“Did you talk to her again once you found Marian? Ask her again about the daughter?”
“No,” said Nestor. “We took another look at the case when we found Marian, wondering if we’d missed anything, seeing if any leads would come out of the discovery. But this was . . . what, 2003? 2004? Our priorities had changed after 9/11. We didn’t have the resources to track down all the loose ends with this—our office was focusing on cybercrime and the war on terror. Brock had made peace with Patrick Mursult, the DA was happy. NCIS was still investigating, but without our involvement for the most part. We tried to consult with you, actually, bring you in, but no one could track you down. I thought you would have wanted to be here when we found her.”
“I would have, yes,” I said. “Where was she laid to rest?”
“Back in Canonsburg, with her family.”
“Her dad, too?”
“Yeah. They were all cremated.”
“You remember Fleece’s place?” I asked. “The ship made of fingernails?”
“I remember.”
“Whatever came of that?” I asked.
“Fact, I remember we were working with the coroner,” said Nestor, “trying to figure a way we could tell if the fingernails and toenails were missing on Marian, but it was impossible.”
“What happened when you found her?”
“Nothing. There was some play in the newspapers,” said Nestor, “but Brock didn’t want to release all the details, didn’t want people traipsing up here.”
“You never came close to figuring out who killed her?” I asked. “After all this time?”
Nestor shook his head. “Never came close.”
Shadows had gathered in the trees. I saw fireflies. Nestor sat on a rock, bundled in his wool jacket. We can observe this place, I thought. There’s plenty of tree cover. We can have someone posted in a blind, watch who shows up, who builds the cairns.
“I need you to show me this place on a map,” I said. “I need detailed instructions on how to get up here. What roads, and that access route you took. Detailed enough so that if I had to get back up here sometime and didn’t have any of these markers, I could still get here. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll mark it all out on a map for you,” he said. “You must be freezing. Let’s get you back. I’ll buy you some supper.”
Nestor lit our path with a Maglite, but even so, finding my footing was difficult coming downhill. Never sure where to plant my silicone foot, I couldn’t feel if dirt or rocks were about to give way in slides. I misstepped, tumbling, gashed my knee. I held on to branches and grabbed hold of boughs, still slipping, my palms sap-sticky and roughed up from catching myself on needles.
“Here,” said Nestor, offering his arm. I took it, steadied myself against him. I put my arm around him, clamped myself to him, walking hip to hip the rest of the way down the hill. He held me beside him.
“Thank you,” I said, frustrated that I’d needed his help at all. “I don’t like to get myself in a position like that—to rely on people.”
“I was all right with it,” he said.
We ate together in Buckhannon, at a place near the river called the Whistle Stop Grill. We sat in one of the booths, the tablecloth brown gingham covered with a heavy plastic sheet. The decor was like a country kitchen—an old hutch, a fireplace. The walls were wood paneling hung with wreaths. We each ordered steak, onion rings. Nestor poured from a pitcher of Yuengling.
“I like this place,” I told him.
“Yeah—I’m kind of a regular here. They have good food.”
“She’s pretty,” I said, catching sight of the bartender, a woman who looked black Irish. “You ever talk with her?”
“Annie, yeah,” he said. “I bet I’ll have to explain you the next time I’m in.”
“Is she your girlfriend? I don’t want to mess things up for you.”
“No, not a girlfriend. I had someone serious for a while, a few years back, but one day you wake up and realize you’re ruining each other,” he said. “Sometimes even the good things don’t quite stick. Sometimes they do.”
Warmed by the flirtation kindling between us. No consequences here. I wanted to take his hand in mine. I brushed my knee against his, and he didn’t pull away. “Thanks for taking me out there,” I said.
“You think that’s everything you’ll need?” he asked. “Do you have to present your case review or anything? Write a report?”
“Not for a little while yet,” I said. “I’ll be around.”
“Good. It’s been good seeing you,” he said.
