Darkness peering (3 page)

Marty's eyes had almost disappeared behind their pouchy lids. He gave
a curt nod. "That's my daughter."

"Thank you very much," Archie said, hitching his pants over his
prodigious belly. "Chief?"

They stepped out into the corridor and kept their voices low. "I've
got to testify this afternoon. Elderly female died of dehydration,
family's suing the hospital. I've scheduled the autopsy for this
evening. How's five o'clock sound?"

"Good."

"I've already performed a preliminary. No signs of penetration, no
semen or blood or bruises on her lower extremities."

"So we can rule out rape?"

"Think so. Don't quote me yet. Got some good fingernail scrapings,
but it looks like mostly dirt. State lab'll give us the results in
about a week ..."

Marty D'Agostino opened the door, his bony features sunken as if some
internal structure had collapsed.

"My condolences," Archie said.

"She was a good girl."

"You okay? Need a lift home?" Nalen offered, even though Marty had
come in his own car.

"I'm fine, Chief. Thanks for asking."

"Can I get you something?" Archie offered. "Iced tea?"

"I need to ask you gentlemen a favor."

They looked at him quizzically.

"Melissa was wearing a friendship bracelet when she disappeared.
Frances and I would like it back."

"Friendship bracelet?"

"She made it herself at summer camp. Red and yellow yarn woven into a
sort of diamond pattern. She kept it tied around her wrist. Never
took it off."

Nalen and Archie traded a look. Then Nalen spoke up. "We didn't find
anything like that on her, Marty."

"No?"

"I'm sorry." Nalen suddenly remembered the three-inch-long red thread
he'd found inside the perimeter and wondered if it belonged to
Melissa's friendship bracelet.

"She always wore it. Every day. Wouldn't leave the house without
it."

"Maybe the perp took it as a souvenir?" Archie conjectured, and Nalen
put his arm around Marty and walked him toward the door.

"I'll have my boys scour the area," he promised as they headed out to
the parking lot. The whole town seemed to be silently suffering its
loss, distant trees shooting into the sky like life's exposed wires.

ON HIS WAY HOME, NALEN STOPPED AT A GAS STATION TO

use the John. His stomach growled. The toilet gurgled. He opened the
dirty window facing the street and heard a child's scream. The sound
froze his blood, but now the child was laughing and he relaxed a bit.

He gazed at his reflection in the fogged mirror--bags under his eyes
despite the sleeping pills he swallowed nightly by the handful, sallow
skin, fleshy middle-aged face that used to be lean from long-ago daily
workouts, no time for that anymore--and told himself there was no
connection, no connection at all... Nalen pulled the cat bell out of
his pocket. Six months ago, Hughie Boudreau had radioed in a
disturbing call. Nalen met him at Ravenswood Road where the two men
hiked about a quarter of a mile into the forest and came upon a
clearing where a grisly scene assaulted their eyes: five decapitated
cats, their heads stuck on stakes, broken bodies discarded in a pile at
the base of a tree.

They soon found a suspect, Ozzie Rudd, the high school football coach's
son. Ozzie had an insolent smirk and slicked-back hair and confessed
that he and some friends had gotten drunk and teased some cats ...
maybe shot at them with a BB gun or

something ... but he swore on a stack of Bibles he'd never decapitated
anything in his life. Then, to Nalen's astonishment, he implicated
Nalen's own son, Billy.

That night, fighting a burning knot in the pit of his stomach, Nalen
drove his own flesh and blood to the station for an interview. Pale
and trembling, Billy denied everything at first. Nalen knew he was
lying because Billy had come home drunk a few nights prior, the same
night the cats were slaughtered. But Billy kept stubbornly shaking his
head, insisting, "No way, Dad!"

It turned out that four sixteen-year-olds--Billy and Ozzie and Neal
Fliss and Boomer Blazo--had gotten drunk on illicitly purchased
tequila, rounded up some stray cats from the neighborhood, carried them
in a burlap sack into the woods and shot them to death with a BB gun.
Ozzie and Neal did most of the shooting. The boys then left the dead
cats where they'd fallen and drove to the Triangle, where Ozzie picked
a fight with a boy named Eddy Tourneau, after which somebody called the
cops and everybody scattered to the four winds. Despite vociferous
protests from a few fervent animal lovers, the crimes had drawn only
misdemeanor charges. The judge handed down lenient sentences--$500
fine, one year's probation. As added punishment, Nalen had grounded
Billy for a month and made him do volunteer work at the blind school.
But to this day, Nalen wasn't sure who'd decapitated those cats, or
just how involved Billy had been, and the whole incident left an acrid
taste in his mouth.

