She seemed happy as a lark as she prepared dinner. I could hear her humming softly to the music. Every so often she'd look over at me and smile. And I made sure to smile back.
I tried to picture her killing those people, but I couldn't do it, at least not the version of Charlotte that was now in the kitchen. The other version I could see doing it, the mousy and nervous version that I'd first met at the hospital, but not this one. The mousy, nervous one, though, I had no problem with. I could picture her holding the morphine syringe. I could see her face set in rigid concentration as she emptied the narcotic into the patient's IV tubing. I could see the relief washing over her as the patient slipped into respiratory failure. But it almost didn't seem possible that that was the same woman who was now in the kitchen humming happily to herself.
I guess I could understand why Charlotte did what she did. I committed so many crimes to keep from literally drowning in gambling debts. In her own way, she murdered those four patients to keep from suffocating. While she didn't know about all the things I'd done, she knew about Phil. I guess at some level, we understood each other.
Charlotte had left the kitchen and was bringing over a bottle of wine and a corkscrew.
'Dinner's cooking in the oven,' she said. 'Would you like to open the wine?'
'Sure.'
She handed me the bottle, and I uncorked it.
'Wait,' she said, and she went quickly into the kitchen and came back carrying a tray holding two wineglasses and a plate of cheese. She placed the tray on the coffee table.
I thought we could sit here together until dinner is ready.' she said.
I finished my Scotch, and then poured us both some wine. Charlotte joined me on the loveseat. At first she sat with her hands clasped and her arms held tightly into her body, but after I put my arm around her shoulder, she moved close to me, curling her legs under her and resting her head against my side.
It felt nice sitting with her. I know it sounds crazy, knowing what she had done, but it wasn't as if I was much of a choirboy myself. Body-count-wise, she might've had an edge, but not by much, and not if you included the maimed and wounded. I even found myself feeling attracted to her. It made me uneasy thinking about Manny and what I was going to force her to do. I decided it could wait until later.
She brought me out of my thoughts by asking whether I liked the wine. I told her I did. Usually I preferred beer, but I did like the taste of it. I squinted at the bottle and saw that it was a French Chardonnay.
'It feels good sitting here with you,' I said, and again, I was mostly telling her the truth.
I could feel her body tense. 'You must've sat like this with your wife many times,' she said.
I thought about it and realized I never did. It wasn't as if every moment between Elaine and me was hell, but I couldn't think of one time where I felt as comfortable and relaxed with Elaine as I did right then.
'To tell you the truth,' I said, I don't think we ever did.'
She turned to me, not quite believing what I said, but I could see in her eyes that she was hoping I wasn't bullshitting her.
'You're lying now,' she said, half serious.
'No, I'm not. Elaine and I got together when we were teenagers. Back then we were always sneaking around and trying not to get caught. Things between us always seemed hectic and rushed. We were only nineteen when we were married, and then we were just scraping by. I had joined the force, and all the stresses of the job. And…'
And then there were the payoffs, the graft, the small crimes. At some point early on a coldness had come between Elaine and me. Not long after that came the cocaine, the gambling, and all the rest.
I shook my head, trying to shake loose those old memories. 'I guess I got married too young,' I said.
Her body relaxed after that. She put her hand on my stomach and peeked at me to see how I would react to her gesture. I reached down and kissed her forehead. As I sat with her I tried to forget everything, about who I was and what she was. I tried to forget everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen. I tried to simply enjoy the moment, because I've had so few in my life where I felt any real sense of contentment.
The buzzer for the oven timer went off.
She pulled away from me and showed me a reluctant smile. "Why don't you bring the wineglasses to the table and I'll get dinner,' she said.
The table was in a small area off to the side of the living room. Charlotte had already set it, using a linen tablecloth and placing two silver candlesticks in the middle of it. I put down the wineglasses, and sat and waited. Not long after, Charlotte came in with the food. Along with the chicken, she had made roasted potatoes and string beans.
