Who Killed Dorian Gray?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  Two Joe looked at Claire. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Claire looked away. “It’s not something I really enjoy thinking about.”

  Two Joe nodded slowly. “No. But it does explain things I see in you.”

  Claire looked back at him. “What do you mean?”

  Two Joe fingered the long smooth braid hanging over his right shoulder. “Oh, a sadness, perhaps, a sense that I have of you as being wounded in some way. I believe we are all wounded in some way, but with you the feeling is stronger, nearer; it’s hard to put into words.”

  He looked out over the hills of the Catskills, which rose and swelled all around, purple in the dying light, enshrouded in their ancient mystery. “These hills are very old,” he said. “There must be many legends about this valley.”

  “Tell me an Indian legend,” said Meredith, “please?”

  Two Joe leaned back in his chair and locked his thick strong fingers behind his head. “My people have legends,” he said slowly, “about spirits who can change their form at will.”

  Meredith leaned forward, her body tense with excitement. “You mean shape-shifters?” she said. “Are you talking about them?”

  Two Joe leaned toward her. “Some people call them that. Some say they roam the hills at dusk, looking for a new form to inhabit. Some say they are the spirits of ancestors long past, left to watch over the living . . . others say they are neither human nor animal, but a creature somewhere in between, halfway between this world and the next.”

  Meredith sat quietly as he talked; Claire had never seen her so still except when she was sleeping. “Wow,” she said. “That is so cool. Are they good or bad, these shape-shifters?”

  Two Joe shrugged. “It depends. Some spirits are evil, and some are good. Some can be helpful . . . my grandfather was a great medicine man, and I have heard that he had the ability to change his form at certain times.”

  “Cool!” said Meredith. “What about you? Can you . . .?”

  “I inherited some of my grandfather’s skill,” said Two Joe, “but not that one, I’m afraid.” He turned to Claire. “I am a medicine man, though, and I can help others to heal.” He reached over and took her hand, and once again she was struck by how warm his skin was.

  “Some wounds take a long time to heal,” he said, “and some never seem to heal entirely. See that you attend to yours, Redbird; the healing process can be long, but it is there for those who seek it.”

  Meredith looked up at Two Joe with admiration. “Wow,” she said. “You’re so wise.”

  Two Joe laughed. “Wise? Sometimes I think I’m just a person who talks to hear my own voice.” He got up and stretched his long torso. The size and solidity of his body were comforting to Claire; she found his presence reassuring.

  “Well,” he said, “back to work, which is really the best medicine of all.” He looked at Meredith solemnly. “You will help me take care of her, Lightning Flash, won’t you?”

  “Don’t worry, I will,” Meredith said seriously. “You can count on me.”

  Two Joe nodded. “I know I can.”

  Later that afternoon Sherry was on the porch fussing with a bouquet of wildflowers, arranging them in a pewter pitcher, when Tahir came onto the porch, hands in his pockets. Claire was settled comfortably in the wicker armchair with a manuscript while Meredith hovered over a chessboard, studying possible moves.

  Sherry looked up from her task when Tahir entered the porch. “Happy birthday a day early,” she said cheerfully.

  Tahir looked at her blankly. “What?”

  “Isn’t it your birthday tomorrow?” she replied, a sprig of Queen Anne’s lace in her hand.

  Tahir gazed at her sadly. “Oh. I stopped counting these things when . . . when I lost my family”

  Sherry’s brown face reddened. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry to remind you.”

  Meredith looked up from her chessboard. “Seems to me that’s even more reason to remember.”

  Tahir sighed. “It’s hard to explain . . . excuse me,” he said, and went back into the house.

  Sherry shook her head. “Oops. Open mouth, insert foot.”

  Claire looked at her. “You couldn’t know. How could you know?”

  “I know,” Sherry replied. “But I feel sorry for him. He’s so thin and—well, haunted looking.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Claire, “he looks like he needs someone to feed him up a little.”

  Meredith scratched her head. “Interesting,” she said, “very interesting.” Claire wasn’t sure if she was talking about Tahir or the chess game.

