An Occasional Hell Page 10

  “Just make sure you don’t hold back on us.”

  There it was, that first hint of suspicion, first glimmer of distrust. Fucking business, DeWalt thought. He said, “So anyway. Considering Rodney’s proclivities, maybe he didn’t mind his wife getting banged by another guy. Maybe it turned him on. Nothing you haven’t come across before, right?”

  “There’s nothing I haven’t come across before.”

  “Or maybe Alex Catanzaro was, I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud here. But maybe he gave her money, bought her presents, and, for whatever reason, financial or otherwise, Rodney went along with it. Or maybe Jeri told Rodney she’d leave him if he didn’t let her fuck around on the side.”

  “So what you’re saying is, either Jeri helped to set the whole thing up, or else, after she saw her sugar daddy get blown away, she willingly ran off with her husband.”

  “What I’m saying is, where’s Jeri Gillen’s body?” And why, DeWalt asked himself for the hundredth time, why in the world did Alex jot down my phone number so many times?

  “Her husband shows up, puts a lead ball in Catanzaro’s brainpan, and she goes off hand-in-hand with Rodney, even though she’s naked as a baby?”

  “Maybe Rodney brought extra clothes for her, precisely so they could leave the old ones behind and make it look as if she’d been abducted.”

  They looked as one another for a long time. Finally Abbott shook his head. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, the simplest explanation is the correct one.”

  “That figure sounds a little high to me.”

  “Your scenario just doesn’t fit, Ernie. I mean what did they get out of it? They didn’t even take his wallet, for chrissakes.”

  “Maybe they did it for kicks.”

  “Whew,” said Abbott, and blew out a breath. “I’d hate to think that was the truth.”

  “The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow.”

  “The thing I still don’t understand, though … why make it look as if Rodney killed Jeri too? I mean the heat’s already on him for blasting Catanzaro. Why, if they’re going to stage something, why implicate Rodney in not one but two murders? Why not fabricate an alibi for Rodney, in which case he might eventually be able to collect on an insurance policy for Jeri. If, that is, there had been one.”

  “There wasn’t?”

  “Not a dime.”

  “Jesus,” said DeWalt. “None of this fits together.”

  Abbott said, cautiously, “There was a nice-sized policy on the professor, though. Two policies, in fact.”

  “Forget it, Larry.”

  “Even if she had to split it with somebody—”

  “Forget it, all right? It’s a dead-end.”

  “At least you want it to be a dead-end.”

  “What I do or do not want doesn’t figure into it.”

  Trooper Abbott nodded, a concession, an apologetic smile. “Want to know what I really think, Ernie? I think it’s going to take a crystal ball to call this one. You know as well as I do, if a case isn’t solved while the trail’s still hot.…”

  “Trouble is, the trail on this one was never hot.”

  “It hasn’t even gotten warm yet.”

  Now Abbott was being wonderfully agreeable. This session was over. DeWalt smiled warmly. “It’s a ballbuster. On that we can agree.”

  “It’s a fucking A-number one bitch and half. A bowlegged bitch with a highpitched squeal. And you’re the guy to blame for fixing me up with this date.”

  DeWalt chuckled. “You’re waxing poetic, you must be tired.”

  “I’m past tired, I’m dead. I haven’t slept in two days for thinking about this thing. I can’t even make love to my wife, Ernie! We’ve missed two nights in a row now.”

  “Geez,” said DeWalt, and thought, I’ve got you beat by about five years, pal.

  Abbott said, “Funny how failure goes straight to a guy’s penis, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a deflating experience, all right.”

  “You have that problem too?”

  “Always,” said DeWalt.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Beyond the inlet the river was as brown as mud and just as slow, the steep bank on the far side lush with waxy green rhododendrons and white-trunked birch and, higher up, young red-skinned chokecherry trees intermingled with oaks. The foliage glistened with the dew of morning but the air smelled of night, of wet wriggling things that push up blindly through damp soil or are cast ashore to strangle on too much air.

