Raveling

by Peter Moore Smith

  “Detective Vettorello?”

  He stretched out his hand from the backlit darkness. “How are you?”

  “I’m, I don’t know,” she said. “This is pretty weird.”

  Vettorello wore a blue windbreaker over a yellow dress shirt and gray polyester pants. He wore big black rain boots and sloshed through the water in the tunnel. “You’ll have to fill out a report about finding the body out here, and, and I’ll help you with that, so don’t worry.” He was smiling, too. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you come out to my car for a moment?”

  As Katherine followed, her feet got wet again, soaking her socks with the filthy water. She couldn’t avoid it. The other night she’d thrown her things into the hamper and the chemical smell simply wouldn’t go away.

  Vettorello opened the door of an old red, boxy Volvo. “Get inside,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  Katherine got into the passenger seat and watched Vettorello walk around to the driver’s side. He got in, too, and shut the door hard. He turned to her now, saying almost teasingly, “So can you tell me why the hell you were out here, again?”

  Katherine pushed her hair away from her face. “I know it’s weird,” she said, “but, but the evidence I told you about, what I’m looking for—”

  “The shoe.”

  “And the knife.”

  “Yes.”

  “This crazy old guy said he knew where it was.” Katherine sighed.

  Vettorello lifted a single eyebrow.

  “Let me back up,” Katherine said. “Pilot Airie—he was found out here in the woods a few months ago, in the middle of a psychotic episode, right? So the other day I was walking around, just trying to understand things, perhaps from his point of view, I don’t know, and there were these girls coming through the woods, and they told me about the Tunnel Man.”

  Vettorello raised both his eyebrows now. “Did anyone else know you were going to see the Tunnel Man?”

  Katherine shook her head. “Why would—” and then she stopped. She stopped in the full horrible realization of what she was about to say. “Eric,” she said.

  “Eric Airie?”

  And when she said it she knew what had happened. She knew he had been out here.

  “Eric Airie,” Vettorello said. “Your patient’s brother.”

  “Eric Airie.”

  “Didn’t you say he’s the one Pilot is accusing of, of killing their sister all those years ago?”

  Katherine nodded. “He’s the one.”

  Vettorello put his hands over his face. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “A homeless man dies. A man dies who I knew eventually would die like this, his head in the water, blood-alcohol levels through the ceiling, no doubt, and now I have to go and question a brain surgeon about his whereabouts for the past few days.” He was shaking his head. “This is ridiculous.”

  “It gets worse,” Katherine said. “Their father, well, he’s disappeared, maybe suicide.”

  “Disappeared.”

  “Flew into the ocean.”

  “By himself?”

  “All alone.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “Tell me about it,” Katherine said. “I’m beginning to think it was him all along—the father, you know, who hurt the girl. Pilot got confused and blamed Eric, and all the rest.”

  “You’ve talked to Cleveland?”

  “This was a theory,” Katherine said. “This was a police theory.”

  “That’s what the files seem to indicate. After what’s-his-name—”

  “Bryce Telliman.”

  “After him, it was the father they watched. An airline pilot.” Vettorello began to muse. “I wonder where the little girl’s body is. I mean, he could have gotten her onto a plane in a little suitcase and dropped her anywhere, somewhere no one would ever look, anywhere in the world.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Is it likely?” he asked now. “I mean, forget hiding the body anywhere, is it likely, psychologically speaking, that the father did it, and then hid the fact for all these years?”

  “This family is deeply—” what was the word? she asked herself “—troubled.” It was all she could find, it would have to do. “And I think anything is likely with these people, at this point.”

  “They’re here, you know,” Vettorello said. “The files arrived from Albany.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “You have to come back to the station.” Vettorello paused for a moment, his hand touching the Volvo’s dashboard. “The shoelace was tested, as well, for being the right age and everything.”

  “And?”

  He looked at her steadily. “It’s not.”

  “Not what?”

  “It’s made of some kind of nylon thread they didn’t even have until the eighties.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m an idiot,” Katherine said, almost laughing. “As far as evidence goes, we’ve got nothing.”

  “What about the Tunnel Man?” Vettorello asked. “Did he really know where the evidence is?”

  “What evidence?” Katherine said, still laughing. “I’ve been led down a road to nowhere.”

  It wasn’t as thick as she expected, just a slim stack of papers in a manila folder, typed statements from witnesses, mostly, some forms filled out, a few pages of handwritten notes. “I’m sorry you can’t take it home,” Vettorello said. “But I can let you read it here. I’m not even supposed to let you do that, really, but—”

  “Thanks.” Katherine flipped through the pages until she found one with Bryce Telliman’s name on it. There in the police station, she scanned through the single-spaced, typed lines, picking up key words and phrases.

  “… saw Fiona at the party… cute little girl, she sat on his lap… likes children… left around two in the morning… didn’t know the family well, very sorry to hear…”

  Katherine continued to leaf through until she found what James Aine had told the police. He had gone to bed late, the statement said, didn’t remember what time, must have been around three or four A.M., had been drinking a great deal. He really couldn’t remember much.

