Quieter than Sleep

by Joanne Dobson

  Piotrowski had told me earlier he believed the killings were reactive rather than planned. When Randy told me he had to see someone at the party, it must have been Margaret. And she must have been galvanized into action on the spot. She was extraordinarily muscular, the medical examiner had told Piotrowski. She would have had no problem strangling Randy. His face, swollen and distorted in death, flashed into my memory. Randy never could keep his mouth shut, and, just look, it had killed him.

  And what about Bonnie? Randy had evidently given into temptation and shared his find with her sometime earlier in the day. We knew he was an obsessive talker. Any audience suited him; he wasn’t particular. And Bonnie had had no reservations about blabbing it. A memory of my final conversation with her in the Commons flashed into my mind: her almost teasing mention of some unknown letter, Margaret Smith seated at a table in the background reading the Christian Science Monitor.

  For me, however, Margaret had obviously changed her M.O.: she’d come prepared. I had no idea how long she’d had the gun. I was quite certain, however, that she didn’t usually walk around with a can of paint thinner in her pocket. She must have picked that up in Cambridge after running into me at the library. Maybe at lunchtime, so she’d be prepared to follow me home.

  My head hurt. I didn’t want to think about it any more.

  “We sent a team to Smith’s house,” the lieutenant informed me. “They found a manuscript. It’s about Emily Dickinson, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. Can we ask you to read it? Not pro bono, acourse. And, acourse, when you get better. We need an expert’s opinion on its significance to the case.”

  I groaned. A dull weight settled directly on my brain. I couldn’t wait.

  The afternoon of my third day in the hospital, I was sitting up in bed, wearing a new nightgown Amanda had bought me, and feeling almost alive. Piotrowski entered, carrying a huge bouquet of daisies and looking somewhat embarrassed about it. Daisies, I thought, what is there about daisies…? But I couldn’t recover even a trace of the memory.

  As I said, I remembered most of what happened. What I couldn’t remember, for the life of me, was exactly what the Dickinson letter had said. Given the trauma I had suffered and the knock on the head, it had been a challenge to remember my name; a letter manuscript seen only once under conditions of extreme duress was simply too much of a stretch. Whenever I thought about the letter, I got terribly confused. I asked Piotrowski if there was any way a forensics specialist could find traces of words on the ashes.

  “You read too much detective fiction,” he replied, shaking his head. “The documents specialist just laughed when we took him in that pile of ashes. ‘No way,’ he said, ‘No fu … uh … no way.’”I guess my dejection showed, because Piotrowski looked at me quizzically. “This really matters to you, doesn’t it? I mean, really matters?”

  How could I make him understand the enormity of the loss? Emily Dickinson’s final Master letter had been utterly incinerated, not a word, or even a letter, could be reconstructed except what I could remember—which, at the moment, was almost nothing. Margaret had achieved her objective: The letter was gone forever.

  To Piotrowski this was not a setback. My testimony, with supporting evidence, was enough to close his case. But to me it was a tragedy. Other scholars most likely would believe my account of this letter, but the material trace of the forgotten passion—and the language of it—had vanished forever.

  “To you, Piotrowski, that letter was the cause of two deaths.” He nodded. “Almost of three,” I added as an afterthought. His responding grunt was eloquent. “But to me, at least for the brief time in which I actually saw it, that letter was a way of defeating death. Of getting past the silence that death enforces.” I was now talking more to myself than to him, but he seemed to be listening attentively. “That letter spoke to me of love and betrayal. Of a passion that was so alive at the moment Dickinson’s hand traced those words upon the page, that it was still living almost a century and a half after the words were read, folded away, and forgotten. That letter brought her to life again, if only because through it she spoke to my imagination and my consciousness—to my heart, if I can be corny about it.”

  “Yeah.” Piotrowski’s reply was thoughtful. I started, because I had forgotten he was there, that I was actually talking to someone. “Yeah, I see,” he said. “I suppose that’s how it is.”

