Tell No One (10 page)

“So question
uno
: Where have these pictures been, Beck?”

“I don’t know.”

“
Dos
and
tres
: How did the feds get them? Why are they surfacing now?”

I shook my head.

“And most important, what are they trying to nail you on? Your wife’s been dead for eight years. It’s a little late for a spousal battery charge.” She sat back and thought about it a minute or two. Then she looked up and shrugged. “No matter. I’ll make some calls, find out what’s up. In the meantime, don’t be a dimwit. Say nothing to anyone. You understand?”

“Yes.”

She sat back and thought about it some more. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like this even a little bit.”

O
n May 12, 1970, Jeremiah Renway and three fellow radicals set off an explosion at Eastern State University’s chemistry department. Rumor had it from the Weather Underground that military scientists were using the university labs to make a more powerful form of napalm. The four students, who in a fit of stark originality called themselves Freedom’s Cry, decided to make a dramatic albeit showy stand.

At the time, Jeremiah Renway did not know if the rumor was true. Now, more than thirty years later, he doubted it. No matter. The explosion did not damage any of the labs. Two university security guards, however, stumbled across the suspicious package. When one picked it up, the package exploded, killing both men.

Both had children.

One of Jeremiah’s fellow “freedom fighters” was captured two days later. He was still in jail. The second
died of colon cancer in 1989. The third, Evelyn Cosmeer, was captured in 1996. She was currently serving a seven-year prison sentence.

Jeremiah disappeared into the woods that night and never ventured out. He had rarely seen fellow human beings or listened to the radio or watched television. He had used a telephone only once—and that was in an emergency. His only real connection to the outside world came from newspapers, though they had what happened here eight years ago all wrong.

Born and raised in the foothills of northwest Georgia, Jeremiah’s father taught his son all kinds of survival techniques, though his overriding lesson was simply this: You could trust nature but not man. Jeremiah had forgotten that for a little while. Now he lived it.

Fearing they would search near his hometown, Jeremiah took to the woods in Pennsylvania. He hiked around for a while, changing camp every night or two, until he happened upon the relative comfort and security of Lake Charmaine. The lake had old camp bunks that could house a man when the outdoors got a little too nasty. Visitors rarely came to the lake—mostly in the summer, and even then, only on weekends. He could hunt deer here and eat the meat in relative peace. During the few times of the year when the lake was being used, he simply hid or took off for points farther west.

Or he watched.

To the children who used to come here, Jeremiah Renway had been the Boogeyman.

Jeremiah stayed still now and watched the officers move about in their dark windbreakers. FBI wind-breakers. The sight of those three letters in big yellow caps still punctured his heart like an icicle.

No one had bothered to yellow-tape the area, probably
because it was so remote. Renway had not been surprised when they found the bodies. Yes, the two men had been buried good and deep, but Renway knew better than most that secrets don’t like to stay underground. His former partner in crime, Evelyn Cosmeer, who’d transformed herself into the perfect Ohio suburban mom before her capture, knew that. The irony did not escape Jeremiah.

He stayed hidden in the bush. He knew a lot about camouflage. They would not see him.

He remembered the night eight years ago when the two men had died—the sudden gun blasts, the sounds of the shovels ripping into the earth, the grunts from the deep dig. He’d even debated telling the authorities what happened—all of it.

Anonymously, of course.

But in the end he couldn’t risk it. No man, Jeremiah knew, was meant for a cage, though some could live through it. Jeremiah could not. He’d had a cousin named Perry who’d been serving eight years in a federal penitentiary. Perry was locked in a tiny cell for twenty-three hours a day. One morning, Perry tried to kill himself by running headfirst into the cement wall.

That would be Jeremiah.

So he kept his mouth shut and did nothing. For eight years anyway.

But he thought about that night a lot. He thought about the young woman in the nude. He thought about the men in wait. He thought about the scuffle near the car. He thought about the sickening, wet sound of wood against exposed flesh. He thought about the man left to die.

And he thought about the lies. The lies, most of all, haunted him.

