Manner of Death

by Stephen White

  The taxi pulled up outside a modern one-story structure that was attached to a long rectangular hangar, she grabbed her bag and began to pull herself out of the car without even a simple touch for me. I wasn't ready to let her go.

  I said. "He killed Susan in a plane, you know."

  "I know. I'm taking precautions." Her tone amused me, the same voice a young woman might employ when assuring her parents that she is always— always— careful when she's with a boy.

  I wouldn't be easily dissuaded. "He may be an airplane mechanic, he may have access."

  "I have a locked hangar for my plane, and I’ve used the same mechanic for years. I’ve asked him to do all the work himself for a while, he's agreed to that. My preflight checks are .., exhaustive, a real pain in the butt." She pulled her hair off her neck, then released it. "I'm worried, too,” she said.

  "Maybe you shouldn't fly again until we understand better what happened to Susan. Simes and Custer are collecting all the details, they'll be back to us soon enough."

  Her tone changed, she admonished. "Maybe you should get out of the advice business."

  "I'm sorry," I said, although I didn't think that my caution was anything but prudent.

  "It's okay." She grabbed her bag again and raised herself from the car, she leaned down before she closed the door and said. "Alan, what about Chester?"

  I said. "Jesus. Sawyer. I never thought about Chester."

  "Maybe we should."

  "God, yes."

  She took a step away without saying good-bye, then she turned back to the car and said. "Alan?"

  The desert wind was blowing in short intense gusts, and she was holding her hair from her face with one hand to keep it from her eyes. I had to lean sideways across the seat to assess her expression. It was, I thought, somber.

  "Yeah?"

  "Did you love me? Back then. Did you really love me?"

  I got out of the car, walked around the trunk, took the bag from her shoulder, and lowered it to the macadam. I embraced her the way I had wanted to in the airport terminal, she was stiff at first and didn't return the hug. Finally she softened. I could feel the tips of her fingers begin to probe the muscles on my back. I could feel the pressure of her breasts against my abdomen. I could feel her cool breath caress the skin on the side of my neck.

  Into her hair. I said. "The very best I knew how."

  FIFTEEN

  Lauren was asleep when I got back to Boulder near midnight.

  I felt odd sliding the unfamiliar key into the unfamiliar lock in this house in town where I hadn't slept since Lauren and I were dating. Those recollections of that earlier autumn when I'd been falling in love with her were decidedly mixed memories, there had been the exhilaration of romantic discovery, but those faltering first days in our relationship had also been marked by a gnawing tension. I feared the return of that tension now that Sawyer had reappeared in my life.

  Some of the tension back then had been Lauren's distrust of me, we blamed her mistrust, with facile ease, on her illness. Was it true then? Partially.

  What about now?

  Partially.

  My take? She didn't feel consistently lovable. So she had trouble believing I really loved her, and she insisted on believing that her illness was the solitary barrier to her sense of security, without it, she wanted to believe, she would be secure as a woman and we, as a couple, would be fine.

  The couple part was true, we would be. I believed that.

  But, deep in my heart. I also felt that even with multiple sclerosis in the equation, we, as a couple, would be okay. Not ideal. But MS wasn't the only flaw in the silk cloth that we'd woven into our marriage coverlet. In falling in love with Lauren, in committing to her, in marrying her. I took the last steps of a journey that was freeing me of my juvenile quest to find an ideal mate. In fact, when I met Lauren I was separated from a gorgeous, witty, brilliant woman I'd married after convincing myself that she was perfect.

  I assumed, always, that in her life, somewhere along the way, Lauren had made the same judgments about me and my imperfections, she had determined that I had plenty of flaws and that she loved me anyway.

  I fell in love with her despite her insecurities, despite her inconsistencies, despite her illness.

  I fell in love with her because of her usual joy and her surprising nurturing, because of her remarkable reservoir of courage, and because of her wisdom, and her beauty.

  In doing so, I thought I had found the right woman for me. Not the perfect woman, though. I no longer had that illusion.

