by Unknown
The rear door to the church was ajar. He peered in, but at first he couldn’t see a thing, the contrast too great between the yellow glare outside and the lightless interior of the derelict building. Gradually, large amorphous shapes became distinguishable, like prehistoric mammals emerging out of the mist. He could make out rows of wooden pews facing him, and high up in the back a balcony with a protective railing.
He stepped inside carefully, a wooden board creaking under his foot. To his right he saw two overturned chairs and sheets of music spilled on a dusty floor. The air was thick with damp, swamp-like. To his left, as he turned slowly, there were two other chairs that had not been overturned.
Anna was sitting in one of them.
Was she alive? Her chin sagged, and his first thought was, she’s given up, though he could not have said exactly what that meant. Her legs were stretched out before her – he recognised the toffee-coloured slacks and tan sandals. Above her waist she was only wearing a bra.
Only a bra? Oh, Christ, he thought, but then he saw her chest move as she exhaled – she was alive. As he went towards her he saw that Anna’s arms were behind her, over the back of the chair. She had been tied up expertly with the kind of white cord they used back in Primrose Hill as a laundry line. Peggy Mohan had been tied up with the same kind of cord.
Anna must have heard him approach, for she lifted her head up and her eyes widened. He was about to speak when she motioned with her eyes towards the back of the church. He nodded, putting his finger to his lips, and looked out towards the lines of empty pews. He could see nothing in the vast arena of un-occupied space. Then he noticed on the other chair a butcher’s knife, its blade flat on the seat of the chair like a calculated reminder.
He picked it up, then went behind Anna’s chair, where he sawed vigorously until the cord between her wrists gave way and her arms fell loose.
‘Where is he?’ he said quietly in her ear.
She was rubbing her wrists carefully, trying to drive the blood back into circulation. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a dull voice. He realised she was in shock.
‘Did he hurt you?’
She shook her head.
‘Did he—?’
She shook her head again; she knew exactly what he’d meant.
Then she said in a cracked, frightened voice, ‘He took me to the dunes – he thought you’d be there for the weekend. He got scared off when Tina Poindexter came by, so he drove me here. He said you’d know where to find us.’
‘Is he in there?’ He gestured with his head at the pews.
‘I heard something moving in the balcony.’
‘Here’s what I want you to do. Go out that way there—’ he pointed to the exit he had come in, where a v-shaped wedge of light slanted through the door – ‘and then go round to the street. At the corner there’s a restaurant. Get them to call 911 right away.’
‘But—’
‘No buts. Do what I say. Understand?’
She nodded, and got up slowly from the chair, looking as if her legs might give way. He saw her blouse, crumpled in a heap on the floor, and picked it up and handed it to her.
‘What about you?’ she said, sounding afraid again. She was putting her shirt on slowly. Too slowly.
‘I’ll be right behind you. Now get out of here. Quick.’
When he heard her go out the door, he turned towards the pews. He knew he should go, too, but he stood there, stock still. Though he waited, he heard nothing. Maybe Duval had gone, slipped out some other way, or tiptoed out while Anna had her head down. Go to Mississippi, thought Robert. Standing near the former site of the altar, it seemed like a secular benediction. Take the Bonneville and get out of town. Go anywhere, but for God’s sakes, go.
He should leave, find Anna and wait for the police, then try and rebuild the lives Duval had fractured – their own. He started to walk to the door, when a voice suddenly spoke, out of the darkness behind him.
‘I wasn’t going to hurt her, Bobby.’ There was a pleading note to the words.
Robert stopped and turned around. He peered into the darkness, then said loudly, ‘You could have fooled me. You had her tied up. And her shirt was off.’
‘I know. But I promise I wasn’t going to hurt her.’ There was a faint echo to his words. Robert realised he was up on the balcony.
‘Is that what you told Peggy Mohan, too?’
‘I thought you believed in me, Bobby.’ He sounded aggrieved. It was almost convincing. ‘Anna does. And Donna.’
