A Quiet Death

by Marcia Talley

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean, Hannah?’

  ‘When Skip thought he was dying, he told me that he’d killed somebody. If this woman had been a recent murder victim, surely there’d be something about it on the Internet somewhere.’

  ‘Did Skip say who he was supposed to have killed?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Did Skip look like a soldier?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ I said, wondering where Paul was going with this line of questioning. ‘He’s the right age, mid-twenties, I’d guess, but he looked like a stockbroker to me, or an accountant. An attorney, maybe. Why do you ask?’

  ‘He could have served in Iraq, or Afghanistan,’ Paul said reasonably. ‘He could have killed somebody over there, and be wracked with guilt. Shit happens in wartime. You said he was Catholic?’

  I nodded. ‘He carries a rosary.’

  Paul raised an eyebrow. ‘How old did you say this guy was?’

  ‘Twenty-four, maybe twenty-five.’

  ‘Aren’t rosaries hopelessly old-fashioned? Something only wimpled nuns and great-grandmothers still do?’

  ‘They’re contemplative, Paul. Praying the rosary has a quiet rhythm to it, like meditation. Or, Skip may have been carrying it as a kind of good luck charm.’

  Paul grimaced. ‘As a good luck charm, it certainly fell down on the job.’

  ‘Speaking as someone who still wears her mother’s St Christopher medal whenever she flies, I don’t find the fact that Skip was carrying a rosary in his pocket strange at all.’ I had a sudden thought. ‘Search for Skip Chaloux.’

  Paul tapped a few keys, stared intently at the screen. ‘Nothing. There’s a fitness model named Chaloux, and somebody who makes corsets. Otherwise it’s “Skip to Main Menu” or “Don’t skip breakfast!”’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

  We tried a simple search on ‘Chaloux.’ 77,000 entries, plus or minus. After paging through half a dozen screens, I called it off.

  ‘So, what’s your next step?’ Paul wondered as he powered down his computer.

  ‘Without a last name, I’m dead in the water. As soon as I feel up to it, I’m going back to the hospital, and see if I can track Skip down. PGHC is a regional trauma center. If they pulled him out of the wreck alive, that’s probably where they would have taken him.’

  ‘Seems like the logical place to begin.’ Paul flipped off the desk lamp and followed me back upstairs to the kitchen. ‘But if you don’t find him there, what then?’

  I smiled. ‘Then I open the letters and start looking for clues.’

  FIVE

  Sitting next to me on the sofa Wednesday evening, Paul scrolled through the channels – WRC, WUSA, WJLA, not to mention CNN, FOX, MSNBC and LYNX. I snatched the remote from his hand, aimed, and turned off the TV.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, but I just can’t deal with it. Blah, blah, blah, twenty-four seven. You’d think that absolutely nothing else was going on in the world except for this Metro disaster. They’re running the same footage, over and over again.’

  I covered my eyes with my hand, but the images still burned on the inside of my eyelids. The twisted wreckage. The walking wounded. The orange, basket-like stretchers. The yellow body bags.

  Indeed, the crash and its aftermath had pushed everything else out of the headlines. So what if fall elections were nearly upon us and the Republicans were likely to take over the House? Who cared if wildfires were burning out of control in the Rockies? A damaged oil rig was still spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico, an intern at Lynx News had gone missing, and widespread flooding continued in Pakistan. Reporting on these events had been relegated to the inside pages of the Post and the Times, or reduced to television crawls, while full-blown coverage of the Metro crash went on and on and on.

  One by one, the names of the victims were being released. So far, in addition to the train driver, whose name had been announced almost immediately, the victims had been identified as a sixty-three-year-old rabbi from Alexandria on his way to spend a week with his grandchildren in Lanham, a German couple in their early seventies who were vacationing in the United States for the first time, an elementary school teacher, thirty-two, on her way home after work to Cheverly, a forty-year-old unemployed computer programmer heading to CSC for a job interview, and Tashawn Jackson, sixteen.

  When pictures of the victims were published in the Post, I remembered the German couple. They’d been sitting at the front of the car, gray heads together, consulting a Metro map, but I didn’t recall seeing any of the others. Except for Tashawn, the boy who died because he’d been too busy listening to his Nano to give up his seat to me.

