The Long and Faraway Gone (33 page)

C
HESTER AND
L
AWR
ENCE
had forgotten, or had never known, Howard B.'s last name. Julianna drove to the nearest branch of the public library, in Warr Acres, and told the librarian at the reference desk what she was trying to find. The librarian lit up: the highlight of her day. She started clicking the mouse before Julianna stopped talking. Five minutes later the librarian had located an obituary printed in the
Daily
Oklahoman
on March 31, 2006.

“Howard Neil Bridwell, 65, prominent Oklahoma City attorney.”

A graduate of the Northwest Classen Class of 1959. President of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of Texas. A juris doctorate from UT in 1966, after which he moved back to Oklahoma City, passed the bar, and joined the firm of Kirkland and Nash. Senior partner of the firm from 1984 until his death.

Devoted father, loving husband. Survived by his wife of forty-­one years, Pauline. Two daughters, one son, four grandchildren.

No photo of the deceased.

The librarian was beaming at Julianna, as if to say,
What else you got for me?

“Can you find contact information for his widow?” Julianna said.

The librarian seemed disappointed, the task beneath her. But she turned back to her computer and quickly found a phone number for Pauline Bridwell, an address. Julianna entered both into her phone.

“Thank you,” she told the librarian.

Pauline Bridwell lived just off Western, on one of the streets in Nichols Hills where the houses were expensive but older, smaller, less aggressively landscaped—­homes, not compounds. She answered the door wearing jeans, an oversize wool cardigan, and a pair of garden gloves.

Julianna didn't know what she'd been expecting. Pearls? Howard B.'s widow was in her seventies and seemed appealingly unconcerned by that fact. Her face was lined the way a face should be lined, her hair a natural shade of silver-­gray.

She smiled warmly at Julianna. “Sorry. I was out back with my pansies.”

“Pauline Bridwell?”

“Yes.” She took off her gardening gloves. “Can I help you?”

Julianna tried to detach herself from the moment, from herself. Pandora's biggest mistake wasn't opening the box, it was slamming the lid shut again before the last item could escape.

That was the curse Julianna wouldn't wish on her worst enemies:
May you always have hope.

“You husband, Howard,” she said, “was my sister's sponsor in AA.”

“Oh?”

“A long time ago.”

“Howard was very active in AA, until the day he died. I think he must have sponsored dozens of ­people. He wanted to give back. He always said his life began the day he joined AA. You know he passed on, don't you?” She reached out to touch Julianna's arm, as if Julianna were the one who might need consoling. “A few years ago.”

Julianna nodded. “My sister's name was Genevieve. Genevieve Rosales. Your husband was her sponsor in the summer of 1986. The summer and fall of 1986. Did you know her? Did your husband ever mention her?”

“Genevieve?” Pauline Bridwell considered. “I don't think so. At least I don't recall the name. I was in Al-­Anon in those days, but not as regularly as Howard went to his meetings. I really only got to know a few of the ­people he sponsored over the years.”

“Can I show you a photo of my sister?”

“Of course.”

Julianna took out her phone. Pauline Bridwell studied the photo taken of Genevieve on her seventeenth birthday.

“I'm sorry. I'm afraid I don't recognize her.” She looked up at Julianna. “May I ask what this is about?”

That warm smile again. Her consoling hand again, on Julianna's arm.

Why? Could she see that Julianna was doomed? Was the pain in Julianna's eyes that obvious?

“It doesn't matter,” Julianna said. “Thanks for your time.”

She started walking back to her car. Halfway down the flagstone path, though, she stopped. She wasn't sure why. A sixth sense, a sudden chill in the wind. Or maybe it was the sound of Genevieve's voice.

Juli, wow, she's even a better liar than you.

She turned and saw Pauline Bridwell standing in the doorway of her house, watching her. The woman's smile was gone, and her face—­in the one instant after Julianna turned and before Pauline Bridwell shut the door—­looked a thousand years old.

Julianna walked back up the path. She rang the doorbell again. This time there was no answer, so she went around the side of the house. The gate to the backyard was unlocked.

