by Devon, Gary;
That was the same morning that Faith had slipped Rachel’s old dress into her purse. When she first saw it among the other clothes, a new idea began to take shape in her mind. It was completely unlike her, but now she was feeling she could do anything now. Henry’s deceit, his compulsion, freed her worst fantasies.
The dress was pale blue, worth next to nothing and over the left breast pocket, in large elaborate letters, was the embroidered white monogram RB. Faith took it from a box of old clothes going to charity while Sheila was outside. Afterward, when they had dropped the boxes off at St. Vincent DePaul, she took Sheila to a very expensive lunch.
She bought the chicken livers early the next day, along with several other small items at the grocery; then she stopped at a gas station. In the ladies room, Faith disposed of the livers by flushing them down a toilet. All that remained was the red-black blood. There’s no mercy, she thought, in prolonging this. She took out Rachel’s dress, poured the blood over it and slipped the bloody dress into a Ziploc bag. This one’s for you, Rachel, she thought. I’m doing this for you. But Faith knew she was in the grip of something far larger and more vicious than simple justice. She knew she could hardly contain what was happening; even she sensed that she had entered a new realm entirely.
Then it was a few minutes past twelve, and from the open plaza across Concepción Avenue, Faith watched Henry leave City Hall in the company of three other men. She rose from the stone bench and started toward his office, carrying her package.
30
Coming back from lunch a few minutes early, Slater noticed that the receptionist’s desk was deserted. He went through the secretarial lair and passed only one of the clerk-typists, who happened to be painting her fingernails. Even Abigail was away from her desk. Everybody gets lazy in the summer, Slater thought, walking into his office. When he pushed the door shut, he found himself staring straight into Burris Reeves’s face.
“Christ, Henry, look at that view,” the big man said. “Always knocks me out. Maybe you don’t know how lucky you are. If you ever miss the common touch, come camp down in the basement with me, then you’ll appreciate all this.”
All Slater’s instincts were ringing with danger.
“Oh, I think I appreciate it, Burris. What’re you doing here?”
“I’m in the Traffic meeting you called for one-fifteen. That’s where your secretary is right now—getting coffee. Your coffee maker’s on the blink.”
“Then make yourself at home.”
Reeves’s face broke into a smile. “Already have.”
The other city officials were beginning to come in, shaking hands, drifting toward the conference table: Massey, the city clerk, Neil Hardwick, the commissioner of streets and highways. Bill Corbin, from the committee for urban development, came in with the representative from the research firm, who began putting up an easel and flip charts. Abigail followed soon after with the coffee urn.
Slater had gone behind his desk, some fifteen feet or so from the others. He dropped his suit jacket across the back of his chair and rolled his shirt sleeves. Taking the last cigarette from his shirt pocket, he lit it and tossed the crumpled pack into the wastebasket. When Abigail came by to ask if there was anything else, he said, under his breath, “This isn’t the time or place, but we’ve got to find a better system for manning these offices at lunchtime.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really don’t know what happened. The girls must’ve gotten their wires crossed. Anyway—it won’t happen again.”
He couldn’t say that it was already too late, couldn’t say that he never wanted Reeves in his office, alone. Slater stubbed out his cigarette. “All right,” he told her.
While the men began taking their places, Slater sat down at his desk to collect his notes for the meeting. Suddenly, he caught a whiff of a faint, rancid odor. But in an instant, it was gone. What was that? he thought, but couldn’t place it. The midday sun beat viciously into the room. He ran his hand over his shirt pocket and realized he was out of cigarettes. When he opened the center desk drawer to get another pack, the smell flew in his face.
All he saw at first was blood—red-black blood—and he swallowed hard at the surge of nausea in his throat.
It took a moment to realize exactly what it was he was, looking at. Beneath the vivid, dark splashes of blood, he saw the old woman’s dress with the monogram RB. Slater shuddered involuntarily. Rachel’s dress.
Who did this?
He nearly panicked. Quickly, he pushed the drawer shut. Oh, God … oh, God …
He lifted his eyes to see who, if anyone, had noticed his shock, but no one was looking at him, no one except Reeves. Who was smiling.
