"Your theory," he began, cautious not to offend
her. "Its hypothesis is based on him knowing she was dead. How would he
have known that? It wasn't in the papers."
His deduction surprised her. How indeed? He was right.
"He knew," she stammered.
"How?"
It was like coming into a dark room with all exits locked.
He didn't let her suffer long.
"Martin," Cates said softly. "We told
Martin."
No, she decided, the man on the phone was not Martin. That
man was frightened, with something to lose, something big.
"Martin is the logical one," Cates mused,
reinforcing his affirmation. "That is ... if your theory holds."
"Sounds reasonable," she said without conviction.
"That's still not murder," he said gently,
revealing the soft edges of doubt. Was he mocking her?
"But it is a motive," she pressed.
The waitress brought their hamburgers.
"People kill for less," he said.
No, she decided. A deeper fear was the issue here. Clint's
kind of fear. How could she possibly convey that to Cates without confessing
how she had discovered it?
"We still don't have a victim."
"But we do." She felt on the edge of hysteria.
"A murder victim?"
"Soon," she said. "You'll see."
He shrugged and bit into his hamburger.
Back at the apartment, Flannagan had just begun wrapping
up. Seeing Fiona, he shook his head.
"Miss Tidy lived here. All spit and polish. Bet most
of what we found is yours or his," he said, pointing to Cates. "And
the girl's. But not many."
"You think someone might have wiped them away?"
"That's police stuff. I'm only a flunky."
He pinched her cheek. "We dusted where you said. I got
nothin' under the seat," Flannagan added, smiling.
"We got one good two-hand set," he said, his
professional instincts showing now. "Some good takes on the inside of a
drawer, the one with the undies."
"And the caviar cans?"
"Smears."
"Where was the two-hand set?"
"Damnedest place. The closet rail. Good and
clear."
"See," she said, turning to Cates. "We're
just missing pieces."
"I'm with you, Fiona. Partners, remember?" She
wondered if he was humoring her now.
He handed her the batch of prints, separated into a plastic
envelope and marked. She quickly dropped them into her purse.
"It would have taken longer if we really did it right,
Fiona," Flannagan said, as she walked him to the door. He had lowered his
voice.
"Look," he said. "It's all the time I can
spare. He finds out I've taken time away from the other, he'd shit." She
pecked him on the cheek.
"Thanks, Mick."
She was already calculating the problems that lay ahead.
She couldn't deal with Slaughter, the latent prints man. He guarded his domain
with more than the usual paranoia and would probably ask too many questions.
Somehow, she knew she'd have to enlist the help of the FBI. Another personal
favor. So much of police work depended on personal connections. What she had in
mind, however, was a little too personal--Tom Gribben.
He was an agent now assigned to FBI Headquarters. Working
with him on a case had led to a couple of dates, a consequence of her inexperience.
She had, she recalled, deliberately aborted his interest, much to his
confusion. It was his attitude she remembered most, because he didn't take
kindly to her rejection, especially after they'd once slept together. For him,
apparently such an act became a bond of fealty. It had set off in her a total
revulsion against dating anyone in law enforcement. They needed too much
praise, especially about their lovemaking. No, she had decided after Gribben.
No more cops as lovers.
"Let's split," she said suddenly, effecting a
yawn to cover her agitation. It was nearly midnight.
"Do you really think we're on to something?"
Cates asked. It was obvious that he, too, wanted to get his hopes up about what
might show up in the prints.
"Yes," she answered firmly. "It may not be
police business, but we are on to something."
Back in her apartment she took a cold shower, perhaps a
subconscious punishment to that other illogical female victim trapped inside of
her. You can't be me, she rebuked that other self.
Now listen, her logical, police self reasoned as she sat on
her couch in an oversized terry cloth robe that she shared with Clint. She wore
it as a security blanket, recalling his presence. She was, of course, directing
her conversation to the phantom Dorothy, not the broken horror lying in the
creek that day, but the sweet, soft, vulnerable female sister who apparently
could not extricate herself from that mysterious illness, the male malady.
