Quiet as the Grave (16 page)

“After two years? But you were married—”

“Six years. I know. She seemed genuinely shocked that I planned to walk out. She begged me to stay, and,
for a while, things seemed to get better. She'd been cold as ice, during those first two years, but suddenly she was on fire. She wanted to make love every day, every night. Sometimes several times a night.”

Suzie felt her cheeks flaming. She poked at her steak and tried not to hate Justine too much. “Well, that must have been a dream come true.”

He shook his head. “Not really. It took me a while to catch on, but underneath all the theatrics, she was still as cold as ice. It was the weirdest thing. She acted insatiable, but she actually wasn't enjoying it at all.”

Now that was hard to believe. Suzie frowned. “Give me a break.”

“I'm serious. It was all make-believe. In the first five years of our marriage, I'm not sure Justine had one single truly satisfying sexual experience.”

Suzie tapped her fingers on the table. “Okay, here's where I may be stepping over the line, but…” She wrinkled her nose. “Are you that bad?”

He chuckled. “She said I was wonderful. She said the earth moved. But it didn't.”

“Well, umm. Not to be indelicate, but were you really giving it the old college try? I mean, you do know how it works for women, and—”

He blinked innocently. “I think I do. I did look it up in a book once. Maybe you could tell me.”

She smiled. What a damaged lady Justine must have been. Suzie had a sneaking suspicion that she might be able to have a “satisfying sexual experience” here at this fancy table, if Mike looked at her just the right way.

“Maybe someday I'll show you,” she said. She made her voice tart to keep her emotions under control. “But you were in the middle of your story. Carry on.”

“After a couple of years of that, she got tired of pretending, for obvious reasons. I think that's when the other men really came into the picture, but I didn't care. I was tired of the charade, too. Unfortunately, that respite lasted only about a year.”

What an emotional seesaw the whole marriage must have been. Suzie wondered whether that had been part of the fun for Justine, bouncing Mike's emotions up and down like a rubber ball.

“About six years into the marriage, she came back to my bedroom. That's where the story gets ugly. Because that's when I found out what really worked for her sexually. That's when I found out what she really wanted.”

Darn it. Suzie set her jaw, getting ready for the hard part. “And that was?”

“Pain.”

She let her fork fall with a clatter. “What?”

His face was set in tight lines. He clearly did not like reliving this.

“Pain.”

“Yours or hers?”

“Hers. Justine wanted me to hurt her. It was the only way she could—find any release.”

Suzie swallowed. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it wasn't this. She'd thought maybe stories of other lovers, arguments in the night, letters intercepted….

Apparently her imagination simply wasn't creative enough. “When you say pain, do you mean—”

“I mean
pain
. I don't mean tussling on the bed, or love nips, or even sex so vigorous you ache in the morning. I mean pain. I mean welts. I mean blood.”

Suzie looked at her filet in its pool of red juice and felt her stomach turn sideways. “Oh, my God,” she said.

“I tried to help her. I begged her to see a psychiatrist. I even tried, a few times, to meet her halfway. I agreed to little things.” He closed his eyes. “But hurting someone is…for me, it's simply not compatible with lovemaking. I found that I could do one or the other…but not both.”

Oh, my God.

“We limped along like that for a while, but eventually I could barely stand to touch her. It was too sick. The last night we ever tried to make love, she wanted me to bite her breasts. She was furious when I said no. She wanted me to draw blood. When I refused, she tried to bite me.”

Suzie put out her hand. “Mike—”

“I held her away—she wasn't any stronger than a child, really. She was so frustrated that, in the end, she bit the inside of her own forearm. She bit until she bled, and then she spit the blood in my face.”

“Oh,
Justine
.” Suzie closed her eyes. “And then?”

“Then I left. I never touched her again.”

 

O
N THE WAY BACK
to the boathouse, they were both unusually subdued. Mike turned on a Chopin CD, which Suzie thought was a good choice. Chopin was very tender, and they needed to remember that tenderness still existed in this crazy world.

They didn't touch—who could think of kissing, or even holding hands, after a story like that? But she hadn't ever felt closer to him. She hadn't ever admired him more. He had been through hell to make a good life for Gavin. And he hadn't tried to turn Gavin against his mother. That alone practically qualified him for sainthood.

She shut her eyes, letting the sweetness of Chopin wash over her. She remembered how passionately she had envied Justine, once. That seemed so long ago now.

It was hard to imagine any of the things Mike had described. She couldn't imagine that gorgeous face twisted, begging for Mike to hurt her. She couldn't picture that pampered mouth smeared with her own blood. Her breasts…

Suzie instinctively put her hand up, as if to protect her own breasts. And as she did, the gesture reminded her of something. Some other time she'd reacted with a wincing horror to a similar story.

