Carl’s left leg was more or less extended and he could still hold the makeshift cold compress on it. Night had fallen, and there were no streetlamps here, so Tess could not see the expression on his face.
“Sure.”
“Why would it have been ridiculous?”
“What?”
“That guy said he thought we were having an affair. And you said, ”Don’t be ridiculous.“ ”
“Oh.” She understood what he was asking. Was it so impossible to think she might be interested in Carl Dewitt, with his freckles and his orange-red hair and his bowlegged stride? Yes, actually, it was. Only not because of the freckles and the orange-red hair and the bowlegs, but because of something else, some ineffable lack, the thing that people called chemistry.
But she did not think he would find that reason particularly comforting.
“I meant I wouldn’t cheat. Not on Crow.”
“How can you be so sure? Have you ever cheated?”
The simple thing was to say no. Tess did not owe Carl Dewitt that much honesty. After all, he had not always been truthful with her. But she felt caught on the question, as if she had stumbled into a bramble bush and needed to pull away with great care, separating herself one thorn at a time.
“I had a boyfriend who ran around on me. A lot. We broke up. But when he got engaged to someone else, I became the person he cheated with. I justified it at the time—I was his first love, I was his real love, blah, blah, blah—but there’s not any justification for what I did. To make things worse, he was killed one night. After we were… together. And I saw it. He died right in front of me.”
“Some people would see that as a fitting punishment.”
“Yes, I suppose they would. But Jonathan didn’t die because he was sleeping with me. It was… just a dumb accident.”
She lied because the story wearied her, she did not want to tell it again. Every time she told it, she ran the risk that it would be waiting for her when she closed her eyes. Assuming she ever closed her eyes again.
“So he died, and that made you decide you would never cheat again.”
“Yes.” No. Crow had left her once, when her yearning for another man became so pronounced that she told him about it for fear she would act on it. Carl didn’t need to know this either. “It’s complicated, being in a committed relationship that falls short of marriage.”
“So why don’t you get married?”
“I have a hunch that marriage becomes an excuse for people to start taking each other for granted.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never made it to marriage.”
“Scientists are beginning to say monogamy isn’t natural to any species. Not even swans. It’s a struggle, something you have to work at every day.”
“I never had to work at it when I dated. I didn’t date much, but when I did, I liked being with just one person.”
“Well, then, you’re better than most people I know. Crow and I have agreed to talk, if we start having feelings for someone else. That’s the best we can do—pledge to be honest about our weaknesses.”
“And so far—”
“So far, we’re doing fine.”
“I did have a girl once.” Something in Carl’s voice made it sound as if the once referred not just to a time long ago but to a literal number. He had a girl. Once.
“And?”
“She said I wasn’t ambitious enough. It made her mad that I was happy where I was, being a Toll Facilities cop, living in the town where I grew up. She said I should want more. So I tried. When I found… Lucy, I thought maybe this was my chance. I’d be a big guy, I’d be more. Then she broke up with me because I worked all the time.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. If I had to do it over again, I’d go back to being me. The me I used to be. Then I’d find a girl who liked me just the way I was.”
“You still might.”
“Except I’m not that person anymore. Whatever happens, I’ll never be that person again.” Carl sighed. “I miss him.”
The conversation was unsettling. It was too delicate, too fraught. Tess felt as if she could make a million mistakes with a single syllable. What should she say? What did he want her to say?
“You should cut your hair,” Carl said.
“What?”
“Or not wear it in a braid. I saw this show, on A&E, the Criminal Justice files. A woman with her hair pulled back is too easy to grab. You jog, right?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, imagine how easy it would be for someone to come up and—” His left hand caught her braid at a spot low on her neck. “You’d be in someone’s trunk.”
She saw the lights of Union Memorial up ahead, the white-pink blossoms of the cherry trees rippling in the wind.
“Al Capone donated those trees,” she said, hoping to change the subject and hoping Carl would let go of her hair. “It was in gratitude for the treatment he received here when he was in the throes of syphilis.”
“I know,” Carl Dewitt said. Of course he did. It was just the kind of thing he would know: gangsters and gangster films. “Al Capone. Now there was a guy who knew how to use a baseball bat. ”We are all members of a team.“ From The Untouchables. And they caught him because of tax evasion, not for murder or racketeering. Tax evasion.”
“You know,” Tess said, “I bet that’s how we’ll catch our killer.”
“For tax evasion?”
“For something small, some trivial detail he overlooked. No one manages to get everything right, all the time. God is in the details.”
“Really? I thought it was the devil.”
