A Secret Rage

by Charlaine Harris

  ‘So that leaves nine.’

  ‘Did Alicia know J.R., Dan, or Randy?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Barbara. How could we find out?’

  She looked rather daunted. ‘Well, we can’t ask them, can we? Gosh.’

  ‘Let’s see. Dan’s new at Houghton, and he commutes from Hill Run, he told me. He just got out of the army. I think his wife’s family is in Hill Run. He’s from Arkansas. So the chances are very slim that Alicia knew him.’

  Barbara weighed that. Then, after an emphatic shove at her glasses, she crossed Dan Kirby’s name off her list.

  ‘Minus Dan,’ she said. ‘Eight.’

  I scooted down in my armchair and laced my fingers over my stomach. Barbara twirled her pencil between her fingers as though it was a miniature baton. We both brooded over other possible eliminators. So suddenly that I jumped, Barbara grabbed her telephone and dialed.

  ‘Hi, J.R.,’ she said. ‘This is Barbara Tucker. Fine, thanks . . . and you? Good, good. Listen, how’d you come out in that poker game?’

  J.R. answered at length. Barbara rolled her eyes in exasperation, then instantly switched to a smile so the words would come out right when she spoke. ‘Great! Thirty-four dollars, huh? Did Randy play? Oh. Oh, Cindy won’t like that, you’re right!’ Barbara widened her eyes at me significantly. ‘You played that late?’ she burbled into the phone in a very un-Barbara-like manner. Again a mumble from the other end. Then Barbara was nodding at me vehemently, and I took the list from the coffee table and drew lines through two more names.

  ‘No, I don’t want to learn to play right now. Just curious, you’d talked about it so much. Right. Well – sure, give me a call sometime. We’ll do it. Sounds like fun. English professors need all the extra income they can get, right? Bye, now.’

  J. R. Smith was a jovial individual who taught me Archetypes in the English Novel with a kind of infectious zest. I was glad he was apparently cleared. I looked at Barbara expectantly.

  She was a little pink in the face. ‘I guess I’m going to have to learn how to play poker,’ she said, and looked not unwilling. ‘I remembered J.R. was having a bachelor party for Randy Marquette Thursday night, since Randy’s marrying – well, he married – Cindy from the admissions office Friday night. The poker playing was over when Randy fell asleep on J.R.’s couch at four in the morning. Considering the liquor, I don’t think either of them could’ve gotten back up to go out after that. And there were only six men there, since not everyone’s willing to meet Friday classes with two hours’ sleep and an A-one hangover. So I think that if one of them had slipped out for any length of time it would have been noticed.’

  ‘Sounds like it,’ I agreed. ‘Besides, there would have been blood, with Alicia. To clean off.’ I took a deep breath. ‘So,’ I said as evenly as I could. ‘Six.’

  For a full hour we tried to think of other qualifiers that would eliminate one of the six. We couldn’t come up with any. We even left Ray on the list.

  ‘By the way,’ Barbara said as she walked with me to my borrowed car, ‘I take it you haven’t mentioned this project of ours to anyone?’

  ‘Not hardly,’ I said, like one of my young classmates. ‘The only people I would tell are Cully and Mimi. And since their own father is on the list . . .’

  She nodded. ‘Not that I really think for a minute that someone sweet like Don Houghton, or for that matter someone as dignified as Jeff Simmons, our mighty college president, for God’s sake, could ever do something like what was done to us.’

  ‘That’s just it! Do we know anyone on that list who acts anything like the disgusting beast who did that to us? Who could knife Alicia to death?’

  Barbara knew the answer too well to say it out loud. If we were right, the beast had to be there, lurking beneath a civilized skin that covered someone we knew.

  We looked up at the clear cool sky. It was sweater weather in the afternoon, coat weather in the morning – my favorite season. This would have been one of the best years of my life, if only . . . For a second the filth was magically washed away. I drank in freedom with the air. Then I tensed my forefinger against my thumb and thwanged my cheek. No point in going down that dead-end street. Hip-pity hop, back to wonderful old reality.

  Barbara was too used to my habits by now to comment on my cheek-thumping. ‘Six,’ I reminded her before I drove away.

  She just looked forlorn.

