“It could have been a stranger,” Liza said tentatively, but Jack shook his head.
“I think we all know down deep that’s not likely. Most murders are committed by people who know the victim.”
“You’re right,” said Meredith breezily. “I personally think it’s most likely someone who knew her—especially if forensics hasn’t shown any sign of sexual assault. Whoever stole her journal—”
Terry Nordstrom rose abruptly, sending his chair flying behind him. “I don’t need to listen to any more of this!” he said, his voice tight with rage, his whole body trembling. He strode from the porch, heading down the steps, past Evelyn’s car and toward the woods.
“Terry, it’ll be dark soon! Where are you going?” Liza called after him. He didn’t answer, but continued along Camelot Road until it entered the woods.
There was silence on the porch as they all listened to his footsteps becoming fainter, disappearing into the trees, swallowed up by the sounds of the forest. Then Sherry spoke.
“Wow, I guess he really loved her.”
“Someone stole Maya’s journal?” said Jack Mulligan.
Meredith shrugged. “Yep. And I think whoever stole her journal is probably the murderer.”
No one said anything. At that moment the sun dipped behind the side of the mountain, sending a chill across the little group on the porch. The murmurings of nighttime forest creatures, just beginning to stir, filtered through the canopy of leaves surrounding the porch, enveloping everyone in the sounds of the woods at night.
* * * * *
That night Claire decided to call Wally; she needed to hear his voice. She waited until everyone else was in bed. She wanted him all to herself; she didn’t want Jack Mulligan or anyone else overhearing her or making sardonic remarks over breakfast. Just as she had guarded her passions carefully when she was a child, now she felt the impulse to protect her feelings for Wally from this ersatz family of strangers. And so with Meredith snoring softly in the dark beside her, she got out of bed and crept downstairs through the darkened house. A pale shaft of moonlight fell across the statue of Diana in the living room. Her polished shoulders glimmered in the dim light, her bow and arrow cocked, aiming at unseen prey. It was past midnight as Claire tiptoed into the dining room, still and silent as a graveyard. Moonlight spilled through the windows and across the vacant chairs, bone white in the pale light, stiff and expectant as tombstones. The smell of damp wood combined with the faint odor of mildew seeping from the floorboards. Claire stepped into the phone alcove, her palms sweating as she picked up the receiver.
She dialed his mother’s number, glad for the three-hour time difference; in San Francisco, it was only just after nine o’clock.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.
“Mrs. Jackson? This is Claire Rawlings.”
“Oh, hello, Claire. Wally’s just in the other room. I’ll get him.”
Claire had never spoken to Wally’s mother before, but she recognized the same New England reserve, a touch of wariness in the voice. Claire forced her breathing, which was shallow, deeper into her lungs. She felt a buzzing sensation in her head—whether it was tension or excitement or the lateness of the hour she didn’t know—but all her senses felt sharpened. Even the backs of the dining-room chairs looked sharp, their white edges clearly outlined against the blackness all around them. She stood listening to the old house creak and groan around her. The wooden floor was cold underneath her bare feet, and she was sorry she hadn’t thought to put on a pair of socks. Nights were so much cooler up here than in the city, and she hadn’t yet gotten used to the change.
“Hello?”
Claire’s heart quickened at the sound of Wally’s voice.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Wally,” and then she could not stop the flow of tears that pushed their way from behind her eyes.
“What is it, Claire, what’s wrong?” he said, and she hated hearing the alarm in his voice. Still she couldn’t stop the tears, which slipped down her cheeks and into her mouth. Feeling foolish, she wiped her face with her sleeve; she had no tissue with her.
“Oh God, I didn’t want this to happen,” she said, then it all came out: Maya’s death, Meredith’s arrival, the whole series of events at Ravenscroft.
“Oh, darling, I’m so sorry,” he said when she had finished. “I’ll come right away. I can get a flight tomorrow.”
