Salter, Anna C (4 page)

I am not good at waiting, and I am not a procrastinator. I'm the kind that speeds up at intersections. When I jump horses cross-country I sometimes—well, frequently to be honest—have horses taking jumps too fast and too strung out, but I rarely have a horse balk. We are going over that jump if it kills us. It's a genetic thing, the price of being related to Mama.

I could have asked Carlotta to use her connections in the prosecutor's office to find out where Willy had gone once he was released. She was a Vermont prosecutor, and Willy's case was in New Hampshire, but one prosecutor would talk to another regardless. But looking at her, I didn't think it was a good idea. There wouldn't be any way I could ask her without tipping her off.

We got off Willy, finally, and onto the backlash against victims of child sexual abuse and "taint" hearings and legal issues and the way the media gobbles up any perp's version of events regardless of how bizarre, but underneath it all I kept thinking about Willy. Carlotta had kicked off something. I had been so furious that some fool judge had released him that I hadn't yet thought about where his release put me. By the time lunch was over I was facing the fact that if Willy didn't go after me, I'd have to find a way to go after him. I couldn't just walk away knowing he was going to sadistically abuse eighteen million kids.

I walked back to my office thinking about the problems that come when you start on a life of deception. If I was going after Willy it would have been safer to have somebody know exactly where I was and what I was doing at all times, but it wasn't worth the hassle.

This was Carlotta's fault, I rationalized. If she weren't being so controlling I could have told her. I would have told her if I had trusted her to stay out of it and not blab to Adam. I, of course, would stay completely out of it when dealing with a friend who was doing something stupid beyond belief. Right.

In my defense, it had always felt better to be in the driver's seat than the passenger's seat. Willy would look me up even if I didn't look him up, and I couldn't see just sitting around waiting to be surprised. Neither of us had counted on his getting out of prison when he waxed eloquent about his various techniques for entrapping children —after all, he'd been in his sixties and starting a thirty-year prison sentence.

But the real problem —which was so formidable I didn't even want to think about it—was what the hell was I supposed to do once I found him? I couldn't just shoot him —despite my unfortunate, politically incorrect fondness for guns and the fact that I had a fair amount of expertise with them. I couldn't imagine shooting anyone in cold blood.

I wasn't going to talk him out of anything. I could see it now: "Willy, did you know molesting kids was wrong?"

"Gee," he'd say, "I never thought of that. "I'll quit right away."

Threatening him would just put me in more jeopardy. The more Willy was sure I would try to harm him, the more he'd go after me.

Could I warn people in his community? Put it in the newspaper? Without a doubt no one would believe me. Willy was too glib and too charming.

I'd end up with a major lawsuit against me for slander plus get labeled as a crazy whose word was worthless. People have a way of ignoring evidence if they really like someone. A few months before, a teacher at a private school had been caught with mega-amounts of child porn. His colleagues had claimed it didn't mean he was a pedophile. Right. Like people who own two hundred cookbooks don't cook.

I had to smile thinking about Willy's defense. I would say truthfully that I had visited Willy in prison to learn about sadistic offenders. Willy would no doubt use the visits against me. He would portray me as a paranoid who had been harassing him for years and was now making up stories about him.

But if he did sue me, the audiotapes might be admissible under the rules of discovery. I brightened a little thinking I had one option, even though professional self-immolation would not be my first choice.

I walked back to my private practice office a few blocks from Sweet Tomatoes. My private practice was in a house I had once shared with Carlotta. I was only there one day a week. I spent the rest of my time in the Department of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical School, where I taught, supervised residents, sat on stupid committees, and endlessly annoyed the chairman, who thought tact was an art form and that I knew less about it than anyone he had ever met.

That wasn't exactly true. I knew about tact. I just thought it was a character flaw. So what if he had had a few dozen complaints about me over the years. Nobody ever complained that what I had said was actually wrong. They just seemed to think I didn't need to say it exactly that way at exactly that time, if at all. Details.

