Black Evening (41 page)

Grady's heart lurched. Abruptly he whirled toward the sound of a splash.

"What's the matter?" Clauson asked.

"That splash." Grady moved toward the door. "Someone fell into the pool."

"Splash? I didn't hear anything."

Grady's eyes felt stabbed by sunlight as he left the shadows of the tiny building. He stared toward the state policemen at the concrete rim of the swimming pool. The medical examiner was getting into his station wagon. The ambulance was pulling away.

But the pool looked undisturbed, and if anyone had fallen in, the troopers didn't seem to care. They merely kept talking among themselves and didn't pay attention.

"What do you mean?" Clauson asked. "There wasn't any splash. You can see for yourself. No one fell into the pool."

Grady shook his head in bewilderment. "But I would have sworn."

Disoriented, he did his best to answer more questions and finally left the compound an hour later, shortly after five, just as Clauson and his men were preparing to lock the buildings and the gate to the area, then secure a yellow NO ADMITTANCE — POLICE CRIME SCENE tape across the fence and the gate.

Troubled, numb with shock, aching with sorrow, he trembled. He used his two-way radio to contact his office while he drove along the winding road through the looming mountains back to Bosworth. He had a duty to perform, but he couldn't let that duty interfere with his other duties. The office had to know where he'd be.

With Brian Roth's sister. The deaths of his wife and son — the rules he'd learned from attending the grief meetings of The Compassionate Friends — had taught him that you had to do your best to offer consolation. Compassion was the greatest virtue.

But when he finally stopped at Ida Roth's home, a modest trailer in a row of other trailers on the outskirts of Bosworth, he didn't get an answer after he knocked on her flimsy metal door. Of course, Grady thought. The undertaker. The cemetery. The double funeral. Ida has terrible arrangements to make. She'll be in a daze. I wish I'd been able to get here in time to help her.

To Grady's surprise, the woman next door came over and told him where Ida had gone. But his surprise wasn't caused by the gossipy woman's knowledge of Ida's schedule. What surprised him was Ida's destination. He thanked the neighbor, avoided her questions, and drove to where he'd been directed.

Five minutes away to the restaurant-tavern that Brian and Betsy had owned and where Grady found Ida Roth sternly directing waitresses while she guarded the cash register behind the bar.

The customers, mostly factory workers who regularly stopped by for a couple of beers after their shift was over, eyed Grady's uniform as he sat at the counter. Whenever he came in to say hello, he was usually off-duty and in civilian clothes. For him to be wearing his uniform made this visit official, the narrowed eyes that studied him seemed to say, and the somberness of those narrowed eyes suggested as well that word had gotten around about what had happened to Brian and Betsy.

Grady took off his policeman's cap, wished that the jukebox playing Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely" weren't so loud —

 — and who the hell had been morbid enough to choose
that
tune? —

 — then studied Ida's gaunt, determined features.

Brian's only and older sibling, she was in her early fifties, but she looked sixty, partly because her hair was completely gray and she combed it back severely into a bun, thus emphasizing the wrinkles in her forehead and around her eyes, and partly as well because her persistent nervousness made her so thin that her cheeks looked hollow, but mostly because her pursed lips made her expression constantly dour.

"
Ida
," Grady said, "when some people tell you this, you've got every right to feel bitter. The automatic reaction is to think 'bullshit, get out of here, leave me alone.' But you know that I've been where you are now, a year ago when my wife and son were killed. You know that I'm an expert in what I'm talking about, that these aren't empty words. I understand what you're feeling. With all my heart, I'm sorry about Brian and Betsy."

Ida glowered, jerked her face toward a waitress, blurted "Table five's still waiting for that pitcher of beer," and scowled at Grady while pressing her hand on the cash register. "Sorry? Let me tell you something. Brian shut me out after his children died. We visited. We spent time together. But things between us were never the same. For the past ten years, it's been like we weren't blood kin. Like" — Ida's facial expression became skeletal — "like there was some kind of barrier between us. I
resented
that, being made to feel like a stranger. I tried all I could to be friendly to him. As far as
I'm
concerned, a part of Brian died a long time ago. What he did to Betsy and himself was wrong. But it might be the best thing that could have happened."