Was the pain of it so unbearable, she wondered, that the
only solution was to fling one's self to death like tossing away a used candy
wrapper? Or was it necessary for her to be deliberately eliminated in order to
protect some male fantasy of ambition, some public lie? Was the sexual game of
dress-up so disgusting to confront that the man had to eliminate the witness to
the supposed aberration? And was it really an aberration?
She thought of herself and Clint, watching their sexual
performance with that other observer's eye. It was a rather silly exercise
really, grunting contorted bodies, a mad frenetic animal's dance. Was the human
compulsion to pursue orgasmic ecstasy so powerful that the veneer of civilized
behavior fell away like that other wafer-thin membrane? Recalling her times
with Clint, she was certain it was. No part of them had gone unexplored, as if
it were some immutable law that their flesh be joined together, melted as wax
into a single conformation. And love? That, she knew, was the mind's way of
initiating the process, completing the total oneness.
She craved him now, a hunger powerful enough to trigger the
entire spectrum of loss: longing, loneliness and despair. Nothing, she knew,
was worse than being alone like this. Death could offer a tantalizing escape.
Had it offered that to Dorothy?
Then suddenly she was crawling out of a deep pit, conscious
only of incomprehensible pleasure as she stirred in a bath of warm jelly,
letting whatever was happening happen. In the soft dream, she felt the ecstasy
begin, a release so pure, so powerful and delicious that it lifted her beyond
happiness.
"My God," she cried when her mind reluctantly
accepted consciousness again. She was locked in his embrace, speared, in a
literal sense, to the couch, his body still throbbing in the paroxysms of his
own pleasure.
"I couldn't resist," he said, when he had
quieted. "Lying there so lovely and inviting. It was a sight to tempt the
dead."
"That was the most wonderful dream I ever had,"
she said. "You just can't imagine..."
"I have eyes," he whispered. "And other
antennae."
"Thank goodness for that." She lovingly caressed
him and he seemed to harden instantly.
"Must be the forced absences," he said. The idea
always filled her with panic. Was that at the core of it? Would their
relationship disintegrate with permanence?
"How quickly you erase the pain," she said later.
"Pain?"
She hadn't meant to say it. It was essentially the wrong
time to trigger his guilt. Instantly she wondered if she had been deliberate.
He closed his eyes and lay silently next to her. She watched as a tiny tear
trickled down the side of his face.
"I don't think I can hack it, Fi," he whispered.
She turned away, watching the bright lines of the sunlight
filter through the drawn blinds. Not now, she wanted to say, but her will had
frozen. Why had he chosen just that moment?
"Hurting you. Hurting the kids. Hurting her. We've
been at it nearly twenty years. I need you. And I need them."
Her? Do you need her? She wouldn't ever ask that question.
"I suppose I have no courage," he continued.
"But the fact is, Fi, I can't do it. I can't break it up. I can't tell
her. It's horrendous, selfish. I never thought we'd get in so deep and I also
can't bear the idea of your being just a mistress. I love you too much for
that."
Through her anguish, she felt the sense of revolt begin.
No, she thought, I won't let him off the hook so easily.
"Are you kissing me off?" She said it tautly,
swallowing a backwash of tears. She wanted to hurt him, lash out, hang tough.
"You have a right to a life."
"Without you?"
"You don't understand," he said. "I can't
put you in this position. This town is full of other women. It's
debilitating."
"You meant a closet fuck." Her growing anger was
making her stronger. "I've seen what that can do," she said, thinking
again of Dorothy.
"It's just not worth it, Fi." He had also
regained his composure. Were they being civilized now?
"Why not? We can play these games indefinitely. Until
you get caught." She said it with a deliberate note of sarcasm. "Then
it gets tacky. Now that you're a public figure. One way or another, it will
hurt your career. Not to mention that you owe your job to your wife's
boss." Did you go through something like this, Dorothy, she cried to
herself.
"Don't make it any more difficult, Fi."
"Difficult? For whom? It's always been difficult for
me."
"I didn't twist your arm," he said. He was also
capable of quick anger.