  * * * *

  Probably because of her family’s far-flung influence, Alicia’s autopsy had been concluded and her body released to her family – and Grace Funeral Home – on Sunday. We decided to pay our respects the next evening.

  I was dressed and ready, and Cully was in the shower, when Mimi caught me alone in the living room. She looked uncharacteristically drab in the plain dark dress she saved for funerals and funeral home visits.

  ‘Don’t tell Cully my idea about Charles,’ she said without preamble. ‘It’s not like we really know anything. And to tell you the truth, Nickie, I’m worried about what Cully would do if he believed Charles was the rapist.’

  Cully the rational, a vigilante? Farfetched. I stared at Mimi with dismay and a crawling suspicion. This was awfully like manipulation. Was she using Cully as a lever to keep me quiet, to protect her lawyer?

  I didn’t suspect Charles because of that bizarre episode in the kitchen the previous Saturday. I suspected Charles because he was on the list. But I couldn’t tell her that, and I also wanted to find out what she was aiming for. ‘What if it is Charles, Mimi? We can’t possibly let him do it again. Think of what this man has done.’

  ‘We don’t know anything,’ she hissed. The shower had been cut off; Cully would hear us if we didn’t keep our voices down. ‘I may have just gotten scared Saturday morning for nothing. If Charles gets hauled in on suspicion and he’s innocent, the mud will stick and he’ll be ruined. Besides, don’t you see, I know Charles. And I can tell you don’t like him, even though you’ve tried not to say anything.’

  My heart plummeted. This was the fruit of those years before I’d gained more tact, more wisdom, in my relationship with Mimi. She couldn’t discuss her feelings for Charles with me with complete honesty. There was some mystery here that she didn’t think she could share with me, because it was between her and a man she loved.

  ‘I know he couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that to a human being.’ How often had Barbara and I thought of that, in scanning the names of the men on our list? ‘Besides, if he was the rapist, he wouldn’t have just tussled with me in the car. He would’ve raped me. I couldn’t have stopped him. Nick, I’ve thought about it ever since. We were just scared and maybe hysterical that morning. That was my fault. That whole weird little episode was something we made up.’ She twisted her fingers together. She looked at me and said, sadly, ‘Don’t ask me to tell you what I know, Nick. But since from the look on your face I can’t persuade you any other way, I have to tell you that I know Charles didn’t do it.’

  That crawling suspicion came a little further out of its hole. Mimi had never, never lied to me, in fourteen years. But she was acting so strangely. I was totally bewildered by this whole scene. I couldn’t have answered her if I’d known what to say. To my relief Cully entered the living room then, with the car keys in his hand.

  As we rode through the dark streets of Knolls, I pondered. All Mimi was asking was that we keep those moments when Charles was standing at the door from Cully’s knowledge. Maybe she did fear that now Cully and I were lovers he would feel obliged, in true southern fashion, to avenge his womenfolk’s ordeal if he knew the identity of the rapist; for the ordeal had very much been Mimi’s as well as mine. I had deep doubts about Cully ascribing to that attitude.

  There really was no hard evidence indicating Charles was my assailant. There was no hard evidence against anyone, unless the police had dug up something; and they were hardly likely to tell me if they had. All I had was the list. And Mimi was definitely right about another thing: The panic we’d
felt that morning when Charles came to the door could easily be written off to the tension and fear that had permeated our lives for so long.

  So whatever she knew or didn’t know, Mimi was right. I would not tell Cully about that stupid little incident. As we drove through the night silently, I whittled away at the knot of pain and confusion she had caused me, until it was only a canker of uneasiness.

  I looked across the front seat at Cully. He glanced my way at the same time. The normal austerity of his face vanished in a smile that made him irresistible. I hoped I wasn’t using Cully as a kind of emotional aspirin. He would be willing. He was, after all, a wound healer.

  Grace Funeral Home was housed in an old mansion with pillars. It was a freshly painted, carpeted, well-kept-up place. Ordinarily, I’d have rather admired it for the gracious air it gave to a grim business.

  Ray Merritt and Alicia’s mother, Celia Anley, were standing close to the door to receive mourners. Ray was gray and ghastly, Mrs Anley so rigid she looked like a mannequin. Mimi quivered when she saw them, and I knew she was afraid of what they’d ask her. Neither Ray nor Celia had been permitted into the house until it was cleaned by good and loving neighbors. Cully had told us that; he’d heard it from Alicia’s aunt at the filling station.