  She chewed a finger, the rich taste of blood in her mouth.

  Memory seems to be such a problem for the Airie family, she thought.

  There were other statements from Telliman. And lots of other ones from the party guests. There were statements from the Tischmans from next door, the Johnsons and the Brookses and the Daniers. There were the Joneses and the Browns and the Classens and the Haverstons and the Malnerres. There were four bachelors, including Paul Davidson, Karl Fuchs, Arnold Desmond, and Howard Rice, as well as four single women, including Celia Oblena, Sherry Meyerson, Tricia Caulder, and Lacy Klugman, and of course, Bryce Telliman. Finally, Katherine found what she was looking for. She held the slip of paper up for Vettorello to see. “Did you read this one?”

  “What is it?” Vettorello had been across the room, talking to another cop, Styrofoam coffee cup in his hand. He walked back toward Katherine, still in his rubber rain boots, eyes focused on the sheet of paper.

  “It’s a warrant.”

  “For what, Telliman’s house?”

  “No,” Katherine said. “Something far more interesting. They searched Telliman’s house, I presume, and found nothing. This is a warrant for searching the Airie house, and it was denied.”

  Vettorello took the piece of paper from her. He smiled thinly. “Very interesting.”

  “Why wouldn’t the judge sign it?”

  He took a sip of his coffee. “Sometimes you have to have a lot of circumstantial evidence before a judge will permit the search.” Vettorello sat down. “They don’t like to be wrong. They get in lots of trouble politically.”

  “Opportunity,” Katherine said, more to herself than to Vettorello. “Motive.”

  “What motive would anyone
have to kill their own kid?”

  “It’s usually rage,” Katherine said, “anger, resentment.”

  “An accident?” Vettorello said.

  “Not possible, not with a knife.”

  “We don’t have a knife,” Vettorello reminded Katherine.

  “You’re right,” she said. “You’re right about that.” She slipped her hand into her pocket.

  “Anyway,” he said, “searching the Airie house in those days would have been very unpopular. They’d just lost their daughter, and to accuse the father—” Vettorello winced.

  Katherine thought for a moment. “Cleveland said it was Telliman who first pointed to James Airie.”

  “How did they know each other?”

  “Did Cleveland ever ask that?”

  “I’m sure he asked Telliman.”

  Katherine was lost. “Nothing makes any sense.” She looked at Vettorello. She looked around the suburban police station, the drab design, the sad Christmas decorations. The activity level was low right now, mostly people complacent at their desks, the radio tuned to a soft pop station. “I don’t understand any of this. How could there have been no real evidence?”

  “There was the sneaker.”

  “It led to nothing.”

  “Listen.” Vettorello leaned toward Katherine. “Sometimes in police work there is no good answer. Sometimes you don’t find your bad guy.” He leaned back. “It sucks, but it happens. It happens quite a lot, as a matter of fact.”

  “The shoelace was from the eighties?” Katherine could not understand this. Where had it come from?

  She considered me. Why would I lie? To flush my brother out? It meant that she had been fooled into believing a crazy story by a paranoid schizophrenic. It meant Katherine had not only failed to help me with my psychological problems—she had, in fact, made them even worse.

  “I should go,” she said now, shaking her head. “I should go home.”

  “I’ll keep this around.” Vettorello indicated the file. “And if you want to come back and read it again, just give me a call.”

  On the drive home, Katherine decided to turn me over to another psychologist. She considered, for the long drive to the enclosure, leaving this job and going back to the city. And when she walked in the door, her feet cold, her hands shaking—full-blown winter now, freezing—Katherine was ready to quit. She set her things down and saw the message light was on. One message. It must be Michele, she thought. Or Mark.

  Uncharacteristically, Katherine pressed the button.

  “You have one message,” her answering machine said. “Message one. Three-fifty-seven P.M.…”

  “Um,” a man’s voice began, “I, uh, I received a call from you the other day and I wasn’t in town, so I just got this message this afternoon. My name is—is Bryce Telliman. If you want to call me back and let me know what, well, let me know what it is you called me for, that would be fine. I guess you have my number. Anyway, bye.”

  It was almost Christmas. So I spent an afternoon at the Bed, Bath, and Beyond on the other side of the highway shopping for presents. It was almost impossible to pick anything out, but I finally settled on some beige-and-white-striped towels for Hannah and a bathroom radio for Eric. Ordinarily I would have bought something for Patricia and my father, too, but it just seemed strange to get her anything. I’d send her a card, I thought. I walked through the aisles for what seemed like days, my hands stroking the sheets and blankets, my fingers running over the shelves of soap and bath salts. They had everything in this store. I paused in front of the chemical-fire-log display, wondering if Hannah would like to sit in front of a fire, if she could even see the flames. But then I imagined our house burning down, the ashes of my childhood rising into the air above Foxwood Court. And this was not a crazy thought, I told myself. This was a reasonable fear.

