Accustomed to the Dark (10 page)

I noticed that the smudge of dirt was gone. “Sugar, please. Thanks.”

She poured for me, handed me the cup and saucer, then poured for herself. She carried her tea back to the armchair and sat down carefully. “I apologize, Mr. Croft. This has all been … unsettling.”

“I understand. And I apologize for imposing on you like this.”

“It's no imposition. It's just that I find it difficult to believe that Sylvia could have done the things you say she has. I know she had an oppressive childhood, and I've always felt that she was basically an unhappy woman, but I never …” She let the sentence trail off and she shook her head. She took a sip of tea.

“You mentioned her childhood before. You knew Sylvia's parents?”

She nodded. “Yes, but not terribly well. Neither my husband nor I were very fond of Frank—Mr. Miller.”

“Why was that?”

She frowned again, organizing her thoughts. “He was one of those people who believed that a man's home is his castle, and that everyone in it was a servant. And he was a brutal man. I don't like saying this, but I think that he abused them all. Doris—Mrs. Miller—and Sylvia and Ronny. I could be wrong, of course, but my husband thought the same thing. I'm not talking about sexual abuse—although God knows, we're finding out that there's more of that than anyone ever suspected, aren't we? But I did think that he beat them. They looked, all of them, as though they were walking around on eggshells. Sullen, but watchful. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Both Doris and Sylvia seemed to accept it. Ronny was the only one who ever really stood up to him.”

“And how did he do that?” I took a sip of the tea. Earl Grey, and strong.

“He left. Ran away, really. I didn't know about it until my daughter told me. Ruth. She's married; she lives in Pagosa Springs now. She heard about it from Sylvia, and she told me. Ronny went to Santa Fe. I gather that he started getting into trouble down there.”

“Sylvia was close to Ruth?”

She sipped her tea, pursed her lips. “Not close, not really. She and Ruth went to the same high school. They came home on the same bus. They talked.”

I nodded.

“After high school,” she said, “Ruth went up to Boulder, to college. Sylvia stayed here and took some courses at Highlands. She dropped out two years later, in nineteen seventy-five, when her mother died.”

“Sylvia's always lived at home?”

“Always. I think that after Doris died, Sylvia just took over for her. Assumed her role, in a way. She cleaned the house for her father, did all the shopping, all the cooking. Except for her job, I don't think Sylvia had any real life outside that house. No men friends, no women friends.”

She frowned. “I'm making her sound like some sort of terrible basket case. She wasn't. As I said, she was very polite, very well spoken. She always dressed well—not fashionably, really, but well, and she was always very nicely groomed.” She glanced down at her sweat suit, looked up, smiled a faint smile. “Unlike some people we might mention.”

I smiled back.

“And she's a responsible woman,” she said. “She's the head teller at the bank. She's worked there for nearly twenty years, and I doubt that she's taken a single day off.”

“Did you speak with her often?”

She frowned again. “It's terrible to admit this, but I'm afraid I didn't. I doubt that I've been over there, to Sylvia's house, more than three or four times in the past five years. And Sylvia's never come over here.”

“Why is that?”

“It was my fault, probably. She was so very reserved, so very … self-contained. It was as though she didn't need anyone. Didn't want anyone. Whenever I went over to say hello, I felt as though I were intruding. And she kept that house looking exactly the way it had looked while her parents were alive. She never even rearranged the furniture. It was clean—she always kept it very clean—but it was like some sort of gloomy … crypt. I hate to admit this, but it always made me uncomfortable. I invited her over here, many times, but she always found some reason to beg off. Finally, I stopped inviting her.” She raised the teacup to her lips, stopped herself, lowered it. “Have you ever read Emily Dickinson?”

“Not recently.”

“There's a poem of hers that I've always associated with Sylvia. ‘We grow accustomed to the Dark.' Do you know it?”

“No. Sorry.”