‘Not for much longer, Duval. Donna Kaliski says they found your blazer.’
Silence hung in the darkness like fog. Robert’s voice sliced through it. ‘The next step would have been a DNA test. But you and I know what that would show, now don’t we?’
‘What you talkin’ about?’
‘You’d flunk the test. I know that.’
‘Then you know something nobody else does, Bobby.’
‘Except Vanetta.’
‘What’s it got to do with Vanetta?’ He sounded angry.
‘She kept the shirt, Duval. The shirt you wore that night. I’ve got it now – there’s blood all over it. Peggy Mohan’s blood.’
Duval said nothing at all. When his silence persisted, Robert peered up through the gloom. He said, ‘What I can’t understand, is why you put us through such a wild goose chase. What was the point?’
This time Duval replied. ‘When I come out of prison I didn’t want to bother you, Bobby. I just wanted to know you again. I met your family; that meant a lot to me. I even sent your wife flowers.’
So the mysterious flowers had come from Duval. Robert was dumbfounded. What had been the point? Anna hadn’t had the faintest idea who’d sent them to her.
Duval said, ‘I was trying to be nice. That’s all. I wasn’t stalking her, Bobby.’
‘But Duval, you hadn’t even met Anna when you sent those flowers. You didn’t know us at all.’
‘But I wanted to,’ Duval insisted, and the beseeching tone had entered his voice again. ‘I already knew Jermaine and his wife didn’t want me around. They’re family, but it didn’t mean anything to them. So I hoped I could find a life with you all instead.’ He paused. ‘But you let me down.’
‘You think we let you down. How do you figure that?’ He realised that through the far wall was the Blackstone apartment where he had grown up. And where he and Duval had played.
‘Man, it’s always been that way. It started when I was little. I had no father. He wasn’t just absent – I didn’t even know his name. With Aurelia, it could have been any one of a thousand men. Shit, Bobby, I saw two men fucking my mother when I was five years old. One of ’em caught me watching him and he started to laugh. Then my own mother saw me, and she just looked away.’
‘But you had Vanetta, Duval. You know she loved you. She always loved you.’ He thought of how she had kept Duval’s secret.
‘I know that, Bobby. You don’t have to tell me.’ He sounded resentful. ‘See, when I first thought I might get out – must be nine or ten years ago – I got really scared, man. Sounds funny, don’t it? Here’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for and when it looks like it might happen, my pants filled up.’
‘That’s not surprising, Duval.’ He would have been used to prison; the outside world must have seemed terrifying.
‘The one thing I hung on to is that when I got out, Vanetta would be there. This time, she was gonna let me live with her. She said so herself. If she’d only have let me live with her before I wouldn’t have got into trouble.’
‘What, you think you wouldn’t have hurt that girl?’
‘Shit, that Mohan girl, she used to be friendly, she used to say hi. Then one night I say “You look mighty fine this evening”, and after that she wouldn’t even look at me, she wouldn’t even acknowledge that I existed. Do you know how that made me feel? She was worse than Lily.’
Lily? Was Duval still nursing his weird complex about Robert’s sister? It had been almost
forty years. He decided to ignore it. ‘Is that why you hurt the Mohan woman so bad?’
‘I don’t know, Bobby.’ His voice sobered. ‘Something just seemed to give. I can’t explain it. Don’t think I ain’t thought about it.’
There was steel in his voice now, as if he was following an argument he had carved out against the formidable opposition of his conscience and his guilt.
Duval was saying, ‘The thing was, I wanted that girl to acknowledge me. No one else did. My momma was sliding down into her hole, and I might as well have never been born as far as she was concerned. Even Vanetta didn’t understand – she said I had to stand on my own two feet, just when I felt I had no feet at all.
‘I know I was wrong, I know it. But I realise now that it wasn’t just me who had to live with what I had done. Nobody else wants to forget about it, either, even after all these years. There’re some mistakes a man can make that nobody will forgive him for.’
