Cloudland (33 page)

“Finally! It’s so good to be out of there.”

“How are you feeling now?” I asked.

“How am I feeling?” he repeated. “A little better. Still getting dizzy spells and feeling disoriented. Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m driving back to Vermont.”

“Why are you doing
that
?”

I informed him what Nan O’Brien had learned.

“Are you sure about this?”

“The source is the Burlington police.”

“Oh, Jesus. Well, I’ve just had a message from Marco. Saying Matthew tried to drive away from his parents’ house and got as far as St. Johnsbury. The state police pulled him over and are holding him temporarily.”

Oh no, I thought, he’s in custody now, but said nothing.

“Marco wanted to come this evening and present his evidence about Matthew, but I stalled him and made an appointment for tomorrow. I’m just trying to get a handle on what’s going on.”

I considered this. “Is there any way we can let Springfield know Prozzo has withheld all sorts of important information?”

“The FBI already spoke to them. I don’t know whether or not Springfield will move on the information. Law enforcement agencies sometimes stick together and can be reluctant to rattle their own ranks over alleged irregularities.”

“How unfortunate,” I said.

“No, how stupid!” Anthony exclaimed.

There was a significant pause between us. “Catherine,” he said at last, “I think when you get home you should just drop the dogs off and come to my house until we can figure this out … together.”

“That probably would be a good idea.”

I chose not to mention that Matthew would have been on his way to meet me.

TWENTY-TWO

I
WAS DRIVING ON ROUTE
91 just outside of Hartford; steering the car with one hand, I managed to fish the scrap of paper with Hiram’s number out of my purse. I punched his numbers in with my thumb, and while waiting for the call to be connected I noticed a highway billboard of a woman in a bikini leaning forward showing cleavage, advertising a day spa. As I was remarking to myself: yet another service or product sold through sex, I wondered about the relationship between Matthew and Stephanie Prozzo and if there was more to it than I actually knew.

Luckily, Hiram answered his phone. “It’s Catherine,” I said. “I actually left New Jersey a little earlier than expected. On my way back to Vermont.”

“Okay … Well, I guess you’ll want me to bring your little girl home.”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” I told him where I kept the hide-a-key.

“To be honest, she’s been missing you. She’s been sticking to one corner of the pen, didn’t even go inside the barn when it rained.”

“Did you try ice cream?”

“Ran clear out of ice cream. Where are you right now?”

“Hartford.”

“She’ll be at your house by the time you get home.”

“Thank you, Hiram.”

“Glad to help, Catherine.”

In Vermont, July daylight lingers until just after nine
P.M.
Brightly colored flowers harbor their glow, birch trees beam their whiteness, and the hush is filled with the song of locusts that starts up and trails off intermittently, leaving the throaty rattles of nocturnal birds. When I pulled into my driveway around 8:45, I could still see most of the familiar landmarks of my property: the sagging split-rail fence with a grayish silver patina, the old barn with a partially caved-in roof, its deep red stain. I pulled into my parking space, let the dogs free, and they gamboled around the lawn in gleeful circles. As I slung my overnight and computer bags over my shoulder, I could barely make out the rotund outline of Henrietta staring at me through the sliding glass door into the side of the house. Watching my approach, she trotted backward and forward, whimpering and grunting, terribly uneasy.

Passing through the door, I rubbed her head and her belly and then looked around for her garbage can of Pig Chow; it was nowhere to be found. Hiram probably had forgotten it. Luckily, Henrietta was not doing her usual two-step “I’m hungry” dance, so I assumed he’d already fed her. I wouldn’t have to deal with fetching her food until tomorrow morning.

There was still enough light in the house to move around without switching on lamps, and I decided that I wanted to gather the gloom. I found myself thinking had Matthew not been detained and was still expected I might have gone around the house lighting candles for him. Or perhaps not. Perhaps that would send an ambiguous signal to him. I had the dogs’ bedding and food still left to bring in from the car but wanted to let Anthony know I’d arrived home. I picked up the phone and could hear the pulsing dial tone that indicated messages.

