The Prettiest Feathers (11 page)

J
ohn had wanted to pick me up at seven o’clock, but when he called to verify our date, I postponed it until eight I wanted it to be long after sundown, dark, and the house perfect when he stepped inside—the flicker of candlelight dancing on the handblown glass vases, the stemware, the sterling silver tea set
.

Bathed, powdered, and perfumed, I would be the focal point in my new white dress; the room would be my frame
.

I knew that he would be punctual. At one minute before eight I heard his car in the drive, then the sound of his footfalls on the front steps. I opened the door before he rang the bell
.

It plays out like a series of dreams, one after another, projected onto a giant screen in the theater of the mind—with the final scene beginning in silence, in black and white.

He hands me a small, gift-wrapped package
.

“A special order,” he says. “I was afraid it wouldn’t arrive in time, but the fellow at the record store insisted it would. I guess this proves I should have more faith in UPS
.”

“
What is it?” I ask, but already I have the ribbon pulled away and the paper is ripping under my eager fingers
.

“
It’s a single piece of music by a man named Julian Cope” he tells me. “You do have a tape player, don’t you
?”

Sarah talks. Her mouth moves, but there is no sound.

I drop the cassette into my Magnavox and set the speaker control at the midpoint. The tape has barely begun when John walks over and turns the volume higher
.

Recently I returned to Vermont, to the village of Saxtons River. I found what was left of the old house—shutters askew, windows smashed out, sections of metal roof rusting in the waist-deep grass of the front yard. I walked around to the back and up the still familiar incline to my old grove—that trinity of gnarled apple trees. All that remained of my town were a few bits of wood and pieces of metal wire casing.

At the center of the triangle formed by the trees, I brushed away the dirt, lifted a rock from its resting place, and found the knife. It was still wrapped in several layers of plastic, just as I had left it so many years ago. After the “incident,” the man my mother told me to call Father had concealed it in his sock drawer. The fool. When they slept, I entered and left that house at will, and I knew where everything was kept. I had reclaimed my knife even before their wounds had healed.

He’s telling me about Julian Cope, saying that this is the best work he has ever done. I’ve never heard of Julian Cope, at least not that I recall. Roger Waters is more to my taste, but I tell John that I love his gift, and “Julian Cope is wonderful
.”

“
Is he new?” I ask, but immediately I see that I have made a mistake. I’ve seen it before—that look in his eyes, as if I have let him down. It’s clear that his opinion of me rises and falls in direct relation to my knowledge, or lack thereof, of the things he cherishes
.

Tonight isn’t turning out as I had wished. I had wanted candlelight and compliments, perhaps a caress. And I had wanted to hear his voice, to hear him talking about himself and me and us. But the music is too loud, too disturbing. He says this noise, this piece by Julian Cope, is called “Fear Loves This Place
.”

I wait for it to end, watching him, following his movements around the room as he picks up the artifacts collected at auction sales and put there by my parents. I wonder if he is thinking of them as expressions of my own personality, or if he sees that they are my environment, an explanation for the woman I have become
.

The thrumming of an electric bass joins the percussion. The music fills the room—the tape I bought for Sarah, the homemade dub of the one piece by Julian Cope that I wanted her to hear, the one I will leave behind for Robert to find. But the music in my mind is so much sharper, clearer. There’s nothing to dilute it, no bouncing around among the knickknacks, the antiques, the debris of a life spent waiting.

He seems distracted—barely looking at me, edging away whenever I come near. What am I doing wrong?

Sarah pours wine into crystal glasses. She’s wearing her hair up, enabling me to examine the lines of her neck. Her white dress has a high collar with a narrow band of embroidered birds that encircles her throat. White threads on white fabric.

Her perfume—a foul, cloying scent—seems to shrink the room, making it difficult to breathe.

He’s wearing black.
A
silk shirt, slacks with a crisp crease, wing tips. His hair appears freshly trimmed, his cheek newly shaved. I wonder if he’s wearing cologne. I hope I will soon be close enough to know
.

I offer my guest a glass of white wine poured from an antique cut-glass decanter. I hope he notices how beautifully the grooves catch the light—multiplying it and reflecting it back, like a prism—turning a dozen candles into hundreds
.

Sarah smiles, slices cheese, arranges the pieces on a tray. Her mouth is moving the entire time. In the beginning I had trouble seeing her, holding an image of her. She was elusive. Now I can’t hear most of what she is saying, but I know that’s a choice, a conscious decision, that I have made.

The music grows louder.

I smile.

I settle down on the brocade love seat near the display case filled with Chinese porcelains. I am hoping that John will come and sit beside me, but he takes the black leather chair instead
.

He talks about chaos theory. Albert Camus, Vietnam. And then he tells me about the swallows on Washington Street in Boston, and I tell him about the church I attended as a child. Baptist. I went there because the music was so beautiful, especially “Amazing Grace.” I always waited outside the building until services were ready to begin. Someone would pull the rope, and the bell in the tower would ring, calling the parish to worship. I loved watching all the pigeons fly out of the tower. As they scattered across the sky in every direction, it seemed as if the brass of the bell had exploded and splintered. I wondered why the birds never remembered from one Sunday to the next what would happen; why they were always taken unawares. Or maybe they did know. Maybe they accepted their role, and played it
.