‘You did the time; you paid the price. They forgive you, Duval.’
‘No, they don’t,’ he snapped. Robert thought he could see him now, leaning above the balcony’s rail above the centre aisle of the church, a moving square of white. It must be his shirt.
Duval said, ‘Think about it, Bobby. ’Spose I’d said to you, “I’ve done my time, I am a changed man, let’s forget about what I did, but yes, sir, I did do it”. Would you have been so nice to me? Would you have wanted to know me? Would you have let me meet your wife and daughter?’
There was no point answering. Duval was absolutely right.
‘That’s why I lied.’ He stopped, and Robert heard a rustling noise from the balcony. Then Duval started talking again. ‘I didn’t lie to fool you or trick you. I lied so you would treat me like a normal man, I lied so you would give me a break. I lied so you wouldn’t condemn me before you had a chance to find out what I was like. I lied so you would know me.’
Robert said, ‘But you must have known you’d be found out, if you insisted on this innocence stuff. Why couldn’t you leave it alone?’
‘I started something I couldn’t stop. Thanks to your wife, and that woman in the centre.’ He sounded angry at them now. He suddenly lowered his voice, as if imparting a confidence, but Robert heard him clearly nonetheless. ‘Even if I’d thought it through, I would have done the same thing. Because if I said I was guilty, y’all wouldn’t want to know.’
Robert was trying to keep Duval talking until the police arrived, but part of him was enthralled. Duval didn’t sound crazy at all, even in his distorted rationales. He seemed to recognise the gulf between him and everybody else, though not that he was living in a bubble of his own. What had Bockbauer said? When their balloon gets pricked . . . a lot of them can’t cope. God knows, Duval hadn’t coped – or he wouldn’t be standing here in the dark on a rotting balcony, having kidnapped Robert’s wife.
‘You still there, Bobby?’
‘Of course I am. Look, Duval, it’s not too late. I went to see Bockbauer. He was pissed off, but he said he’d give you another break.’
‘Bobby, don’t fuck with me now. We both know it’s too late.’
Then a siren sounded in the distance, and it was coming closer.
‘Duval, I want you to stay right where you are. I’m sorry but that’s the cops. You know they had to come.’
‘I know.’ His voice was flat, but the white square was still there on the balcony; Duval hadn’t moved.
‘You stay right there, okay? Whatever you do don’t come down. They’re going to be scared. Just like those guards downstate. I don’t want you getting shot, Duval. You hear me?’
Robert couldn’t see him on the balcony now. He must have stepped back. ‘Duval, I said, did you hear me?’
And then he heard the one word, as if they were boys again and he was telling him to come play ball. ‘Okay.’
Robert went out and through the shitty little yard, with its plastic wrappers and a child’s toy carelessly thrown over the wall from the Dorchester Avenue side. When he turned the corner to go along the alley to the street, two figures in uniform appeared out of the dark in front of him. One of them started, his hand moving to his sidearm.
Robert shouted, ‘Don’t shoot!’ and put his hands in the air.
The cops came forward carefully. ‘Where is the guy?’ one of them demanded.
‘He’s inside.’ He sensed his voice was shaky.
‘Is he armed?’
He hesitated, thinking fast. ‘I don’t know.’ A yes would guarantee Duval didn’t leave the church alive. The same officer started to draw his weapon. Robert said sharply, ‘Don’t go in yet. Please.’
The cop looked at his partner, who shrugged. Robert said, ‘He’s up in the balcony, but I think he’ll come down. Let me talk to him – we grew up together.’ And before they could object he turned and went around the corner.
He walked through the rear doorway, calling, ‘Duval! Duval!’ as he moved forward into the dark hall, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. ‘Come on down. It will be okay. You’re safe if you come down now.’
The big room was silent, and he felt frightened again, worried that Duval had come down and was hiding, ready to attack him or the police. Looking up towards the empty balcony, he saw something draped over its mahogany rail. He walked quickly down the church’s aisle, kicking aside rubbish and hymn books, less afraid now, until he was only about ten feet from the bottom of the balcony.
