Blameless (30 page)

Diana stood in front of the restaurant and eyed the traffic inching its way along the congested street, listening to the horns honking, the people yelling. She tried to convince herself that the trip would be pointless, that the landlady was sure to be oblivious of the rovings of her transient tenants. But, according to what Ethan had told her, Diana figured he must have lived at Sunderland Court for at least three or four years. So most likely the landlady knew something about him. If she was willing to talk.

A truck was triple-parked in front of the karate studio next door to Ken’s, trapping a man who had double-parked. “Son of a bitch!” he was yelling, waving his arms indignantly, as if he were completely guiltless in his current bind. “Stupid, selfish son of a bitch!” Diana watched his futile flailing and then swung her purse over her shoulder, once again marching toward a destination she did not want to reach.

Two blocks in from Mass Ave., Diana felt as if she were in a different world. She pulled her coat more tightly around her, although the afternoon was not cold. She stepped into the middle of the street, although the sidewalk was empty. The bustle and diversity of Central Square had silenced into a grimy sameness of streets littered with garbage and rusty cars. The houses she passed were tired structures whose sagging porches supported families of three-legged furniture. No one was about. If not for the haunting vision of the nursing mother behind bars, Diana would have quickly turned back.

She rounded the corner onto the deadend Sunderland Court, finding more of the same kinds of houses as she tried to avoid the muddy potholes while searching for the correct address. She was surprised to discover that number 17 appeared to be a large, rather respectable house surrounded by a huge porch. But as she drew closer, she realized her original assumptions had been correct: the paint was peeling badly; the railing was broken in places and missing in others; and the floorboards of the porch were so rotted that she had to step carefully to make sure she didn’t fall through.

The front door was slightly ajar and lopsided, swinging inward on only two of its three hinges. Diana glanced over her shoulder and then looked into the vestibule—if the dingy space filled with cartons and an amazing number of old television sets could be called a vestibule. She decided not to go in.

Stepping back, she searched the row of buttons to the left of the door. A sign above the top button, scrawled in barely legible Magic Marker, read: “R. M. Masdea, D.D.S. No Appointment Necessary.” Next to the other half-dozen buttons were slots either empty or stuffed with ill-fitting pieces of paper. “E. K.” was scribbled along the side of the one that must belong to Ethan.

As she pushed the buzzer next to the designation number one, guessing that might belong to the landlady, Diana looked through the murky window into Dr. Masdea’s mean little office. Despite her own fear and discomfort, she felt a rush of sympathy for those who had to let someone touch their teeth in such an awful room.

“What?” demanded an annoyed voice from inside the house.

Diana stepped gingerly around the television sets and looked up the large staircase that still retained some of its original grace, despite its missing balustrades and pitted wood.

“What?” asked the young woman who approached the landing. Aside from her hair, which was wild and huge and unkempt, she seemed normal enough, as did the two toddlers peeking out from behind her legs.

“I’m, ah …” Diana paused, although she was calmed by the sight of the children and the relatively ordinary-looking woman. “I’m looking for the landlady.”

The woman squinted down at Diana and ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m her,” she finally said.

Diana unbuttoned her coat and pressed her hand to her lower back. “Could I possibly speak with you for a few minutes?” She smiled and waved her fingers at the children and then added, “I promise I won’t be long.”

The woman took in Diana’s stomach and walked closer to the edge of the stairs, dragging the children along with her. “What do you want?” she asked, not unpleasantly.

“I’m looking for Ethan Kruse,” Diana said, deciding on the direct approach, although she wasn’t sure why.

“Comes and goes,” the woman said, crossing her arms. “Same as I told that cop.”

Diana climbed a few steps and stood on a landing about a quarter of the way up so that she was directly facing Ethan’s landlady. “Have you seen him lately?”

“You ain’t no cop, are you?” the woman demanded. The children were big-eyed and strangely silent, watching Diana.

“I’m a friend of his,” Diana said, keeping her eyes locked onto the woman’s, trying to look as sincere as she could.

The woman snorted. “Always had a lot of them,” she said, eyeing Diana’s stomach again. “You’re older than most.”

