Witness to Myself

by Seymour Shubin

  My work, it’s important to mention, wasn’t going well at this time. My last book wasn’t doing what the publisher — or I — had hoped for, and though I’d had one bestseller, nothing can sour a publisher more on your next book than poor sales of your previous one. So I knew I had to come up with a super idea for a new one; but not only didn’t I have anything that I thought would please them, I had no ideas that pleased me. I was also having trouble with the national magazines: Ideas I pitched to them kept bouncing back. I’d continued writing for the two true detective magazines out of loyalty to Sam Haggerty; and now the only one I kept selling to was Detective Eye — his other magazine had folded — though I was wishing I could finally give it up.

  At least once or twice a week I’d get a call from Haggerty, whom I could picture lighting one cigarette with the butt of another as he held the phone to his ear.

  “Anything new in the hopper? How about that case.”

  And he’d rattle off a crime that he’d read about or heard of on TV. Or I would call him about a murder, either a new one or one that had just been tried in court, and after I’d interviewed the main detectives who’d handled it, it would take me three days at most to write the 5,000-word story. Then it would carry one of my several pen names, under which would be a Sam Haggerty invention:

  SPECIAL INVESTIGATOR FOR Detective Eye.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A sign on the highway to South Minton said FOOD LODGING GAS 1 mi at the next turnoff. He didn’t plan to take it but when he had about a quarter-mile to go he made a fast decision to do it, then pulled into the parking lot of a hotel, the STEPHAN HOUSE. It was only about three and the snow had stopped again, so there was nothing to stop him from just driving on. But he was only about a hundred miles from the town and he still didn’t know what he was going to do.

  The lobby was empty, the only person there the clerk behind the counter. He checked in and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The room looked gray when he walked in; was gray, until he opened the blinds and the sunlight poured in. He put his attaché case on a chair; it held a change of clothing. Although he hadn’t expected to sleep over on his way to South Minton, he had thought he might on the drive home.

  He sat down on the side of the bed, then leaned back against a pillow. His mind couldn’t stop racing, questioning everything he must have already asked himself a thousand times. Like, let’s say he did go through with it, what’s the first thing he would do when he got there? He would have to find a copy of the Breeze or any other newspaper for July 8, of course — but no, that was wrong: It would have to be the next day’s paper, that’s the one that would have carried the story if there was a story to carry. Also, he still hadn’t decided whether he should go to the Breeze’s office for back copies or to the library. In either case, how could he do it without stirring up suspicion, without some giveaway look on his face, perhaps a quiver in his voice or of his hands?

  Although he wasn’t hungry, he forced himself to go downstairs for some dinner. Afterward he looked around the lobby to see if they had a shop that sold newspapers or paperbacks but though there was one that displayed gift items it was closed. He went over to the desk to see if they at least had some booklets, perhaps describing the area, and was a little surprised to see two or three newspapers on the far side of the counter. They were copies of that morning’s local paper, free for guests.

  Back in the room, he started to look through the paper but his mind began to drift. Almost without being aware of it, he began thinking of that long-ago little girl, trying again to assure himself that she was alive, that she was a grown woman now, married perhaps and with children. What always amazed him when he thought of her was that there were long periods of time when he didn’t think of her. Once again he found himself wondering who and what she was, whether Indian or Pakistani or an Arab or a gypsy or maybe a Latino. And who had been with her out on the beach, waiting for her return — parents, guardians, brothers and sisters?

  He turned on the TV to the dumbest show he could find, but nothing could quite relax him. He opened the newspaper to the sports section and read about teams and games he had no interest in. Then, as he turned the pages, his eyes settled on one small news story, not so much because of the heading GIRL’S BODY IDENTIFIED IN PARK, but because its dateline read “Philadelphia, PA.”

  He had made it a practice never to read any story about a murder. Never a complete story, that is; no more than the first paragraph. So though he did know that a girl, an eleven-year-old middle-school student in Philadelphia named Elizabeth Harmann, had been missing for several days, this was the first he knew that her body had been found. She had been raped and strangled.

  He threw the paper to the side.

  For moments it was as if the police would be coming to question him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alan had been out jogging the afternoon he heard from my mother about his mother.

  “Alan,” she said, and she began crying. “It’s terrible, it’s gotten worse. I can’t handle it any more. She just threw something at me. It didn’t hit me but she threw something. And she’s in one of those periods where she doesn’t recognize me.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  His mother and my mother were living together in a pleasant apartment in the suburbs. His mother had started deteriorating mentally within months after his father’s death, and Alan had been paying a woman to help my mother take care of her. But the woman had recently quit.

  Not surprisingly, his mother seemed somewhat herself by the time he got there; this happened often. She not only smiled as he kissed her but she said, “Alan,” and afterward, “Lawyer.”

  “How are you, mom?”

  “Good.” But then she started slipping away again. “It’s just night. Nobody.”

  Kneeling in front of her, he looked over at my mother. She shrugged her shoulders. Then his mother said, clearly, something she had said to me and surely to him at his father’s funeral:

  “It was just like a walk around the block.”