Duval had done it very neatly. The rope was double hitched around the mahogany rail, and could have held an even greater weight. Height was not a problem, since the top of the rail must have been a good fifteen feet above the ground floor. His eyes were closed, and the look on his face seemed entirely peaceful – save for the odd tilt to his head, as if he’d slept in a funny position and was trying to work out the resulting crick in his neck. He must have broken his neck instantly when he jumped.
He was wearing a white shirt, and the same pressed suit trousers he’d had on that day in the coffee shop when the two old friends had met for the first time in almost twenty-five years. The same trousers he’d had on in court, when Robert said he’d be back to see him again, but never had.
Why had Duval done this? Was it hopelessness, now that his guilt had been exposed? Or was it guilt, both about his lies and his crime, guilt that had been hounding him until he had finally simply given up? Either way, he must have realised he would never be allowed to lead a normal life. Whatever normal meant.
Robert would never know the answer now, or what he could have done that would have kept Duval alive. He held his breath for a moment. He thought of how through coincidence or fate, or both, Duval had emerged from prison after Robert had returned to his home town and their lives had become entwined again, like strands of wool reunited on their original spool.
He remembered the two of them as boys, playing right next door with carefree easiness, too young for disappointments, too young even for hope. It had been an Eden, after all, that small back yard, here on the South Side of Chicago, with its lone big tree, in the days before the runt and Mule had come as harbingers of a crueller life.
Not much of a life for Duval, he thought, as he stared at the pendulous figure of his dead friend. He wondered why, if there were no God, people were placed in their lives so differently, like the diverse tributaries of a river. He wondered whether, if he could have seen his own life ahead of him, he would have lived it just the same. If the dice were thrown ahead of time, would he want them rolled again, or opt to play them as they lay? He didn’t know; he only knew that whatever force commanded life, it was blind to the fate of those it consigned. There was no caring master.
‘Officer!’ he shouted, and within seconds he heard the policemen coming into the church behind him. Robert took a last long look at Duval hanging there in his final effort at peace. Then he walked to the back of the church and collected the knife from the chair. Motioning the cop to come and help, he went to cut his old friend down.
If y
ou enjoyed Without Prejudice,
read on for Chapter One of Stillriver,
also by Andrew Rosenheim
One
As he had driven north through the high orchard country he had seen the last sliver of sun slip into Lake Michigan, but here enough light remained for him to make out the birch tree on the corner of the lot, the towering twin maples next to the house, the long expanse of white pine boards and green-shuttered windows that was the house itself. And a patrol car in the drive.
He parked his rental car and got out slowly, stretching after the drive from the little airport in Muskegon and looking around for a minute before going inside. The rough ryegrass (they had never had a silky lawn) was high – why hadn’t his brother been round to cut it? He looked across at the Wagners’, and was surprised to see four cars parked under the cedar trees there. Then he remembered it was now a bed and breakfast. Tourists up for Memorial Day, hoping that, like a rare restaurant meal served ahead of expectation, summer would come early to dispel this wet, cold weather. There was no sign of the Wagner twins.
He heard the back door groan as it opened, then slammed shut, and he turned round to see Jimmy Olds standing on the porch. He was in blue-grey uniform, and had the crescent moon shades of a motorcycle cop pushed back on his head, covering the top of his balding forehead. He was an improbable policeman – short, skinny, quite the opposite of his predecessor, Jerry Dawson, who had been a bear-like barrel of a man, an ex-marine well over six feet tall and very tough with it.
‘Hey Jimmy.’ He was trying to sound friendly but could tell his tone was merely resigned.
Jimmy nodded. ‘Michael.’
Michael walked to the porch and climbed the steps to shake hands.
‘You’ve had a long trip,’ said Jimmy.
‘You could say that.’
‘Europe, right?’ Pronounced Yurp. ‘How long you been over there?’
‘Almost six years.’
