Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  She looked straight at him, though. He sat on the far side of his folding card table. The space between them lay cluttered with dirty plates and an empty pizza box. More plates piled up in the sink. His plastic garbage can, stuffed to overflowing, stank like its contents had begun to compost. No air conditioning. The kitchen window was open, just a crack, letting a wave of humid alley air flutter through the cramped apartment. A bead of sweat pooled at the base of Marie’s neck.

  “Tell me again.”

  “I took her to see Eddie Li. Always the same place, this boutique hotel up in Harlem, near West 124th. She was in there two, maybe three hours. Then I’d take her home. I remember because I never had any trouble on those dates. Eddie didn’t pull any shit, like some of these guys do. She always looked, you know, okay after.”

  “I’m touched by your concern for her well-being.”

  Harlow’s baby face tensed up, his tiny eyes squinting. “I was, okay? Baby Blue was a friend of mine. You don’t spend that much time driving these girls around without caring a little.”

  Marie leaned a little closer and set her palms flat on the card table.

  “You said ‘was.’ Twice.”

  He bit his bottom lip, looking like a guilty kid in the principal’s office.

  “I saw your logs,” Marie told him. “You made one more trip that night. What was it, Harlow? She had a side thing, a chance to make some money and get out from under Beau Kates’s thumb. But she didn’t have any way to get to Monticello on her own. So what happened? Did she ask you for a ride? Offer to kick you some cash under the table, a little win-win?”

  “It ain’t like that.” His bottom lip trembled now, the big man almost on the verge of tears.

  “What’s it like, then?” Marie asked. “Tell me.”

  He finally met her gaze.

  “I had no idea. You got to understand that. I had no idea, not until after. She was a friend.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I want immunity,” he said.

  “Not my call. But if you cooperate, that’ll be in my report. If you got sucked into something, if you weren’t part of whatever happened to Baby Blue, I’ll believe you. I want to believe you, Harlow. But you have to help me out.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded.

  “I think it was a lie. I dunno who hired her, but she wouldn’t go all the way out to Monticello for a cheap date. She told me to keep it to myself, not to say nothin’ to Beau. Like it was a side thing and she was gonna keep all the cash for herself, you know? Maybe she was looking to build up a nest egg, get out of the life. Only…I don’t think she was ever going to get a dime.”

  “How do you know?” Marie asked.

  “I took her to that house. She went inside. And then Beau called me. He knew all about it, knew exactly where I was and where I’d taken her. He said…he said to just leave her there, that ‘the client’ would drive Baby Blue home when the party was over. It was weird. I mean, I knew it was weird, but I still didn’t think anything was wrong weird. Just business, right?”

  “And then?”

  “And then she never came home.” Harlow slumped in his chair. His gaze dropped to the table. “A couple days later, I went and talked to Beau. I asked him, you know, why he didn’t tell the cops about Monticello when he reported her missing. He told me…”

  He fell silent. The bead of sweat at the back of Marie’s neck became an icy finger, trickling down her spine.

  “What did he tell you, Harlow?”

  The big man clasped his hands. A penitent in prayer.

  “He told me he reported it so he wouldn’t look guilty. Just in case somebody figured out that Baby Blue wasn’t never coming back. And if I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me, I’d keep my mouth shut, too. He told me that it wasn’t him I had to worry about. That these people, they could get at me. They could get at me in my bed, in a cell in Rikers. There wasn’t no place I’d ever be safe again.”

  Marie’s chair scraped back on the dirty linoleum. She rose to her feet, her heartbeat steady and strong. Her pulse pounded like a war-drum beat calling her to battle. She had gasoline in her veins. The thought of Beau Kates, free on bail and hiding the truth while Baby Blue’s time ran out, was a lit match.

  “Your cooperation will be noted in my report,” she said, her voice tight as she turned away. Her hand was on the doorknob when he called after her.

  “You ever been tested, Detective?”

  She paused, looking back at him.

  “Tested?”

