Threats (16 page)

“The woman in the lobby was eating paper.”

“I doubt the two events are related. It's important to think about potential meaning.” Chico leaned back in his leather chair and scanned a bookshelf that had been bolted to the wall between them above the desk. He stood and pulled out a thick book, holding the shelf with the other hand for leverage, hefting it down. “Here we go.” He flashed the cover of the book at David, who saw only the gold-trimmed stars and half-moons before Chico turned it back. The book itself was thicker than the old-fashioned dictionary he remembered open on a podium in the library at college.

The detective hefted the book from one hand to the other and cleared a space on the desk. “The interpretation of dreams,” he said, thumping the book down. “It always has some truth.” He examined the tabs on the side of the book and opened it, flipping pages and running one finger down the columns of text. “Here we are. Paper. The oracles say that dreaming of blank paper means grief. That could mean worrying about grief, anticipating grief, progressing through grief. Dreaming of paper with words on it means great joy concerning a love affair.”

“That's it? Either grief or an affair?”

“That's what it says.”

“Those two options seem to be kind of in opposition.”

Chico shrugged.

“Does all printed paper suggest one or the other?”

“You're thinking of that letter you found in the sugar. ‘I will strip the bark from a tree and make you new clothes,' right? Did you find any more of those?”

“You have it memorized.”

“It was memorable.”

“That's the only one I found.”

The detective leaned back in his chair without breaking eye contact. He slipped his finger under the right-hand page in the dream book and turned it. The scent of old ink rose up and mixed with the paper clips. He was watching David. Chico's closed mouth moved slightly with the mandibular workings behind his lips, which were thin and colorless in the low light. They parted into a smile, front teeth tucked. “I want us to be friends, David.”

“I trust my wife.”

“You should trust your wife. Respect her memory.”

“I saw that woman Marie.”

“Right,” he said, closing the dream book. He picked a business card from a stack and handed it across the table. “She wants to see you. She has some ideas. She can be incredibly helpful with memory.” David looked at the card:

MARIE WALLS

TRANCE REGRESSION THERAPY

1201 Southland Dr.

(Garage)

“This is my address,” David said, standing to leave.

“Indeed it is.”

“She's in my garage? Why wasn't this mentioned?”

“It had yet to become pertinent.”

When David stepped outside, he felt the cars slowing before they reached the stoplight. Passengers turned their heads toward him, though drivers stared straight ahead. An older man sitting on a park bench in the square adjusted the manual lens of a camera in his lap. A pair of pedestrians viewed him askance, dragging bloodhounds. A woman dipped her head into a reclining stroller, adjusting a device. Joggers spoke discreetly into their wrists. He was being watched.

 

43.

DAVID HAD CLOSED UP THE GARAGE behind the house years earlier, when wasps took over the high-beamed ceilings. Franny always parked in the driveway anyway, and he kept all the gardening tools in the yard shed. They shared the opinion that killing the small wasps and destroying their paper-thin structures wasn't worth the body count or the overall effort. When he opened the wooden side door, he felt as if he had placed himself ten years back in his own personal history.

Marie was sitting behind a desk in the center of the garage. There were papers and framed certificates stacked on the countertops and shelves where he had once kept the power tools and laundry detergent. Wasps flicked David's ears and settled on his shoulders. Marie stood with her hand extended. “So glad to finally see you,” she said. “I have a vision problem that presents itself unless I'm under fluorescence.” She pointed at the industrial tubes overhead. “It's perfect,” she said. She was wearing a professional-looking blouse and blazer over a pair of pressed slacks. The wasps crawled across her neck and swarmed her hair.

“You're in my garage.”

“Are you sure it's yours?”

“I'll have to call the police.”

The wasps settled like rings on her fingers. She waved a hand, scattering them. “Detective Chico knows all about it. He comes to see me.”

“Who said you could be here?”

“I embarrassed myself not half an hour ago,” she said. “I saw you walking a charcoal Weimaraner on a black leash.”

“That wasn't me.”

“Noble beasts, Weimaraners.”

“I don't own a dog.”

