The Spire

by Richard North Patterson

  Garrison fixed him with a gelid stare. “Remember what you told Hall you wanted to talk about?”

  “Angela.”

  “Angela,” Garrison repeated softly. “I think you know things you’re still not saying. Just like you seem to know everyone involved, back from college days.” He reached into the drawer again. “I want you to read something. You can’t tell anyone you’ve seen it, and I don’t think you’ll want to. But after you’re through maybe you’ll want to tell me more.”

  Standing, Garrison placed a sheaf of Xeroxed pages, bound by a rubber band, in Darrow’s lap. “Take your time,” he said.

  Without saying more, Garrison closed the office door behind him.

  Removing the rubber band, Darrow felt a jolt. In his hands was what appeared to be a journal, written in a clearly feminine hand.

  Alone, Darrow began reading. The nightmare began on the second page: an account of bondage and sexual sadism, supposedly inflicted on the writer by a male figure known only as “HE.” Briefly, Darrow paused, touching his half-closed eyes.

  The woman’s tormentor, if he existed in life, was a man of considerable inventiveness. His techniques were varied, all calculated to produce humiliation without leaving a mark; all, in the diary’s account, excited him in proportion to their debasement of the victim. But HE remained nameless, more a force of domination than a man with human characteristics and emotions, so defined by his obsessions that Darrow wondered if he was reading an elaborate exercise in sadomasochistic fantasy. The voice of the narrator was detached; it resembled the accounts of rape victims Darrow had heard as a prosecutor, wherein the woman, helpless during the act, has willed her conscious mind to go elsewhere. Yet the details were quite specific, meticulously recorded in the toneless voice of a concentration camp survivor, too resigned to inhumanity to respond with outrage.

  On the last page, the only words she had written were: “There is such darkness in the chamber of stone.”

  Shaken, for some moments Darrow sat alone in the silent office. His thoughts kept returning to Laurie Shilts, the magazines she’d found in Joe Betts’s drawer—which, for Laurie, had exposed Joe’s deepest self, transmuting sympathy to fear.

  The door opened, startling Darrow.

  Garrison stood there, reading Darrow’s face. “We found that in Carl’s safe,” he said. “We don’t know what happened to the original.”

  Slowly, Darrow nodded. “Is this her handwriting?”

  “Yeah. When we showed it to her mother, she just shriveled up.”

  Darrow waited for a question that never came. “It could all be fabricated,” he said. “There’s plenty of literary precedent for that.”

  Garrison laughed without humor. “So that’s what this is. Something Angela wrote for fun.”

  “There’s only one alternative: that HE was a real person.”

  Garrison crossed his arms. “Then maybe Carl was blackmailing him, just like you said. So HE bought him off with Caldwell’s money, to hide that he was a murderer. If that’s right, the question is why HE killed her.”

  It was odd, Darrow realized, to feel more horror in Garrison’s office than standing over Carl Hall’s body. “The diary tells us almost nothing,” he replied, “except about this man’s pathology. There’s no person in those pages. Maybe HE was angry. Maybe HE went too far. Or maybe, as Fred Bender believed about Steve Tillman, HE killed Angela to prevent exposure.”

  Garrison gazed down at Darrow. “So tell me this: If the man used Caldwell’s money, who could he be?”

  After a moment, Darrow stood. “I’ll think about that very hard, George. For Angela’s sake, and Steve’s.”

  2

  O

  N THE FLIGHT TO BOSTON, DARROW AND TAYLOR WERE companionable but quiet. No doubt, Darrow thought, Taylor was contemplating her interview. Unable to shake the images conjured by Angela’s diary, Darrow pondered the psychic landscape—real or imagined—that had produced the faceless HE. For the next four days, he promised himself, he would focus on Taylor as much as he could.