  Chapter 16

  That night the residents decided to have a communal dinner. Everyone was beginning to feel like a prisoner, watched over night and day by the police, and Liza thought a big dinner together would be good for morale. Liza made a vegetarian stir-fry, Billy bought fresh sweet corn, Sherry baked muffins, and even Jack got in on the action, preparing a tomato-and-basil salad with Bermuda onions. To Claire’s surprise, Gary contributed a plate of barbecued pork chops.

  “You’re not one of the vegetarians?” Claire said as Gary stood over the barbecue grill. Immaculate in khaki slacks and a pressed blue-and-white-striped shirt, he looked as if he had just stepped off a yacht.

  Gary snorted softly. “Oh, please. Some people spend entirely too much time thinking about what they put in their stomachs.”

  “That smells good,” said Claire, inhaling the woody aroma of the roasting meat.

  Gary poked at the chops with a long, sharp fork. “An old family recipe, straight from the Georgia plantation.”

  “Your family is Southern? You don’t sound Southern.”

  Gary raised one thin eyebrow. “Honey,” he drawled, “if you’s a Negro in this country, you’s from the South at some point or other.”

  Claire wasn’t sure how to react to this; was she supposed to laugh? She found it hard to relax around Gary; he was so formal, so professorial, and this ironic little impersonation was out of character.

  She gave a dry little chuckle. “I see. Well, it certainly does smell good.” She looked around for an excuse to leave “I’d better go see if Liza needs any help in the kitchen,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

  Gary shook his elegant head. “No thank you.”

  The sun was just sinking over the mountains when the residents seated themselves around the picnic table on the porch, surrounded by steaming platters of food, four bottles of Merlot on the table in front of them, courtesy of Evelyn Gardner and the Woodstock Guild. The mood was oddly festive, as if everyone was tired of feeling bad; cheered by the food, people seemed more relaxed than Claire had seen them since she arrived. It all had the feeling of a wartime celebration. Worn-out from being suspicious of one another, the residents were making a special effort to get along.

  Sooner or later, though, the conversation inevitably bent around toward crime. Sherry advanced the idea that you could tell some people were criminals just by looking at them.

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Gary. “If that were true, then innocent people would never get wrongly convicted.”

  “Not everybody, just some criminals!” said Sherry.

  “What about the criminals in your books?” Jack said to Claire, spearing a pork chop and dropping it onto his plate.

  “What do you mean?” said Claire, also taking a pork chop, which smelled irresistibly good.

  “Well, aren’t they . . . just like other people? I mean, you wouldn’t necessarily recognize someone was a murderer just by looking at them?”

  “Of course not,” said Camille, daintily plucking a piece of arugula from her salad plate. She put it in her mouth, her red lips closing over it. Claire noticed Tahir staring at Camille, a hungry look in his deep-set eyes. “I mean, if you could, they wouldn’t be able to hide so well in the general population, right?”

  “Isn’t the point that they look like everyone else?” Liza observed.

  “But they are different in some way, ar
en’t they, whether you can see it or not?” said Sherry.

  “Anyone at all is capable of murder,” Tahir said softly, putting down his pork chop. “That’s one thing I learned in the war. Your neighbors, people you thought were your friends . . . they can become killers overnight if the circumstances are right.”

  “But I can’t believe just anyone would kill another person; there have to be some of us who would refuse no matter what the pressure,” Billy said angrily. Claire saw Gary trying to catch his eye, but Billy did not return the look.

  Two Joe stood up. “The mind is a dark place,” he said, and went into the house.

  Tahir shrugged. “All I know is what I saw.”

  “But what about free will?” said Sherry. “If we’re all potential murderers, what’s the point of anything?”

  “Actually, even free will is a relative concept,” said Meredith, her mouth full of salad.

  “Swallow before you talk, Meredith,” said Claire.

  Meredith swallowed heavily, her face red. “What I mean is, we’re all programmed to some extent by our circumstances, by genetics—”

  “And genetically we’re all killers,” said Gary. “Everyone knows that. It’s even built into our societal structures.”

