“I don’t need this, Morgan. I’m trying to put what happened to my son behind me.”
“I think he fakes some of that foolishness.”
“He could’ve fooled me. Not you, though, huh?”
Morgan, compelled to defend himself, said, “Two children with Bensington connections have died in apparent accidents. Your son and, three years ago, the eight-year-old daughter of Paul and Beverly Gunner. Both deaths took place outside of Bensington. Boston and Cambridge.”
“What am I supposed to make of that?”
“I’m a policeman. I have to consider outside possibilities.”
“If they’re reasonable, yes. That man in there isn’t.”
Morgan walked him to his car. The car was elegantly free of exterior accessories. He remembered when every automobile had been an overenthusiasm of ornament and chrome, the tires big and fat, the horses under the hood chomping at the bit.
Bodine opened the driver’s door and slipped into quiet luxury. The window lowered itself as if from a verbal command. “My wife and I plan to have a child. Has she told you?”
“No reason she should have.”
“My mistake. I thought it might interest you.”
Morgan watched the automobile glide around the sweep of the lot and vanish through the gateless opening in the shrubs. “It’s nothing to me,” he said to himself, and the words had weight but not reality.
• • •
It was cocktail time when Harley Bodine entered the busy lounge at the country club. Carrying a wineglass and a smoldering cigarette, Bodine mingled easily, with a renewed sense of himself, for he’d been challenged and tested and was stronger for it. He felt experienced, felt about him almost an aura of immortality. Here and there he returned smiles. Phoebe Yarbrough was a Calder mobile in a sequin dress. Illusions shaved and contoured her; her height diminished her husband’s. “Where’s Kate?” she asked.
“Working on something,” he said. “She fancies she’s a writer.”
Myles Yarbrough wore an aspect of worry and unease and offered a handshake. The small diffident knot of his tie squeezed up a cleft of skin when he spoke. He was hard to hear, for his sentence frayed at the end.
Phoebe said clearly, “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“Does it bother you?” Bodine asked, unaccustomed to the bold way she looked into his eyes.
“May I?” She took a drag from it, and her face flared out of a pageboy, hollowed dramatically under high cheekbones, and seemed in a pending state of foreclosure. She was not beautiful, he decided, merely vaguely bizarre.
He moved on, abandoning his cigarette in the nearest ashtray, and spotted the Gunners near the buffet table. Paul Gunner was eating bleeding meat off a skewer, his stance preemptive, unopposed, supreme.
Seconds later Gunner plodded toward the men’s, and Bodine followed.
The mirrors were ice, the floor a checkerboard of black and white. He and Gunner spaced themselves a urinal apart, and Gunner pissed without looking, without touching, shivers running through his shoulders. Bodine stood straight, like a priest being watched.
“I have something to tell you.”
“Not now,” Gunner grunted.
“It’s about my son.”
“This isn’t the time.”
“It’s also about your daughter.”
Gunner shook himself dry by jiggling his stomach. “I don’t discuss family in a shithouse. Call me later.”
They moved in unison to the mirrors, Bodine to rinse his hands, Gunner to pull a hair from his nose. The nostrils were strawberry, as if he’d had a bleed. Bodine subjected his hands to the fierce breath of a blower as Gunner heaved away.
“My private line.”
Bodine nodded.
• • •
Peering through the bars, Chief Morgan watched Dudley consume an apple. Dudley ate it to the core, to the pips, which he spat into his hand and deposited neatly in a saucer. Then he looked up and said, “I could use a clock.”
“I’d like a million dollars.”
“I’d like a cuckoo clock.”
“You’re cuckoo enough,” Morgan said, opening the cell door, both ends of the chain banging against the bars. “How about a stroll outdoors?”
“Yes,” Dudley said, popping up from the cot. “I could use the exercise.”
Moonlight drifting through clouds was a kind of spiderweb holding the night together. In front of the town hall the emerald eyes of a raccoon glared, then vanished. Morgan crossed the street with a hard step. Dudley’s seemed weightless, and when they entered the green he moved as if some half-heard music were drawing him along, giving his step a slow lilt, his breathing a mild beat. He touched Morgan’s arm.