  Only this time, instead of saying it to him, she seemed to be saying it to his father.

  He looked at her as she was sitting in a living room chair, a little smile on her lips. He couldn’t help think of the times when he was a kid that she wanted him to wear rubbers in the rain. And wouldn’t let him go outside when he had all of a ninety-nine degree temperature, which she and his father must have thought was like a two-hundred degree fever. And the creek that ran through the woods near our houses, only a foot or two at its deepest, how it was the curse of her life in that she was always warning him against falling in and drowning.

  Mom, he thought now, you worried about the wrong things.

  A couple of weeks later, I helped him move his mother, who had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, into a nursing home. Anna had suggested that she should come to her place, but though Alan was tempted he didn’t want to put a special burden on Anna. After tours of several places he’d selected the one he considered the best. His mother put up no fuss when he and my mother and I took her there.

  Coincidentally, he would learn something exciting that same day that he would never be able to share with her. By now he had been approved for the board of the Foundation, and that evening he got a call at his apartment from Elsa Tomlinson. She didn’t ask him any questions; she simply stated a fact.

  “I didn’t want to call you about this at your office. But I want you here working with me. Right under me, as executive vice president or whatever title I can figure out. I want to groom you to take over, though it’ll depend on you how that works out. Now don’t say yes, no, maybe. Come in and let’s talk.”

  He saw her the following day, and the upshot was that he was to start in a month.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Alan woke at the Stephan House he felt strangely refreshed, as though nothing of importance was on his mind. But then the realization that this was the last leg of his trip sent a quic
k hot beating through his chest. It was still dark out, and he turned on the lamp on the night table and picked up his wristwatch and glanced at it. It was twenty of six.

  It was only when he was walking back from the bathroom and saw the open newspaper over on the chair that he remembered the Elizabeth Harmann murder. He felt the urge to rush over and stuff the paper in the wastebasket; didn’t even want it in the room.

  Whoever did that to her, whoever committed all of those horrendous rapes and murders he’d tried to avoid knowing about over the years, those people were different from him, weren’t they? Weren’t they?

  By the time he went down to the lobby he had calmed himself considerably. If a murder in Philly could be reported way up here near the Cape, wouldn’t an unsolved murder on the Cape have been reported at some time in Philly?

  He drove away from the hotel slowly, filled with doubts again but telling himself he was going to do this today, finish what he had started, find out once and for all. But every so often he had to take a deep breath. Then, when he was about twenty miles into Cape Cod on Route 6, he almost froze in panic. A police car was parked angled on this side of the road, its lights glittering.

  A short line of cars had slowed ahead of him. He could see an officer standing next to a car, apparently talking to the driver. Occasionally, as the line moved forward, the officer would lean toward a window, then motion ahead with his arm. But it was only when Alan got much closer that he could see that he was directing traffic around a two-car accident.

  About an hour later Alan was driving between a thick line of trees on either side of the road that told him across the years that he either was approaching a turnoff to South Minton or had possibly already passed it. All he knew for sure was that the ocean was to his right; other than that, his mind had gone blank. Then he saw a sign by an intersection, perhaps the same one that was there that day fifteen years ago: SOUTH MINTON.

  The lane his father had turned into had to be one of these several lanes he was now beginning to pass. And then, about a mile or so away, would be that other lane where.

  He turned into one of them at random, thinking as he did of the old saying about a criminal returning to the scene of his crime. All he knew was that he wanted to go back through the years, to look, to see.

  The trees were skeletal in the cold, the ground hard and uneven, some of the limbs layered with snow. He came to the top of the dune, as if to an old nightmare, and stopped with a heavy foot on the brake. The ocean lay ahead, bright blue, with just a slight curve of waves at the fringe. He kept the motor running, the heater of course on. He couldn’t believe he had pulled in here and was actually remaining even though he was aware that someone might have seen him turn in. And that a face might suddenly appear at his window.

  What are you doing here, sir, and who are you?

  Still, he couldn’t make himself turn around or back out. Not yet, not yet.

  Which lane was this, if either of the two? He couldn’t tell for sure, but soon he began thinking of it as the one where they’d parked the motor home, the seats facing the dune, though at a slight angle. His father was still behind the wheel, his mother in her usual seat next to him, and he in one of the seats behind them, though sometimes he’d sit next to his father, hungering with a teenager’s hunger to be able to take that wheel.

  He thought of the coziness of that motor home, of his bunk along the side and their little room in back with its accordion-like doorway. And how they would all watch TV at night, or read under the lamps or play gin rummy.

  Soon he saw two people, a man and a woman, materialize in the distance on the beach. They wore heavy coats and woolen caps down over their ears in the cold and wind. He hadn’t seen a single person that time they’d been here, and for a few moments he just sat watching them walking closer. And then he came out of it and back into the icy reality that no one must see him. He backed away from the dune fast, then made a U-turn and headed toward the road, the car bumping over the hard ruts. When he came to the road he stopped just long enough to make sure no cars were in sight in either direction. Then he drove to the intersection that led to South Minton.