God help me.
Still feeling sick, a fine, damp sweat turning cool on his forehead, Slater sat forward on the edge of his chair, clasping his trembling hands below the surface of the desk. Against the background of quiet conversation, he tried to gather his wits, but he couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds. What am I going to do? He was afraid to leave his desk, afraid that someone—Abigail perhaps—might come and open the drawer in front of his staff. Stop it, he told himself. Get a grip. Don’t let Reeves see what he’s done. Slater didn’t have time to reason things out; he was aware of the men, one by one, turning to him, waiting for him to start the meeting.
His mouth felt dry and sour. He got up, and as he did, he felt the room swerve gently around him. He clutched at the edge of his desk for support. Divert them, he thought. Get them to focus on somebody else.
“All right,” he said. His voice was hoarse. He coughed, cleared his throat and began again, “Let’s get down to business … we’re here to consider”—he paused and went on—“the expansion of Willow Creek Lane to a four-lane thoroughfare.”
He didn’t immediately take his place at the table but stepped in front of his desk, placing himself protectively between the men and the bloody drawer. Slater looked at each face in turn. “Let’s get started with the traffic impact studies conducted recently by TSE Research. Mr. Eades, if you’d like to begin.”
The men’s faces turned from him. Everywhere he looked now, Slater seemed to see affirmation that things had gone wrong, dreadfully wrong. He couldn’t see how he was going to get free. For the last seven weeks now, he had tried to brace himself, knowing that something was coming, sensing Reeves drawing nearer and nearer the truth. But he had expected a warning—or some veiled threat. This was worse. Much worse. Slater felt sick to his stomach as he listened, in a kind of a trance, to Eades’s droning voice: “… resulting in an increased traffic load of thirty percent or roughly eight hundred fifty passenger vehicles per day.”
All he could conjure up was the smooth, tan-pink tautness of Sheila’s body, her lovely shadowed eyes. Sheila, Sheila, he kept thinking. What if Reeves knows all about you, too—my God, he’s got to know about you. It’d started that night at the farmhouse. And been going on ever since. But how? Reeves, how did you get on to me?
The diamond. What did you find out about the diamond? Reeves, if you know, then I’m done for.
Suddenly he was filled with bravado, knowing that this life he was leading could be over in seconds. Make your move, Reeves, he kept thinking defiantly, if you’re going to. All you have to do is open the drawer and it’s all over.
The meeting was ending. It was four in the afternoon. Slater concealed his impatience as well as he could; he was constantly aware of Reeves watching him. Slater knew that the police chief could not be deterred in his pursuit of the truth in any way. How long have you been watching me, Reeves? How long have you been waiting for me to incriminate myself?
Then the men were gone and the room filled with the long emptiness of the sinking afternoon, all the minutes he would sit alone. Somewhere out by the elevators he could hear Reeves whistling a light, happy tune. Getting up and going to the door, Slater asked Abigail, “Was anyone here when you left at noon?”
“No.”
“But—how did Burris know you had
gone for coffee?”
Abigail smiled. “He was getting on the elevator when I was getting off on the second floor.”
He nodded. “See that I’m not interrupted until quitting time.”
Returning to his desk, Slater pulled the drawer open, and again the stench of old blood filled his senses. Again there was that twisting pain, dull this time, under his ribs. He closed the drawer as tightly as it would close; he sat down in his chair; he got up, but he couldn’t avoid the stench—it was all around him. He breathed it in, deeper and deeper until he felt his lungs were contaminated with it.
My God. Her blood. I can’t get away from it. It keeps coming back. He’d have to get a container—a plastic bag, he realized. Then he’d have to get it out of the building, without anybody seeing what it was, and destroy it. Burn it.
Sitting there, trying to muddle it through, he felt the cold rush of truth. The diamond! That had to be what it was. His diamond was the only piece of hard evidence Reeves could possibly have. That damned diamond!
