Cloudland

by Joseph Olshan

  “How is he?”

  “I’m about to take him to the hospital … finally. He’s been refusing to go. But then he had an episode in the shower.”

  She’d heard him cry out and found him slumped down in the stall, leaning against the tiles under a deluge of water. She kept asking what was wrong and all he could say was, “I can’t think, I just can’t think!” When he recovered from this momentary fit, Anthony finally agreed to be driven to the hospital and gave her the name of the neurologist he’d known in medical school, who happened to be affiliated with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

  “I don’t mean to usher you off the phone, but that doctor is supposed to be calling about meeting us over there. I already have Anthony in the car.”

  Now even more worried about Anthony, I knew it wasn’t the time to ask him for phone numbers, not to mention find out why he’d gone to Burlington. I made Fiona promise to stay in touch about his injury.

  I tried the Springfield police station yet again with no luck, and then realized my deadline for the latest column was four o’clock that very afternoon. Worrying that Prozzo now was focusing his suspicions on Matthew and perhaps on me as well, I decided it was best to remain occupied until I heard from him.

  An archivist had written to tell me how to preserve newspaper clippings, in essence how to remove acid from the paper, which causes it to turn yellow and fall apart. I dissolved a milk-of-magnesia tablet in a quart of club soda and poured the mixture in a pan that was large enough to hold the flattened clipping, one of my op-ed pieces that I’d written for The New York Times on vanishing wildlife in Vermont, including the bobolink getting churned under by the hay threshers. Before putting the newsprint in the pan, I was instructed to put in a piece of nylon net that would allow me to pick up the paper without tearing it. I soaked the clipping for an hour, removed it, and just as I was patting it dry with the intention of allowing it to cure completely in the air, the dogs began barking madly: somebody had pulled into the driveway. I went and looked out my study window and recognized Prozzo’s Jeep Cherokee. At last. He was swiping his signature Ray-Bans off his face and beginning a bowlegged walk toward the door. I went and met him. Tucking his sunglasses in his shirt pocket, he apologized for showing up without phoning beforehand.

  “Got your message, Catherine. I didn’t get back right away. I was actually hoping to see Anthony before dropping in on you. But he’s not home. And hasn’t been answering his cell phone.”

  “He’s gone to the hospital.” I briefly explained what I knew.

  Prozzo appeared genuinely alarmed. “That sounds so bizarre, falling like that. Talk about bad luck!”

  “You coming in?”

  “Sure. Just don’t offer me any dog biscuits.” He patted his small belly. “I’m dieting.”

  The dogs, still barking, went up and sniffed at him and then shied away. Before going to sit down, he stood for a moment at the threshold to the kitchen, calculating something. “This is going to…” He stared at me. “Make things tricky. I need to get into the hospital to speak to him.”

  “Do you want something to drink?”

  He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Yeah, maybe some water.” While I fetched a jelly glass and filled it from the tap, he pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, his bulk setting off a complaint from the wooden spokes.

  “Careful,” I admonished. “Don’t lean back.”

  He chuckled at my petty concern.

  I faced him. “So am I one of your new leads in the River Valley murders?”

  Prozzo managed to laugh. “Who told you that?”

  “A big-mouth waitress. And my neighbors. You should know that in a small town like this people protect one another, especially old-timers. And it gets back who’s been talking or asking questions. I just want to know why you’re questioning them and not me.”

  “Here I am,” Prozzo said. Indicating the chair in front of me, he said, “Why don’t you have a seat.”

  Feeling beleaguered, I said, “I’d rather stand.”

  “Okay.” He paused, obviously for effect. “You had a visitor the other day.”

  “I get visitors all the time.”

  “Your former boyfriend.”

  I merely stared at him.

  “You’ve been spending time together?”

  “We’ve seen each other exactly once.”

  “So you’ve seen Matthew Blake only once.”

  I shivered when I heard the name pass his lips. “Matthew Blake,” I repeated. “You do your homework, don’t you?”

  “You could say it’s my job.” He fell calculatedly silent, his flinty eyes once again riveted to me.

  Remembering how he’d hounded Hiram Osmond to no real avail, I said with skepticism, “So Matthew’s the one you’re trailing now?”

  Prozzo was watching me carefully.

  “It wouldn’t be your first miscalculation.”

  I could see a flush creeping into his face and neck. “There’s a lot of trial and error to this line of work, Catherine. It’s not as breezy as TV.”

  “Do you happen to know that Matthew Blake has been abroad these last few years?”

  At this, Prozzo reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an eight-by-eleven sheet of paper folded into quarters. “This is an employment contract with an ESL school in Cambridge that he signed a little more than two years ago. According to them, he’s been steadily employed since the date of signature.” He handed me a photocopy of a document with lots of fine print. A date was circled in black ink: April 5, 2007. I recognized Matthew’s signature below it. Then Prozzo passed along a dot matrix printout of a Qantas Airways manifest: February 23, 2007. Marked in yellow highlighter: MATTHEW R. BLAKE and a corresponding passport number. “He did go to Thailand. This is the record of his flight home. He was out of the country for just over two weeks. And coincidentally, his return predates the first murder by one month.”

