Cloudland (32 page)

Breck sat down next to me and crossed her legs. “I’m so glad you’re here with me and not up in Vermont.”

I didn’t answer.

She leaned toward me. “You need our help now.”

I didn’t need anybody’s help.

Breck went silent, thinking. Then she said, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe Matthew knows the detective’s daughter. It sounds too coincidental. I think … he’s trying to trick you into seeing him again.”

“Trick me? Come on!” I pushed back in my chair, wishing I could escape somehow, not only Breck’s company, but escape myself. I didn’t know what to think or do.

“He’s a liar, Mom. If his lies about Thailand are pathological, don’t you think he’d lie about the daughter to try and discredit her father? Her father, who seems to be closing in on him?”

I looked away. “I have no idea.”

“Let’s face it, Mom, Matthew is manipulative. God help us.”

I leapt up from the table, disconnected my phone from the charger, and found the number of Anthony’s room at the hospital.

“Who are you calling now?” Breck asked.

There was no answer. I dialed the hospital main number, and they said he was no longer in the room and they weren’t sure if he’d been moved or released. Then they asked if I were a family member, and this disconcerted me. I dialed his home telephone number and there was no response. I tried his cell phone and reached his voice mail. Where was he? Where was Fiona, for that matter? “He’s totally out of contact!” I told Breck. “This is very unlike him.”

“Complications? Maybe due to his concussion?” Breck wondered aloud.

I could hardly even consider it. My natural inclination was to try Matthew again. When I told Breck this, she said, “Mom, are you listening to yourself?” Then grabbed both my arms and, trying to sound compassionate, said, “If you’re not listening to yourself, listen to me.”

“I don’t want to listen to you. I don’t need you to save me. Much as I appreciate the effort,” I added, hoping this would soften my statement.

Breck went on. “You’re addicted to this man.”

“I’m not addicted to him! I love him.”

Breck gasped and looked stupefied. “You still love somebody who tried to hurt you?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

“You love somebody who put his hands around your neck with the worst of intentions?”

“He stopped.”

“He realized what he was doing and that he probably would go to jail for the rest of his life.”

“Yes, exactly, he realized!”

“But he still did it, Ma. Which means he could do it again.” Breck released her grip on my arms, wiped her tearful eyes with her wrist, and then put both hands gently on my shoulders. “All these women, Ma. All these dead women were
strangled
first. Strangled before they were stabbed.”

And then a devastating realization hit me. If Matthew’s hands in the end were too enfeebled by damaged nerves to strangle, then wouldn’t he have to rely on other means, such as a knife, to complete a murder?

With that the phone rang. Breck picked up the cordless and read the number. “Vermont.”

“Just answer it,” I said.

I heard a woman’s voice ask for me, and Breck say, “Who’s calling, please?” She frowned and covered the mouthpiece. “Nan O’Brien?”

I grabbed the phone, my mind still staggering from the sudden reckoning, and it was all I could do to concentrate on what she was saying.

“Catherine,” she began, “I spoke to my friend at the Burlington police department and have some information for you … can you talk now?”

“Yes … I can talk.”

“Okay. According to him, my friend, somebody
did
place an assault charge against Matthew Blake. It was investigated and ended up being dismissed. It was a girl he apparently dated very briefly. Her name was Stephanie Prozzo.”

“Stephanie Prozzo?” I cried out. “
She
was the victim?” and looked, horrified, at Breck.

Nan went on. “My police friend says she was unstable, her story didn’t seem credible. Full of contradictions. They didn’t end up pursuing her accusations very far.”

“Hang on a moment.” I turned to Breck. “Matthew wasn’t lying about Stephanie Prozzo.”

Breck threw up her arms in exasperation and left the room.

“Now, may I ask you what’s going on?” Nan said. As overwhelmed as I was, I did my best to briefly explain everything.

“And I have a bit more. Apparently this girl has had quite a history of psychiatric disorders. She’s been in and out of hospitals. She nearly died a little more than a year ago. Suicide attempt. Still living in Burlington when it happened, waitressing. She told the police and the people at Fletcher Allen hospital that she was in love with a man called Matthew Blake. Now, apparently, she’s living at home.”

