Body Language

by Michael Craft

  Parker reacted with a blank expression, but a ripple of his bearded cheek betrayed the clenching of his jaw.

  I lifted a file from the tabletop where I sat. “I discovered another dossier of interest this morning. Here.” I stood, handing it to him. “A summary of the life of Parker Trent since his honorable discharge from Vietnam following a gruesome massacre that he survived. Mr. Trent has established a successful career as a newspaper editor, though it seems he’s done a lot of job-hopping, at least until about three years ago—about the time of Edwin Quatrain’s death—when he began his most recent stint as editor of the Milwaukee Triangle. The report concludes that Mr. Trent is logically ‘above suspicion’ of the rape and murder of a Vietnamese girl because he is gay.”

  Parker tossed the file on the desk—there was nothing of news to him in it. “Look,” he told me calmly, “it’s time to level about this.” He tapped the folder. “Yes, I was there. Yes, it was awful. Yes, I committed a lie of omission in not telling you this background, because yes, I came to fear that it might incriminate me as an impostor who had a motive to kill. But I’m not Mark Quatrain. I couldn’t be.” He tapped the report again. “I’m gay.”

  I crossed my arms, shook my head. “You’ve been posing as gay, and you’ve been doing it for three years, since the time when you first got wind that Suzanne suspected you were alive. Glee sensed that you were straight from the day she met you—she had vibes that you were flirting with her. Then I saw that kiss you gave her on New Year’s Eve—‘transference’ indeed. And now I hear that you’ve made a date with Glee for Monday night—what the hell’s that about? With my own suspicions aroused, I knew there was one way to determine conclusively which way you swing. Parker, I know what makes men tick, and, believe me, there’s no way you could have survived that grope session without a hard-on if you were gay. Hence, the surprise ‘seduction.’ I had to know.”

  “You don’t know shit,” he said, spitting the words. It was the first time he freely vented anger toward me. “If you know so damn much, get to the bottom line and tell me why I’d kill Suzanne—on Christmas Day, an hour after meeting her, in a crowded house.” He folded his arms.

  Hooking my hands in my pockets, I strolled a few paces in thought, recapping, “Suzanne had discovered the possibility that her brother Mark was still alive, and if he was, she was hell-bent on finding him and bringing him to justice for the murder of the Vietnamese girl—motivated largely, no doubt, by revenge for her own incestuous rape. So it’s clear enough why Mark would want Suzanne dead. But what hasn’t been clear to me, until today, is why the murder occurred when and where it did.”

  Pacing back to Parker at the desk, I explained, “When you ‘met’ Suzanne on that Christmas afternoon, she chatted with you about her research project, mentioning an interest in DNA, and you offered your help. Later, she came up here to the great room to see if she could ‘find something,’ and we surmised that she was looking for baby books. But her search wasn’t motivated by sentiment, was it, Parker? She was after something specific, and you would risk anything to prevent her from finding it. So you joined her up here, perhaps pretending to help her in the search, waiting for the opportunity to smash the life out of her skull with one of these”—I rested my hand atop one of the banister’s artichoke finials—“a king-thing, a handy makeshift bludgeon whose existence would be known only to someone who grew up in this house. A fire was in full blaze only feet from where she fell, and you could easily have burned the weapon, but, instead, you kept it, planting it in the trunk of my car. Your purpose was not to cast serious suspicion on me—it was an obvious, inept frame-up. No, the point was to help build the case against Joey (the king-things were his toys), so that everything would fall into place when he confessed to the crime through his suicide note.”

  Parker eyed me with a steely gaze throughout this, clenching one fist, gripping the table’s edge with his other hand. “You seem to have missed the point,” he reminded me. “What was she after? What was so important that I couldn’t let her find it?”

