Without Prejudice

by Unknown

  Back in the office, he struggled yet again to read Dorothy’s six-month report, which was long, dense, and detailed. At half-three he gave up and left the office for a breath of fresh air, walking over to Michigan Avenue, where he bought a pack of sugarless gum as self-justification for his exit from the office. When he returned he found Vicky leaving a message on his desk. ‘Your wife called.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About twenty minutes ago. You weren’t here,’ she said defensively. ‘She said, would you please get Sophie from day camp?’

  ‘You’re kidding.’ He looked at his watch – Anna was supposed to pick their daughter up in ten minutes. He would never get there in time. What was going on? They’d had an arrangement.

  ‘Is that all she said?’

  ‘Yes. She sounded like she was in a hurry.’

  Sophie was waiting in the parking lot with the camp director, a butch woman with a whistle on a string around her neck.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Robert to the woman. ‘Bit of a mix-up.’

  ‘Shit happens,’ she said rudely, and left.

  ‘Where’s Mom?’ asked Sophie as they drove away.

  He wondered what to say. ‘She’s at the dunes,’ he said, hoping he was right.

  ‘Are we going there now?’

  ‘No, Mom’s got a project she has to finish. So you and I are going to have a bachelor weekend. Lots of treats.’

  ‘I thought a bachelor wasn’t married,’ Sophie said.

  He gave Sophie supper, a short order cook’s special of hamburger and French fries, nutritionally redeemed by a side tomato salad, then let her read upstairs while he watched a baseball game on ESPN. He was fixing himself a second large Scotch when the phone rang.

  ‘Is Anna there?’ A woman was speaking, with an oddly silky voice.

  ‘No, she’s not. Can I help?’

  ‘It’s Donna Kaliski from the centre. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to her yesterday. I was in Springfield at a meeting. Do you know if by any chance she’s heard from someone called Duval Morgan?’

  She didn’t know he was in the loop. ‘Not a word. His case officer doesn’t know either. He said Duval missed his last appointment.’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s terrible. And just when I’ve got good news for him.’

  ‘He could use some.’

  ‘We think we’ve found the evidence from the trial we’ve been looking for.’

  ‘You mean the blazer?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, surprised. ‘I didn’t realise you knew that much about it.’

  He wanted to say that he’d been at the trial, that he’d known Duval first, and that he was the original link. But this woman wouldn’t know that, and it was Anna who was actively helping Duval. Robert’s seeing him for coffee every week or so was hardly doing a lot.

  Kaliski was talkative. ‘It turns out it’s been stored downstate – God knows why. We’ll be able to get an order from a judge next week. With any luck, we’ll have the conviction overturned this autumn.’

  ‘I guess that’s good news.’

  ‘Of course it’s good news,’ she said sharply. ‘Are you expecting Anna any time soon?’

  ‘No. She’s at our weekend house. Would you like the number?’

  ‘I have it. I tried calling there, but she didn’t answer.’

  Because she thought it was me, thought Robert, as Kaliski thanked him and said goodbye.

  4

  He slept fitfully, waking twice nervously when he heard voices outside which turned out to be couples walking very late towards the lake. Rarely alone at night, he felt childlike in his apprehension. Falling asleep again at four, he had a vivid dream, of Vanetta when he was little in the back yard on Blackstone Avenue. She was boosting him up onto the branch of the tree. He felt both a child’s sense of safety and an adult’s insecurity, and woke up with a start to discover it was already eight o’clock.

  He cooked scrambled eggs for Sophie’s breakfast, enough for two, but found he couldn’t eat anything himself. She was still in her pyjamas, something Anna never allowed but he couldn’t be bothered about right now.

  He didn’t want to call the dunes this early. If Anna had decided not to pick up the night before, then calling again would just reinforce her decision. If she were at the dunes. He tried not to think about where else she might be.

  ‘What would you like to do today, Soph?’ he asked, determined to sound cheerful.

  ‘Go see Mom?’ she asked.

  ‘She’ll be back soon. Probably tomorrow.’