I’ve got to kill him. Nothing else made any sense. He knows too much. It was terrifying enough never knowing what Reeves was planning for him, but nothing was worse than coming face-to-face with it. Reeves did this—he’s been dogging me all along and his timing was perfect—today, even Abigail was gone. He’s still setting me up, still testing, waiting to see what I’ll do. He’s driving me crazy.
Damn you, Reeves, he thought, you know I can’t live like this. I should’ve taken care of you a long time ago.
Downstairs, in police headquarters, was the man Slater was going to kill, the man who had to die. He felt curiously resigned about it now—more than resigned. He was thinking about a gun, a hired killer’s sawed-off shotgun lying in a leather bag. An evil bastard of a gun, Reeves had called it.
Sheila could never know what his love for her had led to. But I can’t see her. Reeves will be there—watching.
He knew how it would be done and where—the day, the hour. Slowly the anxiety and the dread left him.
When Abigail came into the room to say good night, he was sitting at his desk in the great flare of evening sunlight, apparently going over some of his notes from the meeting. Slater was attentive and pleasant to her but he didn’t hear a word she said. His eyes were fixed the whole time at a point above and to the left of her head.
31
Founders day fell on a Saturday at the end of June. It was the kind of vibrant summer day that drew people out of doors to spruce up lawns, to wash and polish cars, to light the charcoal in their grills. And Sheila felt, as she always had, the thrill of unbridled expectation. Every year, from the moment she woke up, it was the one day that was always charged with excitement—and this year that feeling of anticipation was even more pronounced. Because tonight she would see Henry Slater again; it would be unavoidable. She knew exactly where he would be this evening and she would go to him. He would have to look at her, speak to her. She didn’t intend to make it easy for him to resist. To be down on the courthouse commons, tonight, with the orchestra playing and the scent of flowers everywhere—those were the minutes she lived for.
If she had been asked to account for her actions that morning, Sheila couldn’t have, and yet there she was, driving slower and slower up Condor Pass, until she had hardly enough speed to carry her up the road’s twisting curves. All she was aware of was an overwhelming need to see him. Where the pavement widened, cars were parked on the side of the road. In the opposite lane she saw one of her classmates transporting guests in a golf cart. Farther along, through the foliage, she glimpsed a milling crowd wandering through striped tents, then the Slaters’ lawn opened fanlike before her. Across the lawn, she could hear violins.
Suddenly, emerging through the guests, Sheila saw him. She knew who it was by the confident way he moved.
So this’s what they do, she thought. This is the party he couldn’t invite me to. Or Faith either, for that matter, but Sheila put the blame squarely on Henry. Thinking she was being treated like an outcast, she experienced an intense, prickly jealousy. When she stopped parallel with the long slope of the lawn, she saw a boy she knew from school, a senior, coming toward her. “Hi, Sheila, you invited to this shindig?”
“No,” she told him, “wish I was though.”
“Hey, what do you hear from Denny? You two still going out?”
“Yeah, kind of. He’s gonna be back in a few weeks. What’re you doing here?”
“Taking invitations and parking cars,” he said. “If you don’t have an invitation, I’m supposed to tell you to move along.”
“Oh, I’m not staying,” she told him. “I just wanted to see what it was like up here.” She shifted gears and hit the gas. “See ya,” she called. She whipped into the end of the Slaters’ driveway, swung back and headed down the hill.
The McPhearsons had invited her over for a cookout but Sheila didn’t want to go. She hated having to invent lies in order to explain herself but she chafed under their solicitations. Still, that was where she ended up. It was quarter to three in the afternoon when she left, saying good-bye to Mary and promising to call on Monday. She had an appointment with the real estate agent at three-thirty—papers to be signed before the closing on the house. She dreaded going back out there—maybe, she thought, because she really didn’t want to sell it after all, especially now that it was too late to change her mind.
Canyon Valley Drive was quiet. There was seldom any traffic at this time of day, even on weekends. Porches stood empty. A muggy oppressiveness hung on the air, a penetrating heat that seeped through Sheila’s clothes. The sidewalks and lawns sweltered. Two old pickup trucks were parked in her driveway, so Sheila pulled off the pavement at the front of the yard and turned off the ignition.