I lingered with Nestor out by his truck, wishing he didn’t have that muff of a beard, but when he said, “I’ve thought about you so much over the years,” I kissed him anyway, finding his lips soft through the field of hair. I could tell he wasn’t expecting me, not so readily, but he kissed me and gave in like he was trying to drink me—I could feel the want in him. He cupped my breast as he kissed my neck.
“There’s people around,” I said, and Nestor said, “I’m sorry,” stepping back like he’d offended me or had transgressed, so I said, “Where do you live? Near here?”
I followed his taillights down 151, Old Elkins Road, about twenty minutes until he pulled in to the long gravel drive. A front-porch light. I parked behind the truck, followed him to the side door. “I could never fix this lock,” he said, nudging it open—he let the dog out, a jumpy setter, who scrambled into the yard and ran off into the dark. Nestor kissed me in the mudroom—pulled me to him. I kissed his eyes, kissed him. I felt him hard through his jeans, so I touched him, rubbed him while we kissed. He touched my hair like something precious and kissed the strands. He led me through the kitchen. “Through here,” he said, into the living room. A mirror above the mantel reflected our dark forms. He approached in the mirror behind me. His hands folded over my breasts—I felt him push against me from behind. Breathless, he turned me toward him, fumbled at my shirt buttons—so I helped him, spreading open my clothes, revealing myself. Nestor unbuttoned my jeans, fell to his knees as he guided my clothes down over my hips. He kissed my prosthesis, kissed my other thigh, kissed the length of my leg, higher, tasted me. He reached up and held my breasts, and my knee went weak, and I collapsed down with him to the carpet. I helped him remove my prosthesis, laughing with him at the release of the vacuum seal, the sound it made, peeling off the liner, embarrassed when he kissed my stump, knowing how it would smell—how the liner would have made my skin smell—but he kissed me there, kissed me. He kissed the line above my hair, golden there, working his way up my belly before taking each breast in his mouth and sucking. I shivered, arched myself, welcoming, and he pushed at me, entering me, pulling out only as he came. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that was so fast, I’m sorry,” and he used his mouth and then his fingers until I clenched and shuddered and cried out, panting. We slept for a little over an hour on the living-room carpet, woke up kissing. I used my mouth on him, then guided him into me. We watched each other’s eyes this second time—less needy than before. Throw pillows and a blanket from the back of the couch, we curled up together on the floor. He touched my left thigh and kept his hand resting there—I wondered if he thought it was a sign of courage to touch me there, or a gesture of acceptance, or if he was attracted to the missing limb, as some men were, but I didn’t want to ask him, just wanted him to indulge in whatever he needed from me.
“How did you lose your leg?” he asked, sometime after midnight. “Or were you born like this?”
My eyes had adjusted, and in the ambience of moonlight I noticed the strange painting above the television. A painting of a body, lying supine, and I worried it might be a naked woman, something tacky like Davy Gimm’s swimsuit posters, but realized it was a painting of a dead man.
“What is that?” I asked. “You didn’t paint it, did you?”
“No, I didn’t paint it. It was here when I bought the place, and I just never took it down,” he said. “The guy who facilitated the sale
of the house wanted me to have it, said it has something to do with a Russian novel. It’s just a poster of some old painting. A picture of Jesus.”
“You could hang one of your own photographs,” I said.
“A painting of the dead Christ is worse than crime-scene photographs?”
“You’ve got to have something else.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I’ll swap it out. I have some shots of Yellowstone I like, one of the Grand Prismatic Spring. But you know, that painting—I used to be religious, I was raised in the church.”
“I remember you asked me if I believed in the Resurrection,” I said. “You thought it might help me, being around so much death.”
“That’s right,” he said. “That sounds like something I would have said. But I had an experience around that time. Like a religious experience, but in reverse I guess you could say. Have you ever had a religious experience? Like you heard the voice of God?”
I thought of seeing Earth from the distance of space, the near-holy connectedness to every facet of creation in that moment. “No,” I said. “Nothing religious, nothing like that. I’ve found beauty in nature, but nothing like hearing voices.”
