Just Fall (10 page)

Missing her is still an acute ache in Lucien’s heart. Yet he is grateful his mother had met Bertrand before she died, also grateful that she had loved Agathe, and that she was proud he had become a cop.

After his mother’s death, Agathe’s family had become his own. Her parents, Therese and Moses, her sister, Gabrielle, and Gabrielle’s husband, Peter, all of them had embraced him even back when they were still just dating, but after his mother’s sudden death it was even more so. He remembers the pride that swelled in him the day Moses had asked Lucien to call him Dad. He has done so ever since.

Agathe. He had been understandably distracted while talking to her at the scene of the murder; had held the phone away from his ear and just let her rant, until a subordinate asked him a question and he had unceremoniously ended the call. But he loves his wife dearly, loves their son, and knows he will love this new baby about to grace their lives. Agathe was his high school sweetheart; he has loved her every day of his adult life. She is also the person who grounds him, soothes him, is his respite from the brutal debasement he faces daily. When the creeping shadows of man’s seemingly infinite capacity for ugliness and evil threaten to overwhelm, Agathe provides light and grace.

Now, as Agathe answers her phone, it is clear her bad temper has dissipated. That is the way it is with Agathe. Her temper flares, bright and hot, floods out of her in a torrent, and then fades away, leaving cheerful good humor.

Lucien apologizes about his reaction to the news of their second baby. He assures her he loves her and is happy to expand their family. He can hear their Bertrand gurgling softly in the background and his heart expands. Maybe they will have a girl this time, a little sister he can raise his boy to protect. He shares that thought with Agathe, who is pleased. Her sister, Gabrielle, has one child, Thomas; it is time they welcomed a girl into the family. Agathe asks what he wants for dinner, and when he hesitates, unsure if he will make it home in time, she offers to make a curry with dumplings, his favorite, and so he knows all is forgiven.

The first time Ellie saw a dead body she was twenty-one. It was the night before college graduation. She and her crowd of friends were partying hard, a noisy, carefree last hurrah. The obligatory stodgy dinners with families in town for the ceremony had been endured, then one by one they had peeled away to the house on Rose Avenue where the music was pumping and the alcohol flowing. The house, which had been the central gathering place for this group all of senior year, was a gracious old Victorian, a somewhat battered Painted Lady graced with faded multicolored hues, remnants of her heyday. Given the house’s disreputable history (it was rumored to be a former whorehouse), and current standing as the best party house going, it had been christened the House of Pleasure by its residents.

The actual residents of the house were four: Jason Briggs (Ellie’s boyfriend, an ambitious business student with a work hard/play hard ethic), Doug Holland (Jason’s best friend, a feckless history major with no fucking idea about what he wanted to do with his life), Shyam Hemarajani (a hard-striving first-generation son of immigrant Indian parents, who possessed a surprisingly scalding sense of humor), and Collette Guichard (a once and forever tomboy, always more comfortable tossing around a football or playing beer pong than any traditionally “feminine” activity).

Ellie loved Jason, tolerated Doug because she loved Jason, had formed a surprisingly solid friendship with Shyam, and maintained a polite rapport with Collette, with whom she could never quite get into a conversational groove. Ellie was at the house a lot, practically the fifth roommate, and a vibrant part of its never-ending-party policy. This night was no different. She, like everyone else, had ditched her parents as soon as was decently possible and sped over to the house. Beer? Check. Vodka? Check. Tequila, lime, salt? Check, check, check.

Knowing this was the last night of senior year, of college, of this honeyed window of time before “real life” began, gave the evening a surreal quality. There was an electric current in the air, a sense of wildness, a frisson of infinite possibility.

People who had never before spoken fell into deep philosophical discussions and emerged hours later bemoaning the fact that they had only just now discovered each other and vowing to stay in touch. Shyam finally made a move on Rachel Marcus, the dark-haired beauty he had been crushing on for two years but had been too shy to approach. To his utter astonishment (and perhaps hers) he persuaded her to disappear with him into his bedroom. Collette ruled the foosball table, taking on one challenger after the next, winning each match with a whooping war cry of victory. Doug drank. And drank.

Although none of his friends knew this, Doug’s dinner with his parents that night had not been a gathering of proud affirmation of their only son’s accomplishments. Doug’s parents had arrived on campus for a meeting with the dean to learn that Doug was not going to graduate with his class. His last exam, a series of essays for a history of religion class, had been an invective-blurred rant against the professor, a rigid bureaucrat with whom he had butted heads from the onset of the semester. The dean had given Doug every chance—to take the test again, to apologize to the professor—but Doug, for reasons not even he could fathom, had refused. Consequently, dinner with his parents had been a battleground. His father’s more measured and confused questioning had been punctured by his mother’s shrill and desperate anger. “How could you do this to us, Douglas?” And as their narcissism raged, Doug retreated further and further into himself. Until he got to the Rose Avenue house.

There, Doug was the life of the party. He started drinking the minute he got in the door, played the impeccable host, pouring endless shots and tapping countless kegs. He circulated, greeting one and all; he danced; he took Collette on at foosball and lost. But while everyone else was feeling the sharp tang of incipient release and celebration like sea salt in the spring breeze, Doug was spiraling deeper and deeper into a dark, lonely place of oppression and despair.

