All the Things You Are

by Declan Hughes

  First things first, Nora thinks as she gets out of the car and climbs the steps of Monroe High. Let’s establish exactly who got killed here.

  Love Letters

  On the walk from Twin Anchors to her car, Claire tries to bring her thoughts to order. She needs to get back and be with Barbara and Irene, but they are safe with Donna, so there’s that. In the meantime, she needs to find out what the hell has been going on. If Paul Casey thinks she was flirting with him online, what else has she been doing? And who has been pretending to be her? She has already called Dee to ask for – well, technical support, she supposes you’d call it, since Dee is the only person she knows who is really knowledg-able about all of that stuff, but Dee’s cell went straight to voicemail. Crossing West Menomonee, she sees the Caprice Internet Cafe half a block up the street, and on impulse decides to see if she can figure it out herself.

  Five minutes later, having parted with three bucks for a computer screen with Internet access, and a further three for a cafe latte, she is ready to go.

  First step, Facebook. She types the address, and arrives at the page: Welcome to Facebook – Log in, Sign Up or Learn More.

  At the top, there’s space for her email and password. Her email she knows, but her password? Maybe it’s Barbara1 – isn’t that what Dee said her email password was? She fills both boxes and clicks the log-in button. Within seconds, a screen pops up, asking her to update her security information. She clicks through email address, her cell phone number, and a security question (what’s your youngest child’s name?) and finally lands on a page with News Feed at the top, and on the left-hand side, a small photograph of herself. She stares at the information on the News Feed. There are posts from a handful of moms at the girls’ school, and from some of the theater people she knows in Madison. The theater people are advertising shows that are coming up, or linking to press articles about productions that have just opened, or, in her friend Simon’s case, a bitchy blog, written anonymously under the pseudonym Addison DeWitt, savaging shows across the land. The moms have posted assorted pumpkin recipes: pie, soup and so on. There’s also a mom, Diane Crosbie, who has posted her own review of a novel her book club has just discussed, Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs. The review, which Claire clicks to without even thinking, seems more concerned with spotting the similarities between Lorrie Moore’s fictional town of Troy and the real Madison, upon which it is apparently based, than in discussing the novel’s plot or characters. Claire shakes her head with irritation, not just at the review, but at the fact that she has clicked through to it, that she has started to read it at all. This is exactly why she doesn’t like going online: it’s not just that she ends up getting distracted, it’s that distraction seems the entire point of the exercise. Mind you, the spicy pumpkin soup recipe Ragna Glenny has up looks kind of tasty.

  She’s back at the News Feed page. Along the top right-hand corner, she sees three options, Home, Profile and Account. Clicking home simply refreshes the screen she already has. Account brings her a pop-down menu of settings. Profile brings her to a page with her name at the top. This is what she needs. There’s her date of birth (but not the year – thanks, Dee). But the date of birth is wrong. It says November 12, but Claire’s date of birth is November 24, or at least that’s what the Taylors always told her. Well, she’s not going to get bent about two weeks. What’s more alarming is the information that she’s single, and that she’s interested in men. Jesus, Dee. That’s just not funny. There are four photographs of her along the top taken relatively recently, by Dee, she assumes; she can’t remember, but Dee is always snapping things on her phone.

  On the left in a sidebar comes the news that she has forty-seven friends – of the ten they show, Claire would classify four as acquaintances, and the other six as not even that: people she might just about wave to in the street. Above that, there’s a menu, one of whose items is Photographs (7). That’s three more than are visible on this screen. She clicks through to a page marked Claire Taylor – Photos, and the pit of her stomach lurches. The four she’s already seen are there. The other three are of her and Paul Casey, from their theater days: young, and high on love and art. They were all taken the same night. The photos are in a box in her hide-out in the house on Arboretum. She has never shown them to anyone, not Danny, not Dee, no one. She doesn’t look at them herself, either. They are … memories. Her memories. Someone has taken her memories and shared them with the world. But who would want to do that? The same person who said she is single and interested in men? Dee may have set up the page, she might even have depicted her as a lonely heart, but she’d never go through her personal stuff and put it out there. That crosses the border from mischief to malice. No, this must be courtesy of the same people who killed Mr Smith, who killed Gene Peterson. She’s read about websites being brought down by geeks with a grievance. If they can hack into Visa and Mastercard, they can hack into Claire’s Facebook page.

