Mother's Day (30 page)

“What street is this?” asked the woman beside him.

Walter started and peered out the window. He had lost track of time, remembering. “Congress Street,” he muttered.

The woman hoisted herself up off the seat and started toward the door. Walter exhaled, glad to be rid of her.

His mind returned to Linda. She had been his to command, for several years. He had acted out every fantasy, enjoyed every release. It had worked out better than he had ever dreamed. And then she ran away. For a long time he had stifled his impulses, made do with pornography, and dreamed of his retirement, when he could return to Asia. He had used all his self-control, knowing he would never come across a situation as perfect as the one with Linda Emery. And then, off duty one day, he had caught Rachel Dobbs in the act of shoplifting a Walkman in a tape and CD store. He’d followed her outside and accosted her. She’d turned out to be a runaway from Seattle. She had no one to vouch for her. She was scared and willing to do anything. And he couldn’t resist.

But it had been a mistake. He didn’t have the same kind of grip on her that he had on Linda. She started to threaten him, and his temper got the best of him. Something about the way she defied him was infuriating, and that hammer in the toolbox was close at hand. Walter shifted uneasily on his seat. Suddenly the lights in the bus seemed uncomfortably bright.

“Bayland,” the bus driver called out.

Walter squinted out at the street signs. He would wait for a few blocks, get off at the main street. It was only a short walk from there. He pulled the cord overhead and waited until the last moment to step up to the back doors and climb down onto the curb. It was good to be back in the darkness.

He opened his umbrella, put his head down, and started the few blocks toward the house. He had gotten rid of the car. That was one big job out of the way. Now he had to dispose of the body. Luckily his police training helped him to avoid costly mistakes, leaving telltale evidence and so on. He had thought it over carefully and decided that the best place to put her was a summer house that would not be in use this year because the people were going to Europe and had decided not to rent it out. He knew this for a fact because the police were supposed to check on the place every week. But they would not be checking in the two-car garage. There was no reason to. No one would open those doors for six months, maybe a year.

Walter glanced up and could see his own house in the near distance. In the daylight you could see the peeling paint, the broken shingles, but in the darkness it still looked imposing. Walter’s father, Henry Ference, had been a famous attorney, and Walter sometimes felt as if he had inherited his cleverness. He often thought he could have been just as successful as his father. It was just that circumstances had gone against him. There was no money for the Ivy League education by the time Walter grew up. He had settled for the police force, but things still seemed to go wrong for him.

Like this business with Phyllis. She had come up with that hypnosis idea, and she would never let go of it. She was like a dog with a bone. And Walter knew that when the engineer remembered the face of the man who pushed Eddie McHugh, the face would be Walter’s.

This whole thing was having a ripple effect. He had never intended to do another killing after Amber. That had terrified him when it happened. But then Linda had come around with her threats. She was going to expose him. Some nonsense about DNA testing, to prove that Jenny Newhall was his child. Only it wasn’t nonsense. She could ruin him. He didn’t know, at the time, that she’d also told Greg Newhall that he was the child’s father. All he knew was that killing her had been necessary—no choice. But once he had put her in the Dumpster, he had to go back to her room, to make sure she had kept nothing that might implicate him. What he didn’t realize was that Eddie McHugh had been waiting for her light to go on, ready to peep at her. And he’d seen Walter instead, searching through her things. Eddie let that information drop when Walter was questioning him at the police station. He thought it would get him off of the peeping charge with Phyllis. He’d realized his mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Eddie got a lot more than he bargained for. Walter hated to admit it, even to himself, but pushing Eddie in front of that train had not been that difficult. He had always heard it said, especially by the guys who worked in the prison system, that when a man killed once, it got easier and easier to kill again. He’d always thought of that sort of person as an animal. He was not like that. He was civilized. The only reason he had killed these people was because it was absolutely necessary. It wasn’t something he liked doing. But he had to admit that it did get easier.

Walter reached the front steps of his house and bounded up them the normal way. There was no use worrying about it. He was almost in the clear. He just had to concentrate on what needed to be done. He would have a hot cup of tea to take the chill off and then get on with moving the body. He slammed the front door behind him, relocked it, and stared down the gloomy hall. Suddenly a figure appeared in the dark before him.

