How Will I Know You?

by Jessica Treadway

  He told her his name and she said, “I know who you are. You’re Carbone’s husband, you run the shack, and you dive for dead bodies. Kind of a Renaissance man.”

  He wanted to think she wasn’t making fun of him but couldn’t quite persuade himself. “More like a jack of all trades,” he said.

  “That’s what I hate about living in a Podunk town like this. Everything overlaps with everything else. Everybody overlaps.” She waved the cigarette for emphasis. “There’s no mystery.”

  “Well. Except this.” He made his own gesture toward the gathering inside, referring to her dead classmate and the questions still surrounding what had happened to her.

  “Yeah. Okay, you got me.” She stamped the half-smoked cigarette out under her UGG. He’d thought she might stand up from the swing when he joined her, but she remained seated and gripped the swing’s rusty chains.

  “So what was going on with you two?” He tried to keep his voice casual, though he could tell she wasn’t about to be fooled. “You and Joy. Before she took off that day?”

  “Nothing. What do you mean?” Delaney shrugged as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, but it wasn’t convincing.

  “I know about the parties.” He took a quick look behind him to make sure no one else had come outside and could overhear. “I know about the scrips.”

  Registering no reaction to his words, Delaney began pumping in a gentle swing. “So is your old lady preg, or what?”

  She’d paused slightly before the word “preg,” and he sensed immediately that she’d been going to say knocked up but thought better of it at the last moment. Even so, her question, and the sudden shift in topic, took him aback. Alison hadn’t planned to tell anyone at school until she began showing. But maybe she was beginning to show and she didn’t realize, and he didn’t realize either because he was a guy and didn’t know how to look for such things.

  “I thought so.” The measure of self-satisfaction already evident in Delaney’s face went up a degree or two.

  “How could you tell?”

  “Truth?”

  “Yeah.” He said it even though he wasn’t sure.

  “Well, she always has a bottle of Diet Coke with her, right? During class.”

  “So?” Alison had been a Diet Coke fiend even before they’d started going out in tenth grade.

  “So I always thought maybe it wasn’t just Diet Coke. Partly because of the way she acted, partly because she was always popping mints at the end of every class. One day I swiped the bottle when she wasn’t looking, and I was right. I mean, there was Diet Coke in there all right, but it was totally spiked. Seagram’s. Trust me, I know.” She allowed her voice to display a tinge of pride before she seemed to understand that this was nothing to take pride in. “But right after Halloween—right before Joy died—she started bringing straight ginger ale. I figured, preg.”

  Her last words barely registered through the roar in his ears. Spiked, Seagram’s—those were the ones he heard. He turned away from Delaney, afraid for a moment that he might keel over into the snow.

  It explained everything: the way Alison had pulled away from him. Her distraction, her weeping for no reason. Why her eyes were red so often (her contacts, she always said) and why she was asleep sometimes when he worked an early shift and got home shortly after the school day ended.

  What was wrong with him? Could he have been a bigger douche? Every impulse told him to turn around, stalk back into the building, and accuse his wife. But his higher consciousness understood that now was not the time. He set the information aside in his mind—just out of reach—and with a degree of control he would not have expected of himself, he said to Delaney, “If she has anything to say about that, I’m sure she will.”

  She smirked, but he could tell it had an impact; it might take a while, he thought, but even Snake Girl could be put in her place. She got off the swing abruptly, letting the seat clatter behind her, and changed the subject. “So the chief asshole is your father-in-law.”

  He was tempted to laugh at the way she said it: chief asshole. The biggest, most powerful asshole. Doug Strong Arm. But again, he couldn’t affirm what the girl said because it might get back to Alison. “The chief’s my father-in-law, yeah.”

  “And what, he’s making you do his dirty work, asking about Joy?”

  “No. I’m doing it on my own.” What the hell, he thought. One on one, she didn’t seem like a bad kid; she had more on the ball than he’d expected. Would it be worth appealing to her sense of justice? “The thing is, I’m pretty sure they got the wrong guy.”

  Her head jerked up, and he saw a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “The black one? I’m with you on that. What would he have to gain by killing Joy, right?”

  “Well,” Tom said carefully, wanting to capitalize on this new source of agreement between them, “even if I had an answer to that, I couldn’t tell you. But people do things sometimes for reasons that don’t make sense to anyone else.”

  “Like I don’t know that. Come on—don’t patronize me.”

  “Sorry.” Go easy, he told himself. “Look, if you know something, you should tell me. Or the police.” He paused, weighing the wisdom of his next words before deciding to say them. “But I’d rather you tell me.”

  “I can’t tell the police. That’s the point.” Now she did stand, letting the swing seat squeak up behind her, and leaned close enough that he could smell her breath. Did the rancidness come only from the Marlboro, or was fear mixed in there, too? She spoke quickly, as if wanting to avoid hearing her own words. “She was blackmailing the police. Specifically, the asshole.”

  “Who was?”

  “Joy.”

  It took him a moment to make sense of the two people she was talking about: Doug and the dead girl. The dead girl had been blackmailing Doug. “What are you talking about?” Recognizing that he was entering territory from which there was no turning back, he felt both alarmed and excited, and thought he detected a bit of the same combination coming from Delaney.

