Declination

by Gregory Ashe

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

  “Should I know him?” She glanced at North.

  North shook his head.

  “Well, what’s this all about?”

  “I think it’s about your husband,” Shaw said.

  Marjorie cocked her head. Her smile, North thought, looked a little pasty at the edges now. “My husband?”

  “He was a police officer, right? A detective? In Vice?”

  “He was. You wouldn’t believe how difficult that man made my life; I think he was born to raise hell. But I’m interrupting your meal. You boys go on and eat, and we can talk when you’re done.” Her eyes slid to the empty darkness again. “Over cheesecake.”

  With a tremulous smile, she turned toward the French windows.

  North met Shaw’s gaze and shook his head. Sliding out of his seat, Shaw launched himself into Marjorie’s path. He didn’t touch her; he wasn’t close enough for that. But he parked himself between a pair of tables, and she’d have to turn to get around him.

  Rising from his seat, North moved to one side, boxing Marjorie against the corner of the patio. He shook his head when she opened her mouth; her eyes were wet and dark.

  “You’re not in any danger,” Shaw said.

  “From us,” North added.

  “We just need to talk.”

  “I don’t—” Marjorie tottered in a half circle; North could see it in her face when she realized she was pinned. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. Coming out here, treating me like this. My son and his husband would have your butts if he heard about this.”

  “His husband?” North said.

  “Please, Marjorie,” Shaw said. “I just need a few minutes.”

  She was a tough old bird; North had to give her that much. Already, her dark eyes were hardening, reassessing. Her mouth pinched shut. But she nodded.

  “Can we?” Shaw pointed to the seats.

  Marjorie didn’t move.

  “Just tell her,” North said.

  So Shaw told her: who he was, the attack, the video of the Slasher and, in the frame, the tail end of an automobile with a license plate registered to Marjorie Parrish.

  When Shaw had finished, North waited for the denial, the protestations: it had been over seven years; how could she be expected to remember a thing like that; she might have been out for a late dinner, for all she knew.

  But Marjorie put one hand to her chest, gathering her sweater, and asked, “What kind of car was it?”

  “The license plates—” North began to remind her.

  She shook her head.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Shaw said. “A sedan. I didn’t see much of it.”

  She cocked her head again; the motion had become birdlike on her. Her voice was high and tight as she asked, “Was it my Caddy?” She paused, swallowed, and said in a stronger voice, “I only ask because Thomas had both cars registered in my name.”

  “I don’t know,” Shaw said.

  “What was the other car?” North asked.

  “A Volvo.”

  North shook his head. “It was the Caddy.”

  Down by the river, a bird trilled, and a red ember swam through the air. A cardinal, North thought. And then came the low boom of a riverboat horn. The wind rattled the branches, carrying the smell of salmon to North again, mixed now with a hint of dead leaves, fallen and wet along the muddy bank.

  “I suppose we should sit down,” Marjorie said; the clacking branches tried to swallow the words.

  North let Shaw sit. He let Marjorie sit. Only then did he drop into his own seat.

  “Go on,” Marjorie said with waxy attentiveness. “Before it gets cold.”

  Flaking the salmon with his fork, North studied Marjorie’s face openly. Shock lingered there, and hurt—that was coming in on the midnight line—would hit her later, harder, and North didn’t want to see it when it did. But shock wasn’t the same as surprise.

  “You’re not surprised,” Shaw said.

  “That’s my line,” North said.

  Marjorie’s gaze ping-ponged between them.

  “This was a shock,” North said.

  “But you aren’t exactly surprised,” Shaw added. “You’re not protesting. You’re not . . . you don’t seem confused.”

  “I don’t think I am confused.”

  Shaw shoveled macaroni and cheese into his mouth. He pointed at North and made a rolling gesture.

  “He wants you to explain that.”

  “You really should try the salmon, dear. It’s fresh; we never buy frozen.”

  Spearing some of the pink meat, North said, “Why aren’t you confused?” Then he took a bite, and the fish was so tender, with a hint of cedar smoke from the plank and the creamy bite of aioli, that he forgot his own question and took a second bite.

  “I don’t think I’m surprised because I really never understood what happened at the end of Thomas’s life. I’ve had all sorts of questions. If you’d come to talk to me five years ago, I think I would have been . . . upset. Defensive is a better word. I would have wanted to know why you were asking questions. I would have been afraid you were going to make it all disappear. That seemed very important for a while.”

  North tried to ask a question, but he found his mouth full of salmon, so he gestured with the fork, taking in the winery with a circle.

  “Mostly this, yes,” Marjorie said. “It was an investment at first, and I would come out every week to check the books and the inventory. But then I started spending more and more time out here. And then, a few months ago, Philip insisted I move out here—move anywhere, really. At first he tried to pretend it was about staying young, trying something new. When that didn’t work, he changed his story. He was worried about my safety. Some men Thomas had put in prison were out now, and they might be looking for revenge. It sounded like a . . . like a story, I guess. But I was also afraid. And after a few months of that, I moved out here just like Philip wanted.”

  Shaw was so deep in the mashed potatoes that he looked like he’d need to be excavated, but he looked up and made a two-syllable noise through a mouthful of food.