“I had—it was like I had a vision of God, but God was like a black hole,” said Nestor. “The vision overwhelmed me. People talk about what infinity is, and they think of things that are never-ending, but infinity cuts the other way, too. Infinity can be a negation. We grow from dirt, and our cells multiply, and we grow and wear out and rot, and more are taking our place—it’s disgusting, all the bodies and death, billions of us, it’s like the tide, washing in and washing out. All that religion, that bullshit about God, it’s like that shit you believe as a child and one day wonder how you ever believed anything at all. Childish things. And everything changed for me after that vision, that experience. I started drinking to blunt the terror I’d felt. I was just so scared of the world. I couldn’t stomach the Bureau anymore, I moved out here, just drinking to lose myself. And I would watch that painting of Christ, convince myself that he might sit up, hoping he would somehow sit up to prove me wrong, but every night . . . I figure this painting is a depiction of Jesus after he’s been taken from the cross, and he’s just dead, a dead body, and everyone’s waiting for the Resurrection, and he’s waiting for his own Resurrection, but it’s not going to happen. I hated that painting because of how unchristian it felt to me, but then I realized what its message was. I dug deeper, found deeper meaning.”
“You’re an atheist,” I said.
“No, I believe in God. I believe God exists. I had an experience, I had that vision, and in the vision I saw God. God is a pestilent light ringed with black stars. I’m still a man of faith because I believe, but when I think of God, I think of something like a parasite.”
His heart was racing; he had broken into a cold sweat. His body was silvery in the moonlight. A small constellation of moles dotted his chest, like the belt of Orion over his heart. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry—and I’m sorry I asked about your leg,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. You must get tired of everyone asking you about it.”
“The truth is, I don’t even remember it happening,” I said. “I was lost in the woods, hypothermia had set in. My leg had turned gangrenous. They had to amputate. I remember the amputation.”
A car passed on 151, and the headlights flashed momentarily on the wall, crept in a grid of windowpanes across the ceiling. I wondered if we had turned cold to each other—just like that, after getting what we’d wanted, but Nestor put his hand on my hair, petted me, pulled me closer to him. I put my arm around him, and he lowered his head onto my breasts. I felt the rising and falling of his breath, knew he could hear my heartbeat.
“I had a local anesthetic, but was awake,” I told him, remembering the surgery in zero-g, the blood globules squirting in rushes, smearing against the ceiling, the walls. “I was awake, but I couldn’t watch. I just looked at the ceiling the whole time. They cut across my shin first, removed my ankle and foot. That’s the cut I sometimes think I still feel—a phantom sensation. Sometimes I feel a sever across my shin. The infection had already risen to my knee, though, so they had to take the rest.”
After a time Nestor helped me put on my prosthesis. He said, “It doesn’t bother me, just so you know. The moment I first saw you, I wanted to be with you—”
“You don’t remember when you first saw me,” I said.
“I saw you for just a second that night at the crime scene. You caught my eye. And in that meeting room the next morning, I was supposed to introduce myself to you. I already knew you were good-looking, but Jesus Christ, Shannon, when I saw you that morning—”
“All right, that’s enough.”
“And after you left, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. There was this other case, and I thought we might cross paths, but we never did. I was hoping—”
“I would have liked to cross paths,” I said. “What did I miss?”
“Just a waste of time, for us. Some guy from Harrisburg, some lawyer,” said Nestor. “He was killed in a carjacking. We wanted to consult with you.”
“What did he have to do with me?”
“Nothing. Erroneous reports,” he said. “We were working with a database of ballistic fingerprints, and the bullets they recovered from this lawyer matched the bullets we’d recovered from Mursult, so I thought of you, but we’d had the gun in our evidence room all that time. We wanted to call you in, to testify that this match was a false positive, but we couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find you.”
“What happened with the prosecution?”
