Chosen for Death (31 page)

I stripped off my dress, slip, and shredded stockings, dropping the dress and slip into the sink and the stockings into the trash. He had given me a pair of worn Levi's and a high school sweatshirt. I blotted as much water as I could from my underwear and slipped them on. Good thing he was tall. If he'd been built like his mother I never could have worn the pants. As it was, my hips filled the jeans in a way his bony adolescent body never had. I dried my hair, ran my fingers through it, and confined the clammy strands in a rough braid.

He was waiting in the hall when I came out. "Thanks," I said, holding up my wet clothes. "This is a lot better. Have you got a plastic bag I could put these in?"

"In the kitchen," he said, walking toward the back of the house. I followed him, waited while he fished one out of a closet, and stuck my clothes in it. He wasn't exactly a dynamic conversationalist.

"I feel awful about this," I said. "I rang your doorbell on an impulse, to see whether anyone knew about any land around here for sale. It was just so pretty. Your mom invited me for a walk on the beach, so I could really see how nice it was. And then she slipped and fell into the water. That heavy coat pulled her down, so I jumped in to pull her out. Lost my shoes." He stood silently, watching me. I felt like I was babbling, but I wanted to tell someone the story I'd prepared, to protect Betsy, even though I didn't fully understand why I wanted to protect her when I didn't even like her. His staring made me uncomfortable.

"I'd better be going. Please tell your mother I'm sorry for the trouble and thanks for the clothes. Do you want them back?"

"No, that's OK," he said. His look said he'd never wear them again anyway, not after I'd worn them.

I held out a hand. "Good-bye, then. My name is Thea Kozak. What's yours?"

He took it reluctantly, an expression of undisguised distaste on his face. "Chris," he muttered.

"Well, good-bye, Chris Davis," I said. "Please thank your mother for me." I let myself out—Chris didn't even bother to come to the door—threw my clothes in the back seat, and headed back to Camden, uncertain about what I'd learned, and sadder than ever about my sister Carrie. Sorry that I hadn't been there for her, hadn't had any idea what was going on in her life, when her life was full of disasters like Charlie and Betsy Davis. Such a wretched, sordid end to the search she'd put so much hope and faith in.

I turned on the heat to see if I could stop shivering and stepped on the gas, racing north toward a hot bath and a stiff drink.

Chapter 24

Andre was bent over, taking something out of the oven, when I came through the door. He dropped it hastily onto the stove top and came to meet me, taking in my wet hair, strange clothes, and bare feet. "I've had it, Lemieux," I said. "I'm giving up. No more playing detective for me. You've got to find the person who killed my sister. I can't take any more of this ferreting out suspects and having death-defying adventures." I started out kidding, changed in midsentence to anger, and ended up in tears, running the full gamut of emotions in less than a minute.

"I was worried about you," he said. "I see that I was right to be. You've been on another of your adventures. What was it this time? I thought you were just going to Augusta to read records."

"I did. I went to Augusta, to Hallowell. Read records. Read phone books. I found Carrie's mother. We had a long talk on the beach across from her house, leading to an involuntary swim in Glen Cove when she jumped into the water and I had to jump in to pull her out. Boy, that water was cold!" I threw the bag of soggy clothes over toward the stairs. "I lost my favorite shoes." I'd been running on emotional energy ever since I climbed out of the sea; now that I was here, and safe, exhaustion hit me like I'd been sandbagged. "I'm awfully glad you're here," I said. "I'm tired. I don't want to be alone. I'd hug you, but it would be like the embrace of the swamp thing."

He hugged me anyway. I sagged against him, savoring his warmth and his bulk. His shirt smelled of cigarettes and whatever he'd been cooking. The intensity of his embrace told me things about his caring and concern that his taciturn style left unsaid. When he finally released me, my bra had made two wet circles on his shirt. "Gotcha," I giggled, pointing at them. He grinned and pointed right back at me. I looked down at the circles on my sweatshirt. They were positively obscene. "Is there anything to drink around here? I'm seriously in need of fortification."

Lightly, he touched my face and felt my hands. "You're freezing, Thea," he said. "What you're seriously in need of is a hot bath." He took me by the shoulders, turned me around, and gently propelled me up the stairs. I didn't mind letting him taking charge. I needed a little looking after. It was a welcome change from my usual aggressive independence. I wasn't going to lose it because once I let someone run me a bath.

It was nice to have someone to take care of the physical things, like baths and food, because my mind was elsewhere anyway. Since I'd first had the idea that Carrie's death was connected to her search for her birth mother, I'd been charging forward with my own search, certain that when I found Carrie's mother I would have found the answer to her murder. I now knew more than I'd ever dreamed of knowing about Carrie's origins but I didn't know how to evaluate what Betsy Davis had told me. I could see how the impetus to kill could have come from twenty years of festering anger about Carrie's birth, coupled with her fear of discovery. I wanted to find the killer so badly that I wished I could think she was guilty, but I believed that wretched woman when she said she didn't kill Carrie. She'd seemed so honest and so hurt herself. She admitted she was willing to kill me, but in the end it was herself, not me, that she tried to harm.

So what conclusions could I draw from my latest foray into detective work, other than that I was not cut out for it? My thoughts about Carrie's mother were depressingly similar to my conclusions about Charlie. Carrie's mother had good reasons to kill her, and she could have acted out of a murderous rage, yet I didn't think she'd done it.