Ellie and Jason had played host and hostess until about two
A
.
M
. Then Ellie had grabbed Jason’s hand and led him upstairs. They hadn’t spoken much about what was going to happen after graduation. Jason had been accepted to Wharton, so was Pennsylvania-bound. Ellie was planning a move to New York City, just a few short hours away. Both had adopted a somewhat wary, somewhat hopeful “wait and see” attitude. But tonight, Ellie felt profoundly sad. It was the end of all of this—school, with its defined schedules and expectations, falling in love with Jason and then being in love with him, the first time in her life she could really say that she was in love. Suddenly, the mature restraint with which they both had approached their imminent separation seemed ludicrous to her. She wanted to lick every inch of him. She wanted to eat him up.

As they walked into his bedroom, she was the aggressor, pushing him down on the mattress, tugging breathlessly at his clothes. Jason was receptive, a little amused, but also turned on by her urgency. The room was dark, except for the slice of yellow light that cut in from the hallway through the partially open bedroom door. Ellie paused in the light, smiling seductively down at Jason, who was lying on the bed propped up on his elbows, as she slowly, seductively unbuttoned her shirt. Just as she tugged it off and tossed it to him, they heard Doug bellowing from downstairs.

“Jason! Jason! Where are you, man?”

Ellie saw Jason’s torn look. She unhooked her bra and with one swift move of her hip butted the door closed. As she turned the lock with one hand, she twirled the bra over to the bed with the other.

“You’re mine tonight, baby,” she said as she joined him on the bed, her long blond hair swinging, her body ripe with desire and need.

The next morning, Jason was still asleep when Ellie woke, parched with thirst and needing to pee. She hit the bathroom, grateful it was littered only with red plastic cups partially filled with stale beer. Some of their parties had seen it left awash with puke, and, on one memorable occasion, three naked, intertwined people asleep in the bathtub. She picked up the best she could, pouring beer down the sink and piling the cups. She drank from the tap, but the smell of old beer made her gag. She decided to go to the kitchen in search of juice. She made her way downstairs, picking gingerly over the debris of the party. More red plastic cups, empty liquor bottles, an overflowing ashtray, a stray shoe. When she saw Doug slumped against the wall, she thought he was asleep. Her first thought was that the weird angle of his neck was bound to be painful when he woke up. It was only upon taking a closer look that she saw the congealing blood that ran from the ragged vertical slices in his forearms, the sticky red serrated kitchen knife that lay by his limp hand. It was then that she began to scream.

It was nobody’s fault, Ellie and Jason assured each other. Doug had been troubled, mentally ill. But Jason alone among all of their friends had known the trouble Doug was in, the depth of his angst. And so, the echo of Doug’s anguished cries for Jason, the cries that they had heard even as Ellie had swung the door to Jason’s bedroom closed, reverberated through their relationship and eventually killed it.

Ellie hurries through the lobby of the little tropical hotel and out onto the sunbaked circular driveway planted with riotously colored flowers—a grandiose flourish to the otherwise simple establishment. She takes note of the idling taxi, a battered blue Volvo with one red door. She climbs in.

“Where to?” asks the driver.

“Hewanorra Airport. Please.”

He flips on the meter and pulls out of the driveway. Ellie’s wired, on edge. She watches palm trees flash by as well as tropical blossoms: ginger lilies, anthuriums, birds of paradise. Two grazing goats, bells around their necks, lift their heads when the taxi rattles past them. Ellie shifts uncomfortably on the hot seat of the cab. The backs of her thighs are sticky and pull away from the vinyl with a snap.

She wills herself to think, to plan. She will fly home. And then say what? She racks her brain and comes up empty. Should she go to the police? Or say nothing at all? Let the gossip mill turn? Whatever the gossips can invent would be better than the truth about Rob. But what if he
was
still alive? What if he found her after she abandoned him? What would he do then? What would his captor do when he learned she had fled? A trickle of sweat runs down between her breasts and she fans herself uselessly.

“Nice nails.”

She’s so lost in thought she’s not even sure the driver is really talking to her.

“What?”

“I said I like your nails.”

His accent is peculiar, not the lilt of the island; she can’t place it.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“So, he’s dead.”

Ellie’s head jerks up. Did she actually hear that? Or was it that shape-shifting accent of his?

“What did you say?”

“He’s dead, yes? Unless you left some other poor sucker in your room.”

For a second the landscape blurs before her eyes. A roaring sound swirls through her brain. Breathe, she reminds herself.
Breathe.

“Yes. He’s dead.”

She says it firmly but she’s wary, prickling with apprehension.

“But you didn’t follow directions, did you? What happened to doing it on the boat?”

“He showed up wasted. He was causing a scene. I had to make a judgment call.”

“Quinn is not happy. He likes people who know how to listen. How to obey.”

“I killed the guy, didn’t I? I did what I was told to do.”

The driver gives a dissatisfied grunt.

“So, I take it you’re not driving me to the airport?” She keeps her voice steady only with effort.

“No.”

“But how did you know where to find me? How did you recognize me?” She can’t help herself. She blurts her confusion; her voice cracks.

He laughs, and she gets a flash of a gold tooth reflected in the rearview mirror. “Oh, little girl.” His voice is full of pity.

They turn onto the main drag of the little town of Vieux Fort. It is dazzling with color and noise. Candy-colored buildings, dabbed with exuberant graffiti. Women selling fruit and vegetables, bracelets and beads, pungent spices and black lava soap, men hawking live chickens and throwing dice. Tourists threading through, sniffing, bargaining, flashing cash.