“I won’t run.”
“If you do, I won’t chase you,” Morgan said wearily, stiff in the joints. The night delivered its own sounds, its liquid tastes, its touches of the unknown. Shrubs charred by shadows stood jagged. “It would settle a lot if I knew who you were.”
As they moved deeper onto the green, Morgan’s gait became more like Dudley’s, almost somnambulistic. The darkness had various shades and shapes, the deepest dark lurking in the trees. Dudley said, “Are you angry?”
“I think you like making a fool of me.”
“Yes, you are angry.”
“I think you rehearse your lines.”
Dudley gazed up at drifting clouds, all resembling slow barges bereft of goods. “We’ll never see eye to eye, Chief. That’s because you only have two.”
Morgan spoke softly. “Would you agree to a polygraph?”
“A lie detector? I wouldn’t want to be strapped in.”
“It isn’t like that.”
“I wouldn’t want anyone getting into my mind.”
Morgan felt a greater stiffness in his legs. The texture of the air had altered, and a breeze strolled toward him. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks and looked around, for Dudley was no longer with him. “What are you doing?”
His hand was out. “I felt a drop.”
Morgan was glad of the distance between them. It seemed to lessen a tension, and he spoke in his coolest voice. “In this town we like our eccentrics harmless, not homicidal.”
“I go where there’s a need.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m a professional,” Dudley said, only a part of his face visible. “A hitman.”
“You don’t look like Mafia to me.”
“I only do children. Reasonable rates.”
Morgan felt a greater weariness than before. Who is this man, he asked himself, and why am I listening to him? “I see. Contract stuff.”
“Yes. I’m quite good.”
“How do you get business? You can’t advertise.”
Dudley smiled through the dark, teeth and dimples showing. “Word of mouth.”
• • •
At eleven-thirty Harley Bodine left his wife’s bed, partially clothed himself, and paused to listen to the rain. A wind chafed the trees. From the bed, her face tattered in shadows, Kate said, “Close the door when you leave.”
He descended the stairway deliberately in minimal light, entered semidarkness through a double doorway, and, picking up a cordless phone, went to an open window. He wanted fresh air on his skin and in his lungs. He rang Gunner’s number, and promptly Gunner’s voice was in his ear.
“What’s the problem?”
“That friend of yours is in town. The police chief has him in a cell.”
“I should have warned you. He tends to be unpredictable afterward.”
“The chief took me to see him. The silly son of a bitch looked me right in the eye.”
“And?”
“Nothing,” Bodine said. “It was like we were feeding each other lines. It was a stage play. What’s with him?”
“He likes to hold a razor against his throat,” Gunner said.
“I felt it was against mine.”
“No danger of that.”
Bodine f
ound a cigarette and lit it. “How can you be sure?”
“The man’s certifiable, and so’s the woman. That’s always been the kicker. I thought you understood.”
Exhaling smoke, Bodine enjoyed the twirling sensation in his stomach, that of a man operating beyond the ordinary pitch of life. He said, “The chief mentioned your daughter.”
“But our friend didn’t.”
“No.”
“It’s late,” Gunner said. “Go to bed. Enjoy your lovely wife.”
“I already have,” said Bodine.
6
MRS. NICHOLS LOOKED IN ON HER. THE ROUND EYEGLASSES and dark colors stood static in the doorway, like sculpture, but the scent of musk marched in. “How are we this morning?”
Sitting up in bed, Mrs. Gunner scratched a whiskery underarm. A cockled leg eased out of the cover. “I’m an old lady, so you figure it out.”
“Did we have a good night?”
“I wasn’t ravished.”
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Nichols said. “Are we joining the others for breakfast?”
“I’ll eat here.”
Maria, new at Hanover House, came in later to make the bed, pick up soiled clothes, run a bath, and empty the pot. Then she helped Mrs. Gunner into the tub, toys floating on the water, metal bars within range for Mrs. Gunner to hoist or lower herself. Within reach was a button to press in the event she was alone and in distress. When she slipped deep into the water, a rubber duck floated up and nudged her chin.
