Love Nest (11 page)

“Could be talk, you don’t want that,’ the chief warned, his spoon in his bowl. “Worse thing a cop can do is try to save a hooker. I don’t speak from experience, but it’s common sense. Anyway, the point’s moot. She’s gone for good, right?”

It was possible she was gone and just as possible she was not. He pictured her on Alfred Bauer’s doorstep, ready to assume whatever shape the man wanted, to cater to the whims of the wife, to tend to the son, to barter for the affection of each, their promises her ticket to the good life.

“Main thing,” said the chief, “is you’ve put a word in the right ear. That should stop the funny business at the Silver Bell. Though I still can’t understand why Paige Gately allowed it. I mean, she’s proper. She’s Olde Andover, an
e
on the end of
old
. ’Course you never really know what makes somebody tick. Look at yourself, Sonny, you’re at a peculiar age, almost forty, right? You still ticking the same?”

It was another question to which he was not sure he had an answer. He was not even sure he wanted to come up with one. He stirred his stew, a rich aroma to it, while the chief ate his.

“What if she comes back, Chief? What if I can get her to sign a statement?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I could put them all away.”

“All except her. Isn’t that what you mean, Sonny?”

He did not like being pinned down, his resentment aimed not at Chief Chute but squarely at her for interloping into his life, trading on his sensibilities, enticing his eye. A few minutes later he reached for the check, his turn to pay, the chief’s to tip.

“You didn’t eat much,” the chief noted.

“Seldom do.”

“But less than usual this time.”

He moved sideways between crowded tables, the chief in front of him, carefully threading the way. “At least speak.” The voice was slow to reach him over the clink of flatware. The face was Fran Lovell’s, absurd in its reproach, as if she blamed him for wrongs existing only in the dark of her mind. He smiled and waved.

Outside, in the dry high heat of the glaring sun, they paused near a flower barrel brimming with pink and white annuals, gift to the town from a garden club. Down at the traffic signals near the library, a fair-haired youth in cut-off jeans was revving his motorcycle, the same kid that riled his neighbors by roaring through their quiet streets. The chief, shading his eyes, said, “You know what he’s doing, don’t you? He’s fantasizing he’s a Hell’s Angel. A real biker would toss him over the handlebars and bugger him, don’t you think?”

“That your way of telling me I could get burnt?”

“No, Sonny, I was just making a comment, sort of the way Billy Lord would.”

He did not follow the chief to the station. He drove to the High Plain Road area, where a rising number of residents were reporting bicycles stolen from their garages, Hispanics from Lawrence suspected, dark-skinned boys seen cruising the vicinity in a soiled and battered van. He backed into a graveled space between the cool of two blue spruces and watched cars rumble by. The rangy well-seasoned woman who lived directly across the road ambled over to chat for a minute, her sun-baked face leaning in on him, her right arm toughened by a tennis racquet. “Hope you get the little bastards, Sergeant, that was the best bike I ever had. Seat fitted my ass like a glove.”

The only vans that passed in the two hours he sat there were clean and unscathed and belonged to a plumbing contractor and a termite inspector.

He intended to return to the station, but after crossing the railroad tracks at the foot of Essex Street he swerved right, shot past the old depot, and took the meandering route home. All that awaited him was a bill in the mailbox, a furled newspaper in the drive, and a small unassuming house that suddenly seemed dreary, the way it had when he moved back after his parents had died, a silence running through it like water, filling depths.

He drank bouillon from a cup, read the paper from front to back, watched television until he could not deal with the noise, and then dozed off in the easy chair, waking when he thought he heard a door sigh open, but it was only a breeze agitating the curtains. Later, when it was dark, he stepped out the side door for a look at the stars and stopped in his tracks. Something was working in the warm night air, rippling it where the rhododendron grew massive, scenting it, as if an unseen animal were lurking about. “I know you’re there,” he said softly. He moved back slowly to the door and waited in the light. Footsteps gradually came out of what he had thought was an emptiness.

“Are you surprised?”

“No,” he said.

“Angry?”

He did not answer.

“Sonny.” Her face sprang up in all its vividness. “So much in me has never been touched.”

“Let’s not — ” He stopped, looked at her carefully. “Why the hell are you crying?”

