by Jane Haddam
“Wait,” Howard Androcoelho said. “I thought the medical examiner said it had only been hanging up there for two hours.”
“You don’t have a medical examiner to speak of,” Gregor said, “but the time frame would be off given the coldness of the body—”
“It was frozen stiff when I put it up there,” Kyle said. “I never realized before that that was meant literally.”
“And how could he have done it without anybody seeing?” Howard asked.
“Oh, that’s the easy part,” Gregor said. “I went over there and looked the other day. The billboard is positioned slantwise to the road. It’s very large, and its scaffolding reaches down into a dense clump of trees. You can do anything you want behind that billboard and nobody from the road can see you. The miracle was that nobody driving by saw the body as it came up over the top, because Kyle here had to be literally swinging it.”
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “All right. That.”
“Fine,” Gregor said. “But then we’ve got the disappearing corpse. I take it the two of you see that as my fault, you removed the corpse because—”
“How were we supposed to know what was going to happen?” Kyle said. “I see those television shows. And I know the real thing isn’t that good, but you were talking about sending the body to the state medical examiner’s and I couldn’t figure out, neither of us could, what that would mean. So—”
“So,” Gregor said, “you just drove up to Feldman’s and took the body out. And it was simple, because you were in uniform and you had a police car. Didn’t it occur to either one of you that too much of the stuff you were doing could only be successful if somebody was in uniform and had a police car? Dropping off the backpack. Getting the body out of Feldman’s. Putting the body in Chester Morton’s old trailer. Try any of that in anything but a police car and you’d have been nailed midstream. It’s something of a miracle you were never nailed anyway. Is that the end of it? Are the two of you sure I’m not going to find something else wandering around that you should have told me about?”
Darvelle shook her head. “We got a little scared. Especially after moving the body. I mean, you know, from Feldman’s. It just didn’t feel safe anymore. If you see what I mean.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
“Wait,” Howard Androcoelho said. “Just a minute. Are you telling me that Chester Morton committed suicide?”
“Exactly,” Gregor said.
“But then, I don’t get it. I mean, we can’t arrest anybody for a suicide, well, unless they live, you know, and—”
“Those two people in that truck didn’t commit suicide,” Gregor said. “Why don’t you try wrapping your mind around that.”
SIX
1
Shpetim Kika heard the news on the little television set he kept in the construction site. The set was always on, but he didn’t watch it much, because it didn’t have cable. Once there had been a time when there was no cable. Everybody in this area and everyplace else in the United States had relied on their antennae. How had that worked? The antenna was useless as far as Shpetim could see. The set filled up with snow. It made buzzing noises. Sometimes it just went mute. It was impossible at least half the time.
It was just after lunch, and Shpetim had been watching Nderi and Anya, standing together near the edge of the site, near the new parking lot where cars would be when the building was open. Anya had taken a big box of something out of the trunk of her car. Then Nderi had taken the box from her. Now they were both walking across the site toward him, but they were walking very slowly. It reminded Shpetim of something. He wasn’t sure of what.
The television broke through its snow for a moment and someone said, “This just in. Sources inside the Mattatuck Police Department are reporting that an arrest will be made this afternoon for the murders of two local residents near Stephenson Dam just hours ago. Sources also tell us that these murders are connected to the disappearance and death of Chester Morton and that the break in the case was obtained through evidence provided by the infant’s skeleton found on a construction site near Mattatuck–Harvey Community College.”
Shpetim Kika had lived most of his life in a Communist country. He knew when the news was complete and utter bullshit. He thought what he’d just heard was at least half that. What made him happy was that somebody had mentioned the baby. It was as if he had been trying to push a boulder uphill and it had finally budged.
There was a guy, Shpetim thought. From literature. He pushed the boulder uphill over and over and over again, and as soon as he reached the top, it fell down again. Well, Shpetim decided, he’d beaten the guy from literature. He’d pushed his boulder up to the top of the hill and it had gone straight over.
Nderi and Anya were coming up to him now. Anya was chattering away, and smiling. Nderi was staggering a little under the box.
“Hey,” Nderi said, reaching the construction shed. He put the box down on the ground in front of the door. “Anya brought food. She and Mom have been cooking all morning.”
“I have the day off from work,” Anya said. “There was a funeral. One of our people died. We got off for the funeral and then there was the reception, but I didn’t go to any of it. It wasn’t somebody I know.”
“Heart attack,” Nderi said solemnly, looking down at the box of food.
“At forty-six,” Anya said. “It was truly awful. You’d think he’d know better, being in the medical profession. But you can’t tell with people. And even the ones you think are doing everything right, they die, too. And then there are others who break all the rules, and there they still are at eighty-seven.”
“My grandfather lived to ninety-five,” Shpetim said. “And he wasn’t senile, either. He lived to ninety-five and scared the hell out of all of us to the end of his life.”
“I don’t remember any of my grandfathers,” Anya said. “They both died in jail.”
Nderi picked up the box again and came into the shed with it. He put it on the little desk and looked inside it. “I keep telling her she should think of them as martyrs,” he said. “I mean, it’s not the same as dying because you’re upholding the honor of God, but it is, in a way, because they wouldn’t have been arrested if they hadn’t been Muslims. I mean—”
“It’s all right,” Anya said. “I understand what you’re getting at.”
