by Lila Shaara
Harry thought about Ronnie Ho and Julie Canfield. “So it’s a good strategy to hook up with a professor.”
Fay got so angry at this Harry could almost see the colors emanating from her, reds and greens and blacks. “That isn’t what happened. And it isn’t such a good strategy anyway if the guy rips you off.” Harry almost shot a look of triumph at Dusty but managed to keep his eyes on Fay. “Emily just wanted to do her work and be left alone. She wanted friends, too, but she saw right away that that wasn’t going to happen. Charlie promised her eternal love and world peace, and she bought it, at least at first. By the time she knew what she was really in for, she was married to the asshole. And she figured at least she could try to save the world, even if her name was never associated with it.”
A gray tabby cat the size of a wolverine wandered into the room and made his way to Fay’s chair. She reached down and picked him up; Harry was impressed by her strength, since the cat looked like he weighed twenty pounds or so. “His name’s Nick.” She stroked him as she said, “That reminds me. You wanted to see her last letter to me.” She stood up and deposited Nick on Harry’s lap. It felt as though he’d had a piece of furniture thrust onto him. He petted the cat, who seemed reasonably pleased and started kneading Harry’s thighs. Dusty appeared to enjoy his father’s winces and muted gasps of pain as the cat pierced the fabric of his pants with fine claws. Fay returned in a moment.
“Is Nick named after Nikola Tesla?” Harry asked, half joking.
Fay’s eyes grew big with surprise. “How did you guess that?” He shrugged. She said, “You know more about her than I gave you credit for. That’s good. I feel better about letting you read this.” She handed Harry a handwritten letter on thick parchment stationery. Harry took it and shimmied his thighs enough to get Nick to jump off him. “I’ve never shown this to anyone,” Fay said. “I’m not sure I should show it to you. But I guess it can’t hurt Emily now.”
There was a monogram on the top, brown in intertwined Gothic letters, CEZ. Charles Edgar Ziegart. The curvy blue handwriting looked as though it had been made with a fountain pen, the shape of the letters feminine and young. He looked at the date; it was six years ago.
Dear Fay,
Whatever you hear, I want you to know that there was nothing you could have done to change anything. This is the best end to a bad situation. Don’t defend me to anyone. It won’t help me and it will hurt you.
I have too many regrets to count, but one of my greatest ones is that I failed my responsibility to you. I’m sorry most of all about the wheat fields. When you pass them, remember that you are unique in all the world, because I made you my friend.
Em
He gave the letter to Dusty, who read it, his mouth open. Harry restrained an urge to tell his son to close his mouth. Instead he asked Fay, perched once more in the big chair, the cat returned to her lap, “What did she mean about the wheat fields?”
“It’s a reference to The Little Prince. It’s my favorite book. I used to joke with her about the fox.” Her eyes were dim and sad, her hand slow as she treated the cat to gentle wipes down his spine.
Harry said, “I read it a long time ago.” To Dusty, he thought. “You’ll have to excuse my memory. What about the fox?”
Dusty looked up. “You especially liked that part. Where the prince tames the fox, and he says that wheat fields will always remind him of the prince’s hair?”
Harry was surprised that his son not only retained such a sentimental memory but could remark upon it so unself-consciously. He remembered now that he’d almost been brought to tears by it, something about a lonely fox and a lonely little boy, and at the time, he’d been thinking of his brother, Lawrence. Now he realized he’d also been thinking about himself.
Fay Levy got up again, sending the cat to the floor with a loud thump, and went to one of the overstuffed bookcases. She pulled a small hardcover from the top shelf. Harry recognized the book at once. It was missing the dust jacket and was worn around the edges. A silk bookmark with a flower pattern had been placed between two middle pages. Fay handed it to him.
Harry opened to where the bookmark held its place, a passage in which a fox was speaking to the wandering boy.
The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you.
Harry smiled at the memory of reading to Dusty, his head weighty on Harry’s chest as he sat in a big chair and hurt his throat making a different voice for every character, to his little son’s delight. Harry replaced the bookmark and closed the slim book. “How well did you know Doug McNeill?” he said.
