The Snow Garden

by Christopher Rice

  “I never blamed you for her death,” Eric continued. “I showed you that note because I blamed myself so much that I couldn’t stand the solitude of it. I wanted a partner in crime, just because my burden was so big I had to share it. It was wrong of me, Randall, I know that. If anyone killed her, it was me, because I let her kill herself. Because when she started drinking and going to the doctor for more and more drugs, I wasn’t the enemy anymore. She was trying to fight her own mind.”

  Randall couldn’t bring himself to look at Eric. The quiet sincerity of Eric’s sorrow blurred the portrait of Dr. Eberman as monster that Randall had clung to so desperately during the past two weeks. It stirred the fire of feelings Randall had vowed not to let burn for the man he was supposed to destroy.

  “And then it was easy for me to forget that I ruined her life. That I promised to love her even when I knew I never could. And I asked her to give up her own life for the sake of mine, even though I knew I couldn’t share it with her. Yes, Randall, I killed her. You didn’t. And if I had known I was going to end up driving you this crazy with guilt, I never would have shown you the note. Never.”

  Randall stared down at the scotch bottle.

  “I’m sorry, Randall.”

  “Don’t say that to me.”

  “I have to. I made a horrible mistake with you. But I never thought I was capable of hurting you. I thought you were the one that had all the power over me. I was greedy. I took more from you than I ever should have, and I justified it by lying to myself and saying you were strong enough.”

  “Stop, Eric.”

  To Randall’s surprise, Eric obeyed.

  “What do they do?” Randall asked once he found his breath.

  “Mitchell calls them purgings. They were supposed to stop after the first year,” Eric muttered. “They were supposed to isolate their sexual desire, and then wean themselves from it gradually. But they never did. And now what I thought was a wonderfully insane experiment is nothing more than your bargain-basement cult. Maybe I should have seen Mitchell’s arrogance. I should have realized he didn’t want anything more than a band of disciples.”

  Randall watched the moist sheen on Eric’s eyes as the man’s jaw tightened to suppress the first quaver of tears. “There are few things I find more frightening than a college student who believes every single one of his convictions,” he finished.

  When Randall looked at Eric, he didn’t see a murderer. He saw the man who would wake up tomorrow morning to find his life ruined in the Atherton Daily Journal. For the first time since arriving at Atherton, Randall spoke without measuring his words first and gauging how they would shape someone’s perception of him. “I wanted to be who I was with you.”

  Eric’s eyes shot to his and held his gaze, until Randall picked up the scotch bottle and pressed it against Eric’s chest. “Your wife was murdered.”

  Eric held the bottle to his chest when Randall released. He narrowed his eyes on Randall. He seemed mildly puzzled but little else. “Good-bye, Eric.”

  Randall stopped on the front porch, waiting for Eric to call after him. But when he looked down he saw that one of his blue contacts had adhered to the palm of his hand. Eric had been staring at his fake blue eye and his revealed brown one. Randall stared out at the desolate street, closing his hand over the contact lens, searching for someone who might see him emerging from Eric’s house for the last time. The street was empty.

  The scarf was balled up inside his jacket pocket. He had kept it hidden 'for the past two months and had never looked at it. And he barely did now as he wedged it inside the mailbox, positioning one hem of red tassels so they spilled over the top, visible after he dropped the lid.

  Even though Kathryn had been typing furiously for the last two hours, April had drifted off to sleep.

  After the article ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jono was nowhere to be found. I went so far as to call his mother, and even she had no idea where he was. I didn’t know what I was going to say to him. All ten girls who had tested positive had come forward by then, and I thought I was going to be the eleventh, so maybe I just needed to hear him deny it.

  At first, she didn’t hear the light knock on the door, so familiar that it pained her: Randall. April let out a groggy groan. Kathryn stopped typing.

  “Kathryn?” Randall called through the door.

  She opened her desk drawer. She had already folded the printout of the Dallas Morning News article down the center. Randall knocked again.