"Precipitate an argument. Go ahead. It's an easy way
out." Throwing down that gauntlet, she knew, was unfair. But didn't she
have to test his resolve?
Despite the harsh exchange he remained beside her naked,
their bodies still touching. Her other self saw the humor in the scene,
especially the costuming, or lack thereof. Aware that it might be their last
time together, she suddenly started to trace patterns on his body with one
finger, drawing curlicues down his chin, along the bony ridges of his neck,
over the hump of his Adam's apple, down the forest of fur, circling the tiny
hard nipples, downward still along the single strand of haired ridge. Her head
had moved onto the hard shelf of his chest where she could hear his heart
pumping, a steady, strong beat. She felt his hand caressing her forehead,
sweeping the hair back, patting it lightly.
Mysteriously, like some gorgeous beast rising from the
dead, that special part of him twitched with renewal.
"I'm making it hard for you," she thought, with
giddiness, a message conveyed from one self to the other.
"I wish..." His words trailed off, whatever
thought it implied masked by a sigh of futility.
"A goodbye gesture," she whispered bitterly, watching
the smooth twitching organ now in her hand. She moved lower, caressing it with
her lips, making tiny forays with her tongue. In her work, she saw it as an
object of ridicule; their Johnson, they called it. They were always grabbing at
it, clutching it, scratching it as if they needed to know it was still there.
It was a terrible thing to be enslaved by something beyond your control,
dependent on an involuntary nervous trigger.
Salivating now, moving her lips along the smooth shaft,
fingers touching the soft crenelated sacks and below, the tight hard gut of
arousal, she wondered how many times it would take to defeat him, to destroy
the arrogant potency. Suddenly, he was reaching out with his hands for
mutuality, which she avoided by a surreptitious twist of her body downward,
where he couldn't reach.
Against her ear, she heard the giant pump of it, the surge
of pulsating blood. For a few brief moments more, she would control him.
Perhaps in his mind now, he was thinking that she was offering a tribute to his
vaunted masculinity. Let him have his delusion as a parting gift. He tried to
move, but she held him there, her mouth and hand pinning him.
"I want you," he cried out the words as if it
were a plea for mercy. "I need you."
No more, she told herself. That part of her was out of
bounds for him from this moment forward.
"Please," he begged.
Never!
The army of herself attacked, determined that his last
foray would land impotently in the air. See me now, she cried out to the nuns
of her schooldays to whom the object in her hands and mouth was the ultimate
symbol of the forbidden. Is this the beast you railed against, she wondered,
her eyes open now, alert to what she believed was her final victory. With
methodical deftness and clinical observation, she watched the thing twitch and
spurt, offering its last gasp.
Soon he was still, the giant pumping generators at rest as
the proud knight slowly nodded. Am I free now, she wondered?
She left him there, lying prostrate, his eyes hidden in the
crook of his arm. He did not reach out to touch her as she slid away and went
into the bathroom. In the shower, she rubbed her body raw, hoping to rid
herself of the last vestiges of the affliction, urging the final ascendency of
her rational self.
By the time she'd dried herself, stimulating her skin with
an aggressive toweling, she was freshened, renewed, stronger than she'd felt in
months. The entire episode with Clint, nearly six months of madness, seemed
already a thing of the past. As if to test the alertness of her new self, she
concentrated on the various objects on the bathroom shelf, rearranging them
neatly, her bath salts, her toilet waters, her perfumes. He had given her
Arpege, a favorite of his, which she promptly poured down the sink. The gesture
increased her new sense of well-being. Before the day was over, she vowed, she
would rid herself of everything that reminded her of him.
It annoyed her to see that he was still in her bed.
Apparently he had fallen asleep. She decided to ignore him and dressed
carefully, paying uncommon attention to her makeup. She put on a blouse and
pleated skirt, demure clothes but still feminine, not the usual pants suits she
wore to buttress her sexual neutrality. Surveying herself in the mirror, she
decided that, whatever the anguish, it had not ravaged her. She was complete
again, confident, the cobwebs blown from her mind.