  I felt that way before I went to Las Vegas to see Sawyer. Seeing Sawyer, touching her, had unsettled me. Still, as I crawled into bed next to Lauren in her old house on the Hill. I felt assurance that I had married the right woman.

  The unfamiliar city noises distracted me as I tried to find sleep. I heard cars downshifting in the distance, and closer listened as two dogs barked up some competitive tree. I listened to the wind whistle down canyons. From my other bed in my distant bedroom across the Boulder Valley I could barely even discern those canyons as charcoal slashes in the landscape. Even Emily's big dog sighs sounded different as she fought to find a corner that provided comfort and security.

  Twice I thought I knew what Sawyer had meant by professing her fear of volcanoes, not hurricanes. Twice I knew that I was guessing.

  I sat up in bed and looked at Lauren's bedside table for the Glock. It wasn't there. Would she keep it under the pillow? I didn't know. I hoped not.

  I thought about Chester some more and knew he was now on my list for keeps.

  I tossed. I turned. I didn't believe that Lauren was actually asleep beside me.

  Out loud. I said. "We're fine. Don't worry. I lova you."

  She didn't stir.

  She greeted me warily at breakfast. I embraced her longer than I normally would have.

  I told her I was grateful for the bagels and coffee and fresh-squeezed juice.

  "How did it go?" she asked.

  Was she asking whether I'd learned something useful or how things had gone with Sawyer? I chose the more benign fork in the road. "Okay. Good. Sawyer and I are on the same page about not divulging the patient list to Custer and Simes, we came up with some possible suspects to look at. I want to talk with you and Sam about how to check them out. I don't even know how law enforcement goes about locating people, sweets. I'm sure there are ways, though. Right?"

  She smiled and said. "Yes, there are ways." She found something interesting in the bottom of her coffee mug. "So how is your friend? After all these years? Did you enjoy seeing her?"

  My friend? "Sawyer was a lot of things to me back then. Lauren. But she was never my friend."

  "That's funny."

  Her voice told me she found the revelation soothing. I was tempted to elaborate, but didn't. Instead. I said. "But to answer your question better. I, um,’ think, I don't know .., she's .., it's like she has a limp."

  "She.., limps?"

  "Figuratively. Psychologically. Being with her, it's like an old, serious injury has healed. But one leg is shorter than the other one or something. Or the scar tissue won't really allow her to move gracefully. It's like that. Being with her, she's restricted. Tight. Jerky, awkward."

  "What injury?"

  "She didn't say. I didn't ask."

  Her eyes scorned me. "I can't believe you didn't ask, are you attracted to her still?"

  I didn't want to follow Lauren wherever she was heading. Was there a reasonable way to answer?

  "If I am— so what? She's attractive, but it doesn't mean anything. I mean. I think the new receptionist in your office is pretty hot, and didn't you recently admit that you thought that attorney you creamed last week on the drunk and disorderly is a pleasant addition to the local bar?"

  The scorn in her eyes flashed a frosting of contempt. "What's different is that I didn't used to date him."

  "You're right."

  "And you really think Trisha is hot? She has no boobs at
all. I didn't think she was your type."

  "The older I get the more I don't think I have a type. I'm actually becoming a more equal-opportunity lech." I didn't confess that I was constantly amazed at how many different ways women can find to be lovely.

  "So she's still pretty, too? Sawyer?"

  I touched my wife across the table. "Like you, Lauren, she'll be beautiful until she dies."

  With a suspicious tone, she said. "You're getting smoother as you age, you know that?"

  I shrugged. Saying thank you felt risky.

  Lauren and I had promised each other we were going to check on Dresden's progress in Spanish Hills every day: either before we went to work or after. While she showered and dressed to get ready for this Sunday morning visit I cleaned up the breakfast things, but couldn't seem to master the controls on Lauren's antique KitchenAid dishwasher.

  She jiggled the handle on the door and the machine started. "It's cranky sometimes,” she said. "Like me."

