All Things Cease to Appear (46 page)

We’ll need his consent first.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

You’d think he’d want to know.

He’s worried she’ll get traumatized.

Well, that’s a very good reason, isn’t it? But I got a hunch she’s not the one he’s protecting.

Wiley nods. I’ll start building a life history, he says as he leaves.

Travis sits there listening to the phones ringing outside his office. Everybody calling with questions, concerns, fears. No tips yet. They’ve already taken hundreds of calls, but not a single one from any member of the family—on either side. He understands they’re grieving. Plans need to be made, the funeral parlor, the church, the graveyard. But where in hell are her parents, or sister? And his people, where are they? With the tables turned, if it were his wife, he’d be camped out here, demanding answers.

Travis’s secretary pokes her head in. You got fans. She jerks her chin at the window, the local-news trucks parked along the curb. Reporters standing around in heavy coats, smoking, drinking coffee out of paper cups.

I got nothing, he says. Still, he has to give them something. He takes his time putting on his coat. Then steps out into the firing range.

Was it a robbery? one of them asks.

We haven’t ruled anything out, he says.

People are saying you have a suspect in custody.

No, we have no suspect at this time.

Are you planning to interview the little girl?

Not at this time.

Can you describe what sort of evidence was found?

I’m not at liberty to share that information just now. We’re hoping someone will come forward. At this point we’re looking for some help.

What about the husband?

Travis coughs into his glove. It’s not easy coming home to something like this, he says. He’s very distraught.

Later, back in his office, the phone rings. He looks through the glass window at his secretary’s desk, its neat surface, the pushed-in chair.

He picks it up. Lawton.

What he hears is the sound of air. Just air, that’s all. Coming from someplace far away, into his ear and back out again.

—

LATER,
when he’s going through the victim’s car, the thought comes to him that there’s something going around in ordinary American households, a virus of the soul. Marriage, with its all-you-can-eat menu of disenchantment. It’s a Ford Country Squire, a name too fancy for a station wagon with fake wood siding. He still remembers the ad campaign when it first came out: seven or eight school-aged kids sitting on the roof of the car with their backs to the camera, watching other kids on swings at a playground. It sent a message to young women that this was the car to drive if you wanted to bring up happy, well-adjusted children. Well, who doesn’t want that?

His own wife has been driving hers for at least seven years now, but she doesn’t like the green vinyl seats or that, the first week they owned it, their daughter threw up in the back after a sweet-sixteen party where she’d injected enough dope into her bloodstream to opiate a small suburb. He can remember that night in the hospital, watching over his Alice in the emergency room, how pale she looked, and coming to terms with the fact that she was doing things that scared him, things he had no control over. When the doctor pulled him and Mary outside he told them she’d almost died.

Every parent is guilty of something. You try everything you can to make things right. Sometimes it works. Other times, well, you just have to let go. When he thinks about the situation with Alice he has a hard time coming up with a reason for it. At first, when they were just getting into it, he took the blame. Maybe he’d been too strict, or maybe she couldn’t handle his being a cop and it embarrassed her. But now he sees that just enabled her even more. It gave her the excuse to keep doing it.

It took him a long time to stop thinking it was about him or what he’d done. It was all on her—her problem, her weakness, her bad choices. You can’t take the blame for other people’s mistakes even when you want to, even when you think you should.

The victim’s car is spick-and-span. No surprise there. The only thing he finds, crushed under her seat, is a grocery list: eggs, oranges, pork chops, lettuce, furniture polish, Rexall.

Later that afternoon, he stops at the Rexall on Chatham Avenue, whose pharmacist, Dennis Healy, he’s known for thirty years. How’s the family?

Just fine. What can I do for you, Sheriff?

Just following up on something for work. Would you see if a Catherine Clare picked up anything last week?

Give me just a moment.

While he goes back to check, Travis stands there getting looks from some of the customers, who recognize him from the news and are none too pleased with his performance so far. He’s relieved when Dennis comes back to the counter.