  “What do you mean?” said Camille.

  Gary spread his long hands with their beautifully manicured nails. “Well, what’s war except legalized slaughter? I mean, we’re training young people to go out and kill strangers and then we think it’s horrible when a murderer is loose in Ulster County.”

  “But it’s different,” said Sherry.

  “How? How is it different? We reward soldiers for doing exactly the same thing. Isn’t killing just killing on some level?”

  Camille put down her salad fork. “But in one case people are killing because they’re told to do it by—”

  “By their superiors,” Jack interjected, smiling. “Careful, now, you’re skating on thin ice. This defense didn’t work too well for the men at Nürnberg.”

  Sherry stared at him. “They committed atrocities against mankind;” she said angrily, her voice sharp as flint.

  “Oh, as opposed to the bombing of Dresden, which killed thousands of civilians and destroyed an ancient city—or Hiroshima? I suppose there were no crimes committed there,” Jack replied.

  “Japan declared war against us,” said Sherry.

  “And that makes it all right to sacrifice millions of innocent civilians? At least soldiers know they might die.”

  Sherry’s face reddened under her deep tan. “Japan showed no sign of surrender, and the war might have gone on and on—”

  “Oh, I see.” Jack smiled. “So the good ol’ USA was in the right then, too. And what about the Indians, look what we did to them. I guess that was understandable, too?”

  Just then Two Joe appeared at the door, a mug of coffee in his hand. “What happened to my people was destined to happen. We were not strong enough, and the way of nature is the strong always overcome the weak.”

  “That’s a depressing thought,” said Liza.

  Two Joe shrugged. “To the victor belong the spoils.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as people stared at their plates and sipped their wine. Meredith poked at a June bug crawling up the table leg.

  “Well,” Camille said finally, “if we’re all murderers, then why aren’t we all killing each other all the time?”

  Jack shrugged. “Because we don’t need to. People will usually take the path of least resistance.”

  “In other words, there aren’t more killings not because people are good, but because they’re lazy,” said Liza.

  “Or scared. Most people know there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance of getting caught.”

  “And these days with modern forensics the chances are even greater,” said Meredith.

  “The exception, of course,” said Jack, “is serial killers. They’re so driven that risk becomes secondary to them. And, of course, to them their crimes seem necessary, fulfilling as they do a deep need in their psyche.”

  Meredith looked at him. “How do you know so much about serial killers?”

  Jack studied his napkin. “Because I was once a cop.”

  No one said anything for several moments. Meredith stared at Jack, a bit of hamburger caught on her lower lip. Claire could hear the busy twitterings of birds in the bushes nearby. A fly landed on the table, inspected the corn bread, then took off suddenly, buzzing off in a circular flight pattern.

  Finally, Liza spoke. “Do you think we’re dealing with a serial killer here?” she said softly.

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so. The victims are too different, and there’s no sign of obsessive ritual. A serial killer is endlessly reenacting a psychological drama in his head, and there’s an obsessively repetitive quality to serial crimes which doesn’t fit this killer.”

  “Wow,” Meredith said respectfully, “that’s good. You know what you’re talking about.”

  Jack brushed the crumbs from his hunting vest. “Well, that’s enough shoptalk for one evening.”

  Claire thought she heard Two Joe snort softly at the other end of the table.

  “Well,” said Meredith, “I gave Detective Hansom some of Maya’s old articles, just in case the answer to her murder lies somewhere in her past.”

  “But how would that link her to Terry?” said Sherry.

  “I don’t know, but some of them are pretty interesting,” Meredith replied, reaching across the table for some bread. Claire was just about to reprimand her boardinghouse reach when Jack Mulligan’s wineglass tipped over, spilling out onto the tablecloth, a quickly spreading red stain. Sherry sprang from her seat and soaked up the excess with her napkin.

  Camille rose and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll get a dishcloth.”

  To Claire’s surprise, Jack turned to Tahir Hasonovic. “Be careful, for Christ’s sake!” he said.