  DeWalt had been sitting at the inlet for nearly two hours now, since dawn, sitting on a stump rolled close to the fire pit, his feet perched on a round chilly stone. He had come to watch the river fog, to attend its slow ascension. Maybe it would lift and reveal something he had failed to see before. This was always his hope, inarticulate, unreasoned; that he might glimpse what he had never seen; recover a tremor of understanding; be made privy to a knowledge few living men deserve.

  Upon his arrival here the fog had been a solid wall of white against the charcoal trees and ashen sky; a well-defined battlement of hoary silence; a bulkhead. Gradually the curtain rose, lifting whole, exposing the river’s far edge and the groping rhododendron, clearing finally the trees and hanging grapevines and the sky itself, an August sapphire sky that soon surrendered all beauty to the sun.

  At DeWalt’s foot set a thermos of coffee and a brown paper bag. He removed the thermos’s plastic cup and filled it, smelling the warm steam, warming his hands around it. He could allow himself only a sip or two but he had made enough to fill the thermos; the coffee would stay warmer that way. He raised the cup to his lips and tasted the coffee; a sip so small, so prized and delicious, that his tongue seemed to absorb it all, leaving nothing to swallow. There had been no particular reason for him to come here at dawn, or why he now chose to wait, no purpose other than the hope that a purpose might introduce itself, might … might what, DeWalt? Might chirp at you from the cattails, Here I am! Here I am!

  When he held the cup of coffee between his knees he lost its scent and smelled instead those cold chunks of charred wood at his feet; or, if a timid breeze blew, he smelled the river. But the scent of ash did not tell him anything he needed to know. Nor did the water tell him anything, nor the fog, nor the ancient stones.

  He balanced his cup of coffee on one of those stones and took from the paper bag the two-inch heel of a baguette, fresh at five AM, and removed the bread from its plastic wrapping. Over the wound, the white flesh of the bread, he had spread honey-butter. He bit into it now and tasted the sweetness first on the roof of his mouth, and then his mouth filled with sweetness, and he held it there, a yeasty pastille, until it had all but dissolved.

  As he ate the bread, tiny flakes of crust flew from his hand to the ground. A sprinkling of crumbs, DeWalt, from a moment of your life. Evidence after you are gone that you were here.

  Except that a bird will soon be along, a chickadee or sparrow, to feed on those crumbs.

  And then the bird will fly away and the bird will be the evidence. Because the evidence of one’s life is always in transit, DeWalt, always elusive. It lasts as long as it lasts, and then it changes, and it is what we have as truth.

  He finished the bread and had another sip of coffee. He placed the sticky plastic wrap inside the paper bag, folded the bag flat and slipped it into his pocket. Now that the fog was gone the air would warm quickly. There was no reason to be here and nothing to learn.

  But as long as we have anything more to do, Melville had said to Hawthorne, we have done nothing.

  Silence is the only valid response, said Samuel Beckett.

  I’m disgustipated, said Popeye the Sailor Man.

  He laughed softly at himself, a capitulation. Then he turned on the stump and once again looked at that narrow space where Catanzaro’s car had been parked. He had seen the police photos, so he superimposed those images on the flattened weedgrass and he saw the pale blank headlights of the square-faced silver Honda pointing at him. He sa
w the door on the driver’s side sprung open. He saw Jeri Gillen’s rose-colored dress folded neatly on the back seat. He saw one straw sandal just outside the car, Jeri’s purse with the shoulder strap broken and the contents spilled twenty yards down the lane.

  Both front seats are reclined at a forty-degree angle. Catanzaro is atop the girl. Her right foot is hooked over the steering wheel. The radio plays softly: 99.6 FM, station WZYZ, bedroom music, instrumental and innocuous. Jeri supplies the lyrics.

  “God, how I love to fuck you,” she is saying. “You feel so big inside me, I love your big cock. Fuck me hard, baby. Fuck me hard.”

  DeWalt has heard her voice and he has seen pictures the police have not seen but he still knows not enough. Until he knows it all he knows nothing.