“It’s really important that I find him,” Diana said, letting the woman think what she would.

“You’re better off without him, honey,” the landlady said. “That guy’s no good. Never has been. Never will be. Best you take your baby and go.”

“I plan to,” Diana said, nodding. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Slipped his rent under my door first of the month. Full amount in cash. Same as always.” She shrugged. “Last time I seen him.”

Diana calculated quickly. The first of the month was well after James had been killed. This woman had seen Ethan more recently than anyone else. “So he was here within the last few weeks?” she asked. “He’s been home?”

“Guess so.” She shrugged again. “Rent got paid. Like I told you, he comes and goes.” She leaned down and deftly lifted both children, mounting each on a hip. “Probably shouldn’t have let him stay after what happened before,” she said as she turned toward her door.. “But he pays the rent—and that’s more than most of these losers do.”

Diana charged up the stairs, sidestepping the toys that littered the landing. “What do you mean,” she demanded. “After what happened before?”

The woman surveyed Diana, then she smiled slyly. “After his last girlfriend got herself a shotgun and blew off her head,” she said, her voice filled with equal measures of pity and disgust. “Made a hell of a mess in the apartment.” She shook her wild mane of hair. “Hell of a mess,” she repeated.

Then she kicked the door closed with her foot, leaving Diana standing alone in the silent, toy-strewn hallway.

Dusk was falling quickly, filling the murky alleys and doorways with ominous shadows. Diana clutched her purse tightly and hurried down the stairs. Ethan’s girlfriend had killed herself with a shotgun blast to the head. It probably meant nothing. But it could also mean everything. It could save her neck legally. Or it could get her killed.

Right now, she didn’t care much about legal. She was edgy and scared, her nerves like frayed rope, her every sense heightened and painfully alert. All she cared about was getting home.

And then, as she stepped into the street, she caught a movement along the side of one of the houses. She froze for a moment, like a deer caught in headlights, then whirled around. Nothing. Buttoning her coat, Diana focused on the cross street in front of her. Get off Sunderland Court. Turn left and head west for two blocks. Another left and in two blocks she would be on Mass Ave.

She rushed down the street, oblivious of the muddy potholes, stepping wherever her long-legged stride placed her boot. Then she saw it again. There was someone near the doorway of the decaying house on her right. Someone hiding in the gloom of the listing porch. A man. A large man in a bomber jacket. Watching her. He slipped back into the shadows, but Diana knew that this time the eyes were for real.

She began to run and didn’t look back. Hearing the footfalls pounding behind her, she ran even faster. She turned the corner of Sunderland Court and raced to the lights of Prospect Street, her body flying on the adrenaline of pure fear. She felt the darkness of his shadow fall onto her back. She felt the weight of it. The terror. She dashed around the corner on to Prospect, toward the bustle of Central Square.

25

D
IANA JUMPED INTO HER JEEP AND PUNCHED THE
locks on both doors. She rammed the key into the ignition, gunned the engine, and pulled away from the curb. A horn blared in anger, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she lost whoever was following her. All that mattered was that she got away.

Ethan. She knew it was Ethan. She had seen enough before he ducked inside that doorway. Enough of him, and enough of the jacket. James’s leather jacket. The jacket he and Ethan had fought over. The jacket Ethan had never returned.

Diana slammed on her brakes at a red light, her eyes darting feverishly to the left and then to the right. She looked in her rearview mirror, straining to differentiate among the headlights that followed her, struggling to discern if he was still there. She stared at the light, willing it to turn green. She had to get away. Now. This instant.

Ethan was capable of anything.

He was stalking her as she was stalking him. But what did he want? What might he do? The array of possibilities was endless. Frighteningly infinite.

She darted across the Mass Ave. bridge into Boston, weaving carefully between the lanes of traffic. She managed to twist around a truck making a left turn onto Marlborough Street, but was halted by the light at Boylston. When the light finally changed, she stepped on the gas and glanced behind her. As before, a pair of headlights clung to her tail-lights as if leashed by a powerful magnet. But it didn’t seem possible that a single car could have stuck with her at every intersection. Or did it?

