Cloudland

by Joseph Olshan

  I heaved a deep breath and then asked, “Did you harm any of those women?”

  I could hear him sobbing steadily now, and then his voice, in tatters, “The problem … is no matter … what I say, you’re not going to believe me.”

  “I think I might be able to accept the truth and believe you if I … can believe in it.”

  “Okay, how about this?” he said, momentarily recovering his composure. “You’re the most important person in the world to me. I don’t want you to turn away from me.… I didn’t kill anyone, Catherine. I couldn’t kill anyone. I don’t know what he has, or what he’s cooked up, but I’m telling the complete truth. If I’m lying then I’d probably be angling to kill you, too,” he pointed out. “So how can you possibly trust me, anyway?”

  He sounded convincing to me, but of course I wanted him to be convincing. How could I really be sure? No, I had to choose; but hadn’t I already chosen, already deciding to take the risk that everyone would say I was insane to take? At last I said, “Leave there and drive to my house.”

  “That might be one of the first places he looks for me.”

  “Not if you write him a note, attach it to your door, and say you drove back to Boston. That would make sense, because it’s not his jurisdiction. He’d need to get Boston as well as the FBI involved, and that will take precious time. Just write him the note and go to my house. There’s a key under the blue flowerpot next to the barn. Go in and wait for me. I’m coming home now.”

  “But he said if I tried to go anywhere he’d have the police track me.”

  “Have you looked outside your door?” He had. “Do you see any police cars?”

  “Let me check again.” He was away from the phone for a few minutes. “Doesn’t look like anybody is out there,” he reported when he came back.

  “Then pray that he was bluffing and get going. You don’t really have any alternative, as I see it.”

  * * *

  Breck was still outside when I went upstairs, packed my suitcase, gathered the bags of dog kibble, the metal bowls, the stands the metal bowls fit into, and bundled everything into the big canvas bag I’d brought. I took out some dog biscuits, held them before Virgil and Mrs. Billy, and then secreted them in one hand so that they’d follow me. The dogs were incredibly obedient, almost as if they knew that their cooperation would hasten them back to their preferred environment. They dutifully pursued the hand clutching the treats just as Henrietta had shadowed the quart of ice cream all the way into Hiram’s pickup truck.

  I’d loaded everything into the car when Breck came around the side of the house, stopped ten feet away, and stared at me with her hands on her hips.

  “Don’t tell me.… You’re going back.”

  “I have to.”

  “There is nothing you can do to prevent what’s happening now. You can’t get the detective to stop his weird investigation unless you get his superiors to stop him. And why should they believe what you say?”

  “Because he claimed Matthew was once arrested and charged for assault in Burlington. And that was a complete lie!”

  “He could easily claim to have said nothing about that to you, that you’re making it all up. You spoke to Anthony. Why don’t you let him handle it from here on in?”

  I reminded Breck that my most recent attempt to contact Anthony was unsuccessful. And that he was still out of commission. And that time was of the essence.

  “Okay, but Mom, if you can’t be sure that either Matthew or Prozzo are to be trusted, you’re taking a huge risk by going back to where they are.”

  “I have to do something, Breck. It’s because of me that all this is happening. I have to find out why Prozzo never told me that the woman Matthew allegedly assaulted was his daughter.”

  “Why don’t you just call and ask him?”

  “He never answers his phone. Besides, Anthony and I need to confront Prozzo together. So if Prozzo happens to call, tell him I’m out or that I’ve gone to New York City, not that I’ve returned to Vermont.”

  “I don’t like helping when you’re doing something I don’t believe in.”

  “You have no choice, Breck, you have to help, you have to protect me.”

  “I realize that, Mom!”

  “I’m going to drive back, and if I don’t feel safe, I will go immediately to stay with Paul and Wade, how about that?”

  Distraught, she shook her head and said nothing.