  Tashawn Jackson, the boy who unknowingly saved my life.

  SIX

  Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while using this medication.

  Great. It was either the pain or the pills. Not a choice I was prepared to make.

  Caution: May cause drowsiness. Alcohol may intensify this effect.

  I carefully considered this warning while standing in front of the medicine cabinet several hours before my usual bedtime. Then I popped a pain pill and headed down to the kitchen to fetch a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from the Box-o-Wine we kept on tap in the fridge. The pain was getting easier to deal with, but the nightmares were another story. Over the past two days, even my doctor-prescribed naps had been interrupted by dreams, grotesque variations of the crash that jolted me awake, heart pounding. I chased the pill with half a glass of wine topped off with crushed ice and club soda, then padded back up to bed. For the time being, at least, drowsiness definitely needed to be intensified.

  The next morning, I lay awake in bed trying to figure out what day it was – Friday – while communing with a pair of cardinals peeping sweet nothings to one another from the tree outside my open window. The telephone rang, interrupting my reverie. I waited for Paul to pick up, but when he hadn’t by the third ring, I figured he’d already left for work, so I fumbled for the telephone myself.

  ‘Hannah, it’s Connie. I’ve been wanting to call, but Paul said you needed to rest. How are you doing?’

  Connie is Paul’s sister. She lives on the Ives family farm down in Chesapeake County, thirty miles or so south of Annapolis.

  ‘Battered and bruised,’ I told her. ‘Creeping around like an old lady, but at least I’m creeping. Others weren’t so lucky.’

  ‘Paul filled us in. It must have been horrible.’

  ‘Horrible doesn’t begin to describe it, Connie. It’ll be a long time before I get back on the Metro.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Ah, ha! I was hoping you’d say that.’ I explained about the mix-up with the Garfinkel’s bag and asked Connie if she’d be willing to drive me back to the hospital. ‘Paul’s got classes and faculty meetings all day, so I’m on my own. I’m not supposed to drive. Hard to do, even if I wanted to, with this pesky cast on my arm.’

  ‘No problem,’ Connie said. ‘After lunch, OK?’

  ‘Super.’

  The heatwave had broken at last, ushering in a glorious fall. Connie picked me up in her lime-green Volkswagen bug with the top down.

  ‘There is nothing that can’t be cured by taking a ride in a convertible,’ I told my sister-in-law as I eased into the passenger seat and tried to strap myself in. The effort brought tears to my eyes.

  Connie drew the seatbelt across my lap and snapped it into place. ‘Happy to contribute to the cure.’ She had a scarf tied around her auburn curls and a white swathe of sunscreen across her nose. A lemon-yellow chrysanthemum bobbed cheerfully in the bud vase attached to the VW’s dashboard.

  ‘How’s Dennis?’ I asked as she waited to make the left turn from Prince George Street on to College Avenue. Dennis was my brother-in-law, a Chesapeake County police lieutenant.

  ‘He’s got a murder on his hands, I’m afraid. A student at the community college. I wish they’d keep the murders over in P.G. County where they belong.’ She clapped a h
and over her mouth, blinked innocently. ‘Oh, my, did I say that?’

  ‘You did. Bad girl. I should report you to Dennis for insubordination.’

  By the time we took the exit out of Annapolis on to Route 50 west, I had told Connie as much as I knew about Skip and explained what I wanted to do.

  ‘So, let me get this straight. You need to find this man and return his property.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And the only thing you know about him is that his name is Skip, last name maybe Chaloux.’

  ‘Uh huh. And that he’s new to the area, because he hadn’t a clue about our weather. And his phone is with Verizon.’

  Connie groaned. ‘Well, that’s really going to help us, isn’t it?’ She eased the VW out into the fast lane and passed a school bus as if it were standing still. ‘What’s Skip short for, then?’

  ‘Skipper?’ I suggested.

  Connie grinned. ‘Skipper is Barbie’s little sister, Hannah.’

  ‘Or a castaway on Gilligan’s Island,’ I added helpfully.

