“You sound so different,” Marj shouted. “Your voice seems older.”
“It’s not the best machine.” It was the spare, one he used just for playback.
The recording lasted only about five minutes, interrupted by occasional blips as each new entry began. Marj listened attentively, jotting occasional notes in a loose scrawl. He clicked off the tape when he posted his final remark about needing to find a toilet.
“Well, I’d have been shitless, too. It’s all pretty incredible, Rolo. Your doing that, I mean. Following that guy. And then him not turning on the lights. My God! I’d have been terrified.”
“It made me nervous, sure.” He remembered how his bowels ached.
Marj looked down at her notes, which ran half a page. “Doesn’t leave us with much. You got a decent description, and some of his habits.” She glanced down at her notes. “‘Drives with one hand on the wheel. Pulls on his ear.’” She looked up quizzically at Rollins.
“Like this.” Rollins demonstrated, tugging gently at his left earlobe. “I just wanted to record a few details so I’d remember. It brings it back.”
“‘Shifts lanes without signaling.’” She looked up again.
“That made him hard to follow. But a lot of people don’t signal, as you’ve probably noticed.” He remembered that Marj herself didn’t signal.
“And you said he made all these ‘extra’ turns at the end,” Marj said.
“I thought he was trying to lose me.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I didn’t know. I couldn’t be sure he was.” Rollins remembered now how surprised he’d been to see that. No one had ever been evasive before. “I figured I was imagining things,” he told her.
“You could have made a note of the license plate number.”
“It’s just a number! It doesn’t tell you anything. Now, a vanity plate—”
“Well, we got it now, along with the guy’s name,” Marj interrupted. “So what were you doing before you started following the guy? The tape didn’t say.”
“Just reading the paper.”
“Just reading the paper.” Marj shook her head. “So why’d you follow him?”
“I don’t know. He was there when I looked up.”
“So there wasn’t, like, anything special about him. No ‘Follow Me’ sign on his rear bumper?”
“I told you. It’s arbitrary. I see someone and maybe I think, okay, that’s the one. Or maybe I don’t. It’s all about how I feel.” Rollins wasn’t sure she appreciated what a confidence this was. “It’s unconscious, I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
Marj set down her pen and shifted in her seat. “Okay, Rolo, here’s the thing. Here’s the part I’ve been wondering about. Did it ever occur to you that this guy might have been expecting you to follow him?”
“But he couldn’t have.”
“Why not? It’s not like this was the first time you did this.” Marj glanced toward his row of tapes again.
Rollins considered this a moment. “But how would he know?”
Now Marj seemed exasperated. “Maybe he’d seen you.” She said it slowly, pausing between each word.
“But he couldn’t have,” Rollins repeated.
“How would you know? You just told me you were reading the paper. He could have been watching you.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Let’s forget impossible, okay?” Marj slapped a hand down on the bed and stood up. “We’re way past impossible here. You tipped this guy off somehow. There’s no other way! He was on to you. I mean, Rolo, come on. You think you’re invisible, that nobody notices you.” She laughed, to Rollins’ annoyance. “Like in the office. You think nobody gives you a thought, but you are the number one topic of conversation in the ladies’ room. Number one, Rolo.” Marj’s voice was raised now, and she’d left her chair to move back and forth by his bed, gesturing. “So I don’t think you were just sitting there, and this guy just happens to drive by and lead you back to, like, the one house in all of Massachusetts that’s connected to your old friend Cornelia. I don’t buy that, okay?”
“So, well, what then?”
“I think he was watching you and waiting. And I think you know why.”
Rollins felt a slight pulsing in his temple that might augur a migraine. He stood up and went to the window. He needed to break free from Marj’s eyes. “Okay.” He glanced at his grandfather’s Pierce-Arrow. “Okay,” he said again. “Now just calm down for a second, all right? Just calm down.” He continued to face the wall. “There is something else you should know. I didn’t want to tell you before because, well, I just didn’t. I’m not used to this.” He turned back to her, swung a hand back and forth between them.