I had a half hour before my next client, and I started to pick up the phone to track down Willy. The absence of a plan was definitely a problem, but why worry about it now. First I had to find him. But the phone rang before I could pick it up.

"This is Dr. Stone," I said.

"Michael," the voice on the other end said simply.

My heart rate went up a notch, which annoyed me exceedingly. I could never seem to control the effect Adam had on me. "Good afternoon, Chief Bowman. Caught any crooks today?"

"Half a dozen before sunrise," Adam replied. He paused. "I'd like to come over this evening," he said. Adam could be more direct than I was.

"Why?" I said, suddenly suspicious. "Did Carlotta call you?"

"What's with the third degree?" Adam asked. "Why would Carlotta call me?"

I had blown it. Now he'd call her if she didn't call him.

"Nothing," I said. "Really, it's nothing. She's just on the rampage about me, as usual. I thought you were coming over to lecture me —which I would not have liked," I added sternly just in case he did call her.

"No," he said slowly, "that wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

Adam could say fewer words and get a bigger reaction from me than anyone I had ever known. I found my mouth was dry.

"Sounds fine," I said trying and miserably failing at keeping my voice even. "Dinner?"

"Sure," Adam said, and we got off on the when and where stuff, which allowed me to get my heart rate a tad short of tachycardia.

There was nothing I could do about the estrogen vote. I liked living alone. I didn't want a steady boyfriend. But every time Adam came around, the estrogen just started swimming in my ears.

Once Adam and I had gone to Hawaii. Well, actually I had gone, and he met me there. I wasn't even sure he was coming, and I had been walking on the beach when I realized the barefoot guy in shorts walking toward me was Adam.

The whole time we spent there had been a world apart. Like ghosts of the Aaragone, we never spoke of home. We never talked about his job or mine or sex offenders or my prickliness about independence or anything to do with the real world. I had worn long cotton dresses on the beach at night with nothing underneath, and the wind had whipped my dress around and lifted my skirts. I had felt like Marilyn Monroe standing on that grating, and I have never felt like Marilyn Monroe before or since. I could still remember the feeling of the wind on my bare thighs and bottom. I could remember the feel of other things too. Sitting in my office a million miles from Hawaii, it still made me smile.

On the way back to the mainland we had both been glum. The real world was rushing toward us with every mile, and we both knew it wouldn't be the same. It hadn't been.

I picked up Chinese on the way home. The best thing about being in my forties was making my peace with who I was and who I wasn't, and I wasn't Julia Child.

I was, however, happy to see Adam when he walked in. It was still light out, and mercifully, mud season seemed to be warming up so we agreed to dinner on the deck. I was busy unpacking cartons and didn't notice how still Adam was.

"I've been thinking," he said, finally. 'How would you feel about moving in with me for a while?"

"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with the way things are now?" I am never very smart when estrogen is roaring in my ears. I should have seen what was coming, but I didn't.

"The commute's too long from my house to yours," he said lightly.

"Fifteen minutes? Boy, you've been living in the country too long. Fifteen minutes would buy you a block in Boston at rush hour."

Adam didn't say anything, so I went on, "Look, why spoil a good thing? I am not the easiest person to live with." Actually I am impossible to live with.

Adam persisted. "Then why not move back into town with Carlotta? You and she got along when you were living there before."

I knew, then, where this was going. He had called Carlotta. "I can't move in with Carlotta," I said sitting down to face him. "If there is any risk, and I'm not saying there is, I don't want to put her in the middle of it. You know Carlotta. She doesn't know zip about self-defense. She used to hate it when I had guns in the house."

"You can't stay here now, not with Willy out. You're a quarter mile from the nearest neighbor."

"Why not?" As if I didn't know.

"Michael, have you ever been to the scene of a homicide?"

"No," I said. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Because I'm not sure you realize what you're getting into."

"I'm not getting into anything."

"Buy that and I've got a bridge to sell you."

"Adam, there's no point to this."

"Look, I do not want to find your bruised and broken body with needles under your fingernails."