“Because I know you’re glad to see me.”

N
o services. The boy’s body was cremated Thanksgiving week, the bonemeal scattered by his mother in the woods where they had last walked together. The shock of his death was still in her eyes, and much more was seared into her brain. The rector of Christ Church tried to comfort her, but she would have no part of it, standing as pure force at the front door, ready to drive him back if he attempted entry. Later, when she was in the master bedroom, Dr. Stickney telephoned. “I’m here if you need me.”

“I’ve never needed you,” she said and thrust the phone at her husband to hang up.

In the past few days Alfred Bauer had aged ten years, his polished beacon of a head set on a neck of soft clay. In his dry hand was the boy’s diary, opened to the only page written on. He spoke. His voice, usually resonant, lacked life.

She said, distantly, “Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“What does it mean?”

“What it says. If you choose to believe it.”

“Do you?”

She gazed through him, the dark of her dress stressing the starkness of her skin and the fairness of her hair.

“Please. Do you believe it?” he asked.

“He’s gone. So it has no relevance now.”

“Do you blame me?” he asked bleakly.

“I blame you. Myself. The cop.” Bones never before prominent in her face asserted themselves. Her smile was uncanny. “I blame everybody.”

“I never interfered,” he said, the tired muscles around his mouth slowing his speech. “You had the final word in bringing him up. I always knew what he meant to you.”

“Just as I knew what Melody meant to you.”

The silence was brittle, no denial, only a puckering of his features from too much popping inside his head. She turned away, slipped off her shoes, and removed a sweat suit from a dresser drawer, his presence nearly forgotten. Then she spoke.

“I always loved you too much. Never a problem till Melody. She was different, wasn’t she?”

“Harriet.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Did
you
kill her?”

“I was wondering when you’d ask.” She scratched at pinch marks left by the elastic top of her pantyhose, which, diminished to a clot, lay next to her dress on the floor. “Like your other question, it no longer has relevance.”

“But I want to know.”

“I’d rather you think about it.”

“I want to protect you.”

“Like you did Wally?” She turned to him and stood terribly straight, parts of her painfully arched, belly muscles rippling. Her thighs had a hammered quality, flesh packed in as if from pounding. “Is it too late?” she said, her legs evenly spaced. “Am I too old?”

His bare head tilted in confusion. “For what?”

“To be a whore again.”

• • •

Sergeant Dawson went jogging in the brisk morning air, a mere mile, but when he got home he could not keep his body quiet. It hummed and throbbed. His mouth was snapped shut, but the air hissed out of his nostrils. His ears rang, and his chest pinged like a hot engine tuning down. Later, when he began feeling more himself and somewhat confident he was not dying, he made a telephone call. He said, “I need to talk to you again.”

“I’m not surprised. Is it personal or professional?”

“Does it matter?”

“If it’s a question of guilt, I charge a fee. I’m expensive.”

“What time?”

“It’ll have to be late,” Dr. Stickney said. “Make it five o’clock.”

It was his day off, but he went into work anyway. Chief Chute spotted him, called him into his office, and said, “I’ve been talking to the district attorney. He’s satisfied the Haines case can be unofficially closed. The boy’s suicide is tantamount to a confession.”

“I wish there’d been a note. There should’ve been.” He felt a palpitation and ignored it. “Then everything would be clear.”

The chief regarded him with avuncular concern. “I know what’s going through your head, but you can’t let it get you. You had a job to do.”

“Did I push him into that closet? That’s the question.”

“He had too much on his conscience for someone his age, more than any kid could handle. Just looking at him was probably a push. Not your fault, Sonny.”

“I went there to bring him in, but I couldn’t even cut him down. His mother’s arms were locked around him, she was holding him up. Bauer and I couldn’t get past her. I don’t think she even knew we were there. It was like the three of us were doing this dance around him, stepping on each other’s feet and not feeling a thing. It was like a dream.”

“Sonny, this isn’t doing you any good.”

“I knew he was dead. The eyes had hemorrhaged. Do you know who finally cut him down, Chief? She did. Calm as anything, she asked for the knife. I was afraid at first to give it to her, thought she might use it on me. Even Bauer looked scared. With one arm she held the kid up, all that dead weight, and with her other hand worked the knife. Then she told us to get out.”