"I don't understand." Grady leaned closer, trying hard to ignore Roy Orbison's mournful song and the stares from the silent, intense factory workers.

"It's no secret," Ida said. "
You
know. The whole
town
knows. My husband divorced me eight years ago. After we were married, I kept having miscarriages, so we never had children. It
aged
me. How I hate that young secretary he ran off with. All I got from the settlement, from the greedy lawyers, from the God-damned divorce judge, is the rickety trailer I'm forced to shiver in when the weather gets cold. You're sorry? Well, let me tell you, right now as much as I hurt,
I'm
not sorry. Brian had it all, and I had nothing! When he shut me out… The best thing he ever did for me was to shoot himself. Now this tavern's mine. Finally I've got something."

Grady felt shocked. "Ida, you don't mean that."

"The hell I don't! Brian treated me like an outcast. I
earned
this tavern. I deserve it. When they open the will" — Ida's stern expression became calculating — "if there's any justice… Brian promised me. In spite of the distance he kept from me, he said he'd take care of me. This tavern's mine. And I bet you could use a drink." She stiffened her hand on the cash register.

"Thanks, Ida. I'd like to, but I can't. I'm on duty." Grady lowered his gaze and dejectedly studied his hat. "Maybe another time."

"No time's better than now. This is happy hour. If you can't be happy, at least drown your sorrow. Call this a wake. It's two drinks for the price of one."

"Not while I'm in uniform. But please remember, I do share your grief."

Ida didn't listen, again barking orders toward a waitress.

Disturbed, Grady picked up his cap and stood from the stool at the bar. A professional instinct made him pause. "
Ida
."

"Can't you see I'm busy?"

"I apologize, but I need information. Where Brian… Where Betsy was… What do you know about where it happened?"

"Not a hell of a lot."

"But you must know
something
. You knew enough to go out there."

"There?" Ida thickened her voice. "
There
? I was
there
only once. But I felt so shut out… so unwelcome… so bitter… Believe me, I made a point of remembering how to get there."

"Go over that again. Why do you think he made you feel unwelcome?"

"That place was…" Ida furrowed her already severely pinched forehead. "His
retreat
. His wall against the world." Her scowl increased. "I remember when he bought that hollow. His children had been dead five months. The summer had turned to fall. It was hunting season. Brian's friends made an effort to try to distract him. 'Come on, let's hunt some rabbits, some grouse,' they told him. 'You can't just sit around all day.' He was practically dragged from his bedroom." While Ida continued to keep her left hand rigidly on the cash register, she pointed her right hand toward the ceiling above the tavern, indicating where Brian and Betsy had lived. "So Brian… he had no energy… if it weren't for me, the tavern would have gone to hell… he shuffled his feet and went along. And the next day, when he came back, I couldn't believe the change in him. He was
filled
with energy. He'd found some land he wanted to buy, he said. He was… Frantic? That doesn't describe it. He kept jabbering about a hollow in the mountains. He'd wandered into it. He absolutely had to own it."

Ida gave more commands to her waitresses and swung her dour gaze toward Grady. "I figured Brian must have had a nervous breakdown. I told him he couldn't afford a second property. But he wouldn't listen. He insisted he had to buy it. So despite my warning, he used this tavern as — what do they call it? — collateral. He convinced the bank to loan him money, found whoever owned that hollow, and bought the damned thing. That's the beginning of when he shut me out.

"The next thing I heard — it didn't come from him; it was gossip from customers in the tavern — was he'd arranged with a contractor to put in a swimming pool out there, some buildings, a barbecue pit, and… The next year when construction was finished, he invited me out there to see the grand opening.

"I admit the place looked impressive. I figured Brian was getting over his loss, adjusting to the deaths of his children. But after he, Betsy, and I and their friends — and my fucking, soon-to-be, ex-husband — had a barbecue, Brian took me aside. He pointed toward the woods, toward the pool, toward the buildings, and he asked me… I remember his voice was low, hushed, the way people talk in church.