  ‘Isn’t Duval coming?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to make it today.’ He’d forgotten all about their original plan. It would be quite wonderful if Duval suddenly arrived, and put their minds at rest. But it wasn’t going to happen.

  He said to Sophie, ‘Maybe we could go to a Cubs game – they’re playing at home today.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, and he was glad to see her happily deflected. She hadn’t picked up his own uncertainty about Anna’s return, since otherwise – like her mother – she wouldn’t have left it alone.

  At ten he decided Anna should have cooled off by now. Before they were married, their occasional arguments could result in non-speaks and a refusal to pick up the phone, but never for more than a day. But when he rang now, there was still no answer, and this reignited his suspicions. He tried telling himself she might be staying at a friend’s; it didn’t have to be with Philip Masters.

  He found Maggie Trumbull’s number on the roster they kept pinned by a magnet to the fridge – along with school numbers, doctor, police, etc. Her husband answered; after a minute Maggie came on.

  ‘Hello, Robert.’ Her voice was civil rather than friendly. Maybe Anna had been confiding in her.

  He explained he was trying to reach Anna at the dunes. ‘I can’t get through and I’m a little worried. I was wondering if she’d been in touch.’

  ‘Not since yesterday at work. I saw her when she was leaving. She said she had to pick up Sophie from day camp.’

  ‘She did? I got a message from her telling me to do that.’

  ‘Maybe she changed her mind, Robert.’

  When he hung up he didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. Why had Anna changed plans at the last minute? Messing about with Sophie’s arrangements was completely out of character. No doubt Robert was now fair game; he couldn’t believe Anna felt Sophie was, too.

  There was one other call he could make. Philip Masters’s number wasn’t on the fridge list, so he went upstairs to see if he could find it in Anna’s study. But he couldn’t find her phone book – she must have it with her. He wasn’t about to call Maggie Trumbull again to ask for the number. He didn’t know what he was going to say to the man anyway; Masters wasn’t going to admit his wife was in his bed at that very moment.

  Then he saw the box.

  It was a large carton, the cardboard soft from its trip to California and, five years later, back again. Lily had sent it at last; he had forgotten all about it. How long had it been here? he wondered, cross that Mrs Peterson had put it in Anna’s study, not his. She must have signed for it the day before.

  Lily had not bothered to repackage the contents, but had merely taped the box closed and slapped a Federal Express label on it. He opened it now with a pair of kitchen scissors, and found on the top a square biscuit tin, the kind the family used to receive each Christmas from his mother’s few remaining Michigan relatives.

  He took the lid off, and found the tin full of buttons, a vast assortment ranging from cuff-sized ivory discs to beetle-sized wedges. Amongst them was a small envelope, with a letter folded inside. Taking it out, he saw that it was addressed in his own hand to Vanetta at the Cloisters address. He stared at its yellowing pages, evidence of his adolescent self:

  Dear V

  It’s getting cold here now and they say there may be snow tomorrow. But people in Boston don’t know what snow really is. It’s okay because they heat the classrooms really wel
l, and my own room is warm as toast.

  I am given lots of schoolwork and doing all right. We were taught about a German named Kant yesterday – I bet you ‘can’t’ believe it!

  I am playing soccer lots, and there is a chance of playing in the game on Saturday against a school called Belmont Hill. I can’t wait for Christmas, and Dad says we will be spending it in Chicago this year, not Michigan, since Gram and Gramps are too old to travel so far. Not that it is that far.

  I hope Merrill is behaving! I miss you, V, and can’t wait to see you.

  Your Bobby

  A blanket sat underneath the tin, reeking of old wool and moth balls, folded over to fit in the box. There wasn’t much else: two pairs of winter socks, and a paper bag which bore the label of Stop ’N’ Shop, once a food emporium in the Loop. Unlikely to have been visited by Vanetta. The bag would have been Merrill’s, who had often shopped there when she had her hair done at a fancy salon downtown. Vanetta must have taken it from the apartment when she stored these things downstairs.