“Jesus Christ,” Walter cried.

“It’s me, Walter,” said Emily.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded furiously.

Emily looked apologetic. “I couldn’t stand it. I checked myself out. I took a cab home. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Walter just stared at her.

“What happened to the picture?”
Emily asked timidly, pouring her husband a cup of tea.

Walter glanced at the hole in the plaster, the light spot on the wallpaper where the picture had been. He had swept the picture off the table and into a trash bag in his hasty clean-up before he left the house with Phyllis’s car. It was automatic. He wanted to rid the room of anything that connoted a struggle, even though the picture had fallen before Phyllis ever arrived. “It fell,” he said shortly.

“Did the glass break?”

Walter hesitated. “Yes. I threw it out.”

Emily nodded and pressed her lips together. “I’ll have to get something to put there,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Walter, staring out over his teacup. They both knew she never would.

There was silence in the kitchen, except for the loud gulping sound Emily made as she drank a ginger ale. She placed the glass down on the table, then picked it up and wiped the table beneath it carefully with a napkin. “I know you’re mad that I came home,” she said tentatively.

“No, I’m not mad.”

“I just felt so uncomfortable there,” she said. “All the personal questions. I didn’t mind the withdrawal so much. Honestly. I mean it was bad, but I guess I deserved that. It was more the groups and all the psychologizing. I just hated it. They kept wanting me to talk about…you know, the past. They aren’t happy unless you’re telling them everything. And there’s…I just…I believe some things are between a person and God.”

Walter nodded.

“But I really think I’m going to be okay this time. I really do.”

“That’s good,” said Walter, taking another sip from his cup.

Emily sat back and felt the old familiar heaviness settling onto her heart. He wouldn’t criticize her. He never did. He never got mad at her or objected to what she did. There was no reason to explain any of it to him. He was the perfect husband, she thought, and she felt that void inside of her again that had temporarily been relieved in the hospital. She knew what other people thought—they thought she should be grateful. Most men would have thrown her out long ago or beat her up or something. Walter never lost his temper with her.

Tears rose to her eyes. She wiped them away. He did not seem to notice.

The ringing of the phone startled them both. Emily looked at her husband fearfully. “That might be Sylvia,” she said.

“I don’t want to talk to her,” said Walter.

“She’ll wonder why I’m home,” said Emily worriedly.

“It’s none of her business,” said Walter.

Emily could see that he wasn’t going to answer the phone. She wished she was one of those people who could just sit by a phone and let it ring, but it made her feel too guilty. If someone was calling her, it was her duty to answer. Slowly she felt her insides shrivel at the prospect of hearing Sylvia’s voice on the other end, critical and shrill. She licked her lips and whispered, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Ference?” asked an unfamiliar voice.

“Yes,” Emily agreed uneasily.

“My name is Karen Newhall. I know it’s late and I’m sorry to bother you and your husband at home, but I need to speak to Detective Ference.”

Emily’s heart filled with relief. She knew it wouldn’t last. Sylvia would find out before long—but at least for now she was safe. She held out the phone to Walter. “It’s for you,” she said.

Walter pushed back his chair, walked over, and took the phone. “Yes,” he said.

Emily took their cups and saucers and rinsed them in the sink. Then she began to dry them.

“What kind of information?” Walter asked suspiciously, his voice low. He turned his back to his wife.

“Well, you did the right thing to call me,” said Walter. “But listen, there’s no need for you to come down to the station. I’ll come to your house. I’m sure you’ve seen enough of that place already… Okay. Okay. I’ll see you then.” Walter hung up the phone.

“I need to go out,” he said.

Emily nodded. “That’s okay. I’ll be fine,” she said, although he hadn’t asked. “I’ll go to bed early.” She knew better than to inquire about the call. Walter never liked to discuss such matters at home.

“You might have trouble sleeping,” he said. “Maybe you should take something. I have some sleeping pills.”

“No,” said Emily. “No pills. They’re as bad as alcohol. I learned that at the counseling. They call that substituting one dependency for another. No, if I can’t sleep, I’ll just watch TV or clean out a closet or something,” she said, forcing a smile.

