Act of Darkness

by Jane Haddam

  Clare decided to sit up. Lying down, she felt like an Aztec virgin on a sacrificial altar. She molded her pillows into a pile against the headboard and propped herself up on them, then thought about the rain coming down over her head. With flat roofs like this, it sounded louder than it should have, and harder, like ball bearings pumped out of a shotgun.

  “Harvey,” she said, “give me a break, will you please? I can’t get out of here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the police won’t let me, for one thing. They won’t let any of us. Out of Oyster Bay, I mean.”

  “You could go to a motel.”

  “No, I couldn’t. This is Fourth of July weekend. There’s an enormous festival going on up here. There are fireworks every night.” She looked dubiously in the direction of her windows, covered tightly with thick curtains that had been weighted with lead to make them stay put. There wasn’t any point in telling Harvey Gort about the rain. “Harvey,” she said, “there isn’t a vacant hotel room on all of Long Island.”

  “Hotels and motels,” Harvey said in a singsong voice. He did that sort of thing sometimes, like an old-time priest suddenly breaking into plain chant. Clare had never understood why. “Let me think,” he said. “It’s important now. With that bastard Debrett out of the picture, there’s no reason for Fox to get that much of our money.”

  Out of the picture. Clare pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it. Squawking noises came from the earpiece. Harvey was rambling on. She put the receiver back to her ear and listened with mounting astonishment.

  “The only thing I want to know,” Harvey was saying, “was whether it was cocaine or AIDS. That’s it. You know it’s got to be one or the other. They’re all like that, the effing sons of bitches with their effing M.D. degrees. All sniffing it up one end and getting it porked up the other and then acting like the rest of us are—”

  “Harvey.”

  “You know it’s true, Clare. You spend all your time with them. You know—”

  “What I know is that I’m sick to death of listening to you eff this and eff that all day long. Don’t you ever let up?”

  “It’s a perfectly respectable Anglo-Saxon word, Clare. The only reason you object to it is because you’ve been brainwashed by—”

  “Stuff it,” Clare said. “I’m not interested in another lecture on capitalist sexual oppression and I’m not interested in another lecture on using the weaknesses of establishment structures to bring about social change. Why do you think the police won’t let us leave Oyster Bay?”

  “Because they’re pigs, that’s why. They like throwing their weight around.”

  “I could give you a lecture on recent decisions in constitutional law, Harvey, but it’s like I said. I’m not interested in lectures at the moment. They’re keeping us here because they think Kevin Debrett was murdered.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line, long and hollow, that made Clare feel instantly better. Finally, finally, after six years, she had managed to bring Harvey Gort to a full stop.

  “Well?” she said.

  Harvey cleared his throat. “I listened to the eleven o’clock news,” he said. “I’ve got the Early Bird News on right this minute. There isn’t anything about murder.”

  “There wouldn’t be, would there? There won’t be until they’re sure.”

  “How can they not be sure?”

  “Let’s say there are some very strange things about this death, Harvey. Let’s say something else. If they have to pick a likely suspect, somebody with a motive right out there for everybody to see, I’m the prime candidate.”

  “You?”

  Clare thought about developing this for him, but decided not to. It seemed so obvious to her that it also seemed impossible that anyone could miss it.

  Suddenly, sitting up in bed felt as confining as lying in it had. Clare threw off the covers, swung her legs over the side, and stood up. It was all jumbled up together in her mind. Kevin Debrett and the death of Kevin Debrett. The Empowerment Project. Harvey Gort. Herself. She would have said she didn’t care if Harvey and his people got their cut of the Act in Aid of Exceptional Children, but it wasn’t true. She devoutly hoped they wouldn’t get a dime. She took the phone away from her ear again, and stared at it again, and shook her head. What could she possibly be thinking of? This was like contemplating suicide.

  She put the phone back to where she could use it and said, “Harvey?”

  “I’m here,” Harvey said. “I still think what I was saying was valid. You can’t tell me they’re really holding seminars up there this weekend. After this, I mean.”