Shpetim looked into the box and came up with an enormous loaf of bread and then what looked like a vat of lamb and beans. There were utensils at the bottom of the box. That was a good thing.
“Ah,” he said. “I forgot. I heard it on the television. Yeah, yeah, I know. But you could hear it a couple of minutes ago. There’s going to be an arrest this afternoon, you know, an arrest about all the nonsense, not just Chester Morton but—”
“Oh,” Anya said. “Those two people out near the dam. Wasn’t that awful?”
“Listen,” Shpetim said. “Maybe it was awful and maybe it was not. These people. You hear things. The people in that trailer park—”
“You can’t look down on people just because they’re poor,” Nderi said. “You told me that yourself. You used to be poor.”
“I don’t look down on people because they’re poor,” Shpetim said. “I have never done that. It’s not the poverty, but the way they live. Having children where there is no marriage. Living off the government when they could be working. And the alcohol. And the drugs. You know what I’m saying. You do not know what those people are. You can’t say it was terrible until you know.”
“No,” Anya said, “I think it was terrible anyway. I think it’s terrible when anybody dies, and as for the way they lived. Well. You don’t know what happened to make them like that. And even if nothing did, even if they decided for themselves to live badly, isn’t that a tragedy, too? God gives us life. It’s terrible when we waste it.”
“Yes,” Shpetim said, caught again by the fact that he was being reminded of something. He still couldn’t think of what. He turned to the television set and w
aved his hands. “Anyway,” he said. “It came on the television. There is going to be an arrest. There is a break in the case. The break in the case came through the skeleton of the baby. See? I was right all along. The baby was important. And now, since we went and talked to Mr. Demarkian, they will be able to arrest the evil man who did these things, and everybody will be safer. It’s America, the way I told you. In America, you go to the police, you state your case, the right thing gets done.”
“But we didn’t go to the police,” Nderi said. “We went to Mr. Demarkian.”
“Mr. Demarkian is a consultant hired by the police,” Shpetim said. “He is the police here for as long as he is hired. And that’s a good thing, too, don’t you see? The regular police are not quite up to the job. The patrolmen who came here are clueless. The police commissioner is an idiot with spaghetti for brains. You don’t have to worry. They know all that themselves. They bring somebody in with a good mind and the work gets done.”
“I wonder what it’s all about,” Nderi said.
“I can’t imagine behaving like that,” Anya said. “Not the people at the dam. I can’t imagine behaving like that, either, but I was thinking of Chester Morton. Running away from your family like that. Disappearing into thin air and not seeing your own mother for twelve years. Your own mother.”
She went to the box and began to set things up properly. There were paper bowls for the lamb and beans, wider paper plates to put the bowls on and bread and butter. There were smaller paper plates for the pastries at the bottom. Shpetim watched in amazement as stuff just kept coming out.
“I brought real forks and knives and spoons,” Anya said. “We thought the plastic ones were too—I don’t know. Skimpy. The tines of the forks kept bending. I’m supposed to gather these up and bring them back when you’re done.”
“They wreck their families,” Nderi said. Then he blushed. “I shouldn’t say ‘they’ like that. It’s not everybody, not all the Americans. But a lot of them do. You can’t imagine running away and not seeing your mother for twelve years—”
“Well, you know,” Anya said. “Except for a politcal thing. If the authorities were hunting you and you were going to be killed. For politics. Like at home during the war.”
“Yeah,” Nderi said, “but I’ve heard all about Chester Morton. I didn’t really know him or anything, but I’ve heard. And the other Morton kid, too, Kenny, I’ve heard the same thing. And the Mortons aren’t the only ones. They hate each other.”
“Hate each other,” Shpetim said. “The families do?”
“The Mortons all hate their mother,” Nderi said. “And they talk about it all the time, even to strangers. And you can see why. I’ve met Charlene Morton. I’ve seen how she treats people. How she treats her own children. She hates them as much as they hate her.”
“I don’t believe it,” Anya said, very definitively. “How can a mother hate her own children? Her children are a mother’s life.”
Shpetim took the bowl of beans and lamb she handed him, and the fork, and then he got it. He knew what he kept being reminded of.
Anya reminded him of Lora, all those years ago, when they first knew each other. And Nderi reminded him of himself.
And, Shpetim thought, it was a good thing he’d listened to reason and decided not to oppose this marriage.
2
When Howard Androcoelho called to say he was bringing over Gregor Demarkian, Charlene listened, and told him she’d be at home, and then hung up. The air in the office felt very still. There was a fan pumping away somewhere, and the air conditioning was on, but the air didn’t feel as if it were moving at all. It was odd to think how long it had been since the first day she had sat in this office, knowing that Chester was gone. Charlene remembered that day as if she’d just lived through it. The air had felt very still then, too. Her skull had felt as if it were cracking open.
Charlene waited for what felt like a million years. Then she got up, got her pocketbook off the top of the metal filing cabinet, and headed out to the parking lot to her car. Stew saw her leave. Charlene saw him see her, and stand up as she passed, too. She went by as if he weren’t there.
