The War for Gloria

by Atticus Lish

  Her back and shoulders looked as if she had been lying on a stove: Her skin was a deep brick-red color, like a bad sunburn or the purple hide of a rhinoceros—postmortem lividity. The examiner pressed the redness with his finger. It did not turn white but remained red. Her red blood cells had seeped out of her veins into her skin, permanently changing her color. In the redness, there was a muddy greenish-brown scaling. There were two sweaty white patches on her back where her weight had lain. They resembled hives. The sweatiness was the beginning of skin decomposition. Mold was growing on her skin.

  The pathologist took out her lungs, heart and liver and weighed them. When he cut open the top of her skull to inspect her brain, he saw a highly visible dark purple mass, like a black plum, in the middle of her red-and-white brain—evidence of intracranial bleeding. He flayed open the marbled meat of her upper body and found dark red bruising in the strap muscles of the neck. In the soup of blood of her larynx, he found the hyoid bone broken.

  The pathologist X-rayed her for broken bones and foreign objects and took samples of her blood, urine, vitreous humor—the fluid from her eyes. She had multiple bone fractures. She had alcohol in her system, which had decomposed to aldehyde and sugar. He took her hair. He swabbed her body for sperm and prostaglandins. He fingerprinted her. Under her fingernails, he found shreds of bloody tissue, which he sent for DNA analysis.

  Leaving her on his steel table beneath the roaring vacuum hood, he unhitched his breathing apparatus, peeled off his gloves and went upstairs to his computer and began to write.

  Her death was a homicide. She had died from blunt force trauma and strangulation.

  Her toxicology report detected chloroform.

  * * *

  —

  Her funeral was held at an Irish funeral home down the street from a car care center. A crooked sidewalk went by small houses, brick stoops with loose mortar, and scraggled hedges to the wide white sign and black script, like a letter written in 1776 with quill and ink. It faced the redbrick Quincy firehouse. Tom wore black shades at the service and stood with his thick hands clasped one over the other beneath his belt buckle. His graying hair hung to his shoulders. The coffin that Molly rested in was made of mahogany, planed, finished, inlaid with gold. The well-designed lid created a hermetic seal according to the funeral director. It stayed closed. Underneath it, a soft silk lining pillowed her body. Tom spent over fifteen thousand dollars on her funeral. His relatives came from New Hampshire. Women in his extended family brought yellow flowers shaped like trumpets. At the end, he was one of the six men who carried out the heavy shining coffin to the hearse.

  Corey hadn’t been invited. From across the street, he watched them carry out the coffin.

  * * *

  —

  The news reported that a cell phone had been found lying in the trees off Route 116, less than two miles from Mount Holyoke State Park where Molly’s corpse had been discovered. The police recovered the SIM card. Valuable information was on the card. They wanted to know who had called her. It led them to a Cambridge man named Adrian Thomas Reinhardt.

  * * *

  —

  The Massachusetts State Police homicide unit attached to the Hampden County District Attorney’s office was handling the investigation of Molly Hibbard’s murder. The district attorney and his investigators appeared on the news and said that they were moving forward.

  But nothing happened next. As the weeks went by and April became May, the case vanished from the news and the drive to prosecute it seemed to stall, leaving everyone who cared about it in a state of suspended animation. A popular theory for why this happened was that Reinhardt was a wealthy kid from Cambridge who was taking nuclear physics at MIT, while the victim was a Quincy sheet-metal worker’s daughter.

  The papers said that MIT was expelling Reinhardt pending the outcome of his case and that his mother had retained a criminal defense attorney to defend her son.

  In a statement to detectives, which the public didn’t hear, Reinhardt claimed that any record of a call to Molly Hibbard’s number which had originated from his phone was either the result of a misdial or had been made by someone else.

  Any idea who? investigators asked.

  Adrian said: A youth from Quincy, like the victim, who’d been obsessed with her, named Corey Goltz.

  * * *

  —

  Ten days after the news broke of Adrian’s entanglement in the case, one night quite late, Corey’s phone rang when the lights were out and he was trying to sleep. Earlier the waves had been washing the shore, but at some point, the wind had dropped, the tide had turned, and now the house was silent. He picked up the buzzing Samsung. The voice on the other end began speaking without preamble.

  “Who’s this?” he interrupted. But he knew it was Adrian and sat up on high alert.

  “I guess you don’t remember me. I guess I’m pretty forgettable.” Adrian’s voice sounded strange, as if he had a cold or had been weeping.

  “Why are you calling?”

  “Oh, I guess I don’t have an official reason. I could probably hang up again and the world would keep turning at the same speed around the sun.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At school. It’s going well. I’m still learning things. I’m taking gauge theory. I’m going to pass my finals. That won’t be a problem. I’ll probably be doing a summer internship.”

  It struck Corey that these were fantasies or lies.

  “I’ve got a problem, buddy.”

  “Is it something to do with your mother?”

  “Someone killed my friend.”

  “That sounds very traumatic.”

  “I got a feeling you know all about it.”

  “I can’t know about something unless it’s been communicated to me.”