Fiona answered. I said, “I just got back. I’m unloading some stuff. I should be leaving here in five minutes.”

She told Anthony and then came back on the line. “We’ll be expecting you,” she said.

Then I checked messages; there was yet another one from Matthew. “Catherine,” he began, “I just tried your cell. I guess you’re out of range. There is something else that I just remembered. Recently, when I told you about
The Widower’s Branch
and how I couldn’t find the book … and then I found it … now I realize Stephanie Prozzo actually visited me while I still had it in my possession. She knew the book belonged to you; I’m pretty sure I mentioned it to her. I now remember I discovered it missing right after she was there, but for some reason I never made the connection. And it just happened to reappear again around the next time she showed up at my apartment.” He sighed jaggedly and sounded stressed. “Anyway, I guess I’ll see
you
soon.” This was obviously left before he’d been detained by the St. Johnsbury police. This revelation only added to my confusion. It made Prozzo’s actions and his allegations even more curiously one-sided. What exactly did this detective hope to achieve?

Then I thought of the piece of paper Breck had found jammed in the Wilkie Collins novel, scrawled with the words “you and her,” the fact that Nan O’Brien reacted with alarm to its existence the first time I met her. Could this phrase have been written by Stephanie Prozzo?

As I went and fetched the traveling containers of dog kibble, as I gathered up their baggage and was transporting everything back to the house, the din of the locusts seemed to increase. I rounded up Virgil and Mrs. Billy, tossed their beds down in my study, and was just getting ready to leave and drive up the road to Anthony’s, when the motion detector lamps switched on. A car was pulling into the driveway very slowly, the way cars do when the driver is lost, looking for somewhere else. When I glanced out the glass studio door, I saw Prozzo’s Jeep Cherokee idling next to my car.

I froze and stood there, barely breathing, watching him get out.

In the glare of the spotlamps, I noticed he was wearing a tight sweatshirt that showed his paunch and a baseball cap, his face looking haggard and worn. He didn’t see me. There was a bulge on the right side of his chest that I assumed was a gun. I wondered how much he knew of what I knew: that his daughter had fallen in love with Matthew Blake, that she was unable to contain her passion, that she committed acts of desperation that probably included writing anonymous letters to Saint Michael’s College. With the dogs braying like banshees, I grabbed my car keys with the idea of sneaking out the back door and moving through a field of ferns to the dense woods. I’d slowly make my way around the perimeter of trees that began where the freshly mown field ended and the tall grasses began, head toward the barn; thus concealed, I would move along its flanks until I came within ten feet of my car. I’d jump in and lock the doors and drive off to Anthony’s.

But I wasn’t quick enough. Amid the commotion of barking dogs, Prozzo didn’t knock, just barged in, and appeared in the kitchen looking harsh and annoyed. Startled and afraid, I greeted him by saying, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk to you.”

“Not a good time. I’m leaving for Anthony’s. I just got off the phone with him. They’re expecting me.”

He squinted at me. “Why did you come home? Why did you take such a risk?”

I couldn’t think of a response so I said nothing and just watched him, aware that his stance seemed defensive and menacing.

“I need a word,” he told me with flat affect, then walked to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

I had the urge to turn around and run out the back door. But I knew he’d stop me. Prozzo was strong and resolute. How had he figured out that I was on my way home? Maybe from Matthew, who was now being held up in St. Johnsbury? My heart clattering against my rib cage, I could barely manage to say, “If I don’t get to Anthony’s in a few minutes, they’ll be coming down here to find me.”

Ignoring this, he said, “I need to ask you more questions.”

“What do you need to know?”

“About the book that describes the women by the fallen trees.”

Without even strategizing, slightly calmer now in the frantic hope that he’d shown up merely to further interrogate me, I said, “Go ahead.”

Prozzo folded his arms over his chest. He looked bigger in casual clothing than he did in his cheap suits, and I figured he must have weighed close to two hundred pounds, nearly seventy-five pounds more than I did. “Before I get to the book, I’d like to know why, since we’re supposed to be in contact, that you didn’t tell me you were coming back from New Jersey?”