Pauline Bridwell was on her knees, next to a flat of amber and auburn flowers, stabbing the soil with a garden spade. She didn't look up as Julianna approached.

“Did your husband kill her?” Julianna said.

The woman paused to dab sweat from her forehead with the back of her glove. She still wouldn't look at Julianna.

“It was an accident,” she said.

“An accident.”

“He said it was an accident.”

Julianna felt light-­headed but calm. There was an otherworldly glow to Pauline Bridwell's backyard—­the sun low, the leaves changing, the grass fading to a pale gold.

“What did he say happened?”

Pauline Bridwell gently tucked a plant into the hole she'd dug for it.

“She phoned him that night. The ­people he sponsored would phone at all hours, day and night. And Howard would always go. He would drop everything and go.” Her tone was matter-­of-­fact, but she stabbed so hard at the ground that the garden spade slipped from her hand. “Howard told her to meet him in the parking lot by the entrance to the fair. They sat in his car and talked. Howard liked to tell the ­people he sponsored about the dark before the dawn. How life is about progress, not perfection. Do you know how many ­people he helped over the years?”

Julianna understood now why Genevieve had left Crowley's trailer so soon after she arrived—­why she hadn't stayed to get high with him. Temptation had drawn her there, but at the last moment she'd decided to turn away. She'd decided to find a pay phone and call the one person who could help keep her straight.

“He said she wanted him to drive her home,” Pauline Bridwell said. “There was an accident, and she wasn't wearing her seat belt. She hit her head.”

Here was the lie, finally, that Pauline Bridwell had chosen to believe twenty-­six years ago.

“Why would she want him to drive her home?” Julianna said. “Her car was there.
I
was there.”

Pauline Bridwell stabbed at the ground. She continued as if she hadn't heard Julianna.

“After she hit her head, Howard panicked. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't take her to the hospital, because she—­ It was already too late. Thirty or forty minutes after he left the house, he called me, crying. He said there'd been an accident.”

What had really happened? Julianna could guess. Genevieve's sponsor had coaxed her into his car. He'd made a pass, and she'd resisted. Maybe he struck her in anger. Maybe she'd banged her head hard against the glass of the car window during the struggle and an artery in her brain ruptured. Maybe, in that sense, her death
had
been an accident. Or maybe her sponsor had been planning to rape and kill her for weeks and had just been waiting for the exact right opportunity to strike, to look into her eyes as the life drained from them.

Julianna realized she didn't want or need to know what had really happened in those last few minutes. She didn't want or need to know what Genevieve's sponsor had done to hide her body. Or what, maybe, his wife had told him to do with it.

Pauline Bridwell set the spade down and turned, finally, to Julianna. Her eyes blazed.

“We couldn't call the police,” she said. “Howard had a career, a reputation. A family. To throw all that away, what good would it have done? Would that bring her back?”

Julianna wondered if the woman kneeling before her really believed what she was saying, if the line of Pauline Bridwell's jaw was trembling with defiance or with shame.

Julianna didn't want or need to know that either.

All these years she'd hated Genevieve so much, for abandoning her at the state fair. Now, though, she pictured Genevieve standing on the dark side of the midway that night, outside Crowley's trailer, feeling a pull that must have been almost impossible to resist.

But she
had
resisted, Julianna knew now. Genevieve had turned and walked away and called her AA sponsor.

Why? What opposing force at that moment was even more powerful than the temptation that had drawn Genevieve there? Was it maybe the thought of Julianna, alone and afraid on the curb outside the rodeo arena, waiting for her sister to come back for her?

Julianna heard Genevieve's voice again, laughing.

Of course it was you, you dumb-­ass. What else would it be?

Pauline Bridwell had bowed her head. Julianna couldn't hear what she said.

“What?”

“He was a weak man.”

“Okay,” Julianna said, and walked out to her car.

 

W
yatt dreamed he was in an old house, the light dim and the air thick with dust. He was going through cabinets and dressers and closets, sorting through what seemed like a century's worth of worthless old junk. Broken alarm clocks, yellowed table doilies, chipped glass paperweights. He suspected he was dreaming, but he couldn't quite convince himself of it.
This is a dream,
he would think, but then he would shake his head and think,
No, this is real.

