Home Body, page 29
The human body was a very resilient thing. Sometimes.
As I pulled away, the plan was to find a phone, call the police about Sandra Baker, if that was her house. Maybe grab some dinner and then head back to the riverfront to wait. And if they had Rocky? I’d childproof the locks, bundle him in the van, drive him to the police station, hand him to a cop, say, “Here he is—the Grim Reaper. He’s all yours.”
So I swung around the block, and there was a phone, against the wall outside the bus station. I pulled over and parked, and leaving the van running, went to the phone. There was gum pressed over the mouth end of the receiver and it had hardened like concrete in the cold. I picked most of it off, put a quarter in, and dialed.
The number rang. Once, twice . . .
Roxanne answered. Or a reasonable facsimile.
“You’ve reached Roxanne Masterson at Child Protective Services. I’m away from my desk, but if you need to talk to someone tonight, call the following number.”
I waited as she gave it.
“If you want to leave a message, you may do so after the tone. If this is J. M., I’m all set until eleven. Call the car between seven and seven-fifteen.”
On the phone, I heard her breathing. I listened until there was a last breath. Then a click, and the tone,
“I love you, too,” I said, and I hung up.
As I stood there, on the sidewalk of the deserted street, I knew what I would do. Like a smoker saying they would only have one cigarette, a drinker saying just one more drink, I told myself I would just drive by. Take one more look. Not even get out of the car.
52
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And I didn’t; not right away. At first I just sat by the side of the darkened road, with the parking lights on, the motor running, and watched.
The light was still on in the Camry. There was one light on in the house, in the basement. I sat for fifteen interminable minutes and nobody came or went. Two cars passed on the road, one swerving wide around the van, the other a pickup that sped past headed out of town, and I pulled ahead to a wider part of the shoulder, the kind of place where deliverymen pull off to eat lunch. I shut off the motor and lights, and it was still and quiet and cold.
I took the flashlight from my bag and tested it, but it didn’t work. I gave it a sharp rap and it did, and I turned it off and looked up and down the road. There were no cars in sight, and I got out, and, crunching through the crusty snow, crossed the road.
As I approached the driveway, headlights showed in the distance. I hurried past the Camry, stepping clear of the frozen tracks, and huddled in the shadows near the side door until the car passed. It did, and I slipped the flashlight into my parka pocket and took out a pen. I pressed it against the yellow light of the doorbell.
Pressed again.
I waited a minute, then forced myself to wait a minute more. Then I counted to ten. Took the pen and pulled the storm door open, and slipped inside.
Listened. Looked. Turned on the flashlight and played it over the room. It was the same: shoes, jackets, keys in the lock in the inner door. I went to the crack and peeked. The food was on the table. I swallowed. Breathed slowly and silently. Inside, there was a click and the refrigerator started to hum.
“Hello,” I said, and it was jarring as a scream.
I waited. There was no answer. I said it again. Waited some more. Used the pen to push open the door.
It swung but didn’t creak. When it stopped, I could see the groceries, a brown leather pocketbook hanging by its strap on the kitchen chair. I called out again. No answer. I stepped into the room.
My boots made gritty footsteps on the tile floor and I fought off an impulse to wipe the prints and get out. I told myself I only wanted to know if this was Sandra Baker’s house. I didn’t want to know that she was asleep on the couch.
I crossed the kitchen and stood in front of the refrigerator, moved the flashlight beam over it. There were notes stuck to it, pink and yellow and green. One was the number of a travel agent. Next to it was a newspaper article about a cruise: Miami to St. John to St. Croix and home. Someone had circled the phone number to call for information.
If it had been Sandra, she had some money.
There was a postcard from Atlantic City, showing the casinos, another from Greece, showing the Parthenon. The appliances were new and top of the line. There was a fishy smell from the grocery bags and I peeked in and saw a bag of shrimp, a jar of cocktail sauce, a twenty-dollar bottle of wine.
