He shook his head. “I don’t know.” And he didn’t. Only that he’d been running across some kind of field.
He imagined it had been from police, though he couldn’t remember.
“That’s awful,” she was saying. “I know what it’s like, though I haven’t had a nightmare like that in years.”
Soon she fell asleep again but he lay awake for at least an hour more. The next he heard was the sound of the shower in the morning, and then she came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her.
She said, “Don’t get up. It’s too early for you, you don’t have to go in until later. I’ll have coffee at the place.”
“No, I’m getting up.”
They had coffee together, sitting at the kitchen table. He didn’t want to go into the hall for the newspaper, didn’t want to know about anything right now that was going on in the world. Nor did he want her to leave. He dreaded being alone even for the hour or so before he would go off to the office. And how he dreaded walking in there.
They kissed before he opened the door for her, and then he walked with her down the hall and waited until she got on the elevator. He picked up the newspaper by his door and, after glancing at the front page to see if there was anything about the Harmann murder, he put it on a table and went to finish dressing. The apartment was so silent that the silence seemed a noise of its own. His computer was on a desk in the living room, and the temptation was to pull up the Breeze’s Web site to see if there was anything on it about a suspicious incident at the library. But he didn’t want to know if there was. He wanted to go in to the Foundation thinking that he had probably imagined the whole thing, that he had panicked for no reason.
He picked up the newspaper again to see if there was anything about the Harmann girl’s murder on one of the inside pages. Nothing on the second page. But on the third page was a picture of the killer, a man named Harold Luder. Again Alan just read the story in bits and pieces. It said little new about the man, other than that he had been paroled two years ago after serving twelve years for molesting a ten-year-old girl.
Alan stuffed the whole paper into the trashcan.
Again he was thinking this isn’t me. How many times over the years he had tested himself by looking at little girls, mostly those in ads, and there’d never been that sort of a desire, that sort of a feeling.
The offices of the Foundation took up an entire floor of a fourteen story building in downtown Philadelphia. His office was next to Elsa Tomlinson’s. It was a spacious office, with a look of high corporate position. On his desk, waiting for him, was a small neat pile of proposals for grants from inner city ballet companies along the East Coast. He’d already seen them, and they had been returned to him with comments from the staff. There would be a meeting on it later in the day.
Mid-morning there was a coffee break: A vendor brought in a cart of coffee, tea, sodas and cakes, and people streamed to it from their offices and desks. One of the things he’d cautioned himself about as he’d walked into the building was not to look sad, not to show the face that Anna had seen.
Elsa, he couldn’t help noticing, barely acknowledged him as they stood around the cart. Although she hadn’t said anything, his taking a couple of days off for a personal matter so soon after joining obviously bothered her.
Ron Jameson, one of the division vice presidents, a man who always wore a bowtie, asked, “How did your trip go?”
“Okay. Good. I’m glad it’s over.”
“How,” he came back softly, glancing toward Elsa standing far from the cart now, “was it taken?”
Alan pretended he didn’t know what he meant. But he did have the feeling that Jameson, a man in his fifties, was one of those who resented him.
“It was fine,” he said, and he managed to drift away. But it was only to join a small group that was talking about the Elizabeth Harmann murder.
“Her poor family...”
He went back in his office.
This time when he came home, into the quiet of his apartment, he went straight to the computer and logged into the Breeze’s Web site. There was nothing in it about the library. He told himself to quit now, to shut down the machine. But instead he did a search for Susheela Kapasi’s name again, went to links he hadn’t opened yet. One of these was under the name Mack McKinney. And this name had several links of its own.
The first one he opened revealed a picture as well as a story.
The picture was of a man Alan had seen on television several times over the years — seen, that is, for a few moments in passing as he flipped through the channels. He’d been on programs such as Larry King, America’s Most Wanted, some Court TV shows. But Alan had never stopped to listen to him for more than a minute or two.
Now he read that Mack McKinney was a 67-year-old retired New Jersey state police detective whose twelve-year-old daughter had been raped and murdered eighteen years ago by a handyman who was now serving a life sentence. Sometime after the murder, McKinney had started a foundation in her name to help publicize and finance investigations into old unsolved murders of children. One of the cases he was actively involved in was that of Susheela Kapasi.
“It’s work I want do until the day I die,” he was quoted as saying.
And his eyes, Alan felt, were staring at him.
Chapter Twenty
His friend Gregg Osterly, who had left a message on his answering machine inviting him to dinner, was someone he had known since college; they frequently played squash together in the gym Alan went to once or twice a week. A Ford dealer, he lived with his wife, two children and widowed father-in-law on a ten-acre farm about twenty miles outside the city. Alan had no intention of going — it was an effort just to go to work and be with people there — but when he neglected calling him back, Gregg phoned him again on Friday evening when Anna was with him.
“Hey buddy,” he said, “did you get my message?”
“Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you, I was out of town.”