Back and forth like that, over and over, Wyatt arguing with himself and breathing dust and opening yet another drawer full of half-­melted candles, of frames without photos. It was the world's least enjoyable dream.

When Wyatt woke up, a big black guy was sitting in the chair next to his bed, leafing through a Disney Princesses coloring book.

This is still a dream,
Wyatt told himself.

Definitely,
he agreed.

“Mr. PI!” the big black guy said when he noticed that Wyatt was awake. “Mr. VIPI!”

Dark and sweet. What was dark and sweet? What could the girls never get enough of ? Wyatt almost fell back to sleep.

“Fudge,” Wyatt said. His mouth was dry. His mouth was the charred remains of a terrible fire. “Hello, Fudge.”

“You in the hospital,” Fudge said. “You been on some
legit
drugs.”

Wyatt nodded. The effort made him swoon. “I know.”

“You
know
it.”

He offered Wyatt a fist to bump. Wyatt felt a spike of panic. He couldn't remember what had happened after he'd stabbed Chip. Chip had been alive. Chip's expression had never changed. Had Chip pulled the knife from his throat? Had Chip managed to turn and grab Candace's arm, to finish what he'd meant to start?

“Candace,” Wyatt said.

“She been up here most the time. Lily, too.” Fudge held up the coloring book as proof. “Candace back at the Land Run now, now the doctor say you be all right. She say to tell you she got a damn
business
to run.”

Wyatt, smiling, was drifting off again. A nurse entered the room, a guy. He checked Wyatt's IV. He checked the dressing on Wyatt's hand, the dressing on his upper chest, the dressing on his collarbone, then handed Wyatt a Styrofoam cup full of ice chips. Wyatt shook an ice chip into his mouth and let it melt.

“How long have I been in here?” he said.

“You ask that every time you wake up,” the nurse said.

The nurse had a big handlebar mustache. He looked more like a gunslinging sheriff, more like a Wyatt, than Wyatt did.

“I do?”

“You do,” Fudge said. “Been almost two days now.”

The doctor came in. A woman.

“Hello, Mr. Rivers,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“As good as can be expected,” Wyatt said. “Under the circumstances.”

She smiled and looked over his chart. “Here's where we're at, Mr. Rivers.”

She went on for a while. About blood loss and the subclavian artery, about the subclavian vein and the very narrow space between it and the subclavian artery, about the difference between a grade-­one concussion and a grade-­two concussion. The gist, Wyatt gathered, was that he'd been lucky. For a guy who'd been rammed by a CRV and stabbed in the upper chest, he'd been lucky.

Wyatt remembered now waking up and asking the male nurse how long he'd been there. He remembered Candace sitting next to his bed. In the sunlight, in the moonlight. He remembered Lily gazing gravely at him, her small hand on his. And . . . Gavin. Gavin? Yes, Gavin, too. Sitting in the chair, shifting uncomfortably. Unless that had been a dream.

The doctor was saying now something about the probability, on all counts, of a full and successful recovery. And then she was saying something about a credit card.

“It's in my wallet,” Wyatt said.

The doctor looked up from Wyatt's chart. She glanced at the male nurse.

“I don't think you understand, Mr. Rivers,” the doctor said. She explained that a Good Samaritan with military training had known to seal the knife wound in Wyatt's chest with the edge of a credit card. He'd probably saved Wyatt's life.

A credit card, Wyatt thought. Crazy. But that was life for you, full of surprises. It never got old.

“So that's where we're at. We should be able to get you out of here tomorrow.”

“A farm boy from Oklahoma gets a scholarship to Harvard,” Wyatt said.

The doctor and the nurse, on their way out of the room, paused.

“First day on campus,” Wyatt said, “the Oklahoma farm boy goes up to a fellow student, an older student. And the farm boy says, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where the library's at?' The other student, he turns up his nose, and he says, ‘Here at Harvard, sir, we do not end our sentences with prepositions.' ”

The doctor and the nurse waited. Fudge waited. Wyatt shook another ice chip into his mouth.

