“Excuse me, but Dr. Hill. .”
“Please,” she says with a wave of the hand. “Call me Joy.”
“Joy, then. It’s come to my attention that Simone wasn’t your first tenant. There was a woman living here before, one of your former students.”
“You mean Agnieszka Oliszewski. She wasn’t a tenant so much as a houseguest. There were complications with her immigration status vis-à-vis employment, and until she could sort that out and get a job, she couldn’t really afford a place of her own.”
“So you did a favor for Ms. Oliszewski,” I say, stumbling over the name. “And she repaid it by running off with your husband.”
Her face hardens. Then she gives me a broad, indulgent smile. “You’re trying to get a reaction out of me. But no, I’m not resentful. Agnieszka wasn’t the first woman he brought into the picture, just the last. Having it going on right under my nose. . I guess that’s what I needed to finally take action. They didn’t run off together, as you put it. They were pushed.”
“By you?”
She lifts her palms as if to say, Who else?
Cavallo touches a book and the professor’s head snaps toward her. Cavallo’s hand drops and she relaxes.
“Their departure coincided with your legal problems, isn’t that right? The Zachariassens brought their sexual harassment suit-”
“Which was thrown out.”
“Thrown out? Or was it settled?”
Her shrug implies the two outcomes amount to the same thing. “You know why people agree to settle? Because what they were looking for in the first place was a payoff. Say somebody does to your daughter what those people accused me of doing: would you take a check and move on, or would you want to see justice done?”
“Justice,” I say.
“Exactly. If there’s any substance to the claim, you don’t settle. You don’t take your money and slink off into the darkness. That girl was hysterical-and I use the word advisedly, well aware of the negative connotations. I caught her cheating, and she responded by trying to destroy me.” She gets a faraway look. “Their claims had no basis in fact. None of them do.”
“None of what?”
“The claims,” she says. “The rumors about me.”
“What kind of rumors?”
She laughs the question to scorn. “I have never been involved with any of my students. Oh, I could give you a list of colleagues who have-but I’m not one of them. I don’t know how stories like that get started, but once they do, you’re branded for life.”
“What about Simone? She wasn’t one of your students.”
“Was I involved with her, is that what you’re asking?”
I hold her stare without repeating the question.
“There are reasons other than money to want to have someone under the same roof. And at my age, sex isn’t one of them.”
“You’re not so old,” I say.
“For me it was never-” She stops herself, conscious of Cavallo moving in the background. “Never mind what it was. I’ve answered your question, Detective.”
“Why did you invite Simone to live with you?”
“I just wanted someone to be here. Is that so hard to understand? I never had children, never wanted them, and I was happy to see my husband go. And yet, once he was gone I felt alone. You may find this hard to believe, but people don’t naturally gravitate toward me. I’ve never had the gift of attraction. But having a tenant made it easy.”
“Only she wasn’t paying the rent.”
She concedes with a tilt of the head. “It didn’t take Simone long to figure out that the money wasn’t a big concern for me. What I really wanted was. . companionship.”
“And when she didn’t give you that?”
Silence.
“How did you feel when you realized she was taking advantage?”
“I pitied her. Simone could be selfish and manipulative, but after all, she was just a single-cell organism repeating her basic programming over and over again. Once you’ve realized that about someone, it’s very hard for them ever to hurt you.”
Cavallo returns from the bookshelves, shaking her head at my raised eyebrows. No sign of the book. She sits on the sofa next to Dr. Hill.
“Do you remember me, Professor?”
Hill leans back, like she can’t focus without some distance between them. “I do now.”
“Only it’s strange,” Cavallo says. “The way you’re describing Simone Walker sounds a lot like the way you described Shayna Zachariassen the last time we met. Maybe you do attract a certain type.”
The professor says nothing, letting the words hang in the air.
“You must be quite a reader,” I say. “So many books on the shelf. You haven’t read all of them, have you? People must ask that a lot.”
She blinks in slow motion, making her contempt for my banter unmistakable.
“There’s a particular title I’m wondering about, a true crime book about a case here in Houston from ten years back. It’s called The Kingwood Killing. Have you ever come across that particular book, Joy?”
“I don’t read that sort of book,” she says. “I find them sordid. And that goes for the people who read them, too.”
Charlotte and the Robbs hold down a table for us at Hungry’s Café, rising in unison to take turns giving Cavallo a hug. They say the usual things about not seeing her often enough. I smile and nod through it all like I’m paying attention, like my mind isn’t still on the job.
I’m as far away as ever from Simone’s killer. As far away as ever from her, too. Everyone in that girl’s life was using her. And she was using them, too.
Beside me Charlotte slips her hand into mine. Her face is radiant in the gold artificial light. To anyone but me, she would appear happy. But it’s a frantic sort of joy, a smile that never reaches the eyes.
“You okay?” I ask under my breath.
She ignores the question.
Carter and Gina wear the same awkward, excited expressions they always do when they’re taken out to dinner, anxious to please and be pleased. Carter must have raided the laundry basket. Instead of the usual ironic T-shirt, he’s found a tight-fitting plaid cowboy shirt with pearl snaps.
