by Warren Adler
11
"You look tired, Mrs. Simpson," Alice said when she came in the next morning. Vivien, by an act of massive will, had managed to get Ben off to school, desperately trying to hide her anguish and her tears.
"Do you hurt, Mommy?" Ben asked as she dressed him in his outer clothing.
"A tummyache," she mumbled.
"See," he said, "you ate bad things." She hugged him to her with uncommon ferocity.
"Now you're hurting me, Mommy."
"Sorry, love," she said, releasing him.
She could not confide in Alice, who always expressed an unfavorable view of the male gender. A grandmother in her sixties, Alice had been married three times and had come up from West Virginia to escape what she referred to as "a brutal life." She was paid quite well.
"I had an awful night, Alice," Vivien said when she noted that Alice was inspecting her suspiciously.
"Mr. Simpson get home?" she drawled.
"Not yet." She was forcing cheerfulness and making a botch of it. "He decided to stay a bit longer."
"Happened to me once," Alice said. "Husband didn't come home when he said he was."
God! Don't answer her, Vivien begged herself. Had she been that transparent?
"Zack. He was my second. One day he went out hunting, and I ain't seen hide nor hair of him since."
"Maybe he was shot. Killed?" Vivien said maliciously.
"Maybe. Only he never came home. Police looked. Everybody looked. Just upped and never came home."
"It must have been terrible," Vivien said. She wanted to get away but was rooted to the spot.
"He was no good as a husband. No good as a man. I looked some at the beginning. Then I stopped. I figured he went off and left me. We didn't get on much."
With disgust, Vivien felt compelled to speak.
"And you never heard from him again?"
"Nope. Never even called in to check up on our three kids."
"Do you think he's dead?"
"I think he just run off. Men are weak. They do that. I was no angel to live with neither."
Surely Alice's remarks bore no relevance whatsoever to her situation. Yet they did release a whole spectrum of new emotions. She had known Orson nearly eight years, and not once in all that time did she detect the kind of brooding dissatisfaction that had obviously infected Alice's second husband. The idea of Orson just taking off and leaving them was impossible. But panic opened up some very bizarre possibilities. She quickly rejected them.
She could not wait to get Alice out of her sight. She went up to the bathroom and looked at her face in the mirror. It seemed ravaged. Her skin had a pasty, unhealthy look, purple rings had begun to form below her eyes, and an ominous sprinkle of pimples had begun to appear on her lower chin.
When the telephone rang she dashed to it. Her hands were clumsy with tremors, and she dropped the instrument. Retrieving it, she took a deep breath before responding. Please let it be Orson. It was Dale Martin, Orson's law partner.
"Any word?" he asked.
"None." A sob leaped to her throat.
"Vivien?"
"Uh-huh."
"I'm coming over."
She nodded and hung up; she fell across the bed, her shoulders shaking convulsively and tears pouring out of her eyes. She felt utterly abandoned and alone, totally empty and vulnerable. To muffle her sobs, she pressed a pillow over her head, fearing that Alice would walk into the bedroom. She did not want comfort. She wanted information. She wanted her husband.
She managed to pull herself together before Dale came and put on a thin coat of makeup, slightly botched by shaking fingers. Dale looked at her warily, obviously trying to decipher the extent of her composure. He was a tall man with blond hair fading to gray, ice-blue eyes, and a long, jutting chin.
"This is definitely not like Orson," he said gently.
"Definitely."
Alice brought in coffee, and he sipped it in between pacing up and down in the kitchen.
"That's a great snowman," he said suddenly, stopping to admire it. Then he turned away, frowning.
"Am I upsetting you?"
"Too late for that."
"I had Miss Sparks check all of Orson's correspondence, all his notes, all his doodles. Our existing Paris clients had no knowledge at all of an impending visit. He never called them in Paris, which is unusual in itself. We have no idea whom he went to see. It was never even brought up at our weekly new business meeting, although there is some Vague recollection of his saying that something new was in the works. The point is it wasn't ... well, official."