I met his accusing stare and said, “Because everything changed. And you know it changed. There’s a DNA match now that throws the whole investigation into question.”

“That may be. But that doesn’t mean there is only one murderer.”

“I understand your theory, Marco.”

“But you don’t realize that my theory involves you.”

“What, that
I
killed all these women?”

“Don’t be absurd.” Then the detective’s eyes narrowed as though he were looking down a gun sight. “When exactly did you give Matthew Blake a copy of that book?”

“You questioned him. Why didn’t you ask?”

“He says he doesn’t remember. But that if I asked you, you would.”

I wondered why Matthew would have lobbed the answer back at me. And then inspiration struck. “Obviously before the first of the murders occurred.”

“Well—”

“That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? The final piece of the puzzle, as you told me two days ago … Now
I
want to ask
you
something. You told me Matthew was arrested for assaulting a woman?”

“Correct.”

“In Burlington?”

“That’s right.”

I waited a moment, waited until he was looking directly at me. “But Burlington has said the charges were bogus and got dismissed.” He shook his head. “I’m a journalist. I naturally check my sources. Let’s say I’m giving you a chance to revise what you said.”

He averted his eyes. “No revision.” I watched him for a moment, the way his massive shoulders went into a slump, his face wearily intent. A fierce wave of protectiveness toward Matthew came over me. I believed with even more conviction that he had committed no crime.

As I stood there, waiting to see what Prozzo’s next gambit was going to be, it occurred to me that despite the detective’s efforts to maintain stability within his own family, his daughter had tried to kill herself. Her state of mind must have been akin to Breck’s self-destructive refusal to eat until her body began shutting down. Both Prozzo and I believed we’d failed our children.

The kitchen was darkening. I needed to put a light on. My white enamel refrigerator and stove still faintly glimmered in the broadening shadows. I took a step back and switched on a floor lamp whose shade glowed with Parisian street scenes. It warmed Prozzo’s dismal face.

I resumed. “When you came here the day before yesterday to tell me about Matthew, why didn’t you mention your daughter knew him and that she dated him? Don’t you think that was a big omission?”

I watched him struggle for several moments before managing to reply, “Whether or not he knew her doesn’t affect what he did.”

“Agreed, but knowing he dated her and that he broke off the relationship has to affect your attitude toward him.”

Prozzo considered this for a moment and shook his head. “He hurt her,” he said with malice.

Curious reply. He’d been adept at concealing this volcanic resentment on previous visits to my house, as well as when I saw him at the prison and while the search-and-rescue teams were trolling the Connecticut River for the body of Elena Mayaguez. He’d maintained a tough exterior all along except for when we briefly spoke about our daughters or when he’d shown compassion toward Elena’s uncle. I’d found him touching in those moments. I’d believed him to be a rational being who’d made his career out of sifting carefully through evidence, making deductions, spurred on by a hunch or a divine insight. He was a different man now. He was a broken man, he was an enraged man.

I continued, “My understanding was they only went out on a few dates.”

“They slept together.”

“That’s what happens. In college, kids fall easily into bed. And relationships can be … flimsy. I can’t tell you how many of my students have cried in my office when their love affairs suddenly went south.”

“He made promises to her!”

“That’s what she tells
you.
But who knows what the truth really is?” I thought for a moment and then said, “When you drove up to the Northeast Kingdom to find Matthew, when you questioned him as thoroughly as you questioned me and everybody else around here, why didn’t you bring up the relationship? As a father concerned for his daughter’s well-being, you could’ve spoken to the man she’s been fixated on. And yet you said nothing.”

“How do you know what I said and didn’t say?”

“Obviously Matthew told me.”

Mrs. Billy and Virgil sauntered into the kitchen at this point, and I shooed them away. The spotlamps outside hadn’t gone off yet. Perhaps there were small animals moving around out there and reactivating them. I thought of Anthony, hoping he’d begun to worry, that he would drive down Cloudland Road to find out why I hadn’t arrived.