  ‘I know a Steve who’s called Skip,’ Connie continued, slipping into the HOV2 lane and pushing the little Bug up to seventy. ‘And isn’t that guy Skip, who fixes your car, really named Wilfred?’

  ‘Nobody’s named Wilfred.’ I laughed. As Connie sped on, I stared at the cars we passed, silently counting the number of people driving while talking on their cell phones, making the most of the risky practice before Maryland’s ban went into effect in a few weeks’ time.

  ‘Could he be a third?’ Connie said brightly.

  ‘A third of what?’ I asked.

  ‘A third. Like Alfred P. Newman the Third, named after his grandfather Alfred P. Newman the First. In other words, the name skips a generation.’

  ‘In that case,’ I said sweetly, ‘he’d be a second.’

  Connie stuck out her tongue. ‘Picky, picky.’

  ‘Whether he’s a second, third or even a fourth isn’t going to help us much if we don’t know whether the namesake grandfather was a Charles or a George or, God help him, a Wilfred, is it?’

  When we got to the hospital, Connie dropped me off at the main entrance under the portico while she sped off to park. To my left, a row of ambulances stood backed into emergency-room bays, their crews waiting for their ill or injured passengers to be admitted before driving the vehicles back to the firehouses where they normally lived. I stared at the ambulances for a moment, wondering if any of them had delivered me there.

  When Connie caught up with me, I was making zero progress with the staff at the information desk in the hospital lobby. ‘We can confirm whether or not someone’s a patient here,’ the gentleman who was helping me said, ‘but you have to know his name.’

  ‘Skip,’ I said. ‘His name is Skip. His last name could be Chaloux.’

  ‘We don’t have any Skips on the patient list,’ he explained for the second time. ‘How do you spell Chaloux?’

  ‘C-H-A-L-O-U-X.’

  He tapped a few keys, shook his head. ‘Nope, no Chaloux either.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, waving my fluorescent cast under his nose as Exhibit A. ‘I was a patient here on Tuesday. I think Skip was a patient, too. We were both involved in the Metro crash,’ I added, hoping to earn a sympathy vote. ‘The hospital, i.e. you, mixed up some of his belongings with mine, and I simply want to return them.’

  The volunteer fixed me with a steely glare. ‘Ma’am, I will explain it to you once again. We are required by federal law to protect the privacy of our patients. Unless you are a family member, or a designated person, even if you knew the name of this Skip person, even if you are telling me now that he’s your very best friend in the whole wide world, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about his condition.’

  My sister-in-law stood at the counter next to me, wisely staying out of the discussion. I leaned in her direction. ‘I should have lied,’ I whispered. ‘Said I was his aunt or something.’

  ‘In that case,’ Connie whispered back, ‘you would have known his last name.’

  I felt my face flush. ‘Duh.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ the staffer began again. Maybe he was softening. ‘Why don’t you leave whatever the mixed-up thing is with me, and if this fellow called Skip is in the hospital here, surely he’ll notice that it’s missing and ask about it. Then, we can make sure it gets back to him.’

  I tend to get huffy when thwarted, so I fixed the volunteer with a steely gaze of my own. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand that unless you can confirm or deny the presence of a patient nicknamed Skip in this hospital, I can’t return the items now in my possession to you directly, only to Skip himself, or to a designated member of his family.’

  The old guy smiled. He actually smiled. ‘OK. Point taken. Why don’t you write Skip a note? If it turns out he is, or was, a patient here, I can see that it gets to him. If, regrettably, he’s passed away, I’m sure his next of kin would want all his effects returned and they’ll get in touch with you. How does that sound?’

  I faced Connie. ‘I don’t have anything to write on. Do you?’

  Connie pawed through her handbag, then shook her head.

  ‘There’s a gift shop,’ the staffer pointed out helpfully.

  I popped into the gift shop and purchased a greeting card – a cocker spaniel holding daisies in his mouth on the outside, blank on the inside, where I wrote:

  ‘Skip. I hope this finds you recovering from your injuries. I have your Garfinkel’s bag. If you get this note, please telephone me at . . .’ I turned to Connie who was inspecting some stuffed bears. ‘Home or cell, do you think?’

