by Dick Cluster
His eyes were busy, so he couldn’t watch her response. “Uh-uh,” was all she said.
“Oh. You get any sleep, before all this?”
“A little. Not much. I was worried.”
“That I wouldn’t come back?”
“That you’d decide you ought to turn me in.”
Alex slowed coming up to the exit, and then he could take a minute to sneak a glance. Her legs, soaked and shivering, were drawn up on the seat, against her chest. Her hair was wet, face streaked and dripping too. She looked like a wet cat, like his landlady’s cat Antoine, who usually had a proud, independent, inquisitive air, but sometimes would get stuck outside in a storm.
“There’s a tape recorder in the pocket here,” Suzanne said. It was half complaint, half challenge. “What am I supposed to do now, confess?”
The dashboard lights made her face a little bit green. He couldn’t see her eyes. That somebody had come looking for him at his shop was not surprising. That they had reappeared at the motel, after he was sure he’d lost them, troubled his sense of order. Bernie knew where she was. Tommy knew. Nobody else knew, unless she’d been followed from the mall— or had called somebody, anybody, once she got to the motel. Alex wasn’t going to put her out into the storm, but he wasn’t going to break out the warm milk or dry towels yet. He said, “It’s for Bernie to hear the rest of your story, whatever the rest is. We’re going to New Hampshire, we won’t see him again.”
Taking the exit, he felt a flow of warm air, which meant that the Saab’s engine had heated up enough to share its heat with the coolant, and the coolant with the fins of the heater core. That was comforting to him, just as the warm air had to be comforting to Suzanne, whatever burden of misery and fear and defiance she might be carrying. She slid her legs down to take advantage of the heat. She buckled her seat belt and unzipped the parka. After a minute she reached under her sweater. There was a sound of Velcro being separated. Alex could tell she was freeing her injured arm from the sling. He crossed under the highway and headed north. In a minute he came to an intersection with a small commercial district, closed now. He saw there was some kind of clinic, a hair-cutting place, and a shop that advertised scuba gear.
“New Hampshire,” Suzanne said. “If you go right, it’ll take you over to 93.”
“Thanks,” said Alex. “Did you grow up around here?”
“Here? Not me. Saugus. That’s why I asked Professor Phillips to meet me at the Typhoon. From there I thought… but then Scat disappeared. I was out looking for him. That’s why I sent, why Natalie went instead. But Tommy and some guys rent an apartment, so I drive around here some. I’m not making too much sense, am I?”
Alex turned where she said. He didn’t know his own way, and the road had a route number and a sign promising Woburn and Burlington. As he followed twists and turns through darkened buildings and dark scrubby woods, he shot a glance at his passenger struggling with her arm, maybe trying to get its circulation restored. He relented about the warm milk. “Wait a minute,” he said, signaling and braking to a stop. “Wait a minute, let me help.” He waited a minute himself to be sure no big car materialized behind. Suzanne said, “I’ve got to get this sweater off,” raising her free arm over her head.
Alex lifted the hem and began to pull the sweater slowly and gently over her head. It was the same way he’d stripped Maria so many times when she was too tired to get herself undressed. But the difference pointed as much as anything to the problem he now had with Suzanne. It might be that she needed help with her arm. And it might be that she was trying one more way of leading him where she wanted to go. And it might be that she was confused about the difference. The question was, was he?
With the heater on, the air in the car was clammy and steamy at once. They were parked on a dark, slippery roadside where ghostly lights roared up and past. There was no locking of glances, because of the dark and because Suzanne’s eyes were hidden by the black wool that he’d now pulled up over her head. But she wouldn’t need sight to know that his eyes, close in the semidarkness, would be wandering over her skin, over soft curves, her ribs opened by her lifted arms, her breasts half-risen out of the sheer bra. It didn’t matter what he’d thought or said in Trevisone’s office. The fact was that he liked women and they tended to like him. He didn’t prolong his helpful operation, but there was still a little time to go with the fantasy about what his lips and fingers might do in this territory. There was also a little time to puzzle over whether that might bring him any closer to knowing her, or her to knowing him.