  “I don’t know what we’re doing. Nobody’s said anything. Everybody’s in shock.”

  “Bull dung.”

  “It may be bull dung to you, but a lot of these people have known Kevin Debrett for a long time. And remember something, Harvey. Even if Debrett is dead, his clinic isn’t. There’s that. There’s also the obvious, which is the thing you never think of.”

  “What’s obvious now?”

  “There’s nothing to say there has to be an Act in Aid of Exceptional Children. There’s nothing to say it shouldn’t die in committee. If Dan Chester decided to take exception to your behavior, or mine—”

  “He can’t do that, Clare. There’s been too much publicity. He has to go ahead with the act. If he drops it, Stephen will look like a fool.”

  “There’re a lot of ways to kill a bill, Harvey. And there’re a lot more ways to kill you. Chester could always get Fox to go with vouchers.”

  There was another long silence on the line, then the sound of heavy breathing turning into snorts, and Harvey Gort said, “Shit.”

  “Exactly,” Clare Markey told him.

  “You can’t let him do that. Vouchers are poison. You know they’re poison. They ruin any chance we have to be a real—”

  “—force for social change,” Clare finished for him. “Yes. I know. In the meantime, I am not going to do anything to make the police think I’ve got anything to hide or to make myself look guilty. I am not going to leave Great Expectations unless I’m asked to leave. I am not going to try to move to a motel and I’m not going to ask for the privilege of being allowed to leave town. I’m staying right here. If that costs you people one hundred thousand dollars, that’s your problem.”

  “We could sue you for it, Clare.”

  “Yes, you could. And I could declare bankruptcy, and then where would you be? Good-bye, Harvey.”

  “Clare—”

  But that Clare was only a distant squawk. Clare was slamming the receiver into the cradle, bringing one down on the other with a crack that sounded more like metal than plastic.

  [2]

  Stephen Whistler Fox knew when he heard the knock on his door that the person on the other side would be Dan Chester—mostly because he’d been half-waiting for Chester all night. The other half of the time, he had been thinking about Janet. It was six thirty in the morning and even colder than usual. The air-conditioning was off, but the temperature outside had dropped into a pit. When he went to his window and looked out, he saw tiny figures walking along the shore farther up the bay, bundled up in slickers and hoods. He was trying to find his courage. It had been years since he talked to Janet, really talked to her, assuming he had ever talked to her at all. Lately, she seemed to have been fading out of his awareness, dissolving into nonexistence in a way that disturbed him.

  When the knock came, he got out of the chair he’d been sitting in and went to the vanity mirror, to check himself out. His hair was still untouched by gray. His face was still untouched by lines. He looked just the way he had always looked, except better.

  He turned away from the vanity mirror, went to the door, opened it up, and stuck his head out. Dan was there all right, dressed in chinos and a baggy cotton sweater, with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers. Dan always looked like a scholarship boy at some ultra-WASP prep school. He knew all the rules, but he was
never able to carry them off right.

  Stephen stepped back, opened the door wide, and let him in. “Hi,” he said. “I thought it was you. I expected you to show up last night.”

  “I had things to do last night.” Chester shut the door, threw the bolt—why did he always do that?—and threw himself down on Stephen’s bed. “I was up until four o’clock in the morning, trying to figure out what’s going on. I didn’t get anywhere.”

  Stephen frowned. “I don’t see where you mean to get. Kevin died. The police don’t know what he died from yet, so they’re a little nervous. You said yourself it was perfectly natural.”

  “It is.” Chester cocked his head. “What do you think, Stephen? What did Kevin die from?”

  “Murder,” Stephen said solemnly, because he meant it. He hadn’t been able to follow all the technical discussions that had been going on the night before, but he hadn’t needed to. He’d known as soon as he’d heard that Kevin was dead that somebody must have murdered him, and he’d even had a good idea who. He thought Dan must have a good idea who, too.

