Compound Fractures

by Stephen White

  I was incapable of recognizing the specific nature of the underlying elegance.

  Each time I thought I’d discovered an organizing principle that might guide me, I quickly found an exception or three or five. Any hope proved fanciful.

  The mail addressed to Lauren that had continued to arrive after her death provided me with signage that I could use to mark trailheads for future exploration. I knew that my task would be easier if I could see and read the email that continued to arrive for Lauren after her death, too.

  But my digital access was blocked. The Blackberry she carried had been provided by the DA’s office. I never saw it again after she was shot. Whether it was collected into evidence to be used in an eventual prosecution of her murder, or whether it had simply been handed over to her employers by the police to protect work product, I didn’t know. I accepted that I might never know.

  Whatever guidance Lauren’s BlackBerry might provide about intimate correspondence with Raoul would not be available to me. But it might, I knew, be available to Elliot Bellhaven, Lauren’s boss. That pissed me off.

  Her personal laptop was password protected. That was not a surprise. During a conversation we’d had one date night about marital transparency—her issue more than mine—we had exchanged laptop passwords. I had never used her password and had misremembered or forgotten it. Or she had changed it after she told me what it was.

  Or she had lied to me.

  Some of that had, apparently, been going on.

  The piles and files exhausted me. I took a break to spend an hour with the kids. I made them dinner. I returned to the chore in the sitting room. I got them to bed.

  Midnight came and went. At 12:20, I got a text from LA Amy.

  Good Night Moon! The light tonight!!! Go look!!

  I went and I looked. Fine moon. Not full, but still. I returned to find another text.

  Ur 2nd thoughts? Not a date. Don’t apologize.

  I considered replying. With an apology, or some defiance. I didn’t bother.

  At 2:37, I gave up trying to solve the office puzzle, flicked off the lights, and collapsed onto the bed in the guest room. I couldn’t sleep; my brain was busy pondering the weight of all the potential surprises I was postponing until the next day.

  On top of the list of what was keeping me awake? I had located a stash of apparent work material in two discrete locations among her things. One source was in an inch-thick file marked “Pending Resolution, Work” that was in the short file drawer of her desk. The other, parallel collection was contained in an unsealed fat Tyvek envelope—damn Tyvek—that she had marked “Personal, Work.” Oxymoron, that.

  The envelope was buried among a pile of papers and catalogs.

  The file appeared to be neat and organized. The envelope was not organized. Papers of all kinds were stuffed into that Tyvek repository in a haphazard fashion.

  By chance, I had tossed the envelope that Sofie had pulled from the pocket of Lauren’s peacoat in the week between Christmas and New Year’s—the sealed envelope that Sofie said was addressed to “elly-ott”—on top of the stack that included the Tyvek.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was demonstrating admirable restraint by not reading the work materials, or whether my cowardice about my wife’s secrets had become a dominant trait. Regardless, I greeted the unknown on Lauren’s desk with trepidation. I had trouble believing there was something there that I wanted to know. I was also doubtful that I would find something that would confirm, or deny, the existence of an affair between Lauren and Raoul. Lauren had hidden her affair successfully. I didn’t believe she would have left careless clues for me on her desk at home.

  Closure with Lauren would be elusive. Closure with LA Amy? Easier. I got out of bed, returned to the bedroom, and found the texting thread with her. I pecked out:

  You were sweet to reach out. Sorry, no. Maybe next time I’m in LA.

  I felt some accomplishment as I hit SEND. I flicked off the light. In the fractional second before the master bedroom went from dark to black, my eyes fell onto the line of left shoes that Sofie had arranged against the long wall opposite my side of the bed.

  Specifically, my eyes rested on a left shoe from a familiar pair of heels. The heel was tall. Probably four inches. The shoes were, well, sexy. Lauren, her balance compromised by multiple sclerosis, hadn’t been able to safely balance on high heels since early in our relationship. I felt a pang of sadness. I returned to the guest room.