  Tahir looked at him, a bewildered expression on his face. “What do you mean?” he said softly.

  “Oh, come on; you knocked it over,” Jack replied angrily.

  “All right, all right,” said Liza. “Let’s not fight about it, okay? There’s no harm done.”

  Jack muttered something under his breath but sat down and resumed eating. Everyone else did the same, but an uncomfortable hush settled over them, broken only by the mournful howl of coyotes up on Guardian Mountain.

  Later, sitting in front of the fire at her cabin with Meredith and Claire, Liza said, “So, Jack’s an ex-cop. That explains a lot about his political views.”

  “Hey, careful,” said Meredith from the sofa, where she lay with Nubs curled at her feet. “Claire’s dating a cop, you know.”

  Liza and Sherry both looked at Claire, who felt herself blushing.

  “Oh really?” said Sherry. “Dish, dish—what’s he like?” She and Liza had apparently worked out their differences, though Liza had not spoken further to Claire about it.

  “He’s okay,” said Meredith. “He’s old but kinda sexy.”

  “You probably think everyone over twenty is old,” said Liza.

  “Naw, he’s got grey hair and everything.”

  “I’ll bet it’s nice grey hair,” Sherry said to Claire, “nice and thick. Is it?”

  “Well, I like it,” Claire replied, feeling both pleased and embarrassed.

  “I’ll bet it falls over one eye in a really sexy way,” said Sherry. She was sitting on the rug at Liza’s feet, while Liza sat in a low overstuffed armchair. A blue cotton Indian spread covered the chair; on it were stenciled multilimbed gods, sitting cross-legged, waving their many arms over their heads.

  Liza casually ruffled Sherry’s smooth black hair. “You’re embarrassing Claire,” she said.

  “Oh, she loves it. You love it, don’t you, Claire?” said Sherry.

  “Well . . .” Claire replied.

  “So what’s it like dating a cop? Are they good in bed?”

  “Sherry!” said Li
za, flicking the top of Sherry’s head with her open palm.

  “Ow,” said Sherry.

  “That’s no way to talk in front of Meredith.”

  “Don’t worry; I’ve heard worse.” Meredith rolled over onto her elbow. “Once I even walked in on my dad doing the nasty with the Wicked Witch herself. If that didn’t warp my young mind, then I’m immune to damage.”

  Liza laughed. “Sometimes I wonder who’s more of a child, you or Sherry.”

  “I am,” said Sherry, grinning. “I’m a bad girl and I deserve to be spanked.” Liza flipped a hand at her head again, but Sherry ducked.

  “Well, I’m smart but I’m very immature,” said Meredith.

  Everyone laughed, startling Nubs, who leaped off the couch and stood in the center of the room, looking irritated, then walked slowly into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” said Meredith, “I thought you told me Tahir was supposed to be a Muslim.”

  “That’s right,” said Liza.

  “Then how come he was eating pork chops?”

  Liza shook her head. “Maybe he’s not practicing anymore.”

  “After all, not all Jews are kosher,” said Sherry. “I’m not, for example.”

  “It’s so ironic, isn’t it?” said Claire. “Arabs and Jews are both Semitic, they share some of the same dietary rules, and yet . . .”

  “Go figure,” Sherry said. “I’ve stopped trying. My parents are such Zionists, too. You know, the first question is always ‘Is this good for Israel or bad for Israel?’ ”

  “Hey,” said Meredith, “what’s with Billy and Gary? I saw them looking at each other during dinner.”

  Sherry smiled and leaned back on a camel-hair hassock that sat to one side of the woodstove.

  “Gary and Billy? Didn’t you know?”

  “Know what?” said Meredith.

  “Sherry . . .” Liza said, reaching for her, but Sherry laughed and shook her off.

  “Oh, come on; it’s no secret!”

  “What isn’t?” said Meredith.

  “Gary and Billy were an item last summer—very hot and heavy and all that.”

  Claire tried to imagine cool and aloof Gary Robinson being hot and heavy with anyone, but she couldn’t picture it.