by Gerry Boyle
“How Portland was a good city to live in. It had just made one of those lists.”
He seemed to relax. “Oh, yeah. Great city. Great for the young people. They love it here.”
“Right. Sybill loved it, didn’t she?”
“Well, she was a quiet girl,” the guy said, guarded again. “She gave me no trouble. No trouble at all.”
“You know where she went?”
“Never said a word. Paid the rent on time, then one day I come by, she’s gone. Key is on the floor inside the door. No note, no nothing. Never asked for her security, neither. Just poof. She’s gone. You tell her, you see her, I still got her money. Six-hundred bucks.”
“Huh,” I said. “Leave her things behind?”
“Hey, she barely got any. Girls usually got all kinds a stuff, you know? She got a bed, a chair, a little TV. No cable, just the antenna. Looked like a jail cell, you know what I’m saying? Nice rooms, too, you fix ’em up. You should see it now. Girl in there, she got the place looking so nice.”
“I’m sure.”
“Hey, I was shocked. Nice girl, has the guys starting to come around. One of ’em, he’s got serious money. Mercedes-Benz, clothes right outta some magazine. He really likes her, too, I can tell. Bringing her flowers.”
“So she dumped him and left,” I said.
“Hell, no. Day after she’s gone, he’s standing at the door, bottle of wine and some roses in his hand. He says, ‘Where is she?’ I says, ‘Gone with the wind, just like the movie.’ I thought he was gonna cry, right there on the doorstep.” He pointed to the front door.
“Yeah, I can see she could be a real heartbreaker,” I said.
He looked at my hand, at my wedding band.
“I’m married,” I said. “My heart’s fine.”
“Me, too. But I’ll tell you, if I was twenty-five and not married.”
He shook his head, recalling her. “Nice-looking girl.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Sweet, too, you know. I talked to her sometimes, working around the place. Thought about things. Worried, you know?”
“What kinda things?”
“Oh, about people, why they do what they do. Had these people next door. Not my building, don’t think that. Man and a lady. Fight? Oh, Jesus, did they fight. I always kinda thought that might’ve been the reason Sybill left. Screaming and yelling, and the cops coming. And then—”
He paused, looked around like somebody might be listening. “You know what happened?”
“Remind me,” I said.
“You work for the paper here, right?”
I didn’t answer. It didn’t matter.
“Then you know that house right there, that’s where the guy got killed. Lady had moved out, she’d had enough. But somebody, they decided this bastard had it coming. You remember.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Hey, refresh my memory. How’d he get killed?”
“Big goddamn butcher knife, right off his own counter. Said it was some artery got cut, why it sprayed all over the place. Artery in his neck.”
He felt his neck. I felt mine.
“Goddamn mess, I heard. Hey, I don’t mind cleaning up food, drinks spilled. But blood, no thanks. All over the wall. Man, does that stain, you don’t get it off right away. You gotta seal it and seal it again or it bleeds right through.”
“Musta been cops all over the place.”
“Big police van, place all taped off. Detectives talked to everybody, what did they hear, see anything that night? Houses so close together, you know.”
I looked at the house next door, thirty feet between the buildings. “Sybill know this guy?”
“Nah, she kept to herself. Her job, it kept her out a lot.”
“What job was that?” I said.
“She worked in some fitness club, one for ladies. I know that ’cause I asked her where it is. She said, ‘Hector, you can’t go. You’re a guy.’ Felt like a creep, you know, like I wanted to see her in her little outfit or something. I was just being friendly.”
“I understand.”
“But she was funny, you know. You get too close, she’d just shut the door.”
“Huh,” I said. “Probably right.”
He took a deep breath. “Well, probably oughta get going. Just hate to go back in that cellar.”
“Right. Hey, listen, this guy who got killed. How long before Sybill left did that happen?”
“Like, two days,” he said. “It freaked her out, you know? I said, ‘It’s still a safe neighborhood. Hey, these things happen.’”
