|
His voice switched on a series of scenes from their therapy sessions: Deanna on a bicycle as her mother sprinted alongside; Deanna’s first swimming lesson when she ripped off her floaties in blue pool water then sank like iron; a succession of birthday parties with paper hats and kids fighting for frosting off a butter knife. One scene after another discharged itself as if an old-time carousel of slides from Deanna's childhood had begun whirling inside his mind.
“You going to tell me why you called me?” Moody said.
“Someone asked me to.”
“Who?”
“The killer, I think.”
“I thought this was a suicide.”
He nodded. “Officially, yes. We have a suicide note and everything—but it doesn’t fit.” Cantrell's jittery white fingers reached into his side pocket. He handed Gar a small, plastic baggy. Inside, the suicide note was scrawled on a blank telephone message pad:
I have this almost terrible energy in me and nothing
seems to help... I walk up and down the
room—back and forth—and I feel like a caged
tiger.
Gar knew this was pure Ann Sexton and was rife with the kind of drama that fake notes often had. Real suicide notes were banal:
Please pick up the photos and clean out my car,
good-bye.
"Now turn it over," Percy said.
He did. On the back in the same block letters was printed: "Ask E.M.. if F.'s note was as good."
It gave him a nice jolt. "You think 'E.M..' is me?"
“Those are you initials, aren’t they?”
It was a simple enough question. He noticed his heart was pounding, almost carelessly, as if it was someone else’s—even as it banged against his front chest cavity. He thought he might be going into shock.
Percy let out a sigh, heavy and abrupt. "These are your initials and you lost someone who's first name began with F. I know because I found her remains. You know all this. Why do you make me say it?"
Gar was looking at Percy's face and his sad ironic smile. Finn was a subject they never discussed. Percy waited for him to say something, but he couldn’t.
"Did you ever tell this client about Finn?” he asked.
Gar shook his head.
"Any way she could have found out?
He didn’t say anything but Percy guessed the answer was no.
A grim expression worked its way across the stubble on Percy’s chin. Now he kept his eyes averted as he studied the blood spatters along the wall. His body language suggested distraction. The subject of Finn's death was like a vast desert between the two men. Cabinets were brutally opened and closed in the adjoining kitchen. Footsteps. Low voices somewhere in the apartment.
Instantly, Moody was back standing in the attenuated light of that house on Fountain Street three years earlier holding a piece of Finn's singed, blackened bridgework, all that was left of her body—when the top of his own head had seemed to catch fire the same way the floor of her building had been engulfed. Within two weeks, he was hospitalized for depression; within a month, he had resigned from the Bureau.
As Moody shuffled around the room, he lost all feeling in his limbs and stared down at the woman on the floor as a way of orienting himself—eyes wide open, face blank, wan features looking faintly surprised at his reaction. He said, “So you think this suicide was staged.”
Percy shrugged. “You specialized in it. What do you think?"
But Moody’s voice had abandoned him again. He just stood there, looking down.
A long silence fell between them. The detective looked disgusted. "Have it your way." A phone rang in the kitchen. Someone gruffly called Percy's name.
"Excuse me," he said and ripped off beige latex gloves.
[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2, Part 1] [Chapter 2, Part 2] [Top of Page]
|