Vivien felt a shudder run through her, but she said nothing.
"Was there anything different about him, Vivien?"
"Different?"
"In his attitude, his demeanor..." He looked at her long and hard. "In his relationship with you."
"I don't understand."
"Was he secretive, guarded? Unusual in any way?"
"I didn't notice. He is a very reserved man, as you know. He is a good father, a loving husband—" She paused abruptly. "Was there something you noticed, something at the office?"
"I think I really irritated Miss Sparks. I think she was insulted that he made the arrangements himself. She characterized him as guarded lately. But it was only a subjective judgment. It doesn't tell us much."
"Dale," Vivien said, firmly, "what are you thinking?"
"I don't know what to think."
"Dale, I know lawyers. What do you think?"
"It's not what I think. They'd only be speculations."
"I might as well hear them out in the open." She hesitated. Her own speculations, she knew, had been ruthlessly edited.
He stopped his pacing and held up his hand, using his fingers to illustrate the possibilities.
"Accident? Crack-up? A form of amnesia? Perhaps a nervous breakdown? Embezzlement? We went through the firm's books. I'm sorry, but we're still a business. Anyway, it was all negative. Nothing unusual. We even looked through his billing file. Nothing. Malfeasance of some sort? A bad mistake that we didn't know about? Nothing. Not yet. Fed up? Maybe he just ran away from some pressure."
"He had no pressure. Not from me."
"Another woman?"
"Ridiculous."
"We thought so, too."
"We?"
"The other partners."
It distressed her to think of them chewing over their personal life. Orson would be appalled.
"Discount all of that. It's not like my Orson at all. Not my Orson." She felt indignant. Her voice had risen.
"I'm sorry, Viv."
She felt a wave of panic coming on, a weakness that might bring on more tears. She stood up and turned away, fighting it.
"Should I call the police?" she asked.
"Not yet. Wait another day. We might all have overreacted."
How can I possibly get through another day? she thought. But she nodded, knowing he was thinking of the firm. He was being practical, protecting their interests. Hers as well.
"Nobody vanishes into thin air," Dale said.
She thought of her earlier conversation with Alice. "Zack did," she said.
He looked at her oddly, but she did not explain it.
12
On the sixth day the first body to be recovered was that of a one-year-old baby. One of the divers found it half-sunk in the muddy river bottom. It was still muddy when it came up, but those parts of it that were clean showed ruddy pink, healthy-looking flesh.
Seeing it lying on the floor of the temporary morgue, it became for McCarthy and his colleagues the truly tragic image of the entire affair, an image that they would surely never forget. The weather had warmed, and a fine mist caused by the river's melting ice steamed upward from the surface. They had opened both lanes of the Fourteenth Street Bridge to traffic again and had reduced the number of personnel needed for the operation.
The crane had brought up the front end of the plane, including the cockpit with the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot. A blowtorc
h had to be used to extract the co-pilot. By the end of the day there were still five bodies to be recovered, as well as some additional personal property stuck in what had been the overhead racks. The entire load of baggage in the hold had been recovered and painstakingly assembled in a room outside the Medical Examiner's office. Most of it had been identified and released to relatives. Nothing in the baggage offered the slightest clue as to the identity of Jane Doe, and no one had stepped forward to inquire. Her body still lay on a tray in the refrigerator of the Medical Examiner's office.
McCarthy checked the passenger list for the remaining names of the bodies. In addition to Mr. and Mrs. Marlboro, there was an elderly couple in their seventies, whose children still waited for word at the Marriott, and a teenager, whose parents were also on hand. But no one had stepped forward to claim the Marlboros.
With only five bodies still to be recovered, the emergency homicide team was broken up the next morning. Most of the group was reassigned. Because of the open nature of the Jane Doe ident, McCarthy and his partner Forbes were assigned to remain with the operation. They were both bachelors and therefore natural candidates for the job. The past week had been hell on family life, and the captain of Homicide, satisfied that his staff had done a superb job, had a fit of magnanimity. Besides, it was Sunday.