  “It’s been on the news, Adrian.” Corey was standing in the dark, his heart pounding down to his legs.

  “There must be a thousand things on the news every day that aren’t true.”

  “Adrian! They say you’re a suspect! You did something to her!”

  “You have your facts wrong. If I were a suspect, I’d know it. The police have talked to me, but that doesn’t mean they think I’m guilty of anything.”

  “So you do know what we’re talking about!”

  “As I was saying, they talked to me. They asked these questions: a, b, c, d…I said, let’s look at these questions logically. Here’s where there’s a fact or phenomenon you may have missed—just like with any scientific hypothesis. And it must have convinced them, because obviously they’re not going to let a murderer run free on the streets. It was just providing information. It’s like in any scientific observation you can’t gather enough information from one point of observation, so you have other points of observation, and then you check the data to see if it matches.”

  “This isn’t science class, this is life, Adrian.”

  “Well, what use is science if it doesn’t work in life? I mean, that’s what it’s for—using facts and data and reason and trying to invalidate or confirm a hypothesis. If anything, I’m thinking the cops are going to get around to talking to you.”

  “Adrian, they’re not just talking to people at random. They’re talking to people for a reason. They think you killed her. And that’s because you did, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry you think that. Killing a woman, that would be immoral.”

  “You’re a fucking liar.”

  “Let me think about this. No, I’m not lying. It would be immoral to kill a woman, just because—for whatever reason. I mean, we could debate about some counterfactual situation where she’d done something to you first, but unless it was like some really extreme case of child abuse, say, it’s like, you’re not going to justify that.”

  “Are you telling me the news is making up the fact that you’re a susp
ect?”

  “I’m not telling you anything. I haven’t seen the news you’re talking about. All I know is there’s this crime—this tragic thing that happened—and the police are trying to figure out what happened. That’s as much as I know. If anything, you probably know more about it than I do, since you knew her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She was your friend. That’s why the cops are probably going to want to talk to you. It’s like, who’s more likely to kill somebody? It’s somebody who knows this person, who has this nasty mixture of feelings of love and hate for them. What stranger is going to feel that way? Unless you’re talking about a serial killer or something—like some guy who’s been killing people for years, which is obviously not true in my case, and it’s probably not true in your case, unless you’ve been hiding it really well.”

  “Are you saying the police were actually asking about me?”

  “Your name came up. It only stands to reason. It’s nothing you should be worried about.”

  “I’m not worried about it. I hope they do talk to me.”

  “What do you think you’ll tell them?”

  “The truth.”

  “It might be a good idea to have an alibi for the night this happened. You could tell them you were hanging out with me. That’d be a good idea! Think about it! We could tell the cops we were at your house in Quincy. If we both stuck to that, they wouldn’t be able to do anything to you, no matter what evidence they turned up.”

  “What the holy living fuck are you talking about? I’m not going to lie to the cops. I don’t need an alibi, I’m innocent. Innocent people don’t need alibis. You’re the one who needs an alibi. You killed her, Adrian.”

  “No, I didn’t. My conscience is clean on that score.”

  “I know you. You did it.”

  “You’re just jumping to conclusions.”

  “How else would you be mixed up in this? You had to have done it.”

  “Well, there is one other way I could be mixed up in it: if I knew someone who was mixed up in it.”

  “Who? And you better not say me.”

  “I wasn’t going to say you. But it would explain it if something happened and I’m innocent and this other person is guilty.”

  “Who the hell are you talking about?”

  “You’re going to be mad, but it’s someone you won’t like. You’ll probably feel that competitive jealousy.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “It’s your father.”

  “What about him?”

  “He would be the reason this happened.”

  “When you say this, you mean the reason Molly’s…”

  “The reason she died. Yes.”

  “Did you see him kill her?”

  “No. I didn’t see that.”

  “Did he kill her and he told you?”

  “All I can do is provide the data that I can collect from my observation point, not the data from another observation point.”

  “Adrian, you better tell me.”

  “I can tell you that I was friends with your father for a long time, and if I owe you an apology for that—I guess I do.”

  “So, you and my father: What did you do?”

  “I didn’t say we did anything.”

  “Did you kill Molly?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t say you didn’t either. So did you or didn’t you?”

  “I would ask you to stop trying to get me to say something that won’t make any difference to a person if she’s dead.”

  “You did it. Oh my God.”

  “I haven’t confessed or anything. Those are your words. If you’re planning on telling anyone about this conversation…”

  “I’m not interested in telling anyone, you sonofabitch!”

  “That’s a noble response. I’d expect nothing less than that nobility from you.”

  * * *

  —

  He stared at the wall without seeing it. The lights were out in the house and there was nothing to see. He stood in the center of the house without turning on the lights, the phone dead in his hand, his head alive with imagery, the whole history of him and Adrian pouring through him like a river. And his commentary on that history going round and round in circles and following that river down a hole.