She lit the two candles and then sat across from me. I watched as she started cutting her food into tiny bite-sized pieces. Like before, after every few bites she'd dab at her mouth with her napkin. She was beaming. I could tell the food was good, but thinking about what I was going to do made it tasteless. Still, I ate it and remarked to her how delicious her cooking was, and that made her beam all the more.
'You really like it?' she asked.
'Could be the best meal I've ever had,' I said.
We both sat and ate quietly after that. Charlotte seemed deep in thought, as if she were trying to make up her mind about something. She didn't exactly look troubled, but her brow was somewhat furrowed and some nervousness had crept back into her eyes. She coughed lightly to get my attention.
'Mr. Vassey's son asked me about you today,' she said. 'He wanted to know how I knew you.'
'What did you tell him?'
'He had seen me in your car, so I told him that I didn't know you but that you were kind enough to offer me a ride home when my car wouldn't run.'
'Did he believe you?'
'I think so, yes.' Her small, pale face darkened. I don't like him at all. I think he's also a criminal like his father.' She paused. 'You're not involved with him, are you?'
'No, I'm not. Anything between the two of us goes back to when I was a police officer. And you're right, Charlotte, he is a criminal and he's dangerous. You should try to keep away from him.'
She had handed me the perfect opening to bring up Manny, but I didn't have the heart to do it. The least I could do was let her enjoy her dinner. As it was, talking about Junior had darkened her mood. I tried to change the subject by asking how she had learned to cook so well.
She showed me a shy smile. 'My cooking is nothing special,' she said.
'Who are you kidding? You must've gone to culinary school.’
‘Only for a year.' Then, hesitating, lowering her voice, 'My father convinced me that nursing would be more practical.’
‘You don't like nursing, do you?'
She looked down at her plate. I didn't think she was going to say anything, but she told me, 'Not particularly, no.'
'You should go back to culinary school,' I said. 'We could both start fresh together. Only I have to first figure out what I could do.'
I don't know if I was bullshitting her, or playing for time, or what, but I think I actually started believing it was possible. I guess the last thing I wanted to do was think of Manny.
There was some wetness around her eyes when she looked back up at me. Not much, but some.
'Do you have any ideas what you would like to do, Joe?'
I did have one idea. Something I felt in my gut. 'I'd like to travel. Maybe go to Europe,' I said.
'Really?'
'I'm forty years old and I've never been out of the state, except for Albany, and a one-day trip to Boston.' And Canada for a couple of hours, but I didn't mention that.
I stopped to take a bite of food, and after swallowing, added, 'I used to be content with the idea of living out my life in Bradley, but those days are long gone.' I laughed. 'Kind of pathetic, huh? I don't know, I just want to see some of the world before I die.'
'I haven't traveled much either,' she said. I grew up in Toronto. Once, when I was a child, we went to Ni
agara Falls, and a few summer trips to Quebec City. But that's really been all. I haven't seen any other towns in the United States other than Bradley, and of course, yesterday, our trip to Burlington.'
'Would you like to see Europe also, Charlotte?'
She nodded.
'We could go there,' I said. 'There's nothing in the world stopping us.'
She laughed. 'Where would you want to go first?'
'I don't know. Italy, France, maybe Spain, it doesn't much matter.'
'I always wanted to see England,' she said. I would love to visit their castles, and see the Thames, and London, and the rolling countryside. Of course, Paris would be beautiful, too.'
'Why don't we do it, Charlotte?' I said. The idea of the two of us traveling off to Europe overwhelmed me. It didn't have to be the other way. I didn't have to force her into killing Manny. We could just go somewhere and leave Bradley far behind. Maybe they'd catch up to me eventually, but I'd get a few good months out of it before they did, and maybe more than a few. There were places where with some luck we could disappear completely. Maybe one of the Baltic states, maybe somewhere in East Asia.