  Oh God. I jumped back out of bed. Naked. I ran down the hall and I grabbed that high heel. No no, not it. My composure failed me. Not gradually. All at once. I kicked at Sofie’s entire neat lineup of left shoes and boots and sandals. I lifted every shoe that had a heel of any height, tossing each in turn over my shoulders. Some left, some right.

  No shoe had a red sole. Not one. “Shit. Shit.”

  My composure fragile, I stepped into the closet. Nearly two dozen shoe boxes were arranged on the highest shelves, out of reach. I grabbed a step stool to examine the identifying labels that Lauren had placed on the shoe boxes so that she could easily locate a precise pair she was seeking. I fought an impulse to yank all of the boxes to the floor so I could sort through the resulting mess with the total lack of discrimination of a tornado.

  Instead I took a deep breath, read each label, and I chose a single box from among the many. It was an earth-tone box, a medium brown. The designer’s name on the top was in an ostentatious script. The word Paris was in a more restrained font in one corner of the lid.

  The box was empty. The other boxes all contained a single shoe, a right shoe. The matching left shoe from each pair should have been among the ones that Sofie had lined along the wall in the bedroom. But both shoes were absent from the brown box.

  Diane? I began thinking of the shoes she’d cradled that night in that condo. Did she have Lauren’s shoes? How, I thought, could she have? Did Diane really come into my house and steal my wife’s shoes?

  Then I thought, No. Not Diane. Oh my God. I began to yank all the remaining shoe boxes from the shelves, ripping off the lids. I kicked maniacally at all the right shoes, at all the sandals, at all the pumps, at all the sneakers, at all the mules, and at all the heels.

  I talked to them. I yelled at a few. I cursed more than once. As my insane tantrum neared a conclusion—I was running out of footwear to abuse—I looked up to see Jonas standing in the doorway to the closet.

  He said, “Dad, are you okay?”

  It was, I knew, a reasonable query.

  Observing ego is the capacity to look in a figurative mirror and see one’s self and one’s behavior with negligible psychological distortion.

  How was I doing in that moment? In my figurative mirror it was the middle of the night and I was a naked guy cursing at his dead wife’s footwear while tossing her saved shoe boxes and right shoes around the walk-in closet, then drop-kicking and examining the soles of the shoes before tossing them over my shoulders.

  The expression on Jonas’s face made clear how I appeared to him. My closet shoe-fit must have looked like one of the crazy GIFs he liked to create from bursts of anime melded with brief clips of Oprah. The similarity only underscored the extent of my crazy.

  I recognized the evidence of my acute decline. Which meant that my observing ego was reasonably intact. I tried to take comfort in that.

  The remainder of my psychological makeup? That would require serious work.

  It took me a while to convince Jonas I was okay. The discussion started with me pulling on some sweatpants.

  It ended with me coaxing him back downstairs to bed.

  I didn’t have to wonder whether I had convinced him I was all right.

  He told me he wasn’t convinced I was all right.

  I told him I completely understood.

  35

  I CHECKED ON JONAS—THE LIGHT was off in his bedroom—before I returned to the guest room bed. I was glad it had been he, and not Gracie, who witnessed my tantrum.

  I
sat, leaning against the headboard in the dark, pondering whether a more observant husband would have noticed the day that the nondescript brown shoe box arrived in the closet.

  Or would that have been a more controlling, paranoid husband?

  I knew it wasn’t whatever kind of husband I had been.

  I broke in my new burner by phoning Amanda. Since it was the middle of the night I assumed the call would wake her. I heard five rings before she answered.

  In a sleepy voice she said, “Wrong number,” before she hung up. She hadn’t recognized my new burner number on her caller ID. How could she?

  I was elated by the anonymity. I phoned again. One ring only. She answered. I said, “Amanda. It’s—”

  She wasn’t listening. She spoke when I spoke. “Stop calling.” She hung up again.

  I hit REDIAL. Before I even detected a ring, she said, “Alan?” She’d heard me say her name before her last hang up.

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus. It’s three o’clock in the morning. What’s wrong?” It was apparent that she was trying to engage with me without actually waking up. I didn’t think that would end up working out for her.

  “Almost four. It’s starting to snow. I have a question. It can’t wait.”

