Lifeline

by Gerry Boyle

  I waited for the answer.

  “No. I guess she falled asleep.”

  “Did you wait for her?”

  “Yes. I held up the bag for her.”

  “On her face.”

  “Yes. I kept it right there so she could do—”

  “Her throw-ups. I know, honey. And then Mommy was asleep.”

  “And she wouldn’t wake up, so I got scared, so I called you.”

  Marcia blinked back tears. So did Roxanne. I wiped mine with a finger.

  “And where’s Mommy now?” Marcia said.

  “She’s in heaven. And we’re gonna go see her.”

  “That’s right. Someday we’ll go see her.”

  “Can I have some chips now?” Adrianna said.

  “Sure you can, honey. I’ll get them in a minute.”

  Adrianna trotted into the other room and Mister Rogers came on. It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood, Fred Rogers was telling her. A beautiful day in the beauty wood.

  Marcia looked at me. I looked at her. Then at Roxanne. I wiped my eyes.

  “So what do you think, McMorrow?”

  “I don’t know. Does anybody else know this?”

  “Just you and me and her. Roxanne. And my husband.”

  “Cops don’t know?”

  “No, they don’t. I told them I took her home the first time I went there. They asked Adrianna about the fighting and she told them. And that’s all she told them.”

  “When did she tell you?”

  “As soon as she got here. She was all wound up, and when she’s wound up, she likes to talk. She told me the whole story.”

  “Why did you go back alone after you got Adrianna out of there?”

  Marcia gave a little shrug.

  “I got panicky. I thought I’d left something that would tell them . . . tell them about her, about what happened. So I went back again.”

  “And called the police?”

  “Yeah.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Tough one,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Marcia said.

  I thought some more. Turned around and looked out to where Adrianna was kneeling in front of the television. There was a bowl of chips in front of her on the carpet and she was eating them, three bites to the chip. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  If it got out, her life would be changed. She’d know she’d accidentally killed her mother. The world would know that she’d killed her mother. She would have a social worker. She might have a foster home. The story would come out in the paper. For the rest of her life, she would carry this enormous, crushing burden.

  I looked at her, at her small feet curled up underneath her. What would Donna want? What did Donna want for her? Up in heaven. I walked back to where Marcia was standing, the gun still hanging irrelevantly in her hand. I was still carrying the knife.

  “We need to talk,” I said to Roxanne.

  She followed me out of the room. I turned and our eyes met.

  “You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Roxanne said, looking over at Adrianna. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  “She may realize it someday.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe if she’s older she’ll deal with it better.”

  “At least she’ll have a chance to have a normal childhood,” I said. “But you know we’ll have to carry this one with us too.”

  “Yeah,” Roxanne said.

  She swallowed. I sighed and took both of her hands in mine.

  “Okay?” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  We walked back into the bedroom. Marcia hadn’t moved.

  “Raise her well,” I said.

  She looked up at me, then at Roxanne.

  “I’m going to try,” she said. “What about the police?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d say Jeff Tanner is in very serious trouble.”

  30

  The police came, many of them. A couple of them untied Jeff and handcuffed his hands behind his back. He protested as they crammed him into the back of the cruiser. I turned and walked away.

  There were several cops at the scene, both Kennebec and state. The local cops took statements from me and from Clair. They looked curiously at Clair’s big Ford four-wheel-drive, examined his rifle, and when they were done, treated him with deference, which was deserved.

  I went up to the house where Roxanne and Marcia were talking to a state trooper. The trooper was waiting for a detective. The detective, when he arrived, was LaCharelle. He took me out in front of the house, alone.

  “What’d I tell you, McMorrow?” he said.

  “I stand corrected. What happens now? Off the record.”

  “We go to grand jury, just to keep things nice and neat. Terrorizing, reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon. Attempted assault. And, of course, murder. He won’t make bail and he’ll sit in a cell for nine months or so until we bring it to trial. Then we do our best to make sure he spends a long, long time in a place where there are no women to beat on.”

  “What about a plea for manslaughter?”

  “No way. This boy’s going bye-bye big-time.”

  He looked at me and gloated.

  “So much for reporter’s intuition, huh?”

  As we were standing there, a black Pontiac roared up and slid to a stop. Tate got out, glanced grimly at me and LaCharelle, and hoofed it across the grass toward the house in her high heels.

  LaCharelle gave her a small salute.

  “Counselor,” I said, nodding.

  “McMorrow,” Tate said, striding toward and past me. “I guess we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

  “Good. Say hello to Fluffy.”

  Tate glared and continued walking.

  “Fluffy?” LaCharelle said.

  “Her cat. What brings her out on a Sunday?”

  “Probably heard the TV people’ll be here. She tips ’em off and then beats them to the scene. Hey, you know your buddy Danny Leaman?”

  “Alphonse?”

  “He’s telling everybody Tate made him a deal to chase you out of town.”

  “Anybody listening?”

  “You kidding? It’ll take more than one dirtbag to tear down what she’s got built. Tate’ll chew him up and spit him out, cross her like that. He won’t see daylight for twenty years.”

  “So she’s still the prosecutor on him sticking me in the car?”