Then the sweater was taken care of and he’d tossed it into the backseat, bringing back buried high school memories. He concentrated on the sling, a modern contraption that hung from one shoulder but also fit around her waist. It used one Velcro strap, already undone, to fasten the injured arm by the wrist. Suzanne undid the second clasp, which buckled the waist strap, and handed the sling to Alex while she slipped her bare and goose-pimpled arms into the parka. She took the sling back and refastened it outside the coat.
“Thank you,” she said. “My arm was frozen stiff in there.”
“Sure,” Alex answered, pulling back onto the road. He thought about women being propositioned by their therapists and gynecologists and the like. It was something about the caretaker/client relationship, and something about social taboos, what pieces of body or mind were supposed to be kept hidden unless you wanted to extend an invitation. It was fucked up, no doubt about it, but there it was.
“So, um, where do you live?” he asked.
“I live in Dorchester, near school. I mean, I can only afford a room, but I found one.”
“I tried to call you there. All day Sunday. You live by yourself, that’s why nobody answered?”
“Yeah, one room with kitchen privileges, in a lady’s house. She only charges seventy-five a month, and I do some shopping and stuff for her. The cops have probably been there, poking through all my stuff. And Mrs. Brady is telling them everything she ever knew or guessed about me, lonely as she is.” Alex felt that she was looking at him now, so he briefly did meet her glance. On impulse he said, “If you had any dry pants to change into, you’d need me to help peel your jeans off too.”
“I know,” Suzanne laughed, cracking up. A big smile split her face, and she kept it toward Alex as she turned around to retrieve the sweater which she used as a damp towel on her face and hair. “I’m kind of stuck with you, and I guess you feel like you’re stuck with me. It’s not you, it’s those detectives going through my room that makes me feel… invaded.”
“Why?”
“That was private space, the first I had in a long time. It was like a diary when you’re thirteen— maybe like your car is to you, I don’t know. What did you feel like when they smashed it? Well, I guess you were more worried about Maria, but still…”
“So, how do you afford that room, and school? Do you have a job or a scholarship or something?”
“Yeah. Both. I did. At this rate I’m gonna lose them both. I have a job at school, clerk, in financial aid. Fill out this form, fill out that, ten copies of each.” Lights and big green overhead signs appeared ahead. She added, “I’ll tell you and your lawyer the story, but I’d like to get something warm in me, and some caffeine to stay awake. There’s a place up here, and I think there’s a CVS where I could get a couple T-shirts and stuff to wear.”
“Right,” Alex said. He still wasn’t sure what had just happened, whether anything was settled. But he thought it was better to have happened there and then, not later, in some motel room where the stale air and stale decor reminded them they were strangers together, where the only furniture made for use and comfort was a big, soft bed. He waited while she shopped, and then in the restaurant she disappeared to the ladies’ room and he called Meredith to report in. When her answering machine clicked in, he hung up. He tried Kim, who was home, so he told her what had happened today. He asked her to relay this to Meredith and to Rosemarie Sturgeon also. He asked Kim
to remind Meredith that the invitation to join him in New Hampshire still stood. He asked her to stress that his entanglement with Suzanne was legal and professional and perhaps a certain amount parental, that was all.
Kim said, “Methinks the fellow doth etcetera.” She added, “I know you don’t feel this way, Alex, but your cancer makes some of us feel you’re just back from the brink of death. So we worry about you. I won’t speak for Meredith, or lecture about the wonders of monogamy. I just care that you come out of this adventure unhurt. And I trust your judgment best when you’ve got a clear, uninfatuated head.”
14. CALLAHAN
Alex drove north in a single line of cars doing forty behind a snowplow. The snow had gotten drier, the flakes smaller and faster, as he headed into the center of the storm. He asked Suzanne how she knew Caroline Davis’s death wasn’t an accident.
“Because Scat told me it was arranged for him to run into her.”
“Did he tell anybody else, do you think, or only you?”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t have any evidence except my word for it, if that’s what you mean.”