  I was fascinated with him, he heard himself think. I admired him, yes. What did I want? Big muscles? A’s in math? I wanted to learn his secret. He was outside the struggle of life like the Buddha in a flower. He pursued self-strengthening without anxiety, feeling only entrancement. I wanted his calm and blissful self-involvement. I knew, I knew, I knew he was playing chess with my father. And I ignored it, because I coveted a secret. A secret I have since learned doesn’t exist. All because I was afraid to go to basketball practice like everybody else—like Molly. Who now is dead.

  And Corey saw her standing in the cluster of athletes in the echoing court, breathing hard, wiping her face with a towel, reaching out to him with her sweating hand.

  Another wave of loathing convulsed him for Adrian’s cowardice and misogyny: He was a malformed male who aimed his rage at women. Corey swore he’d go to the police about him in the morning.

  But Corey was a coward too. He was very afraid and horrified. The morning came and he didn’t go to the police.

  * * *

  —

  Tom had been drinking straight for days on end, going to work, drinking in his truck, drinking continuously and staying drunk as the days turned into weeks. His bosses told him he could have all the time off he needed. He said he didn’t want any. They gave him paid leave; they let him keep the Ford. He had taken leave for his daughter’s funeral. He didn’t talk, he drank. He drank and was drunk behind the mask of his Viking-face, behind his black sunglasses, behind the straight line of his compressed mouth, his puffy dimpled cheeks and the gray biker beard that reached the chest of his Harley-Davidson shirt. He fell unconscious in his truck one night. He kept drinking when he woke up. His friends developed theories of how and why the DA was corrupt and spoke of advancing their theories in the media. “It’s a buyout,” they said to Tom. They spoke of how to get the bureaucrats to act: from threatening lawsuits to taking pictures of them cheating on their spouses. If they couldn’t get the wheels of justice to turn, the next question was, what could be done to the guilty party, this Cambridge boy, to punish him in vigilante style?

  Silent Tom kept pouring alcohol down his throat. One morning, when he was already drunk for the day, he broke his silence to call the state police and ask, “Why haven’t you arrested this kid?” A detective told him they were working on it.

  After work that evening, Tom and his crew parked their trucks behind a Dedham strip mall, sat on their tailgates, talking, tossing their words at the cinderblock wall like dice. Tom’s big hands hung like deadweight in the belly pocket of his sweatshirt. Under tension, the fabric stretched down from his square shoulders. His beard thrust out from his chin like a plant that lived on runoff from the scooped stone of his face. He was wearing black wraparound shades, which doubled as safety glasses.

  “You hear anything new from the cops?” one man asked.

  “No.” Tom stalked away and kicked his boot on the asphalt.

  The talk lagged and resumed. A man came back from the liquor store with beer. Victor said he didn’t want any; he was driving. The men shared out the beer. Tom took a flask out of his pocket and drank it off like water.

  One man said quietly, “I’d be afraid to do that.”

  Tom said, “I’m not driving a lift. All I gotta do is stand down here and go ‘Make sure it’s straight.’ And if they bust me, I’ll accept the consequences.”

  “I’d hate to see you get in trouble. You’re one of the good ones.”

  “One of the good
ones…,” Tom muttered.

  “We don’t want Vizzer running things. We don’t want to get Vizzered.”

  “I used to drink my ass off and I always showed up in the morning.”

  “Vizzer took Sean on a job to Connecticut. They went to play Golden Tee Golf at four dollars a round. They were doing Guinness Nitros. He fires down a growler every time Vizzer does. He got so drunk, he said, he couldn’t remember his own name.”

  Tom walked away and kicked his boot on the ground again. “Growlers. Uh-oh.”

  “Sean said he was so drunk he forgot his own name. He got Vizzered.”

  Tom circled over to an electrician who was smoking. The man palmed his smoke to him. Tom hit it and handed it back, palm up, at the level of his waist. Exhaling smoke, he went to his truck. The men watched him. Tom got the bone-handled knife out of the cup, cut a zip tie that was binding a coil of extension cord and kicked the cut plastic loop away.

  “Let us know if we can do anything, Tom.”

  “We shouldn’t let him drive.”

  He had gotten in his truck and was sitting, slumped behind the wheel.

  Victor walked over to him, saying, “Thomas…”

  “They’re investigating,” Tom slurred. “They’re doing their job like we do ours.”

  * * *

  —

  Several weeks after the funeral, on an evening in May when it was still cold, Corey went out to Houghs Neck and knocked on Molly’s father’s door. No one answered.

  He stood facing the door a long time. Dusk blurred everything around him.

  Finally he went in.

  A scene of clutter met his eye wherever he turned—washing machine, toolboxes, extension cords, rolls of sheet metal, fishing rods, cases of Dasani water, boot prints on the carpet, piles of clothes, a Grateful Dead ashtray cupping the butt of one of Tom’s cigars, junk mail on the seats of chairs, beer bottles, CDs—Martina McBride’s White Christmas on the kitchen counter. He found Tom sitting on the couch in front of the TV wearing old-man reading glasses, plaid pajama pants and a UMass sweatshirt as a memorial to his murdered daughter. His long, cinnamon Viking hair was undone. Shot with gray, it spread from his head out to his shoulders. The TV was off and the screen looked like a polished black gravestone.