Glass Houses (15 page)

“Do you know what Father said to me once?” Margaret asked Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was just getting out of her light spring jacket, pulled from the closet earlier than usual this year because of the weather.

“What did he tell you this time?” Elizabeth asked.

Margaret ignored the implication of the question. It was true she talked a lot about the things Father had said to her, but that was only reasonable. Their father had been the most important influence in their lives. He'd been the most important influence in many people's lives. Aside from the fact that he was important to her because he was related to her, he had been important to the country. He had been secretary of the treasury under Eisenhower. He'd been ambassador to Sweden before that. He'd have been governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania if he'd stuck out his campaign. He hadn't because he hadn't liked the way the press went snooping into his private life, just when he was getting married for the second time.

Margaret put the memory of the second marriage out of her mind. “We were talking about Roosevelt,” she said. “Franklin Roosevelt. And I said he was a bad man because he pandered to people and took away the money people had worked hard to earn, just because they'd earned a lot of it. I couldn't have been more than twelve. Anyway, he said I was wrong, that the New Deal was a good idea, not only because it helped the people who were poor and starving, but because it put a brake on fortune building. Isn't that odd to think about? The New Deal putting ‘a brake on fortune building,' as he put it, although what he meant was that it made it harder for people to climb up.”

Elizabeth closed the door to the hall closet and came over to where Margaret was standing next to the archway into the living room. “Whatever are you talking about? What made you think about the New Deal?”

“The clothes,” Margaret said. “I was thinking how hard it was nowadays to buy clothes because you can't trust the things you used to: designers, better dresses, good department stores. They all sell clothes for the sort of person who has lots of money and no taste, the vulgar people. It's as if the only people left with money are vulgar people.”

“We've got money, Margaret. It's not the money we've got to worry about at the moment. And we'll have a lot more money when we take Green Point public, more than any of the people you're worrying yourself about.”

“I know we've got money. It's just that everybody else has it, too. People who weren't anybody when we were growing up. And they have more of it. And they have no taste. And then there are the music people, you know, with the videos. It's all trash these days. You have to be so careful not to become trash yourself.”

Elizabeth went through into the living room, sat down in one of the two big armchairs, and put her feet up on the coffee table. Margaret winced.

“Do you think,” Elizabeth said, “that you could come down off whatever fantasy cloud you live on to at least try to deal with the situation we're in? Our public stock offering is only months away. It's not going to be helped if Henry is on trial for being a serial killer.”

“I am dealing with the situation we're in,” Margaret said. “Although I must admit you don't seem to want my advice for anything. I think it was very wrong of you to employ that young man to represent Henry. We've got our own lawyers. They've known the family for years. And they're more—they've got more experience. And prestige.”

“They've got no experience at all in criminal law,” Elizabeth said, “unless you happen to get indicted for stock fraud. They'd be useless in a case like this. Henry's being charged with murder. With two murders.”

“It's all nonsense,” Margaret said. It seemed to her that the air in front of her eyes had become suddenly thick and solid, so that it rippled. “Henry couldn't commit a murder. He can't even commit a robbery. He's tried. He just fell over drunk, and they had to get us to make him dry out somewhere.”

“I wonder,” Elizabeth said. “If I had to answer truthfully, I don't think I'd say that Henry couldn't ever commit a murder. There's a lot under the surface of Henry. Most of it isn't too pleasant.”

“You can't honestly believe the police are right,” Margaret said. “You can't think that Henry is this, this whatever—Plate Glass Killer.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, “I certainly don't think he's that.”

Margaret felt better. The air had stopped shimmering and warping in front of her eyes. “There, then,” she said, “it was a mistake. It's just a matter of making sure we stop the mistake before it does any more damage. I think it was very wrong of that judge not to let Henry out on bail. It made it look as if Henry is dangerous.”

“Maybe Henry is dangerous,” Elizabeth said, “even if he isn't the Plate Glass Killer.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe Henry—well. There was the problem the last time they arrested
him. They didn't arrest him just because he happened to be around at the time. They searched his room. They had that peculiar pile of underwear.”

Margaret flushed. She could remember the day the police had come to search Henry's room even though Henry hadn't stayed in it for weeks. It had been beyond embarrassing even to have the police in the house, even with their own lawyers present. Then to have had to stand there while they came up with a dozen women's panties in one of Henry's drawers—well, that was—that was something.

“Margaret,” Elizabeth said.

Margaret came back from wherever it was she was. It really was as if the air was changing around her, becoming solid, becoming a place.

“The Plate Glass Killer doesn't take his victims' underwear,” she said. “You know that as well as I do. Even the police know that.”

“There's still the question of what they were doing in Henry's drawer, in this house.”

“Maybe that silly Conchita put them there herself,” Margaret said. “Oh, I hate these women who come from South America. They've got no sense, and they've got no sense of proportion. Maybe she was absentminded and put them there by mistake.”

“Her own underwear? Two pairs of it were her own. And what about the rest? They weren't mine or yours. They weren't Conchita's.”

“You have no way of knowing if they were Conchita's or not,” Margaret said. “Oh, why do we have to bring all this up again? Wasn't it bad enough the first time?”

“It's going to get worse,” Elizabeth said.

“I don't see why,” Margaret said. “They can't possibly hold him. They've got no evidence. Not real evidence. Even the blood was just—well, you know—just a mistake. Because he saw the woman there on the ground and tried to help her, and he got blood all over himself while he was doing it; and then people on the street saw what they thought was a homeless man all covered with blood, and it all got out of hand from there.”

“Do you really think Henry touched that woman because he was trying to help her?”

Margaret wished very much that she could end this conversation and go somewhere. She could go up to her own room and have tea brought in and sit by herself for the rest of the afternoon, looking through the albums of photographs she was the only one who cared about anymore. She didn't have anything up there that could disturb her, no television, no radio, no computer, no newspapers. Even Elizabeth didn't come into her room anymore.