“Well, you’re in town now. So tell me you’re coming. I don’t like seeing my wife cry.”
“Hold on.” Why couldn’t he just say no? But Anna was looking at him, almost as if she had heard the conversation, and with his hand over the receiver he told her about the invitation.
“I’d love to go if you want to,” she said.
The invitation was for six o’clock on Saturday but he picked Anna up about ten in the morning and they headed out to Amish country, about thirty miles away, driving up a one-lane road, Route 340, that cut mostly through farmland and villages with names such as Blue Ball, Intercourse, and Bird in Hand. As they drove, and even though they’d both seen it before, they admired, as if it were a different planet, the Amish in their horse-clopping buggies, the horse-and-muleplowed fields, the houses with long clotheslines of black garments, and, since many of the homes had no electricity even though electric lines ran from pole to pole along the road, the windmills that stood on their grounds. They stopped at antique shops, bought nothing though he kept asking her to, had a good lobster tail lunch without worrying what they would have for dinner, and even took a few-mile train ride through the fields.
There were two other couples at Gregg’s, both of whom Alan knew. Gregg took an immediate liking to Anna, had her sit next to him at the table, and afterward took her on a tour of the large farmhouse. Alan walked with them as he led her from room to room, pointing out antiques and what, in the restoring of the place, was new and what was originally there. His children, twin six-year-old girls, were playing in their bedroom while his father-in-law was in an upstairs study, watching television.
“Dad, you know Alan, of course. I want you to meet Anna.”
His father-in-law stood up, held out his hand to them.
“Can you imagine,” Gregg was saying, “Dad here didn’t want to eat with us?” But Alan barely heard his words. He was staring, frozen, at the screen.
The Larry King program was on. And the retired state policema
n, Mack McKinney, was one of three men sitting across from him.
“Oh you know I ate earlier,” Gregg’s father-in-law was saying.
“Yeah, I know, I know. I know you.”
Alan only wished they would shut up; he couldn’t hear, he was straining to hear words.
“Well, let’s move along,” Gregg said.
“I want to watch this for a second,” Alan said.
“Well, I’m going to show Anna the barn. We’ll be out there.”
But in only the few seconds it took for Alan to turn from them back to the screen, commercials were on. He stood there waiting, anxiously. Had they been talking about the murder? Maybe about what had happened at the library? He wanted to ask Gregg’s father-in-law but was afraid that even a little show of curiosity would point to his guilt.
Now Larry King and the three men were back on.
Instead of talking about any particular crime, Larry said, “I want to introduce former detective Mack McKinney once again, a man who’s long been involved in helping solve or draw attention to unsolved crimes. And fortunately for us all, he has been mighty successful at it.”
Alan stared on, wondering what might be coming next.
“I know,” Larry said to McKinney, “you’ve gone into this many times. But I would like you to do it again for those listeners who might not know of the tragedy in your life that brought you to this tremendous work. You had a daughter Sharon, who was murdered at the age of twelve back in 1986. Would you tell us something about that?”
“Yes,” McKinney said, clearing his throat. “My wife and I came home after doing some shopping and we found that she wasn’t there. This was only about six o’clock and it didn’t really alarm us. But after about an hour we began calling her friends and one of them told us that Sharon had been at her house but had left to go home at around five. The houses were relatively close, so she would have walked. That’s the last she was seen alive.
“It wasn’t until two weeks later that her body was found in the woods about a mile from our home. Searchers had gone over the woods repeatedly, but this time a neighbor noticed a small mound of dirt under some leaves. And under that...”
He stopped. His eyes were glazed with tears.
“She’d been tortured and raped.”
“And her killer,” Larry said, “was a handyman you knew. Someone who had done some work around your house.”
“That’s right.”
“And who received life without parole.”
“Yes. I’ve been asked so often if that’s closure for us. It isn’t. But I don’t know if the death penalty would be either. Nothing really is.”
Alan slipped out of the room, his pulse beating in his temples. It was a moment or two before he became aware of how much he hated, how much he loathed, whoever had killed that child.
After dropping Anna off at her apartment he headed back to his place about one in the morning. He had a reason for not staying over. Worried about the first half of the program he had missed, he was anxious to see if it might be repeated, as programs often were late at night.
In his apartment, he went straight to the trash can for the TV pages of that day’s paper, found them and looked to see if the program might be running again at any early morning hour. No, it wouldn’t. But he read the brief description of the program he’d seen and released a long breath. It had been about a murder he knew nothing about.
This feeling of reprieve was only to last until morning, when he saw Mack McKinney’s face in the paper again. It was as if the man were following him, watching him, drawing closer.
Chapter Twenty-One
The picture was about the size of a postage stamp yet it loomed in front of him like a billboard.
He generally didn’t look through the TV supplement of the Sunday paper unless there was something in particular he wanted to check on. And there wasn’t that morning. He just happened to be gathering up the thick paper before leaving to visit his mother when several pages of the section fell open and, while straightening them, he saw McKinney’s face.