“Let me get you a cup of coffee.”

He shook his head. “Amazing woman.”

“Sonny.”

“Yes?”

“Reporters come around, you let me talk to them, especially the guy from the
Herald
.“

He nodded.

“The district attorney will quietly let it out, off the record, that we had the goods on the boy. I mean, we don’t want an unsolved homicide hanging over the town, or at least people thinking it’s unsolved. People who know anything at all about the case are already putting two and two together.” There was a sigh. “I’m glad it’s over. I’m more glad for you than for me.” The sigh was repeated. “No more personal involvements. I think that’s got to be a rule from now on. Sound sensible to you, Sonny?”

He nodded while looking at items on the chief’s desk, as if each possessed a significance other than its obvious one.

“One other thing, Sonny. Go home.”

He consulted his watch. It was nearly eleven. He drove, without haste, to Dr. Stickney’s office. The woman in the outsize spectacles gazed at him from an aloof and cold persona. In her perfect hair was a tortoiseshell comb that seemed as authoritative as the badge clipped to his wallet or the weapon hidden on his hip. “I have you down for five.” He picked up a magazine. “The doctor has a client.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Not there,” she said when he started to seat himself. She escorted him into a small private room of soothing colors, the pastel artwork on the walls meant to please children. On a table was a sketch pad and crayons.

“Should I draw something?”

“Suit yourself.”

He braced himself in a chair like a child who knew exactly how long he must sit. It was twenty minutes but seemed a solid hour. Dr. Stickney appeared quietly and closed the door behind him. When Dawson started to rise, he stayed him with a gesture. “We’ll talk here.” He drew a chair, and they faced each other across the small table. Stickney’s small teeth glittered inside his neat beard. “What haunts you the most, Sergeant? Melody’s death or the boy’s?”

Dawson’s hand trembled. “He didn’t leave a note.”

“That disturbs you?”

“You usually don’t go out that way, not without saying anything.”

“Suicide is a message in itself.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear you say. Do you still think he didn’t kill her, Doctor?”

“Sorry, I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Then why’d he hang himself?”

“A few explanations are possible.” Stickney picked up a blue crayon and drew a careful circle on the pad. “One is he was full of fears, some he doubtless came out of the womb with. A warm place the womb. We all want to return to it. You, I, even the chairmen of our biggest corporations. Why not him?”

“That’s glib.”

Stickney endowed the circle with scribbled hair, female eyes, and a mouth. “Or maybe he simply wanted to join her, a romantic notion he was quite capable of following through on.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I’m merely tossing things out for you.”

Dawson shivered, more from frustration than from anything else. “I think you’re blowing smoke up my ass.”

“Vulgar talk, Sergeant. For some reason I wouldn’t have expected it from you.” His smile was slight, with the barest hint of sympathy. “But at the moment your mind must be a horror show. You feel responsible. So you want reassurance. More than that, you want absolution.”

“The truth is all I want.”

“All I have are opinions, and I’ve given them to you, gratis.”

Dawson stared at the pad. For a number of seconds the drawing absorbed him. Then he lifted his chin, his face a crag. “Their relationship wasn’t sexual, but the kid’s jealousy was.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes.”

“She told you the truth. He was impotent — except with himself. Only in his imagination was he her lover.”

“But his jealousy was real.”

“Yes.” Stickney raised a hang. He had dainty fingers and traced them over his beard. “The jealousy went deep.”

“It could be hateful.”

“Indeed.”

“Uncontrollable.”

“Possibly, given the right circumstances.”

“Then why are you fighting me over his guilt?”

“If you’re satisfied, Sergeant, that’s all that matters.”

“I don’t like doubts.”

“I do.” Stickney leaned back. “You see, I deal in them every day.”

After a soft knock and a silent turn of the knob, the door sprang open, and the woman in the outsize spectacles peered in. “You have a client waiting, Doctor.”

“Yes, thank you. The sergeant has finished his business.”

Stickney left the room, and the woman stepped deeper into it. Dawson remained seated, an odd look in his eye, voices eddying inside his head. The woman approached the table and stared at the pad.