“So the Oklahoma farm boy says, ‘Okay. Where's the library at, asshole?' ”

The next time Wyatt woke up, a guy was sitting in the chair that Fudge had occupied. He wore a corduroy jacket and cowboy boots, a weary expression. It didn't take a detective to know the guy was a detective.

Wyatt started at the beginning and walked the detective through everything.
Almost
everything. He left out the part about bashing Jeff Eddy in the face with a pumpkin. He left out the part about Jeff Eddy's affair and how Wyatt was using it to keep him off Candace's back. The detective didn't want to know any of that. Wyatt was doing him a favor.

The detective nodded along, taking notes. He only asked a ­couple of questions, getting the timeline straight. Wyatt had a feeling the detective already knew from Candace most of what Wyatt was telling him.

Wyatt didn't play it down, how dumb he'd been not to figure out sooner that Chip was the person harassing Candace and that Chip was her ex-­husband. The detective declined to weigh in on the matter one way or the other.

“Why were you honking the car horn?” he said. “Get attention?”

“I wanted her to run,” Wyatt said. “Candace. I hoped she'd hear it and take Lily and run.”

The detective wrote that down. “That little lady is something,” he said, admiringly.

“What about him?” Wyatt said. “The ex-­husband?”

He didn't want to hear the answer. He already knew the answer. Wyatt had killed a man, a human being. The worst kind of human being, and Wyatt hadn't had much choice in the matter. But the truth was the truth. He would have to live with it for the rest of his life.

“Deceased,” the detective said.

“Am I going to be charged?”

The detective closed his notebook and stood up. “With what?” he said.

He gave Wyatt a nod—­of respect? of pity?—­and left.

Wyatt slept. He dreamed about the old house full of worthless junk. When he woke, it was dark outside. Candace sat in the chair next to his bed.

“About time,” she said.

“Better late than never.”

She yawned. “I guess.”

“Go home.”

“That goof in the kilt brought me a clay dildo he made.”

“He finds it deeply offensive when ­people call them that.”

“He said it was an apology. A peace offering.”

“Go home. What time is it? How's Lily?”

“I told her you had a car accident. I didn't tell her the rest.”

Wyatt nodded. “Sometimes partial honesty is the best policy.”

“She was worried you would die and turn into a ghost.”

“You'd never get rid of me.”

“Ha.”

Wyatt slept again. He woke, morning now, with a clearer head. The male nurse with the handlebar mustache unplugged him from the IV and heart monitor while Gavin sat in the chair.

“I'm gonna be paying for this until the end of time,” Gavin said, “aren't I?”

“Now that you mention it,” Wyatt said.

A nurse's aide gave him his phone, wallet, and watch. She offered him a plastic bag stuffed with the blood-­soaked clothes and shoes he'd been wearing when they brought him in. He declined politely.

“We have to ask,” she said. “It's a rule.”

Gavin had brought Wyatt a new set of clothes, a long-­sleeved shirt with some kind of Navajo print and a pair of pleated Dockers, the Dillard's tag still attached to both. White New Balance sneakers. Wyatt knew that beggars couldn't be choosers.

He had to take his time getting dressed. A clearer head had its price, and he felt like a cork bobbing in a sea of pain. His chest, his head, his hand, his ribs. He felt slightly nauseated, too, as a bonus.

The pharmacy in the lobby of the hospital filled Wyatt's prescriptions for various anti-­inflammatories, antibiotics, and painkillers. Gavin was waiting for him out front. He helped Wyatt ease into the passenger seat of the Town Car he'd rented.

“I had a steak last night,” Gavin said as they merged onto the Lake Hefner Parkway.

“Tell me more,” Wyatt said. “I beg you.”

Gave shot him an irritated glance. “The joke,” he said. “Your dumb joke about the two guys eating steaks in Oklahoma.”

“New York. They were eating steaks in New York. That was the point of the joke.”

They pulled in to the Marriott parking lot. Home, sweet home.

