An Occasional Hell

by Silvis, Randall;

  He was glad she did not stay to watch him eat. Eating corn on the cob is not a thing to invite spectatorship. As a boy at family reunions he used to cringe when the platter of corn was passed down the long picnic table, uncles and aunts and cousins and strangers crowded elbow to elbow. What an assault of the senses would ensue! His uncle, the farmer, did not raise pigs but DeWalt had no doubt he knew exactly how they would sound, a dozen snouts pushed deep in the slop. And they would talk, those good country people, with mouths full; they would laugh and grin with mouths dripping butter and split kernels. Since then, DeWalt had never been able to fully enjoy the pleasures of corn on the cob except when alone.

  The same held true for onion and avocado sandwiches. It was good to have nobody around for his breath to offend. Sleeping late when he didn’t have to teach—could he do that if not alone? Not shaving on weekends. Being able to pass a mirror without feeling compelled to look in it. Being responsible to no one but himself. Being needed by no one. Neither valued nor desired.

  When he finished the dinner he carried the plates into the kitchen. Elizabeth was seated at the table, a glass of white wine in her hand. The glass was full. Either she had not drunk any of it yet or she had recently refilled it.

  “That was the most delicious dinner I have ever had,” he told her.

  “You’re easy to please.” There was an edge to her voice, an extra facet.

  He dumped the cobs into the trash, then went to the sink and began to wash the plates. “I’ll do that,” she told him. “Leave them.”

  He said nothing. He washed the dishes quickly, dried them, put them away. When he faced her again he saw that the wine glass was still full. “Would you rather talk here or out on the porch?” he asked.

  She took half a minute to answer. “Outside, I guess.”

  They sat together on the porch glider and did not turn on the overhead light, though the night was dark enough now to illuminate fireflies winking against the far bushes, dark enough to hide if not her face from his at least the deeper emotion of her eyes. It was she who set the glider in motion, establishing with the pressure of her feet a rhythm for him to follow, a slow scrape backward, a glide forward, the repetitious drag, he thought, of a jazz drummer’s brushes, beat keeper for the blues.

  Oh I went down to the St. James Infirmary, I saw my baby lying there, stretched out on a long white table, so cool so sweet so fair.…

  “We brought Gillen in today,” he told her. “He was caught late last night. He’s in custody now.”

  “Oh my god,” she said. He felt her quivering exhalation of relief. At least he hoped it was relief. He did not think he could be wrong about her. But there was always the possiblity of error.

  “He was staying in a cottage at Honey Lake,” he said. “A boy from the college had set it up for him. It seems they were involved in a kind of business relationship. Selling cocaine on campus.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “I wish I were.”

  “Was … the girl with them? At the cottage, I mean.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, did he … say where she is? Or confess to anything?”

  “The boy from the college admitted to the thing with the cat. Apparently Jeri had had duplicates made of Alex’s keys. Without his knowledge, of course.”

  “But why would she do something like that? If she cared about him, why would she steal his keys?”

  Because she wanted what you have, he thought. What you had for a while and what she imagined you continued to have in spite of her. DeWalt recognized in himself then a certain sympathy for Jeri Gillen, a response he did not quite understand. He was beginning to feel a sympathy for everybody, and he did not particularly appreciate that emotion, it blurred the lines, it weakened him. He hoped he had not used up all of his anger. He had a long way to go yet and he had counted on the anger to take him there.

  “Their story,” said DeWalt, “Rodney’s and the other boy’s, Craig Fox, is that you set Gillen up. You called and asked him to go down to the river, knowing he’d find Alex dead. And that while looking for Jeri, he’d leave fingerprints or some other evidence, or better yet, the cops would arrive and find him there.”

  “And is that what you believe too?” she asked.

  “The police think they’re lying.”

  “Then I’m not a suspect anymore?”

  He watched the fireflies for a moment, their dance of lights in the trees at the far end of the yard. There was something sad in their aspirations, that almost desperate blinking for attention. Meager lights of ardor calling Here I am, here I am, so transient and unsustainable. They seemed so close to one another out there, yet unable to find each other in the dark.

  “The police believe that one of the boys did the actual shooting,” he said. “But at your suggestion. That you hired them to kill Alex, that you supplied the murder weapon, and that you then refused payment or lowered the price, which is why they then sent you the cat as a warning to reconsider.”

  She nodded, understanding all this, having presumed and feared as much for several days now. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. It was DeWalt who kept the glider going; he thought it important somehow that the motion, the illusion of movement, did not stop.

  “Am I going to be arrested?” she asked.

  “There’s no hard evidence against you,” he said. “No powder burns, no prints, nothing but that one phone call to implicate you. But that doesn’t mean they can’t lock you up for forty-eight hours if they want to. If you are taken in, and I’m not saying you will be, in fact I don’t think you will be, but even so, it’s high time you talked to a lawyer.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said.

  “You might never even need a lawyer, I don’t know. But it’s foolish not to be prepared.”

  “I thought it would get better. I thought it had to.”