“Conversation,” Marj prodded.
“Right, conversation. Okay.” He took a breath. “I told you I went to see Jeffries’ house tonight, right?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t tell you where I was before that.”
“Nooooo.”
He told her about going to Cornelia’s house in Londonderry, although he scrupulously did not say how he’d happened to do that.
“You saw her, didn’t you?”
Rollins told her no, happy to disabuse her of at least one of her fantasies. Still, she was astonished that he had actually gone inside. Rollins made fists of his hands inside his pockets as he told her about discovering that the house had been sold to the Stantons by Cornelia’s parents—illegally, he was fairly sure. He looked over at Marj: Her face was all confusion.
“Well, that’s bizarre,” she said at last.
“And get this. Guess who the realtor was.”
Marj’s eyes shot open. “No!”
“Yes.”
“Sloane’s hooked up with your aunt and uncle?”
Rollins shook his head sorrowfully. “Seems to be.”
“That guy is everywhere, Rolo. He’s connected to Cornelia’s parents, to you, and now he’s hitting me with these fucking phone calls—” She stopped, midsentence, and looked at him strangely.
“What?” Rollins asked.
She spoke calmly, which made her words all the more frightening: “I keep remembering the way he looked at you at the North Reading house.”
“I don’t know him, Marj. I don’t know why he did that, okay? I’ve never seen him before in my life. Really. You’ve got to believe that.”
“Okay, whatever you say. But why Cornelia’s parents?”
“I talked to Schecter. He thinks it’s because it’s coming up on seven years that Neely’s been gone.”
“So?” Marj looked at him blankly.
“If someone’s gone seven years, then they’re legally assumed to be dead, and their property goes to the heirs.”
“Then who gets all Cornelia’s stuff?”
“That’s what we don’t know. Neely’s lawyers wouldn’t tell me. But obviously it’s not my aunt and uncle, or they wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to phony up the deed.”
“Well, maybe it’s you, you ever think of that?”
“Me?” A stunning prospect, and a flattering one. He felt a little bubble of joy rise through him as he considered it. But why him? It had been so long since he’d seen Neely. Plus, she was so much older. He’d never meant as much to her as she had to him. He was always the one chasing her, never the reverse. “I doubt it,” he said finally, feeling a pang of sadness as he did so.
“Then why is Sloane so focused on you? That’s the question.” She sounded impatient.
Rollins stretched his hands out toward her. “Just wait a second. That’s what I was going to tell you.” He lowered his gaze to his shoes, which seemed about the only safe place to look right then. He took a breath and told her about visiting the little memorial marker by the side of the road. As Marj’s eyes widened in amazement, he realized this was not going as he’d planned. He’d intended this confession to convey his undying loyalty to Neely, but instead he could tell he was coming across like some
kind of nut.
“The point is, I’ve been there before,” he finally declared.
“At the side of the road?”
“On her property.”
“You go in there, like, regularly? Even after you finished the story?”
Rollins nodded. “I didn’t think anyone would be there. The house had always looked empty.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She sat down on the bed.
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“You thought I’d think you were even weirder than I do, is more like it.”
Rollins said nothing.
“So what would you do?”
“Nothing much. Just walk around.”
“You drive in?”
“I’d park by the side of the road.”
“Where anybody could see you?” Marj said. “Don’t they call that trespassing?”
“But she was gone!”
“But you just told me Sloane was the guy selling the place. He could have seen you there.” Marj’s eyes went wide. “He probably thinks you’re still on the case. Maybe he thinks you’ve found out something. Something important.”
“Like—?”
“Like what happened to Neely. Like where her body is. Like who killed her. And he’s watching you to find out what you know.”
“But come on! I don’t know what happened to Neely. I’m not investigating a murder. I don’t even know for sure that she’s dead, let alone killed.”
