by Nancy Werlin
“I wondered …” I gathered myself. “I wondered if it was because of Daniel. I wondered if maybe Daniel was protecting me too, all those times he was so horrible to me about Unity …”
I looked across into Saskia’s face. I read an answer there: No.
But then she said, “Yes. Yes, exactly. I was doing what Daniel wanted. Unity was fine for him, and for me, but the last thing he wanted was his little sister involved in it. He went out of his way to alienate you. He wanted to make sure you’d never want to be where he was, doing what he was doing. What I was doing.”
“You’re lying,” I said.
Her eyes dropped away from mine.
The world had tilted on its axis for me. I said after a moment, “I’m sorry, Saskia. I was jealous of you. Of you and Daniel both.”
She shrugged. “I was jealous of you. For other reasons. You seemed so … okay on your own. You didn’t need anybody. You just stayed yourself, and that saved you.” Her mouth twisted, and she quoted, in perfect mimicry of Daniel doing his Buddha thing: “Guard yourself like a frontier town. That was what you always did.”
I gaped at her.
And then softly she said: “Daniel treated me like dirt, you know.”
Somehow I found my voice. “No …”
“Yes.” And as I continued to stare, she added, “You are so naïve, Frances. I never understood how you could be that way. I still don’t understand. You’re not stupid. Just … blind. Oblivious.”
“Daniel loved you,” I said finally, uncertainly. “Didn’t he?”
“Daniel loved only himself. And the thought of being rich.”
We looked at each other.
Finally I asked: “Did you—didn’t you love him?”
Saskia shrugged again. “At the beginning I did. When we were first at Pettengill. He made me feel less alone. When I was with him—having a boyfriend, you know—I felt more like I belonged.” Then: “Frances, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said grimly, conscious that it wasn’t just the cramps that had me in anguish. I was pressing against my stomach with both arms now. “This is … pretty normal for me. First day. You know.” Finally I could look up again.
The conversation had not gone the way I had thought it would go. And there was something else. Something hidden, the way I’d hidden my own nightmares beneath black paint. I could feel it. I could feel it in the room with us. I said, “Saskia?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Yes?”
And my nerve, my courage, was right there with me, steady. Calm. I said, “I was told you wanted to talk to me about Daniel’s death. That you would tell me how it happened.”
“Yes,” said Saskia. Had she paled even more? “That’s true.”
“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Then let’s do it. Get it over with, Saskia. I can handle it. Tell me how Patrick Leyden killed Daniel.”
She was too silent.
“Saskia?” I said.
She said, “Well, that’s just it. Patrick Leyden didn’t kill Daniel. Maybe he was ultimately responsible—my lawyer plans to say that, and that it was self-defense, in a way. But Leyden wasn’t directly responsible.”
Her eyes were twin pits of hell. “Frances. I killed Daniel.”
CHAPTER 34
“You’re quiet,” said Diefenbacher to me from the driver’s seat.
“Uh-huh,” I said. He and I had been in the car, alone, for five minutes only. It was odd. I realized now that on the drive up, I’d secretly longed to have Sorensen not be there. Despite everything, I’d wanted to be alone for a single, precious, even silent hour with James—with Diefenbacher. But now that I had gotten my wish for the drive back, I didn’t care.
Diefenbacher had given me a note from Yvette, who was staying in Boston overnight. He had said that she wanted me to call her; that she wanted to talk to me. I had nodded and stuffed the note in my pocket, but I didn’t think I could call her. I didn’t think I’d want to talk to her ever again.
As we drove slowly through the evening rush-hour traffic, I watched out the window of the car. On the sidewalk in front of a brownstone, I saw a couple who seemed to be about my age; a tall boy with a shaved head—shaved so close he was really bald—had his arm around a girl with short, dyed-white hair. She was laughing up into his face and he was grinning down at her and, despite the difference in their heights, their steps matched perfectly as they walked, leaning into each other and battling the winter wind. In love, I thought, and abruptly had to blink hard.