“Yes, they do,” I said.
“But she wasn’t having any of it. Still, I thought she’d give her notice, take her deposit. Not just pack up and disappear in the middle of the night. Hey, still got a storage box of hers down in the cellar. Keep it in back of the door, blanket on top of it. Figure I throw it out, the next day she’ll show up looking for it.”
“Isn’t that always the way,” I said.
“Hey, I gotta get some breakfast,” he said, turning toward the truck, then back. “I don’t eat enough, I get weak in the knees. Sorry I couldn’t help you.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “It was a shot in the dark anyway.”
He looked at me, flashed a conspiratorial smile. “Yeah, right. Hey listen, I’m gonna give you some advice.”
“Go for it,” I said.
“You got a good lady at home?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“Then you stick by her. Grass ain’t always greener, lemme tell ya. A word to the wise, my friend.”
“Gotcha,” I said.
He nodded, got in the truck, backed out. Drove off slowly toward Congress. I started for my truck, watched as he turned at the first stop sign. I stood by the driver’s door and waited. Counted to thirty. Tossed in another twenty for good measure. I drove down the block and parked out of sight. Walking back to the house, I took a last look down the street, then walked up the driveway, neither slowly nor quickly.
The cellar door pushed open. The light switch was on the left.
Chapter 26
The far half of the cellar was divided into five sections, wood-framed stalls separated by chicken wire. There was a number on the two-by-four on each stall, 1 to 5. The stalls weren’t locked. Inside were jumbles of skis, bikes, microwaves, a mattress with a brown stain.
If apartment 2 had been rented, that meant Mandi’s stuff didn’t get a stall. I looked around for anything loose. Along one wall was a workbench, a few tools scattered on top, and a toilet plunger. I circled the cellar. There was a roll of insulation in one corner, sitting on a wooden pallet. Along the wall there were mousetraps, the box kind that catch the mouse when he steps on sticky paper.
I came back to the door, which was half open. I pulled it shut—and there was a plastic box on the floor behind it.
It had a blanket on top, covered with dirt and dust. I listened at the door for a moment, then bent down and popped the lid off. It was partly filled with papers, maybe an inch deep at the bottom, the top yellowed with faded handwriting. On top of the papers was a small toy dog, a Valentine heart hanging from his collar.
I took the dog out, lifted a sheaf of papers and held them up to the light.
A faded meatloaf recipe from a newspaper, stapled to a piece of loose leaf. A drawing of a woman with wings, an odd sort of angel, angry, as though Lucifer had a sister. A poem, handwritten on a page of yellow legal pad, in a girl’s careful script.
You and me, we go way back,
back to the beginning when there was just
One of us, not two,
when you stayed out of sight,
let me fight my own fights.
I lost most of them, but not all
If I’d lost more, maybe they wouldn’t have noticed,
wouldn’t have come with their serious, sad voices,
Trying to tell me they were so concerned.
But they did notice, came and cornered the girl wh
o won,
the girl who wouldn’t take it lying down, or if she did,
absolutely wouldn’t cry out, wouldn’t make a sound,
until you came out of your hiding place and you told them,
leave her alone. Leave her alone.
Leave her alone, alone, alone.
So they did.
I turned to the next page. Another drawing, this one of a woman kneeling by a chopping block, a sword raised in one hand, her other arm across the block.
The scars on Mandi’s wrists.
The page after that was a clipping from the Portland Press Herald, a story about a family that went on a ski vacation, smiling blonde kids, handsome parents, mountains in the background. Then another poem, written on the same legal paper as the first.
If you have no memories
Are you still alive?
If you have no family,
Are you close to death?
If loneliness is pain, then I am hurting.
So don’t let them tell you the first cut
is the deepest, because it isn’t,
it is just the first
of many.
I heard a truck pull in.
The papers in my arms, I pressed against the wall behind the door. The truck motor idled for a minute and then shut off. I heard muffled country & western music, and then the truck door must have opened because the music got louder, then the door slammed shut.
