And she would have known exactly what he meant.
After a while you don’t dare face what you did. You just close your eyes and grit your teeth and clench your fists and make believe everything will come out right.
That’s what you do.
Until a moment like now.
Standing in your own front room, Jimmy Stewart on the TV, and you know he is behind you. You know he is right behind you. You have some kind of an idea of what he’s going to do ’cause you’ve read it in the newspapers . . .
Catherine looks at the TV.
George is at the bank.
‘Avast there, captain . . . where ya headin’?’
‘Gotta see Poppa, Uncle Billy.’
‘Some other time, George.’
‘It’s important.’
‘There’s a squall in there, it’s shapin’ up into a storm.’
And Catherine senses him behind her, right there behind her . . . could reach her hand behind her back and touch him. Can imagine what’s going on inside his heart, his head, the rush of emotion that will be almost overwhelming. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s tougher than me. Much tougher than I believed. But then she hears the slight hitch in his throat as he inhales. Hears that slight hitch and knows - just knows - that he feels this thing as much as she does.
Closes her eyes.
‘It’s a good face,’ the voice from the TV says. ‘I like it. I like George Bailey. Tell me . . . did he ever tell anyone about the pills?’
‘Not a soul.’
‘Did he ever marry the girl? Did he ever go exploring?’
‘Well . . . wait and see . . .’
Catherine Sheridan closes her eyes and grits her teeth and clenches her fists, and wonders if she needs to fight back. If it would make sense to try and fight back. If anything will ever make sense again.
God I hope we’re right,
she thinks.
I hope that everything
—
Feels his hand on her shoulder. She’s rigid now, every muscle, every nerve and sinew, every atom of her being is tensed up and taut.
Sorts of leans back toward him as she feels his hands close around the back of her neck. Feels the strength in his grip as it tightens, and knows that it is taking every ounce of his will and self-discipline to do this thing. Knows that this will hurt him more - much, much more - than it will hurt her.
Catherine tries to turn slightly, and even as she does so she knows she is only contributing to the swiftness with which this thing will be done. Perhaps that’s why she turns. Feels the pressure of his fingertips, feels the pressure change as he moves to the right, as he maintains his grip on her throat, as he changes pace, builds pressure, eases back, uses his forearm to tilt her head to the left . . . and her eyes sting as tears fill her lower lids, but she’s not even crying. This is some kind of involuntary reaction, and the tension rises in her chest as her lungs begin to resist the absence of oxygen . . . and she starts to feel dizzy, and when her eyelids flutter she can see deep rushes of unidentifiable colors . . .
Sound erupts from the middle of her chest. A red-raw thundering fuck of a sound. Rushes up through the middle of her chest and stops dead at the base of her throat.
Oh my God
, she’s thinking.
Oh my God . . . Oh my God . . .
Oh my God . . .
Feels the full weight of her own body as it starts to drop, feels the way he struggles to hold her upright, and though she knows it will soon be over there is something inside her - something genetic, something basic, an instinct threaded through and around her being - that still fights for life even though she knows it’s no goddamned use now . . .
Now her eyes feel full of blood, they see nothing but red. Great smashing swathes of burgundy and rose and scarlet and crimson and claret . . .
Oh my God . . .
Feels the weight of her head as it lolls forward.
Knows that even if he stopped right now, even if he released his grip and let her go, even if paramedics arrived and bound her to a stretcher and pushed a mask over her face and told her to Breathe goddammit woman, breathe! . . . even if that oxygen was pure and untainted, and they raced the ambulance to Columbia Hospital or the University Medical Center . . . even if they did these things there would be no way she would survive . . .
In her last moment she strains to open her eyes, and there she sees George Bailey’s face light up at the dance, sees Mary look back at him, and it’s one of those moments, one of those stop-dead-in-your-tracks, love-at-first-sight moments that only ever happen to the best of people, and only ever happen once. And if you don’t go with that moment, if you don’t go with that rush of spontaneous magic that fills your heart, your mind, fills every little bit of everything you are . . . if you don’t just go with it you’ll remember it for the rest of your life as the one thing you should have done, the only thing you really should have done, the thing that might have made your whole life different, might have made it worthwhile, made it really mean something more than what you ended up with . . .
