by Gary Braver
“I was out of range.”
Her mouth and cheeks were red from beard burn. “Who was he?”
She slammed her handbag onto the counter. “You have no right sneaking in here.”
“I didn’t sneak in. I’ve been waiting for seven fucking hours. We had a date.”
“I forgot and I’m sorry.” Then her eyes hardened. “And you’re drunk.”
“Who was he?”
“None of your business. Now get out.” Her arm shot out like a lance toward the door.
“It’s all over your face.”
By reflex she made a move to wipe her mouth then caught herself. Her lipstick was smeared.
The alcohol was making him reckless. It was also disorienting him. The swelling in Dana’s face, the purple shiners. The smaller, leaner nose. The wider, more open eyes. It was crazy, but for a split second he felt as if he were addressing Terry Farina.
“Did you screw him, too?” He tried not to let the images fill his head. Tried not to think that her mouth was red not just from kissing. “Did you?”
“You son of a bitch.” Her voice was scathing. “No, I did not, now get out of here.”
But he didn’t move. The alcohol was short-circuiting the wiring in his brain. He felt himself at the brink, knowing that in a moment he could yield to the heat and start tearing the place apart, smashing things, bringing Dana to a point of terror. But he also knew in some small pocket of reason that no matter how bad it got he could never physically harm her. It was one of the few absolutes in his makeup. He would assassinate the president or take his own life before he could put a hand to her. Of that he was sure. “Who was he?”
“That’s none of your business. Now get out before I call the police.”
The fury in her eyes parched any comeback. And in an absurd flash, he saw himself outside in the dark, explaining the circumstances to a patrol officer, Dana at the door with a meat cleaver. Wouldn’t that be fucking dandy? “You don’t have to call anybody,” he muttered. The heat rapidly seeped out of him and in its place, cold remorse.
“Then go.”
“You’re not wearing your wedding ring.”
Her hand shot up like an obscene gesture. “It’s on the other finger.”
“But you’re still married to me.”
“Yeah, and we’re separated,” she snapped. “And I have a right to do what I damn well please with whomever I damn well please.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You’re still my wife.” Even through the booze, he knew how pathetic that sounded.
“That didn’t stop you from screwing Sylvia Nevins.”
He nodded. “Just tell me, are you sleeping with him?”
She looked at him for a long moment. “No. Now leave.”
No. Something in her manner said that was true. And he threw himself onto that syllable as if it were a life preserver. “Who is he?”
“Stephen, I’m not one of your suspects, and this is not one of your cases.”
“Why did he bring you home in a limo?”
“Because he felt like it.”
“Or was he some rich bopper you picked up at a rock club who hasn’t gotten his license yet?” He knew that was supposed to be funny, but he also knew he had struck at her quick. “You said you wished you were a kid again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Fuck you, Steve. Fuck you.”
He had hit his mark.
In a flash, she grabbed a salt shaker and threw it at him. It punched his shoulder and clattered on the floor.
She picked up the phone handset. Her eyes were spitting at him as she stood there panting with fury, her lipstick smeared, her newborn face still puffy and red. A new yellow sundress that he hadn’t seen before, new backless white heels. New outfit, new Dana.
Suddenly he wanted to cry. There she was in front of him, dressed for another guy, the handset poised to call help, her eyes full of hate and resentment. It was so wrong. So wrong. So far from what it was supposed to be.
He turned and headed for the door. “I’m sorry, Dana. You’re right about all of it.”
And he opened the door and left.
75
“I’m an asshole.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m an asshole.”
“You’re also a drunk.”
“I prefer the former, but I’m working on the latter.”
“I thought you had stopped.”
“I have now and forever. That was the end of it. I swear.”
It was a little after ten the next morning. He knew she was expecting his apology. He was hoping for forgiveness at best, maybe a snicker at least. He got neither.
“I think you need some psychological counseling. I mean it. You’re getting pathetic.”
“I’ll consider it,” he said. “So, who was he?”
“God! Are we back there again?”
“Because I don’t like thinking about you with some other guy.”
“Well, it’s too damn bad. Don’t think about it.”
“Let me move back and I won’t.”
“Why can’t you get it through your head that we’re separated?”
“But only on a trial basis, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’ve tried it and I don’t like it.”
A faint snicker, and he sensed a slender turnaround.
“You’re impossible.”
“Yes, but does he make you laugh?”
“Can we please change the subject?”
“Okay. Want to go to dinner tonight? I found a new place in the South End.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“No, really, it’s got a great pork loin—kind of like myself.” The fact that she just didn’t hang up encouraged him on. And the fact that she had answered after checking caller ID.
“I’m busy tonight. And before you ask, I’m getting my hair done then going to a movie with Jane.”
“How about after the movie? We’ll drop Jane off.”