“I suppose you think I’m cracked.”
“I think it’s grand,” the young woman said.
Mrs. Gunner let herself sink into her shapeless past, so many years running together. Here she was a girl, there she wasn’t. Here was her husband, who didn’t want conversation, only the physical, and there he was in another light, the complete edition of the child they had produced.
A luxuriant towel awaited her; then a rubdown to smarten her flesh, against which she held a grudge. It had submitted too wantonly to age and mocked her cruelly in the mirror. An outsize dress obviated a bra. Moccasins accommodated her bare feet. Maria came forth with a comb, but she warded it off.
“I want my breakfast.”
Gustav had been her husband’s name, his brutality always casual, spontaneous, part of a moment that passed. Later her bruises surprised him, angered him a little, as if she were throwing them up in his face. But he forgave. She did not.
Much that had been forgotten came back.
Maria returned with breakfast on a gilt tray, which she placed on a café table near the window where the sun angled in with the grace of a tiger extending a paw. Seconds later Isabel Williams entered with a steaming mug of coffee and a fresh-lit cigarette and, snatching up an ashtray available for her, joined Mrs. Gunner at the table. Her voice was sere. “You could’ve done your hair, Hilda.”
“Who’s to see?” Mrs. Gunner tapped the shell of a soft-boiled egg. “I don’t smell, that’s what counts with old people.”
Isabel sipped coffee, the red of her mouth splotching the edge of the mug. Thicknesses of mascara gave her eyes the look of bullet holes in a pâpier-maché face. Her nose expelled smoke. “Did you sleep through the rain?”
“Never heard it.”
“The thunder was like racehorses charging ’round the bend.”
“Didn’t hear that either.” Mrs. Gunner fired a look at Maria, who was dusting crystal figurines and examining photographs in stand-up frames. “Don’t break anything.”
Maria lifted a picture framed in silver. “Big boys.”
“Swines,” Mrs. Gunner replied, shocking the young woman. “Ill-mannered and repulsive.”
“Her grandsons,” Isabel said evenly.
“No better than their father,” Mrs. Gunner stated, egg yolk on a corner of her mouth. Her eyes narrowed from an image of her final month of pregnancy, when her belly had been a globe of the world. A phantom cramp made the recollection hurtful. “I’m a great expense to him now. I’m glad.”
Maria said stoutly, “In my family we revere children.”
“You’re in America now,” Mrs. Gunner said, picking up toast that had been buttered for her.
Isabel dashed her cigarette. “Are you Hispanic, dear?” she asked, and the young woman nodded. The ashtray was porcelain. The ashes were fastidiously deposited in a single corner, the lipstick-soaked butt put to rest nearby, as if Isabel were the cleanest of cats. “You sound quite intelligent. Where’s your accent?”
“I was born here.”
“But you’re still a spic,” Mrs. Gunner said, “same as I’m a kraut. Mrs. Williams here is Mayflower, a bit too la-di-da for my liking.”
Maria, boy-figured, picked up another picture, this one in a small, insignificant frame. “Such a pretty girl,” she said. “Is this your granddaughter?”
“The child is dead,” Isabel interjected. “Mrs. Gunner sometimes forgets.”
“I know she’s dead!” The voice was harsh, blistery. “They put her under three years ago.” The voice dropped. “But she’s alive in my heart. Put the picture back.”
The young woman returned the picture to its place and continued dusting. Crunching toast, Mrs. Gunner gazed in a wounded way out the window. The grounds were greener from the rain, the flowerbeds overfull. A crow gracefully beat the air. Isabel said, “You have egg on you,” and wiped it off with spit.
“He never shed a tear,” Mrs. Gunner said. “He wanted her dead.”
“Let’s not get on that subject.”
“Can’t help it. She was my sweetie.” Mrs. Gunner’s face heated up as memories ramified feelings, and feelings tangled her mood. Her breath came out hot. “I don’t blame the mother, just him.”
“Not in front of a stranger, Hilda dear.”
“He’ll go to hell, the little girl’s in heaven,” Mrs. Gunner said.