  She clicks back to the News Feed page and scrolls down. Paul said there were messages she had sent him, and his replies. But she wouldn’t have done it in full view, would she? She looks left and finds the sidebar with her name and photo. Below, highlighted, is News Feed, below that, Messages, which she selects.

  There is a photo of Paul Casey, and the first line of a message. She clicks it, and sees a five-message exchange entitled ‘Between You and Paul Casey’, and her stomach lurches again. The messages are all dated during the ten days or so before she went to Chicago.

  Claire Taylor October 16

  Hey Paul, it’s your past catching up to you. I’m going to be back in town for the first time in, well, an age, and would LOVE to see you. There’s so much that has happened … and so much I wish hadn’t happened … and so much I’d LOVE to happen. Looking pretty steaming in your mugshot, by the way. I arrive October 23. Claire xxx

  Paul Casey October 18 Report

  Hey there stranger, accepted the friend request and thought it best if you made the next move. Leave it to Claire, it’s a spectacular. Well, I will be in town that week, and I would LOVE (we are all upper case now) to see you, and am INTRIGUED by what you might consider a ‘happening’ … speaking of mugshots, you must have locked yours in a lead box in the attic. You look AWESOME and younger than you did when we were dating (although that could be cause you’re relieved of the stress of a) Theater and b) me). Can’t wait to see you, Claire. Paul xxxxx

  Claire Taylor October 18

  Hey you, am sitting up late with third enormous glass of sauv blanc, thinking of something else that’s pretty enormous and wondering if I’m going to get to see it at close quarters in Chi-car-go there that’s my attempts at subtlety pretty much blown I could go back and erase it and say something all coy and when I got there you would be guessing and drumming your fingers on the bar top and tapping your feet the nervous way you used to have and I hope still do my gorgeous boy but there will be no need i xxx you very very much indeed and have often thought about what we used to do and wished that we could do all of it some more lots more and don’t worry if you married or ‘in a relationship’ don’t want to steal you away or boil your bunny just want your xxx must stop before i make even bigger fool than have already made hope not scaring you away drunkgirl xxx

  Paul Casey October 20 Report

  Wow, Claire. I mean, WOW! Had a few cold ones myself to try and do my reply justice, but not sure I can compete with yours. Which is not to say I’m not up for it, totally, the thought of you still makes me hot on a cold Chicago night. Tell me when and where, with a little advance notice, and I’m all yours. Pxxx

  Claire Taylor October 22

  Don’t take anything back but a bit embarrassed by my ravings above. PLEASE do not allude to this exchange when we meet, or I will probably come apart at the seams (drink is evil). That does not mean I didn’t mean every word, just don’t want to be reminded of them (this is a strict condition; I know, I am nuts, but then, I always was!) Will be in Old Town Ale House Tuesday night see
you then c xx

  The worst thing, Claire thinks, after she’s taken five minutes to stop shaking, and blushing, and practically hyper-ventilating, and get herself a cup of peppermint tea (her heart is already beating so fast, another cup of coffee and she’d explode), the worst thing is she could have written those messages. She has thought that way over the years. Not every day, or every month, but from time to time, she has had her regrets, and her wishes, her dreams that maybe Paul was the one. She has sat up late in her nook, hiding from Danny and the kids and drinking too much white wine and thinking X-rated thoughts about Paul, running selected scenes through her private screening room. That is how she sounds and how she gets when she is drunk: whatever polish and sophistication and self-control she thinks she possesses simply evaporate on a cloud of booze. And she does then go firmly into denial, embarrassed, and ashamed even, about what a sewer her mind can be, while knowing perfectly well that if she had bumped into Paul Casey in Madison, she might well have flung herself at him. She pretty much did, when she got the chance in Chicago.