  I could feel my breath catch as I carefully placed the incriminating papers on the table. And finally sat down, my head reeling. So this meant that Matthew had lied about his life in Bangkok, had lied about his love affair with a married woman.

  Marco went on. “When I stopped by to speak to your friends, I gathered he told you a whole different story.”

  My heart pounding wildly, I managed to say, “He told me … he was gone for two years and came back in April.”

  “That’s pretty spectacular make-believe, don’t you think?” The detective wrinkled up his face. “Why do you think he’d lie about that?”

  I had no idea. My brain started conjuring up all sorts of questions and possible explanations and then, in the midst of the flurry, I remembered in a panic that Matthew had read the obscure Wilkie Collins novel.

  I refrained from delivering this crucial bit of evidence right away, for I knew then I’d be damning him definitively. There was still something in me that conspired to protect him, to preserve his innocence, futile as this may sound. I was finally able to gather my thoughts enough to say, “Okay, the lie certainly makes him a suspect. But why is he a suspect to begin with?”

  “As you know, we have several suspects. In his particular case, in 2006, he was arrested for assaulting a woman.”

  I was feeling dizzy now but managed to ask, “When?”

  “While he was in college in Burlington.”

  But surely I would have known about this, about the accusation and the arrest. How could Matthew have hidden this from me?

  “And presumably you know his mother is very religious?” Prozzo continued. I nodded. “That she was part of the Seventh-Day Adventist community? And that Matthew went to a Seventh-Day Adventist secondary school?”

  “I knew the mother was a Seventh-Day Adventist. But there are plenty around here. The last part, about his attending a religious school, I wasn’t aware of.”

  “So two omissions on his part,” Prozzo said, making a temple with his hands. “But here’s the third most important connection, which I’m actuall
y surprised you haven’t made yourself.”

  I shut my eyes for a moment, fully expecting him to mention the Wilkie Collins novel.

  Instead he said, “All these women who have been murdered were strangled in the process. Didn’t you ever make that connection?”

  Obviously Paul and Wade had told him about Matthew’s hands around my throat; I suppressed the impulse to touch my neck and found myself staring at Prozzo’s garish pinky ring with a feeling of utter hopelessness. How could it possibly be: Matthew responsible for the deaths of all these women?

  I managed to get out, “Of course I did. But I thought he was out of the country all this time. Surely you understand why … I wouldn’t suspect him, myself?”

  Prozzo nodded. “Absolutely. But confirming he lied to you about his return is a big piece of evidence that I need.”

  I heard myself sigh. “It’s actually not the biggest piece.”

  Prozzo looked bewildered. “What are you trying to say to me?”

  I rested my forehead on the kitchen table in complete and utter misery. “Matthew read that Wilkie Collins novel, The Widower’s Branch. He knows the story.” I now looked up at the detective.

  Prozzo’s eyes widened. “And … when did he tell you this?”

  “Just.”

  “When were you going to tell us? About this?”

  “I told you, I thought he was living abroad. Besides, I have had other students of mine who have read this novel. I’ve looked for the lists of their names and can’t find them. And there’s no way I could call the school for the lists. They’d see no reason to give them to me.”

  “But they would give them to me,” Prozzo pointed out. “If I asked them.”

  “I’m sure they would.”

  The detective took out his pocket-sized notepad and jotted something down. His face wore an expression of calculation and the conversation dangled into an awkward lull. At last I asked, “Do you think I’m in danger now?”

  “I wouldn’t risk seeing him right away if I were you.” Prozzo glanced at his watch. “As far as I know he’s up at his parents’ cabin.”

  “I believe he probably is.”

  “It’s a little over an hour’s drive. I think I’m going to head up there now to question him … about all these lies.”

  “And what happens if he’s not there?” I said.

  Prozzo glanced at his watch. “I’ll call the school and see if I can get your ‘missing lists,’” he said with an odd intonation.

  “You think I’m lying about the other students?”

  He looked at me askance. “Why would I think that?”

  “Because you might suspect I’m deflecting you in order to protect him.”

  Prozzo shook his head dismissively. “Why don’t you go spend some time with your friends down the road. I have their number. I can call you there. Do you have a cell phone?” I told him I did. “Let me have that too,” he said, and jotted the number down on his notepad.

  TWENTY

  I WAS SHAKING WHEN PROZZO LEFT, could barely string together my thoughts or words. Impelled to call Breck, I broke down in the midst of explaining what Prozzo had told me. She wisely kept her “I told you so” apprehensions to herself and urged me to get in the car immediately and drive down to New Jersey.

  “But he, Prozzo, will probably need me again. The way I left it—”

  “Did he say he was going to arrest Matthew?”

  “No, just question him.”

  “Look, Mother, I want you to be completely safe. Your cell phone will work just as well in New Jersey as it will in Vermont.”

  “Okay, but then I have to figure out what to do with Madame.”

  “She can’t come to New Jersey. Violet’s furniture is not pig-proof. No grate in the floor where she can piss to her heart’s content.”

  “You don’t think I know that?” I snapped.

  “Just calm down, okay? You need to try and stay cool. You’ve got a lot to accomplish in a very short period of time.”

