Just as she disappeared the rest of the way, Timothy appeared. I was shocked to see Afton’s intense gaze coming from such a soft little face. He watched me while I waited, unabashedly observing me, scrutinizing my every fidget and twitch. He was his father’s son through and through.
Julia arrived at the door, pushing her hair around as she shoved the sleep out of it. She paled when she saw who was waiting for her, then lifted her chin and came up with a smile. “Come in, Em. You’re letting the heat in.”
I cringed inwardly at the phrase. To Timothy, I said, “Run along a moment, okay?”
The boy gave me one last, lingering look and vanished.
I said, “I need to stay out here. It’s better that the kids not hear this.”
With a scowl, Julia stepped to my side of the doorway and yanked the door shut behind herself. She crossed her arms firmly across her chest, stiffened her carriage, and narrowed her eyes. “What’s on your mind, Em?”
I shrugged my shoulders helplessly. “I just thought you’d rather tell it to me and get it over with,” I said.
“Tell you what?” she demanded.
“About Gilda.”
Her face was already hard, but now her eyes seemed to draw up into tunnels that receded straight to hell. “Fuck you,” she enunciated, delivering the words precisely and with consummate contempt.
I opened my hands in supplication. “You almost killed me, Julia.”
To that she did not reply. She hardened further.
I said, “Was that the idea? To kill me? Did you think I’d figured it out? Or did it start out as a ruse to make it look like Afton’s killer had also killed Gilda and was trying to kill you? Shit, you dress me up in your jacket and hard hat, you put me in your Jeep. It was clever, Julia, but it didn’t quite work.”
Julia stood like a gargoyle: hateful, repulsive, and made of stone.
At that moment, I couldn’t decide what hurt worse: that she had almost killed me or that she was no longer my friend. I found myself begging, “Tell me anything. Tell me you just lost control of that truck. Tell me you didn’t mean to flip me into the ditch, please, Julia! Tell me you didn’t mean to leave me there …”
Her eyes were still aimed at me but no longer saw me.
I said, “If you’d just left me to take my samples—do my science, Julia!—I would never have figured out what you’d done.” I reached into those dead, dark eyes, searching for my lost friend. “I mean, that was clever, dumping her cart in the creek—I bought that hurt knee game, and the ‘I want to sit in this bar and drown my sorrows’ act, but did you really think I’d be so stupid that I wouldn’t figure out the rest once you tried to kill me? That I couldn’t figure out where you’d buried her body? Tell me you just panicked when you realized I was going near that creek. I mean, what was the game, stall me until those rains came and covered your tracks? How long ago did you bury her? Tuesday? Wednesday? She telephoned you. We have her cell phone logs. You talked for half an hour. What did she want? Quick cash? Did she want to cut a deal?”
Julia stared into space. I began to wonder if she could even hear me. Her eyes had no light in them, only darkness. I thought, How much is it going to take to crack her? I said, “Should I just leave this to the sheriff? His detectives are scrounging that truck for evidence right now, right this instant. If you wait until they come to you, you’ll be lucky to get off with murder two. Come with me now and it’s manslaughter, Julia! Reckless endangerment and manslaughter! I mean, damn it, Julia, I can understand how upset you were at that woman, but did you have to kill her?”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Carlos open his car door and leave it ajar. Fritz was already out of the cruiser, ambling casually toward us along the sidewalk as if he was out for a Sunday stroll. I wanted desperately to turn to him, to throw myself into his arms and bawl, but I kept my eyes focused on Julia. He paused, stooped to tie his shoe, straightened, lined himself up behind a fence where he could see me but Julia could not see him.
Julia’s eyes bored into mine. It was like staring past death into the empty abyss of the damned, and all the brutal force of jealousy that had congealed into hatred came oozing back through.
I put a hand to my back pocket, making sure the short rope was there, and curled my fingers around it. She wasn’t cracking. It was time to lie. I said, “I saw you in the rear-view mirror, Julia.”