“I have to go lie down,” she said. “It's been a long day.”

“It's barely noon.”

“It doesn't matter. I'm exhausted. And I'm—it's all her fault, you know. It is. That woman's. I've tried and tried to understand what Father was thinking when he married her, and I just can't get it.”

“I get it,” Elizabeth said wryly.

Margaret flushed. “It couldn't have been that, could it? When that's what men want they don't marry it, they just use it and throw it away when they're done. Nobody would have begrudged him something like that. I wouldn't have. Mother had been dead a very long time.”

“I don't think you can blame Henry's mother for Henry, Margaret.”

“Why not?” Margaret said. “You can't blame Father. He was a good and decent man. You can't blame any of our side of the family. If there's one thing we don't have, it's alcoholics. Never mind street bums. Homeless people. What rot. It makes them sound like the victims of Simon Legree, but they're not. They're just street bums. And that's all Henry is. It's shameful enough, but he's not a murderer.”

“Maybe not,” Elizabeth said.

“I have to go lie down,” Margaret said again. “I think you're going to regret it, hiring this man we don't know to do a thing like this. He's going to get into all our secrets, and then what will happen? He'll sell them to the newspapers, and Henry won't be the end of it.”

“Do you really think we have any secrets the newspapers would care about? Do you think the newspapers would care about
us,
these days?”

“I have to go lie down,” Margaret said yet again, too aware that this was the third time and she hadn't yet managed to make herself get moving. The air was patterning and bending in front of her eyes again. She knew something Elizabeth did not know, something she had never told anybody. And that was the key. She had never told anybody; and nobody else had found out about it because if they had, it would have come out when Henry was arrested the first time.

It was wrong of Elizabeth to say that it didn't matter what kind of a person Henry's mother had been. Of course it mattered. Heredity was far more important than most people gave it credit for. Besides, Henry had that woman's eyes, and it was the eyes Margaret remembered from that day in his childhood when she had found him in the back near the utility shed where he was not allowed to go. None of them were allowed to go there because that was where the chemicals were kept to clean the back courtyard and to deal with things in the house that required something stronger than soap and water. He'd had blood on him that day, too. He'd had blood all over his face and arms and down the front of his shirt, and the only reason nobody ever found out about it was that he'd burned the shirt when he was done. She could remember the little fire he'd made, just into the alley, when he thought nobody was looking.
She could remember him rolling around in the mud puddles there to disguise what it was he had smeared all over him like war paint on an Indian.

She turned away from Elizabeth and started across the foyer to the stairs. She would go up and take off her stockings and call for some tea and look at her photographs, and after a while she wouldn't remember anything about any of it at all.

D
ennis Ledeski had been
following the news since it first hit, but there was a deep and insistent part of him that was convinced it was all a sham. He'd been expecting a sham for some months now, although nothing as elaborate as the arrest and detention of Henry Tyder seemed to be. Now he was sure that the police must see Henry Tyder the way he himself saw him. Certainly Rob Benedetti—he'd
met
Rob Benedetti, and you didn't get to be district attorney of the city of Philadelphia by being an idiot—didn't believe this latest thing, would know by looking at him that Henry Tyder could not be the Plate Glass Killer. Of course, there was the bit about the confession. Some of the confession tape had even been leaked to one of the news stations. It was impossible to keep anything secret anymore. But the part of the confession tape that had been leaked could have been faked. The whole charade could have been staged to see which of the real suspects started to jump. There could be a police shadow on him right now. All he had to do was look in the wrong direction, and it would be over.

It was impossible to keep anything secret anymore.

He'd been sitting in the office for nearly an hour, watching the news on his small portable television and not going for his cell phone. It wasn't his regular cell phone he was worried about. That one wasn't even expensive, and it had no more technological capability than any other phone. He still remembered, though, thinking the whole thing through: the need to get rid of the actual machine in the event he was found out; the need for “plausible deniability,” as they put it in politics. He was sweating. Thick rivulets were trailing down his skull and the back of his neck, making the collar of his shirt damp. He thought it would feel good, strangling a woman. He could imagine himself doing it to his ex-wife and all three of her best girlfriends. Every single one of them fit the victim profile for the Plate Glass Killings.

Now he sat forward abruptly and turned the television off. He couldn't go on like this. Whether Henry Tyder was the real thing or a sham, Dennis himself was going to have to do something to resolve his own situation, and do it soon. It was too dangerous to keep the damned thing around the office, even if they hadn't found it the first time. It was too dangerous to go on hiding himself from
clients and friends, too. Eventually, the business would drop off, as if it hadn't already done it.

He made up his mind. The door to his office was locked. He'd been locking it automatically all morning and trying not to think of what Alexander was making of that. He got up and went to the closet. The closet was used to keep records these days, not clothes, but it was a walk-in and big enough to use for another room, if it had only had some kind of ventilation. He went to the back of the closet, to the place on the wall where there was what looked like a heating vent that had been blocked up. They had taken that off the wall when they searched. They had pulled up the carpets, too. Where did they learn to do these things?

There were two tall cabinets in the back, one of metal, one of wood. Neither of them held files. All the files were on computers now. He went to the wood one and pulled it away from the wall. He shoved it until it was standing just a little sideways to the wray it had been. The wood cabinet had belonged to his father. He had no idea why he still had it. He had never particularly liked his father. He got down on his knees and ran his hand against the place where two pieces of wood met at the bottom. He rubbed and rubbed until he felt the upper one pop. Then he used his fingernails to pry it out. He was worse than sweating now. His bowels had gone liquid and his head was pounding. He got the cell phone out and held it in the palm of his hand.