  What a lot of time and energy wasted. Because when it came to it, nothing happened. Or rather, a lot of things might have happened, and nearly happened, and she certainly did not resist temptation, but … with a little luck, she thinks, a little grace, even though she didn’t deserve any, she didn’t do anything that can’t be undone. And she misses Danny now, right now, as much as she ever did. She knows some people would say, if you have thoughts about other lovers, and then act on those thoughts, then you’re not entitled to a second chance – you should walk out, you should break free, you should be true to your discontented heart. But Claire thinks that is as rigid, as fanatical, as saying you shouldn’t allow yourself to have the thoughts in the first place, that they are in themselves wrong. Maybe sitting up in her sanctuary steaming it up on white wine and thinking of how things used to be is unwise, but no situation is completely satisfying. No life ticks all the boxes. And she knows from lunch today in Twin Anchors, what she was looking for wasn’t Paul, but some dream of Paul, Paul-when-she-was-single-and-free, some passport to a fantasy version of her own past that wouldn’t include the mess they had together, the fights and the career disappointments, all the reasons they split. What she was looking for was an escape she knows now is an illusion.

  What she wants now is her life back.

  Who the fuck has done this to her? Someone who knows about her and Paul, her and Danny, someone who knew she was going to Chicago.

  It’s a short list: Danny and Dee.

  Neither of them are going to do this. Who else is there?

  Could it have been Gene Peterson?

  Without thinking further, Claire types Google into the address line, and when the window opens up, inserts Gene Peterson’s name and waits for the results. The first ten results are devoted to Gene Peterson the Australian jazz drummer. She adds Chicago to the search terms and tries again. This time there’s a doctor, a choir director and a sportswear manufacturer. Sportswear. She’s pretty sure Danny said that was his line. She clicks on Peterson Sportswear, and a page with brightly colored sports tops, track pants and rucksacks appears. At the top, there’s a headshot of a square-jawed guy of about fifty with sandy hair and a dimple in his chin. Wrong Gene Peterson.

  Start again. Gene was one of Danny’s childhood friends. They went to school together. Name of the high school? Monroe High.

  Try Gene Peterson Madison WI Monroe High.

  First item is a news feature on Madison.com. She clicks the link.

  Madison Man Adds Bulls to Badgers, reads the headline, which goes on to explain that Gene Peterson, who played high-school basketball for Monroe High in the 1970s, has become the official supplier of uniforms to the Chicago Bulls as well as the Wisconsin Badgers. Basketball for Monroe High in the seventies. That’s the right time frame. Were there two of them?

  She clicks back, and finds that Gene Peterson has a Wikipedia page. Nothing fancy, but to the point:

  Gene Peterson is the founder and CEO of Peterson Sportswear, Chicago. Peterson is a native of Madison, Wisconsin, and attended Jefferson Junior High and Monroe High schools. He went to DePaul on a basketball scholarship, but a severe anterior cruciate ligament injury brought a premature end to a promising career. He founded Peterson upon graduation in 1986, and has built it to the major national brand it is today. Among the NBA franchises Peterson supplies exclusively to are …

  Claire’s eyes shift down the page. Sure enough, there’s a photo of Mr Square Jaw again. That has to be Gene Peterson, the Gene Peterson Danny was at school with. But if it is, who was the weird guy she nearly slept with in Chicago? Who is the dead guy in her backyard?

  She gave the cops the picture, the only picture she had of any of Danny’s high-school buddies. Danny didn’t even know she had it; she had found it tidying a closet one day. There were no names attached to it, it was just a picture of Danny and another guy – the guy in Chicago, the guy who was dead in their yard. Although the guy in their yard had been through the mill, he looked like he’d been having beer for breakfast for quite some time. But she was pretty certain it was the same guy. Why had he lied and told her he was Gene Peterson? Who were Danny’s other friends? She knew there were four of them, he had told her that much, back in UW, when he used to talk about the past. It was after they got married, or told the world they had got married – that was when he began to clam up. That was when the past became enemy territory.

  What was it he used to call the guys, back in UW? God, it was such a long time ago. The Four Somethings. Seasons. Winds. Tops.

  Steady, Claire.

  The Four Horsemen. That was it.

