Living Witness

by Jane Haddam

Christine was hovering around his doorway. She looked reluctant to come in, at the same time that she had that mulish expression on her face that said she refused to go out. You work with people for years and you don’t really know them, Henry thought, but he was convinced he knew Christine. The gold cross around the neck. The little gold stud earrings. The Sunday mornings helping out in the Sunday School over at the Baptist Church. The fiancé stashed in the background somewhere, who would learn to keep his hands to himself except on one or two occasions when neither of them could help it, because sexual repression brought sexual explosion, and then she’d end up pregnant five months before the wedding.

  At the moment, she wasn’t pregnant. She was just standing there. She had a file in her hand, Henry had no idea what it was for. He was still standing at the window. Maybe Gregor Demarkian had gone in to the diner to grill Alice McGuffie. He wished to Hell he had that one on videotape.

  “Mr. Wackford,” Christine said.

  “Gregor Demarkian just went into the diner,” Henry Wackford said. “Has he talked to you yet? He’ll be talking to everybody in town. That’s how these people work. Maybe I’ll go over there and see if I can talk to him myself.”

  “Mr. Wackford,” Christine said.

  Henry forced himself away from the window. God, it was impossible, living in this place. People had no sense of occasion. They had no sense of the immensity of the world outside their little plastic prison. He wished he’d never come back to town to practice. He wished he’d never seen Snow Hill in the first place.

  He made himself sit down behind his desk. He put his hands flat against the felt blotter. He looked up. This was the way bosses and secretaries were supposed to interact. Maybe it would allow her to say whatever she needed to and get it over with.

  “Well,” he said. “Do I have an appointment, is that it?”

  Christine took a deep breath. “You do not have an appointment,” she said. “There are some people who want to see you, from Fox News, I think—”

  “Fox?” Henry was interested. “I always said if I ever got the chance, I’d refuse to talk to Fox, but that could be counterproductive. They’ve got the best ratings of all the cable news organizations, and they reach the enemy. And I think I may have talked to them the other day, I don’t remember. But that was off-the-cuff stuff, not a real interview. We could be making history here, Christine. Do you realize that?”

  “I don’t want to make history,” Christine said. “I want to do my job every day and go home at night and have nothing on my conscience. And I can’t do that here. I can’t do that when you’re trying to get God out of the United States government and out of the schools and take away the right to free speech from every Christian.”

  Henry’s chair was one of those tilting, swivelled ones—not the new kind made for computers—the old kind. It had been made for his father, out of good mahogany wood, and it had arms like the arms of a captain’s chair on a particularly expensive cruise ship.

  “God has nothing to do with the United States government,” he said. “If you’d ever believed He did, you should have been disabused of the notion by the administration of George W. Bush.”

  “And there’s that,” Christine said. “Why do you have to insult the President of the United States. He’s the President. We’re supposed to respect the President.”

  “It would take a tree sloth to respect George W. Bush,” Henry said, “and he’s not the President any more. He’s been out of office for months. Did you really come in here to talk to me about George W. Bush?”

  “I came in here to quit,” Christine said. “I’ve been trying to do it for days, but you never let me get a word in edgeways.”

  “You mean you’re giving me notice?” Henry was flabbergasted. “How can you do that? There’s a pile of work out there. Somebody has to do it. If you think you’re going to be able to bring a new girl up to speed in two weeks, or even find somebody who can replace you in two weeks—”

  “It’s nothing to do with two weeks,” Christine said. “I’m not giving you notice. I’m quitting. I’m quitting now. Right this minute. I’m leaving my book on my desk and then I’m going home. I’m not going to be a party to this anymore, Mr. Wackford, I really am not. I gave my life to Jesus Christ when I was eleven years old and I’ve never regretted it. Not for a single minute. I can’t go on helping you persecute Christians the way you do.”