  He remembered how he had pleaded with his father not to go there, and then how he’d sprawled across the sofa not wanting to be seen through the windows. He hadn’t seen a second’s worth of the town. Now he saw that the turn-off led, after a couple of miles of cottages and woods, to a frozen-looking bay fronted by shops, houses and eateries, quite a few of the places art shops and many with the look of being closed for the winter. He drove through a tangle of streets, some with much larger houses, past a firehouse, then — almost startling him — a small police station, and now what announced itself to be the Municipal Building. He was looking for whatever building might house the Breeze but he couldn’t find it. However, he did find the library, a long low building that still had several strings of Christmas lights dangling, darkened, from the roof.

  He parked at the curb across the street and looked over at it. The enormity of what he hoped to do was becoming overwhelming. How could he, a stranger, go in there and ask for God-knows-how-many old issues without stirring suspicion, without someone asking what’re you looking for, can I help? What would he answer? He’d assumed he could get away with some kind of generality, but that was stupid, stupid.

  Though it seemed as if he’d been thinking about this forever, he had to think it out more, he just couldn’t —

  He pulled away from the curb. He drove slowly, telling himself this was just to give him time to think; but when he came to the street that led back to Route 6, he took it — and drove faster. And once out on the road he almost floored the pedal.

  He could never go into that building. Never!

  But then, about ten miles away, he pulled into an abandoned service station and parked, the motor running.

  He had to think harder. As if he hadn’t all these years! As if he hadn’t gone back and forth in his head a million times — do this, don’t do that, you must find out, but why? — you must, but you didn’t kill her, yet you’ve got to know!

  He tried to focus on what had finally come together to bring him here.

  One was another call, about month ago, from Elsa Tomlinson. “Alan, I hate to rush you, but can you start next week? The week after at the latest? It’s very important, I need you here.”

  He hadn’t even told his firm yet he would be leaving.

  The second was a message on his answering machine. From Anna. It was a simple one:

  “I’m going to sleep, honey, but I just want to say I miss you.”

  He stood there, staring at the machine. There was nothing special about the message, but it made him feel hollowed out. They’d never said they loved each other, but he never wanted to more than right now. But he couldn’t — not until he learned the truth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The firm he was with was a large one though far from the largest — thirty-two lawyers. He said good morning to his secretary at her desk in front of his office: He shared her with an associate in the adjoining office. His office overlooked much of downtown and the Delaware River, ten stories below, which reflected his fast-rising status in the firm. He looked at a few just-delivered letters on his desk, then put them down without opening them. He took a deep breath and walked to the managing partner’s office.

  “I just want to let you know,” he told him, “that I’m going to be leaving the firm.”

  “Oh?” Just that, with almost no change of expression. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is it rude of me to ask where you’ll be going?”

  “Not at all.” He told him about the Foundation.

  “Well, you were on the move here and we’ll miss you. What can I say but good luck?”

  “Thanks. Look, I won’t be leaving for two weeks if necessary, so —”

  The man smiled. “Try for tomorrow. Or even today if you can clear things up.”

  That night, sitting with Anna on her sofa, Alan told her about his resig
ning and moving on. She hugged him tight and said how happy she was for him, but afterward there was something obviously sad about her. She was frowning, seemed to be deep within herself.

  “Anna, what’s wrong?”

  She looked startled, began to shake her head and then stopped. It was a few moments before she looked at him.

  “Why did you really call me that time?”

  “What time?”

  “The first time. Why did you call me?”

  “Because I wanted to. I had the feeling you were someone special. Why did you agree to go out with me?”

  She didn’t answer. Then she said, “What do you think of me now?”

  “I think you’re wonderful.”

  “Not just easy?”

  “Oh Christ, Anna, you’ve got to be kidding.”

  She seemed close to tears. “I’m sorry. But there are so many creeps. I think I met most of them the first year I was here. They think because you’re a nurse and you’re young.”

  He put his arms around her.

  “You think you won’t fall for it, you think you’re too smart, but then you do. You think they love you. And then it turns out you had no idea at all what was going on in their heads. It was all a lie.”

  Her body was rigid at first, but then softened a little and she let herself come against him, her head on his shoulder. He wanted to say things to her, things that would help, but somehow he knew that words would never do it, that just holding her was the better way, the only way.

  “Alan?”

  “Yes, Anna.”

  But she just shook her head against him, without looking up, and then seemed to creep into him even more. He rubbed her back, her shoulders, put his cheek on her hair.

  She said, “Thank you.” It was muffled against his chest.

  He wanted to say how can you thank me, I should be thanking you. But he didn’t. Instead he brushed at the hair that had fallen over her forehead. She raised her head and he kissed her lips, softly. Her lips opened and for moments they just breathed into each other, just breathed. And now he was unbuttoning her blouse and she made a few quick attempts at trying to help him. They didn’t even go to the bedroom. Not then anyway, later yes, but not then in their haste. And now they were part of each other, joined and yet trying to get even closer, and then collapsing, finally lying in each other’s arms so still except for the beating of their hearts.