  “Then don’t treat me like an idiot! Otherwise I won’t be able to find an alternative.” I racked my brain for several moments and then was blessed with an idea. “Hiram Osmond. He’s got a bunch of pigs.”

  When I told her Hiram hardly ever answered his phone, Breck suggested driving over to the farm and that I’d probably hear from Prozzo whether or not Matthew was at his parents’ by the time I got back.

  * * *

  Hiram was standing near a pen of alpacas in the throes of being shorn of their fur. Squirrel, his cat, was sitting on his shoulder, marching her paws on her master, a disinterested observer to a racking routine. It was late July; from the little I knew, the shearing was happening at least six weeks late. Being in full fur during the summer months, male alpacas can suffer sterility and females can abort their eleven-month-long pregnancies. Hiram saw my look of bewilderment and quickly explained that in early June he’d had to cancel his appointment with his shearer, who, during the summer hiatus, had gone on vacation and had only just returned.

  The shearer was a barrel-chested, grizzled-looking man helped by his two smaller-built sons who bent down and quietly tied ropes around the legs of each animal. Using a pulley attached to a winch, they slowly separated the legs until the alpaca was forced to lie down on a low table. One son placed his hands gently on the alpaca’s head, while the other held and caressed the animal’s body. There is a pure fathomless fear that glosses the eyes of animals when they perceive imminent danger. During that moment of frailty they appear almost human, their meek innocence never more in relief. It’s a piercing sorrow one feels watching them struggle so defenselessly. With his sons holding it, the shearer climbed on the alpaca; the animal’s body twitched and jerked as though in the last rhythms of life. Finally, it submitted and, petrified, went completely still.

  I could see how watching the panicked animal upset Hiram, and it reassured me to know that the knacker felt compassion for living creatures. In comparison to my last visit, when he seemed unhinged by the incessant questioning of Prozzo and the other officials, today Hiram appeared rather composed. He was pretty cleaned up, too, recently shaven and didn’t reek of sweat and blood and manure; today he just looked like any normal farmer wearing a fresh T-shirt, untarnished with blood. “This is a surprise,” he said. “What’s this, your third visit in twenty years?”

  “Three’s a charm,” I said, and he frowned skeptically, as though my agitation was apparent. Looking past the piles of femurs and skulls and hooves in the knacker’s yard toward one of his large white barns, I noticed the pigpen, which now enclosed two animals. I asked where the others had gone.

  “Sold them.”

  “For slaughter?”

  “No, to another farm. Now, I can’t promise what the new owners will do with them.”

  I turned to him. “I’ve come to ask you a favor.”

  “Shoot,” he said, his attention momentarily distracted by the hobbled alpaca engaged in a new bout of resisting the shearer and striving valiantly to free itself.

  “How would you like to pig-sit for a few days?”

  He smiled. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Always.”

  “You got to go out of town?” Unfortunately, I told him. “She’s a live-in, right? One of those potbellies? Somebody told me that.”

  I nodded.

  “Wouldn’t have taken you for one of those trendy people who keep potbellies in the house.”

  Glancing at the pen of alpacas, I said, “Wouldn’t have taken you for an alpaca-raiser. I thought the profession belonged to the well-off.”

  He explained that several of the animals had been donated to him by a wealthy couple who’d lost their fortune in poor investments, and he was hoping that raising and selling alpacas would possibly supplement his dwindling knacker’s income. “So what’s your pig’s name?” Hiram asked.

  “Henrietta. She’s a darling, for the most part. All I ask is that you don’t accidentally send her to slaughter. B
e more than I could handle right now.”

  He laughed and shook his head and told me not to worry: no pig under his care was headed for butchering—not anymore. “Good that we’re in summer.” He looked up at swollen rain clouds that were presently scudding in from the Adirondacks. “The indoor ones don’t like staying outdoors, especially when it’s colder. Lucky there are only two others right now. So, yeah, bring her on by.”

  “Hiram,” I said. “You’re joking, right?” He started laughing. “I mean, how does anybody shove a two-hundred-fifty-pound pig in the back of a Subaru?”

  “Only one way I know of getting a pig to go anywhere,” he said, with a devilish smile. “I’ll show you when I come get her. When you fixing on leaving?”

  “As soon as you can spare the time to drive over.”

  “Boy, what’s the hurry?”

  I told him family emergency, a daughter in distress. He didn’t press me any further. “Okay, so what do you feed her?”

  I told him I had a Pig Chow mash that I kept in a garbage can.

  Back at the house the phone rang in the midst of my packing. The caller ID read that it was Matthew’s cell. I glanced at my watch: forty-five minutes had elapsed since Prozzo’s departure, so he would not yet have arrived at the cabin. But how could I be sure that Matthew was even at the cabin? For all I knew he could be nearby, calling with the intention of dropping in. I felt woozy and had to sit down. I wanted to confront him about his artful and shameless lying, but how could I speak to him now? Wouldn’t I run the risk of drawing him to me? I just stood there listening to the phone ringing, importunate and jarring and finally giving up with one last little cry. In the clamorous silence that followed, I decided not to listen to his message, if, indeed, he’d left one.