  There was clothing inside the bag. When Robert reached in and pulled, he found he was holding the collar of a man’s shirt – the size tab read 15/35. Mystified, he looked at the shirt, certain he had never seen it before. But then this stuff may have sat in the basement of the Cloisters for twenty years.

  The shirt was oddly coloured, alternately dark mocha and light pink. He stood up and held it out in front of him. The dark patches were not some groovy part of the shirt’s design, but stains. Bloodstains.

  What was it doing here? he wondered. It couldn’t have been his father’s – Johnny had been a big man, before degenerative arthritis and age had shrunken him to his final shell. And Mike was bull-necked – size 17 at least, with a neck like a wrestler’s.

  Was it Robert’s? No, the 35-inch arms were far too long. As a teenager, moreover, he wouldn’t have owned a pink shirt – too faggy, in the delicate words of his peers. And anyway, what would it be doing among Vanetta’s personal effects?

  Something stirred, some glimmer of memory at once tantalisingly close and elusively distant. Words came to mind – he didn’t know why. Do you like my shirt? Was that it? And then he heard the voice again, a female voice. Do you like my pink shirt?

  Yes, that was it. And he started to feel numb as he remembered where he had heard these words, more than twenty years before, quiet yet emphatic and distinctly audible in the hushed courtroom.

  It was Duval’s shirt.

  At first Robert was too stunned to believe it. He felt he was in a dream – he wanted to turn back the clock a day, answer the door to the Fed Ex man, shake his head and say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ then close the door before it was knocked clear off its hinges by the box’s explosive contents.

  But when he looked at the shirt again, it spoke to him, unavoidably. That is Peggy Mohan’s blood, he realised – not some metaphor or a memory. There were long smears on both arms, blotches on the front, even a thick dried lump attached to one of its front buttons. All his recollections of Mohan’s testimony, painted over by time, were suddenly brought home in the bloodstained cotton he held in his hands. He felt as if ice water had been thrown in his face. Duval was guilty after all. This was the same shirt he’d worn the night . . . the night he’d raped and stabbed Peggy Mohan.

  His shock gave way to anger. To think that he had felt sorry for Duval – his pity evaporated in the harsh light of his new knowledge, spattered around him like the blood on the pink shirt. He thought bitterly of how he and Anna had been duped. And to what end? All along Duval knew it could go nowhere.

  At least now Robert knew. He put the shirt back in its bag, knowing it might destroy the life he had built with his wife and daughter. He would have to show the shirt to Anna, and pierce for good the bubble of hope she had grown around Duval.

  ‘Dad?’ Sophie was standing in the doorway.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, thanking God he had put the shirt back in the bag.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just going through some old stuff.’

  ‘Dad, you said Mom’s at the dunes.’ There was a question in her voice.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Is Duval with her?’

  ‘No. What makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just I saw him in the parking lot at camp.’

  He froze. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘What time?’

  She was starting to look frightened, and he realised he had raised his voice.

  ‘In the afternoon at break time. I shouted but he didn’t hear me. What’s wrong, Daddy?’

  Everything was wrong. What was Duval doing there? He was no longer angry, or anxious, or nervous – he was just plain scared. He tried to speak calmly, ‘Did you see Mummy too?’

  ‘Of course not. You picked me up, Dad. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ he said soothingly, doing his best to hide his own mounting fears. They would only stop when he found Anna. He no longer cared where Duval was. Unless he was with Anna.

  Poindexter answered on the third ring. Robert could imagine him, standing on the oak floor of his house’s airy hallway, in khaki shorts and a Madras shirt.

  ‘Hey. I was about to call you,’ Poindexter said.

  Another fucking invitation. Robert cut him off. ‘Have you seen Anna? I can’t reach her – I think the phone in the coach house may be out of order.’

