The Edge of Reason

by Melinda Snodgrass

The tension ebbed. People returned to their desks though their heads still craned, trying to hear. Ortiz sighed and scrubbed a hand across his face. “Mom, huh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Yeah, you can go. Just let us know when you’ll be back. It’s gonna be hell to cover for you this time of year.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Ortiz just waved Richard off. It was all the encouragement he needed. Richard quickly loaded up his briefcase and bolted. A few of the other detectives started to say something to him, but he froze them with a look.

  The fifth skull was surfacing when Angela’s cell phone rang. The local coroner, standing next to her, had a poleaxed expression as he stared down at a tarp covered with a jigsaw puzzle of tumbled bones. Angela had maintained a clinical aloofness, but she couldn’t help wondering if serial killers were somehow linked to the Old Ones.

  “Maybe that’s the Fucking Big Idiots,” Angela said to him. The bitter cold and dry wind hissing across the high plateau had leached all the moisture out of her skin. She felt one of the cracks on her chapped lips break open as she spoke, and tasted salt and copper as she licked away the bead of blood.

  “They gotta take over. I can’t handle this,” the man said plaintively.

  “They’ll take over,” Angela said, and answered.

  But it was Richard. “You don’t need to go to Rhode Island.” His normally lyric tenor was clipped and tight. “My mother …” There was a cough, then the voice resumed, tight with control. “My mother has died.”

  “Oh, God, Richard, I’m … I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  “I can come out as soon as—”

  “No. Leave me alone. Please. I know it’s not fair, but I’m pretty angry with all of you right now. Just give me some time and some space.”

  “I understand,” she said quietly, but she was talking to a dead phone.

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  It had been a hellish trip. As he sat at O’Hare, delayed by snow and ice, Richard briefly regretted refusing Kenntnis’s offer of the plane. But the Lumina corporate jet might have been grounded as well, and he would have had to accept charity from Kenntnis, whom he blamed for his mother’s death. When he wasn’t blaming himself.

  He finally reached T.F. Green Airport at 3:00 a.m. after catching a connecting flight at Boston’s Logan Airport. Exhaustion dragged at every muscle as he shuffled down the Jetway. Behind him the young couple who had sat in the row in front of him were still squabbling, and their tiny baby still whooped out his distress. Ahead an elderly couple kept everyone moving at their own snail’s pace. The husband, face sagging with weariness, pushed his walker like a man moving boulders. His wife, her seamed face soft with concern and love, kept touching his shoulder as if to feed him energy. Richard wondered if the young couple would last to loving old age.

  My parents won’t, now, he thought. And did they ever really love each other?

  Luggage collected, he made his way out on the sidewalk in front of the airport. The air was damp and carried a hint of brine from Narragansett Bay. Richard turned toward the taxi stand. It held only two cars. Behind their steering wheels the drivers dozed. A horn honked once. Richard looked back and saw a green Mercedes sedan rolling toward him. Amelia was driving and she was alone. Relief flooded through him. He wasn’t ready to face his father yet.

  She pulled up to the curb, jumped out and hugged him fiercely. He could feel her shoulders shaking. A security guard began to drift toward them. In the seemingly endless war on terrorism even family reunions had to be cut short. Amelia opened the trunk and Richard dumped in his suitcases. He noted the bag of soccer balls and the set of golf clubs. One was clearly for Paul and the other for her husband, Brent. Richard wondered if there was ever anything for Amelia.

  As they drove he studied her profile. He hadn’t seen either of his sisters for two years. Amelia was the eldest. Despite being only thirty-four, her dark blond hair had streaks of gray.

  The question could be delayed no longer. “What happened?” Richard asked. “What drove her to do this?”

  “I don’t know.” Amelia paused, shook her head sadly. “You seem to have been the only member of the family who sensed she was upset,” she said. “I mean, you called me about it. But then the two of you were always close.”

  “Obviously not close enough.” He discovered that guilt had a taste. He swallowed convulsively several times.