Yes, she'd heard another story like this, somewhere….

Biting…sexual sadism…

But where? For all her big talk, Suzie's own life had been pathetically tame. She had a friend who had a friend whose sister reported using handcuffs in bed, but that was as close as Suzie had ever come to stuff like this.

Suddenly, she remembered. About two years ago…there had been a torrid news article about a fifteen-year-old Albany girl who had run away from home. When she returned, she brought back a bizarre story. She said she'd been drugged and taken to an underground cave where she'd been raped and sexually tortured. Suzie couldn't remember the details, but she did remember that the girl said the man had bitten her, especially on the breasts.

The TV stations had exploited the drama for a few days, but the police hadn't believed the girl's story. She'd been a runaway before, and she had a history of telling horrific tales that turned out to be pure fantasy.

The girl had died shortly afterward, of a drug overdose. If she hadn't done it in a public place, that part wouldn't have made the news at all.

No one thought there was a word of truth in it.

Still…was it possible the girl hadn't been lying? What if there was a sexual sadist with a fetish for biting women's breasts….

What if Justine had run into him?

Suzie looked at Mike. She glanced at the gas gauge, to see how much gas they had.

“Hey,” she said softly.

He glanced over at her. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Nope. Just thinking.”

He adjusted his hands on the wheel and smiled. “Sounds dangerous.”

“So, I was thinking…want to go to Albany?”

“Now? Why? Did you forget your favorite baggy black sweatshirt? I've been wondering where that old standby had disappeared to.”

She rolled her eyes. “Get over it. I burned that thing years ago. This is something else.”

She told him what she remembered.

It did sound pretty far-fetched, when she said it out loud. For a minute she thought he was going to tell her she was nuts.

But he didn't. He tapped his finger thoughtfully on the steering wheel, and then, finally, he shrugged.

“Why not? We can go in the morning. I've got no objection to taking a long shot. Especially if it's the only shot we've got.”

S
UZIE USED TO HAVE A SAYING
:
Whenever Luck seems to be going your way, brace yourself. It's about to take a big U-turn.

When she and Mike went home after dinner that night, Luck definitely seemed to be on their side. They looked up the old news reports on the Internet, just to be sure Suzie had remembered the story correctly. She had.

Because the girl had been a minor when she first came forward claiming abduction and rape, most papers hadn't published her name. But after her death, her mother, Arlene Cesswood, had given quite a few interviews and openly discussed her daughter Loretta's ordeal.

Then they used the online white pages to locate Arlene Cesswood's address. Bingo on the first try.

With everything ready, they went to bed by eleven, planning to get an early start the next morning.

That's when Luck put on its blinker for the U-turn.

They had just finished up a quick breakfast when they heard a knock on the boathouse door. Mike got up to answer it. Her heart thudding, Suzie leaned all the way over the table so that she could see who it was.

It was Harry Rouge, Mike's lawyer. The minute Suzie spotted the bottlebrush mustache, she plopped
back onto her chair and crossed her fingers under her thigh.
Please
, she prayed,
don't let it be really bad news
.

Mike let the lawyer in.
Oops
…Suzie remembered that her blanket and sheets were still on the sofa. She rushed over and, with a murmured apology, snatched them out of the way so the older man could sit.

As he settled himself, she tried to read his expression. She didn't know him well, but she'd guess he was very worried about something. Every line in his face angled down, from his eyebrows to the corners of his mouth.

He was not the bearer of good tidings.

As she stood there hugging the linens, Harry shot her a stern look from under his shaggy white eyebrows. “You slept here last night?”

“Yes,” she said, wishing she didn't sound so defensive. But darn it. She'd spent every single night on this sofa, though she would have far preferred to be upstairs with Mike. If she was going to suffer through a stint as a vestal virgin, she at least wanted credit for it.

“Suzie's just a friend, Harry.” Mike took a seat on the armchair nearest the sofa. “I haven't had a lover since Justine disappeared, if that's what you're asking. I've always understood that, until she was found alive, or her death was explained, I was standing on very thin ice.”

“Good. I'd say that's a fair evaluation.” Harry again looked at Suzie, and again she smiled, trying to look perfectly platonic.

He turned back to Mike. “However, right now I'm not sure that's your biggest problem.”

Mike sat very still. “Okay,” he said calmly. “What is?”

Harry cleared his throat. “Would you rather talk privately?”

“I don't have any secrets from Suzie. I've known her since we were kids. She's trying to help. Whatever it is, I want her to hear it.”