B
y the time I returned to the clinic, the waiting room was packed with the sniffing and impatient. A television replayed a video of
The Little Mermaid
, automatically rewinding at the end and starting over, the color frayed and faded from overuse. After my hours with the FBI, my mind sympathized with the tape. I kept rehashing Carlson’s words—he was definitely the lead guy—trying to figure out what he was really after, but all that did was make the picture murkier and more surreal. It also gave me a whopping headache.

“Yo, Doc.”

Tyrese Barton hopped up. He was wearing butt-plunge baggy pants and what looked like an oversized varsity jacket, all done by some designer I never heard of but soon would.

“Hi, Tyrese,” I said.

Tyrese gave me a complicated handshake, which
was a bit like a dance routine where he leads and I follow. He and Latisha had a six-year-old son they called TJ. TJ was a hemophiliac. He was also blind. I met him after he was rushed in as an infant and Tyrese was seconds away from being arrested. Tyrese claimed I saved his son’s life on that day. That was hyperbole.

But maybe I did save Tyrese.

He thought that made us friends—like he was this lion and I was some mouse who pulled a thorn from his paw. He was wrong.

Tyrese and Latisha were never married, but he was one of the few fathers I saw in here. He finished shaking my hands and slipped me two Ben Franklins as though I were a maître d’ at Le Cirque.

He gave me the eye. “You take good care of my boy now.”

“Right.”

“You the best, Doc.” He handed me his business card, which had no name, no address, no job title. Just a cell phone number. “You need anything, you call.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

Still with the eye. “
Anything
, Doc.”

“Right.”

I pocketed the bills. We’ve been going through this same routine for six years now. I knew a lot of drug dealers from working here; I knew none who survived six years.

I didn’t keep the money, of course. I gave it to Linda for her charity. Legally debatable, I knew, but the way I figured it, better the money went to charity than to a drug dealer. I had no idea how much money Tyrese had. He always had a new car, though—he favored BMWs with tinted windows—and his kid’s wardrobe was worth more than anything that inhabited
my closet. But, alas, the child’s mother was on Medicaid, so the visits were free.

Maddening, I know.

Tyrese’s cell phone sounded something hip-hop.

“Got to take this, Doc. Bidness.”

“Right,” I said again.

I do get angry sometimes. Who wouldn’t? But through that haze, there are real children here. They hurt. I don’t claim that all children are wonderful. They are not. I sometimes treat ones that I know—
know
—will amount to no good. But children are, if nothing else, helpless. They are weak and defenseless. Believe me, I’ve seen examples that would alter your definition of human beings.

So I concentrate on the children.

I was supposed to work only until noon, but to make up for my FBI detour, I saw patients until three. Naturally, I’d been thinking about the interrogation all day. Those pictures of Elizabeth, battered and defeated, kept popping through my brain like the most grotesque sort of strobe light.

Who would know about those pictures?

The answer, when I took the time to think about it, was somewhat obvious. I leaned forward and picked up the phone. I hadn’t dialed this number in years, but I still remembered it.

“Schayes Photography,” a woman answered.

“Hi, Rebecca.”

“Son of a gun. How are you, Beck?”

“Good. How about yourself?”

“Not bad. Busy as all hell.”

“You work too hard.”

“Not anymore. I got married last year.”

“I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”

“Bull.”

“Yeah. But congrats anyway.”

“So what’s up?”

“I need to ask you a question,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“About the car accident.”

I hear a tinny echo. Then silence.

“Do you remember the car accident? The one before Elizabeth was killed?”

Rebecca Schayes, my wife’s closest friend, did not reply.

I cleared my throat. “Who was driving?”

“What?” She did not say that into the phone. “Okay, hold on.” Then back at me: “Look, Beck, something just came up here. Can I call you back in a little while?”

“Rebecca—”

But the line was dead.

Here is the truth about tragedy: It’s good for the soul.