  I stepped to within inches of him at the table. I slid aside the copy of Wine Spectator, revealing the stack of three baby books. “She was looking for this,” I told him, opening the cover of the top album. “A lock of baby’s hair, Mark Quatrain’s. She knew that the DNA in a single strand could be used to provide positive identification of someone now posing to be someone else—someone who was already under investigation as one of the subjects of her dossiers. Can there be any doubt that the strands of your hair that I collected this morning will match this baby’s lock?” With my foot, I slid the wastebasket from under the desk. Its plastic bag held a generous sample of his hair. “Parker Trent,” I said, “I accuse you of hiding your true identity as Mark Quatrain. Far worse, I accuse you of the murders of three people—the girl in Vietnam, your sister Suzanne, and your brother Joey.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then, with our faces still only inches apart, he said flatly, “You smart-ass cock-sucking queer.”

  “Watch your language, Parker.”

  “All these years,” he said, turning away from me, his tone suddenly pensive, “I’ve lain low, moving from job to job, just so no one could really get to know me, fearing that one day Suzanne might figure out that I was still around. And sure enough, right after Dad died, she began her investigation.”

  Turning, he explained to me, “I’d been so attuned to the possibility, I was smart enough to smell the investigation when it got near. So, yes, I landed the gay job in Milwaukee as a means of putting myself above suspicion. But I could tell that Suzanne was on my trail, and it was no longer sufficient to lie low—I had to take more aggressive action. Coincidentally, while I was weighing my options, it became public knowledge that you were moving to Dumont to take over as publisher here, and I saw the spark of opportunity. My plan, which succeeded, was to get myself hired by you. That would allow me to keep tabs on the whole situation from very close range, and I could take decisive action if Suzanne got too close to the truth.”

  He stepped toward me at the desk. “Then what happened? On Christmas Day, within minutes of meeting me, she started yapping about DNA, and within the hour she was tearing up this place in search of baby books. So I followed her up here, offered to help, asked her why the albums were so important. She said she was nostalgic—she lied to me—dragging a chair to the bookcase so she could search the upper shelves. Kneeling by her chair, I asked her to describe the books as I searched the lower cabinet. While describing them, her tone of voice turned wary—as if she suspected me of looking up her skirt. Which of course I was.”

  Leering, Parker sat proudly on the edge of the desk. He asked me, “You just don’t get it, do you? You have no idea what kind of power a beautiful woman can have over a man—a straight man, a real man. And believe me, Suzanne had that power. Victim, indeed! She got exactly what she wanted on that Christmas morning as a girl. I did, too,” he gloated, instinctively rubbing his crotch, which now displayed a hefty lump. “It was the most rapturous fuck of my life. And it would never be that good again.”

  Then his eyes flashed toward me with another recollection. “That whore in ’Nam cried rape, just as poor little ‘abused’ Suzie had. That whore in ’Nam paid the price for her lies; now it was Suzie’s turn. And she never knew what hit her—she never figured out that the ‘gay’ editor from Milwaukee shared her intense interest in those baby books.”

  He tapped the stack of three albums on the desk. “These baby books.” He fixed me in his stare. “I couldn’t let her have these, Mark. Obviously, I can’t let you have them either.”

  Then, with one deft move, he sidestepped to the banister and yanked a king-thing from its newel post, wielding it in the air, gripping the dowel with white fingers. I moved to wrest it from him, but a kick to my shin sent me sprawling. He straddled me, pinning my shoulder with one of his feet, practicing a golf swing with the finial, taking aim at my head. Sneering, he asked, “Any last words, fag?”r />
  “Doug?” I said. “I hope to God you’re there.”

  Doug Pierce said, “Freeze, Parker.”

  Parker didn’t even turn to see Sheriff Pierce emerge from the shadows of a bookcase at the far side of the room. Instead, he spat on my face. “You son of a bitch.” And the artichoke finial began arcing toward my ear.

  The single shot caught Parker in the hip, sufficient to throw off his balance and ruin his swing. Still, I barely managed to roll out of harm’s way when he dropped the king-thing, which crashed next to me on the floor. Then Parker himself dropped, falling on top of me, bleeding. Snarling some unintelligible epithet, he tried to grab me by the neck. But Pierce had rushed forward, and before I was able to scramble to my feet, Parker’s hands were cuffed behind his back, with Pierce’s knee planted between his shoulders.

  Pierce looked up at me as I stood, telling me, “Glad you found time to make that one quick phone call.”