  “I’m sorry.” My head ached. “I’m getting carried away here. You’re not interested in all this—aesthetic stuff.” I was looking at the way the sunlight through the window illuminated the daisies in their yellow vase.

  “Oh, but I am. Who else do I know that could talk like this? You make me think there might be something in all this poetry sh—er, stuff. That it might really let the past talk to you….”

  “She knew that about language.” I was amazed I was having this conversation with him, and I also wasn’t really certain I was making any sense. “She knew that words chosen with care and arranged in just such a … a … felicitous way could bring old passions back to life. Could resurrect them, so to speak.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I suppose it’s something like what I feel whenever I hear Tats’ Domino singing ‘Blueberry Hill.’”

  “Yeah,” I said, “something like that.” It hurt to grin, but I couldn’t help it. “Yeah, really. Quite a bit like that, actually. Quite a bit.”

  Piotrowski saw my smile and immediately backed onto safer ground. “What I don’t get is, if this note was so important and it was sitting there in that library for a hundred years, how come nobody found it before now?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. It does seem strange, but maybe it’s because Dickinson’s Master letters are really rather specialized knowledge. They’re known mostly to literary scholars. And al though he did write a novel, Henry Ward Beecher is not exactly considered a literary figure. I imagine that most of the people who have looked through Beecher’s archives have been historians or theologians. A folder marked ‘Correspondent Unknown’ with a slightly hysterical letter in a difficult handwriting would have been of no interest to them. It was only by happenstance that Randy went into those files. I imagine he was looking for material relating to homophobia or latent homoeroticism, and of course he recognized Dickinson’s distinctive prose style and handwriting.”

  “Too bad for him.”

  “Yeah,” I responded. “Too bad for him.” And almost for me, I thought. But I knew Piotrowski felt guilty enough already, so I kept my mouth shut.

  The sunlight continued to shine on the daisies. As the afternoon sun dipped toward the horizon its rays began to blind me. I reached up automatically with my right hand to shield my eyes and winced with pain as I jarred the burn wounds. Piotrowski noticed, clucked sympathetically, and got up to adjust the window blinds.

  “Do you think it’s possible that the words of Dickinson’s letter are seared into my flesh?” I would never have attempted such whimsicality with him if he hadn’t confessed his response to “Blueberry Hill.”

  With a perfectly straight face, he replied, “I suppose that would be too much to hope for, Doctor, but I’ll have our documents specialist take a look.”

  He was still standing by the window, and I looked over at him in astonishment. This time it was his turn to grin, the hundred-megawatt grin I remembered seeing only once before. I smiled back at him, slowly, but with increasing appreciation. Really, this was a most surprising man. And he had one hell of a knock-out smile.

  Twenty-nine

  PIOTROWSKI insisted on driving me home from the hospital in his Jeep. No, he said. That was all right. He knew he didn’t have to, but he wanted to. It was Saturday; he had nothing else planned. At my insistence, Amanda and Sophia were crashing at the Samoorians’ until I got home, and my daughter had already driven my car to Enfield. This way she wouldn’t have to come back to fetch me.

  “Can I get you something to eat? Ya need a pillow for your head? A blanket? A cup of tea
? Something to read for later?”

  “Just make sure I don’t have to pay the damn hospital bill and get me the hell out of here.”

  As we drove west on the Massachusetts Turnpike into the late afternoon sun, we didn’t seem to have much to talk about. The turnpike was the long way home to Enfield, but at least it wasn’t as winding as Route 2, and the road was in good shape. For that, my aching head was grateful. Each bump of the car threatened to sever the top of my skull from the rest of my body. I was still drugged and intermittently confused, and as for Piotrowski, he seemed to be brooding deeply over some private thoughts.

  I looked over at him, at his square, practical profile outlined against the passing scene of speeding cars and filthy snowbanks. He looked good. His brown hair had been recently cropped. He was wearing a gray turtleneck and black pants that actually fit him. He had lost more weight, but his shoulders still bulked out the new blue jacket nicely. He looked very good, as a matter of fact. But he was quiet and distracted. I thought maybe I should try to get him to talk.

