You Made Your Bed: A Novel

by Cornelia Goddin

  I mumble some kind of nonsense to Natalie, throw some bills on the table, and fly out of there like I myself am one of the birds from the Black Forest mantel clock, my wings black and oily, my scream able to break glass.

  The bag is sitting on the slipper chair next to the window, placed there no doubt by Marecita when she came in to make my bed and straighten up this morning. Does she take any interest in my things? Does she go through them, looking for anything interesting, maybe even trying on my clothes? The thought has never occurred to me before. I’ve never once imagined that I needed to worry about Marecita’s access to my stuff, except of course for drugs, which I have always been careful to keep hidden, partly to safeguard my reputation with her, but also to protect her.

  The stuff in the bag—the wig, the jeans, the glasses—was carelessly shoved in and that’s how it looks now, messy and disorganized. I feel a measure of relief, except that if I were going through someone’s stuff I wouldn’t be so stupid as to fold it if I had found it messy. Marecita is no fool either.

  Have I slipped off into paranoia, or am I sensibly evaluating potential problems?

  These details matter, because if it turns out that Wilson is in fact dead—which I have no confirmation of—there will almost certainly be an investigation. If there is an investigation, there will be an autopsy. And then I will just have to hope and pray that the Little Dutch Boy has done a better job than it feels like he’s doing. Because right now, everywhere I look is another leak and it’s feeling like the water will be up around my neck before anyone even knows my brother’s dead.

  If he even is.

  I wasn’t ready. A murder—it takes time to do it right. There are ten million angles to think through and then you have to turn it all around and think all ten thousand back in the other direction. I didn’t have time for that. I used myself up trying to prevent the murder, rather than plan it. What else have I overlooked in my haste, in my desperation—?

  I will say this: that despite what I’ve done, part of me—when I’m stripped all the way bare, when the herky-jerky psycho side effects of drug withdrawal are subtracted—part of me is rooting for Wilson to make it. Maybe even the larger part (certainly the human part) is hoping that he puked up that Amanita phalloides before any real trouble got started.

  Of course then I’d have to figure out another way of preventing law enforcement from showing up on the doorstep. The little bean and I might have to flee the country. But I make a solemn swear that if Wilson survives, I will not try again. I will, in very un-Crowelike fashion, accept what the fates have decreed.

  The prospect of that—of giving up, of letting go of the outcome—actually brings me a great deal of relief, very nearly like the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Faint, to be sure, but unexpectedly welcoming.

  43

  Detective Scotty Franks, forty-one-year veteran of the Berkeley Police Department, lets out a mighty groan when his cell rings before 6:00 a.m.

  “What the fuck,” he says in greeting.

  The dispatcher chuckles. “Late night, Scotty?”

  “I was in bed by nine after a glass of Ovaltine.”

  “Huh?”

  “Forget it, you’re too goddamn young.”

  The dispatcher gives him the location and then Scotty hangs up. He wanted to have a leisurely breakfast, maybe go to that new place a few blocks away where they make their own sausage.

  I’m too fucking old for this, he thinks, putting on yesterday’s rumpled clothes and strapping on his service revolver. He gives his gray brush cut a rub with one hand, not bothering to wash his face, much less shave.

  Scotty takes his motorcycle, wanting to get out there in a hurry before anyone’s had much of a chance to screw around with a potential crime scene. He arrives at the location in Tilden Park just as the sun’s starting to edge up over the trees. He turns the headlight off, breathing in the astringent eucalyptus air. Up ahead he sees the body lying in the trail, and a young woman digging around in a backpack.

  Even though he’s tired and feels old, the sight of the body stirs something in him, like it does every time.

  “Morning,” he says to Andie Frazer, a cute tech young enough to be his daughter. “How’d you get here so fast?”

  Andie points at her bicycle leaning against a tree. “I live right on the edge of the park,” she says. “I could’ve found him myself, I ride up this way all the time.”

  “What about those goddamn steps back there?”

  She grins at him. “I’d be a little happier if a breeze kicked up. DRT was having a little tummy trouble,” she says, pointing to the pool of brown liquid under Wilson’s body.

  Scotty waves his hand in front of his nose and shrugs. “Who found him?”

  “A runner. Called in to say a wildcat probably killed him.”

  “Dumbass.”

  “Yeah.”

  Scotty clicks into work mode, first focusing his attention around the body. He checks the surrounding dirt for footprints, tire tracks, any stray bits of anything, but sees nothing but dusty tracks, nothing fresh beyond what are almost certainly the victim’s own scrabblings in the dust. He walks around the body slowly, crouching low and standing up, looking at him from every angle.

  “Hundred bucks says he was poisoned,” he says.

  Andie puts her hands on her hips. “You do not know that,” she says, though she’s aware Scotty Franks has a reputation for not losing bets. “Odds are it’s a heart attack—we’ve seen how many dead runners this year?”

  “They weren’t found lying in a pool of shit, not like this. They didn’t have remnants of dried foam on their lips. Look at his face. Those runners…how can I explain it to you? They did not have this vibe.”