Marj weakened, turned away from him. “I’m just trying to think this thing through, okay?” She sounded plaintive this time, desperate. Rollins felt for her. It wasn’t so much that Sloane was trying to understand him. She was. That’s what this was about. And he was more than she could figure.
There was a knock on the door. “Marj? You in there?” It was Tina.
“Oh, shit. Her.”
Marj went to the door. Rollins had to help her with the locks.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Tina’s eyes went from Marj to Rollins and back again. “I just wanted to tell you I’m going to bed, and I thought we should probably get you set up.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s getting late, isn’t it?” Marj turned back to Rollins. “Listen, I better go. We’ll talk about this in the morning, okay?”
“Didn’t you leave something in the bedroom, Marj?” Rollins asked.
“I don’t think so.” But she followed him back, anyway.
Inside the bedroom door, Rollins pulled her to him, spoke quietly. “Don’t tell her anything about Sloane or Jeffries, okay?”
“Now who’s paranoid?” Marj asked.
He held her arm. “Please? Just don’t.”
She gave him a troubled look. “Sure, Rolo. Whatever.”
Neely’s hair was on him, so light, as she bent over his bed to kiss him good night. Just the lightest touch, but promising more. A light, lovely kiss, on his forehead, and then, if he was lucky, she’d rough up his hair.
After Marj left, he returned to his bedroom. Had Sloane sicced the gaunt man, Jeffries, on him? Had his trip to the dark house been their plan, not his? A way of protecting themselves from—what? A murder inquiry? It was a terrible, wrenching thought, not least because it made so little sense. It turned the world inside out. Had he been watched? He who had always been the careful, attentive observer? Could he have missed this essential truth that transformed everything, turning him from subject to object, from observer to observed? The idea ate at him. Rollins couldn’t put it out of his mind, not while he brushed his teeth, not while he changed into his pajamas, not while he lay under a sheet with the lights out, trying to sleep.
Inside the fear, a memory. Dim at first, then flickering into brightness. He’d been on Main Street, in Medford. The previous month. He had been following a white Caprice south from Melrose. There had been a jam-up on College Street by Tufts University, and the Caprice had veered off onto Main and then pulled up in front of a drugstore. The driver—an overly made-up, middle-aged woman, as Rollins recalled—had left the Caprice double-parked while she went in to the store. Because of all the congestion, Rollins had had to circle the block waiting for her to return. But it wasn’t the Caprice he was remembering. It was the car the Caprice had blocked in.
As he’d come back around the block, Rollins had heard the insistent blast of a car horn coming from the part of the street where he’d left the Caprice. But—this was the bothersome part—the driver had stopped hitting the horn as soon as Rollins came around, even though the Caprice’s driver had not returned. A rather large car, too. A disturbingly familiar one.
In exasperation, Rollins threw off the covers and switched on the light. He stood up on his bed, and dragged a finger across the last few tapes, stopping at the one labeled “7:18 PM, June 8, 2000.” As connected as Rollins felt to these recordings, it had never occurred to him that they might actually be useful, provide a resource. His pulse quickened as he opened the box and plucked out the tape, then stepped unsteadily back down onto the floor. He leaned over his tape player and pushed the new cassette into the slot. He pressed the PLAY button.
The first sounds came out as a roar. The volume was still cranked up, and he quickly turned it down. The pursuit had taken him to Medford. He heard himself describe the white Caprice’s muffler problems, and a poodle dashing out into the street, two details he’d forgotten completely, and then he reached the part about the double-parking. She’s pulled over, right in the middle of traffic, Rollins’ voice declared. Blinkers on, must be going in to the CVS there on the corner. I’m going on ahead. See if I can circle the block. In the background now, he heard the usual street sounds, the rush of passing cars, the rumble of trucks going by, a shout or two from a pedestrian. Then he heard it. The insistent honking—over and over. What’s that about?” Rollins heard himself say. Oh, someone’s parked in. One of those big SUVs, a Land Cruiser looks like. Big green thing. On the tape, the honking stopped abruptly.