  She said, “When they busted Joy at the nursing home and brought her down to the station—isn’t that what they always say on TV, ‘down to the station’?—she heard two women in the bathroom talking about how he, the asshole, covered up Mrs. Carbone’s DUI. They didn’t know she was in there, the women.” She coughed, then shoved the pack of cigarettes back into her pocket. “They cops? We have any women cops in this town?”

  “They were probably clerks,” Tom said, not wanting to inflame or derail her by giving a direct no. Natalie would have been one of the women, he knew. The other was probably Jean Stryker, whose name he and Natalie laughed at although they knew they shouldn’t, because she was the domestic abuse specialist the police hardly ever had to call in. Jean sometimes spent hours hanging out with Natalie at the dispatch desk.

  “Of course there aren’t any women cops. Big surprise.” Delaney let out a cheerless laugh. “Anyway, so Joy got in touch with the asshole and let him know what she knew, and said she’d make it public unless he dropped the charges against her. So—poof! Charges gone, the very same night.” Delaney gave a sharp snap of her fingers.

  Tom forced himself to stand as still as he could, a difficult task in light of what was going through his mind. He felt both shocked and not at all surprised that Doug would behave in the way Delaney described, and the crash of conflicting inclinations caused his head to ache. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Damn sure.” Delaney dropped her voice. “Look, think about it. Why do you think I stuck around to talk to you when you came out here—for fun? I’m telling you this because I don’t want somebody put away for something he didn’t do. The black guy. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not that much of an asshole.” Like your father-in-law, she didn’t have to add. “And I don’t want someone who is guilty getting away with it.”

  It took Tom a few seconds to register her implication. “You think he could have—you’re saying you think he, the chief
, might have—” but to finish the sentence would have been a blasphemy he’d never be forgiven.

  “Well, you have to wonder, right? Why he’s got such a hard-on to pin it on the black guy. To pin it on anyone, if the evidence isn’t there.”

  “But it is there. Circumstantial, anyway.”

  She made a dismissive pfft noise. “So what was he doing that day? The asshole. Did you check?”

  Tom did his best not to show that her suggestion dug into his gut. “You should stop talking like this.”

  “Why?” She looked directly at him, seeming to understand that he wouldn’t have an answer either of them would be satisfied with. “Something more important to you than the truth?”

  “Hey. I’m the grown-up here.” It felt like a lie even as he said it, but he hoped it made some impression on her. “You don’t get to talk to me that way.”

  She apologized, though he wasn’t sure she meant it. “How did you know she was blackmailing him?” he asked. “Did she tell you?”

  Delaney shrugged. “Kind of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it was her specialty. Blackmail. I mean, she didn’t call it that or anything. But that’s what it was.”

  “If you don’t start spelling things out—” He started to turn away, but she raised her hand to call him back and said, “Okay. She was blackmailing me, too.”

  “Joy was? What for?”

  Delaney hesitated, a move that appeared unfamiliar to her. “This is confidential, right?”

  He nodded, even though he had no authority to assure her of what she asked.

  “Okay.” Delaney closed her eyes as if the confession didn’t count if she couldn’t see it. “I was giving Joy scrips. She was right back there, at the church, when she called me out.”

  “Who was right?” He knew who she meant but needed her to say it.

  “Sorry—Harper. Harper Grove. Sounds like a place to live, right? In Florida or something.” “Florida” caused specks of spit to settle on her chin, and she wiped them away with an embarrassed swipe. “Anyway, so yeah, I gave Joy blank sheets, from my father’s office. But it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t make her do anything—she made me.”

  “She made you do it? How?”

  When Delaney hesitated again he said, “I can always report you for what went on at the condos. I know who started that fire.”

  “Oh, stop.” Wearily, she retrieved the Marlboro pack and shook out another cigarette. “I’m giving you what you want.” This time, after lighting, she inhaled deeply. When she exhaled a plume of disgust, Tom couldn’t tell whether it was directed at the sensation in her lungs, herself, or him. “Like you said, people do all kinds of crazy shit, right? Ask my father.”

  Her words summoned for him the image of Geoffrey Stowell and Doug conferring in quiet voices after the ODAT fundraising race. Then the sight of them in the parking lot at the funeral home today, less than an hour ago. “Did the police find out?” Tom asked her. “About the scrip sheets?”

  Warily, Delaney nodded.

  “Then why didn’t they arrest you? Or your father?”

  She held the cigarette down at her side, seeming to forget it was there. “This is what I meant before about living in Podunk,” she said. “Everybody’s business all tied up with everybody else’s. You sure you want to hear?”

  He nodded, though the question sliced inside him a quick furrow of doubt.

  “My father’s seeing your mother-in-law.” Then, noting Tom’s confusion at the word “seeing,” she clarified: “As a patient. She’s a drunk, too, right? He’s been trying to help her get sober again. Not that it’s doing any good.”