Now, splashing water on his face, Nalen wondered if there was any
connection between the dead cats and Melissa D'Agostino. "Of course
not, you idiot," he said aloud. "Give your head a shake." Melissa
probably found the bell after her cat had disappeared and was carrying
it around like a keepsake. That must be how it'd gotten into her
hand.

Billy was just an all-American boy drowning in raging hormones, Nalen
told himself firmly, pushing any lingering doubts

to the deep, slumbering part of his brain where all his miseries
resided.

He drove home and parked in the driveway, smiling for the first time
that day when his nine-year-old daughter, Rachel, came scooting across
the lawn toward him. "How's my Pickle?" She squirmed in his arms,
barefoot and giggling. "How's my girl?"

"I fell!" She pointed at her scraped knee. "Mommy says I can keep the
scab. I'm gonna put it in an envelope."

"You are?" He laughed.

She tugged at the crotch of her creeping-up shorts and wriggled around
until he let her go. Beautiful. She was stunning. Yellow hair
twisting in the hot breeze. Blue-green eyes the color of the deepest
part of the ocean.

"Where's your mom?"

They turned toward the house and there Faye stood, almost as if they'd
willed her to appear. She was weeding the flower bed that bordered the
house, hoe in hand, sun throwing glints of her light-colored hair back
to him in brilliant flashes. She caught his smile and frowned. "Did
you find her?"

"Um ..." The words died on his lips.

Faye gave him a dark look. "Rachel, go inside and get a popsicle."

"Oh boy!" She scampered into the house, screen door slamming shut
behind her like a gunshot.

Faye wore a sleeveless sand-colored dress and white sandals, her short,
dirty-blond hair held in place by plastic kid's barrettes. Her face
was flushed and it shocked him how pretty she looked. She had a small
beige-colored mole high on her forehead and thin lips she was
constantly rubbing the lipstick off of. "So she's dead?" Faye asked
with grim suspicion. Yep.

"Was it an accident?" "No, she was strangled."

Faye stiffened, and he knew she was thinking about the children.

"I just stopped by to see how you're doing," he said. "I've gotta head
back to the station. Won't be home until late."

"Fine," she said, turning away from him, a mild breeze toying with her
dress. He knew she hated his world, a world of hard information
supported by physical evidence.

"We've only got forty-eight hours, give or take, before the trail grows
cold."

She ignored him, pretending to wipe the dirt off her hands.

"Where's Billy?"

That got her attention. "Over at Gillian's. Why?"

"I need to talk to him."

Her eyes narrowed. "What about?"

"Just a few questions."

She pressed her lips together, a white circle forming around her mouth,
and shivered like a horse after it's been running for a long time.
"You're never going to forgive him, are you?"

"I forgive him. I just don't trust him."

"Great." She threw down her hoe. "It's not like he murdered somebody.
Or are you going to blame him for that, too?"

"Faye." He walked up to her and ran his hand tentatively down one
naked arm. Her skin was warm from the sun. "I'll give you a call
tonight, okay?"

She jerked away from him. "What about us? Are we going to be all
right? Is it safe here?"

"You'll be fine. Just lock the doors."

"Lock the doors?" He felt her anger like a blast of muggy laundromat
air. "Great. I'll lock the doors, Nalen. I'll lock the doors. In
the meantime, what exactly am I supposed to tell our children?"

He shrugged. "Tell them the truth."

"That's your area of expertise, isn't it? The truth? That's what
you're forever getting to the bottom of. So why don't you tell them,
Nalen? You." She spat the word like a grapefruit seed.

He watched her march off, arms and legs oddly pale in the September
sun. The date on this milk carton had definitely expired. She used to
wet her fingers to put out candle flames, wash her feet in the damp
grass. She had been his view for nearly eighteen years, the bull's-eye
of his day; and all the while, a sense of privacy had been growing up
around her. At some point, she'd lost her habit of wanting him.

