Despite the suppressed objections of the two surviving daughters by his late wife, Temple doted on his handsome new foster son throughout the spring and summer of 1977. Ray’s habit of auto theft was curtailed. There was no need for it anymore, since he now had his own Willys Jeep in which to terrorize the local roads with his reckless driving.
While living on the Williams’ estate he frequently visited his mother and sister at the house in Louisa. His sister remained unaffected by, and almost stubbornly unaware of, her brother’s elevation. However their mother, he said, “took on a new glow, a happiness I’d never seen in her before.” With the death of Mrs. Williams, Edith had expectations, but she and Polly remained in the Victorian house on the edge of town. Her drinking, which had always been heavy, soon became a troublesome issue in the household.
Arrangements were made by Ray’s “foster father” for him to attend the prestigious Episcopal school in Alexandria, Virginia, as a boarder. Temple’s brother-in-law, Monroe Ward, was headmaster there, and Trip Ward, who was the son of Monroe and Temple’s younger sister, Nancy, would be a classmate of Ray’s. But in November of that year, only three months into the school term, Temple Williams drowned while attempting the rescue of a foxhound who had fallen through the icy covering of a pond. With this death, Ray’s new world was shattered.
He quarreled and fought again, first with Trip, and then Monroe himself. In the spring of 1978, after a particularly memorable quarrel involving his grades and a pair of scissors, he stole the headmaster’s car, crashed it in an accident in the Georgetown section of nearby Washington DC, and was expelled permanently from Episcopal. Rather than return to his mother and sister in Louisa, he moved in with new acquaintances of rather low character who had an apartment in the District and at the age of seventeen resumed his former avocation.
“Now, I didn’t steal cars for fun,” he said, “but to make a living.”
He was in and out of detention facilities, and for a time became a ward of the Washington DC juvenile bureaucracy. He did manage to stay clear of the law for several years thereafter, meaning, he said, “I didn’t get caught.” But at the age of twenty, after violently resisting arrest for the interstate transportation of a stolen automobile, he was locked in the DC jail with the adults. Several months later, having been a particularly difficult prisoner, he was sentenced to eight years imprisonment and transferred to the DC Correctional Center, which was located in Lorton, Virginia, across the Potomac River about twenty miles south.
“I’m tired of yakking,” Ray said across the kitchen table. He’d been talking for an hour, prompted occasionally by my questions. “I’ve already told you about Lorton. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. But I swear to you, Bradley, the rule was kill or be killed—or worse.”
“What I don’t understand is how you were able to paint there,” I said. “I can’t picture you in the prison yard with a palette and an easel. Did you wear a black beret?”
We both smiled at the image, and he answered, “AFTAR sponsors art appreciation classes in prisons and, I think, in the inner cities. They’d send a professor to talk about the redemptive power of art. Most of the guys went because if you showed up you’d get hour for hour on your education time and that counted as double ‘good’ time for an earlier release.”
“But you went because you liked it?”
“Yeah. I did like it, especially talking to the teacher. We used to argue, but they were interesting arguments. No one else ever said a word.”
“How did you get to paint?”
“AFTAR expanded the program at Lorton. Although the place was unbelievably overcrowded, we got a day room reserved for art instruction.”
“So the program was a big success.”
“Not exactly. I already knew as much about painting as the man they sent in to teach it. My mother had taught me a lot. But I shut up and let AFTAR take credit. The AFTAR people would have been happier if I’d been a brother, but there was nothing I could do about that.”
He yawned and stretched his arms over his head.
“The part of the program where we painted in the day room only lasted five months. Then someone killed the teacher by sticking him in the neck with the sharpened end of a paintbrush handle. So that ended the program.”
“Oh, my God! Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they couldn’t find another teacher.”
“No, no. Why would someone stab the instructor?”
“I knew the guy who did it. He couldn’t take constructive criticism.”
I stared at Ray, trying to decide if he was putting me on, but he was perfectly serious.
“So they discontinued the program completely?”
“They called it a restructuring. They gave me a big cell all to myself and let me work. There was daylight in there. And they gave me supplies from AFTAR, let me have all my books. I could scrounge up whatever else I needed, like wood from the shop, to stretch the canvases. For five years, all I did was read and paint.”
“What an amazing story,” I said. “The people from AFTAR and Lorton recognized your talent.”
“Maybe the AFTAR people. The people at Lorton wanted to keep me occupied so I wouldn't get into trouble. Anyway, my work got them some good publicity. But I would have gone on like that for years if it wasn’t for Lennie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone else would have let me rot in there, painting until I keeled over. He came on the AFTAR board early this year, took a good look at my paintings, and in eight months I was out. He steam-rolled over anyone who got in his way. He even arranged an AFTAR salary for me. Eighteen thousand a year until I can make my own living.”
“So what were you doing sleeping with his wife, Ray?”
His eyes met mine evenly, without a trace of guilt or embarrassment.
“Sleeping. Just that. I told you, Bradley, there’s nothing wrong going on.”
His eyes were shining and he seemed quite sincere.