  “Yup.”

  “Seems like a conflict of interest, doesn’t it?”

  “Yup.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “Yup to that too,” LaCharelle said.

  We rode back to Prosperity in silence, our hands clasped between the seats. Mary had put out fruit salad and cheese for a late lunch. Clair made a chicken sandwich for himself and we all ate, but not heartily.

  When Clair told Mary what had happened with Tanner and the knife and the gun, Mary just shook her head.

  “That poor little girl,” she said. “Poor little thing. What’s the matter with people?”

  When we’d had our coffee and tea, I maneuvered Clair over to the barn. Above us, barn swallows were whipping in and out of the open loft door.

  “What a piece of aeronautical engineering,” Clair said, watching them plummet toward the opening.

  “Thanks for what you did,” I said.

  “Buy me a beer sometime. Buy me two.”

  “It’s a deal. But I have something to tell you.”

  I did, standing there by the barn door, and Clair listened to all of it. Marcia’s story. Adrianna’s story. When I was finished, he looked up again at the birds.

  “Not an easy call,” I said. “I hope you can live with it too.”

  “Jack, I’ve done things in my life I never wanted to do. But ‘none of the above’ wasn’t an option at the time. You consider the options you have and you choose the best one. That’s what you’ve done.”

>   “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “No. Hey, I remember a day in the war. A very long day. We lost two kids that day. Just kids. And I remember this lieutenant; he was pretty green. Toward the end they were bringing in just about anybody. But anyway, that night, they’d brought in the choppers and saved what was left of our butts, and we’re sitting there and I was eating, I think, and he says to me, ‘Varney, how can you just sit there and eat?’ I guess I was supposed to be cutting my wrists or something. Who knows? I said to the guy, I remember this, I said, ‘Lieutenant, there were a couple of choices we could have made today. The one we made cost us two kids, the nicest kids in the world. Good, decent kids. The other choice would have cost us a couple hundred. So I’m sorry, but I’m giving thanks.’ ”

  Clair looked up at the swallows, then suddenly back at me.

  “You deal with the hand you’re dealt, you know? The hand you were dealt today left you with two choices, too. One was to give up that little girl. The other was to give up that scumbag. Way I look at it, if he didn’t kill Donna that night, maybe he would have finished her off the next week. Next month. These guys don’t just go away, Jack.”

  “This one is,” I said.

  “No loss,” Clair said.

  That evening was spent quietly. Clair puttered in the barn, tinkering with his saw, fiddling with his tractor, dodging the moths that beat themselves against his workbench light. I watched him for a few minutes, then went out back and looked up at the stars, which were gathering against the blue-black velvet. I stood there with my head tipped back and thought of Adrianna and Donna and heaven—that it would be great if there was one.

  When I came in, Mary was reading in the living room. She looked up from her book to tell me a David Archambault had called twice from the paper and wanted me to call him. I thanked her and asked her where Roxanne was. She said she had gone to bed. I said good night and went up the stairs.

  “If he calls again, you’re out?” Mary called after me.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said.

  Roxanne was in bed, turning toward the window. The light was out and the stars showed through the glass. I lay down on the bed and put my arm around her shoulder.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “Not bad, considering.”

  “Are you going to be okay tomorrow?”

  “And the day after that, and a year from now?” Roxanne said. “Oh, yeah. It was the right thing to do. But it’s kind of hard, not telling the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth, and all that.”

  “It is hard,” I said. “But I figure I can live with that easier than that little girl can live with the truth for her whole childhood. It would be a nightmare for her. It really would.”

  Roxanne was quiet. I could smell her hair. I pulled us tighter together.

  “David Archambault’s been calling,” I said.

  “That isn’t going to make it any easier. Reading about it in the paper every day.”

  “It’ll make it harder.”

  “Let’s go,” Roxanne said.

  “Where?”

  “I didn’t tell you, but Skip offered us his boat. He’s away on business for a week.”

  “You sure he didn’t offer you and him his boat?” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. He’s gay. He’s really a great guy. You know what he does? He has this venture investment company and he gives most of the profits to charities. I guess he’s given a huge amount to AIDS research.”

  “God, and you’re stuck with an unemployed reporter who drinks too much beer and has a scar on his face.”

  “I don’t feel so stuck,” Roxanne said, her voice soft in the dark.

  “Well, I am getting better with my spring warblers.”

  “My man of many talents.”

  “But I don’t know how to sail,” I said.

  “Who said anything about sailing?” Roxanne said, taking my hand in hers.

  “You mean we’ll spend the week in the fo’c’sle?”

  “We could.”

  “But what if we get scurvy?”

  “We’ll live dangerously,” Roxanne said.

  “Something new and different,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Roxanne said. “Something new and different.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gerry Boyle is the author of a dozen mystery novels, including the acclaimed Jack McMorrow series and the Brandon Blake series. A former newspaper reporter and columnist, Boyle lives with his wife, Mary, in a historic home in a small village on a lake. He also is working with his daughter, Emily Westbrooks, on a crime series set in her hometown, Dublin, Ireland. Whether it is Maine or Ireland, Boyle remains true to his pledge to send his characters only to places where he has gone before.