The Last Good Day (12 page)

“It was just like this magical place where I could go and make up stories with my friends.” She pushed on, trying to unhook the latch in his mind. “You couldn’t really swim in it before the Clean Water Act because it was so polluted. So we used to just sit on the rocks and talk about all the cool things we could find at the bottom if we ever got scuba gear. Indian arrowheads. War axes. Sunken treasures. I had this friend whose father worked at the prison up the river, and I used to have this whole fantasy of helping these two innocent boys escape. I’d have a rowboat waiting at the shore when they came out of this tunnel they’d dug with spoons. And then they’d shoot at us from the guard tower as we rowed away …”

She could see he was starting to get interested. That little telltale jiggling of his knee reminded her of how he used to squiggle around in bed when she was telling him a particularly exciting good-night story.

“One time,” she said, “my friend’s brother dove into the water looking for a gun.”

“Why?”

“He was a cop and a diver.” She paused, trying to remember exactly how Mike’s older brother, Johnny, told this story. He always managed to wring a loud laugh out of it. But she didn’t have his bravura, his way of tossing a good line up in the air, letting it hang there until everyone was leaning forward, and then banging it home.

“But, you know, the Hudson was like pea soup in those days because of all the sludge they’d dumped in it,” she said. “You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. So he’s swimming around in his wet suit, feeling around at the bottom, and all of a sudden he reaches up and realizes he’s surrounded by steel bars.”

“What happened?”

“He’d swum right into a huge animal cage. Like something you’d keep a lion or a tiger in.”

“Really?” His eyes widened. “And where did the animal go?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the tiger got out. Or maybe it was just an empty cage that fell off the back of a boat. The point is, he swam right into it and couldn’t see enough to find the way out. And his oxygen tank only had about five minutes in it.”

You could see how Johnny would get himself jammed up. He was all sinew and nerve. Always looking to dive right in and mix it up.
A live round,
his father called him.
You never know where he’s going to end up.
As for Mr. Johnny, he said the only time he ever truly felt free was five fathoms down. But he had a good heart. That was his saving grace. And in the end, probably the thing that killed him.

“So, what’d he do?” Clay’s knee jiggled more frantically.

“I guess he just had to feel his way along, bar by bar, until he found the opening,” she said. “And pray that his air would hold out.”

“And did it?”

She felt a diving bell of sadness descend within her chest. “Well, I guess it did,” she said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be telling you this, would I?”

He exhaled with relief, as if she’d just regaled him with the plot of a great horror movie, and she felt a small sunbeam expand in her chest, a quiet delight in knowing that she could still hold his attention sometimes.

She was beginning to wonder. These days she often found herself skulking after the children like a spurned lover, mooning over happy times they’d had at the sandbox and the dinosaur museum, conveniently forgetting the hours of stupefying tedium watching
Barney
and the mortifying tantrums in overpriced theme restaurants. She missed being the center of their universe—the Golden Idol on an island where no one could swim. But she tried to tell herself it was a good thing, all this growing independence. Who wanted to be worshiped all the time anyway? Still, a part of her could not quite accept that time was passing, that something forged so deep in the well-spring of her body could just paddle away without a backward glance.

Clay’s brow began to furrow. “Mom?”

“What?”

“Why’re all your stories about people trying to get away?”

The question brought her up short. His voice was finally starting to change, she noticed, dropping into a wobbly alto.

“I hadn’t really thought of that,” she said. “They were just stories I wanted to tell you about the river and the kind of things that used to happen to me …”

“But that’s where they found that lady dead this morning. Are you saying you want me to go down there by myself?”

“Um, not exactly …” The spell was breaking. “I was thinking you could find other places here you could make your own.”

“
Yeah,
right. As soon as I get my own car. In
three
years.”

He turned away and glanced toward the door. She wondered if he was going to sneak down the hall to the computer room and start downloading porn off the Internet as soon as she left.

“Well, I guess I better get back to work,” he said. “I still have to work on my history outline.”

“You need any help with it?”

“Mom, come on. When have you ever helped me?”