  “Kathryn?” This time it was April stirring.

  “I’ve got it,” Kathryn whispered, rising from the chair.

  Kathryn could see the shadows of Randall’s feet at the bottom of the door on the other side.

  “Kathryn?” he whispered against the door.

  She crouched down and slid the article under the door with a flick of her wrist. As she took a step backward, she could see a shift in shadow though the crack at the bottom of the door as Randall bent down to pick it up. There was a rustling of paper and then silence. Behind her, April shifted in bed.

  The door heaved, straining against its hinges, doorknob rattling. Randall had either kicked it or punched it, it was impossible to tell.

  “Huh?” April grunted, sitting up behind her.

  Kathryn held her ground, surprised that she hadn’t even jumped.

  “What the hell?” April asked behind her.

  “It’s all right. Go to sleep,” she whispered.

  She waited to hear Randall’s door shut across the hall, but instead all she heard were his rough footsteps, gaining speed as they moved down the hallway.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DAWN PEERED AROUND THE EDGES OF THE WINDOW SHADE.

  Her vision blurring, Kathryn clicked on the print icon and sat still in her chair as the pages came humming out of the laser printer. She was done, but the realization didn’t fill her with satisfaction. She felt weak, exhausted. Not proud, but emptier. Cleansed? She wasn’t sure.

  Milky light rose over the rooftops as she made the long walk to 231 Slope Street.

  The front gate was locked so she slid the ten stapled pages inside the mailbox.

  Eric’s eyes drifted open to see the expanse of hardwood floor stretching out from under his nose. Gray morning light glinted off it. His forehead throbbed, but it was footsteps that had awakened him. He blinked, and could make out a set of boots standing inches from his face.

  It took most of his strength to roll over, and when he did he saw Mitchell standing over him. Before Eric had time to make out the mask of silent outrage on his face, Mitchell lifted his arm. The newspaper slapped against Eric’s face and fluttered open as Mitchell’s footsteps retreated into the foyer and across the porch outside.

  Struggling for breath, Eric managed to lift himself up onto his elbows.

  The bottle of Chivas Regal still sat open on the dining-room table, right next to the still half-full glass he poured himself after Randall had left.

  Trying to numb himself, Eric rolled over, spreading out the mess of newspaper pages. But he had covered up the front page, and realized that his thumb and forefingers were hiding his own forehead. He withdrew his hand and saw a black-and-white picture of himself next to the headline: STUDENT’S ALLEGATIONS RAISE NEW QUESTIONS IN DEATH OF PROFESSOR’S WIFE.

  “Kathryn. Get up!” April was tugging on her shoulder. Kathryn weakly batted at her, but April didn’t let go.

  “No.”

  “It’s Randall!”

  “What is Randall?”

  April responded by pulling her out of bed by one arm and leading her into the hallway. Thank God she was wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Halfway down the hall, they stopped in the doorway to an open room. Kathryn didn’t recognize any of the students sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring rapt at the miniature television in the far corner. She was distracted from the screen—outside the window, a satellite dish extended above the tree-line of leafless branches, and the clamor outside the dorm see
med louder than the usual Wednesday morning exodus from Stockton.

  “Is this local?” April asked.

  “Uh-uh,” one of the TV watchers answered without looking away from the set. “This is a Boston station.”

  On television, the news footage cut from" a shot of students walking to class on McKinley Quad to a bleach-blonde reporter standing outside the Quad’s front gates, a banner at her waist announcing that she was broadcasting live.

  “But this morning’s revelations have been greeted with a mixture of reactions. Here on the Atherton University campus, students and faculty alike are skeptical of the timing of Randall Stone’s allegations that he was in bed with Eric Eberman on the night of his wife’s fatal accident. Some are asking why the eighteen-year-old student waited so long to come forward and, even more important, why did he never go to the police? These sentiments were summed up in a terse statement issued late this morning by Atherton’s vice president of public affairs, John Hawthorne.”