I might as well face it. I'd come to a dead end, out of energy and out of ideas. I didn't know where else to look or whom else to talk to. Carrie was still just as dead. I'd promised that her killer would be found, and I didn't see any way I could fulfill that promise. I remembered Sonia's infuriating smirk; heard her saying, "I don't know where you get this idea you can do anything, Thea. Why should you succeed if the police can't?" What I had said then was still true—because I cared more. But caring didn't seem to be enough, and that was all I had left.

Unpleasant as my encounter with Betsy Davis had been, my main reactions were pity and disappointment; for Carrie, it must have been devastating. To find the mother she had dreamed about for so long, who so vividly confirmed Carrie's physical identity. The books I'd read helped me to imagine how it had been—after a lifetime of being a misfit among us giants, suddenly Carrie had found that there was someone else in the world who looked just like her, sounded just like her. I'd gone to meet Betsy Davis expecting to find some answers to the mystery of Carrie's death, but Carrie had gone with a lifetime of emotional baggage. She must have pinned so much hope and expectation on that encounter! For her it was the fulfillment of her life's quest—the end of being disconnected and the beginning of belonging. She had met with complete rejection; flatly told the whole sordid story of her origins; told, without qualification, how unwanted, even hated, she had been, for Betsy Davis would not have been gentle with her unwanted daughter. I was heartsick at the image of Carrie, sweet, hopeful Carrie, fulfilling her dream of finally finding someone who was like her, and discovering that she had been conceived from rape and incest and hated and rejected from the moment of conception.

I lowered the toilet lid and sat there staring dully at Andre's back while he put in the plug and started the water. I felt as though a giant had picked me up and wrung me out like a used washcloth. My feet hurt. My side hurt. I couldn't stop shaking. I was too wretched to care. "OK, stand up," he said, pulling me gently to my feet. I stood and held up my arms so he could take off my sweatshirt. Then he undid my jeans, tugged them down, and took off my soggy underwear. "Into the tub," he commanded. "I'll fix you a drink, and then I'll wash your back and you can tell me what happened."

It sounded absurdly domestic
, I thought, as I slid down into the steaming water. What a life we could have, Andre and I. We could go off every morning confronting murderers, drug dealers, child abusers, hostile admissions counselors, and frantic headmasters, spend the day asking pointed or dangerous questions, and reunite at the end of the day, everything spent, for bourbon and back washing. I floated on my back, feeling the heat penetrate to my bones. The bath felt good even if nothing else in life did.

Andre came back with two drinks. Bourbon. He must have bought some. There hadn't been any here. He took my place on the toilet seat. I sat up and took the glass from his hand, gulping it down like I'd just staggered out of the desert.

"Hey, take it easy," he said. "That's not water, you know."

The alcohol did a slow burn in my stomach. I drank some more. In my dilapidated state, it hit me like a ton of bricks, sending my anxieties into another dimension. I stopped obsessing about what to do next and began to relax. I was beginning to feel human again, depressed but human.

"I'm glad you're here," I said again. I could have shared some of the other things I'd been thinking, about how nice it was to have someone to come home to, how good it felt to be cared for, but all those things smacked of commitment and if I knew one thing for sure, it was that I had a severe allergy to commitment and the pain that could result from it. David and I had been like an intricate weaving. When our individual threads were blended together, the result had been something special and complicated and unique. I used to wake up early just so I could lie there and watch him sleep. When he died and those threads were unraveled, I was left tattered and vulnerable. I'd mended myself as best I could and I was afraid to risk myself again. Andre and I were attracted, but even if we got past the prickles and quirks of each other's personalities, there was geography. A long-term relationship was impractical. "I'm not ready to talk about my day," I said. "It was too rotten. Maybe you should tell me about yours."

"I had a rotten day, too," he said. "Never even got to talk with Mrs. Bolduc. I caught a new sex abuse case, spent the day talking to neighbors of a couple—divorced mother and her new boyfriend—who reportedly are prostituting her two young daughters to pay for drugs. It's a sick situation, and the heartbreaking thing is that it isn't surprising or unusual even though the girls are only nine and eleven. Their teachers reported suspected abuse when the girls' behavior became strange. And the neighbors won't talk to me. They're like a bunch of goddamned clams. They think they should protect this couple." His face was tight and angry. I put a soapy hand over his. "I talked to four different people today," he said, "each of whom insisted they'd noticed nothing unusual and said they didn't want to get involved. As if we shouldn't all get involved when the welfare of children is at stake."

"People even less cooperative than I was?" I said. I lay back in the tub, watching his face, remembering the first time I'd seen him, and then the interview in Thomaston. How formal and unyielding he'd seemed, yet how passionate about solving the terrible crimes that came his way. I didn't know him much better now, despite our intimacy, but I knew enough. He didn't open up easily. We hadn't had time to exchange stories and maybe we never would, but there was a goodness about him, and a gentleness, I never expected to find in a policeman.

He almost smiled. "They made you look like a paragon of cooperation, even when you were at your most prissy."

"You still think I'm prissy?"

"Lady," he said, "I know better now. I know your most intimate secrets. I've seen you black and blue and bloody. Unconscious. Enraged. In your underwear. Out of your underwear. And in the throes of passion." His eyebrows rose to a quizzical peak, asking an unspoken question.

"Anytime," I said. "With respect to passion, only, that is. I've given up black and blue and battered." If he hadn't been there I would be hitting bottom by now, compulsively examining everything I knew and obsessing about what to do next, probably well into a bottle of bourbon. Well, I was doing that, wasn't I? I wondered how he knew bourbon was my drink. "I thought you were going to wash my back?" I said.

"I thought you were going to tell me about your day," he countered.