Suzanne motioned with the recorder, free hand clasped around it, built-in mike a few inches from her mouth. She added, “I didn’t ask him to do anything like this. He wasn’t in that kind of shape.”
“What did he tell you?” Alex asked.
“Understand, I called him from your place, after I heard about it on the news. I caught the last bus and he picked me up in Plymouth. Scat has— he had— this condo in Pepperell Woods. So that’s where we went, but as soon as we got there he changed his mind and said he had to get out. I drove while he did some lines. All the way down he was kind of blubbering to himself. He told me it was set up. He said they told him she’d already be dead, that all he’d be doing was running over a corpse. He said it was just destroying evidence, like burying a body or flushing something down the toilet.”
“Did he know who she was going to be, beforehand? If he knew who, then…”
“Then he could have warned her or something, yeah. He said no, he said they wouldn’t tell him that— any more than he would tell me who it was that gave him his orders, that set this up. He told me that after he hit her and called the cops and all, finally he had to ask them if they knew who she was.”
“Did you believe that?”
“He didn’t sound like he believed himself. If he believed himself, maybe I could’ve let well enough— worse enough— alone.”
“Why? Why would that have made it okay to ‘leave worse enough alone’?” Alex heard himself putting quotation marks around her apt if ungrammatical phrase. It lent a touch of paternalism that his question didn’t need. But Suzanne only answered in the same steady voice, speaking into the tape recorder as if she were confiding to the kind of diary she would keep now that she was no longer thirteen.
“It wouldn’t have been okay, but I might’ve done it, and then I wouldn’t be where I am now. I tried to talk to him about facing yourself, taking responsibility for what you’ve done. Whether he killed her or somebody else did, he was going straight downhill with that on his conscience. I brought him to Natalie’s and we both stayed with him. I thought he would come around to the idea of turning himself in. That’s why I wanted to meet Professor Phillips. I wanted some help, some advice about that. Somebody objective. Somebody that wouldn’t just see me as an ex-junkie still stuck on my ex-dealer and ex-boyfriend, okay?”
“That’s what Natalie thought? Natalie thought you should just turn him in?”
“Yeah. Funny, isn’t it? Probably Professor Phillips thinks you should just turn me in.”
Alex didn’t rise to the bait. “Look, Suzanne,” he said. “Did you kill Scat, or not?” He recognized the tone of voice this time, too. Look, Maria. Did you brush your teeth, or didn’t you? It wasn’t easy to convince somebody she was better off telling the truth, no matter what. It wouldn’t get easier, either— assuming he was still among the living, to be in a position to deal. Look, Maria. Are you trying to steal Elizabeth’s boyfriend, or not? Look, Maria, I want to know whether you’re doing drugs/having sex. I don’t know, Alex thought. After a certain point, it’s no longer Tell me the truth; it’s Show me you can handle it right, that’s all.
“No,” Suzanne said. “No, Alex, I swear to God. He was keeping his nose full and not thinking too straight, but I really thought he was coming around to turning himself in. And then I guess he woke up and panicked and decided that wasn’t the way to go. And then somebody killed him. They did it because of what he knew. They didn’t kill him fast. In the time it took, he would have told them that I knew it too. That’s why I ran. Then I saw that only made it look like it was me.”
I want that part again, slower, Alex thought. But for now he let her go forward. He asked, “Where did you run?”
“I took his bike— the keys were on the kitchen table. He was in the parlor, on the rug—stabbed, blood everywhere. It was— he was still warm— I— I thought he was dead, but I wasn’t sure. The knife was next to him on the floor.”
“Did you touch it?”