Nothing. Just darkness, the absence and antithesis of love.
I said, “I’m asking you to turn yourself in, so the law can go easy on you. This is it, your last chance, or I’m going to have to tell the sheriff what I saw.”
Nothing.
I wished that I had Michele’s training. What had she said? The trick was to sympathize with the killer, draw her out as if I were her friend. But I was her friend. Had been. Had tried as hard as anyone. Was still trying even after what she had done to me. What greater sympathy could she ask for? With sudden fury, I said, “I can see why Afton left you, Julia. You’ve gotten hard. At least Gilda was soft.”
Julia’s lips contracted, baring her teeth. “None of you understand!” she screamed. “You call yourself a friend, but you’re just like everyone else, Hansen! You just stand there judging me!” Suddenly her hands shot toward me as her whole athletic body lunged toward my throat.
I dodged just enough to spare a crushing grasp to my throat, but her impact sent me flying backward and we landed, writhing like snakes, in the junipers. I braced one arm against her throat and arched backward against her battling strength to see where Fritz was. He was there, hovering over us, feet braced, his face intently focused, arms and hands at the ready to dive to my aid. His eyes locked on mine and spoke to me. Now? he was asking.
Not yet, I answered, shoving the heel of one hand against Julia’s jaw. “You killed her!” I screamed, now slapping her face. “Why?”
“She laughed at me!” Julia roared, sinking a sharp elbow into my gut.
“But why kill her?” I panted. I had to get a direct and incontrovertible admission out of her before she did me real damage. We rolled off the junipers and across the lawn, she trying for a killing blow and I blocking with all my might. I caught a glimpse of the sheriff now, running toward us, and Carlos right behind him. Saw Fritz’s hand come out to stop him. Caught a glimpse of his face again, as I kneed Julia in the stomach and ripped at the grip she now had on my hair. Her fingers gouged like talons across my face as I reached back and yanked the rope out of my pocket and wrestled her into a pin. Just like in my old calf-roping competition days, I wrapped the rope twice around her wrists, yanked them down to one flailing leg, gave all three a connecting hitch, and jumped away before she could kick me with the other, my hands flying up out of long habit fighting calves in the arena. I screamed, “Why, Julia? Was it to protect the kids’ inheritance?”
Julia rolled onto her side, her anger at last dissolving into tears. “Because he loved her more than he loved me,” she howled from the ragged depths of her soul. “And I’d kill her again and again and again. …”
THIRTY-FOUR
MARY ANN WALKED INTO THE COMMUNITY CENTER with her head held high. Helga Olsen was there to meet her, and greeted her with a hug. “Mary Ann! I’m so glad you made it,” she caroled. “Come meet the others. Hey, everybody! This is Mary Ann Nettleton, a new hand!”
The heads of ten other citizens of Douglas County turned to welcome the new member of their group.
“Welcome!” said a young woman.
“Fresh blood!” joked a middle-aged man.
“This is hard work,” said Helga. “Developers pay eighty percent of the county commissioners’ campaign contributions, so it’s an uphill battle, but we aren’t easy to shout down.”
“Pull up a chair,” said a kindly faced elder gentleman. “I’m Fred Beauregard. Help me sort these envelopes, would you? I ran a law firm for forty years, but I must confess that I barely know how to alphabetize. Can’t spell, either. My wife used to cover for me, but she’s gone to her rewar
d, where I can’t embarrass her anymore.” He winked at Mary Ann. “But they keep me around here because I understand the law,” he added in mock confidentiality.
Everybody in the room laughed and introduced themselves.
Mary Ann laughed, too, and took her place within her community with a smile and a job to be accomplished. It was a difficult job that she knew would be filled with frustrations but also many joys as she learned more about her world and put her shoulder to the wheel with the other fine people who shared it with her.
RAY AND HIS SPONSOR SAT ON THE WALL AT THE FOOT of the University of Utah campus enjoying the changes in the colors of the sky as day traversed into night, their stomachs contented with the sausage special from the Pie Pizzeria a half block down the hill. For a long time nothing needed to be said.