The lawyer lifted one hand, as if to say,
if his client's bullheaded, what can a lawyer do
?

“All right,” he said. “I had a call from the D.A.'s office this morning. They have a preliminary match on several hairs they found when they vacuumed your bedroom. Unfortunately, at least at this stage, they seem to be Justine's.”

Suzie knew her mouth fell open. She was well aware of how many times Mike had insisted Justine had never been inside this boathouse.

“It has to be a mistake,” Mike said, but Suzie could tell he was shaken, too. “Or else it's a lie. She was never—”

“Never in this house. I know, I know. They're running the DNA tests now, and if they do turn out to be hers, they'll have to be accounted for. I have already pointed out some of the possibilities to Quigley, which I think may be why he isn't preparing an arrest warrant as we speak.”

“Possibilities?” Mike's voice was rough. “What do you mean, possibilities? I'm telling you, she wasn't ever—”

“I wonder if you might want to soften that statement a little. If those hairs are hers, we have several options. They might have come in on Gavin's clothes, after one of his visits with her. The tricky part for that line of thinking is that these are pubic hairs.”

Suzie's knees felt a little weak, so she sat down on the sofa next to Harry. Mike looked as if this news had paralyzed him.

Harry continued, as mild-mannered as ever, as if he hadn't just dropped a nuclear bomb into the room.

“However, that's still a feasible explanation. With clothes tumbling together in the laundry, hairs can be transferred. Jurors won't like that, though. It sounds desperate. More plausible, however, would be that someone else, not you, let her into this house when you weren't home. Gavin, perhaps?”

“No.”

Harry sighed. “Categorical statements, particularly at this stage, may work against us. We have to think strategically. We'll have to talk to Gavin. He may not have wanted to admit letting Justine in, given that you had told him not to.”

Mike's hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “Your
strategy
is to call my son a liar?”

Harry cast a look at Suzie, as if he wondered whether she might be objective enough to think more clearly. She was. She saw what Harry meant. But she also saw why it was unacceptable to Mike.

“I think it's just hard,” she said carefully, giving Harry a look that said
be patient
, “for anyone to believe that strategy is required to keep an innocent man out of prison.”

“The sooner you let go of that fallacy the better. This is a very serious matter. Who else could have let her in, Mike? Do you have a housekeeper?”

“A friend sometimes cleans for me, while she watches Gavin. Debra Pawley.”

“Does she have a key?”

“No.”

“Does anyone have a key?”

Mike shook his head. “I wouldn't risk it. Not with Gavin here.”

“Do you have a spare key hidden on the grounds that someone might have been aware of?”

Mike shook his head. “Gavin has one, and I have one. That's it.”

Harry steepled his fingers at the mound of his belly and stared across them. “Okay, we'll work with what we've got. I think I can handle the hairs, one way or another. The evidence I'm really worried about is the blood. The type matches. If the DNA results go against us, that will be much harder to explain.”

“That's bullshit,” Mike said. He leaned forward. “Whatever they took from the headboard of my bed, it was not Justine's blood.”

“It was definitely human blood. And it wasn't yours, or your son's. You both have type A, and this is type O. Justine was type O.”

Suzie put her hand on Harry's arm. “Something's not right here. Can't you see that? Someone must be setting him up.”

“I was there,” the lawyer said gently, “when they used the luminal. It was old blood. Someone had tried to wash it off.” He turned to Mike. “That bed wasn't ever in your other house, was it? The house you shared together?”

Yes
, Suzie thought, hope rising. Yes, that would account for it. Justine liked to have rough sex. There would have been blood—she'd begged for blood. Mike could have brought it here on the bed unaware.

But Mike was shaking his head. “I didn't take anything from that house. I started over completely.”

The lawyer sighed again, and this time Suzie thought he sounded more weary than exasperated. The thought frightened her.

“Well, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.” He stood. “I'm sorry to bring bad news, Mike, but I
wanted you to start thinking about some of these questions. Because it looks as if we're going to need some really good answers.”

 

A
RLENE
C
ESSWOOD'S HOME
in Middleton Heights was a brick town house, one of about thirty identical attached buildings lined up in an attractive row.

Middleton Heights was one of the newest “reclaimed” neighborhoods on the fringes of downtown Albany. Mike knew the type. Five years ago it would have been deteriorating and unloved. Today it was overpriced and highly sought after by young professionals who hated long commutes.

Loretta Cesswood had run away from this house four times in three years, according to the newspaper reports. Mike wasn't sure why. It looked nice enough, with geraniums in a tub on the front porch, and an “Ode to Joy” doorbell.