  “He’s asking—” North said.

  “I know,” Marjorie said with a smile. “I raised a boy, and I’ve been around teenagers before.”

  “Unfortunately,” North said around another mouthful of fish, “Shaw’s not a teenager anymore.”

  Shaw glanced up and let off another string of mashed-potato noises.

  “I think,” Marjorie said, “he’s saying neither are you.”

  Swallowing his food, North fixed Shaw with a glare.

  “To answer your question,” Marjorie said, “Philip is Philip Taylor. He was Thomas’s partner for a long time. They were on patrol together, and they reunited as detectives in Vice.”

  This time, North made sure to finish chewing his broccoli before he asked, “Do you know Detective Waggener?”

  “Yes, I know Marilynn. The three of them were thick as thieves.” Marjorie seemed to hear her own words, and her expression sickened.

  “What do you mean, you would have been afraid we’d take it all away?” Shaw scraped at the empty spot on his plate where the potatoes had been, turning his gaze to take in their surroundings. “The winery?”

  “Do you know,” Marjorie asked, “how much money Thomas was making at the end of his career?”

  North shook his head; Shaw shrugged.

  “A little over eighty thousand dollars a year. Not bad for a couple whose son is grown, but not a fortune either. And he had his pension, of course. But that was before the leukemia. I don’t know why I thought cancer would be quick: either he’d go into remission or he’d die. It wasn’t quick at all. It dragged on. Weeks and months when it looked like everything was ok, all the tests coming back with great signs, and Thomas would come home. And then he’d catch an infection. Or a relapse. Setbacks. We had health insurance, but everything start
ed costing more, and Thomas couldn’t work. I’d never worked.” She plucked at her sweater. “Absolutely useless. And he got thinner and weaker and the stays in the hospital were longer. And then, one day, he died.” She turned her hands up, as though stating that he’d gone to Kmart, a sort of willful decision that she found inexplicable.

  With some surprise, North realized his plate was empty. Shaw’s plate was practically licked clean.

  “And the winery?” Shaw said.

  “There was money,” Marjorie said, turning her hands up again. “At first, after he got ill, Thomas would just hand it to me. He’d say that he’d pulled it out of the bank years ago, stashing it for emergencies, but I’d never heard anything about a stash of money in my own home. And then he’d say that somebody owed him at work, and they’d finally paid up. And then we had a royal fight about it, and he stopped saying anything. He’d just hand it to me, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. It was money. That was what mattered. So I’d go to the store or I’d get my hair done, and I had this idea in my mind that I didn’t need to know where it came from. We deserved it. That was all that mattered. Thomas had worked hard his whole life, and we deserved to have a little extra money. And then, after Thomas died, there was a lot more money. Quite a lot, in fact. Some of it was the pension. But there were bank accounts all over town, at banks I’d never heard of. So much money. And it didn’t make any sense, not even when Philip and Marilynn told me it was perfectly normal, Thomas had been making investments, both of them practically patting me on the head and telling me to go along and play.”

  In her silence, the cardinal trilled again, and that red ember drifted up the bluff. From the opposite direction, the sound of a lone car buzzed at the edge of North’s hearing—someone out for a drive in the country, enjoying the beautiful day.

  “For a long time,” Marjorie said, “the only thing that mattered, I would tell myself, was that we deserved it. But then I’d be at the teller, taking out a hundred dollars for my hair, or I’d be writing a check to Nordstrom’s, or I’d be picking up a bottle of wine I never would have considered buying when Thomas had been alive. And suddenly I’d remember something: a late night when Thomas had come home with a different smell on his clothes, or the way he’d fly into rages during the last few years of his life, or when he’d tell me he’d been golfing with Philip and then I’d see Philip and he’d say, in passing, what a great time they’d had fishing. Little things.” She laughed suddenly. “If Thomas had been better looking, I might have thought he was having an affair, but that really wasn’t his way. But the money. That might have been Thomas’s way. And then there had been the Internal Affairs investigation, and it nearly put my husband in the ground. I tried to find something better to do with the money. Something useful or good so I wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t think about it quite as much. Then my son and his husband wanted to invest. They had a great idea for a winery.” She laughed again, fondly this time, her dark eyes bright now. “They absolutely insisted that people would love French food, that people would drive miles for good food and wine. But we don’t make French food anymore, and we buy the wine in bulk from California and just slap a label on the bottles. You can see how well it’s going.”

  “The macaroni and cheese was delicious,” Shaw said. “And those potatoes were incredible.”

  “Kiss ass,” North coughed into his fist. Shaw and Marjorie both glared at him, and he smiled. “The salmon was good too.”

  “At least the food has improved since I moved out here,” Marjorie said. “But that really doesn’t bring anyone. You can get plenty of good food without driving sixty miles.”

  Shaw settled his flatware on the plate and said, “Marjorie, I still don’t understand. What you’ve told us about your husband, about the money—I know what you’re hinting at. But I’m not talking about . . . about money. I’m talking about a killer.”

  Marjorie’s whole expression sagged. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  “Marjorie?” North said.