  The days would be full. They had dinner reservations, tickets to a Red Sox–Yankees game, plans for walks through Darrow’s favorite parts of the city. But he, like Taylor, had work. Aside from meetings with his partners and selected Caldwell alumni, Darrow had two appointments he had mentioned to no one. His forensic accountant, Mike Riley, had analyzed the transfer of money to Hall’s bank accounts and, more critically, would try to answer Darrow’s questions. Of more speculative value was a meeting with the psychiatrist whose skill and rigor had helped Darrow after Lee’s death.

  When Darrow turned to her again, Taylor was asleep.

  He studied her, pensive. After some misgivings, he had proposed staying at his town house. A shadow had crossed her face. “Will that be all right?” she had asked.

  “I think it’s time,” Darrow had answered simply.

  That night, Taylor had awakened from a nightmare she chose not to describe. The next morning, after she left, Darrow called his housekeeper in Boston.

  DARROW AND LEE had lived in a handsome three-story brownstone on the first block of Commonwealth Avenue, near the Public Garden. Standing on the sidewalk, Taylor gazed at the town house. “You must be glad to see it,” she said. “The location is lovely.”

  “I just hope you approve of the decor.”

  She gave him a sideways look, smiling a little. “Compared to where you’re camping out?”

  They entered the house. Stopping in the living room, Taylor took it all in—fourteen-foot ceilings, crown moldings, a large stone fireplace, and hardwood floors, brightened by Chinese carpets and bold modern art on the walls, accented by the black grand piano only Lee had played. Taylor admired the piano for a moment, then followed Darrow upstairs.

  The rooms—a library, a master suite and two guest rooms, offices for Lee and Darrow, the exercise room where both had worked out—had been, as much as practical, scrubbed clean of any trace of her. Putting their suitcases in a guest room, Darrow wondered if Taylor sensed this.

  “I like what you’ve done,” she told him. “Instead of filling a hundred-and-fifty-year-old house with antiques, like you were communing with somebody’s ancestors, you made it your own. You’ll be pleased to know,” she added wryly, “that I even like the art.”

  “That is a relief.”

  They descended the spiral staircase to the living room. Pausing by the piano, she rested a fingernail on the black enamel, tracing a line that bisected a light sprinkling of dust. Without turning, Taylor said quietly, “You needn’t have done that.”

  “Done what?”

  Facing him, Taylor answered, “Remove her pictures.”

  Darrow tried to smile. “Are you some kind of witch?”

  “I hope not. Maybe I’m more sensitive to my surroundings than most, to spaces where something’s missing.” Her tone was even. “I can still feel her, Mark. I don’t need to be part of an exorcism.”

  Darrow felt at sea. “Maybe we should go to a hotel.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Taylor replied. “She’s part of your life, and you love this house. So why pretend?”

  Briefly, Darrow spread his hands, a gesture ending in a helpless shrug. “You’re the first woman I’ve brought here, Taylor.”

  “Somehow I’d guessed that.” Moving closer, she touched his wrist. “Living in my father’s house, and remembering my mother, is much harder. This is something I’ll get used to.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.” Briefly, Taylor smiled. “Of course, I’m looking forward to dinner out. The wine will help, too.”

  “Then you can choose it,” Darrow promised.

  TAYLOR CHOSE MEURSAULT. It was clear she liked the Federalist; they relaxed into dinner, talking easily again. It struck Darrow that he had dined here with her father, two days after Lee’s memorial service. Farr had gently implied that, in time, there would be another woman for Darrow. Now Lionel’s daughter sat across the table.

/>   After dinner, Taylor and Darrow walked through the Common and the Public Garden. Dusk had fallen; the swan boats on the duck pond became shadows in the fading light, and an evening breeze stirred the branches of the willows. Away from Wayne and Caldwell, Darrow felt lighter. “Truth to tell,” he said, “I sometimes think about selling it.”

  “The house? Setting aside that I feel like a trespasser, it really is very nice.”

  Abruptly, Darrow realized that he did not yet wish to go back. They sat beneath a willow, gazing at the first faint moonlight on the pond. Sensing his mood, Taylor let him be.

  “About the photographs of Lee,” he said at length. “That was also for me.”

  She turned to him, head tilted. “Yes?”