Nothing for her, but the husband filled a prescription for a drug called niaprazine.

What is it?

A mild sedative. It’s used for sleep disorders in children.

Mind if I get a copy of that prescription?

Sure thing.

People can’t be saved, he thinks, walking out of the store. That’s just the goddamn truth. They make their own problems. It’s not a one-way street—no, sir. Not ever.

The thing about dead people, it’s too late to save them. And no matter how convinced you are of someone’s guilt, you still have to prove it. The people of this town are waiting for him to do just that.

9

MARY DOESN’T SEE
her husband much those first weeks. Like most women in town, she can’t sleep right, thinking there’s some psychotic ax murderer on the loose. That first morning, the hardware store sells out of locks. People on the street seem hunched with suspicion, fearing they’ll be the next to get hacked to death in their sleep. The idea that something like this can happen in Chosen—it makes ordinary things seem strange. You look at cars and faces and wonder: Could it be him in there? Or maybe
that’s
him.

Everybody’s talking about the Clare woman, her status in town turning her into a saint. The Windowbox is a hive of nervous chatter. Most people think it’s the husband. They give Mary dirty looks in Hack’s or come up to her in the street. Why hasn’t Travis arrested him yet? one woman remarked. You don’t have to be a genius to know he did it.

The law isn’t some gossip magazine, Mary shot back.

She and Travis Jr. watch him on TV, microphones jammed in his face. He’s a nice-looking man, she thinks, even when he’s beleaguered by all this drama. We’re building a life history of the couple, he explains to the reporters. Hopefully, something useful will turn up.

Now, that ticks me off, he tells her later that night, watching himself on the late news. That’s the biggest goddamn disappointment in this whole case, that the family hasn’t banged on my doorway wanting answers. If this happened to you or one of the kids, I don’t think I’d sleep a night till I got something. Hell, I’d scour the earth till I found your killer.

She takes his hand and squeezes it. I’d do the same for you, honey.

Even
her
side. Where are
her
parents? He shakes his head in amazement. I just don’t get it.

Maybe there’s a reason they’re not asking, Travis.

What do you mean?

Parents—they know their children. Just like we know ours.

I’m not following you, Mary.

Maybe they’re not asking questions because they don’t have any. Maybe they’re not asking because they already know.

Travis gives this a thought. I can see what you’re suggesting, Mary, and it makes sense on his side but not on hers. If her parents thought George had done this, wouldn’t they try to bring charges against him?

People are funny, Travis, you know that. First, they have no evidence to make such a claim. You’ve said it yourself that there’s not much here to go on. And second, if they did press charges it would obviously destroy their relationship with him and his parents. Maybe they think if they accuse him they’ll never see that little girl again.

—

EVERY DAY
there’s a little more news and the papers sell out. Travis is late every night, and when he finally makes it home he looks worn out. She sits with him while he eats, drinking a little bourbon, watching him turn the pages of the file as delicately as some surgeon changing the dressing on a wound. Even on weekends, with Travis Jr. practicing his clarinet or shooting baskets outside, he keeps on digging, hoping to turn something up. Somewhere inside those brown flaps is the answer he needs.

They rule out the robbery scenario. First, there hasn’t been a robbery in Chosen in almost ten years, and that was just school kids stealing liquor. Catherine’s wallet was sitting out in plain sight with not a dime missing. And if it was a robbery, why the ax? Why make the special trip into the barn? Take what you want and go—the lady’s asleep upstairs. Why kill a sleeping woman? Why, even if she was awake? Scare her if you want, even knock her out. Then do what you came to do and get out. Even a thief has his standards and common sense. Say you get caught robbing a house, you do some time and then you’re out. But murder? That’s for life.

Unfortunately, the autopsy report doesn’t advance the case, only confirms what is already known: it was a single blow that killed her; there were no usable prints on the ax or in the house; there were none of the usual hairs or flakes of skin on his side of the bed; the drains contained no evidence of blood or chemicals. Forensics determined that the time of death was somewhere between 2:30 and 9:30 a.m., allowing the possibility that some roving madman got in there after Clare had left the house.