  “He . . . he would get so angry near the end. About everything. Little things like how I’d hung the toilet paper. Things I’d say while we watched the news: isn’t that boy darling? Wouldn’t you love to see Majorca? And one day, during those killings, when all I could think about was my son who had just come out and who was living in Hi-Pointe and who walked four blocks to and from the bus every day, walked in the dark on his way home, and I said something about Chris, about how I couldn’t stand feeling like I was holding my breath every day until they caught that maniac, and . . . and Thomas went crazy. Shouting. Didn’t I think he’d take care of his son? Didn’t I think he’d make sure Chris was safe? Didn’t I think he cared too, that it mattered to him too? And the shouting turned into throwing things, all of it escalating until I was locked in the bathroom, sobbing.”

  Marjorie reached forward to pluck a crumb off the table, and in the distance, the sound of that lone car engine buzzed along the state highway.

  “I don’t even really think I knew I was doing it, but after that, I started noticing things. All the times the Caddy was in the shop. All the times he’d make me take the Volvo so he could have his friend check something or calibrate something or reconfigure something. The nights he wasn’t home, or the nights he came home late and started a load of clothes in the washer before he came to bed, and he’d tell me he’d been playing cards with Philip or getting a beer with Marilynn. The phone calls, and the way he’d rush out of the house at any time of day or night. I followed him once; later, I thought I’d been very brave, but at the time I’d been so scared that I couldn’t even enjoy it. Acting like a spy. But all he did was go to the McCausland Public House and have a drink on the patio with a man I didn’t recognize. Then there were the days he’d mope around the house, snapping at everything that moved. And one day I was in the kitchen, drinking my coffee and listening to the news, and another of those boys had been killed. And the night before, Thomas had been with Philip, and I had woken up to the smell of Thomas freshly showered and a load of clothes spinning in the wash.

  “I . . . I had to leave. I ran out of the house. I couldn’t go near the Caddy, couldn’t even touch it. I walked for miles. The thought of seeing Thomas made me want to scream. But eventually I wore myself out, and I was in my robe and slippers, so I walked back to the house. And Thomas was there, and he didn’t ask me where I’d been, didn’t ask me why I’d let the coffee burn or why I’d left the house. He just looked at my slippers, which were black from walking in the street, and he told me he had cancer.” A small smile touched her mouth. “I packed all those horrible thoughts up and stuffed them away, and I didn’t have to think about it ever again. The killings stopped, and Thomas was sick. Just a coincidence. And I had so many other things, real and present things, to worry about, that it never mattered again. Except that it did, of course. It’s just been in the back,” she tapped her head. “Where I didn’t have to deal with it.”

  “Did your husband have any gold-capped teeth?” Shaw said.

  Marjorie burst into a laugh, the sound so sudden and shocking that North bumped his fork and it skittered off the plate.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “No dental work?”

  “He had the normal cleanings, of course. And I do think he had a tooth knocked out, but it was absolutely wonderful how they managed to save it and get it back in place.”

  Shaw turned a helpless gaze on North, and North shrugged.

  “Your son is gay?” North asked.

  “Yes,” Marjorie said, straightening in her chair. “He came out when he was twenty-one. That was really quite remarkable, you know. And Thomas, bless his heart, didn’t bat an eye. He probably knew because Chris had been collecting My Little Pony toys since he was three, but I still think that’s to Thomas’s credit.”

  North met Shaw’s gaze and shrugged again.

  “Marjorie,”
Shaw said. “What do you think happened?”

  “Do you mean, do I think my husband was the West End Slasher?”

  Shaw nodded slowly.

  “I don’t know what to think. Sitting here, it’s all very terrible and I can’t seem to settle anything down inside. And I’m not foolish enough that I don’t remember how I felt when . . . when it was all happening. But it also seems so strange, and I just can’t believe Thomas would do something like that.”

  “What about Taylor or Waggener?” North said.

  “If I’m honest . . .” Marjorie paused, gathering another handful of her sweater. “If I’m honest, I think it could be them. Thomas might have done that. Told them what to do, I mean. They were all under investigation in Vice, and . . . and I don’t think they would have done something like this alone. They relied on Thomas; it was almost painful to see sometimes, especially Marilynn. But I don’t know why they would do it in the first place. I don’t know how it was supposed to help them. I don’t know if Thomas . . . if he hated Chris and it drove him to this. I don’t know.”

  Shaw asked, “What did Jadon talk to you about?”

  “Is he the young man that came last week?”

  Shaw nodded.

  “Then I’m afraid you’re too late.”

  North leaned forward, bumping his plate, sending the knife clattering after the fork. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you’re trying to figure this out, I’m afraid Philip might be one step ahead of you. I . . . I thought it was strange, that young man coming here, finally asking about the car after all those years. But it made sense, too. Thomas loved that car. Even when he was dying, he’d talk about it. He made me promise never to sell it, and it became this albatross around my neck. I just dumped more and more money into it to keep it on the road, and then I couldn’t stand that anymore so I put it in the garage and bought a cute little Bug.”

  “Go back,” Shaw said.

  “What do you mean,” North said, “asking about the car?”

  “That very nice young man,” she said, blushing slightly. “Jadon?”