Walter sighed and gazed at the cellar door, which was across the kitchen. It was unlikely that she would go down into the cellar. She was afraid of the dark, the cobwebs. It was a chance in a million, but still, there was that chance. And there was no use locking the door. It would only make her curious if she tried it, and besides, it only locked from the outside upstairs anyway. He watched his wife, moving around the kitchen, tidying up, her hands still shaking from the alcohol withdrawal.

No, he thought, there was only one way to guarantee she would be in no condition to go into the cellar, or anywhere else, for a while. He needed to be sure she would be incapacitated tonight. He walked out into the hallway and opened the door to the antique lowboy. He removed a bottle of vodka from where she had hidden it behind the good china in the back. He set the bottle carefully on top between a vase of dried flowers and a framed photograph of his mother. Then he opened the door to the hall closet and called out to Emily.

“Have you seen my other raincoat? It’s still raining out there, and this one is wet.”

Emily came shuffling innocently out of the kitchen. She had put on her bedroom slippers as soon as she came home. “I’m sure it’s in there,” she said. “It’s probably jammed between two coats.”

Walter nodded to the vodka bottle on the lowboy. “By the way, I found that. You’ll probably want to pour it down the sink or something.”

Emily’s gaze rested with fear and longing on the bottle. “Yes, I will,” she said.

Walter continued to rummage in the closet and made a display of finding the missing coat. “Oh, you’re right,” he said. “Here it is.” Then he looked down at something on the closet floor as if surprised. “Look at these,” he said, reaching back into the closet and holding up a pair of dusty, black tooled cowboy boots. “Now this is the closet to clean if you’re in the mood for cleaning tonight,” he said. He shook his head and gazed fondly at the boots. “I must have been sixteen when I got these.”

“A lot of things need cleaning out,” Emily admitted apologetically.

Walter examined the dusty boots and then gave a noisy sigh. “I was saving these for the boys, for Joe and little Ted. I thought they’d wear them someday.”

Emily’s face turned chalky white, and she could not tear her gaze from the boots in Walter’s hands.

Walter shook his head and handed them to her. “They’re no use to us now. Here’s the first thing you might want to toss out.”

“No,” said Emily, putting up her hands. “No, don’t.”

Walter frowned as if perplexed by her reaction. “Well, I don’t see any reason to keep them any longer. It’s not as if the children are ever coming back.”

Emily covered her mouth with her hand and turned her back to him.

He placed the boots on the lowboy, beside the vodka bottle. “Well, you do what you want with them,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”

Emily nodded but did not look at him as he left the house. Once he was gone, she walked over to the lowboy and picked up the boots. She stared at them, turning them over in her trembling hands. Then she walked over and replaced them in the closet. She straightened up, but she did not want to turn around. It was as if the bottle on the lowboy was calling to her, in a voice that only she could hear.

“I’m glad we don’t have to go to the police station,”
said Jenny, pulling back the curtain to see if Detective Ference had arrived in the driveway yet.

“You’re going to wear that curtain out,” Karen observed. “You’ll be able to hear the car when he gets here.”

Jenny shrugged and flopped down on the sofa. “I just want to get this thing over with,” she said.

“I know,” said Karen, looking out at the rain. The rain had actually been the deciding factor. She had debated what to do—whether or not to wait for Arnold Richardson’s return or to call the police, as Jenny was urging her to do. It was the rain that had helped her to make up her mind. She kept picturing Greg out there, trying to find shelter from the drizzle. It was a habit of long-standing, to worry about his health, his wellbeing. For years, every time he was out on a job and it started to rain, she automatically worried that he might get soaked and get a cold. He teased her about it. He told her she liked to worry. Now she found she couldn’t stop herself from thinking that way. No matter what he’d done to her, to their marriage, he was an innocent man, and he was hiding out, God knew where, being hunted down as a dangerous criminal when he could be safely back…well, maybe not at home, but at least in some kind of civilized place. It was not fair to deny him safety, or delay it, even for a couple of days. Jenny was right. She had to act right away.