The Prettiest Feathers (25 page)

I wanted to tell Pop about Robert, about my need to be close to him—and about Susan Walker. But I’ve never been too sure how much Pop knows about matters of the heart. I don’t think Mom ran off to Africa simply because she was crazy about chimps. I think she got tired of the way Pop kept retreating from her, going somewhere deep inside his head. Sometimes she had a look on her face, like she felt abandoned—even when Pop was right there, in the same room. That’s why, after Mom took off, I didn’t blame her. I blamed him.

But then, maybe I didn’t know my father as well as I liked to think I did. Maybe he had a romantic side that he kept hidden around others. I have suspected that he has a woman with him in Michigan. One time when he made it out to a post office, he mailed me a picture of him sitting in a boat, fishing. It took two days for it to occur to me that someone else snapped that picture. But who? He has never mentioned anyone else being there, not a single soul, in any of his faxes.

After sending off my missive to Pop, I downed a glass of orange juice and an oatmeal cookie, then headed for Sarah’s
house. My car (a big Buick named Karen Ann) is a relic from my college days—a gift from Pop. Since I’ve always had use of one of the department’s cars for any serious driving I’ve needed to do, I haven’t bothered keeping Karen Ann tuned up. She doesn’t even ask to have her oil changed. But I thought she could use some exercise, so I drove her over to Sarah’s place.

I hadn’t turned in my key to the lockbox on Sarah’s front door. I wanted to pull a photo of Sarah out of one of those albums on the shelf in her closet. I didn’t intend to linger-just grab a recent photo for ID purposes—but once I started turning pages, I couldn’t stop. I looked at picture after picture of wedded bliss. For a marriage that was, in Robert’s words, pure hell, it certainly looked a lot different on paper. His arm around her in one picture, hers around him in another. Both of them grinning at their infant child in still another.

I needed to see Robert. There was so much about this case that I wanted to run by him. I also just wanted to sit there with him, to be in the same space that he occupied. I knew that I was feeling vulnerable, and being around that guy had always been an antidote for that feeling.

As soon as I arrived at Robert’s room, I sent Lymann on an errand. Then I closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I’ve got news,” I told him.

“I heard about your suspension.”

“I’m lying low. If you want to reach me, I’ll be at your apartment.”

“Tonight?”

“For as long as I need to be there.”

Robert was looking at me in a new way—like he was appraising me.

“What?” I asked.

“Tell me about the polygraph. Where’d you screw up?”

“When Fibs asked if I knew who killed Sarah. I know, and you know. It was Wolf.”

He seemed to relax.

“Yeah. I’ll probably fail mine, too,” he said.

There was a tap at the door, then Special Agent Walker stuck her head inside and said, “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Hi, Susan.”

That’s all Robert said, but the words were beside the point. I was staring at his face. I saw his eyes, how his whole expression changed when he looked at her. I’d never seen that look in his eyes before—except maybe in the pictures of him and Sarah and Liza.

I got up off the bed and mumbled something about having to run.

“Not on my account, I hope,” Susan said.

“No. I have to get some sleep. I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning.”

“You okay?” Robert asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“It’s nothing. The flu, maybe mono. I’m just run down.”

As I was leaving, I could hear Lymann telling Susan that she wasn’t on the list of approved visitors. She followed me all the way to the parking garage, but she was in stilettos; I was in sneakers. She didn’t catch up with me until I was unlocking my car door.

“We’ve gotten off to a rotten start,” she said, “but I want you to know that I’m still hoping we can work together on this.”

She offered me her card, but I didn’t take it. The look on her face might have been genuine hurt.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. I know I’m being a bitch. I don’t have any claims on Sinclair. It’s been over for months.”

“That’s what he told me,” Walker said.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling even more alone than I had earlier.

“I’m going to tell you something that I haven’t admitted to anybody else. Maybe not even to myself,” Walker said. “Becoming a federal agent is an experience in brainwashing. Everything we do, we do for the company. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it. We’re told that our job is to gather information, period. But I don’t buy that. I should have been a cop, like you. I need to make arrests, see results. So if there’s ever anything I can do for you that’s, well, off the record, let me know. It’ll be just between us.”

“I’m on suspension,” I said.

“I know.”

“I failed my polygraph.”

“I know that, too. And I know that isn’t going to keep you out of this case.”

“Okay,” I told her. “I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

But when I drove away, I didn’t head straight for Robert’s apartment. I knew she might be tailing me. I drove to Fuzzy’s place instead. When he opened the door, I walked right into his arms. That hug was the best thing I had felt all day.

I ended up spending the night on Fuzzy’s couch, remaining in the house even after he took off for work at 3:45. About 8:30, I got up, took a shower, put my dirty clothes back on, booked a flight to Florida, then drove over to the Women’s Center.

Carol’s diagnosis was a post-flu, secondary infection—“walking pneumonia.” She gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, and I had it filled as soon as I left the clinic. She also ordered bed rest, but that I couldn’t do. I just had to hope that the medication did its job fast.

T
he does had me pumped full of something that felt worse than booze. I couldn’t think—couldn’t get a handle on anything.

“I didn’t think Lane would care about me and Susan,” I told Fuzzy. “I figured that she and I were all over. She was looking for commitment—all that shit. I couldn’t handle it, and that was that.”

“She might not have known how she was feeling,” Fuzzy said.

“We could’ve talked about it at least.”

“And what would you have said? That you’re ready to rush off to the altar?”