"Cut it out, Adam. Isn't that a little baroque?" It was kind of a weak comeback, but I didn't seem to have anything convincing to say. Adam was way ahead of me. He had a full head of steam about this, and I was still flapping around on a beach in Hawaii. So much for letting your guard down.

"Not if you have found bodies like that before." Well, he hadn't, at least not in Vermont. Well, actually, maybe he had. Like most of the country, Vermont had had at least one serial killer, I remembered. He had operated for a couple of years a while back, leaving a body every six months. All right, so that kind of thing could happen here.

"He will kill you," Adam said quietly.

"You could at least say 'could.'"

"He will kill you," Adam said a little more strongly, "and then I will kill him."

"Come on, Adam. For Christ's sake. You will not. You're a cop, a good cop. You don't go around killing people."

"I will kill him," Adam said again, firmly. "But it will do no good because you will be just as dead. And then I will miss you," he said gently, "every day for the rest of my life."

I froze. He was repeating back to me something I had said to him about my daughter who had died of SIDS a few years back. Jordan was absolutely my Achilles' heel. I had had no warning he was going to raise her, and her death rose from whatever pool of misery I kept it trapped in and flooded through every pore. Suddenly I had the metallic taste in my mouth I had had for weeks after she died —grief has effects no one can seem to explain. I got very cold and knew if I wasn't lucky I would start shaking soon from the cold. I looked up. Surely, the reference had been inadvertent. Surely, he had not meant to invoke Jordan. I saw in his eyes that he had, and I stood up.

My voice was dead calm, but to say it had ice in it was to say the Arctic Circle had a couple of cubes. It also had a sound in it a rattler makes when you step on it. "Don't you ever, ever in your lifetime or mine use Jordan against me again. Not for any reason. Not to save my life. Not to save the lives of all the starving children in the known universe. Not one time. Not ever."

I was dizzy and cold. I went over and picked up my car keys and my coat. Adam had gone stock-still. Wisely, he didn't speak. "Be out of here by the time I get back," I said. I knew he would. He had not heard that tone in my voice before. But then again, neither had I.

It took enormous effort, but I made myself stop at the door on the way out. I put one hand on the frame to steady myself and turned back. "I can't do it your way. I can't hide behind your coattails and live in your shadow. I can't run home to big daddy when the going gets rough. I know exactly how dangerous Willy is, far more than you do, and yes, he probably will kill me if I'm stupid or careless enough to give him the chance. But if I run and hide, I'll lose who I am anyway, and it isn't worth it, so stay out of it. I'll make it or I won't. All you will do is destroy what's between us." Adam didn't speak again, and I waited for a moment, then left.

I drove around for a while, but it was difficult remembering where I was. Jordan was back in full force. Grief and depression are not even on the same planet. Depression is like a slow-onset paralysis. After a while it's too much effort to lift your arm, to get out of bed. Grief is more like being beaten up. It's a spasm. You feel like curling up in a ball to ward off the blows.

Finally, I realized the car was near Marv's house, and I headed over. I was coming up enough to realize I wasn't competent to drive. I needed to get off the road, and I wasn't ready to go home. I'd be damned before I went to Carlotta's.

Marv had a condominium in town. It wasn't fair to say he lived alone, although there weren't any other people living there. He lived with his paintings and his sculptures —folk art he had collected from all over the world. It was a soothing place, even for me, who knew diddly-squat about art. Marv was a very good psychiatrist and a bad witness in court. He was the person that I called when I needed a consult on a case if he didn't have to testify. I didn't need a consult tonight.

Maybe I just needed to sit around the paintings for a while. Was that because I got something from the art, I wondered, or from the fact he loved them so?

I knocked on the door and heard the padding of Marv's slippers as he came to it. Marv's purple slippers. He always wore them at home, and they were ugly beyond belief. Marv opened the door. He was wearing his usual mismatched thrown-together colors. He was short and partly bald with a potbelly. I was never troubled by the estrogen vote around Marv, and tonight that seemed nothing but comforting.