“The judge threw everything out,” said Nestor. “That damn database spit out a handful of ballistics matches, everything went under review.”
“You miss the work?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But after I—”
“You don’t have to talk about this.”
“I shot a man, in the line of duty. It was justified, in self-defense, but I couldn’t live with what I’d done,” said Nestor. “He’d pulled a gun on me, fired shots.”
I tried to reconstruct him, reconstruct his past—a past he might not ever come to have. Visions of God, a parasite, a pestilent star. Some sort of break maybe. Or maybe killing the man had broken him.
“Who was he?” I asked.
“Some big shot, a computer guy—an engineer,” said Nestor. “His name came up as part of an investigation, military secrets used for private gain. I went to interview him, that’s all—we weren’t even targeting him, but he panicked. I was put on leave, the shooting became an internal matter—they tell you you’re innocent until proven guilty, but that wasn’t my sense. I was ostracized within the Bureau even though I was cleared. Graham v. Connor.”
“And you left the FBI,” I said.
“I hope this doesn’t sound pathetic,” he said, “but I’d search for you on the Internet, hoping for a picture. Just one picture of you. But there was nothing. I would just let my memory of you play around in my mind, imagining what a life would have been like with you. I even asked around about you, but no one knew. Brock didn’t know. But here you are.”
“Here I am,” I said. “And I’m thirsty. What do you have around here?”
Looking at the picture of the dead Christ while I waited for my drink. The body was gray. Holbein, it read. The canvas was narrow, the body stretched out. Impossible to imagine that the body would breathe again.
We sat in lawn chairs out on his front porch, bundled in quilts. We drank cognac from coffee mugs, watching distant headlights. Nestor’s dog, Buick, curled at his feet, snoring as he chased some rabbit in his dreams. Comfortable in each other’s silence nearing 3:00 a.m., my mind wandered to Marian’s body buried among the pines and roving cities built in the shape of pyramids.
“What’s deeper than Christ?” I asked. “You said you looked at that painting and found something deeper than the miracles you once believed in. W
hat’s deeper than Christ?”
“The eternal forest,” said Nestor. “All around us. Everything you can see.”
Too cold to stay outside. We went to his bed, and he drifted off but I stayed awake and watched the dawn glow pink and orange on the walls. I remembered Nestor’s father’s dream. He had dreamed he was trapped in a mine and crawled through the black tunnels until he came to a labyrinth of forest. The mirrored room, the tree of bones. I, too, had been lost in the eternal forest. I considered waking Nestor, to talk with him or kiss him one last time, but left my cell number on the nightstand and let him sleep.
THREE
Miserable weather, spring slush glazed the sidewalks like a skin of chilled pudding. Six months living here. I was Courtney here, I belonged here, a cripple on disability checks, Mountaineers sweatshirts and baggy sweatpants, my hair scraggly and long, unkempt. Six months and I blended in, part of the fabric, like the abandoned storefronts, the grimy windows curtained or covered with plywood, façades browned with rain-streaked muck. The stairs of the palatial Beaux Arts courthouse were filled with smokers, ratty men with nothing to fill their time but loiter, their bodies bent against the rain. Sleet soaked my sweatshirt, my hair, a heavy weight, cold.
I’d made myself a regular at May’rz on nights without Nestor, settling into this IFT—I spent New Year’s here, Christmas. I shook off the slush, took my seat at the far end of the bar, an end stool where I could see the TV but still have my view of the room. May’rz in neon-blue cursive behind the bar, cigarette smoke like gauze. The regular bartender was a young woman named Bex, her left arm sleeved with tattoos, hyacinths and vines. She poured my first drink, rum and Cherry Coke.
“Starting a tab tonight, Courtney?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I’ll pick up Cole’s tonight, if she comes in.”
She swept in from the rain nearing seven, her routine—long-limbed and elegant, her presence a glamour undiminished by middle age, even rain-soggy and exhausted from her shift. Powder-blue scrubs, a cherry-red raincoat. She took her usual stool next to mine.
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