Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) (15 page)

“As if it just then started up again.”

“Exactly!”

“So what you're saying is . . . maybe the tractor had been running a lot longer than you're aware of.”

“I'm sorry, Marcus. I never meant to imply . . . or to implicate or . . .”

“I understand,” he said.

In his silence then she heard his desk chair creak. She pictured him leaning back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling.

“And why was it Dylan came to see you?” he asked.

“He knew it had to have been me who told you he was in the woods for forty minutes. Who else could have seen him get off the tractor and take something from behind the seat?”

“Do you think now you know what that thing was?”

“It was a roll of toilet paper, Marcus.”

“You didn't know that when I first asked, though.”

“He told me, and then suddenly it was like, aha, yes, of course, of course that's what it was. I mean, I see it happening now, I see him climbing down off the tractor, reaching behind the seat . . . I can even see it in his hand. It's as clear as day to me now.”

“That's how the memory works sometimes. He says it was a roll of toilet paper, and now that's what you see whenever you think back on it.”

“Marcus, really, honestly, I mean, let's think about this. Could that boy have gone into the woods, found Jesse, done something to him, hidden the body where nobody can find a trace of it, and then climbed back on the tractor and spent another two hours or so spreading lime like nothing had ever happened?”

“If he was in there for forty minutes, maybe he could have.”

“Marcus, please. You're a sensible man.”

His chair creaked again. She imagined him swiveling around to face the window, gazing out onto the street.

She told him, “You know as well as I do that Dylan didn't hurt that child.”

“I never said he did. But something happened to Jesse. It's my job to find out what.”

“I understand. I just wanted to let you know that I . . . I really have no idea whether Dylan was in the woods for forty minutes or four minutes. I'm sorry if I implied that I did.”

She could hear another phone ringing in his office, and she wondered what it must be like for him. One human tragedy after another. A good day would be a day when the phone didn't ring. Did Marcus ever have a good day?

“Can I put you on hold for just thirty seconds?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

Is this how God feels?
she wondered as she waited. Was there ever a day, an hour, when He wasn't bombarded with prayers and pleas? Carnage everywhere He looks. Flesh and spirit coming apart at the seams.

“Oh God,” she said aloud, and thought about hanging up the phone, clicking it shut, clicking everything shut.

“You still there?” the sheriff asked.

“I'm here,” she said.

“Sorry about that. But anyway. I just wanted to say that I appreciate you calling. And to make sure that, you know, he didn't put any pressure on you or anything like that.”

“Dylan? My God, no, nothing. He never so much as implied it. He's frightened to death, Marcus. He's just a child really. Just a frightened little boy.”

Gatesman was silent for a moment, then asked, his voice softer now, “Are you crying, Charlotte?”

“I just . . . I feel so bad for everybody. For everybody involved.”

“It's hard, I know. This kind of thing . . .” He would have said more, wanted to, but then told himself,
Now isn't the time.

Finally he said, “Okay then. Thanks again. You take care of yourself, okay?”

“You too,” she said. And the closeness she felt for him at that moment, the impossible closeness, it took her breath away, hollowed her out and made her body ache with emptiness. She waited, hoping for more,
Do you want me to come over? Could you use some company tonight?
But there was only silence, two people silently waiting. And finally she folded up her phone.

T
HREE years,
she told herself.
Four years this July. Four years so alone.

If only Mother were here,
she thought.
Mother always knew what to do. Somehow she always knew.

She had known about Mark, Charlotte reminded herself. And she did her best to warn me. But I wouldn't listen. I was always so goddamn smart, I wouldn't listen to anybody.

On the day Charlotte's mother died, her family was all at the hospital with her—her husband, her daughter, her son-in-law.

Daddy was on one side of the bed,
Charlotte remembered.
Holding Mother's hand as always. God, how he adored her. His first marriage, what little I know of it, hadn't been pleasant, though the few times he talked about it, he blamed himself for much of the unpleasantness. It takes two, he used to say. Two to make things work, two to break it beyond repair. I wonder if he was insinuating that he had cheated on his first wife? Abused her verbally or psychologically? Even physically? I can't envision that he ever did. On the other hand, maybe that's always been my problem. Me, an artist. An artist with a woefully limited vision.

Yes,
Charlotte thought, bringing herself back to the day of her mother's death,
Daddy was sitting there holding one hand, I was holding the other one. She was in a lot of pain, I think, despite the morphine. But she was lucid as hell. At one point she squeezed my hand so hard that I lifted my head to look at her, and she was lying there with her eyes wet and shining but smiling the most beautiful smile.

“It's so ironic,” she had said. Charlotte leaned closer because her voice was weak. “What is?” she asked. And her mother answered, “That the organ that gave me my greatest joy is now going to take me away from her.”

Charlotte remembered struggling to keep her tears to herself but to small avail. “You're not going anywhere,” she had told her mother. “I won't let you.”

Her mother had smiled a soft, indulgent smile, then closed her eyes awhile. Charlotte's father had leaned forward then and rested his forehead on the corner of her pillow.

Several minutes later, Charlotte's mother opened her eyes again. “Listen,” she said, and Charlotte leaned close. “That man . . .”