“No! No, please; stay with your mother as long as you planned. I’d feel awful if you left now. Really, Detective Hansom is handling it, and there’s policemen here every day.”
“I would come to be with you, not to help on the case,” he said, sounding hurt.
“Oh, I know,” she said quickly, “but—well, I’ve got Meredith.”
There was a pause and then they both laughed.
“Well,” he said, “it’s all right, then; as long as Meredith’s in charge of things, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“She did save my life, you know.”
“And she won’t let you—or anyone—forget it. Besides, I thought I had a little something to do with that.”
“Of course you did, but you know what I mean.”
“I know. I can’t—well, it’s hard for me to think that I almost lost you, when I had just found you. You—I mean, are you still having dreams about it?”
“Sometimes. But since I’ve been up here, I only dream about you.”
“Liar.”
“I wish it were true, but unfortunately you can’t control your dreams.”
“Let me come back—”
“No, please, it’s only—what, three more days? Spend them with your mother; she needs you as much as I do.”
There was a pause and he sighed into the receiver. She imagined him in his rumpled corduroy jacket—worn partly to please his mother, who liked to preserve “some of the civilities,” as she called them—his curly grey hair disheveled from lying on the couch reading, his heavy-lidded eyes red with fatigue because of the time change. She thought of his hands, long and fine as a painter’s, and the thought of him filled her body with heat, with juice, like a tree with its sap flowing.
“All right,” he said. “I—I just can’t . . . please promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I promise. And anyway, whoever it is, they’re not after me. I never even met these people before; how could one of them want to kill me?”
Standing in the pale moonlight, the house surrounding her with its womblike embrace, holding its own secrets within its ancient walls, Claire had no way of knowing how wrong she was.
Chapter 11
Claire slept late the next day. By the time she awoke, Meredith was already up and out, her mattress neatly made and pushed under Claire’s bed. There was an empty bedroom next to Claire’s, but Meredith continued to sleep on the floor of Claire’s room. Claire was glad to have her there, to hear the girl’s raspy breathing in the dark beside her; it made her feel they were both safer. She wandered downstairs and made fresh coffee; the coffee in the pot from earlier in the morning was already old. There was a note on the counter in Meredith’s sprawling script:
Gone to town with Liza. Back soon—M.
Claire sat on the porch sipping her coffee, listening to the brittle rattle of cicadas heralding the end of summer. She watched the treetops sway in the light morning breeze. The sound of Gary’s flute wafted up onto the porch, held aloft by the same breeze. The tune was sad and plaintive, a slow Celtic melody rolling and turning upon itself like water over stones. Claire sat listening for quite a while, until the melody stopped abruptly in the middle of a phrase, as though a switch had suddenly been turned off. She listened for it to begin again, but when it didn’t, she got up and went inside, washed out her coffee cup, and put some food out for Ralph. Feeling restless, she went upstairs and tidied up her dresser. As always, there was an unread pile of manuscripts beckoning from her book bag in the corner of the room, but she couldn’t read just now. Ever since the murder she had been fighting
back the old feelings of claustrophobia: she just had to get away from this house, this room, even for just a while.
There were no classes scheduled until after lunch, so Claire decided to go for a run. She left a note on the dresser for Meredith: Gone jogging—back soon. She hesitated; she had an impulse to add Love, Claire, but knowing how Meredith hated displays of sentiment, just signed it C. Claire put on her running shoes as Ralph watched her from the windowsill. No one was on the porch when she went back out to do her stretching before taking off at a brisk pace down Camelot Road. It was a bright crisp day, the kind of day in which summer gives way reluctantly to fall, holding on tenaciously in spite of a creeping chill in the air. The road dipped down into a little gully, twisted around a bend, and soon she was surrounded by deep woods on either side.