  “And you thought it wouldn’t work.” I looked myself over, checking for blood. My khakis were in bad shape, but Parker’s were worse—they had a hole in them.

  Pierce stood, hoisting Parker to his feet. Parker whined and complained, bleeding (the rug was probably a goner, as well as the pants), while Pierce told me, “Jeez, Mark, that groping business got a little steamy. I don’t mind telling you, I was starting to sweat.”

  I laughed. “Anything for a story, Doug. Anything for a story.”

  EPILOGUE

  This Afternoon

  MY NEW LIFE SEEMS bogged by funerals, peppered by the last rites of passage into some vast unknown. The mourners who surround me are watching the spectacle of grief played out at the altar. With a numb sense of detachment, they mime the prescribed motions and mouth psalms about sheep, lost in their memories, as I am lost in mine.

  The priest drones through the script of his fill-in-the-blanks sermon, eulogizing “our brother Joseph, an allegiant child of the church.” Though Father Nicholas Winter was prepared to fight in court for the right to bury Suzanne Quatrain from Saint Cecille’s, he had taken a distinctly different view of her brother Joey’s funeral. The wealthy and powerful Suzanne, remember, had fluffed off the church at sixteen, sneaking out of state for an abortion, while Joey had remained steadfast in his faith till his death this week at forty-three. The problem, of course, was that Joey had confessed to murdering Suzanne. And a more serious wrinkle, at least in the eyes of the good Father Nick, was that Joey had taken his own life, blackening his soul with a mortal sin that sent him straight to hell, case closed. Compounding the priest’s dilemma was the historical fact that the Quatrain family had practically built this parish—in fact, they did finance the most recent addition to Saint Cecille School, and he prayed nightly that young Thad Quatrain would one day be inclined to carry on the family tradition. So accommodations had to be made. Meeting with Thad and me on Thursday, the day after Joey’s death, Father Winter condescended to take on the unsavory duties of officiating at Joey’s funeral, but insisted that the service was to be quick and simple—“No choir, no public spectacle, just get him buried, and get it over.”

  I really didn’t care, but I knew that Joey would have, and I was appalled at the priest’s arrogant behavior in the presence of Thad. It was a stupid move politically—the kid would surely remember this incident in future years when the priest or his successor came begging for loot—but an even more offensive aspect of the priest’s pompous air of infallibility was that it hurt Thad. The boy truly loved his uncle Joey, looking past his simplemindedness and focusing on his kindness and affection, thinking of him as a friend and a peer. The last thing Thad needed to hear was that his uncle had committed two truly unforgivable sins, but that’s exactly what the priest told us that day.

  Now, of course, Father Winter views Joey’s passing in a different light entirely. Word has spread quickly since Parker’s arrest this morning, and everyone understands that Joey did not bludgeon his now-sainted sister, that, in fact, they were both victims of their evil older brother, who was thought, till today, to have been heaven-sent some thirty years ago. Ah, the fickle ebb of eternal rewards—easy come, easy go.

  If the priest is at all confused by this turn of events, he doesn’t show it. To the contrary, he seems positively giddy that the man whom he eulogizes was murdered—a tragic though passive demise thoroughly acceptable to God, while suicide is not. “This gentle soul was a gift to our community,” Father Winter preaches, “inspiring us with the childlike quality of his faith. Clearly, he was put on this earth to walk among us as an example to all mankind. Let us rejoice in our knowledge that…” To hear him gush and babble, you’d think it was Christmas.

  I recognize, though, that some of the man’s words carry the ring of truth. Joey was a good person, and I do mourn his passing. During these few weeks since my move to Dumont, I came to know Joey quite well, and I wish I could know him better still. I’ll miss him.

  When I first came to this town, during my visit as a boy, it was Joey who glommed on to me and claimed me as his friend. In fact, I saw too much of Joey during that visit, prompting me to seek refuge upstairs on Prairie Street, where I honed my early skills as a writer.

  I hardly saw Suzanne at all during that trip, and, as adults, we spent only an hour or so in each other’s company on Christmas Day. Now I’m executor of her vast estate, preparing for a custody battle so that I might serve as father to her son.

