The Prettiest Feathers (15 page)

“Go away.”

“I can’t hear you. Open the door.”

“I said, ‘Go away.’”

Then the apartment door crashed open and was left hanging by one tentative hinge.

“I’m not impressed,” I told her. “You gotta pay for that door.”

Bone tired, I rocked on my feet.

“How long are you going to hole up, getting blitzed and feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Wrong,” I said.

“Then what the hell
are
you doing?”

She was wearing jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt, standing in front of me with her hands on her hips—all six feet of her. Lane was a woman and a half A gorgeous one, too—with her auburn hair tied back in a ponytail, and zero makeup on her perfect olive skin.

“I think I’m afraid,” I told her.

I glanced quickly at her, then back at the can in my hand. I took another swallow. “Have a beer. Sit down.”

“I don’t get it,” she said.

She grabbed an Old Milwaukee and sat on the overstuffed chair.

The day I found Sarah, my whole body went rubbery. I couldn’t even talk. I blamed myself. I blamed her. And I blamed her again for Liza. I hated Sarah—especially that almost serene expression on her face as she lay there in her own blood.

To get through it, I downed just enough alcohol to maintain a permanent buzz, let me sleep a few hours, wake up, and wander around the mall.

I’d been over everything I could remember about the last few conversations we had. Wolf. Carver. Wallingford. Two dead guys in an alley.

My head was a mess. None of this stuff made any sense. Sarah met a guy at work. He pulled a gun on two would-be robbers. A few days later they get blown away by someone with a .38 in an alley across the street from the bookstore. Sarah’s Wolf, who isn’t Wolf, sends Carver, who isn’t Carver, over to the precinct house with a .32 and a line of patter about diplomatic immunity, which, of course, he wouldn’t need if he didn’t break any laws. But Wolf is Wallingford, Sarah says. Antiques. Landgrove.

Save me a rubber room.

Last night, in my wandering, I drifted into a music store. I wasn’t looking for anything. It was well lit in there—lots of people. And there was the tape. “Fear Loves This Place.” It was on an album by a guy named Julian Cope.

“I never used to mind being alone,” I told Lane.

This shitty apartment was my home. I could fall into the overstuffed chair with a six-pack and watch the Knicks dismantle the Celtics. I could get Rush Limbaugh on the radio and crank it up. Or I could sit in silence, maybe watch the lights come on as the city went dark.

“When I played the tape, that was the first time I thought about him—thought about what he did to Sarah.
Really
thought about it.”

I played that one song over and over. I went from buzzed to blitzed. And then my heart started going like it would when I was a kid killing a wasp.

“Fear,” I said. “I’m fucking useless. I can’t be involved in the case. I know that. And I’m on leave. But I couldn’t anyway. Fear.”

Lane put her beer can on the table and stood up. “Whenever you sober up, we need to talk. I need information from you, and I’ve got some things I need you to do in an unofficial capacity.”

She started for the door.

“Lane, listen to this.”

I pushed the play button on my answering machine.

“Detective Sinclair,” the voice said. “Have you finished with my materials? I’ve finished with yours. It’s necessary for me to be out of town for a while, but when I get back, let’s do lunch.”

There was a long pause, then the voice again. “Please don’t doubt me. I always keep my promises.”

“Who is that?” Lane asked. “When did it come in?”

“It must have been last night when I was out. I didn’t notice it until this morning.”

She played the message again.

“English accent?”

“I wanted to question him about the double shooting. When he showed up at the precinct he said his name was Alan Carver, and he was representing the undersecretary, John Wolf, of the British Embassy. But there isn’t any John Wolf.”

“You’ve met this guy?”

I finished off my can of beer. “Yeah. I’ve met him.”

She took the tape from the machine. “Did you file a report?”

“It’s in my desk. Open cases. Wolf.”

“Get yourself together, Robert. I want to see you tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure this gets logged into evidence,” she said, pocketing the tape.

“I’m on compassionate leave,” I reminded her.

“In my office, or I’ll come back over here after you,” she said.

Lane was gone. I was alone again—just me and the debris I had created. And Lane’s debris. I opened another beer.

I remember the night before Sarah and I got married. We sat on the porch at her parent’s house and planned the future. We talked until after midnight. Then we went inside to separate rooms. Sarah’s mother didn’t want us sleeping together until after the ceremony. Or was that Sarah’s wish? God, she was so unknowable.

I have to pick up her photograph and stare at it to be able to see her. If I try to picture her in my mind, all I see is a white blur wreathed in blood.

I grabbed my jacket and the box of beers and headed out of the apartment. I pulled the door into a closed position behind me, knowing that any five-year-old could do a B&E on the place if he wanted to.

I was thinking about the medical examiner from Connecticut. What were his prints doing all over Sarah’s house? It seemed like a good time to ask Dr. Chadwick that question.

I managed to find my car, which was parked illegally on the street. At least Lane hadn’t given me a ticket. As I drove toward the interstate, headed north for Hasty Hills, I scanned the stations for talk radio. I locked into one where a caller was saying, “They’re not telling us anything. All these women are murdered or missing, and the police are saying they don’t have any reason to think they’re connected. I think they are connected, and I think they have a responsibility to tell us what we need to know in order to protect ourselves.”

“There isn’t any way to protect yourself,” I told her.

The host said, “Captain Hanson held a press conference this morning, as most of you listening probably know. Let me just read you something from that. He was asked a question—a direct question—about Maxine Harris and Sarah Sinclair, the woman who worked in the bookstore where a source has revealed Maxine Harris
shopped—
and this is what Captain Hanson had to say. ‘At this time we have no reason to consider these cases related, although we are looking at all possibilities. There is no reason to panic. Our investigation is ongoing.’ Not much comfort in
that
, is there? We have another caller on the line.”

