by Blake Crouch
I arrived home from Vermont on Sunday evening, and at nine-thirty on a cold, rainy Monday morning, a police officer was banging on my front door. His grave eyes might have been unbearable had I not already known. Even when he told me, I couldn't muster tears, so I buried my face in my hands and asked him for a moment alone. Shutting the door and leaving him standing on the front porch, I rushed to the kitchen sink and dabbed water on my cheeks and rubbed my eyes so they’d look red and swollen. How could an innocent man explain not crying when he learns his mother has been murdered? Even the guilty manage tears.
Walter's Cadillac sat in my garage. I'd intended to sink it to the bottom of Lake Norman after dark, but that was impossible now. I’d have to go to Winston to handle my mother's affairs.
Most of Monday, I spent at a police station in Winston, identifying my mother's body for the police and the coroner before noon and answering questions for two detectives afterwards. From the outset of their questioning, it was obvious they were baffled as to why my mother had been murdered. Did I know of any reason someone would want to kill her? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she use drugs? To my knowledge, had she ever borrowed money from anyone?
Sitting in front of the two men in the interrogation room, I wondered if they suspected me. I sat comfortably in a chair, but the gray, windowless room felt intrusive. The detectives had been pleasant, but behind their smiles and professional sympathy for my loss, I sensed their predatory urge to begin the process of breaking me.
I’d been with my mother several hours before she died, but the detectives didn't know this. Certainly someone must have seen my jeep parked on the curb in front of her house. Hell, I’d waved to her neighbor across the street. The detectives needed to hear it from me that I'd been with her, before a neighbor tipped them off, making me look suspicious and evasive.
"Look," I began, twisting my glass of water on the tabletop. Exhausted, I'd been patiently answering their questions for the last hour. "I don't know why I didn’t mention it before, but I saw my mother on the 30th."
"Where?" Detective Hadley asked, a young man, possibly under thirty, with a muscular build beneath his gray suit, a clean-shaven face, and short, neatly-trimmed, blond hair.
"At her house. I took her to dinner at K&W and got home around ten that evening."
The detectives sat across from me, staring at each other with poker faces. The older one of the two, a balding man with black hair and a bushy mustache, looked slowly back at me while his partner lowered his eyes, focusing intently on the surface of the table.
"Mr. Thomas," he began, pursing his lips for a moment before continuing. "Here's the thing. Nothing was stolen from your mother's house, and there was no sign of forced entry. Now this means one of two things. Either your mother slept with her doors unlocked, or whoever killed her had a key. You told us no one besides you has a key to that house. And now you're telling us you were with your mother, possibly on the day she was murdered. If you were on this side of the table, what would you think?"
"Maybe some psychopath convinced her to let him in," I said.
"Psychopaths torture their victims, Mr. Thomas," Detective Prosser said, as if I should've known. "Your mother wasn't tortured. She wasn't raped. She wasn't even beaten." He smiled warmly. "She was simply strangled."
I pushed my chair back and walked to the door. The detectives didn't move. "Look," I said, my hand squeezing the doorknob, "I got a bunch of shit to do. You wanna talk again, you know where to find me."
"Have a nice day," Hadley said, smiling.
I walked out and slammed the door behind me.
# # #
Despite ten days of decay, the mortician turned my mother's skin a glowing rose it had never held when she was alive, so on Tuesday evening, I held a wake for her at the Haverty Son's Funeral Home in downtown Winston. By seven-thirty, the formal, red-carpeted visiting room was packed with friends and family, most of whom I hadn't seen in more than ten years. They'd come from all over the country, for my mother and for me. Their sadness and love was more comforting than I'd expected, and through their tears, I allowed myself to grieve.
After two hours of standing in the receiving line with my mother's brother and two sisters, my mouth ached from smiling. With no visible end to the steady stream of mourners, I slipped away, into the crowd. As I searched for a chair or sofa to rest my legs, someone grabbed my arm from behind, and I spun around.
"Andy, I'm so sorry," Cynthia said, her eyes glistening. We embraced, and she squeezed me tightly, as if she could take my pain into herself and save me the tears.