  The Four Horsemen.

  Danny, Gene … Dave, Danny and Dave. Dave, Danny, Gene … plus one.

  Don’t they have high-school reunion websites?

  Monroe High, 1982/83.

  Let’s go.

  Lonesome Road

  The first thing that occurs to Danny as he hits the I-90 is that he’s being followed, or at least, that he was traced to Rockford. So he can get over his paranoia about using his cell phone. He turns it on and calls Dave Ricks and tells him he’s in trouble and needs to see him urgently, and Dave hears him out and talks him down and gives him directions to his studio and Danny turns his cell off again, just in case – and without checking his voicemail messages – and drives.

  He doesn’t feel he can afford to stop until he hits Chicago, in case there is anyone in pursuit, but his hands and face are smeared with blood and while he could live with it, not a bad visual representation of how he feels, he doesn’t want some other driver reporting him to the highway patrol as if he’s some kind of runaway axe murderer. Or indeed, as if he’s Danny Brogan. He finds a box of tissues in the glove compartment, folds them into wads, dabs them with one of the bottles of mineral water that roll around the floor of the Mustang and cleans himself up as best he can. Catching sight of himself in the rear-view mirror, he can’t quite believe what has happened. Jeff is dead. Somebody shot Jeff, a sniper, a hit man. A hit man? What kind of world is he living in?

  Danny stalls on that for a while. Someone shot Jeff, Jeff is dead, and that segues into the TV report as they left the restaurant: Ralph is dead, Ralph Cowley, and the photograph of Danny, they must think Danny did it, well of course they do, there’s a dead body in his backyard and he’s taken it on the lam, what are they supposed to think? Then there was a shot of Mr Smith. What’s up with that? Mr Smith might nip a child’s ankles, but that’s the height of it. Unless … but the idea something bad has happened to his dog is just too much to bear. Jeff, Ralph, Mr Smith, round and round they go, Danny shivering and muttering and crying a bit, and he is on the industrial outskirts of Chicago before whatever life-preserving adrenaline he has – or whatever he has left over from when he floored the car away from Rockford and placed the call to Dave Ricks – floods his system and enables his brain to function.

  First thing, did whoever shoot Jeff aim for Jeff, o
r were they trying to hit Danny? There wasn’t a second shot, and Danny was in full view, so chances are it was Jeff. In which case, they – whoever ‘they’ are – were trying to scare him. Good job, guys, you’ve scored a hundred percent on that front.

  Second, it’s looking increasingly like Gene Peterson is behind all this. Peterson had got him into Jonathan Glatt in the first place. He thinks of it now, in that Irish pub near City Hall, what was it called? The Dark Rosaleen? After a dinner at Everest on South LaSalle that must have cost four hundred dollars, Gene picking up the check, flush with his sportswear business. How everyone did well in Glatt’s fund, the trick of it being, to receive the invitation in the first place. How the annual return was between ten and twelve percent, and had been for the three years he’d been involved. All the guys were in, Gene said, him, Dave and Ralph. It was almost impossible to get in, had been for a long time, but Glatt made an exception for Gene because he’d been able to point some high-worth individuals in Glatt’s direction, guys with serious money. Danny had enjoyed the night, and felt flattered to be asked, and emboldened by Gene’s success, as if it was his success too, or soon would be. Why limit it to the fifty grand they had in savings? Why not think big? He rang the bank the next day and had his two hundred grand in a matter of weeks, making sure the house was valued when Claire wasn’t around. The bank would have lent him more, lent him twice as much. ‘It’s a no-brainer,’ the guy kept saying, nodding his approval at Danny’s financial acumen, his sudden and mysteriously acquired market perspicacity.

  And now he knew the truth about that: all the other guys were in, and then all the other guys were out, and he was left to pay the price. Everyone got away with it except Danny. The same way everyone seemed to get away with the Bradberry fire except Danny. Danny was to blame for it happening in the first place, it had all been set up so that he could get his revenge on Jackie Bradberry. Danny threw the fatal missile that set the house alight. And to top it all, Danny would in time marry the only child to walk away from the disaster.