Lifeline

by Gerry Boyle

  “I wish I had been,” Roxanne said. “We could have found a nice little clearing and communed with nature.”

  “Without binoculars?”

  “Right.”

  Roxanne smiled. The waiter, a match for the bartender, came over and asked if I wanted another ale. I said yes, I’d have one more. Roxanne said she was all set for wine.

  “What did you do this morning?” she asked, smiling and pulling the sweater over her shoulders.

  I hesitated. The waiter came back and asked if we wanted to order. I said yes. Roxanne said sure, and I looked at her.

  “Broiled salmon,” she said. “Baked potato and a spinach salad with vinaigrette dressing.”

  “The same,” I said.

  The waiter left. Roxanne waited.

  “I went into town,” I said. “To get groceries.”

  “Mr. Domestic.”

  I smiled. Took a deep breath.

  “And I stopped and saw Donna,” I said.

  Roxanne looked stunned. Her face sagged and the lights went out in her eyes.

  “She called again. And I was right over that way. I wanted to know more about Jeff getting out, whether she’d seen him. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s what I did.”

  Roxanne was silent. The wine in her glass was absolutely still.

  “I like her,” I said. “I feel sorry for her. And we have something in common. A hundred-and-eighty-pound psycho says he wants both of us dead. She said Tate bailed him for three hundred bucks. He was out in four hours.”

  Roxanne said nothing. Her fingernails traced tiny circles on the base of her wineglass.

  “Did she try to seduce you?” she said quietly, still looking down.

  “No,” I said. “Not really. She went and put on makeup. If I’d asked her to dinner, she probably would have gone.”

  “But you didn’t know you’d be having dinner with me.”

  “Yes, I did. If not tonight, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, the day after that. What God has joined, let no man or woman split asunder.”

  “Jack McMorrow, Bible thumper.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “Some things are permanent. We’re one of them.”

  “Did you tell her that?” Roxanne asked.

  “More or less. But she didn’t really mean any harm. She’s just had terrible luck, I think. She’s reaching out for something normal.”

  “Somebody to hold her up.”

  “I told her that too.”

  “Did she understand?”

  “I think so,” I said. “But she’s not used to being on her own. These guys never let her be on her own. She never had any independence. No life. Except for her little girl. She’s got a very nice little girl.”

  “Domineering, insecure, threatened men,” Roxanne said, fingering the stem of her glass. “They keep women down, under their thumbs, because they fear that they’ll lose their power over them. It’s everywhere you look. Like an aristocracy losing its grip.”

  “Everywhere?”

  Roxanne smiled.

  “Not everywhere,” she said.

  She sipped her wine. I sipped my ale. We looked at each other. Roxanne kept me pinned with her gaze.

  “So you think you’ll see Donna again?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe in court. I worry about her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Jeff is nuts. Very violent. Self-destructive. The only good thing is that he isn’t devious. Not sneaking around. He’ll come after you, but he’ll let you see him coming. Then there’s her ex-husband. He came while I was there. I opened the door and he let loose.”

  “On you?”

  “On her. Some child-support thing. I was in the way, so I caught some of it. I was talking to one of the cops, real nice guy, Lenny, that’s his last name, and he said this other guy, Donnie, is really more dangerous than Jeff.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “Why do women get hooked up with guys like this?” I asked.

  “People get hooked up for all the wrong reasons,” Roxanne said. “Love is blind and your eyes open later.”

  “You still like what you see?”

  “I love what I see. I’ve told you that.”

  “Still?”

  “Still.”

  “What did we do to deserve this?”

  “We didn’t do anything,” Roxanne said. “We were lucky.”

  “And Donna wasn’t.”

  “But she can change that. And I’d be willing to talk to her. There are all kinds of support groups and counselors.”

  “That’s assuming she can get away from the men in her life.”

  “Which is assuming a lot?” Roxanne asked.

  “It’s assuming a real lot.”

  “What about the man in my life getting away from the men in her life?”

  “That may be assuming a lot, too,” I said.

  So we ate salmon and talked and then went outside and sat in Roxanne’s car like high school kids on a date. Roxanne invited me to her place, but I had another date—with Clair at six a.m., bring your own Husqvarna. If I didn’t show up, he’d cut alone. If anything happened to him it would be my fault, and I couldn’t live with that. Some things took priority over being with Roxanne. Not many, but some.

  We said a long good-bye on a dark street in Camden. When a town police cruiser swung by for a second look, we figured it was time to part.

  I drove inland smiling to myself, glad that I’d dodged Jeff’s fists and Donna’s legs and had landed in Roxanne’s arms. I made my way on darkened roads, past darkened houses where people slept wrapped in each other’s arms. When I turned off the dump road, my house was in darkness too. I took the rifle off the rack, loaded it, and went inside to see if anybody had been eating my porridge.

  They weren’t in the kitchen. Or the shed. Or in the bathroom or under the bed. There were no messages on the machine. I left it on and went back up to the loft, where I undressed in the dark, put the rifle on the floor, climbed in, and was out cold.

  Until the banging started.