  “What the hell is he doing, Kathryn?” April whispered. Kathryn just shook her head.

  “Hawthorne says, quote, ‘The university remains highly skeptical of Mr. Stone’s allegations in light of the fact that he chose to voice them to a news source. It remains to be seen whether this young man has any basis for these very serious charges. If so, Atherton University will deal with them appropriately.’ ”

  The news footage cut to file shots of Lisa Eberman’s mauled Volvo station wagon being hauled from the river. The same footage Kathryn had watched from behind the bar at Madeline’s with Randall the night of the accident, without a clue why Randall had gone so white and distant when he heard.

  “. . . and of course one of the most pressing questions here in this small college town, rocked by scandal, is what exactly do the police think of this young man’s claim that he carried on a month-long sexual affair with Dr. Eric Eberman? What possible bearing might this n,ew information have on the death of forty-one-year-old Lisa Eberman just three short weeks ago? So far, the answer from the police has been a resounding, ‘No Comment!’ ”

  Kathryn turned to April. “Where is he?”

  “Gone,” she answered, her voice hushed. “Either that, or he’s barricaded himself in his room. Some reporters got into the dorm this morning. They were pounding on his door when I woke up. Tran and I called campus security.”

  “You didn’t talk to them, did you?”

  “Of course not. But now they’re parked up and down the block. Just about everyone in Stockton’s had a chance to say, ‘Get that goddamn microphone out of my face.’ Kathryn, did you know about this?”

  Kathryn just stared down the length of the hallway to where the door to Randall’s room still bore the construction-paper signs announcing the room’s occupants, both of whom had now disappeared.

  “This is fucking huge, all right, Kathryn,” April continued. “His story’s on the front page of the paper, and now reporters from up and down the eastern seaboard are crawling all over campus.”

  “Do they know I’m his friend?”

  "Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t tell them anything. Did you know he was going to—”

  “No.” Kathryn shook her head violently.

  April shut her eyes and bowed her head. “Look, I don’t even really know what’s going on, but I know that this Eberman guy’s life has just been ruined. Are you saying you don’t have any idea why Randall would want to do something like that?”

  When April saw Kathryn’s expression she let out a short hiss of breath. “I know who might have a clue,” she said.

  Tim answered on the third ring.

  “Have you seen it?” Kathryn asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Kathryn waited for him to continue, but he did not. “Nice work,” she said finally.

  “Hey! Wait a minute! How much has he told you?”

  “Nothing. I figured most of it out on my own.” With a little help from Jesse Lowry, she thought wryly.

  “Then I don’t feel comfortable — ”

  “Oh, spare me, Tim!” she barked. ‘You practically accused Eberman of murder in the Herald and then three weeks later Randall outs him in the Atherton Journal. This has got your name written all over it.”

  “As I just said, I don’t feel comfortable—”

  “Randall’s gone, Tim. He dropped his bomb and then ran for cover. Was that part of your plan?”

  His shocked silence indicated she’d just scored a point. “We didn’t have a plan.”

  “You helped him, though?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tim, you didn’t have the first clue who you were helping.”

  “What?”

  “Just get over here. I have something to show you.”

  She hung up before Tim could respond. It had only taken Tim a few minutes to read “Drywater, Texas,” by Randall Stone. Once he was finished, Kathryn handed him the printout of the article on the catastrophic derailment of a Dallas-bound Southern Union train that destroyed the Valley Vista Mobile Home Park. When she knew he was finished, she waited for him to look up from the paper he held in both hands. He didn’t.

  “How could a dead runaway get admitted to this school?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So? What?” Tim tossed the paper back at her. She didn’t make a move to catch it and it fluttered to the floor.

  “How did Randall get you to go along with this?”

  “He had proof that Eberman murdered his wife.”

  “What proof?” Kathryn barked.

  “He said ...”

  “Oh, he said!”