I’m still driving the old beat-to-shit Ford I bought when Sarah and I were together. She laughed at the car. “Eight hundred bucks,” I told her. “It’s only got sixty-three thousand miles on it. This thing will go forever.”

It’s over 120,000 now, and still going. Why is it so important that I was right, and that Sarah was wrong? Maybe I needed Sarah to be wrong, to know nothing of the practical things in life, so she’d need me. Maybe that’s it.

“I don’t know much about serial killers other than what I see on
TV
,” the caller said.

“Welcome to the club,” I said.

“They must be sick to do what they do. If they’re that crazy, why can’t the police spot them?”

“They have to be incredibly sick,” the host agreed, “but, from what I’ve read—and that’s not a whole lot—these killers, these
savages
really—believe it or not, they look and act and talk and walk just like the rest of us. They go shopping, pay their bills, join a softball team, get out the votes for the local Democratic party. I had to get that last one in. Couldn’t resist it. Theodore Bundy, who killed thirty or forty young women, worked for the re-election of Washington governor Dan Evans.”

“Evans is a Republican, shithead,” I said.

“That’s probably a poor example because Dan Evans is a Republican, but you catch my drift. These guys are hard to spot.”

I took the Hasty Hills exit and drove slowly through the quiet little town, down the main street, past the municipal building, and on out into the country. After about three miles I found the place I was looking for—third house on the left after the covered bridge. Except there wasn’t any house. Just a crater.

I parked across the street from the yellow crime scene tape and got out of the car. I approached a local constable who had been left to guard the area, and flashed my badge. He looked at the can of Old Milwaukee.

“Off duty,” I said. “What happened out here?”

“Doc Chadwick’s place,” he said. “Was in the Barngreve family for years before Doc bought it. Fire marshal’s been all over it. The bomb squad from the city—and some boys from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Monday morning it just
went up. You could hear it clear into town. They found part of a jawbone, but they ain’t said it was Doc yet.”

The radio in his cruiser squawked and he went to see what was what.

When he walked back toward me, he said, “I’ve got a ten-fifty with possibly injury out on Fury Road. Stay back from that edge, now. You drink enough of those things, we’ll be pulling
your
jawbone out of there.”

The constable drove off to tend to his automobile accident.

I slipped under the tape and skirted the edge of the chasm. I don’t know what I expected to find. Probably nothing, but I had to look.

I was just starting to move around the lip of the crater toward what remained of the garden when I saw an old man with a cane walking past my Ford. He was headed in my direction.

“Don’t get too close to the edge,” I called out to him.

“Just taking my walk,” he said. “I don’t see very well, but I can smell it just fine.”

As he drew nearer I could see that he was crippled in some way, and was wearing heavily tinted glasses.

“Arthritis,” he said, as if he were reading my mind. “And cataracts. When I get close up like this, I can see pretty good. The doctor says I have to take my walks, but with all the trucks and cars up here the last few days, I went the other way. Too much trouble. Name’s Henry. I live down the hill there.”

“Robert Sinclair,” I said, extending my hand.

“Police?”

“City.”

“Why you boys coming all the way out here? Over the state line, and all.”

“Curiosity,” I said.

“Big bang.”

“You heard it?”

“Monday morning,” he nodded. “Doc’s dead, I guess.”

“Constable says they’re not sure about that. Did you know Doc Chadwick?”

“Oh, yes. Neighbors for—what?—five, six years? Fine man. Good conversationalist. Intelligent. Of course, I never could understand him doing the work he did.”

“Ever meet any of his friends?”

“Doc kept pretty much to himself. I don’t remember any friends of his, or any people at all going in and out of his place. Only thing we ever talked about, really, was the old alma mater.”

When I didn’t say anything, he added, “Harvard. Only thing we had in common. Except he went on to the medical school, of course, and I was in literature.”

I nodded, hoping he’d go on, tell me more about Chadwick. But Henry had other plans.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve got to walk on now. Pleasure meeting you, Robert.”

“Careful as you go, Henry,” I said, watching him start down the hill.

As I was driving back toward the city, I reached for a beer. I hadn’t realized how tired I was, or how drunk. I thought I saw Sarah in the road—just standing there, wearing that white dress, looking at me that way she always did. If I’d been in the desert, it would have been a mirage. But out there, on a Connecticut road, it was a ghost. And as long as I was drunk enough to see it, I was drunk enough to swerve to avoid hitting it.

The last thing I remember about my trip to Hasty Hills is the car crashing through a guardrail, headed toward a stand of white birch trees. More ghosts.

W
hen I left Robert’s place, I returned to Sarah’s neighborhood, hoping to catch some of the residents who’d been gone when I made my first two visits to the area.

This was tedious work. No one had heard anything. No one had seen anything. Most people just wanted to tell me how horrible it all was, how they’d watched Sarah grow up before their eyes, and now she was gone, and so young, with so much ahead of her, and wasn’t it awful about her little daughter, too.

I lost count of how many worried women asked me to recommend a good lock or an affordable gun. One couple said they put their house on the market as soon as they heard.

I parked in Sarah’s driveway, and had just gotten out of my car when I noticed a woman—one I hadn’t been able to question yet—across the street, waving at me and saying something, which I couldn’t hear. I walked over.

“I was trying to tell you that Miss Sinclair isn’t home,” the woman said.

“I know. I’m Detective Frank,” I told her, showing her my shield.

“Terrible thing about Sarah. Have you caught the one who did it?”

“Not yet, but we’re working on it. I don’t suppose you saw anything out of the ordinary over the weekend—any prowlers or strangers?”