  “You’re living in New Mexico,” she replied and her tone sharpened. Richard knew it was irritation over his profession and where it had taken him.

  “And Papa lived with her,” Richard said and he couldn’t hide the bitterness.

  “I’m not going to respond to that,” Amelia said and they didn’t speak again until they had left the freeway and commercial streets had given way to residential neighborhoods.

  That gave him a lot of time to reflect on his conversation with Mark Grenier in Colorado Springs a lifetime ago, the phone call after Sal Verzzi’s arrival, and now this. His mother’s might have been the hand that acted, but he was certain Grenier’s people had been there, quietly manipulating, tormenting, goading and encouraging.

  So now he had to find them, and … Do what? He couldn’t prove anything. Anymore than he could prove they had tried to kill him. Or killed those kids. As Kenntnis said, they never left fingerprints. Pain stabbed through the hinge of his jaw and Richard forced his tightly clenched teeth apart. Looking out the window, he drew in several long breaths to calm himself and watched the headlights illuminate their surroundings.

  After New Mexico, where clean air and lack of humidity made it possible to see seventy or eighty miles, Rhode Island felt claustrophobic. Where there weren’t houses, the trees pressed close to the roads. Only when they crossed over the bay heading toward Newport was there any relief from the press of humanity. No stars penetrated the smeared gray overcast. After the cumulus castles that formed over the mountains and deserts of the west it just looked dirty.

  As they approached Newport the houses became more impressive. Small lots gave way to third- and even half-acre swathes of grass and trees. No walls disturbed the sweep of lawns between the houses. Snow lingered on the north side of bushes and walls.

  But impressive is a relative term, and overlooking the Rhode Island Sound were the “cottages.” A coy word to describe grandiose waterfront mansions built as testaments to the power and wealth of robber barons.

  They were only a few turnings from home when Richard broke the silence. “How did she … ?” But he couldn’t finish the sentence. Mercifully Amelia wasn’t obtuse.

  “Pills washed down with cognac.”

  Amelia spun the wheel, taking them into a cul-de-sac. The headlights played across red brick and glittered in mullioned windows. High up under the eaves on the third floor, a round window with long pie-shaped wedges of glass drew his eye. The long room behind it, running the length of the house, had been his room from age five until he went away to college.

  The glow from the porch light reflected off the silver bells hung on the holly wreath. They rang softly as Amelia pushed open the heavy oak door. Their footsteps were loud on the parqueted marble floor of the entryway. The air was redolent with frankincense.

  Footsteps came tapping toward them, but it was the rhythm of high heels, not his father’s deliberate tread. Pamela appeared in the archway. She was dressed in professional woman chic, straight skirt and long flaring jacket in black wool, a scarf pinned to the lapel of her jacket with a pearl and silver pin. Her light brown hair was twisted up in a chignon. She was thirty-one and looked younger. Richard reflected that both his sisters were eighty-hour-a-week workers, but obviously a husband and child added to the toll, for Amelia looked older than her years.

  His approach was wary and Pamela bent stiffly and offered a cheek. He saluted it with a quick kiss.

  “Come into the kitchen.
That way we won’t disturb Papa,” Pamela said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Have you eaten at all today?” Amelia asked.

  “Not since breakfast.”

  “Then hungry or not, you need to eat something,” and she made it sound like doctor’s orders.

  The kitchen hadn’t been remodeled but left as a relic of the Edwardian era. A large brick fireplace dominated the back wall. Copper pots hung from a large wrought-iron caddy. Opposite the fireplace loomed a gigantic mahogany buffet, loaded with the everyday china service and all manner of glasses. Between the two stretched a long table. Many a school project had been tackled at that table. Richard remembered making a diorama of a volcano for third grade. There had been an improbable herd of dinosaurs of all varieties grazing at the foot of that ominous peak. Children are so willing to deal out death because they haven’t experienced it, he thought.