  Andie screws her lips around but doesn’t answer. She rummages again in her backpack, bringing out a handful of plastic bags.

  “No clothing in those, remember,” says Scotty. “That goes in paper bags.”

  He squats next to the body, his belly spilling over his belt. He looks into the dead man’s face. “Any ID on him?”

  “Nope. I checked the pocket of his shorts, there was a house key, but that was it.”

  Scotty nods. “Married or not married?”

  Andie looks stricken before collecting herself. “Um, not married. His workout clothes are super expensive.”

  “You think a wife wouldn’t approve?”

  “It’s not that, more like…a married guy isn’t trying so hard, right?”

  “Not bad, Frazer.” He stands up and stretches his arms over his head, yawns. “I’m taking off. When the rest of the crew get here, chew ‘em out for me, willya?”

  “Sure thing,” says Andie.

  “They’re gonna have to carry him out to that first fork, down those fucking steps.”

  “Yep. I texted them.”

  “Of course you did. Kisses, sweetheart.”

  On the ride back Scotty thinks about where to go on his next vacation. Sand or snow, the perennial choice. He’s leaning toward snow this time, thinking before too long he’ll be too old to ski so he better pack in some runs before it’s too late.

  He hasn’t forgotten the case of the dead man in the park; it’s humming along on one of the back burners of his mind, even if he’s not giving it much direct attention. Before anything much can happen, he needs to have a word from the coroner about cause of death, and he needs an ID.

  Until then, he heads to the breakfast place and loads up on sausage. Gotta eat plenty of protein at his age if you want to rip down the mountain, he thinks when his plate comes.

  He gives the waitress a big wink and she pretends not to notice.

  Before he gets the first forkful into his mouth, his cell buzzes.

  “Got the ID,” says a rookie Scotty can’t stand.

  The kid’s voice is so self-important. Scotty squints, looking at his plate of sausage. “Well, that’s great. As long as it’s not Elvis or Jesus, I think we’re probably good. If you hear anything fro
m the ME, call me.” He hangs up, his mood thoroughly sour.

  44

  Caroline

  January 8. Still no word from California.

  This is getting ridiculous. I got back five days ago, and have no idea what’s going on. He must have survived somehow. Maybe Rebecca got home early and got him to the ER, and the ER was lucky enough to know what they were seeing and get him stabilized.

  I want him to be alive. And just as much…I don’t.

  I can’t.

  If Wilson and I had been talking on the phone regularly, I’d call, but I think it might look funny now.

  There’s nothing to do but wait.

  January 9. Still nothing.

  The uncertainty is making me exceedingly fragile. I take a few hits of weed—and you can just take your judgment and shove it, I’m under just a little bit of stress here—blowing the smoke out of my bathroom window, and get back in bed to read. I’m partway into George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, which I recommend quite highly. It’s not my usual sort of thing, but one has to esteem the willingness of most of the characters to do whatever is necessary to save themselves or the people they care about. They shrink from nothing, no matter how harrowing or morally repugnant, and how can you not admire that?

  I am deep into the book, lost in a world of dragons and white walkers, when I hear the scream. Screaming is fitting background noise for the book, so at first I don’t react, don’t recognize the meaning of what I am hearing. Another scream, and I realize it is Mummy.

  I’m pretty stoned but leave my room to witness what is going on. Mummy is in the living room, collapsed on the English sofa with eider-down cushions, her hands covering her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. I can hear that my voice sounds frightened.

  “Wilson,” my mother croaks. Her hands are trembling. She lets out a low moan like an animal. I feel suddenly like a matador who has expertly brandished his cape, standing over a wounded bull, watching it suffer as blood drips onto the sand. You think that is cold? Perhaps it is. Part of me regrets seeing my mother like this.

  But the other part—you might call it the wounded part, the damaged part, the less human part—thinks she deserves it, at least as much as Wilson.

  Or more so.

  Part IV

  45

  Caroline

  A flurry of dramatic activity ensues. Gordon is given the news, and Mummy retires to her bedroom. I think I hear intermittent moaning coming from that direction. In any case, I have my hands full with Gordon, who is pacing around the living room like a caged tiger, muttering and making phone calls.

  Intermittently, he hugs me and says “Please don’t ever let anything happen to you.” Perhaps there is love in this sentiment but I am not feeling it. “Even if that means never leaving the apartment again,” he adds, and I think that is an attempt at levity although it is difficult to be sure. Nothing, as you might imagine, feels the least bit normal. An unexpected death of someone so young—it makes every single second for the survivors so heightened, so laden. If you drink a cup of coffee, you are thinking that Wilson will never do so again. Every breath you take is one more breath than Wilson got, one more second into a future he will not have.

  Hickory dickory, tick tock.

  All of us get our cards punched eventually, as I hardly need to point out. The only actual surprise is how successfully we keep that knowledge buried. People react to a death like this as though the person was never ever going to die and the laws of nature have just been subverted. I would say: not subverted exactly, simply hurried up just a bit.