  “I don’t persecute Christians,” Henry said. “What are you talking about? It’s the Christians who are persecuting me. Shoving their prayers down my throat. Hell, going to a school board meeting these days is like listening to an official town pronouncement that I’m not even an American citizen. One nation under God, for God’s sake.”

  “It is one nation under God,” Christine said, “and I like it that way, and I’m not going to help people like you ruin it and turn this into—I don’t know what you want to turn this into. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to put this folder on your desk and then I’m going to leave and I’m not going to come back. I don’t care what you say. Get that Edna Milton woman to help you if you need help. She’s just like you. She hates God, too.”

  Henry watched her back out of the room. Why was she backing out of the room? You’d think she thought he was King of England, or something equally ridiculous? She was ridiculous. He’d never seen anybody so ridiculous. He jumped out of his chair and ran over to her.

  “You’re the one who’s ruining the country,” he barked at her. “You and all the people like you—superstitious, petty, stupid, racist—oh, yes, you’re all racist as Hell. You hide behind religion but what you really care about is keeping the black people out of here and out of everywhere. And don’t I know it. Religion, my eye. None of you cares any more about God than I care about butter pecan ice cream, and I’m allergic to ice cream.”

  “I’m going,” Christine said.

  She had left her coat lying across the top of her desk. The outer office was deserted except for one young man in a black blazer and a black T-shirt. Henry was vaguely aware that this was some kind of media look. He thought it might have been out of date.

  “You’re the one who’s ruining the country,” Henry said. “Doesn’t that religion of yours teach you any responsibility? Doesn’t it teach you to abide by your obligations? You have an obligation here. You can’t just leave me in the lurch. There’s work to do.”

  “It’s evil work that you’re doing,” Christine said, “and you can get somebody else to do it for you. There isn’t anything in the world that could make me stay here.”

  She was out the door a second later. Henry stood watching her go, watching the door swing open and shut, listening to the sound of the street door open and shut. The man in the black blazer had put down his magazine and was looking up expectantly. Henry thought he was far too interested in what he was seeing.

  “Mr. Wackford?” the young man said.

  Henry gave another long look at the door. “Welcome to Snow Hill,” he said. “That’s what happens when you run your life on superstition instead of reason. The whole world goes to Hell. If we let these people win, we’ll all be back in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages. That’s what we call the time when religion ruled the world. Come in and tell me what I can help you with.”

  2

  The note was waiting on the shelf of her cubby when Alice came in to work, and that was impossible, because the diner had been closed all night, and she was just opening up. She was so tired, what with staying up with Barbie half the night, and taking phone calls from everybody she knew, she almost didn’t see it. She was just putting her coat onto the hook when a breeze coming in from the back door made the note flutter, and she put her hand up to touch it. It was an ordinary note. It wasn’t anything like she’d seen in movies. There were no words cut out of magazines. It was just a plain piece of lined white notebook paper, cut in half and then folded, and the words on it said:

  I saw what you did up at Annie-Vic’s.

  Lyman w
as over on the other side of the room, fussing with the grill. He always fussed with the grill first thing in the morning. Alice put the note in her pocket and told herself there was nothing to worry about. She had been up at Annie Vic’s, yes, but she’d been alone. Somebody must have seen her go in or come out. That was a problem, a bigger one than her brain could really get around, but it was not a catastrophe. It was not the kind of thing that deserved an anonymous note. It was nothing to worry about. And the note might not even be for her. It didn’t have her name on it. She could drop it on the floor in the dining room and nobody would know who it belonged to. Maybe that was what she would do, later. Maybe she’d just let it fall next to one of Their chairs, if one of Them ever came in for a cup of coffee. They almost never did. They preferred the Starbucks out at the mall. They didn’t want coffee so much as they wanted coffee-flavored milk shakes.