Liza had told her that there was a turnoff to the hiking trail up Guardian Mountain, and Claire saw the sign indicating the spot about a quarter of a mile down the path. She kept going straight, though, remembering that Camille had said that Camelot Road came out the other side onto Rock Hill Road. As she ran, her feet pounding a steady rhythm on the hard-baked dirt, Claire thought about Meredith. Now that she was in Claire’s life, her going would leave a gap that could not easily be filled. Once Claire had asked her aunt Jane whether she loved all her children equally.
Her aunt had paused and said, “Love equally? Yes, I suppose so. But I think a parent always feels closer to some than others . . . it’s a great source of guilt, I think, but . . . well, you feel—how can I say it?—more simpatico with certain children. Why this is I don’t know, but I’ve never known a parent who didn’t feel that way. It’s as though you just understand some children better than others.”
Claire could not explain why, but she felt she understood Meredith. They were so different, and yet it was as though Meredith were her flip side, her unexpressed self, her doppelgänger. It was as though Meredith had always been a part of her, a part of herself that she had denied for a long time but that now had come to assert itself and claim her attention.
“Time to go back into therapy,” she muttered as she jumped over a tree branch that had fallen over the path. Up ahead was a mountain stream, a shallow little brook bubbling and shimmering in the light falling through the trees. Claire wiped the sweat from her forehead as she approached it. As she got closer something dark lying on the bank caught her eye. As first she thought it was another log, swept downstream by the storm a few nights ago. But when she was just a few paces away, she stopped dead where she was, her veins filling with horror. At this distance there was no mistaking what it was: there, tossed casually against the bank as if it were a sack of worn-out clothes, was a body.
For the second time in her life, Claire fainted.
* * * * *
When she came to, the first thing she was aware of were the sounds of the forest all around her. She lay with her eyes closed for several moments, listening to the chirping and rustling, the twirping and cooing and humming of all the unseen creatures of the woods.
It was only after she opened her eyes that Claire remembered why she was lying on the ground. Shaking, she sat up and got slowly to her feet. She had an impulse to run away as fast as she could. Instead, she took a deep breath and took a couple of steps toward the still form lying facedown in the shallow stream. The only movement was the slow trickle of water over the smooth round stones of the riverbed. From where she stood Claire could see quite clearly that even with his face in the water, she was looking at Terry Nordstrom. A thin red swirl of blood ran from his neck into the shallow water of the brook. A Walkman lay on a rock where it had fallen, black and shiny as a turtle’s shell.
Suddenly Claire’s stomach began to convulse. She dropped to her knees, racked by the intensity of the waves; it wasn’t exactly nausea, but like nausea, it was an utterly involuntary reaction she was powerless to control. After a couple of minutes the feeling passed. She remained on her knees for a while longer, stones and twigs digging into her skin, until she was sure it was over, then she got to her feet again. She brushed the dirt from her legs, took a deep breath, and started back toward the house.
“Wait a minute, Redbird.”
At first Claire thought she had imagined the voice, but then she turned and saw Two Joe standing at the edge of the path on the other side of the stream.
“H-how did you get here?” she stammered, suddenly feeling breathless again. Two Joe took a step toward her, and she instinctively backed away.
“The same as you. I walked.” He looked at the body lying between them and shook his head. “This is an evil thing,” he said somberly. “There is much badness about.”
Claire glanced back at the path behind her, stretching off into the forest. Above her the sun glinted through the leaves, splashing the ground with yellow. Fear began to seep through her intestines like ice water. This could be my last view of the sun, she thought. Even if she took off at a run, she was sure he could easily catch her, and they were deep enough in the woods that no one would hear her screams.
If Two Joe was aware of what she was thinking, he didn’t show it. He carefully picked his way down the bank and leaned over the body. He sank down on his haunches and looked at it for what seemed to Claire like a long time. But as she stood there watching him her fear begin to evaporate. Why would a murderer act like this? She felt the tension draining from her body. She noticed that Two Joe was careful not to touch anything.
Finally, he straightened up and brushed off his jeans. He stepped across the stream, straddling it easily in one stride, and came to stand beside her.