  Someone had cooked. A turkey. It seemed a bad choice, a reminder of a blighted holiday. Under the warm grease smell of roasted flesh, vanilla added its richness to the air.

  “Sandwich, or do you want it heated?” Pamela asked as she pulled a tray heaped with carved turkey slices out of the refrigerator.

  “Sandwich.”

  Pamela began assembling it. “Well, she finally got the attention she craved,” she said.

  Richard didn’t pretend not to understand. The same old game was starting with his nearest sibling. “For God’s sake, Pamela, if you can’t muster up any grief at least show a little respect!”

  “I ran out of that years ago!”

  They stood quivering. Amelia broke it up as she always had. “Pamela! Stop baiting! And Richard stop … well, just stop.” Pamela hunched a shoulder and began putting away the sandwich fixings. “This isn’t anyone’s fault.”

  Yes it is. It’s mine. I knew and did nothing. But Richard didn’t say it aloud because it sounded nuts and would just start another fight with Pamela.

  Amelia patted him on the arm. “Here, sit down and eat.”

  He did and even tried a bite, but the food seemed to enlarge as he chewed and a constriction in his throat kept him from swallowing. Finally he choked it down, but knew he’d never manage another. Richard shredded the sandwich, hoping the destruction would hide how little he had actually eaten.

  “What are the arrangements?” he asked.

  “The viewing this afternoon. Service tomorrow morning with internment at noon. Naturally we’ll be home to visitors after that.” The list was ticked off briskly by Pamela. “Uncle David, Aunt Mary and the kids are arriving tonight. Hollyburn’s agreed to stay open a little late so David can have his chance to say good-bye since the service itself will be closed casket.”

  David was his mother’s only sibling. Six years younger, David Claasen had been a Wall Street banker before a car crash put him in a wheelchair. He decided that life was too short, quit his job, moved to Vermont, bought a gift shop, married an Earth mother, sired six kids, and became a general embarrassment to his family, friends and in-laws. Until I trumped him, thought Richard.

  “What about Brent and Paul?” Pamela asked

  “They’ll be in this morning. Probably around ten,” Amelia answered.

  “Tomorrow night we’ll put all the kids in your old room, but you can stay there for now. We haven’t got all the guest rooms ready yet,” Pamela said to Richard.

  “I’d …” Richard coughed. “I’d like to see her before.” The lump tightened his throat and he blinked, hoping to keep the betraying moisture at bay.

  Pamela nodded. Amelia stood and picked up his plate. “Since you aren’t going to eat we should all get to bed. Grab a few hours at least.”

  It was strange to be back in his old bedroom, as strange as if adulthood had not intervened. From this side the stained glass gathered the light from the streetlights and flung it in multicolored shards across the hardwood floor. The antique sleigh bed was covered by a handmade quilt sewn by his great-grandmother. It echoed the colored wedges formed by the window. A marble-topped antique dresser surmounted by a tall mirror, a rocking chair built by great-great-great-grandfather Nicholas Oort, and bookcases were the only other furniture.

  Only a few relics of childhood remained—the model ships he’d built and the case filled with beloved books. The Jungle Book, The Wind in the Willows, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Richard sank down on the floor and pulled out the Verne book. The book fell open to his favorite section, where Nemo and the Professor walked across the floor of the sea and examined the pearl in the womb of the giant clam.

  Oddly, what returned weren’t memories of his mother but of his father. Robert had always been the one to read from Verne. And another memory surfaced. Being buried beneath quilts in that double bed, burning with fever while his father held him and hummed a wordless song of Robert’s own creation. Those baritone notes had rumbled with comfort. Richard returned to the present and accepted emotionally what he had intellectually always known; that his music came not from Alannis, but from his father.

  Why had he denied it?

  Richard wasn’t certain which he he meant. The father who rejected that side of himself or the son who couldn’t accept the father had ever possessed it?

  His shoulders felt too high, relieved of the dragging burden of the shoulder holster and gun. He felt naked. Richard looked at the shoulder rig hung on the rocking chair. The weight of the pistol pulled the rocker backward.