No screw tops here.
I listened. No sign of life, either.
Another door led to the rest of the house, and it was slightly ajar. I hesitated, then walked over.
“Hello,” I said again. “I’m Jack McMorrow. I’m looking for Sandra Baker. Ms. Baker, this is a long story, but I really need to talk to you. Do you know a boy named Rocky? Rocky Doe?”
Silence.
With the pen, I pushed the door open. It caught on the carpet in the hall and stopped. I pushed again, and it made a soft shush. There was an odor. A toilet odor. A rancid smell. I called, but my voice was hushed, too. I walked into the hall, the light leading the way like a dog on a leash.
To the right was a bathroom, and I flicked the light on and sniffed. The bathroom was neat, with matching flowered hand towels on the rack. The vanity had a white marble top. There were pink fluffy slippers on the floor by the rug, and I could smell deodorant. Perfume. The bad smell wasn’t coming from there.
“Hello,” I said again, but this time it was a whisper.
No one whispered back.
I moved along the hallway until I came to another doorway to my left, another door straight ahead. The doorway led to a living room, with white carpeting and two rose-colored overstuffed chairs that matched an overstuffed couch. They were empty.
The door was closed.
I pushed with the pen. It didn’t open. I took a twenty-dollar bill from my pocket, wrapped the bill around the knob. Turned. The door opened. The room was dark. The smell was much stronger.
The light searched as I stood in the doorway. There were boots on the carpet in front of me. Women’s boots, one upright, one on its side. Then a liquor bottle, also on the carpet. Absolut Citron. A pill bottle. Pills, yellow and pink, scattered about the floor like tiny Easter eggs.
Dangling from the bed was a woman’s foot.
53
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She was wearing socks, tweed slacks, a white sweater on which she had vomited. Her hair was orange. Her mouth was open and her eyes were closed. Her skin had taken on that shading that medical people call lividity, which I’d always thought an odd term because to me it implied emotion. It meant anything but.
Lividity meant the woman’s blood had settled after she’d died. I could see it in her neck, a coloring like that rust-colored paint they put on the bottom of a boat’s hull. Her face was blotchy and drawn. Her jaw was slack as though she were terribly exhausted. Perhaps she had been, when she’d drawn her last breath.
There is something mesmerizing about a corpse, this irrefutable evidence that despite all our efforts to believe the contrary, we are about as enduring as ripened fruit.
And for a long time I stood in the doorway and stared, drawn inexorably to the sight of her. Was this my Sandra Baker? Was this the woman who wouldn’t let her long-dead friend die? Where was the explanation now? What had happened, that she had died before she could even unload the groceries? Why such a wide swath of death? Kitty, Flossie, Tammy, and now Sandra Baker. Where was my Grim Reaper now? Had he already come and gone?
There was a sound and I started. A humming, ticking sound. The heat kicking on.
As the water gurgled in the pipes, I backed slowly from the room, as though she might jump me if I turned my back. I turned in the hallway and made my way to the kitchen to find the phone. With the light slashing at the dark, I found the base of a cordless phone on the counter. The phone wasn’t in it, and I played the light down the counter, across to the table. There was no phone, but the pocketbook was hanging there. I peeked in with the light.
There was a wallet, the kind held together by a strap and snap, but the strap was undone. I took the pen and pushed the wallet open, and Sandra J. Baker stared me in the face, eyes open, mouth closed. It was her driver’s license photo, and she looked almost merry, at least by comparison.
The wallet slipped aside and I picked further. A large package of sugarless gum, a pack of cigarettes. Kleenex, in a plastic wrapper. Matches. Lipstick and eyeliner pencil. Hard candies and yellow sticky-notes. Crumpled gasoline receipts that said “Bangor Mobil.” Two keys on a metal ring. I gave them a poke.