  Darrow drew a breath. “When I look at them, I don’t just feel sad. I feel angry, and guilty.”

  “Because she died?”

  “Because of how she died, and why.” Darrow felt repressed emotions coming to the surface. “Lee was the most engaging person I never completely knew. She grew up with an alcoholic father and a mother who took her own misery out on Lee. The result was a childhood almost as bleak as mine.

  “Lee’s reaction was to become completely driven—always in motion, never looking back. She was as perceptive about the politicians she covered as she was scared of looking at herself, especially when the truth was hard.” Darrow turned, gazing at the pond. “In the context of our marriage, one of the hard truths about Lee is that she never wanted kids.”

  Taylor was quiet for a moment. “But she was pregnant when she died.”

  “She was also drunk,” Darrow said flatly. “Not just a little, but a lot, driving faster than she should have. And it was dark. So she hit that patch of ice and lost control.”

  Taylor touched his hand. “I’m sorry, Mark.”

  “So am I,” he said with quiet bitterness. “Also about the seat belt she wasn’t wearing when the car flipped. One act of carelessness after another, resulting in two deaths—hers, and the son I very much wanted.

  “I knew Lee didn’t, without her ever saying so. She’d learned too well from her mother that kids were a form of enslavement.” Darrow’s voice softened. “Of course, I overlooked that. And Lee, being who she was, enabled me. Perhaps she loved me enough to violate her own instincts. But once she was pregnant, I could feel how much she hated it.”

  He felt Taylor watching him. “Had drinking always been a problem?”

  “No. Living with an alcoholic father terrified her. Even before the pregnancy, Lee didn’t drink much. Except on the night she died.”

  Softly, Taylor asked. “What happened that night?”

  Darrow hesitated. “The facts are pretty banal,” he began. “She was drinking with the press pack at a hangout near where the candidate she was covering had camped out for the night. Lee was more vivacious than normal—almost manic, I’m told. And she was with old friends, the ones who must have sensed how much she feared what motherhood would do to her career.” Darrow’s tone flattened. “Maybe she wanted to escape being pregnant; maybe she was running from our marriage. Whatever, she broke her rule about abstaining during pregnancy. She had a drink and just kept on going.”

  “And no one tried to stop her?”

  “Not that anyone’s willing to say. But Lee’s biggest mistake was driving. Or maybe it was becoming pregnant.” Darrow’s voice lowered again. “We’d never really talked about that. If we had, I’d have promised to do more than my fair share of parenting.

  “That would have been okay. Instead, Lee died, and I hated her for it, and still loved her. As screwed up as this may sound, I’ve even wondered if I helped kill her.” Darrow exhaled. “So there it is. And here I am, awash in self-pity.”

  After a moment, Taylor said gently, “And you never talked to anyone about all this?”

  “No one. Somehow I couldn’t. Except the psychiatrist I found to keep myself sane.”

  “Did that help?”

  “Some. Our friends tried to help, too—it wasn’t their fault they didn’t know. The same with the women I eventually started seeing.” Darrow studied the swan boats, silver in the moonlight. “Maybe I’m like Lee. It’s hard for me to lean on anyone. Except, at times, your father.”

  “But not about this. Or anything like this.”

  “No.”

  “Yet it’s okay for people to lean on you,” Taylor responded softly. “Like the night I talked about my mother—too much, I thought—and you were so sensitive to how I felt. Just as you were when I was twelve.”

  A catch in his throat took Darrow by surprise. “Maybe I knew something.”

  “Maybe I did, too.”

  Tears surfaced in his eyes. As he fought them back, Taylor leaned her forehead against his. After a time, she said, “Let’s go home, Mark.”

  THEY TRIED TO sleep. Neither did. Late at night, they found each other. It was sweet and intense.

  In the morning, as Taylor slept, Darrow went downstairs to make them coffee. The house seemed different, he realized. He liked knowing she was here.

  3

  T

  HE NEXT MORNING DARROW MET WITH HIS EX-PARTNERS, while Taylor window-shopped on Newbury Street, “practicing for when I have a job.” After lunch together, Taylor went to her interview, Darrow to the psychiatrist who had once helped him.

