by Lee Goodman
Barnaby slept the whole way. It was after eleven at night when we arrived. Barn woke up when Tina carried him into the cabin. I unloaded the car while Tina snuggled Barnaby in the bed until he fell back asleep. I fed ZZ, then he and I walked out for a quick look at the lake in moonlight, then back inside and into bed. I’d hoped to lure Tina over for some snuggling of our own, but she was apparently asleep, too. ZZ jumped onto the bed, turned some circles on the quilt, and curled up beside me for the night.
In the morning I made a fire in the woodstove. Tina made coffee while Barn and I went outside. He was on my shoulders, ordering me this way and that way. We walked out on the dock and peered into the water to see if we could spot any trout. The air was cold and smelled like fall, that combination of sodden leaves and wood smoke. It was the time in autumn—that psychological moment—when the lake goes from looking cool and inviting to seeming cold and thick and concealing.
Tina called us for breakfast. Barn zoomed inside, legs and arms pumping.
Lizzy and Ethan arrived in early afternoon. Henry showed up a bit later. They all put their overnight stuff in Flora’s cabin. Hers had two bedrooms separate from the main room, while mine was one common space.
Ethan, Henry, and I went to pick up supplies in town. It’s a small town where a dingy consignment shop occupies the plate-glass storefront that Woolworth’s vacated several decades ago. The grocery store has changed owners and names half a dozen times. But the hardware and “dry goods” store has been a constant. The rural hub—the bigger town where you go if you need anything more than bare essentials—is forty miles to the south.
Henry and Ethan went to get beer and a few extra groceries while I went to the hardware store; some of the boards in our dock needed replacing. I collected what I needed and waited at the checkout behind a sixtyish woman with a cart full of painting supplies. She didn’t look rural. Her clothes were stylish, her hair and makeup neither wholly ignored nor overly exuberant. She surveyed the store and her fellow shoppers with the inquisitive eye of a tourist.
“Are you a visitor?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” she said. “Born here, but I moved away years ago. My husband and I just bought a summer place over on Tamarack Lake.”
I knew Tamarack Lake. Pricy homes. Some developer had bought up lakeshore, put in a road lined with faux-colonial gas lamps, and built a handful of vacation homes. There were rumors of a golf course coming soon.
“Nick Davis,” I said, offering my hand.
She shook but didn’t let go of my hand. She peered at me over her half-frames, puzzling about something. She seemed to have gotten stuck in a cerebral cul-de-sac.
“And you are . . . ?” I said. I slid my hand out of hers.
“Yes, I see it now,” she said. “Older and grayer, like all of us, but I see you. I, I recognize you. You were the lawyer. DA. Prosecutor. Whatever.”
“Should I know . . .”
She laughed. It was a confident laugh. “No, you and I didn’t have business directly. My business was with your son. I was a nurse. Retired now, but a nurse down at the hospital. Pediatrics.”
A tingle traveled my spine.
“Such a beautiful boy,” she said. “And so happy. So stoic.” She was talking about Toby. He’d had hemophilia. Flora and I would rush him those forty miles to the hospital whenever he started hemorrhaging. “It was my first real job out of nursing school,” the woman said. “Probably that’s why I remember so well.”
Toby had been gone for almost thirty years. I think of him as existing nowhere but in my memory, and in Flora’s. But here was someone who actually remembered him. It made him real. I found her hand in mine again—my doing, I think, holding it in both my hands while I tried to figure out how to respond. I wanted to know her. I didn’t want to let go.
We made a big dinner. Everyone pitched in. I grilled fish outdoors on the barbecue, but it was too cold to eat out there, so we all sat around the big pine-slab table in the cabin. I sat beside Barnaby’s booster chair.
“Dad,” Lizzy said, “where are you? You seem, like, far away.”
“Sorry. Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Family,” I said. “How great it is to have us all here.” This was true and false. It was great to have us all together, but that wasn’t why I was quiet. I was still moved by my encounter at the hardware store. It was more of a feeling than a thought. It was the feeling of something having happened. It was the sense of awakening from a good dream that you can’t remember but want to get back to; the feeling of being lighter in the literal world, having slipped a foot across the line into another kind of place.
