A Fugitive Truth

by Dana Cameron

  It wasn’t such an outrageous idea, once I’d actually thought it. But it did mean that I’d have to start thinking obliquely, because I wasn’t getting anywhere, just going over and over how Faith and Jack had died. I had to find out why. It was time for a bit of discreet prying.

  But discretion wasn’t necessary. The means of observation presented themselves almost immediately on my return to the library a moment later. Sasha looked as distressed as she had after the news of Faith’s death, and Harry’s face was drawn with concern. The door to the library was open and neither of them was lowering his voice, so I went quickly past the door, instead of through it, stayed in the hallway, and studiedly tied and retied both my shoes on the far side of the door. Looking through the doorway, I could follow their conversation.

  “I haven’t seen them since Dr. Glasscock had them out two weeks ago,” she cried. “I know I put them back and now they’re nowhere to be found!”

  “Are you certain they went back to the correct spot? No one’s had them since?” It was immediately clear that Harry had asked those questions many times before. Although he was pacing agitatedly back and forth, he seemed to be going down a well-rehearsed list.

  “Harry! I know how to do my job!” Sasha nearly shouted through her tears. “They’re missing! Along with all the others!”

  “Sasha! Ssssh! Not so loud!” For the first time, Harry sounded worried. “This is a problem that we can solve. We just need to stay calm!”

  “You keep saying that and things aren’t getting solved! More things are missing, and now it’s not just because they’ve been mislaid by Mr. Talbot! This happened since then! Is it possible that Michael took them, and just forgot? He’s done it before. He could have—”

  Harry pulled Sasha into an embrace. “Sssh, it’s okay, we will find out what’s happening, Sasha. I promise.”

  She mumbled something into his jacket that I didn’t hear, then seemed to compose herself. “I’m sorry, it’s just that so much is going wrong lately, Harry. I don’t know what’s happening anymore. What’s happening here, what’s happening with us? Lately you’ve been so—”

  “Sshh, shhh.” He stroked her head comfortingly a moment, then set her firmly away from him. “Go get some air, collect yourself. I’ll start sorting this out right now.” He looked at her with concern. “Okay? We can fix this. This is not a problem.”

  She nodded and went into her office for her coat. I took the opportunity to slip back past the library to return the soggy ice pack to the guard’s office. No one was in, but I could hear a muffled but heated phone conversation being conducted in Mr. Constantino’s office. I threw the ice pack into the freezer of the little refrigerator then dodged out as quickly as I could. Virtue and righteousness might be on my side, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to run into Constantino this minute. I’d had enough grief for today. Actually, for a long time to come.

  Glancing out the window, I saw Sasha pacing to and fro outside the library, her collar turned up and her arms wrapped around her for warmth. I decided that there was no time like the present to start asking a few innocuous questions about library procedure.

  Just as I exited the library, a man rushed from behind the building and grabbed Sasha by the shoulders, jerking her around. She screamed shrilly as I ran toward them. As I neared, I realized that Sasha’s assailant was now staring at me. We froze, locked in a moment of mutual recognition. I stopped and the man threw Sasha aside. He ran down the main road toward the front gate.

  Just as he rounded the bend, I saw with relief that Pam Kobrinski’s car was pulling up the hill toward us. Glancing at Sasha to make sure that she wasn’t hurt, I waved my arms frantically. Detective Kobrinski pulled up, her window rolling down as she pulled to a stop.

  “He attacked Sasha!” I shouted. “Brown leather jacket and a pair of jeans—you can still catch him!”

  Without a word she roared past us, around the circular drive and back down the way she came, her siren wailing.

  I looked down and saw Sasha was still sitting where she’d landed, hyperventilating and shivering.

  “Sasha?” I helped her up and she started crying again, clinging to my arm.

  “It happened so fast,” she gasped. “I couldn’t see his face, I don’t know what he looked like, why did he—?”