John moves toward the small table that holds the wine decanter
.

“Let me pour it,” I say
.

But by the time I reach the table, I see that he wants nothing more to drink. He sets down his glass and turns toward me
.

I tell Sarah, “It is exactly like a dance.”

“Yes,” she says, but it is a question.

“This movement of two people toward an event that they both know will happen. Choreography.”

The music achieves its crescendo—Cope’s pained voice fades, the tape clicks off, the chanting stops—and all is silence again.

A thousand years pass as John reaches into his pocket and withdraws a knife. Look how innocent it is. It could belong to a Boy Scout or a hunter. It’s almost a toy. No murderer would own such a weapon. But he does
.

Sarah’s mouth isn’t moving, I slip the knife from my pocket and lock the newly sharpened blade into position.

She looks, first down at the blade, then into my eyes. I know what she sees there.

I imagine my picture in tomorrow’s newspaper, a headline about the horror, the grisly mess. I think of the cassette tape—and I wonder if Robert will find it. He will know that it is foreign to my taste, but will he guess that it’s a gift from my killer? I wonder, too, about the bowl atop the crystal stem of Johns wineglass, and the fingerprints he has left there. Will he wipe them away before he leaves—and, if he does, what will he use? A piece of the white silk slip torn from under my dress? It’s a shame about the rug—ancient, handmade in Persia. So many hours of painstaking work marred with blood. If only I could fall to the left, and avoid it. I wonder if I will see Liza. Will she have grown, or will she still be an infant? I will look for her, and for Mother and Father, too. There’s so much I want to tell them, and even more I want to ask
.

As the hand holding the knife rises toward me, I understand perfectly
.

“Maxine,” she says.

“How long have you known?”

I think of that first day when he came into the shop—asking for Emily and the others. There is no protection that I could have built around myself, no way I could have avoided this night, this moment
.

She doesn’t resist. She extends her arm, but it is more like a gesture of invitation than alarm. I take her hand and draw her toward me, allowing her eyes to lock on mine, to study the absence of blue.

The tip of the blade makes contact with my skin, finds its place just above the band of embroidered birds. I feel it puncture my throat, then slide sideways, smooth and swift, following the direction of flight. There is no pain, only a dimming of the light and a sense of wonder
.

Both carotid arteries, neatly severed.

She slumps against me, and I hold her—briefly, but tightly—before allowing gravity to claim her.

I am no longer afraid, no longer Sarah
.

I feel myself turning into something small and warm and feathered. I am lifting. Rising. Soaring.

I come back to my body, but Sarah’s spirit doesn’t come back to hers, where it rests in an unsightly heap on the floor. Blood drips from my hands into a small pool on the Persian rug. It has a slight metallic smell with no hint of lanolin.

There is blood on my shirt, my pants, my hands. This world is awash in crimson.

I drop to one knee beside Sarah and brush a fall of hair away from the side of her face. Her profile is almost regal.

If she were alive, if someone hadn’t killed her—well, it really doesn’t matter. I haven’t the time for speculation.

I’ll help myself to one of Sarah’s towels. I need a shower to wash away the day.

T
he call came in at 6:30 Monday morning. The victim was twenty-seven-year-old Sarah Sinclair, my partner’s ex-wife. Robert Sinclair, who also happens to be my former lover, found her.

Although I’m twenty-five, I’m already assigned to Homicide. That’s about five or six years earlier than anyone else in our precinct has ever made it. Robert and I have been partners since I left the academy. That’s why, when he put on plain clothes and moved over to Homicide, he began a campaign to get me transferred over, too. It took six months to convince the captain that I wouldn’t get in the way and that I’d be good for quotas. Robert knew both points would influence Captain Hanson far more than a recitation of my record (cases cleared, citations for superior service, etc.). Hanson would just chalk those up to the fact that I had a male partner.

In uniform, I’d been a confident cop, comfortable on the street. So far, feelings of confidence had eluded me in the cramped cubicles of Homicide. I was young, a woman, an
intruder. The truth was that Homicide wasn’t ready for me, and I had my own doubts about whether I could handle the job.

Robert knew that I would be at home. Weekends—from eight o’clock Friday night till seven o’clock Monday morning—we’re on call. Also, I had been battling the flu. Barring a call-out for a homicide, my plans were to take aspirin, drink lots of fluids, and sleep. He phoned me direct.

“I’m out at the house,” he said, then his voice broke off. I knew that something was wrong; Robert has never been the kind of guy who gets choked up.

“It’s Sarah,” he said. “Her throat—it’s…”

I didn’t get it at first. I thought he’d called to tell me that his ex-wife had a sore throat. Then I heard a sound, something in his voice and the way he was breathing, and I realized that he was crying, or about to.

“Jesus, Sinclair, what’s going on?”

He was silent for a few seconds, then he said, “I walked in and found her. She’s dead.”

If a case involves family, a cop can’t handle the investigation—departmental regulations. But his partner can.

“I’m on my way,” I told him.