Liz smiled at me. Conversation was going on around us. I don’t think anyone else had heard her comment or noticed my spaciness. I would tell her about Toby’s nurse when I had a chance: a story for Lizzy and me to share about her brother. I knew she would like that.
“This must be the peak of foliage,” Henry said. And just that simple comment made me feel fond of him. I could see he was struggling. He’d spent a couple of weekends here with Lydia in May and June. He must have missed her terribly, but he was making an effort.
Barnaby yelled, “I want to get down,” and before I got up, Henry stood and lifted Barn from his booster. Instead of putting Barnaby down on the floor, he said, “Hey, Barnstormer, how about some fresh air? I’ll teach you to skip stones on the lake.”
Henry walked outside with Barnaby in his arms. I watched them through the cabin window. I knew Henry needed to get away from us for a bit, to calm the mental chaos of being back here without Lydia. That he took Barnaby with him was touching: finding solace in the companionship of a child. He held Barn tentatively, lacking the self-assurance Tina and I had with our son. But that scene—the two of them together as Henry carried him to the lakeshore—elicited something. I was full of magical thoughts about Toby at that moment, my encounter with the nurse having somehow brought Toby back toward the threshold of existence, and the two boys blended in my mind. For an instant it was Toby in Henry’s arms, and I got up and went out to join them. I had the thought of throwing my arms around the two of them—the wounded and fragile Henry, and the boy who was both my sons at once—but it was only an impulse.
I walked over as Henry put Barn down by the shore of the lake, and in the cool autumn dusk, the three of us threw stones into black water.
CHAPTER 18
Tina was quiet for most of the drive back to the city. I was blissed out with the feelings of a weekend with family. It was so great having Lizzy and Ethan there, having Henry along as one of us, and then to find Toby so unexpectedly summoned into my heart and mind. I felt happy, and I wondered if Tina and Henry were able to experience happiness yet. Tina didn’t seem like herself, but I hoped time would eventually work its magic.
I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not. Her eyes were closed and we didn’t talk and she didn’t change out CDs, but she was restless, changing positions a lot, trying to get comfortable. At one point I thought she was awake and I said softly, “Great weekend, wasn’t it, babe?” but she didn’t answer.
We approached the city: exit ramps, lane changes, towering streetlamps above the interchanges lighting up the car.
Tina sat up. “I’m not happy,” she said.
“About what, babe?”
She brought her feet up onto the seat, put her arms around her knees, and laid her head on her knees, facing away from me. “Us,” she said.
I tried to get more out of her, but she kept her head turned away from me and said, “Another time, Nick. We’ll talk. I just don’t have the energy right now. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I hardly slept. I couldn’t think how to approach Tina about her unhappiness. Chip called me at six in the morning to say that Jimmy Mailing was dead. Dorsey had just called him. Police had found Mailing’s car, and a body they presumed to be Mailing’s, in a parking area at Rokeby Park.
“Got to go,” I told Tina, and I was out the door. I stopped at a
drive-through for coffee, and then drove to the park. It wasn’t at the amphitheater but at a small gravel lot at the far end of the park. A car had been driven off into the trees, where it was concealed.
My Glock was in the locked glove box. I left it there. I’d have felt silly carrying it with all the real cops around.
Yellow tape was already strung; the evidence response team had just arrived. Chip pulled in behind me. Dorsey briefed us: An early-morning runner had called it in. The police ran the plates, which came back registered to Mailing, who was still wanted under a federal contempt warrant for not appearing at the grand jury.
Dorsey and I approached the car, a small SUV. I’m not really used to crime scenes. I attend them only when they relate to an active case I’m involved in or when, as with Lydia, I happen to be in the neighborhood. At this scene, as with Lydia’s, I was comforted to find Dorsey at my side.