Fay grew quiet at that, her eyes squinting as she sat down again. “The three of us were pretty close. Doug was her only other friend besides me. The Three Freaks, I believe we were called. Poor Doug. We both were always trying to get him to exercise with us, but he thought walking the half block to campus was like running a marathon.”
“Did Doug work with Emily on the Ziegart effect?” Fay shook her head. “Then how come he was on the original paper?”
Fay looked at him, considering her answer. Then she said, “He and I were the only people who seemed to think there was anything wrong with how Charlie was using Emily. I was only an undergraduate dyke; no one was going to listen to anything I said. And Doug was dismissed as a fat underachiever. That was kind of true, unfortunately. But Doug talked to Charlie one night when they were alone in Charlie’s lab. He said he was going to call someone he knew who worked at Scientific American and tell them all about how Emily was responsible for the Ziegart effect, not to mention most of Charlie’s other ‘achievements’ after they got married. She let him have all of them.”
“Such as?”
“For one thing, using chlorophyll as a medium for the storage and transmission of solar energy. There were lots of others.”
Bingo, Harry thought. The green solar panels. “Why did she let him do this to her? Didn’t she ever get angry about him taking all the credit for her ideas?”
“She loved him. And she didn’t care about fame and all that. She just wanted the work to get out there, you know? If Charlie hadn’t died when he did, she would have had her Ph.D. in another few months. She thought she’d just keep working at Cantwell afterwards as junior faculty, which would have suited her fine.”
And given her no motive for his murder at all, he thought, at least not then. “What exactly did Doug want Charlie to do?”
“Put Emily on as first author on the Ziegart effect paper. And put Doug on as third author. We all knew that the Ziegart effect was going to be a big deal.”
“Doug blackmailed Charlie.”
“I guess. I thought it was terrible of him, but I couldn’t totally blame him either. It was a once in a lifetime chance; he took it. Emily was furious.”
“And then he choked to death.”
“That was a few months later.” There was something different in her manner now. Harry waited. After a moment, she said, “Doug’s death gave us both nightmares. But it spooked her even more than it did me. She was pretty superstitious, so I thought that she’d decided the project was unlucky or something.”
“Charlie’s son found the body.”
“Yes.” There was a trace of distress in her face now, and Harry wanted to push on it and squeeze something out of her, something that he was sure was there. He said nothing and waited again, the only sound in the room the soft rasping of Dusty’s pencil against paper. Fay shifted in her chair as though she had an itch in her shoulder, a quick, jerking movement, and then she said, “Jonathan had a thing for Emily. He made a pass at her once.” The room stayed silent while Harry mentally pushed some more, keeping his face and body impassive. He wasn’t as surprised as he should have been, he thought. Fay took a breath and continued, “As far as I know, she never told Charlie. I think she was so shocked when it happened that
she had no idea what to do. The weird thing is, Jonathan adored his dad. I guess a shrink would say he was trying to merge with him or something. And to merge with his wife,” she added, making the last a failed joke.
“And he found Doug’s body?” Harry repeated, his voice calm and low.
“Yes. Yes.” She looked away at the bookcases. “He didn’t deliberately kill Doug, or anything like that. But if you happen to be in the room with someone when he starts choking, and you just stand there, doing nothing”—she paused, still staring at the bookcases—“are you breaking any laws?” The room was very quiet now. Harry could hear the thuck thuck of a small clock on her mantel.
“Depends,” Harry said quietly, thinking, No wonder he gave me the creeps. Then he said, “But why would he do that?”
She shifted in her chair again as though she couldn’t find a comfortable position. Then she finally faced him. “He knew Doug was making things hard for his father. He might have thought he was helping.”
Harry wondered suddenly where Jonathan Ziegart was right now. Fay’s eyes grew panicky and wide. “Wait, I don’t know that. I don’t know anything. Emily and I never talked about it. You can’t print that. I’ll get sued for slander or something.” She repeated, “I don’t know anything.”