“This murderer was very clever, and covered his tracks well,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“Look here.” He pointed to the ground. “He has covered his tracks by brushing the ground with tree branches—here.”
Claire looked at the ground and saw where the dirt had been raked over, eliminating all signs of footprints around the body. “But what about the path itself?” She looked behind her. Two sets of footprints led to the spot where they stood; one was hers, and the other, she assumed, was Terry’s.
“Whoever did this disappeared back into the woods,” said Two Joe. “He—or she—couldn’t risk going along the path, because the recent storm wiped it clean of all other tracks. Also, the ground is so soft that the imprint of a shoe is perfectly captured.”
Claire looked at Terry’s lifeless body, stretched out so casually in the muddy water. “Could a woman possibly have done this?”
Two Joe shook his head slowly. “You’d be surprised what a woman can do; he’s not a big man, you know.” She thought she detected a slight satisfaction in his voice, the sense of superiority tall men always feel around shorter ones. Two Joe pointed to the Walkman and scowled, the corners of his mouth pulled down in disgust. “The woods is no place for one of those things. He might still be alive if he had not worn it. Whoever killed him caught him unawares.”
Claire looked at Two Joe towering over her and tried to imagine anyone catching him unaware. She looked again at the two sets of prints on the dirt path, hers and Terry’s, and felt again the icy little thread of fear in her stomach.
“Then how—did you get here?”
Two Joe shrugged. “Through the woods. I don’t need paths to find my way,” he said disdainfully. “And besides, the best mushrooms don’t grow along the path,” he added, holding up a handful of fat white mushrooms. “Come, we’ll go to the police together,” he said gently, laying a huge hand on Claire’s shoulder. She nodded, but she was not entirely relieved of her suspicions. The fact that she was attracted to Two Joe did not reassure her; it only reminded her of Robert. If she could misjudge him, then she could not entirely trust her instincts about men.
Several hours later Claire was seated on the front porch looking out through the trees at the deepening dusk. The ambulance was just pulling away from the house, its lights revolving slowly, throwing her into a kind of trance state. All around there wa
s hurried movement; everyone was rushing about, talking, bringing trays of coffee back and forth from the kitchen to the small army of policemen who now patrolled the house and grounds, searching rapidly, almost desperately, as the light faded from the late August sky. But in the midst of all of this activity, Claire felt calm, almost as though she were on tranquilizers. She had refused Camille’s offer of Valium earlier, and now some chemical in her brain had kicked in, deadening her feelings, and she sat silently on the porch, shrouded in her stillness, placid as a Buddha.
Detective Hansom stood on the bottom step, talking with Liza, looking more tired than ever. His big dark eyes drooped even lower, the circles under them deeper and more pronounced. He was clearly upset by this new turn of events, and his jaw was set in anger as he pulled himself through the task of interviewing everyone again. If people had been shocked by Maya’s death, they were stunned by Terry’s. This time there was no denying the brutal fact: Terry had been murdered, his neck slashed by a sharp object—something like a hunting knife, the coroner said. The time of death was approximately 12:30 P.M., about half an hour before Claire found him. Once again, Claire wondered how close she had come to actually witnessing a murder.
Finally, Claire went up to her room to lie down. She lay on the bed staring at the ceiling while Meredith sat beside her eating cookies. The more upset everyone else got, the calmer Meredith became. She reminded Claire of a border collie, those black-and-white dogs that herded sheep, creeping close to the ground, every muscle in their body intent on their task, their eyes projecting pure intelligence and purpose. Now, with two murders to solve, Meredith was all purpose; her thin body glimmered with determination.
“The key lies in what Terry and Maya have in common; what common thread unites them?” she said, swinging her legs back and forth under the bed. “It’s odd that you found both bodies . . . it’s almost as though the murderer wanted you to find them.”
“But he—or she—couldn’t know that I’d be going to that bathroom in the middle of the night—or jogging along that path at the time.”
Who Killed Dorian Gray? Page 14