  “What?” The what didn’t reflect any curiosity about my weather update, or about my question; it reflected her incredulity that I would intrude at that hour.

  I asked, “Did Raoul give you the shoes with the red soles?”

  “You woke me to ask me that? Yes. He gave them to me. He has a shoe thing.”

  I wanted to know all about Raoul’s shoe thing. And I didn’t. I was a coward about self-inflicted wounds. Begging for details of Raoul’s shoe thing with my wife would have been the psychological equivalent of taking a blade to my own flesh.

  From Amanda’s mouth, in the context of her red-soled shoes, thing meant fetish. I so much didn’t want confirmation about the role of Lauren’s spike-heeled feet in Raoul’s fetish. But then, of course, I did. I had to. Didn’t I?

  That was why I’d called. I said, “Your shoes? They are Christian Louboutin?” The French from the brown box rolled off my tongue as though I’d practiced it. I had, of course, practiced it. I had no choice. I couldn’t get the damn name out of my head.

  “Yes.” Amanda was wide-awake. “I’m impressed you know women’s shoes.”

  “My education is recent and reluctant. I apologize for waking you. Good night.”

  “Wait,” she said. “I get it. I think I see. You found some? Lauren has a pair too. Are hers Louboutins or Kurt Geigers? They’re Louboutins, of course. Red soles?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t know what the hell Kurt Geigers were.

  After a pause of five seconds, Amanda purred, “He used to call the Geigers ‘his consolation prize.’ Any chance Lauren’s shoes are eights? If the toes are open—Raoul loves women’s toes—I can wear seven and a half. Are you attached to them?”

  I hung up.

  I needed to know if my wife’s Louboutins exposed her toes for Raoul’s pleasure. Though why I needed to know that was not at all clear to me.

  I shut down my burner and went back to my tracker. The phone juggling thing was going to take some practice.

  It was nearly midday in Holland. Sofie responded to my text almost immediately. After some back-and-forth to explain why I was up so late—I told her the broadest outlines of the truth, that I was busy working on cleaning up Lauren’s papers:

  The things you took to remember your mother? Did they include shoes?

  Sofie: One pair. Ok?

  Absolutely. Heels?

  Sofie: Ja. My vader, dad, is not pleased. 2 hi. 2 sexy 2. So tall! I must save them for later. Do u want them back?

  Not at all. Would you please take some photos? Including the soles?

  Sofie: Soles?? WTW?

  WTW was Sofie’s English texting shorthand for what’s the word.

  Bottoms of the shoes? The red part?

  Sofie: On me?

  Always want pics of you. But this time just the shoes. I am trying to match them with an empty box. When your vader says the time is right, enjoy the shoes. Then please send a photo of you all dressed up in them. I miss you so much.

  The shoe photos arrived from Sofie in the next few minutes. The JPEGs loaded slowly, like in the old days of the Internet. Pixel by pixel, line by line. The pace of the reveal felt agonizing. After two minutes I had three photos of the Louboutin heels.

  I had never seen the shoes before. Lauren had never shown them to me. Modeled them for me. Worn them out with me. Or worn them in with me.

  I would have remembered. The shoes were sexy. Mostly black, with open toes. No, I scolded myself, not open toes. I heard my wife’s voice. “Not open toes, these are peep toes,” Lauren had teased me when I’d described a pedestrian pair of shoes she was wearing to work as having “open toes.”

  Peep toes, then.

  The Louboutins had a geometric pattern of crystals on one side, and a delicate strap above the ankle. And those red, red soles.

  After a few minutes passed—minutes I spent mentally filling in blanks I so much didn’t want to fill—Sofie texted me one more time.

  She never wore them. They are like new. That’s sad. Makes me cry.

  I typed: Me too.

  Any residual disbelief I was clinging to about Raoul and Lauren and the Louboutins crumbled in the face of the tsunami of sadness that bowled me over. Despite my earlier efforts to ward them off, I was drowning in images about what had transpired and what the damn shoes confirmed. She wore them, Sofie. She just didn’t walk in them.

  I cried for a long while.

  I was hoping Jonas was asleep.