When I could focus again, the car had moved on, leaving the couple behind. I realized that my cramps had subsided to dull, intermittent stabs and was grateful for that, at least. The car was warm. I stripped off my mittens and opened my coat.
A silent Diefenbacher was trying to work the car over to the highway. Right now, however, we had come to a standstill. Hoping masochistically for another glimpse of the happy young couple, I looked out at the bundled-up pedestrians, the dirty snow, the anxious cars. No couple, but in the Toyota next to us a man abruptly hurled his cell phone away and then looked directly at me and gave me the finger. Then he smashed down on his horn.
“Yeah, that’ll help,” James muttered. Despite the nasty traffic and his attention to it, I could feel that James’s—Diefenbacher’s—real awareness was of me. There was some small satisfaction in that. It was very small, however.
“Saskia told you?” James said, his eyes straight ahead. “About Daniel?” And then, when I didn’t reply: “Frances?”
“Yes,” I said. “She told me.” I leaned my right elbow on the car’s armrest and angled my body more sharply toward the window. The man in the Toyota was gripping his wheel with both hands. His eyes were closed. Suddenly I noticed that there was a toddler in a car seat in the back of his car. The child’s mouth was open.
I could paint that, I thought. I could paint that man, in that car, with that baby. First I’d wash the entire canvas in dark red—no, better, red with a grayish tint. Oils for this. Not acrylics.
“Are you okay?” James persisted.
“No,” I said calmly. I’d use a thick brush, I thought. I’d make the baby all head. One big head bouncing in the backseat, while his father leaned with huge fisted hands on the wheel in the front. And white headlights all around. The light would be sharp needles attacking the car.
Saskia had deliberately injected Daniel, while he slept, with an overdose of heroine. She had watched, beside him, until he died.
“I wrote the note in advance,” she told me. “I planned everything in advance. This was not an accident. It was murder, Frances. I made love to Daniel that night, and then I murdered him.”
There was actually pride in her voice. Pride, and terror, and something I couldn’t name. I looked at her and she looked back at me, and it had been as if we were trapped, doomed to stare and stare … my whole body had felt frozen …
“I want to help you,” James said. He didn’t look at me, and he sounded calm, but beneath the calm I thought I could hear a certain urgency, determination, in his voice. “Terrible things have happened, Frances. It might take you years to absorb them and come to terms with them. If you ever can.”
I didn’t reply.
“I know you loved your brother. I know what Saskia told you must have been a terrible shock. It was to me, and I knew things you didn’t, and—well, of course, he wasn’t my brother.”
I said nothing.
“And I know that—that the bad things about Daniel—I know that, in a way, they don’t matter. He was your brother … But if it would help you to talk … and I think it might … We were friends, Frances, you and I. Are friends. Aren’t we?”
I didn’t think so. I said softly, “I don’t want to talk.”
Some minutes passed. Then: “Okay,” said James.
The traffic finally began to move. The man in the Toyota turned off to the right. I closed my eyes. And I was back in the apartment building, in Saskia’s tiny room, sitting across from he
r. Listening, listening, in a time-space vacuum that contained only us, face to face, staring into each other’s eyes, each other’s souls.
“It all happened quickly.” Saskia’s voice was flat, factual. “One morning Daniel found my tapes, all my accumulated evidence. He’d secretly made a copy of my room key. I walked in and found him sitting with my Walkman, listening to a tape. He’d torn my closet apart looking—he told me he’d suspected I was taping conversations.
“I tried to bluff. I told Daniel it was just insurance, leverage to use against Patrick if we needed to. That it was for both of us. He said he understood. But I watched his eyes as we pretended to believe each other, and I knew he’d tell Patrick. It was only a matter of time. Patrick was due at Pettengill the next day, and if he knew what I was doing—” She swallowed.