I rolled over on my side. “Not that,” I mumbled.

“Bobby, some day you’re gonna get by you and Sarah and Liza. Then maybe you’ll look at what it means to be in a relationship. Monica and I had twenty-eight years of it-some good, some bad. It was work, Bobby. To make it go that long, you have to work at it. And I miss her, too. We were gonna move to Phoenix when I retired.”

“Sometimes I think that Lane and I could have worked things out,” I said.

“Why not now?” Fuzzy asked. “Why are ya talkin’ like there’s no chance now? Get by it. Think about
her.
Think about the two of you, if you want to.”

“You got anything to drink, Fuzzy?” I asked.

“I’m off the stuff,” he said, and got up and walked across the room. “Hey, Lymann, wanna play some cards?”

Lane was jealous. But she was the one that broke things off. I hadn’t known that she still wanted there to be something going on between us.

“What time they putting me in storage?” I asked.

“Soon as the doctor checks you out, we go,” Lymann said.

“Tranquil Acres?”

Fuzzy laughed. “You know where it is? Up above Hasty Hills.”

“I can’t stand it,” I said.

“You see the morning paper?”

“It’s around here somewhere. I can’t read. It blurs.”

“Purrington confessed,” Fuzzy said. “Says he did Harris. He’s probably getting arraigned right now—one count here. They’ll have a separate arraignment on the five up north.”

So I end up in a rubber room, and Lane holes up at my place. She can’t bring Wolf down alone, and Hanson will isolate her. He’s got Purrington. No one can fault him.

“Hanson’s picture in the paper?”

“Him and Willoughby,” Fuzzy said.

“Case closed,” I said.

After the doc cleared me for takeoff, Lymann strapped me into a wheelchair and rolled me down to meet Fuzzy with the car. My favorite sergeant wasn’t kidding: he headed north on the interstate, toward Hasty Hills.

“You really quit drinking?” I asked Fuzzy.

“Yeah.”

“Just like that.”

“When you went out on me, Bobby, we were talking about God calling
me
home. You shoot the shit out of the
Sea Breeze, I figure you’re getting a person-to-person, collect. I didn’t want to see you go, and I’m not in much of a hurry either. Sobered me right up.”

I watched the mile markers go by. The road was familiar. I wondered how many times Wolf had driven up and down here.

The night Lane kicked in my door, I told her the truth. I was scared. And I was scared going to the drunk farm, too, but in a lot of ways it was a relief. I wanted Wolf dead, but the shape I was in, I wasn’t the man to do it. Lane would do whatever she could. Swartz would help her. And maybe in a month we’d at least know where the bastard is.

Fuzzy left the interstate, but continued north on a two-lane road through woods and rolling hills. He had to slow down when we passed a state police operation—the dig on Wolf’s, aka Doc Chadwick’s, property.

“You hear anything about that?”

“Staties ain’t saying much,” Fuzzy said. “Last I knew they were up to eleven.”

Eleven more dead.

“Willoughby and Hanson gonna tie that to Purrington, too? He just happened to choose this land for his mass grave?”

“You want my opinion,” Fuzzy said, “I think they’re afraid to open this up—afraid of what they’ll find. Another Zodiac or Green River killer. Maybe another Ted Bundy. Thirty victims? Forty? Fifty? And they can’t catch him. Hanson would be back on a beat, and Willoughby would be running for the senate in Virginia. Lucky thing Purrington was in town when the manure hit the fan.”

“Somebody’s got to stop this guy,” I said.

The car picked up speed again. I leaned back in the seat and figured it was time to let go. There wasn’t anything I could do.

Lane had done everything in the world for me—kept me alive. I was so hung up on Sarah, I just never saw it. For me
to be with Lane meant I wasn’t with Sarah, and that meant I was at least a little crazy, a little brittle, a lot blind.

I remember that first night when Lane blocked my way in the parking lot. She was telling me then that she loved me. I figured she just wanted to get laid. So I followed her home.

Somewhere in all those months of drunken calisthenics there was a lot more than good sex. And I missed it.

When Fuzzy shook me awake at the entrance to Tranquil Acres, I felt as if I’d had my first real rest in years. I’d fallen asleep somewhere along the way. I was weak, tired, and maybe getting my first hint of what would be, to me, an altered state of consciousness—sobriety.

“All out for the Ho-Ho Hotel,” Fuzzy said.

Lymann opened the car door for me.

“Fuzzy, tell Lane I said I’m sorry. For everything. Tell her that.”

He nodded. “Good luck, Bobby.”

We shook hands.

Lymann helped me out of the car and to a standing position.

“Walk or ride?” he asked.

“You keep an arm on me and I think I can walk,” I said. “You going through the program, too?”

“Ninth time for me, and I don’t even drink.”

“I won’t give you a hard time, Lymann. I promise.”

“I know that. No way you outrun the mon.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” I said. “Ain’t that just the truth.”

I
’d started taking the antibiotics. Carol knew I couldn’t climb into bed and stay there, so she told me to at least take it easy for a couple of days. But I had work to ’do. Even though I still felt tired and weak, I decided to trudge on. I had to.

I had been the lead investigator, and I still considered it my case, my responsibility. As much as I had disliked and even feared Sarah Sinclair because of her power over Robert, I owed her. And Robert couldn’t do anything. I knew he wanted to be right in the middle of it, but he was out of circulation and going to stay that way for a while. Hanson was wearing blinders-so certain that everything was going to wrap up neatly with Purrington. I had no choice. I had to keep working it.