"You didn't have to come down here," I said as we pulled away. "Thank you."
She took my arm, and we pushed through the crowd towards an empty sofa, collapsing onto the cushions. "When did you find out?" she asked, brushing graying hair out of her eyes.
"Yesterday morning. A police officer woke me up."
"Oh God. Do the police have any suspects or leads?"
I looked into Cynthia's eyes with a jaded scowl. "I think those fuckers suspect me."
"No."
"These two detectives were giving me shit yesterday. Since there was no forced entry or torture or rape."
"So that automatically means you did it?"
"That's what they seem to think. I don't know. They may've just been feeling me out."
Cynthia leaned back against the sofa and straightened her black suit, brushing particles of lent and strands of hair off her pants. "I tried to get a hold of you last week," she said. "I wanted to ask if you'd started anything. You go out of town?" I caught an edge of distrusting curiosity in her voice.
"I was in Barbuda. Didn't know I'd be coming back to this."
She placed her hand gently on my shoulder. "You'll get through it," she said. "You need anything, just call." She hugged me again and rose to her feet.
"Taking off?" I asked.
"Yeah, I'm beat."
"You're welcome to stay at my place," I said. "It's just an hour from here."
"I appreciate that," she said, "but I'm staying at the Radison a few blocks away. I got an early flight out of Greensboro tomorrow morning. Gotta get back to New York."
I glanced past Cynthia and saw Beth Lancing making her way through the crowd towards me. She held the hand of her four-year-old son, John David. I couldn't face her.
"Take care, Andy," Cynthia said, taking my hands into hers. "Call me sometime this week, will you? Just to let me know how you're doing."
Beth now stood several feet away, waiting for me to finish. I stood and embraced Cynthia once more. Kissing her on the cheek, I said, "Thanks for coming. I'll call you soon."
As Cynthia walked away, blending into the pool of dark suits and dresses, I sat back down on the sofa. Before anyone else could get to me, Beth stepped forward with her son, and hesitantly, I looked up into her eyes. A stunning woman, tonight she wore a brown dress that dropped to her small ankles. Curly, blond hair bounced above her shoulders. As I looked into her face, I saw misery. The makeup couldn't hide the deep bags beneath her eyes. They were bloodshot, too, as if she hadn't slept in days. Weakly, I smiled at her and winked at John David, dressed like a man in his little, black suit. I stood and hugged Walter's wife, and she broke apart in my arms, her tears streaking the wool of my suit.
"Sit down, Beth," I said after a moment, and we both sat on the sofa as John David knelt on the floor and began crawling around on the dark red carpet.
"I'm sorry about your mother," she said, wiping tears from her eyes with a tissue.
"Thank you for coming," I said, but I knew why she'd really come. When I returned from Vermont, there were ten messages on my answering machine from her, wanting to know if I'd heard from Walter. "Anything from the police?" I asked, my voice soft and conciliatory. I touched her hand which rested on her knee.
"No, nothing." She shook her head. "They won't do anything, Andy. He'll have been gone a week tomorrow morning." Tears filled her eyes again. "The detectives think he left me.
They won't come out and say it, but they keep asking if we had a good marriage. If he had ever cheated on me. But it makes me wonder after awhile, you know?"
John David jumped onto the sofa and snuggled up between me and Beth. His mother ran her fingers through his short, blond hair and he leaned back into her. "He asks about him constantly," she whispered, motioning to her son, and I felt tears coming from the iceberg of guilt that floated behind my eyes. "Jenna's a lot worse, though. She knows things aren't right."
"How are you?" I asked though I didn't want to know.
"If I didn't have to be strong for my kids, I might be dead. It's the nights that are especially hard." She looked down at her son, needing him in a way his innocent psyche could never comprehend. Kissing the top of his head, she smiled at him when he glanced up at her. "I know you're busy," she said, looking back at me. Then standing, she lifted John David into her arms, and he laid his head down on her delicate shoulder. "Can I call you tomorrow?" she asked.