  Jerry Seitz was a lean, bright-eyed man in his mid-forties whose attentive stillness seemed imposed on a naturally energetic nature. Darrow and Lee had known him socially. Before turning to Seitz in the aftermath of her death, Darrow had seen in him an ingenuous sweetness, almost a naïveté, which did not square with his profession. But within the confines of his office, Seitz was incisive and bracingly direct. Darrow liked him a great deal.

  For the first time in a year, they faced each other in Seitz’s sparely appointed office. “So,” Seitz inquired bluntly, “are you still blaming yourself for Lee’s death? Or have you managed to accept that Lee also fell short in your marriage?”

  Darrow shifted in his chair. “I understand that Lee had her own difficulties. But the accident kept us from facing up to things.” He stopped, shaking his head. “You knew her, Jerry. If she’d missed that patch of ice, would we have made it?”

  Leaning forward, Seitz clasped his hands, weighing his answer as he looked into Darrow’s face. “Maybe. I know you would have tried, Mark—awfully hard.”

  “And Lee?”

  Seitz gave the slightest of shrugs. “Would have done the best she could. But I always felt that more of the burden would have fallen on you.”

  Darrow absorbed this. “I’ll never really know, will I? I was talking about that just last night.”

  Seitz’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s new for you, isn’t it?”

  “One could say that.”

  “Who is she?”

  Despite himself, Darrow laughed. “My provost’s daughter. She came here with me.”

  Seitz’s eyes lit with interest. “Is this serious?”

  “It could be. But she’s twenty-eight—looking for her first full-time job, completing her PhD dissertation, and intent on living in a major city when I’ve just moved to the place she never felt at home. Those are pretty serious impediments.”

  “So what is it about her?”

  Darrow smiled a little. “As near as I can tell in a month’s time? Everything else.”

  Still watching Darrow, Seitz smiled too, signaling encouragement. “If she’s the right one, Mark, see if you can make things work. It says something that you’ve opened up to her.” His smile vanishing, Seitz picked up a piece of paper from the table beside his chair. “On to a grimmer subject. I took detailed notes on what you told me about this diary. You’re right that the whole thing could be fiction—the abstract quality of the narrative might suggest that. Still, you’ve asked me to assume it’s real. So let’s reprise the rules.”

  “All right.”

  “First, you want me to speculate on the character of the narrator and the man she c
hose to call HE. Second, you asked me to assume that HE killed her.” Seitz briefly checked his notes. “Finally, you’re trying to compare HE with a man you know to be real: a former classmate who was frequently inebriated, physically abusive to women, and obsessed with bondage involving African-American females. But who also, by your account, gave up drinking shortly after the strangulation of our narrator, and since then has led an ostensibly productive life that includes a highly successful career and a wife and kids he appears to cherish. Does that about cover it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Seitz puffed his cheeks. “This isn’t psychology, Mark—it’s more like divination. We should be doing this in a bar. But I’ll try.”

  “All I can ask, Jerry.”

  “Though we know nothing else about him, the acts Angela ascribes to HE are clearly aberrant. Equally apparent, this man feels a deep contempt for women, however well masked in his so-called normal life. A common background begins with a hard-handed father who exploited a codependent mother. These guys often hate their fathers but also despise their mothers, for being weak.”

  “That’s my old classmate, Jerry. Or so he told me in college.”

  “Interesting. The next step is that the son adopts the contempt of his father toward his mother, while Mom, replicating the pattern, placates him.” Seitz grimaced. “In an adolescent boy there tends to be an erotic element in his subjugation of Mom—her submission begins feeling sexual to him. And because he hates his father, he begins to compete with Dad for power.

  “This can get pretty tangled. When he was sixteen, a patient of mine came home from a date and found his mother in a negligee, drunk. So he pulled up her negligee and fucked her. She responded, and he liked cuckolding Dad. But he and Mom never spoke of it again. Perverse enough for you?”