  “How’s Trooper Schultz?”

  His response was slow in coming, as if he were thinking of something else and was reluctant to change gears.

  “She’s taking it hard. It was her first time undercover, and she almost lost you. She’s beating on herself for that. And it was her first shooting.” He shrugged. “But Felicity’s tough. She’ll be okay.”

  Felicity? I remembered her crouched in the doorway, gun aimed straight at Margaret Smith’s heart. Felicity, indeed.

  “Would it be okay if I called and thanked her?”

  “She’d probably appreciate that.” He laughed, brightening up briefly. “But I got to tell you she didn’t like you very much.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “No. She thought you were arrogant and rude. ‘Arrogant and rude,’ those were the words she used.”

  I remembered with a blush how brusque I had been with her in the library. “Tell her I’m sorry. If I’d only known …” Then I got pissed. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? You never told me stuff! You let me make a fool of myself again, just like when I called you that night—”

  “Well, we wanted you to act natural, so we didn’t want you to know we had protection on you….” He let his words trail off and again seemed preoccupied with his thoughts. But I wasn’t about to let it go.

  “You wanted me to act arrogant and rude?”

  “If necessary.” Then he looked over at me, his brown eyes briefly animated. “You know, I’ve felt that way about you, myself, actually.”

  I was deeply hurt. “I thought you liked me!”

  He gave me a fleeting brilliant smile. “Oh, I do. But that doesn’t mean you’re not obnoxious sometimes.”

  “Well, the feeling’s mutual. And while we’re on it—”

  But he interrupted me, grim again. “Look. There’s something else, something I gotta tell you.” The car whizzed through a deep rock cut. Huge icicles hung perilously close to the road. We must have been doing close to eighty miles an hour. Piotrowski looked so serious that the fight instantly went out of me.

  “What?”

  “Last night there was an intruder in your house.”

  “What!” Pain stabbed through my head, and I suddenly felt nauseous.

  I must have gone pale, too, because Piotrowski said solicitously, “You gonna be okay with this?”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed hard and hoped I wouldn’t disgrace myself.

  “It was a bad scene. He shot one of our officers. But we got the bastard.” Piotrowski’s expression was grim. “We got him, and, goddammit, the courts better not let him slip through. He damn near killed Brita Johansson.”

  “God….” I was going to be sick.

  Piotrowski’s expression grew anxious. “You’re not gonna pass out on me, are ya?”

  “Just give me a minute.” I took four slow, deep breaths. “Okay. Go on. Is Brita Johansson the tall blonde? The one who came to my house that time?”

  “Yeah. And last night she took a bullet in the gut.” His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly I feared he’d lose control of the car.

  Dear God. She seemed just a kid, not much older than my students. Or Amanda. “Will she be okay?”

  “She was in surgery six hours. But they say she’ll recover. I saw her just before I came over….” His voice trailed off.

  “Oh, God, Piotrowski. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I remembered the blond officer’s impudent grin the night of my call to Piotrowski, and I was trying hard not to cry. Then I realized that Piotrowski was still holding back on me.

  “Who was it, for God’s sake? Who was at my house? What did he want?”

  Piotrowski’s lips were tight. “Stan Warzek.”

  “Warzek? What the hell was he doing in my home? How did the trooper find him?”

  “You remember that night you called me?”

  “I’m not likely to forget.”

  “It’s a good thing you called.” He glanced over at me, reached out, and squeezed my hand. If I hadn’t been so horrified with what he was telling me, I would have jumped out of my skin with astonishment.

  “You told me about Warzek harassing you, and I made the connection with the car, you know, the one going by your house at odd hours. And those anonymous phone calls …”

  “Oh!” I had forgotten.