It’s a pretty big window, Travis says. It’s possible, I guess, if you believe his story.

But Mary bristles when she hears this. You know as well as I do, Travis, that a woman with a small child is up at the crack of dawn. She was long dead by 9:30, I can tell you that much. I would bet she’d been dead a good while before her daughter even woke up. He did this in the deep of night. Maybe by accident, all right, but he did it all the same. And then he wiped down that house and went to work

Travis nods with approval. She isn’t saying anything he doesn’t know. She’s just saying it out loud.

—

HE MAKES HER
go with him to the funeral. You and Catherine were friends, he says. It’s only right. But Mary knows her husband better than that.

You don’t have a suit, she says. And you can’t wear your uniform.

You better find me something.

She drives to Macy’s out at the mall and buys him a suit off the sale rack, and the next morning he tries it on. About time, she says, smoothing his shoulders like a mother, tugging on the back of the jacket. You look nice.

They drive down to Connecticut, a little town on the shore. The church is on a hill overlooking Long Island Sound, the water glittering silver in the distance. They sit in the last pew and Travis takes her hand. His is big and warm and it brings her back to him. At times, over the course of their marriage, she has imagined her own mortality, anticipated the ravages of age. She has pictured herself in varying states of infirmity, wondering what Travis would do if she lost some vital piece of herself—her mind, for instance. Would he honor her, would he stay? The big questions you’re too afraid to ask. You wait till something happens, then deal with it.

It’s an old cemetery of crooked stones. A cold wind comes in off the shore. Her shoes sink into the wet earth as they walk out to the grave. She and Travis keep to themselves, hunkering behind the other mourners, observing both families from a distance. Catherine’s seems cautious, reserved, like strangers. The Clares more like royalty, stiff and formal. Their son’s expression is passive, self-conscious, as the little girl wriggles in his arms.

They’re walking back to the car when a woman comes up to Travis. You’ve got some nerve showing up here, she says. She looks something like Catherine, only shorter and stout, with darker hair. The sister, Mary realizes.

We’re just paying our respects, is all. The deceased was a friend of my wife’s.

But she isn’t having it. We know what you’re trying to do, she says in an unfriendly tone. And I’ll tell you right now we don’t appreciate it.

I’m not following you.

With George. Trying to pin it on him.

Travis takes his time answering. That may be your perception.

You’re damned right it is. I think I’m speaking for my family when I say we’re behind George a hundred percent. What happened to my sister has nothing to do with him. There was no reason for it. She didn’t have any enemies. There was no reason for anybody to kill her.

10

Motive
is an elusive word, Travis thinks, because you can never be certain what lies beneath the misguided things people do to one another.

At this time of the year, a month shy of spring, the land looks barren. Brown fields. The ever-present gray sky. Travis pulls down the long dirt road to the Sokolov farm, scratching up his cruiser on the overgrowth of pricker bushes. The car rocks and shimmies over mud puddles. He parks near the house and gets out and looks around. The place looks desolate, but then two dogs roam over to say hello, sniffing his trousers, their tails whacking his legs. You smelling Ernie and Herman? he says, petting one and then the other. They run off when a tractor pulls into the barn. A minute later, Bram Sokolov emerges from the dark bay, a tall man in work clothes and muddy boots, not the genteel farmer he was expecting. Hello, there, Sheriff Lawton.

Mr. Sokolov. Travis shakes the hand of a farmer. Thanks for meeting with me.

Call me Bram.

Over coffee in the kitchen, Bram tells him about his wife’s accident. She’s in a rehab facility in Albany, he explains. Learning how to walk again.

You all were friends of the Clares, isn’t that right?

Bram winces like he’s burned his tongue. For a while we were. My wife worked with him. I always got the feeling he had a thing for her. He’s sort of an arrogant guy, to tell you the truth. Thinks he can have anything he wants. One night—it was Halloween—there was a faculty party and he tried to seduce her. According to Justine, he was pretty persuasive.