  I opened my eyes and pitched out of the bed and went down the stairs, bleary and unarmed, to see who was pounding on the door.

  It was Clair. He had a rolled-up section of newspaper in his hand.

  “What time is it?” I said.

  “Five fifteen.”

  “You said six.”

  “You’ve got to see this,” Clair said.

  “See what?”

  He unrolled the Maine Sunday Telegram. Held it out to show the front of the state news section, bottom right. His big finger pointed to a small story. Boxed.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “Oh, my God.”

  “And Jack,” Clair said. “You’ve got to look at your truck.”

  14

  I didn’t look. I didn’t move. I stood there and read and reread the story, hoping it would disappear. It didn’t.

  The headline said KENNEBEC WOMAN FOUND DEAD. The story said details were sketchy. They did not seem sketchy to me.

  A Kennebec woman was killed late Saturday night.

  Police identified the woman as Donna Marchant, 22, of Peavey Street, Kennebec. According to a dispatcher at the Kennebec Police Department, Marchant’s body was discovered in her apartment shortly before 10 p.m. by a relative, who then alerted authorities.

  Police are treating the death as suspicious, according to spokesman Peter Santori. Late Sunday night, the state police mobile crime lab was at the scene. The cause of death was under investigation, police said.

  I stood there in my boxers, the newspaper held out in front of me. My breath came in short pulls. My stomach felt as if it had been sucked inside out.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” Clair said.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. I felt unsteady.

  “I can’t believe it. I just talked to her. Yesterday. What day was that? Saturday. That’s last night. She died last night. I talked to her in the morning. She was fine. I mean, she was fine. Just sta
nding there. I mean, God. I can’t believe this.”

  “You see your truck?” Clair said.

  I shook my head no. I walked over slowly, in my bare feet. Clair walked beside me.

  When I’d come home I’d pulled into the yard, then, after scanning the house with the headlights, backed out and backed in again, training the lights on the woods across the road. The truck was where I had left it. I walked to the driver’s door and stopped.

  Someone had driven a hunting knife through the windshield in front of the steering wheel. Impaled on the knife was a black-and-white cat. Scrawled across the windshield in the cat’s blood were two words: DEAD MEAT.

  I looked at the cat. Its tongue was sticking out and its eyes were open. Dried blood stained the white fur on its chin. It was wearing a clear plastic flea collar. For a second I thought I’d vomit. Then the feeling passed.

  “We’ve got to call the cops,” I said.

  “Let’s go in,” Clair said.

  I walked weakly to the door, then looked back at the truck. I still had the newspaper in my hand, and I opened it and there was the story again. It hadn’t changed. I hadn’t awakened in a sweat. It was all real. Donna was dead.

  Clair stood near me as I dialed the number. The Kennebec dispatcher sounded weary, until I identified myself. I could hear voices in the background, and then she covered the receiver and I heard her muffled voice say, “It’s McMorrow. Who wants to take it?”

  There was a pause. Then a click. Then a guy on the phone.

  “This is Detective LaCharelle. Can I help you?”

  “This is Jack McMorrow. I just saw the paper. I knew Donna Marchant, and I saw her just yesterday. I think I need to talk to you.”

  “You’re on our list, Mr. McMorrow. We’d like to talk to you, ASAP. Where are you?”

  “My house. Prosperity.”

  “How soon can you get here?”

  “Well, ordinarily twenty-five minutes. Half hour. But I’ve got a problem.”

  “What’s that, Mr. McMorrow?” LaCharelle said.

  “Somebody jammed a knife through the windshield of my truck.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime during the night,” I said.

  “Can somebody drive you in?” LaCharelle said.

  “I guess. But it isn’t just that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “There’s a cat on the knife too. Dead. A dead cat. And a message in the cat’s blood.”

  “Saying what?” LaCharelle said.

  “Dead meat,” I said.

  “Frig it. We’ll come get you. Don’t touch the truck.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Or the cat,” he said.

  The trooper was there in twenty minutes. A detective in a half hour. It seemed like an eternity.

  I sat in the chair by the back window and waited for them. Clair asked if I wanted a drink. I said no. He asked if I wanted coffee or tea, and I said no again.

  “Sad business,” Clair said, staring out the window at nothing.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But don’t blame yourself for this.”

  “How can I not?” I said.

  As I sat, my mind raced from one fact to another, one worse than the last. I had picked Donna out. I had plucked her from the passing faces in district court. I had selected her because I wanted a good story. I had wanted something somebody would read. I had wanted the readers of the Kennebec Observer to see that story and say, “Jack McMorrow. Who is this guy? Did you read this story about the girl in the courtroom?”

  So I had struck, gliding after Donna like an assassin. I had followed her into the parking lot. I had adeptly negotiated my way around her vigilant sister. I had talked Donna out of her reticence.

  I was very good at talking people out of their reticence. I was one of the best.

  And I had proceeded even though I had liked her. I had written my little story for this little paper, heedless of the consequences. For me, there were no consequences. There was only an eight o’clock deadline. I hadn’t looked beyond that. I really hadn’t considered the consequences at all.