And Jimmy Stewart says: ‘Well, hello.’
Catherine Sheridan can’t fight any more. Doesn’t want to. Her spirit is broken. Everything that was something now counts for nothing at all. Lets it go. Feels herself slide to the floor, and feels him release her, and thinks:
I’m not the one who has to go on living with the knowledge of what we did . . .
Thank God for small mercies
.
By the time he started doing things to Catherine Sheridan she was long since dead.
ONE
Washington D.C. was not the center of the world, though a significant percentage of Washingtonians would’ve had you believe it.
Detective Robert Miller was not one of them.
Capital of the continental United States, the seat of federal government, a history stretching back hundreds of years, and yet despite such depth of history, despite the art and architecture, the tree-lined streets, the galleries, the museums, despite one of the most efficient metro systems of any American city, Washington still possessed its shadows, its sharp corners, its blunt edges. People were still murdered there each and every day.
November 11th was cold and unwelcoming, a day of mourning and remembrance for many reasons. Darkness dropped like a stone at five, the temperature below zero by six, and the streetlights running parallel lines as far as the eye could see seemed little more than invitations to follow them and leave. Detective Robert Miller had very recently thought of leaving, of taking another job in another city, and he had his own specific and personal reasons for considering such an option. The reasons were numerous - and they were bad - and he’d spent many weeks trying to forget them. At that moment, however, he stood in the back lot of the Sheridan house on Columbia Street NW. The cherry-blue bars of parked squad cars were reflected in the windows, the hubbub and commotion of too many people with too many agendas - attendant uniforms, forensics, crime scene photographers, neighbors with kids and dogs and questions that would never be answered, the hissing and static of handhelds and squad-car radios . . . The end of the street was a carnival of noise and confusion, and through all this Miller felt nothing but the change of pace he’d known would come. It quickened his pulse. He could feel his heart in his chest and the nerves in the base of his stomach. Three months’ suspension - the first month at home, the second and third months behind a desk - and now he was here. No more than a week of active duty and the world had already found him. He had walked from the daylight, directly toward the shadowed underbelly of Washington, and he had been welcomed like long-lost family. And to show its appreciation for his return it had left a beaten corpse in an upper bedroom overlooking Columbia Street North West.
Miller had already been inside, had seen what he wanted to see, a great deal he didn’t. The victim’s furniture, the pictures on the walls, all a reminder of a life that once was. And now that life had gone, extinguished in a heartbeat. He had left by the back kitchen door, wanted a breath of air, a change of tempo. Forensics were in there, businesslike and unemotional, and Miller needed a little distance. It was so bitterly cold, and though he wore an overcoat and a scarf, though he buried his hands in his pockets, he felt a sense of something altogether more chilling than the weather. He stood silently in the featureless back-lot and watched the madness unfold around him. He listened to the seemingly nonchalant voices of men who were somehow inured to such things. He had believed himself unreachable, but he had been reached, reached with ease, and it frightened him.
Robert Miller - a man of unremarkable appearance, perhaps no different from many other men - waited for his partner, Detective Albert Roth. Miller had worked with Roth for the better part of two years. They couldn’t have been less alike, but Al Roth was neverthless an anchor, a fastidiously professional man, abiding by protocol and regulation, thinking for both of them when required.
Miller had persisted in Homicide, but recent events had overwhelmed and buried whatever sense of purpose he’d originally felt. The things he’d learned seemed to possess as much use as dry sticks and fresh air. He’d made tentative enquiries to Vice and Narcotics, even to Administration, but remained undecided. August had been a bad month, September worse, and even now - still reeling from all that had taken place, feeling as if he’d somehow survived an ugly car crash - he did not truly understand what had happened. He and Roth did not speak of the past three months, it was something sensed, and though Miller felt it would perhaps have been better to speak he never started the conversation.