I felt a dryness in my mouth as I asked her, 'What about it, Charlotte? We could drive to New York tonight and catch a plane. We'd be gone before morning.'
It got so quiet. I could hear my heart pounding as I waited for her to say something. She sat staring at me, trying to decide whether I was joking or serious. I guess she decided I was joking. She showed me a little smile as she reached across the table and took hold of my hand.
'That would be so nice, Joe,' she said. 'Maybe someday we'll be able to do something like that. I hope so.'
I forced myself to smile back. The idea had been nothing but an impulse, and a crazy one at that. Once it passed, I realized it would never have worked. We didn't have the money to make it work. And even if we did, we wouldn't have been able to survive together for very long. Not with her being the way she was and me being the way I was. The stresses of running and hiding would've been too much. As it was, I knew she was borderline psychotic.
And there were my daughters. Once I started thinking of them, the idea crumbled into dust around me.
There was only one way out for me, and as much as I hated the idea of what I was going to do to her, I had no choice.
We finished dinner, and afterwards Charlotte made coffee and brought out an Italian dessert, tiramisu, that she told me she had prepared during her lunch hour.
I waited until we had finished the dessert and coffee before asking her, 'Charlotte, how come you've never asked me about my being in jail?'
She seemed taken aback by that, almost as if she'd been slapped hard across the face. 'It's not important,' she said. 'You don't have to tell me about it.'
'It is important, and I do have to tell you about it. I did some pretty bad things years ago when I was cop. Stabbing and maiming Phil Coakley was only one of them.'
I felt something in my throat, and stopped to drink some water. There was a pleading in Charlotte's eyes for me not to say anything more, but it was too late. I looked away from her, though. I didn't want to look at those eyes.
'When I left jail,' I continued, 'all I wanted to do was lead a quiet existence and never harm anyone again. The problem is Manny Vassey knows enough to send me back to prison for a long time.'
'He might keep quiet.'
'He's not going to. I already know that. Phil has worked out a deal with him, and the arrangements are going to be finalized Wednesday.'
'But he's dying. Why would he make a deal?'
'For a bunch of reasons that don't make a lot of sense. Partly to protect his son, mostly to try to save his and his son's immortal souls.'
I couldn't help myself. I looked back over at her. Her face had become dead white and her eyes were now nothing but small gray holes. It was almost as if she was wearing some grotesque Japanese kabuki mask – one that was locked in an expression of anguish. I could see her hands were clenched into tight fists as she waited for what she knew was coming.
I took a deep breath.
'I need you to overdose Manny with morphine,' I said. 'If you don't, I'm going to go away to prison for the rest of my life.' She just sat and stared at me. 'Charlotte, do you understand me?'
Slowly she shook her head. Almost as if she were in a trance, she said, I'm not going to do that.'
'You don't want me to go away to prison, do you?’
‘I'm not going to do that!'
'I'm sorry, Charlotte, but you're going to have to.’
‘I won't.' She was shaking her head harder, her face completely bloodless. 'How could you ask me to do something like this?’
‘Charlotte, please-'
'Get out of here. Get out now or I'll scream.’
‘You're not going to scream and you are going to make sure Manny dies of a morphine overdose.’
‘You're insane.'
'No, not me. And please, quit this act. I know about you, Charlotte. I talked with Dr. Henri Bouchaire. He told me about what you did in Montreal.'
Her mouth fell open. I watched the transformation as her face turned more into a mask of death.
She said, 'He lied to you. If he said I hurt anyone, he lied to you. They investigated those deaths. They checked the levels on the IV bags and saw that the machines hadn't been tampered with.'
'He didn't lie to me,' I said. 'He told me how you probably used a syringe to inject a fatal dose of morphine into the patient's IV tubing. I don't know if you were told this, but he marked the IV tubing on your last victim, and he knows you replaced it after the guy died.'
'He's lying.'