"Sure," I said, rising to my feet. "I'll let you know if I hear anything. You do the same."
"Thank you, Andy. And I'm very sorry about your mother." She kissed my cheek and tried to smile, but it failed miserably. Then she turned and walked slowly away, towards the doors which would lead out of the funeral home, to an empty house.
# # #
When the visitors had gone, leaving only myself, family members, and the pale-faced funeral director, I walked towards the open casket. It had been crowded since I'd been here, so I had waited, wanting to see my mother for the last time, alone, in a quiet room, without the disturbances of a thousand acquaintances. The mortician had warned me that the bruise around her neck would be difficult to hide, and he was right. As I set my hands on the metallic shell of her casket and peered down at her vapid face, it was the first thing I saw.
To someone who didn't know what to look for, the bruise might never draw a glance. But I'd seen her in the cold morgue, and the blackish-purple ring around her neck had been strikingly obvious then. It had looked as if someone had scribbled with black and purple magic markers on her soft, white neck. But now, in this reverent visitation room, only a light periwinkle shown through the makeup on her throat, like dull violets poking through snow.
I cried, touching her face. Though stiff and unnatural, it was hers. Her hands had been folded on top of each other, and they rested on her chest as if she merely slept. When I leaned down to whisper in her ear, I felt a pair of cruel, penetrating eyes staring through my back. My heart froze, and a cold sweat beaded on my forehead. Quickly, I spun around, darting my head towards the two sets of double doors on either end of the long, rectangular room. Jim, Hannah, and Wendy stood in a small circle, chatting by the entrance, and there was no one at the other end. I took a slow, measured breath, and turned back towards my mother, waiting for the icy feeling in my heart to retreat, though it never did.
# # #
White lights sparkled on the opposite shores, and a biting wind swept across the cold water. I stood shivering atop the grassy bank, watching the white Cadillac glide into the murky water. As it filled and lowered into the depths of Lake Norman, the air inside rushed out, breaking into tiny bubbles like a boiling cauldron on the surface. Then it was gone, the black, glassy surface smooth and calm again, except for where the wind stirred it.
I walked back through the woods, towards my property, the ground muddy from the construction that had begun on a new subdivision. No houses were finished, but concrete foundations, gravel roads, and skeletal wood frames were already in place. A wide swath of forest had been gutted, giving the landscape a bruised, beaten demeanor. It would be another six months before anyone moved here, and though my house was nearly half a mile up the shore, I still hated that I would one day have neighbors so close. I might even move when the yuppies came, with their four-wheel-drives and bratty kids.
Rarely did I think of Walter. Only when his wife called, wondering if he'd contacted me, did his face cross my mind and torture me. But for the most part, I'd mastered the management of guilt, simply by disconnecting myself from his memory. I hadn't killed him. Though heartbroken for the loss, it was business, another casualty of Orson. He knew the risk when he went to Vermont. He made the choice. It was remarkable how numb I felt.
Walter hadn't told Beth where or with whom he was going. All she knew was that on Wednesday morning, November 2nd, Walter had left before dawn with enough luggage for several days. He'd told her nothing, and she had trusted him. Now, for reasons unknown to me, Beth had chosen my shoulder to cry on. I'd been on the phone with her earlier tonight before I drove her husband's car from my garage to this muddy section of woods and sent it rolling into the lake. Though I hated myself for lying to her, there was no other way. No one could know that Walter and I had been to Vermont. As I walked in the dark, feeling my way between frozen trees, I thought, I'll help her come to terms with the possibility her husband might be dead. I'll help her through this, for Walter.
Leaves crunched beneath my footsteps, and occasionally I'd step on a stick that snapped the silence. These woods are so different from the pine forests of Vermont, I thought, picturing that dark, intimate gravesite, cloaked in pines. Here the trees were larger, spread farther apart, the forest floor soft and deep with the decades of dead leaves.