McCarthy arrived at daybreak at the ribbon bridge, as he had done for the past six days. Wally Forbes brought a jug of coffee and a bag of sticky buns, which they drank and ate while the divers went down for what they all hoped would be the last time.
The first body to be brought up was that of the teenager, which they quickly bagged and identified. Then came the older woman, followed by two males—one about seventy, the other in his mid-thirties. Both bodies had lodged behind a small section of fuselage that had inexplicably broken off from the main body of the aircraft. They quickly identified the older man. After his body was bagged and labeled, they tackled the younger man. McCarthy went through the man's pockets and extracted his wallet.
"Marlboro?"
"New face in the crowd. Man by the name of Simpson. Lives in McLean."
"Then where's Marlboro?" Forbes asked.
"Could be an alias," McCarthy said. "It says on the sheet Mr. and Mrs."
"That's it," one of the divers said, scrambling onto the ribbon bridge. "Nothing else down there but some stray baggage." He slid off the bridge back into the murky water.
"Leaves Jane Doe," McCarthy said.
"The missus," Forbes snickered.
"Maybe."
People travel under aliases, McCarthy thought. He always rejected the obvious first, leaving that for last. There were numerous possibilities. If they were genuine cheaters, why not single aliases? Why travel married? They might be a team of some sort, working a scam, establishing married credentials from the beginning, just in case. Maybe they were traveling on someone else's ticket? Maybe they didn't know each other at all and were merely taking advantage of a stray ticket? And maybe they really were married?
He mentally thumbed through the possibilities without conviction. He was too familiar with marital betrayal. Six years later it still burned in his gut and resurrected the old helpless feelings, the ugly images. He had caught them, his wife and best friend, the centerpiece of all that was sacred in his life. It was a violation that he could not live with, and even now the fires of the old hatred burned as hot and bright as ever.
What had been an oasis suddenly became a mirage. Even the most work-hardened homicide detective needed one soft place to keep his humanity alive. Billie had been that place. Sweetheart, mother, and friend. Three months earlier they had had Timmy, light of his life, named for the dad he loved, the old Cap. "Couldn't be mine!" he had shouted, beating his fists into her face. "I swear. I swear!" she had cried. Even when she had begged him to understand, on her knees on the floor of the motel room, hands clasped in prayer, face distorted in tearful agony, he had turned away, the soft part forever hardened to impenetrable rock.
When trust dies, everything, the whole system, goes down the drain. No explanations needed. No apologies required.
The betrayal had badly damaged his faith in his own instincts. How was it possible that he could not see through the elaborate subterfuge of his wife's betrayal? It had happened directly in his field of vision. Jim, his friend, his neighbor, his drinking buddy. How long had it gone on? Would he ever know?
The wound, he knew, would never heal. It distorted his entire life, his self-image, his relationship with his children. Could he vouch for the two oldest? Nothing was ever the same again. No! Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Marlboro were no mystery. None at all.
They zipped up the bag covering the body of Orson Simpson. As they did so, one of the divers came up and dropped some tote bags and a woman's leather pocketbook on the deck of the ribbon bridge. He fingered the damp leather skin of the bag. Certain it was Jane Doe's handbag, he put it in a small plastic bag. He sent the other baggage and the four bodies back to the Medical Examiner's office.
Because this was the last of it, he stayed with the others as they dismantled their equipment, including the temporary morgue. When everything had been loaded, one of the divers opened a bottle of Scotch and passed it around as a kind of farewell toast. There wasn't much talk.
It was already dark when he and Forbes got back to the Medical Examiner's office.
"Wanna knock off for the day?" Forbes asked.
"You go," McCarthy said. "I'll hang out here for a while."
Forbes watched him for a moment, then shrugged a good-bye. They were partners but not intimates. McCarthy had seen to that. Everyone around him knew how high McCarthy had built his wall. He grunted a good-bye as Forbes sauntered off.