  As for my oldest cousin, Mark, I didn’t see much of him during that long-ago visit, but his impact on my life was immeasurable. For starters, we shared the same name, and our namesake was the same man, my father. But my shared history with Mark Quatrain truly began the moment I met him, when he mussed my hair and aroused within me boyish confusions that would later flower into adult passions. He has lived in my memory, adorned my dreams. And three hours ago, he brought our shared history to a close when he tried to kill me.

  Father Winter preaches on, cribbing many of the same sentiments he used to bury Suzanne twelve days ago. Those words, however, are the only similarity between her funeral and Joey’s. According to the priest’s plan, there is no choir today, no public spectacle—this is a far cry from the royal send-off accorded Suzanne, a stripped-down service for her younger, half-wit brother who supposedly died in shame and sin. When the priest learned the truth, only an hour remained before the unpublicized service was to begin, and it was too late to change plans. So, although Joey’s casket rests in the center aisle on the same spot where his sister’s body had lain, the pews this afternoon are nearly empty, and the priest’s words echo to fill the void.

  Again I have taken the second pew, flanked today by Neil and Roxanne. The last few years have seen many changes for the three of us, but the greatest of these is surely the life that Neil and I have begun together, and I can never forget that we have Roxanne to thank for introducing us. Without comment, I stretch my arm around her shoulder, pulling her close, sharing the warmth of her fur coat.

  Neil sits quietly on my other side, listening without reacting to the sermon. Obligingly, without complaining, he has returned to Dumont for the fourth—or is it fifth?—consecutive weekend. I’m way overdue to visit him at the loft in Chicago, and I told him as we drove to church today that I would begin living up to the “arrangement” without fail next week. “But, Mark,” he said, “that’s your first week on the job at the Register, and you just lost your managing editor. How can you possibly get away? Don’t come to Chicago—I’ll be back.” And that’s typical of how he’s put his own life on hold while I’ve tried to get settled here. He’s the man I love. Without comment, I stretch an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. He, Roxanne, and I snuggle patiently in the cold air of the cavernous church, waiting for the sermon to end.

  Ahead of us, Hazel, Thad, and Miriam Westerman are seated in the front pew. Thad is in the middle, in front of me, and he sniffles at the priest’s words. The loss of both his mother and his uncle has finally caught up with him, and I hope he has lea
rned that he needn’t repress sentiment in the name of manliness. He’s learned a lot since I met him three weeks ago, and so have I. It’s uncertain whether Neil and I can claim the right to build a family with Thad—that’s an issue for the courts to decide—but I have learned, to my utter amazement, that the idea is appealing to all three of us, and the thought of taking responsibility for the boy has shaken my own view of how the next few years may differ from the last.

  Miriam Westerman couldn’t care less about Joey’s passing, but she’s happy to flaunt her temporary custody of Thad by perching next to “Ariel” in the front pew, as family. Though she’ll have a tough time battling Roxanne in court over this issue, she hasn’t let that uncertainty stand in the way of plans for her Fem-Snach school, mistakenly endowed by Suzanne’s forgotten trust fund. Miriam has already transferred the endowment into a building account, and the groundbreaking is scheduled for next week, in spite of the impossibly cold weather.

  That same cold weather has finally nudged Hazel toward a decision that’s been too long delayed. Before we left the house this afternoon, she told me that she would be moving somewhere warm. She’s sixty-seven, with failing eyesight, financially secure due to the generosity of Suzanne’s will. Except for Thad, the Quatrain family is gone—there’s nothing to keep her in Dumont any longer, and there’s certainly no reason to endure these winters. She’s out of here.

  Across the aisle, on the other side of Joey’s coffin, the first few pews are peopled as before with a group of Quatro executives. Behind them are a few city and county officials, including the sheriff, Douglas Pierce. I haven’t been able to decide whether Pierce is gay. He’s been more than accommodating, and he’s spoken several times of our future friendship, but his reticence to reveal details of his private life has made it impossible for me to get close to the man. I’m content to know him at arm’s length, of course—he’s dedicated to his profession and will be an important contact for me at the newspaper—but I sense that there’s more to the man, and I wonder if he’ll ever feel ready to tell me about it.