'He's not lying, and even if he's somehow mistaken, it wouldn't matter. If he talked to Bradley Memorial, you'd be finished here, and I guarantee you, no hospital in the States would touch you. And if any of your patients at Bradley Memorial died of respiratory failure, their cases will be reopened, and you'll be looking at murder charges.'
She started sobbing then. It was noiseless. Other than the tears and a slight heaving in her chest, I wouldn't have been able to tell she was crying. It got so quiet. As I watched, my stomach tightened into knots. I felt sick about what I was doing. I found myself wanting to comfort her. I leaned forward and tried to take hold of her hands, but she pulled them away from me.
"This is no big deal,' I tried to explain. 'You've done it before, you can do it one more time. And trust me, Manny Vassey is the most rotten sonofabitch you'll ever meet. He's not worth wasting any tears over. If anything, it's a shame you'll be putting him out of his misery.'
Through her sobbing, she forced out, 'You lied to me.'
'What are you talking about?'
"The only reason you wanted to see me was because of this.'
The knots in my stomach pulled tighter. 'Maybe at first,' I admitted. 'But Charlotte, I'm being honest now, most of what I've told you has been the truth. I have felt good being with you, better than I've felt in years. I don't know if you'll ever want to see me again after this, but if we can get past this, I think we could be good for each other. When this is all over, I'd like to keep seeing you. I promise you, everything I'm telling you now is the truth.'
'How am I supposed to get the morphine? The hospital doesn't leave narcotics lying around. You have to sign them out.'
'I figure you can siphon morphine from other patients.'
From the look that flashed across her face, I knew that's what she had done in Montreal. Then her eyes and mouth opened and her hands went to the sides of her face, and for a moment she was a spitting image of Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream. She sat frozen like that for a horrible few seconds, and then she started sobbing again. Still noiseless, but more violent than before. Her whole body convulsed with it. Her face seemed to fold up into a mass of creases, her mouth now nothing more than a large gaping black hole.
'Don't make me do this,' she pleaded through her sobs. 'Don't make me do this.'
Her hands clenched again
into tiny fists and she started punching her legs.
I got up and held her, trying to keep her from hitting herself. She didn't pull away or try to fight me this time. Instead, her head buried itself hard in my stomach while her tears and saliva soaked my shirt. Still she begged me, her voice muffled by my body.
'What's the big deal?' I tried asking her. 'He's going to be dead in a few weeks anyway.'
But I knew what the big deal was. For years I had promised myself that when I got out of jail I'd never cause any more harm. Somehow I knew she had made the same promise to herself. That when she left Montreal, she'd never do anything like that again. In my case, it didn't take me long to break my promise, but I was forced to. I had no other choice. And now I was doing the same to her.
Her body felt so warm and moist as I held her. I tried holding her harder. I tried to slow down her sobbing. At that moment I felt so empty inside. So rotten. As I looked at her, I realized I had no choice either. I told her I wasn't going to make her overdose Manny.
'I'll figure something else out,' I said.
Her sobbing slowly subsided. I held her and ran my hand through her hair and kissed the top of her head, and told her not to worry about anything. After awhile she pulled away from me – not in a harsh way, but so she could look up at me.
'You're not going to make me do it?' she asked
'No, I won't. I'm sorry that I put you through this.' I took one of her linen napkins and used it to wipe her tears. 1 didn't think it would be that big a deal to you,' I lied.
'I never did what Dr Bouchaire told you I did. I don't know why he has to tell people I did those things.'
It was her turn to lie, but that was okay. I smiled and told her I believed her.
'I don't want you going to prison, but I can't do something like that."
'Don't worry about me. I'm not going to prison. I'll think of something.'
'Maybe he won't say anything about you.’
‘Maybe.'
She took hold of my hand and kissed it, and then held my hand against the side of her face. I stood there feeling a mix of relief and panic. I had no idea what I was going to do next.
'Look at me,' she said, showing a sad clown's smile. 'I must be a mess.'
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