“‘We grow accustomed to the Dark,'” she quoted, “‘when Light is put away.'” She smiled. “I don't remember the entire poem, but it ends something like ‘Either the Darkness alters, or something in the sight adjusts itself to Midnight—and Life steps almost straight.' I've always thought that Sylvia had grown accustomed to the dark—to her own Dark, the Darkness within that family, within that awful house—and that she was never really able to experience the Light again. Happiness, I mean. Whatever that might be, however you might define it. Even just the simple, ordinary day-to-day pleasures of life.” She smiled, embarrassed, and she shook her head. “I'm probably being very silly.”

“I don't think so,” I said.

“It was as though she'd been pressed beneath the weight of that house, like a flower.” She paused. “I would've liked to help her. I did try to help her, over the years. But it's terribly difficult to help someone who doesn't really want your help, isn't it? And eventually, out of a kind of moral laziness, I suppose, you stop trying.” She shrugged, embarrassed again, at the sadness in her voice, perhaps, or at her failure.

“I have a feeling,” I said, “that there wasn't much you could've done to help Sylvia.”

She shook her head. “But it's all so dreadful. Drugs, guns. Helping prisoners escape.” She looked at me. “Convicted killers. That's what the radio said.”

“That's right.”

“It's so dreadful.” She shook her head again. “What on
earth
is she doing?”

“I don't know. Do you have any photographs of Sylvia, Mrs. Rudoph?”

“No. I'm sorry.”

I nodded.

“What are
you
going to do?” she asked me. “Will you be calling the police?”

“I don't have any real evidence against Sylvia. Just the word of a man whose word isn't very good.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You broke into Sylvia's house, didn't you? To look around. To investigate. You were inside while I was watering the roses. That's why I didn't see you come up.”

I smiled. “If I admitted to that, Mrs. Rudolph, I'd be admitting to a felony.”

Her face was serious. “But if you
had
gone through the house, hypothetically speaking, and if you'd found anything helpful, then you wouldn't be talking to me.”

I smiled again. “I'm not so sure that's true. But you've been very helpful yourself.”

She waved that away. “But what are you going to
do?
”

“Sylvia left a bag of garbage in her backyard. I'm going to go through it.”

“Garbage?” She blinked.

“People sometimes get careless about what they throw away. Maybe Sylvia did.”

“But is that legal? Going through someone's garbage?”

“Once something's been put in the garbage, it essentially becomes public property.” Essentially, this wasn't true. According to the Supreme Court, the garbage had to be on a public thoroughfare. Technically, by lifting the garbage from Sylvia's lawn, I was guilty of trespass.

She thought about that for a moment. “Well,” she said finally, “if you say so.” She didn't seem entirely convinced. “But I think I should be with you when you do it.”

“Why?”

“You've really only this man's word, you said. About Sylvia. And his word isn't necessarily good, you said. Suppose you're wrong, suppose Sylvia had nothing to do with the jailbreak. Or the drugs. Or any of it. Maybe there's some other explanation for all this. The RV, the vacation. Everything. I'm sure your heart's in the right place, Mr. Croft, and I don't mean to be obstructive. But it seems to me that someone should be there with you, someone who can … protect Sylvia's interests.” She frowned once more. “Does that sound silly?”

“No, it doesn't,” I told her. “Do you have a plastic tarp?”

She didn't, but she had some large garbage bags of her own. She also had a pair of rubber gloves, and she lent them to me. She walked along beside me as I carried everything across the street and behind Sylvia's house. I unfolded the bags, four of them, and spread them out along the lawn near the garbage can. I put on the gloves, lifted the lid, set it on the grass, hauled the garbage from the can, set it down on the outspread bags. I used my pocket knife to cut the string. Carefully, I began to shake the trash loose from the bag.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Rudolph.

I had seen it, too. A small yellow bird, a parakeet, had been lying at the top of the garbage. It tumbled out across the black plastic and onto the grass and it lay there, stiff and still, like a child's discarded toy.

12

I
LET GO
of the bag, squatted down beside the bird, picked it up. Its soft yellow feathers were smooth and unruffled but its opened eyes were filmed with dust.