Under the relentless sun, the staff of gardeners the real estate agency had hired made little headway. Three of them were at work now on the front yard, Mexican-Indians, she guessed them to be. One rode a noisy power lawn mower, another clipped the hedge and the third was wielding a machete against weeds that had sprung up among the dwarf trees edging the property.
Sheila was wearing shorts and the skimpiest haltertop she owned but still the humidity saturated her skin. She didn’t relish the men looking at her so she got out of the car, ran up the driveway to the house and darted around back. She realized at once that something had changed. The grottolike rose trellis had caved in. It lay collapsed in a widespread ruin across the backyard.
Sheila remembered how much Rachel had loved those red roses. And the honeysuckle next door. It climbed the neighbor’s clapboards, sending out long wavy tendrils into the air, their pale yellow blossoms like frilly trumpets giving off the sweetest perfume. Sheila remembered when she was young enough to sneak up on her grandmother while she gardened, catching her around the waist. Rachel’s craggy face lit up as Sheila swung her round and round in a dizzying circle, the honeysuckle falling over them as if from the sky. “Sheila, let me go!” she’d cry, “now let me go, honey!” At times these flashes of memory struck Sheila with such blinding force that she would find herself standing as if paralyzed, sudden tears in her eyes. She could almost feel, again, the two of them buried in yellow leaves, with Rachel grinning up at her. “Gramma, d’you give up?” she’d urge, “d’you? d’you?” Then the picture would fade, and when Sheila pressed her eyes shut and tried to bring it back, nothing was there. The starched white curtains on the kitchen windows, the taste of the cookies the two of them once had made—they were only mere suggestions of the woman who had lived and breathed. And they were so few.
The kitchen felt stale, forgotten; the cupboards were empty. Almost all the packing was done. The things that were left had been tagged with sale numbers by the auctioneer. Sheila tried to imagine her grandmother sitting in that chair by the table, but now it was impossible.
She thought, The old trellises fall, we die and go away. Nothing stays the same. What do I have left? What could I bring back if I tried? Was she good to me? Yes. Gra
mma was good to me and I miss her. And yet, even my closest friends can’t take the sadness away. Only being with Henry helped. And now, oddly enough, Faith.
Taking the tablecloth off the table, she went out to the backyard. When she shook it out, the starlings flew up in a dark, frightened cloud. Once the garden had been carefully tended and well kept, but now it lay in weedy ruins. Going inside, Sheila looked at the clematis near the place where Rachel’s body had been found that morning. Could it have been only four weeks ago? Again, she felt a moment of frozen fear while the scene of that fog-bound morning replayed vividly in her mind. She almost expected still to find something—a trace of blood or some other horrible reminder left behind. But there was nothing. Only the sandy brick walkways. She would never get used to the thought that her grandmother was murdered, never as long as she lived. A mosquito whined in her ear; Sheila slapped at it and blew a wisp of hair from her eyes. I’m afraid of so many things, she thought. Sometimes for no reason at all, she would feel her muscles tightening up and that cold, cold feeling begin.
She was still standing at the edge of the garden when the real estate agent arrived. Sheila signed the contracts quickly. The property was sold. The realtor had scheduled the closing in ten days, asking if that was suitable. Sheila shrugged and said it was, as if the fact that she would no longer own Rachel’s home meant nothing to her. After the woman had gone, she sat there at the kitchen table, utterly immobilized by dread.
She wandered upstairs into the big bedroom where Rachel had slept. The bed still stood where it had been for a lifetime. When the door swung shut, Sheila was confronted with a sharp image of herself in the full-length mirror, eyes meeting eyes irresolutely. I’m not like her, she thought. I wish I were.
The dusty room, long unaired, closed around her. Sheila crossed the landing to her own room and was comforted by it. It, too, never changed. She still kept some of her things here, even a few changes of clothes. The mahogany bedstead stood exactly as it always had, with its cracked finish and its vague smell of linseed oil: the result of years of Rachel’s polishing. The windows were closed, windows that let in the dawn every single day for the last seven years.