  “What are you trying to get at here?”

  “Everything Randall has said since he got here has been a lie, Tim. He’s not from New York and his parents aren’t even alive, much less living in some apartment on Park Avenue. And his name isn’t even Randall Stone. And maybe we can add in everything he said to get you into bed with him so that you could help him do what he did this morning. Which was ruin a man’s life.”

  Tim swallowed his anger and kept his voice steady. “You think he’s lying about Eberman?”

  “I don’t know where it ends with him, Tim. And you don’t either.”

  “Kathryn, for two people with no investigative experience, we turned up some evidence—”

  “Really?” She picked up her copy of The Atherton Journal. “Why isn’t any of it in here? We’ve got Randall in bed with Eberman. We’ve even got Randall going down on Eberman in his friggin’ office. But nothing about murder.”

  Tim rose from the chair as if it would be easier to speak to the vanity. “Because I fucked up. Look. ..” He turned as if he was arguing his case before a judge. “We found a letter that Lisa had written to a divorce attorney. Something about a property dispute. Anyway, the important thing was that it proved she was planning on getting a divorce. But Randall was still too chicken to come forward. I mean, some of the shit he was saying ... It was crazy. Anyway, last night, I delivered the letter to the attorney it was addressed to, thinking that even if Randall didn’t talk, a letter from a dead woman would be enough to reopen the case. Well, it turns out I put our most important piece of evidence behind the iron wall of attorney-client privilege.”

  “The lawyer won’t talk?”

  “Not to us. He’ll talk to the police, who don’t even know what he has. Richard couldn’t mention the letter without a quote.”

  “Because you stole it,” Kathryn answered, unable to keep the reproach out of her voice.

  “Look, I don’t know what you want!”

  “Take a look outside, Tim. Look at what you and Randall have done. Don’t you think that if Randall’s allowed to slaughter Dr. Eberman’s reputation just by talking to a reporter, it’s only fair that the reporters crawling all over this campus know exactly who’s making these accusations?”

  “It’s not an accusation, Kathryn. They were fucking.”

  “Tim!”

  “All right. So Randall lied
about his past. Maybe he was ashamed of being an orphan. Maybe he grew tip in foster homes. That doesn’t change the fact that together he and I found compelling evidence that Eric Eberman murdered his wife! And considering that this porno article in the Journal is the best we could do, I’m not going to jeopardize any chance of getting the police to look at this again!”

  Kathryn shook her head at Tim’s resistance. “He changed his name, Tim. He came here with a fake identity prepared. He wasn’t just ashamed of his past. He’s eighteen and he erased it. He’s not just an orphan who grew up in foster homes. He’s a con artist, Tim, and he pulled one over on you, me, and maybe even Eric Eberman.”

  “Kind of stupid for a con artist to write down his big secret and just give it to you, isn’t it?”

  “He told me it was just a story.”

  “Still, he gave it to you.” Tim sounded happy to have a new battleground to stand on. “You want to know what he told me about you?”

  “I probably won’t believe it.”

  “He thought he was Eric’s motive for killing his wife. And part of him liked that. But another part of him stayed awake nights just thinking about what you would think if you knew what he had done. Sleeping with a married man. He thought if he found out the truth it would make it all easier for you to accept in the end.”

  Kathryn looked away, shaking her head free of Tim’s words and the memory that after giving her the story, Randall had pleaded with her not to show it to anyone else. And she had agreed.

  “You’re probably the only one here he holds himself accountable to.” “He’s not here anymore,” she muttered.

  Nor was Jesse. And what had he written on Randall when he discovered that Randall’s entire identity was fabricated, that Randall was a runaway believed dead? Jesse had called it awe-inspiring.

  “The fact that Randall just decided to leave town fucks with his whole credibility,” Tim said. “Since I honestly believe that the strength of his accusations are the only thing that’s going to help get at the truth here, I’ll do something that should satisfy you.”