  I heard the mumbled blare of a P.A. system and knew that the detective had seen the fleeing man.

  “Shhh, it’s okay,” I soothed. “I saw him. He won’t get away now. I know who it was.”

  The librarian looked at me with amazement, wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, and hiccoughed. “You know who it was?”

  “It was Paul Burnes, Faith’s ex-husband,” I said grimly. “I think we’ll get some answers now.”

  Chapter 14

  IF I’D HAVE KNOWN WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AT the police station later, I never would have taken Pam Kobrinski up on her offer. She told me that I could help evaluate Paul’s state of mind, I could help tell her if I caught him in any obvious lies. And I thought that by going, it might help quiet my mind, sort out my fear and confusion about Faith and Jack’s deaths. And, I admit it, there’s always the excitement, that hungry little demon of pride that comes with having information that others don’t and being able to reveal it. That was part of it.

  We were both wrong. Worse. I was a fool for believing that I knew anything at all, and she was mistaken in telling me that I’d be quite safe behind that two-way mirror, in that building full of cops.

  It was just a God-awful mess.

  I drove down with Sasha—still shaky over Paul’s attack—who was going to give her statement. Once we got there, Detective Kobrinski led me to a small observation room and warned me to keep quiet and to keep the lights out or I’d be visible behind the two-way mirror. The interview room wasn’t really what I’d expected. I had suspected that there would be no other windows, and there was a video camera mounted on the wall opposite me, the images it recorded played in tandem on the monitor in the room with me, creating a weird sense of unreality, seeing the scene before me in two sizes. But other than that, it was just a room that was painted white, with a cheap, cafeteria-style table off to one side and a few plastic chairs near it. Hell, with that big, institutional black-rimmed clock on the wall, I could have been in my high-school guidance office, if you scattered a few college brochures around. I guess I’d been expecting something out of the Inquisition. Hoping even, truth be told.

  Pam Kobrinski entered the room, and then another officer, whom she’d introduced as Officer Campbell, marched in with their prisoner. With that big beetled brow, nutcracker jaw, and shoulders a yard across, Campbell looked like a refugee from the Neander Valley, but Pam told me he was a pussycat.

  Paul Burnes looked like a calf facing the mallet.

  “You may as well sit down,” Kobrinski said. “We’ve got a lot to discuss, Mr. Burnes.”

  It wasn’t until Campbell actually placed a large hand on Paul’s shoulder that he sat down, unresisting. The few times I’d met Paul back in Michigan, I hadn’t liked him for his deliberate distance, a carefully cultivated, almost clinical detachment that he never let drop under any circumstance. That distance now took the form of an inward retreat. His blue eyes were devoid of emotion or even recognition, I could see that his clothing was unkempt. His hair, in a long, bristly crewcut, showed more gray in the brown than I remembered, and his face was now deeply lined. His strong features still gave him the qualities necessary for handsomeness, but something in his personality had always detracted from his looks, as far as I was concerned. Clean-shaven years ago, he now had a beard that needed a trim.

  “You know you’ve been playing pretty rough with the ladies?” Officer Campbell asked.

  Paul ignored him, sunk in his own thoughts.

  “And the ad agency you’ve been working for is wondering where you’ve been,” Kobrinski said thoughtfully. “You must have gotten pretty excited about something to just up and leave t
hem all hanging like that.”

  So Paul wasn’t teaching anymore, I thought.

  There was a long pause, and then Paul mumbled something.

  “You’ll have to speak up, Mr. Burnes,” the detective said impatiently.

  “I said I had to see her.”

  “You had to see who?”

  “My wife. Faith.”

  “I think you mean ex-wife, don’t you?” Detective Kobrinski asked. She already knew the answer. “Faith Morgan? I don’t get the impression that she had any interest in seeing you. No sir, not after what you did to her.”

  “I had to see her,” he repeated dully.