  Across town in Spanish Hills, we passed Adrienne and her son. Jonas, as they were heading out the lane, adrienne honked and waved at us but didn't slow her new Suburban, adrienne is petite. Behind the wheel of the massive Chevy, she looked like a ten-year-old driving a school bus. I felt a pang of guilt about what oua construction project must be doing to her peace and quiet.

  I made a mental note to send her some flowers.

  Approaching our house from the lane— from the north— nothing much looked different about it. Momentarily. I wondered if Dresden's demo crew had actually started work as promised, then I noticed the debris that was already protruding from the top of the huge blue rollaway. It was over half full. It was definitely not half empty.

  Lauren and I were relentless recyclers. Every couple of weeks we left our papers and cans and bottles out for Eco-Cycle. Our efforts seemed ironic, and futile, as I realized we were rather cavalierly throwing away most of our house.

  It would take a lot of plastic bins full of aluminum cans and glass bottles to make up for this.

  At the meeting where we had signed the contract with Dresden, he had warned us what to expect in terms of progress. "Things fly at first," he said. "The simple fact of this business is that
  I tried to steel myself for what we would find inside.

  Lauren opened the front door and said. "Oh my God."

  I peeked over her shoulder, the experience reminded me of seeing my leg for the first time after it had been secreted away in a plaster cast for fifteen weeks when I was a kid. I knew the leg was mine— it was protruding from my hip, after all— but I didn't recognize it as the appendage I knew so well.

  And this house was no longer the domicile that had been my home of over ten years.

  Most of the interior walls of the upper level of the house were gone. Four-by-eight beams held the joists aloft, the beams supported, it appeared, by four-by-fours and prayer. Only small sections of the ceiling remained intact. Where we had once had a small dark kitchen we now had a small dark cavern with exposed stud walls, naked drainpipes and supply lines, and silver snakes of electrical conduit, the dismal space brought back memories of torture chambers I'd seen in B movies from the sixties.

  Two-thirds of the south wall of the house had been demolished, the empty space that had been created was interspersed with support columns constructed of rough studs, sheets of even rougher plywood covered the opening. Vertical slivers of light leaked in through the cracks.

  Lauren said. "It's so clean in here. I expected, you know. Los Angeles after the big one."

  The orderliness of the space was not exactly my first impression. But I had to admit it was true. I said. "It is pretty neat. Dresden and his demo boys have certainly tidied up after themselves." Other than the hanging conduits and the exposed plumbing stubs, the place appeared ready for the next phase of construction, whatever that might be.

  She gazed around the room in a way that worried me. When she finally spoke, she affirmed my intuition, she said. "You're not going to like this. Don't get upset, okay? But I think we should go ahead and replace those windows. Don't you think that makes sense after all?"

  To save money, we had decided to preserve as much of the existing glass as we could. I sighed. "Which windows?"

  She pointed toward the dining room, where we kept her pool table. But she said. "All of them. I guess. Consistency of fenestration is important."

  Consistency of fenestration? Resigned to the fact that we would be placing a new window order. I said, "Everything? All of them? Even the picture windows in the living room? That's a lot of glass, sweets. It will cost thousands."

  "Don't you want them to match?"

  We still hadn't ventured farther into the house than the entryway, she knew, with the chaos I had just invited into our lives, that I wasn't about to argue with her about a few windows. I started walking toward what had been the living room. "Do you want to call Dresden about the change? Or should I?"

  "I will," she said.

  I contemplated the fact that twenty-four hours after the start of construction, we had already managed a probable fifteen thousand dollars in change orders. I was wondering if that level of impulsive largesse might get us into Guinness when Lauren said she wanted to see what they had done downstairs.

  She shoved aside a sawhorse in order to descend the stairs to the lower level of the house.

  What happened next took three seconds. Five tops.

  I thought— I was certain— that the world was ending, at least the portion that I occupied.

  A two-by-four had been jammed into the supports of the sawhorse, as Lauren shoved the sawhorse aside, the stud was pulled along with it, the other end of the stud was simultaneously yanked out from beneath a temporary support column that stood tall in the middle of the room, as all this occurred, a squeal reminiscent of a large animal dying a torturous death filled the cavern of joists and trusses above my head.