"He asked me if I felt anything different, anything special, anything that reminded me of… anything that made me feel
close
to his dead children. I thought about it. I looked around. I tried to understand what he meant. Finally I said 'no.' The camp looked fine, I said. He was taking a risk with the bank. All the same, if he needed a place where he could get away and heal his sorrow, despite the financial risk, he'd probably done the right thing. 'Nothing about the swimming pool?' he asked. I told him I didn't understand what he meant, except that his children liked to swim. And with that, he ended the conversation. That was the last time he invited me out there. That was the real beginning of the distance between us. The barrier he put up. No matter that I saved his ass by taking care of the tavern back then, just as I'm taking care of it now."

Grady knew that he'd exceeded the limit of Ida's patience. He searched his troubled mind for a final question that might settle his confusion. "Do you know who owned that hollow, or why Brian suddenly felt compelled to buy it?"

"You might as well ask me who's going to win the lottery. He told me nothing. And
I
told
you
, I don't have time for this.
Please
. I'm trying my best not to be rude, but I've got customers. This is the busiest time of the day. Happy hour makes all these people hungry. I've got to make sure the kitchen's ready."

"Sure," Grady said. "I apologize for distracting you. I just wanted… I'm sorry, Ida. That's why I came here. To tell you how much I sympathize."

Ida glared toward a waitress. "Table eight still needs those onion rings."

Grady stepped back, ignored the stares of the factory workers, and left the tavern. As the screen door squeaked shut, as he trudged past pickup trucks toward his cruiser, he heard the customers break their silence and murmur almost loudly enough to obscure another mournful tune, this one by Buddy Holly: "I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore."

He radioed his office and told the dispatcher he was going home. Then he solemnly drove along sunset-crimsoned, wooded streets to the single-story house he'd shared with his wife and son.

The house.

It haunted him. Often he'd thought about selling it to get away from the memories that it evoked. But just as he hadn't disposed of Helen and John's possessions, their clothes, the souvenir mugs that Helen had liked to collect, the video games that John had been addicted to playing, so Grady hadn't been able to convince himself to dispose of the house. The memories tormented him, yes, but he couldn't bear to live without them.

At the same time, the house troubled him because it felt empty, because he hadn't maintained it since Helen and John had died, because he hadn't planted flowers this spring as Helen always had, because its interior was drab and dusty.

When he entered the kitchen, there wasn't any question what he'd do next. The same thing he always did when he came home, what he'd done every evening since the death of his family. He walked directly to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of Jim Beam, poured two inches into a glass, added ice and water, and drank most of it in three swallows.

He closed his eyes and exhaled. There. The Compassionate Friends were emphatic in their advice that people in grief shouldn't seek refuge in alcohol. Brian and Betsy had emphasized that advice as well. There'd been no liquor bottles or beer cans at the camp, Grady had noticed. Whatever the cause of the murder-suicide, anger caused by drunkenness had not been one of them.

He'd pretended to follow The Compassionate Friends' advice. But at night, in the depths of his sorrow, he more and more had relied on bourbon to give him amnesia. Except that it didn't really dispel his memories. All it did was blur them, make them more bearable, stupify him enough that he could sleep. As soon as the bourbon impaired him enough to slur his speech, he would put on his answering machine, and if the phone rang, if the message was something important from his office, he would muster sufficient control to pick up the phone and say a few careful words that managed to hide how disabled he was. If necessary, he would mutter that he felt ill and order one of his men to take care of the emergency. Those were the only times Grady violated his code of professionalism. But just as he'd failed to maintain this house, so he knew and feared that one night he would make a mistake and inadvertently let outsiders know that he'd failed in other ways as well.

At the moment, however, that fear didn't matter. Sorrow did, and Grady hurriedly poured another glass, this time adding less ice and water. He drank the refill almost as quickly. Brian and Betsy. Helen and John. No.