  Officer Campbell shifted his weight behind Paul, and leaned down so that his face was nearly level with Paul’s. “Okay, now why don’t you tell us something we don’t already know. Like why you killed your ex-wife.”

  The effect that his statement had on Paul was like flicking a switch, the torpidity was replaced with alertness: He believed they were trying to trick him. “Killed her? What the hell are you talking about! I thought this was about trespassing or something and running into that…other woman?”

  Campbell threw his hands up in the air. Detective Kobrinski got up.

  “I find that a little hard to believe, considering your past relationship with her. I haven’t gotten your file from Michigan yet, but I think we can safely say that the two of you had your ups and downs.”

  “Ups and downs?” The restored Paul actually smirked. “Don’t make me laugh. She drove me insane. But that was our business, and no one else’s.”

  “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, buddy,” the detective said. “Everybody has their problems, but not everyone tries to solve them with violence. I got a real low opinion of wife-beaters, bud. Real low.” Kobrinski turned away in disgust, but Campbell was watching Burnes intently.

  “Oh please. Come now.” It was like magic. The confident old Paul was back, superior sarcasm and all. Suddenly I knew there was something going on here and that Detective Sergeant Kobrinski wasn’t picking up on it. I caught myself just before I rapped on the glass to get Kobrinski’s attention: I didn’t want to reveal my presence behind the mirror. All I could do was watch and remember so that I could tell her later.

  “I can read, Mr. Burnes. And even if you stole the last diary your wife kept, we know about the rest of—”

  “The diary?” Paul snorted derisively. “That tissue of lies? You know, there’s a very good reason my wife studies Early American fiction. She’s got a real talent for creating it herself.”

  Pam wasn’t buying any of it. “I think we have plenty of other evidence to corroborate—”

  “For example?” He might have been in a seminar, setting a trap for an overconfident student.

  “We have other witnesses who can describe what you did to Faith.”

  “Witnesses? Who?” Paul gave a short, incredulous laugh. “People she’s been feeding a line to from the moment she said hello? Like I said, what was going on with us was strictly our business, no matter what she told outsiders.”

  I thought about the evening Faith and I had spent in the library together and how…greasy it had made me feel.

  “Whatever you say, but we’ve got the forensic evidence—”

  Paul looked at her disbelievingly. “Forensic. Wait a minute, you’re, you’re serious. Faith’s dead? This isn’t just…? Oh, God, what have you done?” Paul seemed to be talking to himself because he certainly didn’t seem really connected with what was going on in that little room.

  “Spare me,” Kobrinski said, bored. “It’s a little late for this.”

  “Spare you?” Paul scrubbed his face with his hands, rubbing his chin as if that would help him make sense of what he was hearing. “What the hell do you know about it? I love Faith, and she loves me. And you’re telling me she’s dead.”

  This was getting too weird for me. I had never seen Paul in so unguarded a moment as this, and the way that he spoke about Faith in the present tense made my skin crawl.

  Detective Kobrinski said, “When we get your complete record I think we’ll find—”

  “What record?” he insisted, then paused. “Now that’s interesting. What do you think you’re going to find?” The old Paul again, the Paul that I knew, raised his head again and stared arrogantly at the detective. I shifted uncomfortably even though I was safely unseen behind the mirror: I wouldn’t have changed places with her for a million bucks.

  “You know what we’ll find, don’t you?” she answered, inviting him to fill in the blanks.

  “Let me guess. I savagely beat her until she tried to kill herself.” Paul said the words in a sing-songy chant, like he was running down a very old, oft-recited list. “Or was it that I was impotent and took it out on her? Or was it the one where she couldn’t conceive and my taunting her drove her to self mutilation? Or was it—”

  I realized suddenly that he knew what Pam was doing and was toying with her. Again came the instinct to warn her, but I couldn’t, not without revealing my presence. I just had to watch and remember.