There were bootsteps and then the door was pushed open wider until it touched my knees and chest. I flattened myself, saw just the edge of him as he crossed the cellar. The landlord. Whistling, he picked up a carton of something, turned, and walked back out to the truck. There was a thud as he put the carton down, and then he whistled his way back.
He crossed the cellar again, this time crouching to open a carton and rattle the contents. “Who saves this shit?” he said, and picked up the box, started to turn toward me. Stopped.
He looked to the far corner and put the box down. He walked to the back of the cellar, bent to inspect a mousetrap. Holding the pile of Mandi’s papers, I stepped around the door and out. I switched off the light and pulled the door shut behind me. “Hey,” the landlord said, and I walked quickly down the driveway and up the street.
Back in the truck, I circled over to the Eastern Prom, cut back on Congress Street, then down the hill past crapped-out tenements with gangbangers on the stoops, the gentrification not there yet. I jumped on the Interstate, drove north, moving slowly in the convoy of out-of-staters. There were trucks pulling boats, trucks pulling campers, Saabs carrying kayaks, and motor homes the size of apartments. Everybody happy and healthy, nobody drawing pictures of themselves cutting off their hand.
Every few minutes, I reached over, pulled a few pages off the pile. More poems, some sort of journal. A diagram of a room. I glanced up at the New York Volvo in front of me, looked back down. A bed. A chair. A dresser and a desk. A hotel room? A homeless shelter? Where had Mandi been?
An hour out of Portland, I swung off the highway, cut through Augusta and headed east. The traffic was lighter, still mostly tourists, bound like lemmings for the coast. I passed them on the hills, called Roxanne from the crest of a ridge in the town of Palermo. The number rang once, and then went to voice mail.
I glanced at the papers. Felt the words forming: I stopped at Mandi’s old apartment. I got some of her stuff. She was one unhappy young woman.
I heard Roxanne’s response. I thought you were through with her.
I left a message: “Just checking on you. Call me when you can.” And then it was down into a valley with green ridges to the west, wooded hills to the east. There was no phone reception for the next ten miles, and I sped up, racing through the black hole.
And then I turned off, tracked through the back roads in North Searsmont and Morrill. There were old farms, orchards overgrown with poplar, trailers parked next to fallen-in houses. It wasn’t that they didn’t value sentiment in these parts; it was just that they couldn’t afford it.
To the tourists, bound for Galway and beyond, it was the heart of darkness, dirt roads leading to nowhere, traveled by people who lived odd, inexplicable, and presumably dull lives somewhere in those deep woods.
I wondered where Mandi would land next. Would she head for the woods? And why?
And then I was turning onto my road, Clair’s end. His truck was in the yard in front of the barn, but I kept going, slowed, and passed my house, turned around in the trees three hundred yards beyond, and came back. I pulled in, parked, shut off the motor. It was a little after noon and the place was still. The sun had come out and the air was warming and humid. Bugs buzzed in the trees and hornets moved to and from a nest in the eaves.
I got out of the truck. Walked to the side door and looked back. Nothing showed on the road. I felt for my knife, took it out and flicked open a blade. I started to put a key in the lock, but when I pushed it in, the door just swung open.
I listened. Nothing.
I took a step inside. Listened again. Looked down and saw a dark splotch on the wood floor. I crouched slightly, peered down. There were red-brown droplets leading into the house. Blood. I held the knife low in front of me, wished it were bigger. My rifle was on the high shelf in the hall closet and when I got there, I eased the door open. Listened. Reached onto the shelf, felt the stock of the rifle.
I slipped it out, reached above the closet door to the shelf. All the way back was a box of .30-06 shells. I got it down, opened it. Pushed five shells into the magazine. I put the knife away, followed the trail.
In the kitchen, there were flies. They landed and tasted the blood, buzzed away and circled as I passed. I looked to the study, saw the sliding door open, the screen, too. The blood trail went to the right and up the stairs. A bumblebee droned into the room from outside, then droned back out. I started up.