  “Most times,” he said, “life is easy. You do what you’re good at. I’m a big guy. I don’t mind throwing down, because I usually win. But I got that shit all wrong. See, I thought that made me a tough guy.”

  “What does it make you?” she asked.

  “My momma, she said there comes a time in everyone’s life when the Lord gives you a test. That moment when you go up against the wall and you find out what you’re really made of, deep down inside. It ain’t about winning or losing, it’s about learning. Because once you’ve seen the truth of what you are, you can’t never run away from it.”

  He took a deep breath, let it out, sagging in his chair.

  “Me? I found out I’m nothing but a coward. That girl’s gone because I let Beau tell me what to do, because I was too afraid to speak up.”

  Marie opened the door. “She’s not gone yet. I’m going to find her. And I’m going to bring her home.”

  “I hope you are, Detective. Because something tells me…you about to get tested, too.”

  Ten

  Nessa stared at the pink rejection slip on her desk blotter, the hastily-torn envelope from the Quarterly Journal of Anthropological Review, as if she might just be reading it wrong. As if she could read it one more time and the block letters on the page would magically transform into a letter of acceptance.

  Her office at Barnard was small, barely bigger than her secondhand desk, but at least it was hers. She’d appointed it with tiny comforts: a lavender-scented candle warmer on the edge of her blotter and a wall calendar with landscape art of the Scottish moors by moonlight. The pink slip was a jarring intrusion. She picked up the phone.

  “Jeffrey? It’s Professor Roth, over at Barnard. I’d like to talk to you about this form letter I just received.”

  A long-suffering sigh echoed over the phone. “Yeah, I…I figured you’d be calling.”

  She picked the slip up in her free hand. Her fingers crumpled the corner on impulse, the paper rustling. She felt more confused than angry, but the anger was still there, a low simmer in the pit of her stomach.

  “I mean, this is a form rejection. How many years have you been publishing my papers? You’ve had dinner at my house. I think I deserve a little better than that, don’t you? Was it a mistake? If it was a mistake—”

  “It wasn’t a mistake.”

  She fell silent, listening to him breathe.

  “And?”

  “Look, Vanessa, your early work was brilliant. Some of the best papers we’ve ever published, and I stand by that. But in the last couple of years you’ve…fallen off. The quality, the depth, it’s just not there anymore.”

  “What are you saying? That I peaked? I haven’t peaked, Jeffrey.”

  Another sigh. “This happens sometimes. A lot of female scholars—they get married, they start thinking about having kids, and the quality of their work drops. They’re just too distracted for the kind of academic rigor it takes to stay on top. It’s not uncommon.”

  Her jaw clenched.

  “Are you joking?” she said, her voice dangerously soft. “In what universe do you think it’s okay to say something like that? What decade do you think we’re living in? And I am not, for the record, having children.”

  “You might not be actively planning on it, but let’s be honest, you’re in your thirties and the biological clock isn’t just an abstract—”

  She hung up on him.

  Nessa crumpled the rejection slip into a ti
ny ball, along with the envelope it came in. Her gaze flicked to the clock on the wall. Time for class. She’d deal with this later. For now she could bottle her emotions and force a smile. Always smile, that’s what Richard told her. Nothing more important than keeping up appearances.

  She crossed paths with Dr. Milbourn, the Anthropology department chair, in the corridor outside her classroom. The older woman hurried past, books clenched to her chest, silver-gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. She paused at Nessa’s voice.

  “Sorry,” Nessa said, “don’t mean to interrupt, but you haven’t gotten back to me? About my email?”

  Milbourn winced. “I…right. Look, Professor, yes, you’re doing excellent work here, and the college is proud to have you on staff.”

  Nessa tilted her head, sensing the unspoken but. She waited for it to drop.

  “But we only have so many tenure slots,” the president said. “And in the end, they have to go to the best of the best. To the professors who really fight for it, who show they’re here to go the distance.”

  “I…thought I was doing that,” Nessa said, her hopes fading like a dying battery.