"Faye, don't be mad."

She disappeared into the toolshed.

Nalen went inside the house and found Rachel planted in front of the TV
in the living room, skinny legs swinging back and forth to the tune of
some game show theme song. She licked a strawberry popsicle, her
tongue turning obscenely red, and suddenly he envisioned her dead, sunk
in the muck, those lovely, curious eyes open to the sun, flies
feasting. His stomach lurched.

She swung her head around. "Daddy, it's The Match Game!"

He crouched down until he was eye-level. "Listen, Sweet Pickle," he
said, "I've got something important to discuss with you."

"Is it about the missing girl?"

"Yes."

"She's retarded."

"Who told you that?"

"Everybody."

"Rachel," he said, taking her by the shoulders, "I've warned you not to
talk to strangers, haven't I?"

She rolled her eyes. "Only about a million times."

"Well, not just strangers. You've got to be careful of people you
know, too. I don't mean to scare you. I know this may sound strange,
but you can't trust anyone. I don't want you going anyplace alone,
understand? Always tell your mother where you plan to be, even if it's
with a friend, even if it's just up the street. And if anybody starts
acting, you know ... funny ..."

Her eyes grew round with wonder, and she drew her knees to

her chest, bare legs dusty from playing in the backyard where the
grass grew spotty in patches.

"Some people can be dangerous. It's like with the wasps in the attic,"
he said. "You've gotta run away when they start dive bombing for your
head."

"Okay," she said, clearly puzzled.

"What I'm saying is ... if a stranger or even someone you know ... an
adult... asks you to come with them--"

"You're scaring her," Faye said.

Nalen stood, knees creaking. Since when did his knees creak? He felt
mildly dizzy, his vision narrowing so that, for an instant, Faye was
the only thing he could see. He caught his breath and the world
widened.

"Rachel, go wash up," Faye said.

"But Mom!"

"I said now."

"How about a kiss?" Nalen opened his arms. "I won't be home until way
past your bedtime."

"Boo-hoof" She made a dramatic face, then leapt into his arms and
presented her strawberry-flavored mouth to be kissed.

He gave her a puckering, daddy like smooch, and she giggled and wiped
her lips, wiping some of the dirt away. She slipped from his grip and
ran up the stairs to splash water on her face and pick at her scab.

"This town was supposed to be safe," Faye said, still angry. "I
thought that's why we moved here."

She looked radiant in her indignation, and he was once again reminded
that all his love for her, all of his deep and desperate need, swung in
a soft sack between his legs. "Well, I guess it's all my fault,
then."

Her expression softened, hips propped against the doorframe. "You're
just never around, is all."

"Sometimes it's more of a job than other times."

Her eyes took him in. "You look terrible, Nalen."

"I'm sorry I scared her."

"No, you're right. She needs to hear it. I could never do that. Steal
her innocence from her. You're a lot braver than I am."

Sensing empathy in her voice, he hooked her by the elbow and drew her
close. "You know what?"

"What."

"I've still got a crush on my wife."

She gave him a warm, melancholy smile. "Being married to you has given
me ulcers."

"Being married to you," he said, "has given me a purpose."

The setting sun melted her face to honey and shadow. "Be careful," she
whispered.

He kissed her softly, reluctant to let go. "Don't forget to lock
up."

BACK AT THE MORGUE, NALEN PUT ON A SURGICAL MASK AND

stood beside Archie as he opened the dead girl's rib cage with pruning
shears from Dale's Discount Hardware. The medical examiner wore a
standard-issue surgical gown, green surgical mask, shoe covers, and a
pair of latex gloves and spoke into a microphone attached to a tape
recorder tucked underneath the steel table. The dead girl lay naked on
cold steel, her pear-shaped body the color and texture of cream cheese.
She seemed small for fourteen; her breasts had just begun to develop,
and the fuzz of darkish pubic hair sprouting from her genitals was just
about the saddest thing he'd ever seen.

Archie worked for two hours, reducing Melissa D'Agostino to a series of
statistics. "Fourteen-year-old white female, manually strangulated.
Dissection of the throat reveals extensive hemorrhage into the
musculature and bilateral fractures of the thyroid