  “It will get better, believe me. It’s not as bad as I’m making it sound. You’ll probably be questioned again, but you can handle that. They’ll want to search the house again, and Alex’s study and his office at school. You might even feel that you’re being harassed or intimidated. And that’s why you need a lawyer, Elizabeth. You need somebody who can protect you in ways that I can’t.”

  “I was hoping to bring the kids back home,” she said.

  “I don’t think that’s wise yet.”

  “I miss them so damn much.”

  She tried not to cry but the tears came anyway. He laid his hand atop hers. She turned her hand then so that their palms touched, and she squeezed his hand tightly for a while. Finally her grip relaxed. She withdrew her hand from his and with a fingertip pulled the tears from her eyes.

  “Tell me the rest,” she said.

  He searched his mind for a beginning, the right place to start.

  “Tell me why Jeri Gillen would make duplicates of Alex’s keys.”

  “Bear in mind,” he told her, “that much of this information comes from Rodney Gillen and his friend Craig Fox. By that I mean, be wary of accepting it as the absolute truth.”

  That’s the way, DeWalt; give her hope where none exists. Throw her a book of matches as she stands stranded on the ice flow.

  She nodded. “Go on.”

  “Apparently,” he said, “Rodney knew all about Jeri’s affair. You might even say he …” participated? Wrong word, DeWalt. Watch your step.

  “Alex wouldn’t have been aware of any of this, of course, but Rodney had a set of photographs; copies, in fact, of the set you showed me. Indications are … he enjoyed looking at them. He liked the idea of Jeri being with another man.”

  “Oh god,” she said. “Oh jesus god.”

  She was breathing very rapidly, hands pressed flat to her stomach, feet flat on the floor as she leaned over her knees. “I feel like I want to throw up,” she said.

  DeWalt stopped himself from touching her. That was no way to go at it now, no way to get this thing done. He crossed his arm
s, then uncrossed them. Clasped his hands in his lap. Pulled them apart. Nothing felt right. “Tell me when you’re ready,” he said.

  A minute later she nodded. “I’ll be all right, I promise. Just go ahead with it.”

  He stared at the fireflies. “It seems that Alex was very generous with Jeri.”

  “Nearly half of his retirement fund is gone,” she said.

  “You checked the records.”

  “He’s been making withdrawals ever since he started seeing her.”

  “How much altogether?”

  “Over eleven thousand dollars.”

  “Whew,” he said.

  “I hope like hell she was worth it.”

  Good, he thought; let’s see some more of that. That’s the thing that will get you through this.

  “So you can imagine what a windfall that was for her and Rodney,” he said. “Alex bought Jeri clothes, gifts, gave her money whenever she asked for it. The money, most likely, financed their cocaine habit. Jeri swore to Alex that she had quit, but of course she hadn’t. My guess is that hardly anything she told him about herself was the truth. One of the other things Alex didn’t know was that Jeri was also involved sexually with Craig Fox. And again, with Rodney’s approval.”

  Again she leaned slowly forward, this time until she was completely doubled up, head to her knees, a tight bundle of grief. DeWalt could see through her shirt the hard curve of spine and he wanted to cover and protect it for her, to shield her with his own body as if mere flesh could turn the pain away. He wanted to hold her and somehow ease the rise and fall of labored breath, somehow quiet his own chill by quieting hers.

  “Alex didn’t know any of this?” she asked, voice muffled, back taut.

  “You knew him better than I did. Was he the kind of man who would have tolerated such things?”

  She sat up and took a deep breath, but continued to hold tight to herself. “Of course not,” she said.

  “In my opinion, I think he truly cared about Jeri. And I think he believed she cared about him in the same way.”

  “I don’t know if that makes it any better or not.”

  Nothing makes it better, DeWalt. “Anyway. She was smart enough to know that Alex would catch on to her sooner or later, or that he’d just get tired of her, something like that. And that’s why she made duplicates of his keys. Whether for kicks, or revenge, or just for the money, who knows? She and Rodney must have figured it would be an easy job. Watch the house until everybody goes out for a movie or whatever, then walk in and take what they want.”

  “She didn’t love him at all,” she said.

  “Cocaine has a way of rendering love insignificant.”

  “I hope she is dead,” she said. “I hope whoever killed her did a damn good job of it. I do. I’m sorry, Ernie, but I do.”

  He liked the sound of that, the sincerity. It told him what he most needed to know. It gave him back some confidence.

  “There are a couple of other things,” he told her.

  She looked at him now. She thought she had heard the worst of it.

  “There was an incident last Spring. A garage in town was firebombed. Rodney Gillen was the probable target.”

  “No,” she said. “Alex would never try to hurt anybody. Never.”

  “You’ve already established that he didn’t do it. It was your anniversary. You went to a play.”

  “Then what …?”

  “Alex didn’t do the actual firebombing, no. But it does seem likely that he was behind it somehow. That he probably hired somebody to do it for him.”

  “That’s impossible. It’s ridiculous.”

  “I think it’s why he wrote down my phone number so often, why he wanted to get in touch with me. You yourself said he read my book, which, let’s be honest, is a violent book. Maybe it was the book that gave him the idea, I don’t know.”

  “That’s right, you don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know Alex, or you could never even suggest such a thing.”