“I called out to you and you didn't respond. Of course, others are never quite who we think they are. That was particularly clear to me not half an hour ago. I was taking in the air outside the office at the time. I'm much happier to be inside.”

“My garage.”

“I'm here for you today. Sit down, please. Tell me what's going on.”

He remained standing. “For your information, you're trespassing.” A wasp crawled into David's ear and he stood very still, waiting for it to come out. He watched her without speaking.

“I hope you're not angry,” she said. “I certainly hope you're not angry. This is all entirely legitimate in the eyes of the law. I have the paperwork around here somewhere. Your wife rented this place to me a few years back, and I made it clear that I would never make my presence known. Your wife thought that would be easier on the family. You'll find all of this in the contract. My condolences, by the way. I have that contract here.” She opened a file and withdrew a stack of pages. They looked like the receipts from Franny's automotive file.

The wasp tickled the tiny hairs lining David's outer ear canal. He could feel the individual legs as they muffled along the delicate cavity. He clenched his teeth.

Marie flipped the pages over. “Really, this is about your wife. It would be more along the lines of respecting her wishes by allowing you to find me. I was so sad to hear about your wife. She seemed like a mysterious woman. Of course you know. She was the kind of woman I'd like to know better, the kind who doesn't lay her whole life in front of you like she expects you to pick it up and figure it out. You know? Some people like to build a lifetime of decision patterns. Your wife was not like that.” Marie covered her mouth against a sudden swarm. She waited for them to pass. “I can see why she decided on you,” she said once the wasps lost interest. “You're kind of a blank slate yourself, aren't you? It takes the right kind of woman to get a man like you. To understand. I imagine you didn't find too many dates when you were younger. No offense.”

The wasp crawled out of his ear, and David immediately plugged the ear canal with his finger, preventing reentry. “Mighty hell,” he said, scooping at his ear with his fingernail. “You've taken up office in my garage. The police know about it. My wife arranged it. That's where my world is right now, right at this moment.” He shuffled his feet backward so as not to step on any portion of wasp. “I came in here for plywood and a can of paint. That's what things are looking like currently,” he said, half turning to check the side door. He saw a can of spray paint beside the door and picked it up. “What are you doing here?” he asked, attempting to wedge the can first into his jacket pocket and then into the back pocket of his jeans. He unzipped his jacket halfway and tucked the can inside. “Chico mentioned you had been thinking.”

“Oh dear, I'm always thinking.” She gestured for him to sit. “That's the thing we forget about ourselves. I wanted to get into your head the day that Franny had her accident. What were you doing that morning? Where was your mind traveling?”

David shook the spray paint can as he thought. He had spent a fair piece of time considering the moment itself and the moments that followed, but not the time prior. He tried to clear the paths of his memory. He saw the images from a distance, as if he was standing outside the window in the snow. “I can't remember,” he said.

“It's in there somewhere. Think about the objects you were looking at, the way you were dressed. The paramedics said they found you in your robe and slippers. A flannel pajama set. Think about the food you ate that morning. The coroner's office said they found berries in her. Were there berries in the house? Picture yourself opening the refrigerator and looking inside.”

He did as he was told but could see only a more recent picture, of a heel of bread and a carton of orange juice, two bottles of beer. The food featured thriving mold spores. “I don't know,” he said. “Orange juice.” He heard a wasp and cupped his hand over his left ear.

“Typical distressed transference,” Marie said. “ISV-2034. Your brain has wrapped a comfortable piece of fabric around where long-term memories are stored. I can help you remember. I'd like to try a process with you called hypnotic induction.”

“You want to put me in a trance?”

“I think it can allow us to go back to the place before the event. It can help you feel more connected with your wife. Have you ever experienced the power of induction? We can learn so much from so little.”

The lid on the paint can popped off when he shook it, and he bent down with some effort to pick it up. “I don't have time at the moment. Perhaps another day.”

She shrugged. “I'll throw in a few
gratis
sessions of bad-habit elimination or pain alleviation. We could get you over that thing with the doors.”