Out in the parking lot, Charlene got into the brand new Focus and turned on the engine. She checked the rearview mirror. She checked the side mirrors. She looked at the nail polish on her fingers. It was an ordinary pink color. It was not like all those new things the girls had on their hands these days. She did her nails herself in her own bathroom once a week. That said something. That was true.
She got the car out onto the road and drove the long back way to Sherwood Forest. Just a couple of hours ago, she had been yelling at Kenny because he would not come home and be part of a united family front. That was how she had imagined this happening. They would all be together. They would be solid against the world. How had it happened that she had failed to instill that sense of family into any of her children? First Chester. Then Kenny. But really, all of them. Mark and Suzanne weren’t anywhere around when she needed them, either.
She parked her car in the driveway and went up to the house by the front walk. She liked that approach. The front doors were double doors. They were wide enough so that, if you propped them open, you could drive the Focus itself right into the foyer. Charlene remembered building this house. She remembered sitting at the kitchen table in the old place, the place that was closer to the office, and spreading out the blueprints so that she could go through them with a magnifying glass. The children were all in bed. Stew was in the living room, falling asleep in front of the television. The house, like the business, had been her idea to begin with.
She went into her living room and looked around. There was the big couch, and the love seat, and an overstuffed chair for Stew. There was her own wing chair, with its upright back, that made her feel safe. Charlene didn’t like relaxing, the way most people did. Relaxing made her feel like her life was going to hell.
She crossed her legs at the ankles. She folded her hands in her lap. She stared straight ahead. When she heard a car in the driveway, she didn’t even flinch. It wasn’t their car. It was Stew.
Stew came in through the side door, through the kitchen, the way he always did. He called out “Charlene?” as soon as he was in the house.
Charlene unfolded her hands and looked at the palms of them. “I’m in here,” she said.
Stew stumbled through the kitchen and then out into the hall. Stew always stumbled. There was something about his body that did not work right. It never had, even when they had all been in high school.
Charlene looked up when he came through the archway from the dining room. She folded her hands again. She didn’t smile.
“You could have told me you were leaving,” Stew said. “I’d have come with you. I never said I wouldn’t come with you.”
“I asked you before,” Charlene said. “I asked you and Mark and Suzanne and Kenny. Kenny hung up on me. Did you know that? I think he was with that girl. That girl he met at the college. Another one from the trailer park. What happened to our children, that all they want to know is people from the trailer park?”
“That isn’t true,” Stew said. “Suzanne is married to a very nice boy. You practically picked him out yourself. And Mark—”
“What about Mark?” Charlene said. “It will probably turn out that I’m responsible for that. Mark without a girlfriend. Mark without a girlfriend for years. Maybe he’s gay. Maybe I made him that way. It’s what everybody will say, in the long run.”
“I don’t think Mark is gay,” Stew said, “and I’m pretty sure you couldn’t make him that way if he wasn’t. You’re not thinking.”
“I’m thinking fine,” Charlene said. “They’ll be here any minute, and then we’ll have to listen to the whole thing, all the bilge, everything. It would have been different if he had died. Then, I mean. It would have been different if they’d have found him dead when he went missing. It wouldn’t have been like this, then.”
“And that’s
what you wanted? You wanted him to be dead?”
“He came here, you know, before he went over to that girl’s house. He left me a note. Maybe if I’d have been here, it would have been different.”
Stew sat down on the love seat. Charlene tried to remember what it had been like sleeping with him, but she couldn’t. She could remember a time in her life when sleeping with somebody was the biggest decision any girl could make, and girls talked about it in the bathrooms at school, talked and talked about it, as if talking about it would make it disappear. She hadn’t talked about having sex with Stew, because she hadn’t had sex with Stew. Not until they night they were married.
“Charlene,” Stew said.
“I was thinking about high school,” Charlene said. “You and me and Howard and Marianne and Althy Michaelman. Girls getting pregnant. Girls getting kicked out. Boys telling lies. I suppose I thought it was normal. Boys always tell lies.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I burned the note,” Charlene said. “I did it as soon as I heard he’d been found hanging from that billboard. I knew he’d committed suicide. I knew it as soon as I heard he was dead. She must have strung him up there herself, just to laugh at me.”
“Herself?” Stew said. “Do you mean Darvelle? Darvelle couldn’t have gotten Chester’s body up on that billboard. She’s a tiny thing.”
Charlene shrugged. “Then she got that boyfriend of hers to do it for her. It doesn’t matter. Why would it? I did everything but cut out my own heart to make things right for him, and in the end I might as well not have bothered. He accused me of it. Did you know that? He accused me of it.”
“Accused you of what?” Stew said. “Charlene, honest to God, you need to go lie down for awhile. You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m not going to lie down. They’ll be here any minute.”
“They? Do you mean the police?”
“Howard, and that Mr. Demarkian person. I knew that was going to be trouble. I knew it. What could Howard possibly have been thinking? Bringing in somebody like that, somebody who’s been on television—maybe Howard thought he’d end up on television, too. God. Does Howard think? Does he?”