  It’s not as though I wanted to do it. Please don’t forget that.

  I keep thinking back to those moments on his cheap sofa, when he was making the big reveal. He really thought I had been messing with him? Interfering, as people used to say? Oh, my dear, hapless brother, once again with his head firmly up his ass.

  Turns out, marijuana was not the best choice for today.

  After Gordon is done talking on the phone with Rebecca, and then with someone in the medical examiner’s office in Berkeley, he strides the length of the living room and then turns to me. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out. He takes a long slow breath and then his face crumples.

  My stomach clenches. “It’s okay, Daddy. We don’t have to talk about anything right now.”

  “My son…” He shakes his head quickly as though to chase away the birds, but those birds aren’t going away. Not ever. The cawing and flapping will be with my father forever, I have guaranteed that.

  He stalks out of the room.

  I tap my forehead with my fingertips to try to focus. Mummy is shut in her room, like always. It’s Gordon I have to watch, Gordon who is the threat to me now. I’m hoping he’ll just accept that Wilson is gone, we’ll go through a tough period of mourning, and after that, things will be back to normal, at least the Crowe version of it.

  I follow Gordon to his library and linger in the doorway. He’s in his leather chair, facing the window, talking on the phone.

  “Well, of course there’ll be an investigation … I know … yes … damn straight I want some answers, I’m just not that thrilled about the Berkeley police department … Some guy named Scotty Franks … Right … Just get back to me when you find out, all right? Thanks. Goodbye.”

  He swivels around and catches me standing there.

  “I don’t want an autopsy,” he tells me, and the degree of relief I feel cannot be described. “They’re saying it was probably a heart attack.”

  I nearly collapse with relief. “That’s good news, then, right? If he was found out on the trail, he must have been feeling okay, until…he wasn’t? It must have been very sudden, even instantaneous?”

  Gordon bows his head. “Did Lillian tell you that when he was found, there was a mountain lion standing over him?”

  I shudder. Anyone would.

  “No, Daddy,” I say softly.

  He laughs and the sound is more mournful than you can ever imagine. “Pretty badass way to go, fucked up by a mountain lion,” he says, looking away so I don’t see the tears running down his cheeks.

  Wilson was many things, but badass was not one of them. For once, however, I keep my mouth shut.

  46

  Gordon is back in his library, sitting in the leather chair, doing his best to put himself in charge of the investigation of Wilson’s death. The process appears to be much the same as making business deals. He’s spoken to the medical examiner, the coroner, the chief of police, the lieutenant in charge of the case, the captain. He’s objected to an autopsy on several grounds, only telling the Lieutenant his main objection, which is his concern that Wilson will have drugs in his system, or some other unexpected revelation that will not burnish the Crowe reputation.

  He’s phoned Amory Porter, who is the only private investigator Gordon feels comfortable hiring, since he has known the Porters for decades and the family lives on the Upper East Side. Another man might have hesitated before asking a ruined former partner’s son for a favor, but Gordon has no such qualms.

  “Yes, I know it might be awkward because of our history. But let me assure you I have nothing but respect for your father, Amory, nothing but respect. We can sit down and talk all that over at some point in the future. What I want to know now is whether you are free to take my son’s case. I’m afraid I can’t wait for an answer, as speed is crucial in these matters. As I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.

  “I think you can appreciate that I’m not thrilled about the prospect of the entire thing being handled by the Berkeley PD, and I—”

  “Do you have some reason to believe the Berkeley—” starts Amory.

  “No, I—I don’t know what their reputation is,” Gordon says, annoyed. “The point is, I don’t know them. I’m used to doing business with people I know, in one way or another. If I’ve never met them, I have other people vouch for them. Trust is the most important thing in the world, Amory, and these guys in Berkele
y—I do not want them having all the information about my son’s case, all the control over the proceedings, and leaking every damn detail to the press. I don’t know this Scotty Franks, don’t know anything about him. But I don’t trust him, you understand?

  “I want you out there looking over his shoulder. Seeing what his team misses, what they screw up.”

  “I thought you just said it…it was a mountain lion? That would certainly be unusual.”

  Gordon doesn’t speak for a moment. Rage keeps churning up in his body, urging him to rampage, break things, cause as much destruction as possible. It takes a minute for him to push all that back down.

  “Right,” he says finally. “It might have been a heart attack. We just don’t know.”

  “Does the cause of death matter to you? I ask that in all sincerity. For some people, the only thing they’re thinking about is the loss of the loved one, and how it happened just doesn’t make much difference.”

  “I didn’t say that. What I want you to understand is that I do not want the state of California performing an autopsy on my son. What I might arrange privately is a different matter.”

  “Do you have any suspicions about this death, Gordon?”

  A long silence.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Gordon finally answers. “Listen, I’m not asking you to deal with the autopsy problem. If that’s going to be stopped, it will take a word from the right person, or failing that, a bribe in the right hands.” He pauses. “You’re not under any obligation to report people doing something illegal, are you?”

  “Not any more than any other citizen,” says Amory, enjoying Gordon’s momentary discomfort.