  “I don’t see why you’re so surprised about it,” he said. “You must have known it was coming. It was only a matter of time.”

  “Are you nuts? Only a matter of time that somebody killed Kevin?”

  “Well, not Kevin in particular. You know what I mean. It’s just that—”

  “Shut up,” Dan Chester said.

  This time, it was Stephen who cocked his head. If he’d seen himself in the mirror, he’d have realized he was imitating Dan. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. He’d seen himself on videotape a million times, and it had never occurred to him that he’d picked up almost all his gestures, all his mannerisms, by watching Chester. He’d picked them up much the same way he’d picked up his politics. And his ambition. And his life.

  Sometimes, Stephen Whistler Fox felt like a black hole. What he was sucking into himself was Dan Chester, but Dan Chester wasn’t big enough to fill him up.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re the one who’s always telling me we have to face reality.”

  “I’m facing reality. Trust me, I’m facing reality like crazy. Were you with Patchen Rawls when Kevin was supposed to have died?”

  Stephen shrugged. The police had asked him the same question the night before, and he’d given them a true answer. Dan had asked, too. “I wasn’t with Patchen at all yesterday,” Stephen said now. “I told you that. I was either up here or down at lunch.”

  “Patchen says you were with her.”

  “Patchen is trying to drive Janet crazy.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she’s trying to give herself an alibi. Although why she’d want to kill Kevin, I don’t know.”

  “She wouldn’t want to kill Kevin,” Stephen said. “Only one person would want to do that. You know who.”

  “No. I don’t know who. And neither do you. You’ve got to stop this right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s dangerous if it’s not true. And it’s even more dangerous if it is true.”

  “I don’t think that’s real, Dan. I don’t think people go around killing other people just because the other people know too much. That’s in the movies.”

  “Right.”

  “I think—”

  Dan got off the bed and went to the window and looked out. Stephen had pulled the curtains back and tidied up, so everything was clean, but it still made him uncomfortable to see Dan there. Maybe it would have made him uncomfortable to see Dan anywhere. Stephen wished he could think. His mind was full of maybes and as-ifs and seems-to-bes. It was always like that, but usually it didn’t bother him. Now it did.

  “Dan,” he said, “yesterday afternoon, I don’t remember what time it was, I told Kevin—”

  “I know what you told Kevin, Stephen. I hope you didn’t tell anybody else.”

  “I haven’t yet. But I was on my way out to see Janet when you knocked, and I want to—”

  “Stop. You don’t want to do anything. You just think you do. You’re panicking.”

  “No, I’m not. This makes sense.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense at all. Especially now. I don’t know that Kevin was murdered. Even the police don’t know that yet. I heard Berman talking to Gregor Demarkian, and as far as I was able to make out, they can’t figure out what Kevin died from. But suppose it was murder. Then what?”

  “Then, that’s what my point is. You see—”

  Dan was still standing by the window. He came away and knelt down by Stephen’s chair, put his hand on Stephen’s arm, looked directly into Stephen’s eyes. Stephen didn’t like it. It made him feel clammy.

  “Listen,” Dan said, “the object here is to get you through this without any mud sticking to you, any mud at all. Not even inferential mud, like with Chappaquiddick. Right?”

  Inferential. Stephen grimaced. “Right,” he said.

  “Fine,” Dan said. “Now, listen to me very carefully, because I’ve been thinking about this for hours. I’ve got a plan.”

  [3]

  The clock just off the foyer downstairs was striking seven when Patchen Rawls decided to make her move, and even then she didn’t feel right about it. She had been up since five, sitting on her bed and meditating, but that hadn’t made her feel right about anything either. The rain was coming down over her head, sounding so loud she imagined she could feel it on her skin. It was beginning to occur to her that she hated this house as much as she’d ever hated anything. It was malign.