Then something occurred to me: the anonymous letters received by the college, could Stephanie Prozzo have mailed them? Could she have been the one who helped derail my teaching career? I now filled Nan in about how the FBI found a DNA match to a man in Florida, who somehow realized they were trailing him and escaped, and how Prozzo had known about the man but hadn’t shared it with any of his colleagues. We both fell silent for a few moments, each trying to sift through all the contradictions and recently revealed truths. “So what this means,” Nan said at last, “is that this Prozzo guy is withholding some evidence and manipulating other information.”

“He’s trying to make the link to Matthew stick.”

“So it would seem.”

“It has to be because of his daughter. He must be beside himself over her.”

She said, “I would agree.… So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Nan. But I have to do something.”

“Whatever you do, Catherine, please be careful. And try and stay in touch with me.”

When I got off the phone, I called Breck into the kitchen and relayed what I’d heard. She remained skeptical.

“I
am
now going to call Matthew.”

“Well, I won’t witness that. I’ll be in the garden.” Breck stalked out of the room.

This time I was able to finally reach him. “Where have you been?” he shouted. “I need to talk to you. It’s about Prozzo. And who—”

“I know,” I said, and told him what I’d learned from Nan, who had intimate contact with the Burlington police department. “Is he there now?”

“He showed up this morning and left and said he’d return in fifteen minutes. He never came back. When he arrived yesterday he told me I couldn’t leave. He knows my car and the license plate. He said if I left he’d have the police track me down.”

“This whole thing about his daughter … it’s like he’s trying to frame you. You can’t answer any more of his questions. You’ve got to leave there.”

“But how? Where do I go?”

“Give me a second to think.… Okay.” There was one clear plan as far as I was concerned. “Matthew,” I resumed, “you have to give me the truth now.… That was a big lie you told me about living for two years in Asia. A lie you supported with other lies.”

“You got my message, didn’t you? I told you why. And I
did
have an affair with that woman. It happened almost right away. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to leave the country.”

“I
shouldn’t
believe anything you say. And I’m going to tell you, no matter how you spin this, you’re going to be thoroughly questioned and the truth will come out. If you lie to me now, I will turn my back on you forever. Which means if you end up in prison, I will have nothing to do with you.”

There was a warbling sound and then he broke down and wept. Finally he said, “Then what do I need to tell you, Catherine?”

I heaved a deep breath and then asked, “Did you harm any of those women?”

I could hear him sobbing steadily now, and then his voice, in tatters, “The problem … is no matter … what I say, you’re not going to believe me.”

“I think I might be able to accept the truth and believe you if I …
can
believe in it.”

“Okay, how about this?” he said, momentarily recovering his composure. “You’re the most important person in the world to me. I
don’t
want you to turn away from me.… I didn’t kill anyone, Catherine. I couldn’t kill anyone. I don’t know what he has, or what he’s cooked up, but I’m telling the complete truth. If I’m lying then I’d probably be angling to kill you, too,” he pointed out. “So how can you possibly trust me, anyway?”

He sounded convincing to me, but of course I wanted him to be convincing. How could I really be sure? No, I had to choose; but hadn’t I already chosen, already deciding to take the risk that everyone would say I was insane to take? At last I said, “Leave there and drive to my house.”

“That might be one of the first places he looks for me.”

“Not if you write him a note, attach it to your door, and say you drove back to Boston.
That
would make sense, because it’s not his jurisdiction. He’d need to get Boston as well as the FBI involved, and that will take precious time. Just write him the note and go to my house. There’s a key under the blue flowerpot next to the barn. Go in and wait for me. I’m coming home now.”

“But he said if I tried to go anywhere he’d have the police track me.”

“Have you looked outside your door?” He had. “Do you see any police cars?”

“Let me check again.” He was away from the phone for a few minutes. “Doesn’t look like anybody is out there,” he reported when he came back.

“Then pray that he was bluffing and get going. You don’t really have any alternative, as I see it.”