“No.”
“What’s he like?”
“Who?”
“The guy in the limo?”
“Jesus! Get off it, will you? I’m not going to talk about that.”
“Well, if I find out who he is, he’s going to have hell to pay.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, he parks his car anywhere in greater Boston I’m going to bury it with tickets.”
“You’re not in traffic, you’re in homicide.”
“An even better solution.”
An outright chuckle. “I’ve got to go.”
“Okay, one more question.”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“Steve, you were building a decent apology, so don’t spoil it.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then, “Yes, I love you. But I just don’t want to live with you.”
He felt his chest clutch. “Ever?”
“For the time being.”
“I want to have kids.”
“Good.”
“With you.”
“I have to go.”
“If I stop drinking will you take me back?”
“It’ll be a start.”
“What else is there?”
“I didn’t say that to set up a bargaining table. My freedom is not negotiable.”
“You can be free with me, just don’t see other guys.”
“That’s not the freedom I have in mind. I’m enjoying being on my own for once.”
“For once?”
“Yes, without having to answer to anybody else, without having someone else control everything I do or don’t do.”
“Like what?”
“Like wanting to be independent.”
“Being dependent on another for emotional or moral support isn’t the opposite of freedom. Nor is monogamy.�
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“Look, we’re getting into a semantic thing. I’m going to hang up.”
Before he said goodbye he asked, “Are you happy with your nose job?”
“Yes. What about you?”
“I’m not sure. It’s weird. You look like somebody else.”
“Well, you’ll get used to it.”
“If you let me.”
“Bye.” And she hung up.
He put the phone down, then went to the cabinet and removed the bottle of Chivas. It was half full. He unscrewed the cap, took a deep sniff. The fumes filled his head like a miasma. Then he dumped the contents into the sink and turned on the water.
A start.
Again. And for real.
76
For days following Lila’s funeral he was anesthetized with grief.
Then that numbness passed into other expressions—the other predicted stages that he would later read about regarding the death of a loved one: denial, guilt, and anger.
Anger.
It was the final and most persistent expression. The one that nobody liked to admit, the one that would surface in time as something else like shame or self-contempt. The child who loses a mother will blame himself for her disappearance while at the same time feel rage at her for deserting him, for no longer gratifying his needs. Paradoxically, she becomes the object of love and craving as well as hate for his unbearable deprivation. Eventually that anger is supposed to pass with the grief, to cool into a numbed acceptance.
But not with him.
For years to come he felt its heat just beneath the skin of things. And no matter how thick the skin grew, it was always there, like the magma beneath the cap of a dormant volcano.
Lila’s remains were cremated according to her wishes, and he scattered her ashes in the sea. Because he was a minor, he moved in with his aunt and uncle in Fremont about fifteen miles away. That meant moving out of the neighborhood where he grew up. But since he was attending Markham Academy, a private school outside of Derry, he didn’t have to change schools. And the commute was about the same.
Throughout the rest of his high school years he did not date anyone.
He still saw Becky Tolland, who encouraged him to emerge from his self-inflicted anguish and get back into acting. He did, and on her insistence, he stayed with the Drama Club and performed in two more plays with her, A Streetcar Named Desire and My Fair Lady. Although they remained casual friends, he did not date Becky again. She was a young woman of the sexual revolution, before AIDS and after the pill—which meant she was sexually active. He wasn’t. So they went their separate ways.
As he grew older, his headaches got worse. So he was sent to a neurologist who conducted a battery of tests, concluding that he suffered minor temporal seizures as a result of the accident with Lila. Another piece of her legacy. Medication quelled the seizures as the years passed.
He attended college and did well. Throughout college he went to parties where he met women, even some with whom he had dinners. They made up a short “just friends” list. But he had no steady. Never had, and he knew classmates speculated that he might have been gay. He wasn’t. Isn’t. In the most pathetic of clichés, he could not find the right woman.
Looking back, he understood how she had affected his apprehension of other females. Lila’s physical beauty had become a supreme template that made other women seem gauche. Even golden Becky—Juliet-pretty Becky Tolland—the girl who made him the envy of other boys. He liked her, had fun with her, admired her fresh clean beauty. But inside he became distracted by her frizzy yellow hair, her pointy catlike face, the skinny legs, and flat chest.
It was Lila who did that. Because Lila was perfect.
She had been the source of his passion, and he had enshrined her in his soul. He knew his was an obsession that bordered on worship. In fact, at times, he felt so lucid a connection to her that he sensed her presence, even her possession of him. It was as if her spirit had crossed the mortal divide and taken up residence in his body. For a spell he would walk around having full conversations with her but taking both parts—himself and Lila. He had even gone so far as to assimilate from recall the tone and pitch of her voice and manner of expression.