Rollins shut off the tape player. A green Land Cruiser! Had Sloane been in that car? He must have been. Rollins tried to picture the scene: Sloane, frustrated, rides the horn as he tries to get out of his parking space. Then he sees Rollins and stops abruptly. Why? Rollins had been up in Londonderry only a week before. Had Sloane seen him at Cornelia’s house, made the connection to the Beacon article? He must have. He must have assumed that Rollins was on him somehow, just as Marj had said. That was the only explanation.
Rollins was not invisible, after all. He had been seen.
Fourteen
That night, Rollins was certain he’d never felt so hot, so uncomfortable. He threw open all the windows, but no air stirred in his apartment: The heat seemed to be coming from inside him. He kept imagining himself being roughed up, shoved this way and that by strangers who shouted at him with gruff, unintelligible voices. Then he felt Tina’s hands on him. They were reaching under the waistband of his pajamas, clawing at him. It was a frenzied, indecent dream that left him tangled in his sweat-dampened sheets. Around four A.M., he got up and took a cold shower to try to cool his mind.
Afterward, when he looked at himself in the mirror and saw his limp hair, soft belly, and bleary eyes, he realized that it was no wonder that no one ever reached for him except in his nightmares. He was old, or at least older than he’d remembered. Those creases on either side of his mouth—he was pretty sure they were new. And could he always press a finger that deep into his abdomen?
He was just stepping out of the bathroom when he heard a knock on his door. He was afraid it was Tina again. He pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt, hurried to the door. “Rollins! You there?” It was Marj, thank God. She knocked again. “Quick, Rolo, let me in.”
Rollins fumbled with the lock, and Marj burst in the moment he opened the door. “Grab your car keys, Rollins, quick. We’re going.”
“What?” This was happening too fast. She was in her running clothes—bright-colored, skimpy. Seeing her there—so real, so thrillingly beautiful—he wanted her to wa
it a moment so that he could caress her face, maybe even kiss her.
“Now! Get ’em!”
Foggy-brained, Rollins returned to his bedroom and grabbed the keys from the top of his bureau and, while he was at it, stuffed his wallet into his back pocket. He shoved his bare feet into his loafers. He would have turned back for a pair of socks, but Marj had grabbed his hand and yanked him toward the front door. “We’ve got to go—right now,” she insisted. He barely had time to lock the door behind him before she’d disappeared down the stairs.
In a few moments they were out on the quiet, rose-colored street; it was cooler, now, at daybreak. Marj squinted at him against the low sun. “Where’s your car?”
“In a garage up the street.” He pointed the way. “Would you mind—?”
“Well, come on,” she interrupted, and took off in that direction.
“What is happening?” he shouted after her.
But Marj didn’t answer. She was well up the street, beckoning for him to follow. Rollins had no choice but to hurry after her, his loafers slapping the uneven bricks. Finally, he caught up to her and grabbed her shoulders to stop her. “Tell me,” he begged her, gulping air. “Tell me now.”
“The car, Rolo. Where is it?” She was panting, too.
“Up ahead,” he gestured up the street. “What’s the matter?”
“She’s in with Sloane.”
“Who is?”
“Tina.”
Rollins went cold.
“Tina, Rolo. I found a note. I couldn’t sleep last night. So I got up and I’m looking around, and I find this to-do list. And one of the things was, ‘Get next four hundred dollars from Jerry.’” Marj started moving again up the sidewalk. “This way, Rolo? The car?”
“So that’s it?” Rollins asked. “Just ‘Get four hundred dollars from Jerry?’”
She stopped again. “I found her address book. Jerry Sloane’s in it. Address, phone number, the whole fucking thing. She knows him, Rolo.”
Rollins’ skin went cold. Sloane was everywhere. He was even here, casting his shadow across the two of them.
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