  Patchen Rawls had no idea how her life could be ruined when it was controlled completely by karma—if it were going to be ruined, it would have to have been ruined in advance, so to speak—but that wasn’t the kind of thing she worried about and that wasn’t the kind of thing she had time to unravel now. Just after she’d woken up, she’d taken Janet’s dirty underwear and ripped it to shreds with her razor. The police had searched her room the night before, and they’d found it, but thankfully they hadn’t known it wasn’t hers. They’d found her perfume vials, too, but they hadn’t realized there was anything in them but perfume. She’d been worrying ever since that Janet would notice the underwear was missing and tell somebody she shouldn’t. Now she was going to have to take out the shreds and bury them where they couldn’t be found, or throw them in the sea. It wasn’t as good as what she’d meant to do with them, but at least it would get them out of her life.

  She had opened her door and set up watch at six o’clock. At six forty-five, she’d seen what she’d been waiting for: Stephen coming out of his room (with Dan Chester) and going downstairs to the first floor. He had been talking about Janet. Dan Chester had been talking about Kevin Debrett.

  She had everything she needed in a bag at her feet. She stood up and tugged the bag under her arm.

  Malign, malign, malign, she thought. That was why things were going wrong. This house and everything in it were malign.

  Patchen let herself out into the hall, looked around to make sure nobody was watching her, and walked down to Stephen’s room. He had left the door shut, but she knew it couldn’t be locked. It would be very easy to get inside.

  Once she was inside…

  He was going to be ready to kill her at first, of course, because he wasn’t really very enlightened. But she was only doing this for his own good. He would see that, eventually. They all would.

  She was just as sure that her mother had seen it, before she was swallowed into the Great Consciousness and made ready for her next incarnation.

  FOUR

  [1]

  BENNIS HANNAFORD SPENT THE early hours of the morning on the phone to Philadelphia. Gregor Demarkian knew that for two reasons. In the first place, he heard her, pacing across her floor, talking in the agitated, curiously defenseless voice she used only when speaking with Donna Moradanyan. That voice was muffled by the wall that came between them, so that Gregor didn’t hear what she actually said, but he could guess at it. Kevin Debrett. The police. A possible murder.r />
  The second way Gregor knew that Bennis had called Philadelphia was because he heard from Philadelphia himself—not from Donna Moradanyan (who would never have thought of calling him), but from Father Tibor Kasparian. The call came in at quarter to twelve, after what Gregor had to admit had been a very frustrating morning. He had risen at seven in spite of his lack of sleep, and showered, and gone downstairs. Just as Bennis’s brochure had promised, there was breakfast laid out in the dining room. The long rose glass table had been set with mats and silverware and rose linen napkins. The rose, glass sideboard had been set with covered silver serving dishes and covered urns for coffee and tea. The scene was eerily like the scene at breakfast in Bennis’s mothers house on the Main Line, except that Bennis’s mother’s house was still part of the nineteenth century, and this was too angular even for the twenty-first. Gregor thought the serving dishes must have been custom-made, because they were so plain and sharply angled. The coffee urn reminded him of the Chrysler Building, complete to the scaly surface and the point.

  He had hoped to find the guests assembled, but he didn’t. Maybe they, like Bennis, had been up too late, and now were sleeping in. Maybe they were awake but in their rooms, or in other parts of the house. The mere fact that there had been a death in the house should have been enough to keep at least some of them awake. The possibility that that death had been murder should have taken care of the rest of them. It had certainly taken care of him.

  He was practically sleepwalking, and he came to standing at the door of Victoria Harte’s dining room, staring at the table and the sideboard and the silverware, feeling sheepish and annoyed. Then he looked down the line of empty chairs to the occupied one at the far end, and smiled. Victoria Harte was there, by herself, hanging over a cup of coffee. There were bags under her eyes and creases at the sides of her forehead. She hadn’t had any more sleep than he had. She had, however, had the presence of mind to pay some attention to her dress. Her sapphire blue caftan was immaculate, and the heart-shaped ruby on it winked as if it had been polished. It didn’t pull at the caftan’s material at all.