Maria, stepping back from her dusting, started to speak, but Isabel, with a gesture, went momentarily cross-eyed to indicate that Mrs. Gunner wasn’t all there.
“He’ll burn,” Mrs. Gunner said with satisfaction, and Isabel lit another cigarette, the flame leaping high from the disposable lighter.
“Won’t we all, dear.”
• • •
Chief Morgan left his car near the chapel and, seeking the administration building, approached a gaggle of summer students. A girl whose face black eye pencil gave arguable drama pointed the way. The Phillips campus was a hamlet of venerable brick and well-behaved greenery sweetened by wafting fragrances of phlox. The grandeur of the bigger buildings, fronted by stately columns, evoked memorials. Morgan felt like an obtruding presence and a loud voice inside the echoing personnel office, where a man of measured formality studied the Polaroid of Dudley and said, “Sorry, no one we know. Should we be worried?”
In the alumni office a rose-haired woman obliged him with old yearbooks, in which he tried to match a young face with Dudley’s dimpled one. Resemblances popped up, but none panned out. “It was a shot in the dark,” he confessed to the woman. He asked to be put in touch with someone who had known the Bodine boy. The name she gave him was Pitkin.
Aerobic shoes gave balding and bespectacled Ted Pitkin a bouncy step as he and Morgan walked over campus grass golden green in the sun, every blade in place. Trees stood brassy. “I recognized you right away,” Pitkin said. Roomy short sleeves diminished his arms. His mouth was liver inside a wiry beard of dubious color. “I was at the Gunners’ the evening you brought the bad news. Glen Bodine was a brilliant student, one of my best.”
“Tell me about him,” Morgan said, shortening his stride.
“Polite, sensitive, shy … and brave. Yes, very brave.”
“Was he depressed?”
Pitkin shrugged small shoulders. “If so, it was his secret. Are you asking if I think it was suicide?”
“Yes.”
“People with treacherous illnesses are inscrutable. They live within themselves. I have a theory, Chief. I believe people carrying such burdens are
prone to macabre accidents, violent deaths. Life sneaks up on them with an air of combat.”
“But the boy was brave, you said. He would have fought.”
“Bravery is usually foolhardy. Cowardice is calculated. It’s what keeps most of us alive.”
They paused in the shade of a rhododendron grown to magnificent proportions. Morgan lifted his face, his skin absorbing the breath of dark green foliage. The sky was aggressively blue. “Tell me about his father,” he said.
“I scarcely know him.”
“But you know the Gunners.”
“I tutor the two boys, advanced mathematics. Mr. Gunner wants them to be a credit to him. He looks upon them as his little thoroughbreds, though of course they’re not so little. Rather gross, I’m afraid.”
“The family lost a daughter.”
“The boys never mention her, nor does Mr. Gunner. Mrs. Gunner did once, but she was talking more to herself than to me. Are these questions leading to something, Chief? Has something new come up?”
“I’m just gathering opinions.”
“Why?”
“It seems to be my job,” Morgan said, and they moved on, but not far. A beech tree offered more shade. A shed condom of shocking pink lay near the trunk like a wad of bubble gum. Ignoring it, Morgan produced the Polaroid. “This face mean anything to you?”
Rising on his toes, Pitkin looked at it one way and then another. His mouth blossomed in his beard. “Is there a connection? Who is he?”
“Maybe make-believe.”
Pitkin seemed to enjoy a puzzle. “Fictional?”
“Funny pages,” Morgan said. Vague noises ripened into voices. Students were passing, boys and girls in lollipop colors. Morgan returned the picture to his breast pocket. “He could be nothing more than a coincidence.”
“In your work,” Pitkin said, straining to help, “I’d assume all coincidences are suspect till proven otherwise.”
Morgan stepped into sunlight, tossed a last look at the students, and said, “That’s my theory.”
• • •
When Beverly Gunner crept into her husband’s bedroom to wake him, the immense stillness of his body frightened her. At first she thought he was dead — and, God have mercy, she hoped with all her heart it was so. Then the mass of a belly, visible through his open pajama top, rumbled. Profoundly disappointed, she backed out of the room and soundlessly shut the door.
Voices in the Dark Page 11