  Fiona loved the news. How many girls that age even watch the news? She’d sit in front of the television and pay close attention to the stories—in those days it was Cambodia, the Carter election, the energy crisis. She’d fold her tiny legs underneath her minuscule butt on the floor and look up at the screen, her eyes rapt. And sometimes she’d turn around in amazement, her lower lip dangling. “Pilot,” my little sister would say, “look at this.” Perhaps other children are like that. But I doubt it. I think she was unique.

  I’d shrug. “Let’s watch cartoons.”

  And she’d tell me I was an idiot.

  Sometimes I wonder what that meant about her, what that would have made of her. She was just a little girl, and it might have meant nothing. Everything can mean nothing.

  On a trip to the library once she decided she wanted to learn French, and by the end of that afternoon she could count to ten. “Uh, Du, Twa…” She skipped around the patio that day repeating the French numbers, lightly touching my head as she went by me. I was sitting on the flagstones popping a red spool of caps with a rock.

  Sometimes I try to gather these memories all together in my head in an attempt to remember her whole. But something always slips away, and I’m left with an incomplete picture. I would do anything to know where the photographs of her are, where Hannah put them, just so I could see her again.

  Exhausted from the long drive into the city—why had she moved so far away? what was she thinking?—Katherine knocked on the door of the fourth-floor West Village walk-up and waited with her arms folded, fingers hiding beneath her jacket. From inside the apartment came the sounds of someone turning the television off and running to the door. “Just a minute.” It was the same voice from the telephone, a man’s voice, but feminine. It was Bryce Telliman’s voice. “Just a minute,” he said again. Katherine heard the door unlatching, the familiar New York sound of lock after lock after lock disconnecting. “Are you Katherine?” It was open now.

  She put her hand out. “Nice to meet you, Bryce. Thank you very much for letting me come.”

  He was as thin as the dying, with long, wavy gray hair and gray three-day stubble. “Well,” he said, “it’s all right.” His skin hung off his neck like loose fabric.

  “It’s probably not easy for you to talk about this stuff, anyway.” She stepped into his little apartment, noticing the dozens of oil paintings hung on every wall, small abstract canvases made of thick, colorful smears of paint. Katherine looked around smiling.

  “My paintings,” Telliman said. Then he motioned to a chair. “Please, sit. Would you like something? Water? Tea? I have beer.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you.” She took the canvas director’s chair nearest the door. It was covered with flecks of paint.

  Telliman took the one opposite. He sat for a moment, just looking at her, then shifted nervously. “Where do we begin?”

  Katherine took a deep breath. “Like I said on the phone, I’m a psychologist, and Pilot Airie is my patient. He’s asked me to help him rediscover what happened to his little sister twenty years ago.” Katherine hadn’t taken her jacket off, and she still hid her fingers in the folds of her sleeves. “And I know, believe me, I know that must have been a very painful experience for you, and I don’t mean to dig up old injuries but—”

  “I understand,” the man said. “You want to know what I remember about that night.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to know if I did it.”

  Katherine shook her head. “Pilot doesn’t think you did it. Neither do I, if it means anything.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “He never thought it was you.”

  “But he was just a kid.”

  Katherine shrugged.

  “And you?” Telliman said.

  “It’s all very difficult to understand.” Katherine heard the sound of steam hissing from a radiator in the next apartment. It made her miss the city. “I don’t have a theory or an opinion that I can really talk about yet.” She leaned forward a bit, asking, “But why were you even at the Airie house that night?”

  “I was a physical therapist in those days—a friend of
a friend of a friend. It was the seventies. People just went to parties. It didn’t matter.”

  Katherine nodded. “Was it a good one? I mean, apart from the, from what happened?”

  “There was a great deal of drinking, I remember. I remember doing a lot of that myself.”

  “You played with her.”

  “They seemed like nice kids.”

  “Yes,” Katherine said, “they probably were.”

  “I’ve always loved children. I wanted to have them, myself, wanted to be a father, you know.”

  “But—”

  He sounded disappointed. “But I’m gay, and I could never have that kind of relationship with a woman, so I’ve had to enjoy children here and there. I’ve been more careful, though, since—”

  Katherine nodded. She didn’t know what to say.

  “The little girl, Fiona, she was outgoing. She sat on my lap and talked, you know the way kids do, telling me her little secrets.”

  Katherine thought she detected a southern accent in his voice, but she wasn’t sure. “Secrets?”

  “She had a sip of someone’s drink. She saw someone kissing someone. And the mother was okay with all of this.” Telliman’s eyes were downcast. “I mean, she saw me and the little girl and made a joke about Fiona being a flirt. But the father—”

  “James Airie.”

  “James.” Telliman shook his head. “He kept telling her to leave me alone, you know, and by the tone of his voice I could tell that he meant for me to leave her alone.”

  “Did you?”

  “She went upstairs at some point.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “Just drinking. And I started to feel like I’d been drinking too much, you know, way too much.” It was the exact language from the police report. This had the sound, to Katherine, of something rehearsed, of something Telliman had said a million times. His voice was becoming monotonous, like he was singing a funeral dirge. “So I walked around to the other side of the pool,” he continued. “Fiona wasn’t in there anymore, you know, I don’t know where she was, and I walked down to the trees they had in their backyard.”