Ray’s sponsor was an older man, stooped and careworn, and his face was pocked with the remnants of bad acne, but to Ray, he shone with the brilliance of Almighty God. The sponsor picked at a hangnail, releasing a stray piece of grit. “Is she okay now?”
“Who?”
“Em Hansen.”
Ray smiled. “Yes, I think so. Yes, she is.”
“What was it like, being with her in that moment? Please tell me again.”
“You mean, when she was … when her Jeep was rolling?”
“Yes.”
“It was terrible. I was driving a car myself when it happened, and I saw everything spinning around me. I had to pull over. It was just as if I was looking out through her eyes. It was terrible. Just like the night my wife …”
“But the other part, Ray.”
Ray smiled. “You mean the light.”
The man closed his eyes and smiled. “Yes.”
“I knew Em was in trouble. I knew I was seeing what she was seeing. So I got on the radio and had the dispatcher patch me through to Douglas County, and I described the vehicle and which way to go to find her. Then I closed my eyes and prayed.”
“And?”
“And I saw this lovely golden light, all shimmering.”
“Ahh …”
Ray shook his head, smiling. “Life is such a mystery.” He turned and studied the furrowed face of his friend. “What do you suppose that was?”
The man opened his eyes. “I don’t know. But I’d like to call it a connection. You sent your love.”
“Funny, it felt like I was letting go of her, not grabbing hold. And I could have sworn it was coming from her, not the other way around.”
“Maybe that’s the truest kind of love. The kind where we give with no need or expectation of return. And then, mysteriously, we find that we are still connected. A bond with no bind.”
“Em and I have always had a connection. Always will. She saved my life once, you know?”
“You told me.”
Ray smiled. “I suppose she’s saved me a number of times, in a number of ways. Those guys on the radio out there looking for her thought I was nuts. They kept saying, ‘Where are you calling from?’ and ‘How is it you know this?’ but it was the least I could do for her.” He laughed. “It’s a good thing I’m with the Salt Lake PD, or they’d never have listened to me.”
Ray shook his head in wonderment. “What do you suppose … you must have some notion, at least … that light! It was so beautiful!”
The man pondered this question a while before answering, “I used to think I knew, right down to a gnat’s eyelashes, but I don’t anymore.” He shifted slightly, and stared into the sunset. “But a woman like Em, she burns bright. We want to draw close to them, to warm ourselves in their heat. It’s comforting. It’s life-giving. And then we get to fearing that we’ll get burned. But here’s what I sense: It takes one to know one, Ray. Life is the fire. We are the flame.”
“And when we die? Does that fire go out?”
The man laughed. “You know the answer to that one, Ray.”
“Some days I’m not so sure.”
The older man picked at his fingernail again. “The best part of us never dies.”
Ray smiled. “Not if memory is any guide.”
They sat a while in silence, then the older man asked, “Is that why you joined the police force?”
“Is what why?”
“Her dying like that. Your wife.”
“I guess. It’s certainly when I joined.” Ray threw a twig into the street and watched as the tires of a passing car crunched it into bits. “I wanted to help people. Protect people.” He shook his head as if to rattle loose such wishes.
“You do help. You do protect.”
“I see people hurt and dead all the time, and I can’t seem to do much at all.”
“But if you and others weren’t there to enforce the law, more would get hurt, and more would die.”
“I suppose.”
“But none of that brings your wife back.”
“That is correct.”
The two men sat on the curb for a while longer in companionable silence, letting the relative coolness of the stone curb soothe them. Ray shot several more twigs into the street and was rewarded with two hits out of three under the tires of passing cars.
One twig had landed toward the center of the lane. It sat there, defying him; in harm’s way yet magically safe between the murderous wheels of passing cars. He thought for a moment that he would name it Em, but then realized to his surprise that he didn’t need to. In that small, silent ah-ha, a weight shifted off his shoulders that he had not noticed he had been carrying. He smiled.