The fact is, I’m a better person because of the deaths. If every cloud has a silver lining, this one is admittedly pretty flimsy. But there it is. That doesn’t mean it’s worth it or an even trade or anything like that, but I know I’m a better man than I used to be. I have a finer sense of what’s important. I have a keener understanding of people’s pain.

There was a time—it’s laughable now—when I used to worry about what clubs I belonged to, what car I drove, what college degree I stuck on my wall—all
that status crap. I wanted to be a surgeon because that wowed people. I wanted to impress so-called friends. I wanted to be a big man.

Like I said, laughable.

Some might argue that my self-improvement is simply a question of maturity. In part, true. And much of the change is due to the fact I am now on my own. Elizabeth and I were a couple, a single entity. She was so good that I could afford to be not so good, as though her goodness raised us both, was a cosmic equalizer.

Still, death is a great teacher. It’s just too harsh.

I wish I could tell you that through the tragedy I mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that I could pass on to you. I didn’t. The clichés apply—people are what count, life is precious, materialism is overrated, the little things matter, live in the moment—and I can repeat them to you ad nauseam. You might listen, but you won’t internalize. Tragedy hammers it home. Tragedy etches it onto your soul. You might not be happier. But you will be better.

What makes this all the more ironic is that I’ve often wished that Elizabeth could see me now. Much as I’d like to, I don’t believe the dead watch over us or any similar comfort-fantasy we sell ourselves. I believe the dead are gone for good. But I can’t help but think: Perhaps now I am worthy of her.

A more religious man might wonder if that is why she’s returned.

Rebecca Schayes was a leading freelance photographer. Her work appeared in all the usual glossies, though strangely enough, she specialized in men. Professional athletes who agreed to appear on the cover of, for example,
GQ
often requested her to do the
shoot. Rebecca liked to joke that she had a knack for male bodies due to “a lifetime of intense study.”

I found her studio on West Thirty-second Street, not far from Penn Station. The building was a buttugly semi-warehouse that reeked from the Central Park horse and buggies housed on the ground floor. I skipped the freight elevator and took the stairs.

Rebecca was hurrying down the corridor. Trailing her, a gaunt, black-clad assistant with reedy arms and pencil-sketch facial hair dragged two aluminum suitcases. Rebecca still had the unruly sabra locks, her fiery hair curling angrily and flowing freely. Her eyes were wide apart and green, and if she’d changed in the past eight years, I couldn’t see it.

She barely broke stride when she saw me. “It’s a bad time, Beck.”

“Tough,” I said.

“I got a shoot. Can we do this later?”

“No.”

She stopped, whispered something to the sulking black-clad assistant, and said, “Okay, follow me.”

Her studio had high ceilings and cement walls painted white. There were lots of lighting umbrellas and black screens and extension cords snaking everywhere. Rebecca fiddled with a film cartridge and pretended to be busy.

“Tell me about the car accident,” I said.

“I don’t get this, Beck.” She opened a canister, put it down, put the top back on, then opened it again. “We’ve barely spoken in, what, eight years? All of a sudden you get all obsessive about an old car accident?”

I crossed my arms and waited.

“Why, Beck? After all this time. Why do you want to know?”

“Tell me.”

She kept her eyes averted. The unruly hair fell over half her face, but she didn’t bother pushing it back. “I miss her,” she said. “And I miss you too.”

I didn’t reply to that.

“I called,” she said.

“I know.”

“I tried to stay in touch. I wanted to be there.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. Rebecca had been Elizabeth’s best friend. They’d shared an apartment near Washington Square Park before we got married. I should have returned her calls or invited her over or made some kind of effort. But I didn’t.

Grief can be inordinately selfish.

“Elizabeth told me that you two were in a minor car crash,” I went on. “It was her fault, she said. She took her eyes off the road. Is that true?”

“What possible difference does it make now?”

“It makes a difference.”

“How?”

“What are you afraid of, Rebecca?”

Now it was her time for silence.

“Was there an accident or not?”

Her shoulders slumped as though something internal had been severed. She took a few deep breaths and kept her face down. “I don’t know.”