“Daniel didn’t get it, Frances. Patrick Leyden was ruining both our lives, and he didn’t see it. Daniel didn’t see what he had become. He didn’t see how bad—how—or he didn’t care.
“We had both become monsters. I didn’t understand at first; I just liked having more money. I didn’t see what I—what I … And then one day I did see. Last September, when Patrick started talking about middle schools. It was like waking up from a dream—like a slap. Suddenly I understood: We might be hurting—killing, destroying—thousands of people. And Daniel—I remember he laughed and said—”
She stopped. I watched her fists clench.
“What?” I said. “Saskia? What did Daniel say?”
She wasn’t looking at me now. I waited.
Then she seemed to gather herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly.
“But Saskia—”
“No!” Saskia said sharply. Then, after a while she added, still not looking at me: “Frances, you can’t possibly understand—I don’t want you to understand—what it’s like to suddenly see how ugly you are. You, and the people you’ve chosen to be with …”
My throat closed.
“Look, I thought I had to kill Daniel,” Saskia said rapidly. “I thought I had to. I had to get Patrick. I had sworn to myself that I—and I don’t know. I looked at Daniel and I knew it was too late for him. Maybe I was crazy that day. Maybe I’ve been crazy for months. Or years. But that day I only saw one way for me to—to go on. It seemed to be a choice between one person or thousands.”
Suddenly she looked directly at me. “I still only see one way,” she said. “The way I took.” She reached out then. She reached out across the length of the bed and gripped both my hands in hers. She gripped them tightly, tightly, and it hurt.
“It was easy, Frances,” she whispered, and the words went right into me and lodged like shards of glass. I knew they would never come out. “Killing Daniel was actually very easy.”
“And this is the thing. This is what I want you to know. It was him or me, Frances. It was. If I hadn’t shut Daniel up, Patrick would never have been caught That’s important, right? Isn’t it?”
I looked at her.
“Please,” said Saskia to me. “Please, Frances, tell me you understand it’s important.”
She didn’t say “Tell me you forgive me.” But I heard it. I heard it, and I saw it in her beautiful, beautiful face.
You don’t know what it’s like, she had said, to suddenly understand how ugly you are.
I didn’t answer. I stared at her, and she stared at me. And my hands moved a little, in hers, and—almost against my will—gripped back.
I wanted to ask: Why, Saskia? Why exactly do you hate Patrick Leyden so much? Is it just because of the thousands of kids that you think destroying him might have saved? Or is it something more … personal?
The difference in age between Saskia and Patrick Leyden was actually less than between me and James Droussian—Diefenbacher.
I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask because this too was one of the answers to why Daniel had died. I wanted to ask.
But I didn’t.
I was not ready to know.
We had made it to the highway, where the traffic remained thick but did move. I wondered how long it would take to get back to Pettengill. I was supposed to have dinner in the cafeteria with Andy. I wondered if he’d mind if I canceled. If I just went to bed.
Or maybe it would be better for me to keep busy. To take the bus to Boston tomorrow with Andy as planned, and visit the hospital, talk with the nurses and doctors and social workers who’d known Debbie there … yes. Yes. I’d do that. Yes, that was best. Andy was so excited, so hopeful. And perhaps—who knew?—maybe we would find Debbie. Find her, take her back on the bus with us, help her make a life. Keep her from dying. If I could be part of that, then maybe, maybe …
“Frances, I wish you’d say something,” Diefenbacher—James—said quietly. “Anything.”
I looked over at his profile. It was nearly full dark outside now. I wet my lips. I said, “Okay. Tell me, Special Agent Diefenbacher. Do you like working for the FBI? How do you feel about all of—all of this? Good? Do you like working neck-deep in—” I groped for a word and, to my surprise, found it. “In evil?”
I heard Daniel’s Buddha voice in my head suddenly, and for once it wasn’t sarcastic. He was whispering. A whole water pot will fill up from dripping drops of water. A fool fills himself with evil a little at a time.