The body was tipped over sideways across both front seats. There was blood spatter on the windshield and dashboard. I couldn’t see the face from where I stood.
“Mr. Mailing is known to you?” Dorsey asked.
I turned away, pretending to clear my throat because I felt that reflexive constriction of throat muscles. I retched quietly, but nothing came up. “Yes, he was known to us,” I said. “But are we sure this is really Mailing?”
Dorsey said, “Do you recognize him?”
There was a lot of blood. He was lying on his right side, and I could see the entry wound behind his ear. The guy’s face—what I could see of it—looked out of shape, probably from dying on his side like that. His mouth sagged toward the seat, which was black with dried blood. I couldn’t really see what he looked like, so I walked around to the passenger side and peered in through the windshield: narrow face, short dark hair. “Pretty sure that’s him,” I said.
Chip came over and looked.
“We’d better have a sit-down,” I said. “Your guys and mine. Assume Mailing was killed because of things he knew.”
Chip left. I stayed and watched as the crime scene techs did their work. I couldn’t tell whether they found anything significant. They got the body into the coroner’s van. Dorsey was alone for a moment, so I said, “What’s it look like, Captain?”
He shrugged. “You saw what I saw. Doesn’t look like there was a struggle, does it? Probably a prearranged meeting. Killer approached the car to talk, then pulled the gun and killed him.”
I called Janice, my assistant, and asked her to set up a meeting with Upton and Chip and anyone else Chip wanted involved. Sooner, the better.
It was still early when I left the crime scene. I drove over to the FBI and took my Glock into the basement, where I dotted the paper target with holes. I was getting better: several shots to the head and heart, a few to the organs and extremities, and only a couple off into the wild blue.
Janice called back and said the joint meeting on Mailing’s murder would be held at the FBI in twenty minutes.
I went up to the conference room. Chip was there with his colleague, Special Agent Isler, and their boss, FBI Section Chief Neidemeyer. Upton came and so did Pleasant Holly. Dorsey showed up; though it had gone all federal, the troopers had responded to the murder this morning.
“Let’s make this quick,” Neidemeyer said.
It was quick. Isler led the discussion. He said that Jimmy Mailing was reputed to be Billman’s chief errand boy. “Mailing probably had the most knowledge of who was getting paid to do what.”
The Bureau had no physical evidence pointing toward anyone, but based on motive and reputation, they had two suspects in mind. The first was Subsurface’s VP for operations, reputed to have fanatical loyalty to Billman. The second was a state senator known to be way too cozy with Subsurface and Bud Billman.
Neidemeyer said, “Shall we ask these guys to come in and chat?”
“They’re both under subpoena to the grand jury on the corruption probe,” I said. “If they know they’re persons of interest in a murder investigation, they might be less forthcoming. Let’s hold off.”
“Carry on, then,” Neidemeyer said. The meeting was over.
In the evening, I read Barn a story and put him to bed, then took ZZ to Rokeby Park. Back in July, I’d only pretended I was going for a run. I had felt compelled to be in the park at night, almost as if I could undo something—like, if I was there and prepared and willing, I could rearrange everything that had gone haywire. It was a passing feeling, long gone now, but I kept going to the park anyway; though I was helpless against the last bad thing, maybe I could head off the next one. I felt useless hanging at home while, out in the black beyond, the next in an inevitable sequence of bad things was swirling itself into existence. I pictured these things like the nascent hurricanes you see in satellite photos: an immensity, indiscernible up close but which, if you get far enough back to look down on the whole of everything, you can discern with absolute clarity. So I kept going out into the night with ZZ, and since I was going out anyway, I actually did start running. I’d never been a runner, but now I surprised myself by enjoying it. I would go running and then get home all sweaty, and I’d peel off my clothes and take a quick shower, feeling strong and youthful, feeling that I’d done something.