Mrs. Rudolph said, “Sylvia had a parakeet?”

I lay the bird down on the ground and I stood. “Not anymore.”

“But why … how did it die?”

“Its neck's been broken.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “She
killed
it?”

“Someone did.”

“But that's so … so heartless. So
cold
. How could
anyone
do something like that?”

“I don't know,” I said. But I thought I did. The parakeet had been put into the bag last, and it seemed likely to me that it had been put in there by Sylvia. Maybe this had been the last act she'd performed before she drove away in her dandy new RV. Maybe she had hesitated before she killed it. Maybe she had told herself that she was doing the best thing, the only thing. But in the end she had broken its neck, swiftly and firmly, as though she were breaking the link between herself and her past.

Mrs. Rudolph was thinking the same, perhaps. “Poor Sylvia,” she said sadly.

“Yeah,” I said.

She took in a long deep breath. “It's such a waste. Such a terrible waste. She was such a sweet little girl. Years ago. She really was. I felt so sorry for her, living in that house. And I just stood by and watched her grow older and more and more … enclosed.” She lifted her chin. “I
still
feel sorry for her.”

“So do I,” I said. I bent down, lifted the bag, began to shake the garbage loose again.

It was clear from what she'd left behind that Sylvia had made a break with her past. I found the kind of things I had expected to find in the medicine cabinet: a can of hairspray, a bottle of Midol, some old lipsticks, a tube of toothpaste squeezed flat. Amid the limp fruits and vegetables I found her credit cards, American Express, Visa, and Master, all three neatly scissored into quarters. Next to these I found her driver's license, some folded grocery coupons, and a receipt, dated two weeks ago, for the purchase of a Colt Python and a .22 caliber Beretta semiautomatic. Probably she had emptied her wallet, cut the cards, and then tossed everything into the trash. I set the receipt aside, on the grass.

I looked at the small picture on the driver's license. A thin woman, a sharp nose, a narrow mouth, brown hair swept back over her ears, hiding them. I put the license beside the receipt.

Stuck to an empty milk carton I found a slip of paper with a phone number scribbled across it. I recognized the area code—Denver. Above the number, someone had scrawled, “Call Lyle Saturday!!!!” The phrase had been underlined twice, and the handwriting resembled the signature on the driver's license. I put the slip on the grass.

Lucero and Martinez had escaped from the penitentiary on Saturday night.

Toward the bottom of the bag, beneath some coffee grounds, I found a sodden mass of what had once been photographs. They had been set alight, left to burn for a while, then doused with water. A few charred corners of prints remained, some black-and-white, some color. There wasn't enough left of the photographs for me to identify anything. But I assumed that they were more family photos, more moments snipped from a long and probably complicated lifetime, and that Sylvia had burned them deliberately.

I stripped off the gloves, picked up the license, the receipt, the slip of paper, and I stood up.

Mrs. Rudolph came over to me, looked down at the number on the paper. “Do you think that's important?” she asked me.

“I don't know,” I said. “Let's find out.” I took out Leroy's tiny phone, flipped it open, tapped in the numbers. The phone rang. Once, twice, three times.

“Hello?” A woman's voice.

Mrs. Rudolph was watching me. I signaled for her to come forward and I held the phone away from my ear, so both of us could hear. She leaned carefully toward me, craning her neck.

“Hello?” said the woman again.

I said, “Sylvia?”

“I—who
is
thi—” And then suddenly a dial tone. The woman, or someone else, had hung up the phone.

I looked at Mrs. Rudolph. “Was that Sylvia?”

She made a face. “I don't know. It could've been.” She cocked her head, listened to her memory. She winced with frustration. “It
could've
been.” She raised her hands. “I'm sorry. Really I am. I just didn't hear enough.”

“That's okay. Excuse me.” I raised the phone again, tapped in Hector's number.

He answered it himself. “Ramirez.”

“Hector, Joshua. I'm in Las Vegas and I may have something.”

A brief pause—probably while he found something to write with. “Okay. Go ahead.”