So this is how it’s going to be, she realized. Bit by bit, the child goes away. The bedtime stories no longer enchant. The cuddles embarrass. The voice changes. The world scratches at the windows. And nothing that a mother says makes any difference.

“’Kay, good night.” She went to kiss him on top of the head, trying not to notice the way he flinched slightly. “Don’t stay up too late.”

10

WITH GRAVEL AND GRIT
from Lynn’s driveway still wedged in the soles of his work boots, Mike came crunching back into the police station at twelve-thirty and found Harold Baltimore in a small gray room at the back, watching the interrogation next door through one-way glass.

“How’s the show?” he asked quietly.

“Pull up a chair and see for yourself. The reviews aren’t in yet.”

In the next room, Detective Paco Ortiz was moving around the hunched-over man seated at the black table, his shaved head shining like a honeydew melon under the fluorescent light.

“So when you got home from the airport this evening, your wife wasn’t home and you started to get worried,” said Paco, his blue Riverside P.D. T-shirt snug across his oil-barrel chest and his goatee narrowing like a trowel. “Is that right?”

“At first, I was just a little concerned that she hadn’t left a note,” said Jeffrey Lanier in a high nasal voice. “But then after the kids got home and I talked to the baby-sitter, I started getting really nervous. She hadn’t heard from Sandi since last night.”

Lanier was a tan youngish-looking man in his early forties with the kind of V-shaped all-American face some women liked, hazel eyes behind Clark Kent glasses, wide thin lips, and a cleft in his chin. From the front, he had an impressive mound of chestnut-brown hair, but when he turned, he revealed a bald patch growing like a spotlight on the back of his head. He was dressed as if he’d just been tossed out of bed, in a maroon Harvard sweatshirt, rumpled khaki shorts, and Teva sandals. So this was what a so-called Internet millionaire looked like these days, Mike thought dourly.

“Is it unusual for your wife to be out for so long without letting you know where she is?” asked Paco, hitching up his gun belt.

“She doesn’t give me a daily schedule. All I know is it’s almost eight o’clock, she hasn’t been home since last night, the kids need dinner, the baby-sitter needs a ride to the train station, and her friend Lynn Schulman is on the answering machine from a restaurant last night saying, ‘Where the hell are you?’ And I hear that, and I start to freak out.”

Mike felt Harold nudge him with his elbow but willed himself not to look over. Life in a small town; eventually everything connects.

“Uh-huh.” Paco sat down on the opposite side of the table and balanced a legal pad on his knees. “So your wife was supposed to be meeting somebody for dinner?”

“Girls’-night-out kind of thing,” said Jeffrey. “You know, everybody’s gotta let off steam once in a while. But then I hear
this,
and I know that Lynn’s one of her best friends forever and I start to think …”

He sniffed, touched the centerpiece of his glasses, and his nostrils turned red at the rims. This was the type of slightly callow boy-man who’d gotten so used to people cutting him slack that some essential muscle in him had started to atrophy.

“So when was the last time you spoke to your wife?”

“Yesterday around lunchtime. She called me on the cell. She wanted to remind me we had a parent-teacher meeting coming up later this week, and she didn’t want me to miss this one. We’ve had some scheduling conflicts in the past.”

“I hear that,” said Paco with an encouraging half-smile. “There ain’t enough hours in the day for me to be with my kids.”

“Since when is he married?” asked Mike behind the glass.

“He isn’t.” Harold shrugged. “But he’s got two kids living in Florida.”

“So were you guys knocking heads a little about your schedule?” asked Paco.

“Just the usual stress of me being on the road all the time and her having to stay home with the kids.” Jeffrey Lanier crossed his legs, a big toe flexing under a Velcro strap. “It’s hard for her, me being away so much. Look, it’s hard for me too. I miss them like crazy when I’m away all week.”

Yeah, right, thought Mike. And then try to make up for it by screaming at them on the soccer field Saturday morning and falling asleep on your wife before the opening skit on
Saturday Night Live.

“So how long were you away on this trip anyway?” asked Paco, staying focused. “Five days, did you say?”

“I took the shuttle to Boston early Thursday morning so I could get in all my meetings, see some friends, and be home tonight.” Jeff hunched forward earnestly, like a seventh-grader trying to read a blackboard. “That’s part of our new deal. I’m supposed to get home to watch the kids so she can go out one or two nights a week.”