That evening Miller had been at the Second Precinct when the report came in. Al Roth had been called out to Columbia NW from his home, and when he arrived he and Miller stood in silence in the dead woman’s yard. Just for a few moments, a sign of respect perhaps.
They went in through the rear kitchen door. Men crowded the downstairs hallway; there were people on the stairs, and the hubbub of voices and the intermittent flash of cameras was backed by the sound of orchestral music. They stood without speaking for a time, and then Roth asked ‘What the hell is that?’
Miller nodded toward the front room. ‘DVD playing . . . It’s A Wonderful Life of all things.’
‘Very fitting,’ Roth replied. ‘She upstairs?’
‘Yes, bedroom to the right.’
‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Sheridan,’ Miller replied. ‘Catherine Sheridan.’
‘I’m going up there.’
‘Mind the pizza,’ Miller said.
Roth frowned. ‘Pizza?’
‘Delivery guy dropped it on the hallway carpet. Came over here to bring an order and found the front door unlocked. Says he heard the TV in the front—’
‘What? And he came in the house?’
‘Says they have strict policy not to leave without payment. God knows what he was thinking, Al. He thought he heard someone upstairs, figured that they couldn’t hear him because of the TV so he went up there. He found her in the bedroom just as she is now.’ Miller seemed to look right through Roth as he was speaking, then he got it together, his thoughts and words coinciding. ‘There’s forensic people all over the place. They’re gonna kick us out in a moment, but you go on up there and take a look.’
Roth paused for a moment. ‘You okay?’ he asked.
Miller could feel the substance and darkness of his own thoughts. He saw it in his reflection, the lines around his eyes, the shadows beneath. ‘I’m okay,’ he said, but there was something indefinite and subdued in his voice.
‘You ready for this?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ Miller said, his tone one of philosophical resignation.
Roth stepped past Miller, walked across the front hallway and started up the stairs. Miller followed him, the two of them edging their way along the corridor to the dead woman’s bedroom. A huddle of three or four men were gathered around the doorway. One of them - a face Miller recognized from some other moment, some other dark quarter of their collective past - nodded in acknowledgement. They knew who Miller was. They knew what had happened to him, the way his life had been opened up for the newspapers and shared with the world. They all wanted to ask the same question, but they never did.
As Miller entered the room the other officers seemed to step back and fade from his line of sight. He slowed up for a moment.
There was nothing like dead people.
Nothing in the world.
People alive and people dead were not even close. Even now, despite the number of bodies he’d seen, there was always that moment when Miller believed the victim’s eyes would open, that there would be a sudden intake of breath, perhaps a grimace of pain, a faint smile, something that said, ‘Here I am . . . back again . . . sorry, I was elsewhere for a moment.’
There was a first time, of course. But there was something about the first time that had stayed with Miller for every other time. It stopped his heart - just for a second, less than a second - and said, ‘Here’s what people are capable of doing to people. Here’s another example of the way life can smash someone to pieces.’
Now, the first thing was the irregularity of her position. Catherine Sheridan was on her knees, arms stretched out to her sides, head on the mattress, but turned so her cheek touched the sheet beneath her. A second sheet had been carelessly draped around her waist and obscured much of her legs. She seemed to be looking back along the length of her body towards the door. It was a sexual position, but there was no longer anything sexual about her.
The second thing was the expression on her face. He could not describe it. He knelt on the floor and looked right back at her, right up close, saw his own features reflected in the glassy stillness of her eyes. It was almost impossible to describe the feeling her expression had given him. Acceptance. Resignation. Acquiescence perhaps? It contrasted with the vicious lividity of the bruising that covered her shoulders and arms. From the neck down, what little he could see of her waist and thighs, it appeared she had been beaten mercilessly, relentlessly, in a manner so unforgiving it would have been impossible to survive. Already the blood had laked, the swelling had become accentuated as fluids thickened and clotted. The pain must have gone on and on and on, and then suddenly - a welcome silence after some interminable noise - it had ended.