He was to be on a cable show called The Justice Road next Tuesday at 9 pm.
This hunter, the item read, of child murderers and predators...
It said nothing about what he would be discussing. But as Alan stared at that face, it was as if the man were already talking — to him.
Driving to the nursing home he thought of something that brought a kind of comfort, if anything horrendous can be called comfort; and it was that his mother was out of it, would never know the truth about him even if someone shouted it into her face.
But she wasn’t out of it that day. That was the weird part. At least she wasn’t out of it for a few minutes.
She had aged terribly in just a few years. She still had a broad face but it was sunken between the bones. And her hair was almost white. She looked at him from her wheelchair with clear blue eyes as he approached her in the lounge, then, recognizing him, she said with a smile, “Alan.” And then nodded when he asked how she was.
He’d brought her two new nightgowns, and a nurse took one of them from the box and held it up for her.
“Isn’t this lovely what your son brought you?”
His mother looked at it with that same smile, and then at the other nightgown, which the nurse also held up. Then she looked at him.
“You were always a good boy.”
“Oh, Mom.” He was holding her hand.
A minute or two passed, during which her look gradually became a stare that was now focused on her lap.
He said, “Mom?” But she didn’t look at him or, a little later, seem to notice when he kissed her goodbye.
As he walked away, he thought of what she’d said about his always having been “good boy.” And how her being alert for a time had scared him.
That evening he took Anna to dinner, and afterward they came back to his place. They were there no more than ten minutes when the phone rang. A young voice, a girl’s, immediately said, “Hi lover. I really want you.”
He could also hear another girl’s voice, though unintelligible, in the background.
He started to hang up but then glanced quickly at the little panel on his phone. It listed an area code and phone number.
“I would love to fuck you,” the first girl said. “Would you like to fuck me? And I’m good at sucking too. Do you have a large dick?”
He covered the mouthpiece of the receiver. The area code was the same as Anna’s parents’, but not the number.
He didn’t know what to say, whether to tell her.
“Honey” — Anna stood up from the sofa and came over —” is something wrong?”
“Look, do you recognize this area code?”
She looked, then said, puzzled, “Yes. But I don’t know the number. Who is it?”
He heard a click as the girls on the other end hung up. He set the receiver down. Anna’s eyes widened as he told her the kind of call it was. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh God. My sister, oh that bitch!”
“I don’t think it was your sister. She didn’t talk to me when I was up there but I remember her talking to your mother. And I don’t think this was her voice.”
“Oh, it was her and her friend. She put her friend up to it. I know that bitch, I know that stupid bitch.”
“Why would she do it?” But it was such a foolish question he instantly regretted asking it. He could picture that orange-haired girl he’d met, pregnant, playing kids’ stupid games.
“Did she ever do this before?”
“Yes!”
“Did you ever tell your parents?”
“Yes!”
“What did they do?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. Nothing. She doesn’t listen anyway.”
She began to cry.
“Look, don’t,” he said.
“She’s such a bitch. And she’s a liar, she makes up stories. She tries to spoil everything for me.”
He led her back to the sof
a and put his arm around her. After a few moments she leaned forward, her forehead against the fingers of one hand.
“I don’t deserve you,” she said against her hand.
“Oh, stop it. Because your sister’s a nut? A kid?”
“I’ve tried hard to break away from there. How I’ve tried.”
“Honey.” He brought her close. “Honey, you have. Now let’s forget this, can we? I know I have.”
She pressed her cheek against his shoulder.
“I’m scared,” she said.
He didn’t want to say it but he did. “Of what?”
“That I’m going to lose you. I don’t want to lose you. I love you so much.”
“Oh, I love you too.” It was the first time he’d ever said it to her.
“You didn’t have to say that.” She didn’t look up.
“Then I’ll take it back.”
“No. No.” She looked at him quickly, then put her forefinger to his lips. “Don’t. Let it stay said.”
Tuesday night he turned on the channel at least ten minutes before the program was to go on. When it did, he saw that Mack McKinney was not the only guest. It was a new show, only a month or so old, and was hosted by a former prosecutor, an attractive youngish-looking woman named Tess Antoni. Her first two guests were a defense attorney and a retired D.A., and they differed strongly about the pardoning of sex offenders. Alan barely listened; he was too intent on what McKinney would be there to talk about.
When McKinney came on Alan was a little surprised by his reaction to how the retired officer looked. He had seen him as a terribly stern man, even when his eyes had teared up when he spoke about his daughter. Now, his was rather a gentle face, his voice soft, his eyes sad.
And somehow, amazingly, though Alan felt startled to his bones, he even saw him that way when, for the first time, he heard him speak the name Susheela Kapasi.
“She was a beautiful girl. Beautiful. I’ve looked at her picture so many times.”
“I understand,” Antoni asked, “you weren’t there at the beginning of the investigation, is that right?”
Witness to Myself Page 8