“So are you two working together again?” Gina asks Cavallo.
“Not really. March here hijacked me from the office, that’s all. He was having trouble getting any of his Homicide buddies to do the heavy lifting for him.”
“Well, it’s good to see you,” Charlotte says. “How is your husband doing? You get to talk to him, don’t you?”
“I worry a lot more about him than he worries about himself. But the good news is, when he finishes this tour, that’s it. He’s finally had enough. He’s not going to re-up again. I’m not going to let him.”
“He was crazy to go back in the first place after you two got hitched,” Carter says. “Not to be critical or anything.”
“You can be critical.” Cavallo smiles. “He was crazy, and now maybe he realizes it. I’m not getting any younger, so if we’re gonna start having babies, it’s time. Speaking of which. . congratulations.”
She raises her glass, getting nothing but Cheshire cat grins out of the Robbs.
“Congratulations about what?” Charlotte asks. She looks back and forth between Cavallo and Gina, pulling her hand out of mine, a quizzical smile on her lips. “Is there something I don’t know? What’s the big secret?”
Gina’s cheeks flush with embarrassment.
“Are you-?”
As the truth dawns, Charlotte pushes her chair back. She reaches toward Gina but clips the side of a water glass by accident. A slurry of ice slides over the table. Carter scoots back to avoid getting wet. Gina stays frozen. I grab the glass, setting it upright.
“Oh,” Charlotte says, covering her mouth with both hands. “I’m such a-”
“It’s okay,” I’m saying, while Carter gives an awkward laugh.
Cavallo: “Did I spoil the surprise?”
&nbs
p; It takes a moment, but Charlotte recovers. She gets up and goes to Gina, throwing her arms around the still-seated girl, hugging her from behind.
“That’s wonderful,” she says. “I’m so happy for you.”
A waiter comes by and helps me mop up the mess. Before I know it, the seating arrangements have changed. Carter takes Charlotte’s place beside me while the two older women close in around his wife, showering her with attention.
“Get used to it,” I say. “For now on, you’ve officially dropped off the radar screen.”
The specter of looming fatherhood doesn’t seem to faze Carter, though it should. He didn’t make much working at the church and makes even less from the outreach center, and I know for a fact they don’t have health insurance. The rent they pay for the garage apartment is next to nothing-but that’s no place to raise a kid.
No, they’ll have to move out.
Out of the apartment and out of our lives.
The thought leaves me empty inside, suddenly nostalgic for the present. Looking at the smiling faces around the table, hearing the lilting voices, I now realize this will all come to an end. It will end, it will end, and tonight we celebrate the high tide.
Charlotte catches my eye. “Hey, we’re supposed to be celebrating.”
“I was just thinking about Carter changing his first pair of diapers.”
He laughs. “I’m trying not to think about that.”
“I’m so jealous,” Cavallo says. “By the time she was my age, my mama already had three girls. So when you need a baby-sitter, you call Aunt Terry, you hear me?”
“Have you thought about names yet?” Charlotte asks.
Gina shares a smile with Carter, then shakes her head. “And we’re not going to find out if it’s a boy or girl. We want it to be a surprise.”
Once we’ve ordered and the food arrives, there’s an awkward moment when Charlotte asks Carter to pray. The rest of them link hands. I stare at Carter’s proffered palm until he rests it on the table.
As he thanks God in heaven for his goodness and blessings, I think of the man crying on Dr. Hill’s leather couch at the loss of a child who probably never existed. Maybe the man is pure invention, too. Part of me would like to believe so, but then I remember that 832 number on Simone’s call log. Perhaps it was my voicemail message that prompted his appearance on the professor’s doorstep.
The reverend was right. Curtis Blunt said he had “discerned” Simone’s infidelity, whatever that means. My guess is he merely assumed the worst, knowing that when you do that, your future predictions are bound to come true. A prophet predicting doom will never be starved for an audience.
When the prayer ends and the others dig in, Charlotte smiles wanly in my direction, the way she does when I’ve intentionally excluded myself and she wants me to know I’m always welcome to reconsider. That smile only heightens my desire to be apart, but since I organized this get-together, I have to stick it out. In this company I’ve grown accustomed to being the odd man out.
After dinner, Charlotte volunteers to run Cavallo back downtown, taking Gina along so the three of them can continue their conversation about parents and children. That leaves me and Carter on our own. He’s silent as we drive through town, so silent I remember that our talk early this morning was interrupted before he could tell me the second thing on his mind. I remember why it was interrupted, too.
Afraid he’ll take the opportunity to open up, that he’s bracing for it even now, I flip on the radio and skip through a couple of stations, landing on a local call-in show where everyone’s still going on about the runoff election and Friday’s snow.
“Charlotte wants me to talk to you,” Carter says.
I study the lights in my rearview mirror. I shift lanes and the car behind me does, too. Carter shifts in his chair, pulling the seat belt away from his chest.