  The Detective Sergeant was shaking her head, uninterested in Paul’s theatrics. “When I get those records, they’ll show that you’ve a long history of violence toward your ex-wife—”

  “The records. Right, maybe. But what if they show this?” Paul stood up suddenly and pulled his shirt out of his jeans. “Did you read about this in her diaries? I’d be very interested to see that particular text myself.”

  A six-inch scar ran jaggedly from just left of his navel across to his side. The ugly wound was closed and the stitches were out, but it was bright pink still. It hadn’t been that long since he received it. I wondered at this; it had been a couple of years since they’d split, according to Faith.

  Campbell shoved Paul back into his seat, but that didn’t stop him from talking. “She used a pair of scissors. The doctor said that if I hadn’t moved in time, I wouldn’t have made it. That’s when she split. I came here to see her, but—No.” Paul closed his eyes and relaxed all his muscles, then shrugged off the other officer’s restraining arm. He opened his eyes again, totally stony-faced but for the calculation in his eyes. “Fuck you. I want a lawyer.”

  “It’s your right, Mr. Burnes,” Kobrinski said, moving a step toward him. “And I think given your situation, it’s also a very good idea.” The detective glanced at her wristwatch. “Officer Campbell, will you join me outside for a moment?”

  She and Campbell left the room. I could see through the open door that she was heading to join me when she was accosted by another officer. She shut the door carefully behind her.

  Paul was left alone with only me to watch him, though of course he didn’t know that. Quite changed from the broken creature he appeared to be when they first escorted him into the room, now that they’d left, he looked animated now, alert, and edgy. Twisting a heavy gold ring that he wore on his right hand, Paul seemed to be gauging his predicament, and I could almost see him as he mentally traced the different pathways, calculating what would happen, as if he were playing chess in his head. I’m no good at chess; any luck I’ve had on the board has come from knowing my opponents rather than anticipating every possible move. Paul was a master.

  He began to pace back and forth in the small room, measuring off the length of the floor repeatedly and methodically. Paul was deep in thought and what his face showed wasn’t panic. It wasn’t fear, bravado, or anything that I would have imagined someone faced with this situation might experience. He was trying to puzzle something out, and the ramifications of that conundrum had an effect far beyond the confines of that little room. There was something else going on here, and he was the only one who knew it. Besides me.

  Watching Paul, I had the sensation I was observing a dangerous animal from behind the slenderest of blinds. The sensation was heightened when he suddenly stopped and turned toward the mirror that shielded me. I held my breath. He began to approach. Not me, I reassured myself. He can’t possibly see me
while the light’s off on my side. It’s his reflection.

  It was all I could do to keep from running away. At the same time, I was fascinated, dying to know what Paul would do. The tension that built up on both sides of the mirror was electric. Every hair on the back of my neck was standing up.

  He seemed to be drawn by something he saw in the mirror, and he approached it almost reverentially. He locked eyes with his own reflection, but given that he was standing in front of me, it was as though he was actually staring into mine. I didn’t dare move. Paul leaned over and gently touched his forehead to the glass, slowly rocking from one side to another, still maintaining eye contact with his reflection.

  He reached over finally and gently brushed the glass with the back of his fingers, as if he were caressing the cheek of someone he saw there. Beyond the mirror. He rested his palm against the glass as I stared right into his unseeing eyes.

  “Oh, baby,” he whispered. “Where have you taken us now?”

  I shivered as my own private horror movie played, forcing me to watch things I found grotesque and inexplicable. Reality as I knew it was distorted, turning inside out and parading itself before, daring me to pick out the truth. I was trapped in a web of voyeuristic intimacy. This was too private to bear and too hypnotic to flee.

  The spell was broken abruptly when the door opened behind Paul and he hastily composed himself as Officer Campbell entered the room.

  Then I turned and ran out of the observation room, Alice escaping from Looking Glass Land, where everything was recognizable but too sinister to be familiar. I almost ran smack into Detective Kobrinski, who was coming to fetch me.

  She shook her head. “Something else, huh?”