She moved past the Christian Science Center at a maddeningly slow pace and then turned the jeep sharply onto St. Stephen Street. Checking her rearview mirror again, she saw a line of headlights, paired and strung behind her. But there was no way of knowing whether a set belonged to Ethan.

Diana didn’t turn into the alley. Instead she stayed on the street, pulling into a spot a few doors down from the house. She kept the engine idling as she scrutinized the cars attached to the headlights she had feared. They streamed benignly by her. She took a deep breath and dropped her head to the steering wheel. She rubbed a muscle in her neck.

She had either lost him or he had never existed. He had never existed, she told herself. She was running from shadows. Just like last week at the library when she had been so sure Jill was on the other side of the stacks, slinking along the aisle, peering between the volumes. Diana had felt the danger like a physical presence; she smelled it. But when she had marched out to confront Jill, Diana found a redheaded student, at least ten years Jill’s junior, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The girl glanced absently up from her book, then returned to her reading.

All Diana had smelled was her own fear.

There was a message from Ethan waiting for her when she went into her office. Diana’s hands trembled as she listened. “I’m in Charlotte,” he said. “North Carolina. At my brother’s. I probably won’t be north for a while—but don’t worry, I’ll keep in touch.” Diana shook her head. She knew exactly where Ethan was—and it wasn’t North Carolina. Ethan was here. Watching her. Following her.

She snapped the blinds shut and checked the lock on the back door, thinking of the small handgun Craig had ordered. Double-action, he told her when he came home from the store last week, showing her a picture in a catalogue. Some kind of revolver, she remembered, tiny and mean-looking. “Consider it a temporary alarm system,” he said in response to her horror at the idea of having a weapon in the house. “I’ll get rid of it as soon we fix the real system—well before the baby’s old enough to walk.” For the first time since the Brady Bill passed, Diana was sorry there was a waiting period to buy guns.

Stop it, she told herself as she removed the message tape and dropped it into her desk drawer. She didn’t need a gun. Last week, Detective Levine had asked her to save all of Ethan’s messages for him, so she called the police station and told the dispatcher that she had another tape for Levine to pick up. She was being ridiculous. The episode with Ethan’s landlady had just freaked her, as had her illusionary pursuit. Most likely Ethan
was
in North Carolina. His taped message did have that long-distance crackle to it, and she thought she remembered a brother somewhere in the South. Most likely it was just the same as the incidents at the library and in the alley: She had imagined the whole thing. There had been no man in a bomber jacket, no footfalls chasing her, no headlights following her. The eyes were not real. She had to stop running from shadows. She had to stop scaring herself with outrageous fantasies. Reality was more than scary enough.

Diana fiddled with the tape in the open drawer before her, trying to catch an elusive memory that danced away every time she got close to it. She thought she remembered something that might impress Detective Levine. Something Ethan had once said about shotguns. And girlfriends.

She went over to the file cabinet containing her group session records, trying to recall exactly when Ethan had started. She pulled two files from the drawer and carried them back to her desk, then flipped open the first one. It had been Halloween—just over one year ago—and by Thanksgiving she had known she had made a terrible mistake.

For months James had been begging her to let Ethan into the group, convinced that she was the only one who could help his friend. “He’s a good guy underneath all the cocaine and bravado,” James had told her. “I know you could really help him.”

After a couple of phone conversations, she had invited Ethan for a preliminary interview. He came in late one afternoon, a sly I’ve-been-a-bit-naughty aura about him. He was forthcoming about his drinking and drug use, and even admitted to a few petty crimes. “I don’t want to be like this anymore,” he said, his eyes wide and locked onto hers. “I want to change.”

He told the classic borderline tale of constant abandonment by those closest to him. And he had the major single trauma—cringing in the corner of the kitchen as his mother’s boyfriend slit her throat—that Diana was finding so common among her research sample. Although a small voice in the back of her mind told her not to do it—a voice she now wished she had heeded—Diana had agreed to let Ethan in the group for a three-month trial period.