“You know it’s not my style,” he says, “to come on strong with the God-talk, right? But she’s worried and she wants me to say something. She feels like maybe, because of the stuff we’ve gone through, you’ll hear me out. She feels like you might not listen to her.” He pauses and waits for some kind of reply.
“Go on,” I say, adjusting the mirror.
“With the kind of work you do, the kind of things you see, there has to be a corrosive effect. You’re always in the presence of evil. When we met, I got a firsthand taste, so I think I have an idea what it must be like.”
I smile. “You think I’m corroding?”
“It comes off you in waves. When you look at people, it’s like you’re sizing them up for the casket.”
“Are you trying to hurt my feelings or something?”
“I’m being serious.”
“About what?”
“I just think. .” He grasps for the words. “You carry a burden, and I’m just saying, if you ever feel like you need to talk-”
“About what?” I repeat.
“The job. Life. Spiritual things.”
“I talked to a guy this morning, a reverend. He said he often had to ‘counsel’ people. Is that what you’re talking about, counseling?”
A defensive note creeps into his voice. “I think it might help. Charlotte feels like it might, too. She worries about you, Roland. She’s afraid that if you keep doing what you do, you’re going to lose yourself.”
“Lose myself,” I say.
Of all the people I know, I’m the least likely to do that.
“The thing about this job is, it opens your eyes to reality. There are certain truths I have to own up to, certain lies I can’t tell myself. Like Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange, there’s no looking away. Everybody else, they can afford to deceive themselves about human nature and the way the world works. But not me, Carter.”
“I don’t think I’m deceiving myself.”
“People don’t. That’s the whole point. But they go on believing what they’ve been told, they keep voting and buying and praying, they live good lives surrounded by good people in a good world where everything is good. And they think when it’s not good, that’s the aberration. That’s the exception to the rule. But underneath, Carter, if you could turn this city upside down, you’d see it’s all rot down there, all corruption.”
“Of course it is,” he says. “Because of sin-”
“Carter, listen to me. You mean well, I realize that. But there’s no magic formula or platitude they taught you in seminary that’s going to turn me into one of you. It’s not gonna happen. You have no idea what I’ve seen and what I’ve done. Trust me, if you did, you’d be like me, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“I know it’s all rot and corruption,” he says, “and with what I’ve been through, you can’t sit there and say I’ve got rose-tinted glasses on.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I start to go on, then stop. What’s the point? “Why don’t we just drop this, okay?”
“How am I supposed to do that, exactly? This is my job, what we’re doing right now.”
“Maybe you’re the one who needs the counseling, then.”
“Probably so,” he says. “But it’s precisely because of the evil and rot that I have faith. Knowing that on top of all that, there’s someone loving and all-powerful who can bring good out of evil-that’s what keeps me going. Otherwise, I would be like you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The worm in my domestic apple starts to turn, and I imagine the conversations they must have had about me, the intimacies Charlotte unthinkingly revealed, and I find I do want to cut him down to size just a bit.
“Carter,” I say, “if there really was some loving, all-powerful force out there, I wouldn’t be hunting a man down for plunging a bowie knife in a woman’s chest and then stripping her and using her dead body as a pincushion. That’s what he did. He spread his fingers out on her skin and stabbed in between them over and over. One, two, three, four, five, six-just like that. And when he was done with her, he dumped her in the swimming pool
and he posed her like she was nothing but a stage prop.”
He’s quiet now, but I can’t shut myself up.
“Now, what you’re saying is that, seeing something like that, I should be comforted. I should feel good knowing that as bad as it looks, it was all for the best. God was up in heaven watching it go down, and even though he didn’t lift a finger, he sure wishes us well. I’m sorry, Carter, but that doesn’t do it for me. If I believed that, I think I’d be miserable.”
“You are miserable,” he says.
“My point is, you’re out of your league.”
“Have you ever considered why God lets things like that happen?”
“No, Carter. I don’t believe I have.”
“It’s not that he doesn’t have the power to stop it, man. It’s just. . God wants us to choose what’s right. He could force us-he has the power to-but he also loves us and you can’t force love.”
“If you were taking a knife to someone,” I say, “believe me, I’d force you to stop.”
“You don’t get what I’m saying-”
“This isn’t new to me. My aunt was dragging me to church and force-feeding me the catechism before you were born, Carter. You think God could come down if he wanted to and make things right, but he doesn’t because he wants us to choose right of our own free will-is that it?”
“Only we don’t because of our sin.”
“Let me tell you a story,” I say.
We’re on Heights Boulevard not very far from home, so I pull into a convenience store parking lot, idling on the far edge next to the air machine, determined to get this over with before we pull up the driveway.
“A long time ago, we got this call. My old partner Wilcox and me. All we knew was that this woman had been talking on the phone to her daughter, and then there were screams and the line went dead. Patrol got to the scene and called it in, saying a guy had bludgeoned his wife to death in the kitchen, and they’d caught him out in the driveway siphoning gasoline out of his truck. You know what he was gonna do with that gas? Burn the place down. And he confessed to everything, right then and there. We arrived on scene and he was ready to give it up.
“ ‘Why’d you do it?’ Wilcox asks the guy.
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