Of course, in more rational moments he recognized the delusion for what it was. Yet when the spells passed, he felt both relief and abandonment.
He still had her photo albums, which he regarded as sacred icons to a religious supplicant. Hers was the most exquisite face he had ever seen. As Harry Dobbs once said, Lila had a face with no bad angles. It was stunningly perfect in proportions and structure. Her skin was clear and moist, and her eyes indigo starbursts. The world was a lesser place without her in it.
There were times over the succeeding years when in hopelessness he contemplated suicide. Lila had taken him to the kingdom and then abandoned him at the threshold. She had taught him hideous loss, then blamed it on him. She had left him with a tortured apprehension of women, a tunnel vision that rendered others inferior. And the only way he could conceive of expelling her from his soul was his own death.
Like a deep inflammation, that realization stayed with him until he met Diane.
Almost perfect Diane Hewson with the heart-shaped face and sunset hair.
Part III
77
The call came at four that afternoon.
It was the eighteenth day that Steve had been alcohol-free. On his fifteenth, Dana had called to congratulate him. He suspected that she was dating other men, but she refused to elaborate or name names. And Steve no longer asked. With some things ignorance was bliss.
A month had passed since her operation. The swelling of her nose was no longer noticeable, and the discoloration was gone. The combined effects of the rhinoplasty with the earlier lid lift and other procedures were startling.
Dana looked like a different woman. Her skin had always been smooth. But the tightening around her eyes and the reduction of her nose had opened up her face, creating the eerie sensation that he was addressing someone with only a vague resemblance to the woman he had married. At once he was dazzled by the youthful beauty that her surgeon had fashioned and distracted by the transformation. She appeared, at moments, to have two faces superimposed.
When the call came in, Steve was writing a report on another case. The Farina investigation had yielded no new leads. A few weeks ago, the District Attorney had issued a statement that the death was being investigated as a possible ritual or serial crime linked to some cold cases. He invited the public to leave messages with the Boston Crime Stoppers tip line. Any information, no matter how small, could prove useful and, as usual, investigators took callers seriously. Tips could be submitted anonymously, although police promised better service if callers identified themselves. But either way, citizen tips were aggressively investigated.
As with the hundreds that had poured in with the murder of Terry Farina seven weeks ago, each one had been investigated. And most turned out to be duds. As the weeks passed, the calls became infrequent.
In the meantime, Steve worked on other cases but kept the case alive by occasionally sending out alerts to state and local police departments throughout southern New England, requesting any information on cold cases that might assist in the investigation of the serial stocking murders. For weeks nothing had come in until that afternoon.
The message that afternoon was forwarded to Steve. It came from a forensic anthropologist at Harvard named James Bowers. He was leaving for a conference that afternoon but would be back in his office on Monday to speak to him in person.
He had called to say that ten years ago the Massachusetts State Police had asked him to help identify a woman whose skeletal remains had been discovered off Hogg Island at the mouth of the Essex River. Divers looking for lobsters had discovered her skull, vertebrae, and partial rib cage entangled in an abandoned lobster pot. Despite the fact that the remains had yielded DNA markers, no identity had been made with any known missing person on record. Yet it was determined
that the remains were those of a Caucasian female in her thirties or forties. Nothing else of the woman had been found—no clothing, affects, boat, or life jacket—except for scraps of material enmeshed with the bones and chemically identified as containing 87 percent nylon and 13 percent Lycra. Her death had been ruled suspicious.
Steve called the return number and left a message that he would like to talk with Bowers when he returned on Monday. Perhaps it was the credentials of the caller. Perhaps it was his sixth sense kicking up. But Steve felt a flicker of promise that took him through the weekend.
78
Aaron Monks seemed particularly animated that night.
It was their fourth date since her operation. The swelling was gone, and her nose had taken on the definition it would have permanently. And Dana loved it.
Even after so many weeks, she could still not get used to the transformation. For more than three decades she had looked at her face, known every angle, every possible expression, each nuance of emotional projection. Each wrinkle, blemish, and displeasing slant. There were no surprises. But the postop change had been so marked, so jarring, that she still saw someone else looking back at her from the mirror.
Lanie carried on as if she were a magazine model, and that she should start seeing herself as such and get out there and date. Because he wanted to keep their relationship discreet, Dana had said nothing about seeing Aaron Monks.
Since her yacht date on the Fourth of July, she had seen him on two follow-up visits at his office. Again he had apologized for getting carried away in the limo, blaming it on the champagne and the craziness of the moment. She understood and forgave him. Then he had called last week to ask if she wanted to join him for dinner tonight. He was leaving soon for a month in the Caribbean and wanted to see her one more time before he left. Because he was publicity-shy, he took her to a restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to be away from any local newspeople. Again he asked that she not mention it to anyone. And she respected that.