  There is a sound outside the car then, a sound of … what? A twig snapping? The hammer of a musket clicking into place? A small involuntary grunt, a whimper of jealousy, unsuppressable groan of rage? Whatever the sound, Alex hears it. He raises himself up on his hands, his gaze finds the window. For just an instant he freezes, incredulous. Does he realize in that instant the impossibility of escape? Does he taste the futility of life, the bitterness of hope and ambition? Is there time enough in that moment for a silent admission of regret?

  Is there time enough to understand?

  His body, instantly dead, is thrown back by the percussion. His spine strikes the steering wheel and he recoils forward again, he falls atop Jeri, still inside her (still erect?), a good portion of his forehead gone.

  Is she still rocking her hips? Still murmuring her vulgar endearments?

  Does she scream?

  Or does she lie mute, wanting to scream but shocked beyond words, beyond comprehension? Does she pass out?

  Does she push Alex’s body aside, shove it away, struggle to crawl from beneath it? Does she squirm and scratch her way out of the car and onto the rainslick ground, clawing insensibly, scrabbling helplessly for purchase until she is lifted up, or struck unconscious, or strangled, or somehow irrevocably silenced and spirited away?

  Or does she, after Alex crumples atop her, does she enjoy for a moment the still-warm weight of death? Does she smile, unafraid, unsurprised? Then calmly slides from beneath him. Then steps outside the car, bloodied, perhaps even excited by the blood. Gratified. Rearranges her props. And walks calmly away with her companion.

  For DeWalt, this last possibility was scarcely tolerable. It chilled him inside and out. A taste of charred wood filled his mouth; he smelled the dew-wet ash. Did such behavior actually exist in the repertoire of human response?

  He knew the answer even before he finished forming the question.

  And that, he decided, was all he was destined to learn this morning. There was only so much knowledge to be gained by sitting on a stump and staring into the fog. The fog was gone now and the morning light too palpable, intrusive. He couldn’t concentrate now. Insects buzzed in the weeds. Ten yards away a starling sat on a limb and screeched at him, wanting his crumbs, his perch.

  He dashed the cold coffee into the ashes, emptied the thermos, and screwed on the lid. Just as he was about to stand he heard a gearbox grinding, somebody downshifting out on the highway, slowing to make the turn into the lane. DeWalt stood and went to his car where it blocked the lane. He glimpsed the blue pickup truck just an instant before its driver noticed DeWalt’s Acura. Again the gearbox whined, this time as Clifford Jewett braked, then immediately shifted into reverse. Draper Jewett, sitting on the passenger side with his head lain back, eyes closed, abruptly sat up and looked straight ahead as the truck sped backward. A moment later the vehicle swung onto the highway, and DeWalt lost sight of them.

  There was no sign of the pickup truck at the Jewetts’ house, but the front door stood open. DeWalt walked onto the porch, listened for a moment, heard nothing, and knocked on the screen door.

  Instantly DeWalt’s knock was answered by a shrill barking. Tippy flew at the screen, bounced off, landed on all fours facing the opposite direction, claws scribbling at the bare floorboards until he managed to turn himself and attack the screen again, the tiny hairless dog as nimble as an acrobat turning flips off a trampoline—a canine Donald O’Connor somersaulting off a wall—and all the while yelping.

  Aleta Jewett appeared out of the far grayness of the house. “Shush!” she said to the dog, and pushed it aside with a foot. Tippy scurried away in a wide half-circle but quickly returned to stand at her heels, eyes bright, rat-head quivering.

  She did not say anything to DeWalt nor did she reach for the door to push it open. Her face showed no expression at all, neither recognition nor surprise nor annoyance.

  “Good morning,” he said, and smiled. Her eyes were the color of smoke. No, not smoke; river ice. The milky blue of river ice two feet thick, dirtied shoreline ice cracked and piled high, a whole winter’s accumulation.

  “I’m Ernie DeWalt, I stopped by a couple of days ago? To ask about what happened down at the inlet?”