There was a drop on every other tread, then, at the top of the stairs, a spatter on the white paint of the landing. No footprints in the blood, nobody walking through it.
I continued down the hall, the doors to both bedrooms closed. The droplets stopped at Sophie’s door and I had to remind myself I’d just left her in Portland, eighty miles away. But then who was—
I tried the latch, lifted it with the top of my forefinger. The door opened an inch. I pressed it with the barrel of the rifle. It creaked. Opened.
I pushed it wide.
Felt the breath fall out of me.
There was blood on Sophie’s bed, a red splotch at the center of the white bedspread. I took a step, whirled around, and covered myself. There was no one there.
I turned back. Stepped closer, saw there was something under the blankets. The shape of a small child. Droplets of blood on the blankets. I swallowed. Held the rifle under the crook of my arm, finger on the trigger. Eased the blankets back.
Nearly gasped.
Blonde hair.
I forced myself to look. It was Twinnie, Sophie’s doll, a hunting knife driven through her pink chest. Her blue eyes stared at the ceiling, as if in death. The blood was from a dead chicken, torn open, staring up at me with a glass eye from bloodied sheets. There was a folded paper at the doll’s pink plastic feet.
I took it by the edge and opened it gingerly. Read it and swallowed hard again.
Sophie Masterson
RIP
Wilton, who knew Roxanne’s last name but maybe not mine. I let the paper fall back.
Turned slowly, the gun ready. I looked around the room. Stuffed animals, books, drawings pinned to her bulletin board. Nothing disturbed. I went to her closet. Counted three and yanked the door open, falling back with the rifle trained.
Little dresses. Her pink winter jacket, hanging on a hook.
I walked slowly from the bedroom, across the hall. Listened at our door. Eased it open. The room was as we’d left it. Everything had been directed at Sophie. Anger, frustration, whatever twisted need he had for revenge.
I walked slowly downstairs and went
to the phone. The red light was flashing like something on a monitor. If it stopped, I thought, I was dead. I pressed the button. The machine beeped and hissed.
“Love you,” Roxanne said. “Call us.”
Another beep: “This is Sarah at the Rockland office calling for Roxanne. If you get this, call me, honey. Thinking of you, Rox.”
One more: “It’s out of my hands. I await his next orders. And you know, there is no way to hide from him. He is all-seeing, almighty. The false prophets kneel at his feet and beg forgiveness. And you will, too.”
I swallowed, looked at the time of the call: 10:42. Pressed the button and listened again.
Wilton’s voice was calm and content now that it was out of his hands. I concentrated on the spaces between the words. Closed my eyes. I heard a humming sound that started partway through. A refrigerator.
I heard a creak, like he’d leaned back in an old chair. Then another creak. A rhythm to it. A rocking chair.
Wilton was home.
Holding the rifle in the crook of my arm, I called Roxanne’s cell phone. Got a message. I called the desk at the Regency and asked them to ring Allison Parker’s room. I left a message, said call me when you can.
I dialed the state police. I asked for Trooper Ricci and the dispatcher said she was off duty until Saturday, 0600. He asked if I wanted to talk to the trooper on duty for that area. I said, yes. He said the officer was tied up, a car accident with multiple injuries. Then his shift was over at 4. It might be tomorrow.
“What is this regarding?” he said, radio traffic crackling in the background.
“Somebody came into my house and stabbed my daughter’s doll,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Is the intruder in the residence?”
“No. It happened this morning. It has to do with a DHHS case.”
“Right.”
I knew what he was thinking. A DHHS mess. Even worse.
“Listen, sir, we’re kinda busy here right now. Can I get your name, sir?”
I told him. “I’ll get the message to the on-duty trooper.”
“And Ricci, too,” I said.
“Okay, but like I said, we’ve got a serious car accident transpiring so I wouldn’t expect a call very soon. There’s no imminent danger?”