  I was leaving her again, the way I did when she was a child and I got distracted by the man who momentarily eclipsed her father, and later on by other lovers. I closed the distance between us and put my hand gently on her cheek. “I have to deal with this, Breck. I know it sounds mad, but I’m going on my gut. Prozzo’s daughter was in love with Matthew and Prozzo is trying to implicate him in these murders. That is unholy.”

  Breck at last gave up. “I know where you’re coming from, Mom. What more can I say?”

  “I’ll call you. I promise to keep you in the loop. But let me leave now.”

  I gave her a long, fierce hug good-bye, pulled out of the driveway, and began heading up the spine of New Jersey.

  It was around three in the afternoon, very warm, and the sun was blaring at me through a hazy caul above the Watchung Mountains. I drove like an automaton. Early in my journey I reflected on how, like many New Yorkers and ex–New Yorkers, I downgraded New Jersey, which really has a lot to offer—a shoreline, mountains, and sweeping vistas of farmland—certainly topographically more interesting than Connecticut, which, in many quarters, has the reputation of being a more beautiful state. But neither of these places were a patch on Vermont. Even though I’d only been away for two days, I missed the gentle landscape, the meadows being mowed in the second haying of the summer, round bales curing in the sun.

  As I settled into the long journey, cajoling the dogs to settle down in the backseat, I began to ponder Prozzo’s most recent actions. The more I thought about them, the more they baffled me. Here was somebody so completely invested in solving a crime suddenly veering off after a red herring. I understood that he blamed his daughter’s mental breakdown on Matthew, but why go to such lengths for … well, there was nothing else to call it but revenge? How could he actually delude himself into believing his daughter’s connection to Matthew Blake wouldn’t at some point come to light? He was jeopardizing twenty years of a good solid career, subverting all the careful work he’d done on the River Valley murders by pursuing a ridiculous, quixotic theory.

  I grabbed my cell phone, called Anthony, and luckily this time reached him at home. “Thank God … they released you,” I said.

  “Finally! It’s so good to be out of there.”

  “How are you feeling now?” I asked.

  “How am I feeling?” he repeated. “A little better. Still getting dizzy spells and feeling disoriented. Where are you, anyway?”

  “I’m driving back to Vermont.”

  “Why are you doing that?”

  I informed him what Nan O’Brien had learned.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “The source is the Burlington police.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Well, I’ve just had a message from Marco. Saying Matthew tried to drive away from his parents’ house and got as far as St. Johnsbury. The state police pulled him over and are holding him temporarily.”

  Oh no, I thought, he’s in custody now, but said nothing.

  “Marco wanted to come this evening and present his evidence about Matthew, but I stalled him and made an appointment for tomorrow. I’m just trying to get a handle on what’s going on.”

  I considered this. “Is there any way we can let Springfield know Prozzo has withheld all sorts of important information?”

  “The FBI already spoke to them. I don’t know whether or not Springfield will move on the information. Law enforcement agencies sometimes stick together and can be reluctant to rattle their own ranks over alleged irregularities.”

  “How unfortunate,” I said.

>   “No, how stupid!” Anthony exclaimed.

  There was a significant pause between us. “Catherine,” he said at last, “I think when you get home you should just drop the dogs off and come to my house until we can figure this out … together.”

  “That probably would be a good idea.”

  I chose not to mention that Matthew would have been on his way to meet me.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I WAS DRIVING ON ROUTE 91 just outside of Hartford; steering the car with one hand, I managed to fish the scrap of paper with Hiram’s number out of my purse. I punched his numbers in with my thumb, and while waiting for the call to be connected I noticed a highway billboard of a woman in a bikini leaning forward showing cleavage, advertising a day spa. As I was remarking to myself: yet another service or product sold through sex, I wondered about the relationship between Matthew and Stephanie Prozzo and if there was more to it than I actually knew.

  Luckily, Hiram answered his phone. “It’s Catherine,” I said. “I actually left New Jersey a little earlier than expected. On my way back to Vermont.”