  She said nothing. Not even a nod. DeWalt could see past her into the living room, a portion of it anyway, braided rug on the hardwood floor, plaid sofa, cushions permanently indented. He could see part of a cherrywood sideboard that was probably an antique. Cream-colored wallpaper with a design of tiny green flowers, the colors faded, probably decades old. He could see two large water stains on the plaster ceiling, amoeba-shaped adumbrations the hue of old blood. He could see into the kitchen too: linoleum floor, a corner of the white-enameled sink.

  The woman herself was as tall as DeWalt, her face and figure broad but not heavy. Hair the color of pewter, a simple but not severe cut; she probably gave herself a permanent every few months, as his mother had—he could still picture his mother on a kitchen chair, winding locks of hair around the pink barbed curlers, bobby pins in her mouth, the pink foam squares he had loved to touch, to fill with water and squeeze dry, the smell of solution, ammoniac, eye-stinging, it would linger in the house for days.

  The hem of Aleta’s blue calico dress fell to midcalf, its pattern of miniature roses so faded as to have all but disappeared. Her feet were bare. In her left hand she held a raw sweet potato.

  “I just thought I’d stop by for a minute and talk to Clifford again,” DeWalt said.

  “He’s not home,” she answered. Her voice was smoky too; leavesmoke; damp leaves that smoked but would not catch flame.

  “How about Draper then? Is he around anywhere?”

  “They’re off together,” she said.

  “Son of a gun. I guess this was a wasted trip.” He pursed his lips and stared past her, as if thinking, struggling for an idea. Then, a smile. “Any chance I could use your phone? It’s a local call.”

  “Clifford don’t allow people inside when he’s not home,” she said. Was there a note of embarrassment in her voice? Any hint of apology, challenge, fear? DeWalt tried to distinguish as much, but could not.

  He nodded. “Any idea when the boys will be back?”

  “When they get here. Not before.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where I might find them, would you? I want to double-check a couple of things.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said.

  “Maybe they went down to the inlet to do a little fishing this morning, you think?”

  “They didn’t go fishing.”

  “They do go down there occasionally though, don’t they? Whether to fish or whatever.”

  She had not yet turned her head or otherwise glanced away from him but neither did she look directly into his eyes; she seemed to be staring at the side of his head, at the top of his ear perhaps. He suppressed an urge to scratch it.

  But those eyes of hers, they appeared almost frozen. Or rather, the irises were frozen, thick circles of ice. But the pupils, those jagged black dots, these were the holes that had been punched through the ice, holes deep with a dark liquid chill. You could not go into them for long, you would not survive the shock.

  “You might look for them in town
,” she told him.

  DeWalt grinned. “They didn’t go off to the movies now without taking you, did they?”

  Aleta Jewett did not smile. “They went in to see about a submersible pump.”

  “You folks out of water?”

  “Pressure won’t stay up is all.”

  “Boy, I bet those new submersibles must cost an arm and a leg.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Despite its flatness of expression her face retained an angularity barely softened by the weight of years, a sharpness of features which, punctuated by those forbidding eyes, must have lent her, in younger times, a striking countenance, that ascetic and perhaps cautionary appearance that certain men are drawn to. DeWalt suspected, however, that she had long ago ceased thinking of herself in that regard, she had moved beyond sexuality and its derisiveness and into a further stage of being, a place he could not name, having never been there himself. But there was to Aleta Jewett an inwardness, a tranquility born of detachment. He sensed that she would stand there forever if need be, succinctly responding to his questions, made neither nervous nor impatient by them, neither amused nor angered. She was beyond guile because guile depends on fear and she was fearless now. Maybe she had always been fearless; he had no way of knowing. He had glimpsed this quality in others on a few occasions but it had always been in faces more obviously pummeled by circumstance, beaten past caring, beyond fear or wonder. Faces so empty that we read into them a most profound and irreducible peace.

  He knew he could not startle or frighten her. And so he asked, “Don’t you agree that it seems highly unlikely, Mrs. Jewett, that none of you people up here would have heard that gunshot?”

  “Apparently that’s what you think.”

  “Yes, I do. It seems a whole lot more reasonable to me that you did hear it. But by the same token, just hearing a gunshot doesn’t make you in any way responsible for it, does it?”