Charlotte followed her mother's gaze to the doorway, where Mark stood each time they visited the hospital. Each time he would come into the room and kiss the older woman's cheek, then eventually retreat to the doorway to stand there with his back against the frame. And that was why, when Charlotte's mother said
that man
, Charlotte had immediately turned to look toward her husband, and found him, as usual, not even looking in their direction but smiling at something down the hall.

“What about him?” she had whispered.

Charlotte's mother regarded her daughter then, but no longer with a smile on her lips. She held her daughter's gaze for a long time but never finished the sentence, only squeezed Charlotte's hand until her own eyes closed again and her grip went slack.

Charlotte's mother lasted another four hours, and during that time her eyes never opened. She spoke only one more time, though in a whisper so small that only Charlotte's father heard. He then answered, “I won't, sweetheart. Never.”

Charlotte later asked him what her mother had said, and he told her, “Don't let go.”

Charlotte had never been entirely convinced that her mother had been speaking only to her husband, only asking him to never let go of her hand, which was what Charlotte's father always believed. Charlotte wondered if perhaps those final words were somehow the completion of the previous unfinished sentence, if
that man
and
don't let go
had in some manner constituted a single thought. After her father had relayed the final words to Charlotte, she had turned to the doorway, empty now, and had become suddenly annoyed that Mark had wandered away at some moment prior to her mother's passing, was probably in the lounge or the cafeteria or at the nurses' station flirting with a candy striper.

Had her mother been telling her to not let go of that man? Or, more likely, had she been warning her to not let go of something
because
of that man? To not give away something she should keep for herself?

During the year of Charlotte and Mark's courtship, then the eight years of marriage, Charlotte's mother had never warmed to her son-in-law. And Mother, Charlotte remembered, was an exceedingly warm person.
But sometimes I would catch her looking askance at him, her eyes narrow and her mouth in a hard line, just like that day in the hospital.

Two years earlier, Christmas Eve at Charlotte's parents' house, had been another example of that look. Charlotte had opened her gift from Mark, saw the Tiffany box, opened it, and saw the two-karat diamond ring. While she gasped and gaped, Mark started chattering about what a fortunate man he was, what a wonderful wife Charlotte was, on and on until Charlotte blushed with embarrassment. It was then Charlotte had glanced at her mother and saw the way she was regarding her son-in-law. As if he had just let loose a ripping loud fart, Charlotte thought.

Later, when alone in the kitchen with her mother, Charlotte had said, “You don't really like Mark much, do you?”

“Of course I do,” her mother answered. “He's your husband.”

“I saw the way you were looking at him. And it wasn't the first time.”

“And how was I looking at him?”

“Like he disgusts you.”

Her mother had chuckled softly. “No, sweetie. That's not it at all.”

“Then what is it?”

“Sometimes . . .” she said.

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes he just goes on too long, I guess. He gushes.”

“And you find that . . . what? Suspicious?”

“Why? Do you?”

“Do you think I should?”

Several seconds passed before her mother responded. “I guess I was just listening to him go on and on about you, and wondering . . .”

“Just say it, Mother. Wondering what?”

“Wondering if he says those things to you in private.”

“Of course he does. All the time.”

“Good. Then that's just the way he is. He adores you and doesn't mind expressing it.”

But, of course, Charlotte had lied to her mother. And that was why Charlotte had gasped and gaped so at his extravagance. Neither generosity of objects nor compliments had been natural to Mark.
Anyway, not where I was concerned,
Charlotte remembered.

And then, she told herself, then came the night at Tambelli-ni's. Our usual Thursday night. Summer in the city. The thick stench of simmering concrete and carbon monoxide.

They were seated as usual at a small table near the back of the room, the area Mark always requested. They were waiting for the salads—his, the house, hers, the
caprese
.

And just like always, she remembered, his damn cell phone started vibrating atop the table. It was always something important, of course, some junior partner to advise, a client to calm down, one of the paralegals with a question that couldn't wait until morning. And, same as always, he picked up the phone, looked at the caller's number, then said, straight off the script, “It's too noisy in here. I'm going to step outside for a minute.” Every single Thursday night.
And I was too stupid to question it,
Charlotte thought.
He's a busy man, I told myself. Wasn't he always telling me what a busy man he was? I never even thought to ask him or myself, “Why not take those calls in the men's room or even the coatroom?” Not until
that
Thursday night anyway.

Because the Tiffany diamond incident had been her first nudge of awareness. Her mother's deathbed look at him had swung the door of suspicion wide open.

What made Mark's Thursday night disappearing act at Tam-bellini's especially suspicious for Charlotte was that Thursday night, right after the cannolis, was their night for sex.

The man would lay not a finger on me all week long,
she reminded herself, and felt the anger blossoming again, just as it always had in June's office, the anger and then the heat and sting of tears. Because by the time he handed the server his credit card on Thursday nights, he was playing footsie with his wife.

“This might take a couple minutes,” he had told her, then stood and made his exit, the phone to his ear. But this time, instead of turning her attention to the other customers, instead of entertaining herself by checking out hairdos and jewelry and footwear, this time Charlotte watched him all the way out the door. She knew from past experience that he would stand there just on the sidewalk, in plain view through the front window, for fifteen seconds or so. Then, ever so nonchalantly, same as always, he would wander out of view.