  When Ray’s eyes met mine I knew I shouldn’t have come. I had lived through it. I knew without doubt that he was wishing I’d died in Alicia’s place. If the attacker had to kill, Ray Merritt wished the victim had been me, not Alicia. At that second, Ray Merritt was struck from the list, at least as far as I was concerned. He’d never liked or trusted me. If he had been the rapist, I would have died instead of Alicia, without doubt. I started to extend my hand, saw Ray wouldn’t touch it if I did, and quickly moved on to Mrs Anley, whom I’d met years before. Alicia had had at least one brother, but I knew she’d been the only daughter her widowed mother had.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ I felt I was expressing regret that I was alive, rather than sorrow that Alicia was dead.

  ‘Bless you, Nickie,’ Mrs Anley said.

  She remembered me, then. I waited for the chill of condemnation I’d seen in Ray’s face. Instead, Mrs Anley hugged me and led me aside. ‘Don’t mind Ray,’ she told me quietly. There were traces of Alicia in the shape of her mouth. Though Mrs Anley had become very heavy, the likeness was there.

  ‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing right now,’ she continued. She sighed. She gathered her thoughts. ‘There’s a choice,’ she said slowly, not looking up at me anymore. ‘Not always. But for Alicia there was a choice.’

  I was mystified. I shifted nervously, twisted the cuff of my navy dress, and waited.

  ‘From what I’ve heard . . . you chose to endure it, and live through it. My daughter’ – she spoke slower and slower – ‘chose to fight. I’m not saying she chose to die, but she chose to take that chance. It proved to be the wrong choice, for her . . .’ I had bent lower and lower, to catch her near-whisper. Suddenly Mrs Anley was finished, and she turned to resume her place by Ray.

  I stared after her. How much ‘choice’ had I had? I simply hadn’t been able to move. I’d been awakened from a heavy sleep, precipitated into a situation already established. I was sure Alicia had wanted to live fully as much as I had. But if it comforted Mrs Anley to believe that Alicia had had some freedom of will in the matter . . . Then I was enlightened. Mrs Anley was proud that her daughter had fought so hard. That was the only warm feeling left to Alicia’s mother: pride, that her daughter had gone down fighting every inch of the way. Death before dishonor.

  Cully and Mimi were comforting Ray, who’d begun to cry in the unpracticed way of men, with great heaves of his shoulders. I was standing conspicuously by myself. I felt, ridiculously, that everyone in the room was looking at me sideways. The One Who Got Away.

  With a rush of relief I spied old Mrs Harbison, our next-door neighbor, standing by an archway leading to another room. I scooted over to her as swiftly as I could manage, hoping to blend with her into a clump of mourning. Poor old lady, she was sandwiched between houses evil had visited. She was wondering, I discovered, if it might come to her house next. She told me that right after she left the funeral home she planned to depart for a prolonged visit to her married daughter in Macon. I told her I thought that was a great idea.

  The open archway led into another, smaller, room. I hadn’t looked in, since I was concentrating on Mrs Harbison. Now the old lady inclined her head and said, ‘You ought to go see her.’

  I had no idea what she meant, but I turned obediently and stepped through the archway. And there, to my absolute horror, was Alicia in her coffin. I thought I was going to scream. I flinched backward, but Mrs Harbison had a firm grip on my arm and steered me forward relentlessly. The old lady had no doubt that I wanted to see Alicia ‘laid out’; in her time she must have seen so many people die that viewing the faces of the dead was simple routine.

  All too soon I was by the gleaming coffin looking down at Alicia. Her face was colorless and smooth and still. Of course . . .

  For the first time the absolute immobility of the dead struck me. The complete absence of movement, even the tiny movements of breathing, seemed so remarkable to me that I couldn’t turn away. I wondered briefly if I should, after all, have gone in to see my father. And I wondered how the mortician had managed to fix Alicia up. I felt an eerie professional curiosity about the makeup he’d used. Why had Ray wanted the coffin open? Why on earth had the family consented to lay Alicia out in front of anyone who cared to take a look? It seemed the worst invasion of privacy I’d ever witnessed. I was appalled; but I was also spellbound. She’d looked so awful when I’d last seen her: mouth open, eyes wide, legs sprawled, covered with blood. What I was seeing now, I forced myself to admit, was better – and, after the initial shock, strangely comforting.