*   *   *

Breck was still outside when I went upstairs, packed my suitcase, gathered the bags of dog kibble, the metal bowls, the stands the metal bowls fit into, and bundled everything into the big canvas bag I’d brought. I took out some dog biscuits, held them before Virgil and Mrs. Billy, and then secreted them in one hand so that they’d follow me. The dogs were incredibly obedient, almost as if they knew that their cooperation would hasten them back to their preferred environment. They dutifully pursued the hand clutching the treats just as Henrietta had shadowed the quart of ice cream all the way into Hiram’s pickup truck.

I’d loaded everything into the car when Breck came around the side of the house, stopped ten feet away, and stared at me with her hands on her hips.

“Don’t tell me.… You’re going back.”

“I have to.”

“There is nothing you can do to prevent what’s happening now. You can’t get the detective to stop his weird investigation unless you get his superiors to stop him. And why should they believe what
you
say?”

“Because he claimed Matthew was once arrested and charged for assault in Burlington. And that was a complete lie!”

“He could easily claim to have said nothing about that to you, that you’re making it all up. You spoke to Anthony. Why don’t you let him handle it from here on in?”

I reminded Breck that my most recent attempt to contact Anthony was unsuccessful. And that he was still out of commission. And that time was of the essence.

“Okay, but Mom, if you can’t be sure that either Matthew or Prozzo are to be trusted, you’re taking a huge risk by going back to where they are.”

“I have to do something, Breck. It’s because of me that all this is happening. I have to find out why Prozzo never told me that the woman Matthew allegedly assaulted was his daughter.”

“Why don’t you just call and ask him?”

“He never answers his phone. Besides, Anthony and I need to confront Prozzo together. So if Prozzo happens to call, tell him I’m out or that I’ve gone to New York City,
not
that I’ve returned to Vermont.”

“
I
don’t like helping when you’re doing something I don’t believe in.”

“You have no choice, Breck, you have to help, you have to protect me.”

“I realize that, Mom!”

“I’m going to drive back, and if I don’t feel safe, I will go immediately to stay with Paul and Wade, how about that?”

Distraught, she shook her head and said nothing.

I was leaving her again, the way I did when she was a child and I got distracted by the man who momentarily eclipsed her father, and later on by other lovers. I closed the distance between us and put my hand gently on her cheek. “I have to deal with this, Breck. I know it sounds mad, but I’m going on my gut. Prozzo’s daughter was in love with Matthew and Prozzo is trying to implicate him in these murders. That is unholy.”

Breck at last gave up. “I know where you’re coming from, Mom. What more can I say?”

“I’ll call you. I promise to keep you in the loop. But let me leave now.”

I gave her a long, fierce hug good-bye, pulled out of the driveway, and began heading up the spine of New Jersey.

It was around three in the afternoon, very warm, and the sun was blaring at me through a hazy caul above the Watchung Mountains. I drove like an automaton. Early in my journey I reflected on how, like many New Yorkers and ex–New Yorkers, I downgraded New Jersey, which really has a lot to offer—a shoreline, mountains, and sweeping vistas of farmland—certainly topographically more interesting than Connecticut, which, in many quarters, has the reputation of being a more beautiful state. But neither of these places were a patch on Vermont. Even though I’d only been away for two days, I missed the gentle landscape, the meadows being mowed in the second haying of the summer, round bales curing in the sun.

As I settled into the long journey, cajoling the dogs to settle down in the backseat, I began to ponder Prozzo’s most recent actions. The more I thought about them, the more they baffled me. Here was somebody so completely invested in solving a crime suddenly veering off after a red herring. I understood that he blamed his daughter’s mental breakdown on Matthew, but why go to such lengths for … well, there was nothing else to call it but revenge? How could he actually delude himself into believing his daughter’s connection to Matthew Blake wouldn’t at some point come to light? He was jeopardizing twenty years of a good solid career, subverting all the careful work he’d done on the River Valley murders by pursuing a ridiculous, quixotic theory.

I grabbed my cell phone, called Anthony, and luckily this time reached him at home. “Thank God … they released you,” I said.