  Poindexter’s voice lost its bouncy quality. ‘You sure she’s here? That’s why I was about to call you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The delinquents have been back. I’m afraid they’ve broken your garage windows again. The same two.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Last night just before dark. Tina saw a car come down the drive, and she thought it turned in at the coach house. I went down a few minutes later, and it was just pulling out. I saw it wasn’t Anna, so I had a look round. That’s when I saw the windows.’

  ‘Was the car an Impala?’ he asked impatiently.

  ‘No. It was one of those old boats – a Bonneville. I was surprised it was still on the road.’

  So it hadn’t been Duval. Then where was Anna?

  ‘Listen, Tim, if you do see Anna will you ask her to call me right away?’ There seemed no point hiding anything. ‘I’m worried because she’s meant to be out there.’

  ‘Of course. I didn’t want to go into the house, but the door was locked and no one’s broken in.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Let me know when you find her.’

  He was getting very scared, so scared that he wanted to know where Anna was, even if the answer was Philip Masters’s flat. How weird, he thought, to wish my wife was having an affair, yet he could tolerate even that if it meant Anna was safe.

  He had nothing concrete to go on, which made his urgency agonising – like a hyperactive man forced to sit still. He thought of calling the police, but what could he say? An ex-con I know is incommunicado; my wife blew up at me and said she wants some space. Ergo, I need your help. No chance.

  There must be clues somewhere in his head, but he found his thoughts whirling too fast to discern them. He had to start looking, but first he needed to do something about Sophie, place her somewhere safe while he tried to find her mother.

  Mr Peterson answered the phone. His Christian name was unknown – even his wife, Anne-Marie, spoke of him as Mr Peterson. An old man with a stick, who wore cuffed trousers and a long-sleeved shirt even in summer weather. He handed the phone over to Mrs Peterson without Robert having to ask.

  He explained that Anna was away and he had an urgent meeting on the South Side. Please could she help? She was hesitant, reluctant to come on a weekend.

  He pressed. ‘If it weren’t urgent, I wouldn’t be bothering you.’ He had a small inspiration. ‘What if I brought Sophie to you?’ Their apartment was on the Evanston–Chicago border, about a mile away.
>
  ‘That’d be okay. I’m just doing the photo album of my daughter’s wedding – Sophie can help me with that.’

  When he explained the change of plan, Sophie kicked up. ‘I thought we were going to the Cubs game,’ she said crossly. It would have been a childish wail not so long ago, but now she spoke like a betrayed adult.

  ‘I’m sorry. Something’s come up. I promise we’ll go to a game soon.’

  ‘Oh, great, Mom’s away, and now you’re going away too.’

  ‘It’s not like that. I’ve got my cellphone – you can call me. I’ll be back this afternoon.’

  ‘Afternoon? I have to spend all day there?’

  He felt helpless in the face of her complaint; he couldn’t convey his urgency without scaring her. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he said, but this did not appease her, and she went off in a sulk.

  He hurriedly packed her knapsack with three reading books and a sketchpad, then threw in a Mars bar to give her an unexpected treat. He found Sophie upstairs and hustled her out of the house before she could object some more. When he parked in front of the Petersons’ apartment, the second floor of an old wooden three-decker house, she looked at him sceptically. ‘Where is Mom really?’

  ‘I told you. She’s at the dunes.’

  ‘Why’d she go without us?’

  He put both hands on the steering wheel. What to say, what to reveal. He avoided his daughter’s gaze. ‘Do me a favour, will you? Just put up with this today, and tomorrow we’ll spend the day together.’

  ‘With Mom?’

  Should he promise this? He couldn’t see why not – his fear was multiplying like spawn, but he still wanted to keep it from Sophie. ‘Yep.’

  ‘You had a fight, didn’t you?’

  This he could level about. ‘Sure did. A real doozie,’ he said with a deliberately lyrical tilt to his voice.

  He’d hoped she would laugh, but instead Sophie started crying. Tears first, then long, wracking sobs that seemed to hurt him physically. He thought of their conversation in Hyde Park. Kids knew what was going on; Sophie must be on pins and needles, wondering if her father and mother were about to split up. He leaned over and hugged her. But the sobbing continued.