He should kill that guy, that Mickey Pechter. That creep, that pervert. He’s trouble. She handled him beautifully—of course—but the man should be taught a lesson. And it would be nice to demonstrate his loyalty to her even as he keeps his distance. The problem is, if Pechter is found dead, the police might focus on her because of her connection to the pervert, and that would be inconvenient. He cannot risk it, satisfying as it would be. And the thing is, it never is satisfying, not quite. The release can come only in the context of true intimacy. He has learned that the hard way.
Besides, Pechter was an unwitting accomplice, he owes him. Her adventure with him, and its legal consequences, provided the entrée he needed. He has never counted on luck, but neither has he spurned its opportunities. The first episode with Pechter had confused her, softened her up,
opened her up in a way he never could have anticipated. The sook is ready for her jimmy. The rush is on.
It’s all about redemption, darling, all about redemption: yours and mine.
He always knew this part would be hard, but he also knew that waiting was his own peculiar talent. Now is the time to pull back, and not only because his picture is out there, floating around. Clean-shaven, his hair color altered, he is not that recognizable. But the point is to see if she can do it on her own. She has to negotiate the final part of the maze alone. He is not sure yet how she will do it, which is part of the joy. But he knows she will find her way. He has chosen well. At last.
He pulls his patchwork pillow to his face, inhales deeply, and thinks about Becca. What would she have been without him? Did she ever ask herself the same question? He likes to think she understood in the end, that she recognized her debt to him even as she reneged on it. She was young and, for all her seeming sophistication, not yet ready to accept the gifts he brought her. If only they had had more time. She would have understood how rare his love was, that it was a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
Funny, he always thought the only person capable of understanding his love for Becca was her father: Harry Harrison, mildly alcoholic, bumbling through the island, offending everyone and never knowing it. Becca’s senses were more acute, she was not fooled by the bland smiles of the Notting Islanders. But neither was she cowed. The locals came to respect her, if not accept her. Harrison was the perennial outsider, so outside he didn’t pick up on the mockery beneath the polite faces.
Once, when she was late coming back from her voice lesson, he had been desperate enough to go to her house. Harry Harrison, drink in his hand, met him at the door and insisted he come in for a little chat. He feared the father would demand to know just what he did with his daughter, all those times they went off on the bay. Worse, he feared he would tell him. He loved Becca so much that he yearned to speak of it to someone, someone who would understand.
Of course, you couldn’t tell your girlfriend’s father how it felt to make love to her. But Harry Harrison struck him as someone worldly, someone who had loved and lost. He would know that it wasn’t about the heat, inside and out, that it wasn’t the mere physical sensation. It was Becca. She was extraordinary, otherworldly. Her voice proved that. No earthbound woman could produce those sounds. When he was—with her, joined to her, he sometimes thought he might reach the source of that voice.
He also found himself wishing there was a switch, a way to turn it off, so it belonged only to him. Because he knew, he knew without knowing, that her talent was his enemy. As much as he loved her and worshiped everything that came out of her, the voice would take her away from him one day.
So he had gone to her house, seeking a different kind of kindred spirit.
“You miss her, don’t you?”
“Sir?”
“Call me Harry. You miss Becca, when she’s away for even a day, don’t you? I do too. She’s all the company I have.”
“Well, we had a date, that’s all. Nothing special.” He pretended to a coolness he didn’t feel. If Becca hadn’t missed the boat, they would be heading out now, in his skiff. He would have his hand in hers, and soon she would have him in her. He had never been with anyone before Becca, but he knows this is as good as it’s going to get. He sees the people around him, the grown-ups. The dried-ups, as he thinks of them. Even his parents, as much as he loves them—what’s the point? How could you settle for such day-in, day-out ordinariness if you’ve known the thrill of loving someone like this? He’d rather die than be without Becca. He really would.
But all he said to Mr. Harrison was, “Is that your computer? Is that what you’re writing your book on?”
Almost no one had computers then and this one was huge, a clunky beast that took up much of the dining room table.
“Yes. It’s a pretty good machine, but the power outages on the island seem to have fried something inside. You wouldn’t believe how much work I’ve lost. I have to back up my files practically every five minutes, and it’s still not good enough. I should go back to a typewriter. They were truly portable. I had one typewriter that went with me from Italy to Cuernavaca to Vermont. But I bought the computer when I decided to live here.”
“Why did you go to all those places?”
“Because I wanted to. I’m a writer. And I make just enough money to live where I please and do as I please—as long as I don’t get too extravagant. I wanted to try island life because I remembered visiting Tangier when I was a boy. I didn’t count on Becca suddenly deciding she wanted to be an opera singer. If she gets much more serious, I suppose we’ll have to move again.”