Another idea snapped into place in Harry’s mind. “Did you know she was pregnant when she and Charlie were in the accident?”
Fay’s hand went to her mouth in horror; Harry believed her when she said she hadn’t. She started to cry, and Dusty looked appalled. Harry had a bad feeling that Jonathan was still in Stoweville, and might think that Maggie had made things hard for him.
The walk to the front door of the Purple Lady’s house took longer than four minutes, and Darcy had a panicked moment when he thought maybe he’d blown the whole operation, being late. But he thought, They can see me, they can hear me. They know where I am. Close enough.
The front door was the same blasphemous color as the shrine, although a little brighter, with newer paint. Darcy felt the hard weight of the gun against his thigh again as he climbed the front steps. Safety’s on, he told himself. You won’t shoot nothing off your-self. No accidents. He raised the knocker, dropped it. It didn’t sound very loud, and he was about to do it again when the door opened, causing his stomach to do a flippy-flopping kind of thing that made his hands shiver. He put them in his pockets so that whoever answered the door wouldn’t see them shake; his right hand felt the gun and he gripped it, only for something for it to do.
Harry assured Fay that he wasn’t going to print anything she’d said about Jonathan Ziegart, then explained that his cell phone didn’t work. She reluctantly let him use her phone to call Florida. No one answered at Maggie’s home. He called Serge, but only got his voice mail. He didn’t bother leaving a message. When he returned to the living room, Dusty was reading The Little Prince. He put it down when he saw Harry. “Fay’s gone to the bathroom,” he said. “She said she’d be back in a minute. Are we going to leave?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “Unless I can think of any more questions to ask her.”
“I thought you’d be all prepared, you know, have ’em all written down.”
“I’m prepared. But you never know when you’ll get an answer that takes you somewhere you didn’t know you were going to go.” Harry picked up the book and let it fall open to the weight of the lacy bookmark.
He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.
He glanced down the rest of the page, then turned to the next and froze after he’d read just a few lines farther. A fragment of memory, a little nagging something had been floating around his brain for the last half hour or so, and now here it was, the answer to a question, the thing that had been gently poking at him. Oh God, Harry thought. I’ve been such an idiot.
43
NINE OF SWORDS
Very bad things. Injury, terrible bereavement
When Josie saw Darcy Murphy standing in the doorway, she thought she might faint for the first time in her life. She hadn’t fainted when they’d told her that Dee was dead, she hadn’t fainted when she held Dunc’s hand as the life passed from him and his skin got cold and quiet. But now, of all times, she was facing a man whom she hadn’t really wronged, yet she felt her breath leave her lungs as though sucked out by a vacuum and her eyes saw everything get wavy and too bright and her head felt as though it was stuffed with helium and might float off her shoulders altogether. She’d had three rum and Cokes on the sly, and figured that that was probably the cause of it, this terrible unsteadiness. She wasn’t drunk, but she wasn’t fully there, and right now she had a sense as clear as clean water that she needed to be. Then she thought, I should have the goddamned flashlight, even as Darcy’s eyes traveled to her hands, no doubt unconsciously expecting to be zapped. But she was fairly certain she would never be able to push that button again, or even touch the goddamned gizmo.
“What in the name of all that shines do you want?” she said.
“Just to talk,” he croaked, his voice odd and stiff, like he’d turned into a raggedy robot.
“About what?” she said, and she knew she was showing fear. They’re going to put me away for using that damn weapon, she thought, and then she imagined the hard clang of a cell door, the unbearable stink, the cold metal all around, the colder faces, enough pain in the air to make any psychic go mad in a day, and she realized for the first time just what made Maggie so afraid. Maggie, who was away doing what she always did when she wasn’t working at one thing or another, or walking with nosy college boys; she was at the public library. She was too much in her own head, that was what she was, although at least she had the girls with her, so they were safe. But Baby was gone, too, off shopping for supplies as if they were laying in for a siege, and here he was, the enemy himself coming right to their door and Josie too drunk to know better than to open up and let the bad colors inside. If Maggie were here, she’d know what to do with this worthless piece of garbage oozing all the colors of death and fear and hatred.