  So Donna, the anonymous victim of two abusive men, had become the not-so-anonymous victim of two abusive men. Or maybe three. Ensnared as she was by these animals, I had held her up for her small, closed world to see: Squirming. Punished. Baring her lacerated belly to strangers.

  Great stuff, Archambault at the paper had said.

  Oh, yeah. Great stuff.

  So now Donna was dead. With her modest dreams. Her little girl. Her paintings. Her purple paintings. Jesus, God almighty. What had I done?

  Her daughter was alone now. Her mommy was gone. Because of Jack McMorrow, her mommy was gone. Because of Jack McMorrow, Adrianna would never see her mother again. Never hear her voice. Never snuggle with her in bed. Never sit across from her at a table. Never hold her hand. Never. Never. Never. Never. Round and round in my head it all went.

  “Oh, damn,” I groaned.

  Clair touched me on the shoulder.

  “They’re here,” he said.

  The trooper was getting out of her cruiser, which bristled with lights. She had reddish hair that she’d stuffed into a blue Smokey the Bear hat. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and came out of the house with Clair. She looked at me sternly.

  “Mr. McMorrow?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m going to have to impound this vehicle, sir. And I’d like you to stay here. One of the detectives will be here in a few minutes. They’ve asked me to ask you not to leave the premises.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  The detective’s car was like the cruiser, except brown, without the lights. Two middle-aged men got out, one very big, one not so big. Neither looked as though he would take much guff.

  They looked at the truck and the cat. The big detective bent down and looked inside the driver’s door to where the knife protruded six inches through the glass. He didn’t react, didn’t say anything except to the trooper.

  “Haul it,” he said. “Augusta.”

  The trooper nodded and walked to her car. The short detective was peering at the cat.

  “Mr. McMorrow,” the big detective said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m Detective Kelly. State police. Detective LaCharelle asked me to ask you if you would come into Kennebec with us.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “It’ll just be easier. We’ve got a few people working on this one, and it’s easier to bring you to them.”

  “Fine.”

  “Somebody will give you a ride back.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  The big detective looked at Clair.

  “Who are you, sir?” he said.

  “Clair Varney.”

  “Did you know the deceased?”

  “No,” Clair said.

  “Just what he read about her in the paper,” I said.

  The detective looked at me.

  “We’re ready when you are, Mr. McMorrow,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just let me put on some shoes.”

  I put on a clean polo shirt, too and sat in the backseat. The detectives sat up front. We left Clair with the trooper. As we pulled out, I wished I’d cleaned the beer cans out from under the seat of the truck. We rode in silence, out onto Route 137, west through the farms and woods of Albion. When we rode through Albion village, cars were pulling up to the small white Baptist church. A couple of kids stared at me as we went by.

  The detectives talked about gardening and woodchucks they had shot for eating broccoli and cabbage seedlings. One had used his nine-millimeter. The other had used a .22. At night, they rototilled the firing range.

  We drove and then they talked about the Red Sox, who they thought were off to a good start.

  “You a Sox fan, Mr. McMorrow?” the shorter detective said, looking in the rearview mirror.

  “No,” I said. “I was raised on the Yankees.”
/>   “Child abuse,” he said, and smiled.

  “We don’t mean to ignore you, Mr. McMorrow,” Kelly said. “It’s just that we don’t want to have you answer our questions now and then have to repeat yourself when we get to the PD. So hang loose another ten minutes and I promise you, you won’t be ignored.”

  And I wasn’t.

  The room was behind the police station, which was at the rear of the Kennebec Municipal Building. The shorter guy opened the door and I went in. There were maps on the walls and a list done in marker that said REQUIREMENTS FOR SHORELAND ZONE.

  The murder of Donna Marchant had evicted the planning board.

  Two guys in sports jackets got up from their chairs and pulled one out for me. Nobody shook hands. We all sat down.

  “Thanks for coming, Mr. McMorrow,” a heavy red-faced man said. “I’m LaCharelle. You’ve met these officers. Kelly and Lister. This is Detective Noel.”

  A very young, very handsome guy nodded. I nodded back.

  “So tell me about your truck,” LaCharelle began.

  “Somebody stabbed the windshield with a big knife,” I said. “The knife had a cat impaled on it.”

  “Your cat?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Recognize it?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Why would somebody do that?”

  “To annoy me, I guess.”

  “Why would they want to annoy you?” LaCharelle said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I annoyed them.”

  “Like who?”

  I hesitated. All four detectives watched me.

  “Donna Marchant’s boyfriend. Jeff Tanner. I wrote a story for the Observer about her. Didn’t use her name, but it was about how she went to court to get a protection order. How the guy had been abusing her. Allegedly. He didn’t like it.”

  “Did he threaten to do something like this?”

  “Not specifically. Tried to punch me out, though.”

  “And what happened?” LaCharelle asked.

  I noticed he had broken blood vessels in his nose.

  “He got a little hurt,” I said.

  The handsome detective looked up from his legal pad.

  “Who else?” LaCharelle said.

  “Donna’s ex-husband, maybe.”

  “Donnie?”

  “Yeah.”