  “Okay … Well, I guess you’ll want me to bring your little girl home.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.” I told him where I kept the hide-a-key.

  “To be honest, she’s been missing you. She’s been sticking to one corner of the pen, didn’t even go inside the barn when it rained.”

  “Did you try ice cream?”

  “Ran clear out of ice cream. Where are you right now?”

  “Hartford.”

  “She’ll be at your house by the time you get home.”

  “Thank you, Hiram.”

  “Glad to help, Catherine.”

  In Vermont, July daylight lingers until just after nine P.M. Brightly colored flowers harbor their glow, birch trees beam their whiteness, and the hush is filled with the song of locusts that starts up and trails off intermittently, leaving the throaty rattles of nocturnal birds. When I pulled into my driveway around 8:45, I could still see most of the familiar landmarks of my property: the sagging split-rail fence with a grayish silver patina, the old barn with a partially caved-in roof, its deep red stain. I pulled into my parking space, let the dogs free, and they gamboled around the lawn in gleeful circles. As I slung my overnight and computer bags over my shoulder, I could barely make out the rotund outline of Henrietta staring at me through the sliding glass door into the side of the house. Watching my approach, she trotted backward and forward, whimpering and grunting, terribly uneasy.

  Passing through the door, I rubbed her head and her belly and then looked around for her garbage can of Pig Chow; it was nowhere to be found. Hiram probably had forgotten it. Luckily, Henrietta was not doing her usual two-step “I’m hungry” dance, so I assumed he’d already fed her. I wouldn’t have to deal with fetching her food until tomorrow morning.

  There was still enough light in the house to move around without switching on lamps, and I decided that I wanted to gather the gloom. I found myself thinking had Matthew not been detained and was still expected I might have gone around the house lighting candles for him. Or perhaps not. Perhaps that would send an ambiguous signal to him. I had the dogs’ bedding and food still left to bring in from the car but wanted to let Anthony know I’d arrived home. I picked up the phone and could hear the pulsing dial tone that indicated messages.

  Fiona answered. I said, “I just got back. I’m unloading some stuff. I should be leaving here in five minutes.”

  She told Anthony and then came back on the line. “We’ll be expecting you,” she said.

  Then I checked messages; there was yet another one from Matthew. “Catherine,” he began, “I just tried your cell. I guess you’re out of range. There is something else that I just remembered. Recently, when I told you about The Widower’s Branch and how I couldn’t find the book … and then I found it … now I realize Stephanie Prozzo actually visited me while I still had it in my possession. She knew the book belonged to you; I’m pretty sure I mentioned it to her. I now remember I discovered it missing right after she was there, but for some reason I never made the connection. And it just happened to reappear again around the next time she showed up at my apartment.” He sighed jaggedly and sounded stressed. “Anyway, I guess I’ll see you soon.” This was obviously left before he’d been detained by the St. Johnsbury police. This revelation only added to my confusion. It made Prozzo’s actions and his allegations even more curiously one-sided. What exactly did this detective hope to achieve?

  Then I thought of the piece of paper Breck had found jammed in the Wilkie Collins novel, scrawled with the words “you and her,” the fact that Nan O’Brien reacted with alarm to its existence the first time I met her. Could this phrase have been written by Stephanie Prozzo?

  As I went and fetched the traveling containers of dog kibble, as I gathered up their baggage and was transporting everything back to the house, the din of the locusts seemed to increase. I rounded up Virgil and Mrs. Billy, tossed their beds down in my study, and was just getting ready to leave and drive up the road to Anthony’s, when the motion detector lamps switched on. A car was pulling into the driveway very slowly, the way cars do when the driver is lost, looking for somewhere else. When I glanced out the glass studio door, I saw Prozzo’s Jeep Cherokee idling next to my car.

  I froze and stood there, barely breathing, watching him get out.