Orson was always with me, at the edge of thought, an omniscient quality to him now, like an evil god. As I passed through the woods, I saw him behind every tree, lurking in the shadows, hiding in my quiet house. I couldn't bring myself to question what had happened in Middlebury, how a man could climb out of a hole with eight bullets in his chest and an overdose of tranquilizer coursing through his veins. But the alternative was more terrifying. If not Orson, who had I buried in Vermont? Here, the retrospection ended. I had a keen ability to think myself up to the edge of madness and stop before plunging into the abyss. I had one purpose now. Utterly at Orson's mercy, I would wait for him to contact me. There was nothing else I could do. You can't sneak up on God.
In the distance, I saw my glowing house, shining like a beacon in the dark, surrounded by the sweet, bitter-smelling red junipers I'd planted last spring. I'd left the lights on, and I walked through the yard towards the back porch steps, peering through the windows into the lonely interior. For a moment, I wanted someone, anyone to be with me. A loneliness grasped me, so overpowering tears burned down the sides of my face. But angrily, I wiped them away and cursed the weakness that had struck me. It was the sort of thing he preyed upon.
Warm and silent inside my house, I turned on the television, went to the wet bar, and fixed myself a Jack and Coke. It was after eleven o'clock, so the local news was on, and as I poured the whiskey over cubes of ice, I heard an anchorwoman say, "Heart Surgeon." I turned and looked at the screen as the video cut to Agent Harold Trent standing before a dozen microphones inside the FBI headquarters in Washington. The soundbyte began halfway through his first official statement to the press since October 31st.
"…testing, we have confirmed that at least seventeen of the hearts found on East Street belong to the corresponding names. We have several leads, but I can't discuss further…"
The telephone rang, destroying my concentration. I left my drink half-made and walked into the kitchen, grabbing it on the third ring.
"Hello?"
"You son of a bitch." Her voice was heartless.
"Beth?"
"Why are you doing this to me?" she asked.
"What are you talking…"
"I know you called me, Andy. I just dialed Star69 and you picked up the phone!"
"Beth, I don't understand…"
"Bullshit! Why didn't you call from a payphone this time?"
"I haven't called you, Beth."
"What'd you do to my husband?!" she screamed through tears. "Tell me where he is!"
"I don't know."
"You said insects were crawling in him. What does that mean?!"
"I didn't…" A chill descended my spine. "Wait," I whi
spered. I brought the phone to my chest and listened. The television blared through the house, so I set the phone on the counter, walked into the living room, and cut it off. Now I could hear nothing but my heart, pounding like a blacksmith's hammer. I returned to the phone. "Beth," I whispered.
"I'm calling the police."
"I didn't call you. I got home five minutes ago, and that means someone has been in my house. You said this person has called you before?"
"Yes." Her voice trembled.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"He said he'd kill me and my children if I told anyone. He said he'd know."
"You have to believe that wasn't me," I said. "I promise you, Beth. Do you believe me?"
"Yes," she said, though still hesitant.
"You're in danger," I said. "We both are. You have someplace you can take your kids?"
"Yes, I have an…"
"Don't tell me. Just go. Go right now and stay there till you hear from me. I'll leave a message on your answering machine. Don't tell anyone you're leaving. Not a soul."
"What about the police?"
"Not even them."
"This has to do with Walter, doesn't it?"
"We don't have much time," I said, glancing at the living room, then up the staircase towards the darker second floor. "I'll explain it to you later. You have to trust me now."
"I have to know about my husband," she said, crying again. "Please tell me."
"If you don't leave now, you and your children will die tonight. Now go." I hung up the phone and wiped my sweaty hands across my jeans. A gun, I thought. Shit, I don't have a gun. My Glock, Walter's 9mm, the silencers, and even the boxes of rounds sat on the bottom of the lake. So I grabbed a butcher knife from the cutting block and walked towards the staircase.
My footsteps echoed through the house as I ascended the steps. The second floor hallway was dark, along with the open guestroom. I moved from the hardwood steps into the carpeted hall and flipped on the ceiling lamp. The white walls became yellow under the orange light, and the sickening pulse of fear ran through me, making my stomach hurt, my legs weak. Turning right, I walked towards the end of the hallway to my bedroom. The door was closed, but I couldn't remember shutting it.