  “And just in case you were right about Warzek being the killer, I put surveillance on him.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. His was the car that followed you out of Enfield. The beat-up brown one. We were following him.”

  “And you didn’t tell me—”

  “You were well out of his way by then. We kept the tail on him until we knew he wasn’t the killer. That was a week ago. But yesterday Johansson was on patrol, and she saw his old Plymouth pulled over in the woods near your house—”

  “Oh, God….”

  “She handled it right. She radioed for backup, so there was three of them went in. But it was her he went after.”

  He concentrated intently on the highway. The stretch of road ahead was straight, flat, and dry.

  “The guys said it was weird. It was like he didn’t even see them. Like she was the only one in the room. He kept staring at her, pointing the gun. He called her a lezzie bitch and a bull dyke. And that wasn’t the worst of it—You’re a lady; I’m not gonna repeat the rest of it.”

  Any other time I would have told the lieutenant he couldn’t shock me. That I’d already heard all the words there were to hear. But at this moment I respected his need to try to protect me, if only in this extremely old-fashioned way.

  And, as I thought about what he was telling me, guilt overwhelmed me. “It was me he wanted, you know. He hated me. He really hated me. And when he couldn’t get at me, he went after her. Officer Johansson took the bullet for me.” Then I did cry. I tried to do it quietly and with some dignity, but I failed. Piotrowski handed me a fistful of his outsized tissues. I wondered if he kept them specially for sobbing women. In his job he must see a fair number of them.

  I cried and cried. This nightmare was never going to end. Even my own home wasn’t safe. Panic seized me. I had to get out of that place. I had to go live somewhere where there were people around. I had to … Then it struck me. “So, if I hadn’t called you that night, I might have found him waiting for me when I got home.” Or Amanda, I thought. Oh, God. He would have gotten Amanda.

  “Right.” He bit the word off sharply. “But you did call. Smart thing to do. You noticed the right things, things I didn’t have a chance to see. You just put them together a little crooked.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” I sniffed.

  “Looks like he’s obsessed with you. He says … you’re a lesbian.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Then silence. Was he waiting for me to deny it? Well, he could just wait. He was a detective, wasn’t he? He should be able to figure it out.

  When I didn’t sp
eak, he went on. “Not that it would matter. But what he thinks is that you’re after his daughter. He keeps saying he was just trying to protect his kid.” He shook his head. “The guy’s crazy. A real squirrel.”

  “Squirrel?”

  “Yeah. A nutter. A sociopath, I think. One a those guys hates women, ya know? I see a lot of that. Gotta be the big man all the time. Gotta be in charge.” He kept shaking his head, as if this were inconceivable to him. “And you being so damn decent to that girl …”

  His eyes softened, then he continued. “So … Anyhow, I’m not taking you home.”

  “What?”

  “Your daughter’s gonna meet you at the Samoorians’. They’re gonna keep you both for a few days, until we release the crime scene, and you can get your place cleaned up.”

  I didn’t ask him what needed to be cleaned up. I didn’t want to know.

  “And Miss Warzek’s gone home to her mother.”

  “Shit.” On a long uphill grade, we passed a laboring tractor-trailer. The driver had adorned its mud flaps with shiny silhouettes of naked women. “Shit. Shit I thought maybe we could get her out of that wacked-out place.”

  “Well, we’ve got Warzek on enough charges to keep him away for awhile, so she should be all right. Assault with a deadly weapon, assaulting a police officer, burglary, aggravated harassment, stalking … If the courts do their job, no one should have to see him for a long, long time.” He hesitated. “We held off on the charge of possession of an unregistered handgun. At least at first.” His eyes slid sideways toward me.

  “Why?” I was baffled.

  “He says the gun is yours.”

  I went cold with horror. The gun Tony had given me! Warzek had been going to kill me with my own gun. He had shot Brita Johansson with my gun!

  But that wasn’t what was on Piotrowski’s mind.

  “So I talked to Captain Gorman—”

  “Why on earth…?”