  If he hadn’t witnessed Helen sneaking wine in the kitchen right after her supposed sober anniversary, this would have been all Tom needed to conclude that everything Delaney was telling him was a lie, concocted just to fuck with him or to cause someone else—her own father?—some grief. As it was, he believed she was telling the truth about this and, so, about all of it. “You’re saying Doug’s covering for you and your father, to keep the news about Helen falling off the wagon from coming out.”

  “Right. Just like he did for your old lady with the DUI.” She made a false laughing noise. “He only has that temporary chief’s job because of three people, right? The Town Board. And I heard he’s not their favorite person.”

  She watched, her eyes narrowed, as he caught up to all the new information processing itself inside his brain. “Wait a minute,” he said. “If the police found out about you giving Joy the scrip sheets, then what would she still have to blackmail you with?”

  This question Delaney swatted away as if it were a gnat. “Look, I’ve told you enough already, haven’t I? I’ve told you everything you need to know to help get that Willett guy off.”

  “But that part doesn’t make sense to me. And if she was blackmailing you, why shouldn’t you be a suspect as much as the asshole should?”

  Now the laugh Delaney gave was a real one. “Are you shitting me?”

  “No, I mean it. What should stop me from thinking you’re telling me all this about the police chief to deflect suspicion from yourself? I read the report. Hell, I was there. You were one of the last ones to see her that day.”

  “Holy shit.” She sighed, as if she could barely believe what a complete drag he was, and—probably—what a mistake it had been to talk to him, even given what he threatened her with. “I wasn’t the last one. Whoever killed her was the last one.” Now they heard groups of people leaving Coleman’s, a sign that the reception was breaking up. As she turned to leave the swing set before they could get caught together, Delaney added, “I’ve done a lot of things I shouldn’t have, I admit it. But choking somebody to death isn’t one of them.” She headed back toward the building.

  Tom let his own breath out, not having realized he was holding it. The directive from his diving instructor came back to him: Stop, think, and breathe. The right thing to do, he knew, was to tell somebody connected to the force—maybe Natalie?—what the girl had said, and let Natalie persuade him why it was ridiculous.

  But instead he went back inside and found Alison. Her eyes were red today, he knew, because of crying and nothing else. “Where were you? I needed you,” she said, leaning into his side as he put his arm around her. From across the room, Delaney Stowell let her eyes settle on them as if watching strangers. Tom turned his back and allowed himself to feel temporary comfort in consoling his wife, even as he foresaw plainly the pain ahead for them both.

  Classic Signs

  When they arrived home after the funeral and reception, Gil pulled into the garage and they sat there without making a move to get out of the car, neither wanting to go into the house. Recognizing this, he left the motor running to keep the heat on. Between them on the console lay the garage-door remote, and when his fingers made a barely perceptible move in its direction, Susanne intuited instantly what he was thinking: All I have to do is push a button, the door will close, we’ll go to sleep, it will be over. The same feeling she’d had in the dead of morning, impulsively swallowing the sleeping pills. Gently, she picked the remote up and moved it to the other side of her seat. She knew he would misconstrue her action; he would interpret it as some version of We have to keep going, we owe it to her, she wouldn’t want us to do that. All their married life they had been having conversations like this, saying one thing (with words or not) but communicating another. At least, this was how it seemed to Susanne. She didn’t think Gil felt the same way. It had bothered her, once, but after all these years she’d grown accustomed to it, and now—especially with their daughter dead—it didn’t matter. She still considered it a foreign language they spoke to each other, but she had adjusted, and she understood it well enough to translate what she needed to know.

  She also understood now that she couldn’t allow herself an escape; it was too easy, when really what she deserved was to be punished. For so many things, some of which she probably had no idea. But othe
rs made up a running list in her head, beginning with I shouldn’t have slept with Martin and continuing with We should have paid more attention when she started staying in her room so much, when she dyed her hair, when she didn’t seem to care about anything. When she was arrested for drugs! Weren’t they the classic signs? What was wrong with them, as parents, that they hadn’t recognized the signs for what they were? The most practical offense—We should have let her keep her cell phone—gave her a punch to the gut, imagining her daughter’s desperation in those final moments, the futility of calling for help. Had Joy cried out for her mother at the end, the way dying soldiers were said to? “We have to go in,” she said to Gil, shutting the car door on a vision that was too much. He remained motionless for a moment, then followed her into the house with a broken sigh.

  Usually she placed her purse on the counter, but today it could go on the floor. What did it matter? Salsa came to greet them—she’d always been like a dog that way—but slunk back as she got closer, as if they gave off a smell to be avoided. Susanne stood in the middle of the kitchen, then had to turn suddenly to grab the countertop for support. Gil didn’t notice, because he was busy collecting his toolbox from the mudroom. He began taking the faucet apart. When Susanne asked him what he was doing, he reminded her that for years she’d been asking him for a two-handled faucet instead of the single-handled one. “I’m going to replace the cartridge with a ceramic disc,” he said.

  She laughed, a dead sound to both of them. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  Without planning to, she took steps toward the hallway and down to where the bedrooms were. Joy’s door was open. “Hey!” she shouted at Gil. After going through Joy’s room looking for something to bury her with, they’d closed the door and agreed not to open it again until—well, they hadn’t decided on the until. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”