One said Toyota. The other said “USPS. Do not duplicate.” I thought for a moment, then moved to the door, where the keys still were hanging from the lock. I looked at them, saw another Toyota key, another post office key. The keys in the bag were her spares. I paused. I wanted to know more, but I couldn’t stay here. But the mailbox, the one with my phony letter.
My fingerprints.
Leaning over the bag, I fished the key ring out with the pen, and put the pen and the keys in the pocket of my parka. Turning off the light, I let myself out.
54
k
The road was dark when I left the house, and I didn’t meet another car until one passed as I crossed into the city limits. I slowed at houses where there were lights, half intending to stop and knock on the door and ask whoever answered to call the police.
But before I knew it I was back in the downtown, driving down Broadway, past Tippy’s house, which thankfully was dark. Then I took a right, cut through to Harlow Street, and there was the post office.
The lights in the lobby were on.
I drove past the federal building, parked on a little court, and got out and walked back. The court side of the building was deserted, the door locked and the guard nowhere in sight. But the door to the post office was open, the service windows closed. I went to a section five feet over from Sandra Baker’s box and leaned low, fiddling with the key and peeking through the boxes into the post office. I could hear the voices of the mail clerks, calling back and forth, but they were distant. I turned. There was no one approaching. I rose quickly, went to box 1281, and popped it open.
The sheaf of mail slid out easily. I tucked it under my arm, closed the box, and yanked out the key. At the door, I checked the sign. It said box lobby hours, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. I’d scan the mail and return it. I had fifteen minutes.
Gloves on in the dark, with the flashlight resting on the passenger seat of the van, I sifted through it. There were bills for credit cards, offers for still others. Something from a dentist in Orrington, an insurance company in Virginia. A renewal notice for Newsweek, and a bill from the Bangor Daily News. A postcard from a casino in Connecticut, signed by Myra, who had won $188 and wished Sandy were there. Flyers from discount stores, a brochure for the new Toyotas. My letter, and a letter with no return address, with the name “Sandra Baker” scrawled quickly.
And a Woodfield postmark.
I turned on the dome light and held the envelope up. The light showed what appeared to be a piece of paper torn from a spiral-bound notebook. There were words, but I couldn’t make them out. I turned the envelope, turned it again. Took the flashlight and held it up, with the envelope against the lens. Two words showed, big and bold but backward. I flipped the envelope over and read.
The note said, “No more.”
I examined it, but that was it. Two words. “No more.” No more what?
I sat back for a moment, looked at my watch. It was seven minutes of seven, and I didn’t want to meet a guard in the lobby, locking up. I did want to meet Crow Man and the boys. I did have to make the call.
Gathering up the mail, I left my stuffed envelope on the seat and got out of the van, locked it, and started walking.
Putting the van key in my left parka pocket, I felt for the box key in my right. Felt again, then slipped off my glove. Stopping on the sidewalk, I dug in my parka pockets, then checked the pockets of my jeans. Went back to the van and looked in the seats, on the floors, in the gutter.
“Shit,” I said.
I checked the van again. My pockets again. I dug in my pockets, patted my jeans, fished in the seats. Checked my watch.
It was four minutes of seven.
“Goddamn it,” I said.
I’d done it now. I was being eyed for one murder, and had failed to report what could very well be another. I’d lifted evidence from the scene, probably committed a federal crime by taking someone’s mail. Who investigated that, the FBI?
It was two minutes of, and I turned and started up the sidewalk, intermittently turning the light on and playing it on the pavement. They had to be somewhere between the post office and the van, and there still was time. If I found them now, I’d just make it. Get rid of the mail, get out of there, go down to the statue and wait.
I loped along the sidewalk, playing the light like one of those guys who look for coins at the beach with metal detectors. An older man with a dog approached and I turned my head away, but still felt his stare.
“Lose something?” he said, ready to join the search.
“No,” I said. “But thanks.”
I crossed the wide walk in front of the entrance, trying to retrace the path I’d used, and I saw bottle caps, used lottery tickets, cigarette butts.