The sponsor said, “What was her name?”
“I called her by her middle name. Amelia.”
“That’s a beautiful name.”
Ray’s smile widened into a peaceful grin. It was the first time he’d been able to let those silken vowels pass his lips in all the years since her death, and to his surprise and great joy, it tasted just as sweet as ever.
THIRTY-FIVE
I FLEW BACK TO SALT LAKE CITY WITH FRITZ. HE didn’t say much to me during the flight. He had said all he needed to say to me before driving me away from Julia’s, which was, “Don’t ever ask me to do anything like that again.”
I had replied, “Okay.”
I was tired, bone tired, and bruised from Julia’s two attacks, but the worst hurt was not the kind that left a visible mark on one’s body. I hurt in my heart. I hurt for Samantha and Timothy, who were as good as orphaned now, and I hurt for Julia, who wouldn’t be able to see much of either of them for a long, long time. I hurt for every woman who ever poured out her love to a man who didn’t love her in return. I hurt for people who couldn’t understand that love is a forgiving thing that keeps on giving in the gentlest of ways even when there’s been betrayal. I hurt for those who haven’t discovered that the truest kind of love can never be taken from them, because it comes from within, welling up as the purest of gifts, with no requirement or expectation of return. And for the moment, I hurt for myself, because even in the intensity and shock of what she had done, I still loved Julia for all the times that had been better.
All these thoughts consumed me as we flew over the great, knotted spine of the Rockies on the way home to Salt Lake City. For it truly was my home now, the place I had chosen to send down my roots and make a life for myself.
When we landed at Salt Lake International Airport, I thanked Fritz one more time for his help and caring. He didn’t say anything. He drove me around to the commercial aviation side of the airport, where I had parked my truck. And as he dropped me off, he didn’t get out or say anything, only nodded and drove away.
I let him go. That’s another thing love does, it gives a friend his space when he needs it.
But I didn’t leave things like that for long. I gave myself ten days to recover. I walked with Faye, played horsy with Sloane, helped Michele wrap the case as the final evidence came in, and got back on the task of being just another geologist working for the Utah Geological Survey. I saw Michele and Trevor one evening, enjoying a meal at the restaurant across from the
Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City where she had now located an eyewitness who was willing to testify that he had spotted Todd Upton the night of the murder, wearing dark glasses and a ball cap to obscure his bald head. Upton would eventually go to trial, as defiant and self-pitying as Julia. I wondered sourly if they might eventually have become friends if she hadn’t punched him.
Over the next days and weeks, the horror of the two times Julia McWain attacked me ebbed, and I began, bit by bit, to feel normal again. I checked the mirror each morning, watching the scratches and bruises fade, and to counteract the vortex of trauma, I thought of Fritz. I thought of his calm presence, and, like the yin-yang symbol with the little bit of darkness in the light and the speck of light in the darkness, I began to find some calmness in myself.
When I was ready and hoped that he was too, I phoned him and invited him to go for a walk.
We met at dusk that evening and strolled under the spreading trees that lined the Avenues, passing quiet homes where families were tucking their children in with bedtime tales of princes and princesses who did heroic things. I ambled along beside him in companionable silence, listening to the small sounds our feet made on the sidewalk.
Fritz walked with his hands in his pockets, his eyes lost in contemplation. The air hung with the fading heat of summer. It would be fall soon, and the leaves above our heads would lose their vitality and drop away as the trees prepared to sleep through another winter.
We came at last to a small park and turned in to a place where the trees gathered together to form a space more private than the neighborhood around it. Fritz spied a bench and gestured toward it. I shook my head. “What I’ve got to say to you I’ll say standing up,” I said.
“Okay.” He remained standing, too.
“You made a request of me, and I mean to keep it,” I said.
“What was that?”
“About what happened in Denver, when I asked you to spot me while I tried to get that confession out of Julia. You said, ‘Don’t ever ask me to do that again.’”
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