  “I’m sure that you’re trying your best,” Milbourn said and gave her a smile of abject pity.

  For just a moment, Nessa thought about the letter opener on her desk blotter. She wondered what it would feel like to ram it straight through Milbourn’s throat. She imagined the administrator’s expression changing from condescension to terror. The arterial blood spraying between her clenched fingers as she fell to her knees at Nessa’s feet. Right where she belonged.

  Milbourn took a halting step back. “Professor?”

  Nessa blinked, the fantasy shattered. “Yes?”

  Whatever she’d seen in Nessa’s eyes, it rattled her. She quickly sidestepped, head down, books clutched tight like a protective amulet. “Nothing. Never mind. I have to be going, I’m sorry. We’ll talk more later.”

  * * *

  There was nothing Nessa enjoyed less than reading her day planner and seeing the line 1p.m. – Dr. Neidermyer. Down in the glass canyons of Manhattan, she walked against the flow, fighting the tide of post-lunch-break workers heading back to the office and the milling, slow-walking tourists with their cell phones pointed at billboards and marquees. Nessa kept to the side and dodged one oncoming pedestrian after another. She felt like a ghost, like none of them could see her.

  A man in a power tie was coming her way, straight as an arrow. There was a gap in the foot traffic and they both had plenty of room to move. On a sudden whim, she didn’t. You move, she thought.

  He collided with her, hard enough to knock her aside, and kept on going.

  “Watch where you’re walking.” He barked the words, bristling and offended.

  “Sorry,” she said. The apology came out as a reflex. Something angry and primal uncoiled in her belly. She didn’t know what to do with the anger except turn it loose on herself, so she swallowed it down and kept walking.

  Ten minutes later she was up in Dr. Neidermyer’s office, a discreet and quiet room just off a discreet and quiet corridor. Floral photographs decorated the walls. A pristine box of tissue offered comfort on a glass table, beside his white leather therapy couch. He’d told her at their first session that the couch was largely an affectation. Most of his patients opted for the chairs on the other side of his desk, so they could talk eye-to-eye.

  Nessa preferred the couch. It was a chance to get off her feet for twenty minutes or so, and that was about the only tangible benefit she got from talking to the man. He sat beside her, a notebook on his knee, his pencil making low scratchy sounds over the air conditioner’s hum.

  “And your…manic episodes?” he asked, the questions ritual by now. “You haven’t had any flare-ups?”

  “Why don’t you ever ask me about my depression?”

  The bald man, his cheeks sallow, hunched over his pad. Scribbling.

  “It’s easier to check on the effectiveness of your medication if we focus on treating your mania.”

  “Explain,” she said.

  “Well, it’s…easier to quantify. Many people experience periods of sadness, of unhappiness, of simple dissatisfaction in life, and mistake those feelings for chemical depression.”

  “So you’re telling me,” Nessa said, “that I’m not qualified to tell you what I’m feeling.”

  He looked up, eyes wide. His head shook like a sped-up metronome.

  “Not at all, not at all. Only that self-diagnosis carries the risk of self-deception. Which is why I’m here, to help shepherd you to wellness. Let’s talk about your hobbies, shall we? Your husband is concerned. He says your artwork has taken a turn toward the morbid.”

  “Does it ever bother you,” she asked, “that discussing my treatment, and my therapy, with my husband is a gross breach of medical ethics? Sort of like the pills you slip me under the table.”

  He squinted at her. “You’ve never objected in the past.”

  “Maybe I should have.”

  “Yes, your treatment is a bit unorthodox, Vanessa, but considering your familial situation—”

  “Oh, yes. My husband is a very important man. His father is a very important man.” She lolled her head to one side, gazing at him with heavy-lidded eyes. “Wouldn’t do for me to be seen picking up my prescriptions in public. Can’t let anyone know Senator Roth’s daughter-in-law is crazy-cakes.”

  Neidermyer set down his pencil. “You are not ‘crazy,’ Vanessa. We don’t use that word here. Tell me about your day-to-day. What are your aspirations?”