Even Loretta's mother, Arlene, an attractive blonde in her mid to late thirties, seemed like a decent person who had honestly loved her troubled daughter.

“Loretta used to be the happiest, prettiest little girl you've ever seen,” she said as she showed them into the living room, which was air-conditioned, tidy and very green, with everything upholstered in lime silk.

She pointed to a photograph on the wall that showed a blond child of about six, wearing a cowgirl uniform.

“See? She used to say she wanted to be a cowboy when she grew up.” Arlene Cesswood laughed at the little joke, which she'd probably told a million times. But she ended it by putting a tissue to her nose and sniffing back tears. They must never have been far from the surface.

Mike wondered if it ever went away, that eggshell vulnerability. He let his mind edge just close enough to picturing what he'd be like if he lost Gavin. But looking into that abyss was dizzying in its horror, so he pulled back. No, he concluded. It probably never went away.

As Arlene led them to the green sofa, he wondered why she'd let them in. She hadn't asked for identification, or probed into their motives. They had offered a simple opening statement, that they'd like to talk to her about Loretta, assuming they'd have to elaborate from there. But she'd opened the door and ushered them in. Either she was very naive, or she'd welcome the devil himself if he offered a chance to take out the old memories again.

The TV was on in the living room. Arlene muted it without turning it off, as if it were some kind of eternal flame that must never be allowed to go out. That made sense, too. They knew that Arlene had been a single mother, and Loretta her only child. The connection to the world through the TV was probably how she kept from going mad.

“Would you like something to drink? A snack, maybe? I've just made some fruit squares, which came out quite well.”

Mike had a
no
on his lips, and a
God, no!
in his mind, when Suzie jumped in and said, “Sure. Thanks, that would be great.”

When Arlene left to bustle around in the kitchen, Mike saw that Suzie had a method to her madness. It gave them time to look around the room and figure out a little about Loretta on their own.

Other than the television, the entire room was like a shrine to the girl. Dozens of framed photographs
crowded every flat surface. Swimming medals and horseback riding trophies paraded across the window-sills and wall shelves. The refrigerator, which was visible through the kitchen pass-through, was covered in crayon artwork that said, Happy Mother's Day, I love you! and My Pet Dog Bill.

But everything, he noticed, was a memento of Loretta the child. From birth up to about eleven or twelve. She'd died at fifteen. Three missing years. It was as if, from the moment Loretta hit her teens, she hadn't done a single thing her mother wanted to commemorate.

In a few minutes Arlene returned with a tray of gooey things. They looked like a cross between the slices of Christmas fruitcake his aunt Birdie used to send and the mud pies his girl cousins used to concoct in the backyard. Mike shot Suzie a glance, but she picked one up and bit right in. He felt his mouth pursing, just imagining it.

“Fantastic,” she said happily, and took another bite.

He turned to Arlene. “I guess you're wondering why we're here,” he said. “We're hoping you might be able to tell us more about what happened to Loretta two years ago, when she was abducted.”

The woman looked surprised. Maybe she was used to hearing people add the skeptical qualifier, “when she
said
she was abducted.”

“Why do you want to know?” In her lap she held a small photo of baby Loretta, which she'd had to move to make room for the tray. She fingered the frame nervously. “Are you reporters? No one has wanted to write about Loretta's story for a long time now. They thought she was making it up.”

“No,” he said. “We're not reporters. That's what I wanted to tell you. I live in Tuxedo Lake. That's
about twenty miles from here. Two years ago my wife disappeared. We didn't know what happened to her, but then, a few weeks ago her body was found. She'd been murdered.”

Arlene put out her hand, the instinctive recognition that they belonged to the same club, the club of lives that had been suddenly, senselessly, broken. She couldn't know how ambivalent his feelings had been for Justine, but that didn't seem to matter.

“I'm so sorry,” Arlene said. “But how can Loretta's story help you? She wasn't murdered, you know. She took her own life. Or it may have been an accident.” She looked down at the picture. “That's what I tell myself, anyhow.”

“I know the situations seem very different,” he said. “And you may be right. It may not be connected at all. But there were some similarities, at least from what we read in the papers. I need to find out who killed my wife. I have to look at anything—everything—that might provide even the smallest clue.”

Suzie sat very still, saying nothing. Mike knew she didn't dare upset this delicate moment. When Arlene looked over at her, as if she had started to wonder how Suzie fit in, Suzie smiled and indicated with a gesture that, if Arlene didn't mind, she'd like to have another fruit square.

Arlene nodded and patted her hand, obviously pleased.

Then she turned back to Mike. “Do you think the person who abducted Loretta might be the same man who killed your wife? Is that what you're hoping?”