Perhaps that was what had happened.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I said to James. I could hear in my voice that tears weren’t far away, but I wouldn’t let them come any closer. I said what I wanted to say. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get infected? Or that, some day, you won’t know the difference between—between—” I stopped then. I couldn’t go on.
Oh, God. What had my brother thought he was doing? Who was he? What had he believed? And who—who was I?
I buried my face in my hands.
Then, in the darkness, James answered. Almost. He said: “I feel good about Patrick Leyden being in jail. Not to mention his ten best pals. I feel good about their probable futures.” Another second, and then: “The world is not a pretty place, Frances. But I know where I stand in it. I do my best out there.”
I looked up. I wasn’t crying. “Fighting evil?” I said hoarsely. I wanted it to be sarcastic, but somehow it wasn’t. It was just—sad.
A few seconds passed and then James said, “Yes. That was the idea. Doing what I can. I can’t say I never have regrets, but I’m not sorry to be out there trying.” I thought he was done, but then he added quietly: “Every one of us is needed.”
I thought of how Daniel had said similar things originally. About Unity. About doing good in the world. But he had been lying.
“Saskia,” I said eventually. “Do you think she’s heroic? Successful at fighting evil and all?” Could a cold-blooded murderer also be a hero?
I wondered what Saskia’s motives had been, exactly. What was it I had seen in her face as I sat across from her, as I looked deep into her eyes? Pain? Regret? Fear? What had she wanted from me? Forgiveness?
Was what she had done evil? All of it? Part of it? I thought so, but I—I had done nothing. What was that? Who was I to judge?
“Is that what you think?” James asked. “That Saskia is a hero?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I turned back toward the window, and watched the darkness outside the car.
She had participated in Unity, understanding what she did. And then, she had risked her own life, and her future, to shut it down.
She had made love to my brother—my wicked brother—and then murdered him.
There was something I didn’t know, and maybe never would, about her relationship with Patrick Leyden.
She had tried to keep me out of Unity. In her weird way, she had tried to protect me. Maybe.
She was friendless. She was alone. She was facing all kinds of court trials—as witness, as defendant. It would go on and on. She’d said she had a lawyer. What kind of a life would she have from now on?
I didn’t understand her. I had never understood her. Behind t
hat lovely face, she was layer upon layer of complexity. If I were to try to paint her, I wouldn’t know where to begin … I was even more afraid of her now, in truth, than I had been before. She was a dangerous girl, Saskia Sweeney.
No. A dangerous woman. A woman.
Like me.
Compulsively I said, “Will she be all right? What will happen to her, James?” I hadn’t meant to say his name. It just came out.
James didn’t appear to notice. He said, “It’s going to be rough on her. She’ll need to be strong. And—she’s going to need a friend, Frances. Badly.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. Then I said, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Maybe not,” said James.
We finally broke free of traffic and the car picked up speed. We sat in silence for the remainder of the drive. But as we entered the outskirts of Lattimore, James said abruptly, “Frances? I want you to know something. You’re going to be a very intriguing, very attractive, and very unique woman. Well, you already are. I hope you know that. The man you decide to love someday—when all this is over and you’ve come into yourself—will be very lucky. That is very clear to me.”
He didn’t look at me. And he didn’t say anything else. I knew for sure then that he did know how I’d felt—how I still felt—about him.
He was trying to make me feel better. In the midst of everything that had happened, he was trying to make me feel better about that one thing. I swallowed hard.
Maybe James already had a lover in his life. Yvette? No, somehow I couldn’t imagine that; and, rightly or wrongly, I felt I’d have known when I saw them together. But there was a world of women out there.
And yes, I was one—or nearly one—now, now and not “someday,” now and not “when I was older.” But that didn’t matter.
That was very clear.
James pulled the car onto the Pettengill campus and stopped in front of my dorm. It was just dinnertime, and there was no one in sight. I was a little late to meet Andy, I thought, but I knew he’d wait. I moved to open my door.