  “Somebody made several threatening calls to Rodney Gillen. The police pulled the phone company’s records, and all of the calls originated from the same pay phone. The booth outside the suite of carrels on the second floor of the library.”

  “Anybody in the world could walk in and use that phone.”

  “It was somebody who knew Jeri’s schedule, knew she wouldn’t be home at the time of the call. Somebody who wanted Rodney to quit supplying his wife with cocaine.”

  Whatever she was thinking, she kept it to herself. DeWalt now realized that he had given her the information in the wrong order. He had told her first about Jeri’s deception and exploitation of Alex, which in Elizabeth’s mind turned her husband into a pitiable figure, a man betrayed by the foolish but understandable error of obeying his heart. Elizabeth was listening to her own heart. It was a heart with a history, a history that would not succumb to any revisionist’s speculations. So he could merely tell her what he knew, what he believed to be the truth. It was what he had been hired to do.

  “The murder weapon was probably among the items stolen from the Fort Erie museum last month. During the robbery that took place one week after Alex’s visit to the museum.”

  “And you know very well, don’t you, where Alex was the night of the robbery. I already told you that, didn’t I? Or have you chosen to forget that too?”

  Anyway, he had told her. He had told her everything she and her lawyer would need to know. Everything the police knew or thought they knew. He saw that it was raining now and he wondered when it had begun, a fine quiet rain that stirred the sweet smell of grass. Even as he watched the rain came down harder, all but invisible except for the first layer of the curtain just off the edge of the porch, raindrops glinting like glass beads as they caught the dim light from inside the house. The porch glider no longer moved so there was no “St. James Infirmary” to accompany the rain now. But the rain had a song of its own. This was a Miles Davis tattoo being laid down. “Bitch’s Brew,” shadowy with cloud-scent. Black rain swatting shingles and porch steps and soggy black earth. It was a long song too; it was going to play all night.

  “I don’t think I’ll be requiring your services anymore,” she told him.

  DeWalt nodded. He put his hands on his knees, pressed hard, pushed himself up. He went to the edge of the porch and looked across the yard. His car was out there somewhere, out there in all that darkness and rain. There were no fireflies now to guide him, no hopeful blinking lights.

  “Tell your lawyer to call me at home,” he said. “So that I can fill her in on what I know.”

  “What makes you think you know anything?”

  He stepped out into the rain. It was cold on his neck and even colder running down his back. It was cold on his face and his hands and wherever it soaked through his clothing. By the time he reached his car he was shivering. He climbed inside and closed the door, started the engine and shivered. This is August, he thought. Isn’t this supposed to be August?

  He turned on the heater but it would take a minute or two to warm up. The wipers swatted urgently back and forth, clacking loud at each turn. With the headlights on he could see Elizabeth still seated on the glider, she had set herself in motion again, was vehemently rocking, eyes staring straight into the long beams of light.

  DeWalt could not stop his teeth from chattering. This must be what Hell is like, he thought. He gripped the steering wheel hard as if trying to strangle some warmth from it. Hell is cold. There is no fire in Hell, DeWalt. That’s just a myth, a come-on, there is not a single warming spark. But ice burns too, you know; as does an icy rain. And that is what Hell is: ice, the great preservative. Hell is the place where not even Death is allowed the final blessing of rot.

  Elizabeth stood then and went inside. She went inside behind her new locks. She went inside to the lights of her living room, the warmth of her anger and wine. DeWalt drove home shivering, windows fogged. There was nothing but static on the radio.

  “I can’t help
but think that we’re missing something,” was what DeWalt had said to Trooper Abbott and what he now said to himself as he lay on his bed and listened to the rain. He lay flat on his back with several blankets pulled to his neck. He was dry now but not much warmer than when he had left the Catanzaro house. Even so he kept the window behind his head open a crack. The rain was better company than the television. The rain not only spoke but had a scent and a presence and what it said was more often worth listening to.

  “I can’t help but think we’re missing something,” said the rain. Again and again it reiterated. Yes, DeWalt answered. And I know precisely what it is. We are missing a body and a murder weapon. We are missing a murderer too. We are missing everything we need.

  He believed that Abbott held the tail of the elephant and that he, DeWalt, held the trunk, but there was a lot of gray space between the two appendages. Abbott seemed willing to settle for what he had, to imagine the head and ears and the great gray bulk. He assumed that to hold the tail was to hold the entire animal. Sooner or later he might even convince the DA of that fallacy. More than one case had been built and won on the evidence of the tail alone.

  A basso tremble of thunder asked him then what is all this to you, DeWalt? You have been relieved of you duties, remember? You are not in the elephant chasing business anymore.

  Why could he not let go? Was it mere meniscus that held him? surface tension? that human quality of adhesion which sticks abraded hearts together?

  In two and a half weeks he would be back in the classroom. Baggy corduroy jacket with worn leather elbow patches. Sophistry and sex in the air. There you will be, DeWalt, wading through the thick of it, perpetuating the myth. Good writing matters, you will say, it really matters. And your students will compose stories about killer Coke machines and cynical overweight cats because they read the bestseller charts and ask, Whoever this William Gass guy is, when was the last time he was on television?