  “Right now?” She turned her head again, looking up at the ceiling. “Most of the time, Doctor…most of the time I just want to be loved. To be adored. Cherished. I’d like to know what that feels like.”

  “Your husband loves you.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Is that your professional opinion based on careful analysis? Is he one of your patients, too?”

  Neidermyer plucked a tissue from the box. He put it to his mouth and let out a wet, hacking cough. He shifted in his chair.

  “No, but…but I know him, and I can hear the concern in his voice when he asks about you.”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Nessa said, “that he just left to spend the weekend with a younger and prettier woman. The funny thing is, what bothers me isn’t the deed, it’s that he won’t just tell me outright. It’s been two years since the last time we had sex, did you know that?”

  He rose from his chair, crossing to his desk, and tossed the crumpled tissue into a waste bin. “I’m not sure that’s—”

  “I think the miscarriage, that was the moment when everything went sour. When they told me that my insides were…well, that I wouldn’t be giving him a child. Apparently, that’s a deal-breaker in the Roth household. So that’s how it is. He prefers the company of his right hand, I prefer the company of a good book.”

  “You said you want to be loved ‘most of the time,’” Neidermyer said, red-faced. “What else do you want?”

  A faint, reptilian smile rose to Nessa’s lips.

  “Every once in a while, I think it might be nice to rule the world.”

  “I think everyone daydreams about that sometimes,” he said. “It’s a very common fantasy—”

  “I would be terrible, I think.”

  Neidermyer chuckled. He fished in his desk drawer. An unlabeled bottle of pills rattled in his hand.

  “Well, it’s just a fantasy. That’s a good mental exercise, though: instead of fearing you’d fail, imagine yourself as a successful leader.”

  She turned her head and locked eyes with him.

  “The word terrible, Doctor, has more than one meaning.”

  His gaze flitted to the clock on his desk.

  “Right, well, that’s…that’s all the time we have for today. Let’s keep you at your current dosage, and we’ll reevaluate in a few weeks. And please, Vanessa…trust your husband. Richard is a good man. He only has your best interests in mind, believe that.”


  Eleven

  The Vandemere Zoo in upstate New York had never been much of a tourist attraction. Bequeathed to the county by a dead industrialist with too much money and too few heirs, it had been built out of loyalty to his faded hometown instead of anything resembling good business sense. Nobody was surprised when the backwater zoo went bankrupt less than a decade after it opened, all the animals sold off to wealthier, better-run attractions, leaving the park a desolate wasteland. Now the terraced walkways stood empty, the amphibian tanks drained, the enclosures long vacant but still bearing the faint, clinging stench of soiled straw and dung. A skeleton crew of workers, paid for by the zoo’s new owners, came through once a month to trim back the weeds and groom the maze of pebbled paths.

  At the heart of the zoo stood a lodge, fashioned like a vintage log cabin. Once a visitors’ center and rented banquet hall, it now played host to an elite few. Their club had named themselves the Vandemere Lodge in honor of their new digs, but they’d had any number of names throughout the years. Names were a formality to be changed and shed as their needs demanded. Only their core values, and the strict bar to entry, remained.

  Dress code at the Vandemere may have been business casual, but nobody was slacking when it came to sartorial indulgence. Savile Row blazers and designer sweaters were the order of the day, spruced up with a few lapel pins or school ties here and there, just to spur the occasional bout of Harvard-versus-Princeton rivalry. Beneath rustic timbers, under the glassy eyes of a twelve-point buck’s head mounted over the crackling fireplace, Richard was in his element. He navigated the pine-patterned rugs and the swirl of conversation, cradling a crystal glass of cognac in his hand. There were maybe twenty men in all, mingling in the lodge hall, and another handful out on the elevated deck overlooking the abandoned zoo. He could see them through the wide windows, catching the pumpkin-orange sunset and taking out lighters. The faint tang of cigar smoke wafted in through the propped-open door on a cool evening breeze.