His heart lurched, even as his mind raced through the calculation. He is a junior, seventeen. Becca is a year ahead of him in school. He knew she would go to the mainland at the end of this school year, that he would have to wait a year to follow her. But he counted on their having the next year. He’s not sure he could survive two years without her.
“And you could do that? Just pick up and go anywhere you want to go?”
“As long as it’s reasonable. New York is too expensive. Of course, Becca has her heart set on Juilliard. I keep telling her there are other good music schools. Peabody in Baltimore, for example. She’s got New York fever.”
No, she doesn’t, he wanted to say. She yearned to sing, yes. But she wanted to be with him too. They had spoken of it endlessly. She wouldn’t go to New York, not without him.
“And when I tell her I don’t think New York is going to work out, she says maybe she’ll run away, go to Italy or somewhere else in Europe.” Harry Harrison shook his head, sad and bewildered. “She’s always threatening to leave me if she doesn’t get her way. It’s hard for a man alone to raise a daughter. She seems to think it’s my fault her mother is dead. As if, having divorced her mother, I didn’t care when she died. But I did. And I didn’t want to be a single dad. Taking a four-year-old girl into my life wasn’t what I had planned, either. She says I drink too much. But alcohol is just… the lubricant. A writer has to shed his inhibitions, get naked. I have to enter a place where I don’t care what people think.”
He thought, Well, you’ve ended up in a place where people don’t care about you at all. If you knew what they thought of you, you’d probably never get a word on the page.
“I heard,” he said instead, “that you’re writing a book about us.”
“Who told you that?” Harrison’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was harder, and the sudden change scared him.
“I… I don’t know.” Big-mouth Aggie Winslip. “It’s just something I heard. Becca must have mentioned it.”
Harrison switched back to genial host. “She did? I didn’t even know Becca listened when I spoke about my work. She seems to find it boring. She calls me a cut-rate Michener. Becca’s a terrible snob, if you want to know the truth. Keeps talking about ”high art‘ and “low art.” With high art being whatever she likes—opera—and low art being everything else. I’ll tell you something about Becca.“ He leaned in to share his confidence, his breath sour with gin. ”She’s got the diva temperament, but I don’t think she’s got the acting chops to be a great singer of any range. She’ll have to play parts that are close enough to her own personality to get by. She’ll never sing Mimi, she’ll always be Musetta.“
“I… I’m not sure who they are.” This was true, despite Becca’s endless chatter about what she did and what she sang and what she was learning. When she spoke, it was often as if she were still singing in a foreign language. He was so caught up in joy he couldn’t hear the distinct sounds.
“You don’t need to know,” her father said, clapping him on the back. “Can I get you something?”
But he made his excuses and wandered out, still thinking about what kind of job would allow him to go wherever he wanted. Every job he knew was tethered to a place, whether it was waterman or C&P lineman or schoolteacher. He wanted a job that would allow him to go any
where, because that’s what he would need to be with Becca.
Later, years later, he would find himself wondering if there was a different meaning to her father’s words. You don’t need to know. He thought Harry Harrison was being kind, saying these things were unimportant, they would not impede his love. Now he thinks that Harry Harrison assumed this was a high school romance, destined to fade.
This realization made him feel much less guilty about what he had taken from Harry Harrison—who had, it turned out, drunk himself to death in a fashion. When Becca disappeared, Harrison did too, and he spent the rest of his life in pursuit of his wayward daughter. Of course, he never found her. But liver cancer found him.
Everybody dies. He adjusts the pillow beneath his cheek, so he’s no longer pressing against one of the more wiry seams. His mother’s handiwork improved over the time she was making this pillow. As did his. He sighs, hollow from anticipation. Everybody dies.
CHAPTER 32
It took one phone call the next day to determine that Michael Shaw’s partner was a real person, now living in California—and not particularly happy to have a stranger call him out of the blue and remind him that his lover was dead.
“Of course I live where I told the police I live,” he said when Tess explained, in a smooth-as-silk lie, that she was going over open case files for the Anne Arundel County police and needed to make sure he had provided a correct telephone number and address. “But what about the case? Have you made any headway?”
“We’re pursuing it with due vigilance.” She thought that was something a cop might say.
“Have you learned anything, anything at all? It’s been six months, and when I call your detectives they act as if I’m a gigantic pain. Are they ever going to make an arrest in Michael’s case? I understand that accidents happen, but a hit-and-run—a person should have the decency—you can’t know whether someone’s dead or not unless you stop—”
Shaw’s former lover began to cry.
“I’m sorry,” Tess said, and this was not a lie. “But we may have a break in the case soon.” She hoped that wasn’t a lie.
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