“I got you a flight out tomorrow morning,” Gavin said. “I figured you could use a good night's sleep.”

“Thanks.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

“A hug?”

“Smart-­ass.”

Wyatt took the elevator up to his room. He ordered eggs from room ser­vice and ate a few bites so he'd feel less guilty about cracking open the first miniature bottle of Jack Daniel's from the minibar. The first bottle made him less guilty about cracking open the second one.

He took off the clothes that didn't fit and climbed into bed. Now that he wanted to sleep, though, he couldn't. He could feel the blade of the hunting knife slide into him. And then slide in again. And then again. Each time the sensation was a surprise.

To distract himself Wyatt thought about the night of that long-­ago tornado, August of '86, the small forgotten memory he'd stumbled upon at the coffeehouse. He'd been saving the memory for a special occasion. This qualified, didn't it? The details were so vivid, so fresh. It was his one memory of that summer that was not yet a memory. Wyatt was
there,
his finger hooked through the label of his blazer, the raindrops blowing against his face.

He tried to grope his way back in time, back inside the mall and the movie theater. Just a few minutes before he stepped outside into the wind and rain, just a few minutes before lightning lit up the sky and he watched the funnel of the tornado twisting like a snake on the road, Wyatt knew he would have told O'Malley good-­bye. He would have told Melody good-­bye. Theresa was already gone, but maybe a faint trace of her scent had lingered in the lobby.
That
was a moment Wyatt would love to live again.

This new memory, though, like all memories, was just a broken fragment of the whole—­the edge crumbled when he stepped there, fell away beneath his feet. Wyatt stood outside the mall, the raindrops blowing against his face, but he couldn't get back to the good stuff.

The tornado sirens died. The raindrops blew against his face. Already they were becoming photocopies of raindrops. So he tried walking forward, not back. And what do you know? That edge of memory supported his weight. Wyatt was still
there
as he headed home across the wet, black street, as he cut through the park behind the movie theater. He smelled fresh-­mowed grass and heard the deafening chirr of cicadas in the trees. The clouds broke open, and the stars spilled across the sky like confetti. Wyatt recognized the car parked up the street, an old black VW Bug that belonged to Bingham's nutty friend Donald.

If you had an existential bent, if you believed in a cold and indifferent universe, here was the proof. Instead of a rediscovered memory that gave him five more precious minutes with O'Malley or Theresa, with Melody or Grubb or Karlene—­Wyatt had been given the gift of Pet Shop Boy instead.

“Hey,” Donald said as Wyatt approached.

“Hey,” Wyatt said.

He didn't slow down. He was tired. He had blocks to go before he slept. He didn't want to hear about yet another of Donald's dumb, can't-­miss moneymaking ideas.

“Mr. Bingham's going to be in there another hour at least,” Wyatt said.

“Okay,” Donald said. He stood up as Wyatt passed and walked alongside him. “Hey, do you want to hear about this idea I have? Get ready. Swedish porn films.”

Wyatt didn't feel bad for Mr. Bingham that his only friend in the world was Pet Shop Boy. You got the friends you deserved.

“I have to go home,” Wyatt said.

“Okay.”

Donald stopped. Wyatt kept walking.

“Later, Donald,” he said, without looking back.

And then that was it. Wyatt, in his hotel bed, had reached the far boundary of the rediscovered memory. He didn't remember walking the rest of the way home. Or, more accurately, he remembered walking home a hundred different times, no one particular time more distinct than any of the others.

The last place Wyatt was really
there
was in the playground, hurrying away from Pet Shop Boy. The chirr of the cicadas, the stars like confetti, the street wet and black from the rain. Wyatt hadn't wondered what Donald was doing alone in the park across from the theater at eleven o'clock at night. He was waiting for Mr. Bingham to get off work. Why else would he be there?

Why else, on that night in August, a week before the murders, would Donald be alone in the park across from the movie theater?

Wyatt saw Donald sitting on the end of the teeter-­totter—­perched there, tall and skinny, like some awkward flightless bird—­just outside the reach of the weak light cast by the streetlamp.