  36

  THE NEXT MORNING, FRIDAY, came on schedule. The snow that fell overnight was like powdered sugar on a crepe. It would be gone before the sun blinked twice.

  The world hadn’t stopped. I registered some surprise at that. And a small sliver of disappointment. At breakfast Jonas never mentioned my naked meltdown in the middle of the night. He did tell me he wasn’t feeling well.

  I drank coffee as I checked The Coloradoan online for an update on Big Elias’s demise. A follow-up story indicated that a witness had come forward and provided a statement to the Larimer County sheriff’s investigator.

  The witness was driving home on North County Road 23E the evening before Elias Contopo’s body was discovered. He thought that he drove past the horse trailer and pickup on the west shoulder of Tatonka Trail a little bit after eight o’clock. He reported two things of note to me. First, when he drove past the horse trailer there was a second vehicle parked along the road, but on the opposite shoulder. He had assumed the second driver had stopped to offer help. If he hadn’t spotted the second vehicle, the witness told the reporter, he would have offered assistance.

  The other thing the witness reported was that a man was standing in the back of the open door of the horse trailer wearing white coveralls. The man’s back was turned; he couldn’t see his face. The witness didn’t recall any details about the second vehicle other than that it was a sedan. The headlights were on; the glare was in his eyes. His attention had been on the truck with the horse trailer with the open door, and on the man in the coveralls.

  I stopped breathing halfway through my read. Sam Purdy, I knew, was smart enough not to use his own vehicle on his homicidal errands. He had proved that in Frederick. The white coveralls? I thought, Tyvek. The man standing in the door of the horse trailer wasn’t wearing coveralls. He was wearing a disposable jumpsuit. The Tyvek coverall was becoming a reliable enough presence that I considered it to be Sam’s MO. A modus operandi. A way of operating.

  If that was Sam on Tatonka Trail he was batting 1.000 with his choice of homicidal haberdashery. If that was Sam on Tatonka Trail he had worn Tyvek jumpsuits for each of the murders he’d committed.

  At least the ones I knew about.

  I Googled Tyvek jumpsuits. They were cheap and easy to procure. Sh
it.

  I also checked the online price for a pair of Louboutin spike heels.

  The cost of a pair of fancy heels much less ornate than the ones that Sofie’s vader rightly thought were too sexy for his daughter started below a thousand dollars. A pair with crystal details not too unlike Lauren’s came in at just south of three thousand.

  Dollars. Before the crash in 2007, chump change for Raoul.

  I checked Kurt Geiger, too. More women’s shoes, but at a fraction of the cost of the Louboutins. All of Raoul’s women didn’t wear Louboutins.

  Apparently only the special ones did.

  LAUREN HAD AFFIXED A LABEL on the ends of each of the shoe boxes in her top shelf collection. Each label had a shorthand description—“green pumps, 2 in.” “sky blue espadrilles”—along with an acquisition date written in a month/year convention. The date for the Louboutins was just shy of two years before the day that Lauren was shot.

  Two years. Did the affair begin with the gifted pair of Louboutins? No, that would be too forward, even for someone with Raoul’s confidence. So not two years. More. Their relationship started earlier. The gift of the Louboutins marked a transition of some kind between them. A day had arrived when Raoul didn’t have to say what they meant. A day had arrived when she didn’t have to admit she couldn’t walk in them.

  The gift came at a time when things could go unsaid. Sexual things.

  What kind of transition did the Louboutins mark? I could imagine the answer to that question with relative ease. Absolutely no comfort, but remarkable ease.

  Lauren’s label on the box identified the shoes as “CL peeps letts.” The letts puzzled me. The solution to the puzzle came to me in the shower. Letts was for stilettos.

  Christian Louboutin. Peep toes. Stilettos.

  The image of my wife on the first day or night the erotic event played out, Lauren in her peep toe stilettos and Raoul in, well, nothing, became etched with acid on my brain.

  Raoul had been screwing my wife for years. How blind was I? So blind that Lauren didn’t even bother to hide the shoes from me. They had been sitting in plain sight on the same shelf on her side of the closet from the day she received them from her lover.