“I hear you.” Paco made a quick note on his pad. “And so you’ve got phone numbers for people in Boston we can double-check everything with.”

“Yeah, sure, but look … what’s going on?” Jeff put a hand over his bald spot, protecting his tender vulnerability. “I came down here to give a missing person report. Is there something you guys aren’t telling me?”

“Sir, I’m just trying to get all the facts together so we can proceed to look for your wife,” Paco said patiently. “Now, what time did your flight get into LaGuardia today?”

“About five o’clock, but …” Jeff was distracted, noticing the window in the wall for the first time and realizing somebody might be behind it listening. “Look, I’m really starting to get scared here. These children need their mother …”

“Sir, we’re gonna try to find her as fast as we can,” said Paco, swiveling his chair around the side of the table to get close to him. “Do you have a picture of your wife that we can work off of?”

Mike watched the husband fish around in his pocket for a wallet photo, his nostrils expanding and contracting more quickly, his agitation filling the interrogation room like helium.

“What do you think?” Harold murmured.

“He’s making the right noises, but it’s too early in the song.” Mike moved back from the glass. “Why’s he so hinky already?”

“This is a head shot.” Paco thumbed his lip as he studied the wallet photo. “You have anything that shows, um, a fuller view?”

“What do you mean?” said Jeff, pushing back in his chair and holding on to the armrests, his bare knees starting to double up like knuckles. “Why would you need that?”

“It’s standard.” Paco shrugged. “Just to see if there are any distinguishing marks and characteristics. People can change their hair or even their eye color nowadays if they decide to run away. Body type can be harder.”

“She was tall, about five foot eight, and … well, you know, she’d had two children.” He touched his glasses and looked up at the ceiling, trying to concentrate. “And she’d had a lumpectomy. And then, um, a little liposuction.”

“She got her fat sucked?”

“It was for her, you know, not for me.” Jeff started breathing harder. “And, ah, I guess she’d just gotten some kind of a tattoo on her ankle.”

“A tattoo?” Paco’s eyes batted up at the window and then landed back on Lanier. “What kind of tattoo?”

“A blue butterfly.” Jeff’s chest began to heave, and he coughed. “She got it in the city this summer, on Saint Marks Place. Midlife crisis kind of thing. She started doing a lot of crap like that after she got past the cancer.”

“Shit, it’s her,” said Harold, a radiator hiss leaking through his front teeth. “I
knew
it.”

Mike pressed his lips together, carefully containing himself.

In the other room, Jeffrey Lanier removed his glasses and put his hands up to the sides of his head as if he’d just realized he had a splitting headache.

“Hey, you’re not asking me this because that’s what they found on the body at the train station?”

“Sir, we honestly don’t know who that was, but we just have to follow through on every possibility …”

“Oh my God …”

Jeff started to rise, and his face turned a deep arterial shade of red.

“Oh, here we go,” said Mike.

“Shit.” Harold grimaced. “Is this guy gonna stroke out on us?”

It was like watching a controlled demolition. Jeff’s left knee went first, bending and buckling, his shoulders sagged, and then the rest of him fell sideways against the table, scraping the legs on the linoleum floor. He grabbed the edge to try to keep his balance, and a high rasping honk choked his chest.

Paco half-rose and slid a box of Kleenex across the table. “Mr. Lanier, you gonna be all right?”

“Yeah, I’m all right. I’m all right.” Jeff gasped and waved him off.

“I only have a few more questions. I know you’re anxious to get back to your kids.”

“What am I going to tell them?” Jeff sat down again, the rhythm of his breathing becoming more spasmodic, as if he were turning inside out. “How am I going to do this?”

“Well, hopefully, you won’t have to. It’ll turn out to be somebody else.”

Mike heard himself snort. Harold looked over at him impassively, as if they were strangers on a park bench trying to read the same newspaper.

“Mr. Lanier?” said Paco, waiting patiently for the subject to get himself under control. “I’m sorry to have to ask this, but are you and your wife having any emotional or financial difficulties?”