“You look good,” Darcy said for no apparent reason, and that’s when they heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked.
She looked behind her and saw Miss Tokay in the hallway, standing in front of the grandfather clock, holding the biggest gun Josie had ever seen in her life; it looked like one of those bazooka things you saw in old war movies. Miss Tokay was aiming right at Darcy Murphy’s chest, and the old lady said in a tone that sounded kind, “You get out of here, boy.”
Then Josie heard something else, the sound of cars pulling up the dirt driveway, although she couldn’t see them yet because she couldn’t see much of anything other than the giant gun. Miss Tokay said, “Pull your hands out your pockets, boy,” and Josie turned back to him, hoping he would obey the old woman, who Josie could see now had entered some mad place. Darcy did as Miss Tokay asked, a wide-open, stupid expression on his face, one of those grins that means you’re shit-scared, and as his hands came out of his pants a pistol, a big one, was in his right hand, his tight fingers wound around the grip as though rigor had set in, the knuckles blue-white, the thin bones prominent. Josie could hear cars crunching up the driveway louder now, although she couldn’t see, couldn’t look away from Darcy Murphy’s hands, and then she saw him raise the pistol, the fear-grin still eating up the lower half of his face. “It’s all over now, ma’am, you got to let go of that shotgun.” Who the hell does he think he is? she thought. John Fucking Wayne?
Miss Tokay walked forward, the big shotgun not wavering a bit. Josie thought, If I had a level, I bet the bubble would stay right in the center, and oh God I wish I was sober, maybe then I’d know what to do. She almost called Maggie’s name out loud but remembered that Maggie wasn’t there, and maybe that was a good thing, but she and Miss Tokay were there, sure enough, so it maybe wasn’t so good at all, people were going to get hurt. Or going to jail.
Miss Tokay kep
t moving, the big gun like a prow on a comical little ship with a good wind in its sails, pushing Darcy back from the door. “You tell my nephew-in-law that he can’t have none of it,” she said, calmly and sweetly. “You tell him that, after you put that silly gun down.”
Darcy held his gun out still, and Josie thought this had to be the worst thing, the most dangerous situation she’d ever been in. I should’ve let him rape me, she thought. Maybe then we’d all be safe. I would’ve survived, and someone isn’t gonna survive this. She knew this as deep as anything, that someone was going to die here today. It might be me, she thought. It might be. Oh, Maggie, oh, Maggie.
Darcy raised his gun just a little higher, as though righting his aim a bit, then said in a louder voice, no croaking now, “Put the shotgun down, ma’am, the game’s over. You’re caught, you know. The authorities know.”
“They don’t know nothing, sweetheart,” said Miss Tokay. Then Josie heard an explosion like a bomb going off in her head, felt heat and wind, and Darcy Murphy grew smaller and smaller, as if he was being sucked down a tube and then disappeared. Josie realized that he’d been hit by the blast, been knocked clean off the porch. She stood for a moment, paralyzed by horror and indecision. She turned to Miss Tokay, who was sitting in a chair in the hallway, having been knocked backward by the recoil of the big gun. Josie went to her first, and pulled the heavy shotgun from the old woman’s thin hands. She said, “Miss Tokay, Miss Tokay,” and Josie realized that she was crying, and she lifted the gun, feeling the horrible, warm weight of it. She should have put it down, but she couldn’t, she was so afraid that the old woman might pick it up and shoot again. The gun fell a little as Josie moved back toward the outside, frightened out of her mind, dragging the big gun with her out the front door, out to where Darcy was lying in a strange, bony pile half on and half off the porch. She pulled herself closer to him, seeing the blood-and-bone mess of him, his chest a grisly mix in the middle of his body. She reached the edge of the porch and looked down on him, strangely unafraid of the gore painting him, and saw his gun pointing up to the sky, his arm propped against the planks of the porch.