“That’s very good, Sergeant.”

• • •

After Ed Fellows finished talking with Paige Gately on the telephone, Fran Lovell came into his office with a blue file folder, her handwritten notes attached to it, her name imprinted on the notepaper. “Here’s the appraisal and the financial statement on the Silver Bell.”

“Let’s go over it together,” Fellows said.

She wound her way to his side of the mahogany desk, detached her notes, opened the folder, laid everything out before him, and then moved back a pace, one hand stuffed in the jacket pocket of her drab skirt suit. The hemline of the skirt was uneven, a thread trailing. Fellows gazed up over his half glasses.

“You were late getting in this morning.”

“A little.”

“You overslept.”

“Yes,” she said, and he seemed pleased, then not.

“You don’t wear lipstick anymore.”

“Sometimes.”

“Not often.” His tone was wistful. “I remember the day you came to work here, a young married woman. Years fly, don’t they, Fran?”

She pointed at the papers, the polish on her fingernail partly chipped off. “Everything should be there, except Mrs. Gately’s credit history. You apparently have it.”

“Do I? Yes, I’m sure I do, somewhere.” He busied himself with the material she had delivered, scanning figures, peeling thin pages, knitting his brow. Then, deliberately, he shifted his attention to her notes. Though her handwriting was large and bold, quite legible, he said with a squint, “I can’t make out this word.” Her hair drifted forward as she leaned over him. He shortened his voice. “You didn’t take a bath this morning, did you?”

“The word,” she said, “is
chattel
.“

“Don’t move, please. You smell as if you just got out of bed.” His voice was little more than a whisper, all his thoughts inside her suit.

“Does my tired body interest you again?” Her expression was glum. She drew herself erect. “It was never healthy what we had. It wasn’t even happy.”

He turned a faint shade of pink through the faded remains of his tropical tan and, hunching his pinstriped shoulders, commenced reading her notes again. In a voice that was all business, he said, “I gather you don’t think much of Mrs. Gately’s proposal.”

“When has my opinion ever mattered to you?” She backed away, her smile at variance with the hard set of her jaw. “You’re such a clown, Ed. Such a terrible clown.”

• • •

The assistant principal, his face equipped with the immutable hornrims, said, “Tragic. Simply tragic. We know each year some of our students will be highway statistics, but this … this, Sergeant, is shocking. We ask ourselves what didn’t we do, what didn’t we see to prevent it. We’re all taking it hard, Mrs. Medwick especially.”

“It’s Mrs. Medwick I’d like to see.”

“He wasn’t a popular boy, but at assembly, during the moment of silence, you could hear a pin drop. I’m probably repeating myself, excuse me, but it’s so hard to understand. It’s my first experience with a student suicide. I pray to God it’s not infectious. You know how impressionable and vulnerable adolescents are.”

Dawson said, “If I could see Mrs. Medwick for a few minutes.”

“She’s taking it the hardest. She feels she bears some of the responsibility because of the problem she had with him. I’ve told her she’s being silly, but that doesn’t stop the torment, does it?”

“I’ll make it brief.”

“She’s not here, Sergeant. She’s taking a couple of days’ sick time. Principal thought it best. I did too.”

“Thank you.” Dawson started to move away.

“You have some torment, too.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your eyes, Sergeant.”

Mrs. Medwick lived in the Shawsheen section, on a narrow back street of small neat houses built in the early years of the century when the town’s well-being was tied to textiles. Mill workers had lived in them. Now young lawyers, electrical engineers, electronic technicians did — and teachers. Mrs. Medwick’s house was halfway down the street, on the left, white with red trim, bordered by juniper, the bowl of the bird bath removed for the winter.

“Yes, come in,” she said. She had been looking out the window and had opened the door before he had a chance to use the bell. She led him into the front room, showed him to a chair. “Is it about Walter Bauer?”

“Yes,” he said, “if you don’t mind.”

“Will it take long?”

“No.”

“Good.” She was dressed in a high-neck blouse and a full skirt, her lips lightly painted, as if she had been undecided about staying out of school. She sat squarely in an opposite chair, her skirt drawn well over her knees. “It was suicide, wasn’t it? I mean, there’s no doubt, is there?”