“I’ve never met anyone like Nora,” he continued. “We went riding this morning to clear our heads after last night. We stayed out for hours, talking about everything. You should see how my riding has improved, by the way. Nora says she’s never seen anyone pick it up so quickly.”
“You do have a natural seat, Ray.”
“We came back here and fixed some sandwiches for lunch, and then we went into the studio to finish our conversation.”
“And . . . ?”
“I was telling her how deadening it is to be locked up without reason, how it poisons your soul, makes you less than human, and how I’ll have to go back if anyone finds out what happened last night in New York.”
Now he became distinctly uneasy, but I couldn’t tell if he was worried about prison or was hiding something.
“The story still doesn’t add up, Ray. How did you go from talking about Lorton to sleeping together?”
He swallowed hard and his eyes grew luminous. For the first time since I met him, he was embarrassed.
“I cried, Bradley. I don’t remember ever crying, even when I was a little kid, but I was crying so hard I couldn’t stop. She held me, like I was a little boy, and told me everything would be all right—that she and Lennie would never let me go back.”
He was blinking now at the memory of the emotions he’d felt a few hours before.
“I couldn’t stop crying. Tears were streaming down my face, and she held me and told me everything would be all right. For the first time in my life I knew what heaven must be like. When she was holding me like that, saying she and Lennie wouldn’t let me go back to prison. We were both so tired from being up all night that we fell asleep like that on the sofa.”
“Sounds serious, Ray.”
“There’s no sex involved,” he insisted. “There can’t be! She’s married to Lennie!” He had the entire matter figured out. “I don’t want that with a woman anyway,” he said. “I’m not . . . wired that way. With Nora, there aren’t any expectations bec
ause she’s married. Anyway, we’re fated to be together. It’s incredible how much alike we are, despite the superficial differences.”
I must have looked skeptical.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked.
“I’m sure you think you’re telling the truth, but you and Nora are playing with fire. If you both feel like it’s ‘heaven’ when you touch, you’ll be doing the nasty together on the floor within a month.”
“Don’t talk about her like that!” He stood to confront me. I’d gone too far.
“Okay, okay,” I said, trying to soothe him. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to be offensive. I’m trying to be a friend to both of you—warning you of a certain reality between men and women.”
“Well, not between me and Nora,” he said, settling back into his chair. “Don’t ever talk about her like that again. Do you understand?”
The hair on the back of my neck was beginning to stand up as I looked him in the eyes. I could see the gold flecks in his irises expand, and his body was taking on that same coiled tenseness as it had the moment right before he plunged the knife into Raider’s heart. I wanted to run from the kitchen but remained in my chair, sweat running down my armpits. Ray continued to stare at me until, finally getting himself under control, he broke his gaze by looking at the floor.
“I apologized for that particular remark, Ray,” I said carefully, “but I’ll say what I have to say, whenever I have to say it.
“Suit yourself,” he said, and got up and left the room.
That night I locked my bedroom door for the first time since moving to Schoolcross and lay awake twisting in the sheets for hours, trying to understand why two people had been brutally killed.
They say that prosecutors consider evidence from eyewitnesses to be the most easily manipulated and the least reliable. Now I understood why. My constant mental replay of the encounter between Raider’s menace and Ray’s quickness gave the whole episode a dreamlike quality. At this point, a skillful interrogator could have convinced me of anything by the tenor of his questions.
My own role in Raider’s death continued to trouble me deeply. How could I have run from the scene, then never call the police? Even if what Ray had done was “self-defense,” he’d still go back to prison. Carrying a weapon was a serious parole violation, not to mention stabbing a man in the heart with it. And Lennie had given him the knife. Lennie and Ray both had their reasons for hoping the entire incident on Sixty-Fourth Street could simply be forgotten. Lennie was the one who’d publically fought for Ray to be freed on parole.
And now Lars was dead, killed by Mario, or so everyone thought. If I knew Ray was involved in Lars’s death, nothing would keep me from going straight to the police. But I had only suspicions.
The more I thought, the more confused I became. Before finally slipping into an uneasy sleep, I decided I’d talk with Lennie first thing in the morning. He certainly needed to be told about the argument between Lars and Ray the night that Lars had disappeared. I also would tell him I’d be moving. I no longer felt safe at Schoolcross.
It was well after dawn when I awoke, and I washed and dressed hurriedly then slipped downstairs. Ray frightened me now and I wanted to avoid him, but as I was taking my jacket from the peg in the front hallway he called from the kitchen.
“Bradley! Is that you? Come here.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you mean, ‘What do I want?’ I want you to come here.”
I entered the kitchen apprehensively. He was standing at the counter, stirring something in a mixing bowl with a spatula. His blue denim work shirt was flecked with flour.
“I’m making pancakes,” he said. “I’ve been watching you cook long enough.” He gestured at the steaming kettle on the gas range. “The water’s hot. Make yourself something to drink and sit down. I want to say something.”
“What’s on your mind?” I asked, as he stirred the contents of the mixing bowl.
“I’ll come right to the point . . .” he answered, but I’d already noticed something disturbing.