  Here was no woman frozen in final pain and fear. This was a serene Alicia: clean, her hair arranged, her face turned to one side to cover a scalp wound I remembered. She had the dignity she’d had in life. She was presented as she would have wanted. But I swore to myself on the spot that I would put something in my will about closing my coffin.

  I was only vaguely aware of Mrs Harbison wandering away. When I finally looked up from the face I’d last seen smeared with blood, I met Don Houghton’s eyes. His face was smooth and still and white. I shuddered. He looked at me steadily, with an unwavering disregard of what lay literally between us. ‘It’s always a shock, isn’t it?’ he commented.

  Maybe it was the carefully dimmed lighting, maybe it was the overwhelming presence of death, or my own horror at seeing Alicia – but he didn’t seem to be the same Don Houghton I’d known for all these years. Not the same man who’d taken us to the zoo in Memphis, the man who’d borne so patiently and lovingly with his difficult wife. I would rather have looked at Alicia’s corpse than at the face of this stranger. When I lowered my eyes, I observed as if from a distance my own hand gripping the rim of the coffin so tightly that my knuckles had turned white. I snatched my hand away.

  This man is also on the list, I thought. There was only one list in my life, a list of names. And this man, the father of two people I loved, was on it.

  ‘In the midst of life . . .’ Don quoted ponderously.

  I glanced up involuntarily. He was looking down this time, at Alicia. ‘I always liked that girl,’ he said simply. He walked around the coffin, passing within two feet of me as he went through the archway.

  Thank God Cully is so tall. I spotted him immediately and flew to him like a bird homing to its particular tree. He was engaged in low-voiced conversation with a group of college people: Barbara, the Cochrans, Jeff Simmons, a couple of familiar faces I couldn’t label. I jerked at Cully’s coat. He swung round with a surprised look. When he saw my face, he mumbled an excuse over his shoulder and moved me away.

  ‘I have to get out of here,’ I said through clenched teeth. He saw I meant it, and quickly asked Theo to get Mimi home; and without waiting for an answer
he whisked me out the door and into the parking lot just in time. I sped to a clump of bushes on the far side, and I vomited.

  ‘Romantic, huh?’ I gasped between heaves. He wisely kept his mouth shut. I loved him so much for that that I could have kissed his hands. But love and throwing up, fear and throwing up, don’t blend. In the end, all you think about is throwing up.

  That night Cully’s training paid off in spades. He didn’t ask me any questions on the way home. He just murmured soothing things about a hot bath and bed, exactly what I’d been dreaming of myself. I leaned back against the car seat in a jelly of exhaustion. Things gradually quieted down internally.

  It wasn’t just the eerie conversation with Cully’s father that had upset me so violently, or Mimi’s painful withdrawal, or Ray’s hostility, though all had contributed. When I’d looked down at Alicia’s still face, I had seen my own. I had seen my longer, thinner hands folded on my waist.

  It had been a vile moment, worse than a glimpse of my mother dead drunk, worse than the leer I’d seen in my stepfather’s face; worse, even, than my rape. During that long ordeal, I’d known my enemy. He was right there on me. Now I didn’t know who he was, whether he was observing me, or whether his hatred of me was spent or active. I’d finally reached the end of my rope. My reserves of courage were exhausted. My almost-faded bruises seemed to take on new life. My gums around the loosened teeth ached. I thought I tasted blood in my mouth again.

  As I brushed my teeth in the blessed solitude of the bathroom, I decided it would suit me just fine if nothing ever happened to me again in my life. Nothing more distressing than misplacing my keys, nothing more elating than successfully matching some drapes to a rug. Yes, that would suit me just fine.

  To make myself feel better, I let myself dream dreams I normally would have dismissed from my mind. Would Cully ask me to marry him? Given the example of my own mother’s remarriage, the misalliance of Elaine and Don Houghton, and Cully’s and Mimi’s washouts, it was amazing that I wanted to contemplate marriage. But the dreams fed you as a child are almost impossible to dislodge. Those dreams can be very comforting when just being an adult is a burden.