  She felt a small rivulet of sweat go down the back of her neck, in spite of the fact that the kitchen wasn’t really warm yet. Barbie was staying home from school today. Alice thought that the Cornish children probably were, too. She couldn’t imagine what it was like being the Cornish children. She didn’t believe it when people said they just didn’t believe in God, or the afterlife, or judgment. She was sure they knew, deep down there somewhere, that God was real and that the way they were living meant they would spend eternity in horror. What must it be like to be the Cornish children, knowing all the time that your mother had been condemned to Hell, that she was down there somewhere burning, and that the best you could hope for is that you would never see her again?

  By the time Gregor Demarkian came into the diner, Alice had passed through the phase of thinking about Judy Cornish in Hell, and was thinking about the writer of the anonymous letter burning in Hell. It was a wicked thing to write anonymous notes, and it was dangerous, too. She was a good Christian woman. She was just going to sweat about it for a while. Send a note like that to somebody who really was a criminal, though, and you had no idea what you’d get: a knife in the back? An ambush on the way home from work or school? A little drop of poison in your coffee?

  Gregor Demarkian was taller than Alice had expected him to be. He had one of those names that usually belonged to small dark people, not black but dark, square little men with hair that looked oiled. Gregor Demarkian’s hair didn’t look oiled, and he was taller than anybody Alice had ever seen except Nick Frapp. She wiped the palms of her hands on her apron. She ought to go home today and rest and look after Barbie. She wasn’t feeling well. If it wasn’t for the fact that that Connie Sutpen hadn’t shown up again, she would just tell Lyman and leave.

  Gregor Demarkian sat down at the counter. Alice took a deep breath. Of course he would sit down at the counter. He belonged in a booth, that man did. He wasn’t a trucker, and he wasn’t trying to pretend to be a trucker like these television people. It was the truckers who sat at the counter, or the regulars. Or at least it had been, until all this fuss had started.

  Gregor Demarkian was talking to the man next to him. This was one of the television people, not anybody Alice knew, although she’d seen him in here half a dozen times in the past week. She put her hand in her apron pocket and fiddled with the anonymous note. It was odd how things went. You’d think you know everything, absolutely everything, about everyone in town, you’d think you know what their handwriting is like, but she couldn’t make this out at all. Maybe it was one of the television people who had sent it. Maybe it was one of the people from the development. The trouble with that was that they would have no way of knowing that she had a cubby back there, with her name on it. People from outside would have put it in an envelope in her mailbox or something like that.

  Alice got the coffee pot and headed over to where Demarkian was sitting.

  “My reporter would wet her pants if you let her have an interview,” the television man was saying. “Especially now. Even with a murder, we’ve just been hanging out around here spinning our wheels.”

  “No signs of violence by the forces of the religious right?” Gregor Demarkian asked.

  “If you ask me, the forces of the religious right mostly want to get on camera and fulminate,” the television man said. “But nobody listens to me. The network wants coverage of the trial; it thinks we have to be here before anything happens, so here we are. We interviewed that Reverend Frapp the other day. It fell absolutely flat. No snake handling, no drinking poison, and a guy who can quote Seneca in Latin.”

  The coffee pot was full. All the coffee pots were kept as full as possible at this time of the morning. Alice put her free hand around the side of it. It was hot, but not so hot she was in danger of being burned. She walked over to the two men and reached for Gregor Demarkian’s still-overturned coffee cup. The counter was set with coffee cups turned upside down on saucers, and paper placemats with a picture of the American flag on them, and paper napkins with forks and spoons and knives holding them down.

  “Can I get you anything?” Alice said.

  Gregor Demarkian looked up at her. She hated his eyes. He had eyes like black marbles.

  “Are you Mrs. McGuffie?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course I’m Mrs. McGuffie,” she said. She knew she sounded rude, but she really didn’t care. She really didn’t. Who were these people, anyway? They didn’t belong here. They’d be gone as soon as this trial was over. The only difference between Gregor Demarkian and the television people was that he’d probably try to pin that murder on a good Christian just to make the Christians in town look bad.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked again.