When he had gone, McCarthy spilled the moist contents of Jane Doe's handbag onto one of the metal tables. There were the usual personal objects of a woman's life: makeup, wallet, key ring, money, perfume, a half-filled tube of mints, scattered small change. The woman's name was Lily Corsini Davis. It was all there on the various identification cards: her driver's license, an American Express card, her medical plan card from Woodies. On some of the IDs she was Mrs. Edward Nelson Davis. Her address was on "Q" Street in Georgetown. Five foot three, 120 pounds, hair black, eyes brown. The small driver's license photo showed a dark prettiness, perhaps beauty. He checked the details on the license against the height, weight, and body description provided by the Medical Examiner's report. There was no doubt about her identity.
But there was nothing in the contents to suggest any connection with the man. On another part of the metal table he spread out what had been removed from the pockets of the man's clothing: a wallet, a pile of bills in a money clip, some coins, a leather key case, seven different credit cards, a driver's license, a photograph of a young boy. The license told him that the man's name was Orson Oscar Simpson, age thirty-five, 180 pounds, six foot three, brown hair, brown eyes—facts already partly deduced from a visual inspection of the body. There was an address in McLean.
A fragile, waterlogged ticket confirmed that the man was indeed the Calvin Marlboro of the passenger list, which meant by a process of elimination that the woman was most likely, although not completely confirmed, Mrs. Marlboro. Unless there was another body around, this just had to be the missing woman. The unused remaining ticket indicated a Miami return four days from the date of takeoff, three days previous. He felt an odd twinge of psychic pain but let it pass. Somebody out there must be sick with worry.
With painstaking thoroughness he went through the contents of the recovered tote bags. In each tote bag were summer clothes and the usual toiletries, each defining a gender. Still there was no obvious connection. In the woman's small toiletry duffel bag, he found what he assumed were the usual toiletries. Nothing unusual, even to his trained detective's eye. He fingered the water-logged bills in the man's money clip, extracted them and counted nine hundred and thirty dollars, including eight hundred-dollar bills. It seemed like a great deal of cash for a four-day trip, c
onsidering the number of credit cards. A bit of circumstantial deduction, he thought. A cheater would not use the cards. Cash only. No records. In theory, there was little doubt in his mind that the two were connected.
Somewhere, perhaps among the objects spread on the table, was hard evidence of the connection. Why search for it, he wondered? Unless it led to a conclusion of foul play in terms of the crash itself. Others were pursuing that end of the investigation. So far they had recovered the little black box of pre-crash tapes, and he had heard that the salvaged pieces of the plane were being assembled in a heavily guarded hangar. It would, nevertheless, disturb him if something were overlooked—murder for insurance or revenge or political advantage. The stuff of thrillers, to be sure, but possible, quite possible. In this case the devastation to the living was profound. The bastards, he thought, feeling the anger well up inside him, his suspicion concentrated impotently in a dark void.
"All wrapped up?"
From behind him he heard the familiar voice of Southair's young vice-president, Jack Farnsworth. The man looked pale and haggard, worse than he had ever seen him.
"Seems to be."
"The Marlboros?"
"A facsimile thereof."
McCarthy provided the terse information on the identification.
"How do you read it?" Farnsworth asked. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
"Except for conjecture, there is no conclusive connection." McCarthy paused. "Not yet. Is it possible that there are two bodies still not accounted for?"
"We've been assured that there are no more bodies on the bottom, and the numbers check out."
"Then it has to be them," McCarthy said. Unconsciously, he put the woman's key ring around one of his fingers and twirled it.
"Doesn't matter," Farnsworth sighed.
"It does to their spouses."
"Maybe they know all about it. Maybe they don't really care."
"They care," McCarthy said with some embarrassment.
"Wouldn't they have called Missing Persons?"
"Maybe. It's a drastic step, and most people don't call until desperation, which should be just about setting in."