  ‘Both, I imagine.’ So I wrote the numbers down, signed the note ‘Hannah (the woman on the train),’ stuffed the card into its envelope, scribbled on the front and handed it to the staffer behind the desk.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Skip. Parens. Garfinkel bag. Not a lot to go on.’

  I shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s all I know.’

  ‘What now?’ Connie asked as we strolled back to the spot where she’d parked her car.

  ‘Now?’ I asked.

  Connie pressed the keyless remote and the car beeped. ‘Yes, now.’

  Using my good arm, I reached for the door. ‘Nothing to do but wait.

  Later that afternoon, when Paul came home from class, he found me sitting in the dining room, the contents of the Garfinkel’s bag spread out neatly on the table in front of me, a photograph in my hand.

  After Connie dropped me off, I’d untied the letters, carefully preserving the pale green ribbons that had held them together for so long. I’d arranged them in chronological order – 1976 through 1986 – like a game of solitaire.

  I held a pencil, freshly sharpened, with an eraser on the end. A spare pencil, equally sharp, was tucked behind my right ear.

  I had a notebook in which I had already written ‘#1, Sep 15 1976 New York’ and the address of the apartment in Paris where Lilith had been living at the time.

  A cup of tea sat at my right hand, the bottle of pain pills at my left, but, surprisingly, I’d been so engrossed in what I was doing that I’d missed the last dose and hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘Hannah, what on earth are you doing?’

  I looked up at my husband and grinned. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Research.’

  ‘Well,’ Paul said as he set his briefcase down on one of the dining-room chairs, ‘so much for your protestations about invasion of privacy.’

  ‘I feel like a voyeur, I admit. But I’ve promised myself that I’ll read only enough to help me find out who these letters belong to.’ I tapped the letter dated 1976. ‘There have to be clues in the letters somewhere.’

  Paul dragged a chair over from the wall next to the buffet and sat down at the table across from me. ‘What progress have you made?’

  ‘Look at this picture,’ I said, sliding it toward him across the polished mahogany.

  Paul studied the black and white image carefully. It showed a young man in his twentie
s with dark fluffy hair, long in back and trimmed to just cover the tips of his ears. Sunglasses dangled by one earpiece from the three-button placket of his Izod polo shirt. He was perched on the lip of an ornate fountain and smiling broadly for the photographer.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’

  ‘His name is Zan.’

  SEVEN

  Sometimes my husband has a one-track mind.

  ‘What’s for dinner, or dare I ask?’

  Abandoning the photograph, he had come around behind me, kissed the back of my neck, then begun to massage my aching shoulders with his thumbs. I rotated my shoulders against his hands. ‘Um, that feels good.’

  ‘Pizza?’ I asked him after several more minutes of bliss. ‘Chinese carry-out? Or . . . do you fancy a stroll down to Galway Bay?’

  Galway Bay won hands (and pink fluorescent cast) down, so we set out into the deliciously cool evening for the short walk up the street and around the corner to our favorite Annapolis hang-out.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Fintan wanted to know when we appeared at the door.

  ‘Metro crash,’ I told the restaurant owner simply.

  ‘My God,’ he said, fumbling the pile of menus he was carrying. ‘Tonight, drinks are on the house. The usual?’

  Fintan seated us in a quiet, two-table alcove near the front of the popular neighborhood restaurant, then, after admiring my eye-catching cast, went off to fetch our drinks – a frozen margarita for Paul and a mojito for me.

  Paul spread a napkin in his lap. ‘So, his name is Zan. What’s Zan short for? Alexander?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just signs the letters Zan.’

  ‘Zandros,’ Paul mused on. ‘Zander. Maybe even Zane. Last name?’

  I shook my head. ‘Never. The man was married, I discovered very early on, and not to Lilith.’

  ‘Aha! The plot thickens.’

  Just then, a waiter appeared with our drinks. After he took our dinner order, Paul tested his frozen margarita, licked salt off his lips and pronounced it good. ‘Without a last name to go on, it’s going to be pretty tough tracking this Zan person down.’