And then, as I approached, the doors, I saw the guard turning his key in the lock. He closed the door behind him, gave it a jiggle, and then turned. Through the window, I saw him hold something up and examine it. Then he twirled it and held it up again.
The key. The guard had it, and I had the mail.
I turned away quickly, and stood there for a moment, holding the mail, first against my chest, and then, as I strode away, under my arm. I thought of tossing it down a storm drain, or burning it in the woodstove. But there had to be some way to get it back into that box. Some way, I thought, as I walked away from the building, back down the hill.
Sneak into the post office and just stuff it in myself? Mail it all again? Go back to Sandra Baker’s house and leave it there? But that would be misleading. Or I could just give it to the cops and tell the truth.
I had never been much of a liar. I didn’t need to start now. It was time to start telling the truth, the whole truth, nothing but.
And I’d told Crow Man and the ninja I’d meet them at Hannibal Hamlin at seven, and it was three minutes after, which probably didn’t matter, though there was a chance that Crow Man would, for some hundred-dollar reason, manage to be punctual. So putting the mail on the passenger seat, I drove down the hill, up one redbrick block and over the steel-railed bridge that crossed Kenduskeag Stream. I parked the van in front of a shoe-repair place, which was closed, shut off the lights and motor, and sat. The downtown had emptied like a tide pool, and the little park was dark and deserted. I couldn’t make out Hannibal Hamlin from the van, but he had to be there, and maybe they were, too. Or maybe they’d walked a hundred yards, and, with the attention span of puppies, wandered off to sniff out some booze, huff down some fumes, forgotten all about me, and now here I was, sitting in the dark in some frozen outpost of a city.
But then again, where else could they trade a skinny little boy for a hundred bucks?
I got out of the van and, reaching back in for the flashlight, crossed the street and walked back over the bridge. Below me, the stream was running fast and cold, a black gash in the center of the ice. The ground was icy and crackled like broken glass as I walked. The sound echoed off the buildings on the far side of the stream, but when I stopped beside the statue, everything was still.
In the distance I heard a siren, and thought of Sandra Baker. I’d wait fifteen minutes, then go make the call and come back. I started counting down. Waited some more. Stared up at Hannibal Hamlin, and his monument to the fleeting nature of fame. These kids wouldn’t know him from Adam. But then, they probably didn’t know much about Adam, either.
I stood some more, shuffling on my feet to stay warm, but the sound carried in the night air and I tried to hold still, me and Hannibal. But the cold seeped in like water, and my feet ached, my nose ran. I wiped it with a gloved hand, then turned as footsteps came from the direction of the van.
Someone was approaching, tapping along the icy sidewalk. I turned to watch, and the figure materialized. It was in a long coat, carrying a bag. As she passed under a light, I saw blonde hair, but then a van came down the street and slowed, and I couldn’t see her. The van stopped.
I saw the driver turn. Someone called something. The woman emerged from behind the van, walking faster with her head down. Someone laughed. The van motor idled loudly, and then there was a metallic scrape. The doors opening. Feet crunching on the ice. Two guys came around the back of the van, and then two more, and I thought of Rusty’s bunch, and tensed. And then I saw him.
He was at the center of the huddle that crossed the street, and I only saw glimpses of him as they approached. His hair. His glasses. The gag tied over his mouth.
When they got close, Crow Man turned. He gave me a gap-toothed, triumphant grin.
“Friggin’ delivered to your door,” he said. “Now hand over the cash.”
They separated, and there was Rocky, huddled like a hostage. The gag was a blue bandanna. His hands were tied in front of him, and his chin was on his chest. The rest of the posse, bright-eyed and feral under their hoods, awaited their reward expectantly.
“Wiry little scrapper,” Crow Man said. “Had to practically hog-tie him to get him in the van. You oughta throw in another twenty bucks for wear and tear. And I gotta pay the guy for the goddamn van.”