  He couldn’t wear a gun into church, to his mother’s funeral. But he was carrying the sword. How was that any different?

  Because it’s irreplaceable and I’m afraid. They killed her.

  Richard shrugged into his coat, and paused before the mirror to straighten his tie. The black and dark gold paisley swirls seemed too bright against the material of his shirt. The charcoal gray suit and black shirt heightened the paleness of his skin and silver gilt hair, and turned his eyes into pale blue ice chips. He slipped on the family signet ring and watch, and squared his shoulders. It was time to face the day.

  From the second floor the stairs became a great sweeping curve depositing you in the living room. His sisters had descended those stairs, long gowns trailing, white gloved hands gripping the bannister as they set out for their debutante balls. Young men with inexpertly knotted white ties had waited at the foot of the stairs, clasping corsages in damp hands. Richard’s memories were of sliding down the bannister until a broken wrist and the worst spanking of his life had made that game a lot less fun.

  Three hours of sleep hadn’t left him at his best. His eyelids felt coated with sand, and wisps of cloud had replaced cogent thought. It wasn’t until he reached the foot of the stairs that he remembered Pamela’s plans to put the kids in his old room. He went back upstairs for his piece. He would have the judge lock it in the safe. But before he faced his father with a gun in his hand, Richard decided to fortify himself with some food.

  Unfortunately the plan didn’t work. Robert wasn’t in his study. He was in the kitchen, seated at the table, with the New York Times held up in front of him like a barricade. A cup of coffee sat near his right elbow. He wore a dark suit with a windowpane of grays and purples and dark lavender. He seemed aged far beyond his sixty-two years. Richard noticed that the judge’s eyes weren’t moving. The paper was just a prop.

  “Good morning, sir,” Richard said and the paper crackled as the judge’s hands closed convulsively on the edges.

  “Good morning. Amelia tells me you arrived very late.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Robert’s eyes fell on the shoulder rig and pistol and the corners of his mouth pulled down, etching lines in his thin cheeks.

  Richard hurried into speech. “We need to get this into the safe before the kids arrive.”

  “Yes, we do, and Brent and Paul are already here, so come along.” Robert took a sip of coffee and made a face. He crossed to the sink and poured it out.

  Ri
chard’s stomach rumbled with hunger. “Just one minute, please.” He opened the bread box and pulled out a slice. Saliva burst in his mouth as the rich yeasty smell hit his nostrils.

  He devoured the bread in quick small bites as he followed Robert across the entryway and down the hall to the study. It was a man’s room. The large cherrywood desk was tucked neatly in the bay window. There were two enormously tall wingbacked chairs flanking a fireplace detailed in Delft blue tiles. Underfoot was a geometric oriental carpet in deep shades of red and blue. Glass-fronted bookcases were filled with hardcover books. Most of them were legal texts.

  The gun was safely stowed in the floor safe under the false flagstone on the hearth.

  “Do you remember the combination?” Robert asked as he spun the dial.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I would prefer you leave it here during the duration of your visit.”

  “Yes, sir. I can’t imagine I’ll be needing it.”

  “I can’t imagine why you ever wanted it,” said Robert.

  It was an invitation to begin anew the endless, circular discussions that had accompanied his announcement that he’d been accepted into the police academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  Richard ignored the verbal gauntlet and threw out one of his own. “Sir, are you certain it was suicide?” Perhaps they had made a mistake and there would be something with which to attack them.

  Robert jumped to his feet, whirled to face Richard. His hand rested on the mantel and the knuckles were white. “Kindly don’t try to play policeman games with me, Richard. It was suicide. She left a note.”

  “Oh. Amelia didn’t tell me that.” Richard slid the stone back into place and stood.

  “She didn’t know about the note because I destroyed it.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “She said things about you,” Robert answered.

  There was that feeling that his stomach had been replaced with a small animal consisting of only teeth and claws. “What kind of things?”