  In the glare of the spotlamps, I noticed he was wearing a tight sweatshirt that showed his paunch and a baseball cap, his face looking haggard and worn. He didn’t see me. There was a bulge on the right side of his chest that I assumed was a gun. I wondered how much he knew of what I knew: that his daughter had fallen in love with Matthew Blake, that she was unable to contain her passion, that she committed acts of desperation that probably included writing anonymous letters to Saint Michael’s College. With the dogs braying like banshees, I grabbed my car keys with the idea of sneaking out the back door and moving through a field of ferns to the dense woods. I’d slowly make my way around the perimeter of trees that began where the freshly mown field ended and the tall grasses began, head toward the barn; thus concealed, I would move along its flanks until I came within ten feet of my car. I’d jump in and lock the doors and drive off to Anthony’s.

  But I wasn’t quick enough. Amid the commotion of barking dogs, Prozzo didn’t knock, just barged in, and appeared in the kitchen looking harsh and annoyed. Startled and afraid, I greeted him by saying, “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to you.”

  “Not a good time. I’m leaving for Anthony’s. I just got off the phone with him. They’re expecting me.”

  He squinted at me. “Why did you come home? Why did you take such a risk?”

  I couldn’t think of a response so I said nothing and just watched him, aware that his stance seemed defensive and menacing.

  “I need a word,” he told me with flat affect, then walked to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

  I had the urge to turn around and run out the back door. But I knew he’d stop me. Prozzo was strong and resolute. How had he figured out that I was on my way home? Maybe from Matthew, who was now being held up in St. Johnsbury? My heart clattering against my rib cage, I could barely manage to say, “If I don’t get to Anthony’s in a few minutes, they’ll be coming down here to find me.”

  Ignoring this, he said, “I need to ask you more questions.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “About the book that describes the women by the fallen trees.”

  Without even strategizing, slightly calmer now in the frantic hope that he’d shown up merely to further interrogate me, I said, “Go ahead.”

  Prozzo folded his arms over his chest. He looked bigger in casual clothing than he did in his cheap suits, and I figured he must have weighed close to two hundred pounds, nearly seventy-five pounds more than I did. “Before I get to the book, I’d like to know why, since we’re supposed to be in contact, that you didn’t
tell me you were coming back from New Jersey?”

  I met his accusing stare and said, “Because everything changed. And you know it changed. There’s a DNA match now that throws the whole investigation into question.”

  “That may be. But that doesn’t mean there is only one murderer.”

  “I understand your theory, Marco.”

  “But you don’t realize that my theory involves you.”

  “What, that I killed all these women?”

  “Don’t be absurd.” Then the detective’s eyes narrowed as though he were looking down a gun sight. “When exactly did you give Matthew Blake a copy of that book?”

  “You questioned him. Why didn’t you ask?”

  “He says he doesn’t remember. But that if I asked you, you would.”

  I wondered why Matthew would have lobbed the answer back at me. And then inspiration struck. “Obviously before the first of the murders occurred.”

  “Well—”

  “That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? The final piece of the puzzle, as you told me two days ago … Now I want to ask you something. You told me Matthew was arrested for assaulting a woman?”

  “Correct.”

  “In Burlington?”

  “That’s right.”

  I waited a moment, waited until he was looking directly at me. “But Burlington has said the charges were bogus and got dismissed.” He shook his head. “I’m a journalist. I naturally check my sources. Let’s say I’m giving you a chance to revise what you said.”

  He averted his eyes. “No revision.” I watched him for a moment, the way his massive shoulders went into a slump, his face wearily intent. A fierce wave of protectiveness toward Matthew came over me. I believed with even more conviction that he had committed no crime.

  As I stood there, waiting to see what Prozzo’s next gambit was going to be, it occurred to me that despite the detective’s efforts to maintain stability within his own family, his daughter had tried to kill herself. Her state of mind must have been akin to Breck’s self-destructive refusal to eat until her body began shutting down. Both Prozzo and I believed we’d failed our children.