I ran. And on this particular night I picked at the idea of Tina’s unhappiness. She was prone to phases. Of course she was unhappy. Her sister had been murdered. I had asked a few times since then if she wanted to talk. She always said no, in a voice implying that her discontentment had just been a momentary thing. I had let myself think things were mostly okay now. Except that I glimpsed it in her from time to time. I decided I should keep signaling my willingness to talk, but if she kept declining, it would do me no good to pester. She would feel beleaguered. No, it was better for me to quietly work on being more attentive, more present, more “wonderful.”
When I got home, I took my shower and went up to the office. Tina was there, inhabiting the glow from her desk lamp, her back toward the door but the window above her desk making a mirror, as it always does at night. She looked at me, and I smiled and went over and kissed her on the head, then I settled into my cockpit. “How you doing, sweetie?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“We never finished talking,” I said.
She turned to face me, but I didn’t see happiness or annoyance or melancholy in her eyes. She looked perplexed.
I hadn’t been surprised the previous night, when she’d said she wasn’t happy. I realize now, looking back on it all, that Tina has never been all in. No doubt she could give you a laundry list of reasons for her reticence, but the bottom line is that I have a way of irritating her. True, when life is calm, she’s not as susceptible to being irritated, but when times get tough, she seems to find me less and less tolerable.
“You told me you were unhappy,” I said. “Maybe we should—”
“I didn’t say I was unhappy. I said I wasn’t happy.”
“And there’s a difference?”
“Huge.”
“Well, I’m available to talk anytime you want.”
“Maybe another time,” she said.
CHAPTER 19
I skipped work and went to pick Lizzy up in Turner. We drove through rural wetlands on our way to intercept the interstate farther to the south. It was early. Mist still lay on the surface of cattail marshes.
This was the first chance Liz and I had had to spend time alone since Lydia’s murder. I was on my way to see a lawyer down near the state line a couple of hours away. Lizzy was along for the ride.
“Let’s enjoy the morning,” Lizzy said. “There’s a pullout a few miles up.”
I gave her a questioning look.
“Ethan and I drove down here a couple times to hike the Wishbone Trail,” she said.
There was so much about this girl that I didn’t know. For the past few years she’d been spending more and more time at her mom’s house because her school and all her friends were out in Turner, and because Flora’s house ha
s more privacy than mine. It might also have been because Flora’s husband, Chip, is more laid-back than Tina.
I pulled into the wayside where Lizzy showed me. We parked facing the marsh and sat with the car doors open, drinking coffee from to-go cups and eating carrot muffins she’d baked.
“Good muffins,” I said.
“Liar,” she said, making a face at her muffin. “Maybe I forgot the sugar.”
Lizzy was being humble. She didn’t forget anything. More likely she’d gotten the recipe from one of Flora’s cookbooks that didn’t believe in sugar.
I said, “You know, Liz, if you’re not going traveling anytime soon, I might be able to use your help with a few things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Research things. Investigation things. I was thinking if—”
“Wait, shush,” she said. “Listen.” She got out of the car and peered off into the cattails. “Hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Creak creak drip. Like an old pump.”
I listened. I heard it. Creak creak drip. “What is it?”
“It’s a bittern. A kind of heron.”
“How do you . . . ?”
“Ethan likes birds,” she said. “Sometimes we get up early and go out looking.”
Creak creak drip.
“And speaking of Ethan,” I said, “how are things?”
“Okay, I guess,” she said. “He really loves me.”
“Reciprocated?”
She sighed. “Yes. Sometimes.”
“You’re still young,” I said, and immediately hated myself for coming up with such pablum. “I mean . . .”
“How are things?” Lizzy said.
I didn’t answer. She waited. So I said, “It’s been a tough few years. And now Tina’s really grieving for her sister.”
Lizzy nodded.
Creak creak drip.
Renfield is a small city—the kind where you can’t figure out why anyone lives there. The surrounding land is wet and shrubby. It is monotonous, lacking the mountains and picturesque lakes of the north country. The economy is depressed; towns are small and seem to run mostly on inertia. Renfield is a paper-mill town, but unlike the defunct textile mills up in the city, the economic engine of Renfield Paper, anemic though it is, still chugs.