Suzanne shuddered. It was an involuntary shudder, a spasm, her shoulders deciding they felt a cold burden that they could not bear. Alex felt it, shot her a glance, and watched the wipers brush the snow up and down, back and forth. “No,” she said. “I didn’t touch it. No. But I touched him. He was warm. I’ve seen a lot of bad shit, even people I was afraid could be dead. I never saw anybody that really was. I never saw blood like that. I could smell it. I had to get out. I took his keys. I got on his bike and got to a pay phone and called the cops. I didn’t say who I was, just said they better get an ambulance there. Then I drove his bike up into Arlington. I can tell your lawyer friend where the phone was, where I left the bike, what kind of knife, all of that. Then I hitched a ride out to Tommy’s. He hid me somewhere. But that was no good, not forever. Last night I talked to Natalie, she told me about you and Caroline’s grandmother, what she hired you to do. If you can find out about Scat and Caroline, maybe that’ll lead to who killed Scat too. She thought it would be safe by then for me to come to her place. If I got there, she’d set something up for me to get together with you.”
Suzanne stopped then, didn’t go on right away. Alex saw she had laid the recorder in her lap. Her free hand was rubbing the bad shoulder, maybe because of the memory of what had happened to it, maybe just to keep busy. Ahead of him, two drivers got brave and veered out around the plow. Alex just followed the taillights of the car that remained between it and him. He had a lot more story to hear, and he had no need to get brave. He said, “This is today, right?”
“Right.” She picked up the recorder, pressed the play button again, and continued. “Today I was supposed to end up like that girl Caroline, except today I got lucky again.”
No, Alex thought. No, one is enough, not you too. He told himself to keep his two eyes on the road, and the third eye that Terry talked about on the line of parts that made up this story, a thin line of events that should be laid out neatly one at a time. He said, “Tell me what happened today.”
“I went to Natalie’s, like I said. If I was a killer, who would expect me back at the scene of the crime? I was sitting in the kitchen, waiting, thinking that’s Natalie coming up the back steps. Instead it’s this guy. He says, ‘I’m Detective Callahan. From here on, anything you say can be used against you.’ I thought, this isn’t real, this isn’t happening to me. Next thing I knew he had his arm around my neck and something against my ribs. He said if I didn’t want to bleed to death like Scat, I’d cooperate. He tied me up like you saw. He sat there kind of toying with a knife, a long folding knife, a fishing knife I think it was. He said on second thought he was going to arrange it so I died like that nosy bitch instead.”
“Caroline?”
“That’s what I said. I said, ‘You mean the one Scat ran over?’ He didn’t answer that. He reached in his overcoat and came out with a needle, a syringe. He held it up. H
e said, ‘It’ll be painless this way. You come with me, all you’ll feel is a pinprick, it’ll look like an accident and everything’ll be okay.’ He kind of smiled and then held up the knife in his other hand. He said, ‘You don’t, you feel this slide in and out of a warm wet hole you didn’t use to have. You’ll be screaming, but you still might hear the air bubbling out the wrong side of your lungs.’ ”
Alex turned from the swish-swish of the wipers and the red taillights of the car ahead. He turned long enough to watch her lips form expressively around her last words. They stayed parted, making a hiss that illustrated the sound of a leak, air from a tire, from a basketball, maybe from a punctured lung. She sounded the way people tended to sound when they were repeating the story of a disaster or narrow escape that had happened to somebody else— with shock but also with relish, as if they believe but at the same time they can’t accept that it’s real. A bad actress might sound like that, too. But so would somebody who had been terrified— had reason still to be terrified— and was trying to separate herself from her fear in just that way. Alex understood something about that.
“Jesus,” he said. “How did you get away?”
“I told him okay, I’d go with him. He went down the steps first, backing down to keep an eye on me. The only thing I could think of was to make a ball and roll down sideways. I went bumpity-bump like a sled or something out of control. I shut my eyes, I couldn’t help it. All I know is I hit him and he either missed me or else he didn’t use the knife. I got up before he did, and I ran. I was around the house and on the street before I knew I was hurt. I passed a few people who looked at me funny or called out, ‘Hey, are you okay?’ I couldn’t even talk, not yet, but I wanted to get to you instead of the cops if I could. When I got there I tried ringing the bell with my nose. I kicked the goddamn door and banged on the glass with my head. Then I just kind of wore out, gave up, I guess. I figured I wouldn’t die, or if I did maybe that was God’s way of winding up the whole thing.”