  The support column fell to the wood deck with a concussion that was way out of proportion to its size.

  Lauren screamed. "Alan!"

  I looked up to see one end of a long ceiling joist slipping from the spot where it should have been secured to its intersecting beam by a joist hanger, the joist began to fall in a short arc toward my head. I barely had time to move before the two-by-eight grazed my arm and crashed to the floor at my feet.

  I waited for more lumber to fall.

  None did, another joist sank a few inches and squeaked, another one shuddered and groaned. But the single ceiling joist was all that came down.

  Lauren rushed to my side, skipping over the fallen joist, she said. "You're bleeding, are you okay? I'm so sorry. Did I do that? Did I make that come down? Come on, let's get out of here, it's not safe."

  I figured standing still was the most prudent thing I could do. For half a minute I stared at the joists and trusses, trying to determine if anything else was about to tumble down.

  I examined my biceps. I was bleeding. One of the nails that should have been holding that joist in place had slit my skin. I said. "I think I'm okay. Just a scratch. I'll probably need a tetanus shot. God. I hate tetanus shots."

  "Why did that happen? Should that have happened?"

  "No, that shouldn't have happened. Do you have your phone with you? Let me call Dresden."

  Dresden lived in the town of Louisville, which was actually closer to our house than was most of the city of Boulder. Less than ten minutes later, he was parking his big Ford pickup on the lane.

  He wanted the story again, he said. "A joist fell? You're sure?"

  "Two others came loose. Go check for yourself, Dresden. Do you have a hard hat?"

  I might as well have been warning one of the Joint Chiefs about the dangers of UFOs, he said. "Joists don't fall from ceilings on m
y jobs, Alan. I don't need a damn hard hat."

  Dresden spent about five minutes inside while Lauren finished dressing my arm with first-aid supplies from the car.

  Our contractor spoke even more slowly than usual when he rejoined us. "This is crazy. So tell me what happened again."

  Lauren was eager to repeat her tale. "I wanted to go downstairs to see what you guys had done down there, but there was one of those things in the way at the top of the stairs. What are they called?" She turned to face me.

  "A sawhorse."

  "Yeah, There was a sawhorse in the way. So I slid it back a couple of feet. When I did—"

  "Don't forget the stud. Somebody had jammed a stud into the brace of the sawhorse."

  "Yes, and when I moved the sawhorse, that board— it's a stud, is that what you called it?"

  "Yes, a stud."

  "That stud moved, and then those two sticks that were holding up the ceiling fell and then that big board came down from the attic and almost hit Alan in the head. It could have killed him."

  Dresden turned his head to me for help in the same polite way a politician consults a translator on a foreign junket.

  I said, "The stud that was caught in the sawhorse had also been stuck under the temporary support column that was holding up the joists. When Lauren moved the sawhorse, the stud moved and came out from underneath the column, the column fell, then the joist squealed, and then it just came crashing down right next to me. Two others came loose."

  Lauren clarified, "Right on top of you, you mean."

  Dresden had been standing, he sat beside us on our little front stoop and removed his baseball cap. This one read "Belize." I think he had a cap from every place he had ever scuba dived. I was beginning to believe it was a large collection, he smoothed down his dusty brown hair and replaced the cap on his head. "Alan, somebody wanted to bring the whole center section of the roof down. It wasn't just one joist that was sabotaged."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure. Listen, we didn't leave it like this. I was the last one here at the end of the day. I'm the one who put the sawhorse in place at the top of the stairs. Just as a precaution, since we'd already removed the stair rail, there was no stud anywhere near it when I left last night. No wav. It was around seven, mavbe six-thirtv, when I left, and there was no stud shimming up that support column. No way in the world I'd use the end of a long stud to shim a column, that column was cut to length and nailed in place. Nailed to the floor, and to the beam in the ceiling." He paused. "Lauren, alan. I don't work this way. I'm careful. I'm neat. I'm methodical.