  “Some scrambled eggs and toast,” Gregor Demarkian said.

  Alice made a show of taking out her pad and writing it down. In those fancy restaurants out at the mall, nobody wrote anything down. It was just another way of telling people how much smarter you were than they were. Not writing anything down, as if you had a perfect memory. She bet they made plenty of mistakes, and then pretended they hadn’t, so they could all go on pretending together. That was what it was all about with those people. Pretending. They pretended to understand things you didn’t, and they pretended that the silly things they said meant something real, and then they pretended that they were nothing like you at all.

  She put her book into her pocket and brushed her fingers against the note again. Then she blushed.

  “Are you all right?” Gregor Demarkian said.

  Alice started. Gregor Demarkian looked like he was peering at her. The television man looked like he was doing the same thing. She tried to straighten her back and succeeded only in creating a little spasm.

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” she said, the words coming out when she had only meant to think them. “I don’t care what Gary Albright says. You’re not the police, and you’re not on our side. I don’t have to talk to you, and nobody else does, either. Your eggs will be out in a minute. Good-bye.”

  She turned her back to both the men and walked away, to the little window that led to the kitchen, to hand in her slip. The note was still in there, in her pocket. It made her cold, just to think about it.

  I saw what you did up at Annie Vic’s.

  Well, Alice thought. What of it? What had she done up at Annie Vic’s that should be anybody’s business but her own?

  3

  It was cold in the room now. Sometimes it got that way. Annie-Vic thought about the window, and about how easy it ought to be to close it, but she couldn’t close it, and she knew she couldn’t. It was odd to be here like this—to float, to be able to hear everything anybody said without their knowing you could hear it. It was a revelation, really. If she came out of this—and she thought she would, if only because she wasn’t panicking—she would recommend a stint of it to everybody. It was amazing, the kind of things people said when they thought you couldn’t hear them.

  This man, this person called Gregor Demarkian, didn’t say much of anything. Annie-Vic had been interested as soon as she’d heard Dr. Willard use his name. Sh
e’d heard of him, of course. She could barely help it. When she was home and on her own, she was practically addicted to Court TV, or Tru TV, as it had started calling itself. It was a silly change, and the mangled spelling of “true” offended her. She hated to sound like an old person, but she thought the standards of everything had declined badly since World War II. Even in the early days of television, when there was practically nothing on the box but the criminally stupid, nobody would have put up with a spelling like “tru.” Ed Sullivan had classical musicians on his variety show: pianists and violinists playing Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms. People were ashamed to admit that they were ignorant of the important monuments of the Great Tradition, never mind grammar, punctuation, and spelling. And tattoos—nobody had tattoos except the members of motorcycle gangs, and women never had them at all. The whole world seemed to have devolved into ugliness and squalor. It was as if one day she had gotten out of bed, and the hillbillies had won.

  At the moment, she wasn’t getting out of bed, or even turning over. Annie-Vic wanted to turn over, because her back hurt. She couldn’t lift her arms. She couldn’t open her eyes, not on purpose. They sometimes opened on their own, she didn’t know why. They were open now, so that she could see something of what was happening in the room. Being flat on her back, she couldn’t see much. The Demarkian person was very tall, and broad, like somebody who played professional football. He was probably too old. Annie-Vic had no idea how old you had to be to play professional football. That nice black man, that Michael Jordan, had gone in and out of being retired for years, and she didn’t think he was much more than forty. But that was professional basketball, so maybe that was different.

  There were things that Annie-Vic believed to be necessary. One of those things was a commitment to curing your own ignorance. There was something intrinsically wrong about being proud of what you didn’t know. So many of these people these days were proud of just that. They took it as a badge of honor that they never listened to Bach and couldn’t tell a Renoir from a Picasso. Franklin Hale, for instance, seemed to be making a career out of boasting about his own ignorance, and Alice McGuffie—