“Another time. Thank you for your kind offer. Have you seen the plywood?”

“No rush. During the season, I get some research done. I think the word ‘you' has been linked with more devastating sentences than any other in the English language. But it's possible that ‘love' is worse. I'm feeling it out. It requires some reading.” She tapped a stack of anthologies and novels.

David saw a phone book in the stack. “Fine, that's fine,” he said. “I've been unknowingly funding research. Do patients come in here? I've never seen anyone.”

“I'm still getting the word out. It takes a while to build a common base. Meanwhile, I expect my findings to be published by the end of the year. That should help draw people in, I think.”

“Plywood?”

She pointed toward a stack leaned up against a far wall. “Mind the wasps,” she said.

The wood looked sodden from across the room, but the boards were dry and fused together on closer inspection. He pried the top one from the stack. He coughed and hefted the dusty board up, spreading his arms, leaning back against the surprising weight.

“I'll be going now,” he said, maneuvering sideways, arms spread against the wood grain, the board pressed against his body. It smelled like turpentine and rot. “Good luck with your research. Thank you for being in my garage. I don't know what to tell you.”

“I'll be here,” she said. The door closed between them. David saw a piece of paper wedged under the door. He leaned the plywood panel against the building and dislodged the page. It had been wrapped around wasp corpses, which fell to the ground, separated from and followed by their fluttering wings. The paper read:

IN THAT HALF SECOND WHEN YOU REACHED FOR THE DOOR, I CAME UP BESIDE YOU, DRILLED A HOLE IN YOUR HEEL, AND ATTACHED A TUBE THROUGH WHICH I AM CURRENTLY COLLECTING YOUR BONE MARROW. IT IS GOING INTO A BAG. I AM GOING TO SELL IT.

David twisted around to examine his heel. He looked back toward the house and into the ash trees behind the yard. He balled up the note and kept it in his fist as he walked toward the house.

The house was quiet. David added the balled-up note to the collection in the silverware drawer. He went through the house, touching each piece of exposed metal he could find. He touched doorknobs, window sashes, picture frames, electronic equipment peripherals, door hinges, wall-plate screws, light fixtures, and vents. He put his palms on the water heater. He touched faucet handles, smoke detector battery connect points, individual razor blades, numbers on clock faces, towel racks, and zipper pulls. He imagined all the metal in the house melted in a cauldron. The mixed alloys would create a speckled bubble, like a stone he once found on the beach and kept in his jacket pocket for years, touching it gently with the tips of his fingers, until one day he put on his jacket and reached for the stone and it was gone.

 

44.

THERE WAS A RACCOON in the entry hall. It startled David because it was roughly the size of a healthy baby and was plundering the glass-walled base of the grandfather clock. David thought for a moment that it was a baby, there in the shadows. It was bigger than a breadbox. Its fur was slick. Its paws fumbled and grasped. The raccoon knew it could get into the grandfather clock. It was not bothered that David was standing very close, though it did stop and turn toward the light when he opened the door again. David wondered idly at the percentage chance that it was rabid. It seemed likely. Everything seemed likely. He closed the door and walked toward the kitchen with his back against the wall, giving the raccoon a wide berth should it try to leap for his face. Once the door was closed, the animal turned again to its scrambling task.

The kitchen was colder than the rest of the house, and David saw that the window over the kitchen table was still empty from where Samson had removed the broken glass and frame. Leaves and dirt were scattered on the table. The raccoon had eaten most of a pear in a bowl before knocking the bowl to the floor, where it split into three ceramic pieces, curved like the cupped palms of hands. David pictured the startled raccoon making a run for the entry hall. Everything made sense. The empty space where the window should have been gave the kitchen the feeling of being outdoors, as if the kitchen had sprung organically from the ground. Woven branches created natural furniture and older trees formed a refrigerator. All of it was cold, the way it was meant to be cold at that time of year in that part of the world. It felt natural. Still, it wasn't safe to have an empty place where a pane of glass had once gone completely unnoticed. The house could fill with raccoons. If Franny returned, she would assume the place had been abandoned.