“Ray, excuse me for interrupting, but did you put extra eggs in the batter?”
He followed my gaze to the shells that littered the counter.
“Yeah,” he said. “I thought it would make the pancakes taste better. Why?”
This was one of my pet peeves.
“The pancakes are going to be all thick and tough now.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about, Bradley,” he replied, his voice exasperated.
“Cooking?”
“No, about moving out. You’re getting on my nerves. Why is it any business of yours if I want to put an extra egg . . .”
“Two . . .”
“Okay, two extra eggs in the pancake batter?”
I knew he wasn’t talking about unwanted cooking advice—it was because I’d questioned him about Nora. I’d watched him kill a man with no warning, and now I was picking a fight over the recipe for pancake batter? My dismay at irritating him lasted about a tenth of a second before being replaced by elation as I absorbed the news. He wanted to move out!
“Funny you should mention moving, Ray. I’ve been thinking about that myself, that it was time to start looking for my own place in New York.”
“Well, I can’t move to New York, Bradley, not without AFTAR’s permission. If Nora and Lennie agree, I want to move in to the Keeper’s Cottage. No offense, but I feel like I need more privacy to do my best work.”
This was one of Lennie’s lines. He often said he needed privacy to “do his best work.”
“No offense at all,” I hastened to reassure him. “Moving to the Keeper’s Cottage is a good idea.”
The Keeper’s Cottage was the little house adjacent to the Arena that Nora and Lennie had restored as a private getaway. They hadn’t used it in years.
“You’ll still represent me, right?”
“Sure, Ray. Your being alone will help you paint more and be good for business.”
“It’s settled. I’ll talk to Lennie or Nora and move out today if I can. Fox will loan me his truck.”
“Let me know if I can help.”
He turned his attention back to the pancakes as I got up from the table.
“What about breakfast?” he asked.
“I’m not hungry yet.”
“Suit yourself.”
I left through the front door and walked up the pathway to find Lennie, noticing as I passed the Big House garage that the Wagoneer was gone. I continued around to the side and up the steps of the back stoop to the kitchen entrance. I spotted Mrs. Rhodes through the window in the kitchen door, buttering toast. When I knocked lightly she gave a start.
“It’s turrible, isn’t it?” she said, as she admitted me.
I would have preferred not to talk about the events of last night, but she plunged right in.
“Mr. Rhodes didn’t sleep a wink,” she said. “He kept tossing and turning, thinking about that dead Lars, his eyeballs all . . .”
“Yes, it’s terrible, Mrs. Rhodes,” I said, “but I need to speak to Mr. Hirsh right away.”
“Mister has gone to the police already, and Missus is still asleep.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance it was suicide, Mrs. Rhodes?”
“Suicide?” she squawked. “Does a man commit suicide by burying himself in a wood pile and hitting his head with a hammer?”
As I’d intended, she quickly laid out the household’s entire theory of the case.
“Everyone knows Lars and Mario was fightin’ all the time. The night Lars disappeared, them two had a real go-to-pieces here at the Big House when they came back late and drunk, looking for Missus. Mister told them to go home and sleep it off. When they were going back to the Cockpit, Mario popped him on the head with a hammer, right outside their own front door. Then he wrapped Lars in a tarp and dragged him to the woodpile.”
Maybe that was what had happened. It wouldn’t be the first time a cri
me of passion had been committed during a drunken spree. And Mario and Lars had a history of nasty squabbles. After asking Mrs. Rhodes to have Lennie call me when he got home, I took my leave and headed back to my house.
As I neared the Quaker Cottage, I could see Tamara’s ancient Volvo parked out front. She and Ray were standing on the porch, their voices carrying clearly in the morning air. The tone was ugly. They were so involved in their discussion that they didn’t notice me at the edge of the yard.
“This thing was going on the whole time, right under my nose. I was too stupid to know the two of you were using me,” Tamara said.
“My friendship with Nora is none of your business. You said yourself, ‘No commitment’ between us, remember?”
“You’re like every other man. You never cared about me. All you wanted to do was fuck me—not that you’re capable of that either. You need to see a doctor or something.”
“You’re the one who kept running after me, making a fool of yourself.”
She tried to slap him, but he grabbed her wrist and bent her arm downward until she was doubled at the waist from pain. For a moment I thought she’d drop to her knees, but he let go abruptly. She staggered back, trying to regain her balance, then reached the edge of the porch and fell backward down the stairs onto the walkway. She landed hard, right on her tailbone, but didn’t appear to be hurt.
“You’re a bastard,” she said, as she picked herself up. “You hurt everyone you touch. You’ll do it to Nora too.”
She was walking backward toward her Volvo.
“Nora won’t listen, but Lennie might,” she yelled. “I’m going to tell him right now. And I know something else too . . .”
She had reached her car and was struggling with the door handle.
“. . . I know you hurt someone when you were in New York on Sunday. I saw the blood on your sleeve. The first time you went into the city you hurt someone. That’s why you never leave Schoolcross. You can’t be with normal people without hurting them.”
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