Here She Lies (3 page)

Julie had explained to me that the barn she had bought last year and renovated through the winter was at the crossroads of Division Street and Alford Road.

She said it was painted red and would be impossible to miss. Division Street was long and winding and dark, just what you would expect of a country road at night.

But then gradually the darkness began to fade. It was like someone had spilled light all over the street, light that spread toward me. Washed over me like a wave, even filled the car. Like the car’s starting jolt back at the airport, the brightness of this light quieted Lexy.

Her wailing voice simply stopped as we pulled into the flashing arcs of white and blue and red lights.

Police lights.

I felt a sinking inside me, a terrible dread, as I pulled up behind the last of three squad cars parked in front of a big red barn. There was an ambulance. A series of disembodied camera flashes. A stout man wearing a Red Sox baseball cap and wrapping yellow police tape around the trunk of a tree, trailing it in search of another anchor. This close, the rotating police lights blinded us each time they swept over our car.

Sweet country air seemed to pour into the car when I opened the door—air and the weird low chatter of people talking and crickets cricketing and my mind whirring like a broken disk drive. What was happening here?

Lexy twisted to the side and squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness. I had one foot on the ground and one hand on the steering wheel. I didn’t want to leave my baby alone in the car, nor did I want to carry her into an unknown situation that looked very bad.

There was a clump of people at the side of the road, some standing, some crouching. They all seemed to be focused on the same thing.

“Mommy will be right back,” I whispered to Lexy.

“Sit tight.”

I walked toward what appeared to be the center of activity. Hovering together in an area defined by taut strands of yellow police tape were officers in uniform and others in regular clothes who looked official. It was their expressions: serious, focused, at work. Out-side the barrier was a collection of people I decided must be neighbors; they seemed excited in a way the police were not.

I stepped to the side where I could see what was happening inside the tape. After a moment, someone left the group that was clustered together and someone else moved forward. And then I saw what they saw: a woman lay on the ground. She looked frozen. Her eyes were open, pupils large and fixed, and one of her legs was bent at a strange angle. Her head was hinged dramatically backward and her neck seemed covered by a shadow. Or maybe … maybe it wasn’t a shadow …

maybe it was … it was her neck, sliced open with clean precision, and this cleavage of her flesh was filled with dark, glistening blood. There was so much of it! A pool of blood spread steadily around her.

I felt a terrible sense of familiarity, almost a déjà vu, except I was sure I had never experienced this moment before. It felt completely foreign and completely wrong. And then I understood my strange reaction: the woman—she was
us.
Her name leapt out of me: “Julie!

Julie!
”

The murmur of voices quieted as every face turned to look at me. I couldn’t tell if I was walking or standing still; it was a heaviness I can’t explain. Then as the shock wore thinner I began to see differences between the woman, the
body
, on the ground and us. Her legs were heavier than ours, her body rounder, her hair thicker, though it was our same shade of reddish brown.

One of the uniformed officers stood up and walked toward me. “You okay, Ms. Milliken?”

“I’m her twin sister.”

“Oh.” His was the same measuring stare I’d encountered a thousand times, when someone’s surprised mind doubted you.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Local woman, cleaned houses for some of the folks along this road.”

“What happened?”

“She was killed.”

“Killed” was almost putting it nicely. The woman’s throat had been slit, her blood was emptying out on the road and the way she was lying, like she’d fallen backward, looked like someone had come up behind her, depriving her not just of her life but of the knowledge of who took it. It was the worst thing I had ever seen with my own eyes.

“When?”

“Don’t know. Pretty recently. Listen, ma’am, you’d better step back. There’s your sister, over there.” He pointed behind me, to my car. I turned around and there was Julie, reaching into the backseat, scooping up her niece.

My heart pulsed at the sight of Julie, and hungered at the sight of Lexy, who was crying again. I had no idea how much time had just gone by—probably just a minute or two, but it felt like much longer. My poor baby was exhausted and probably afraid. Julie was bouncing her in the air, trying to cheer her up, but Lexy was wiggling, uncomfortable. I wondered if she thought Julie was
me
, a mommy who looked like Mommy but who
wasn’t
Mommy, a mommy who smelled just a little bit different and sounded just a lit-tle bit different and was a little bit thinner but otherwise
was
Mommy. A mommy who
wasn’t
Mommy and who
was
Mommy. It must have felt like an insult after the long, difficult day. She was too young to know about identical twins. I hurried over to take her in my arms and comfort her.

I kissed Julie’s cheek as Lexy dove at me. Never in my life had anyone been so certain of the difference between me and Julie when we were standing next to each other. Lexy’s complete lack of hesitation was gratifying, but even so, I said to Julie, “She really thought you were me.” I said it because she couldn’t have children of her own and I could, and so we would have to share.

“No, she didn’t,” Julie said. “But thanks for saying so.” She smiled at Lexy, who glanced back and forth between us, looking baffled. Then Julie circled me with a warm arm and I became aware of her unique and familiar smell, part perfume and part
her
: a rich musk that was more affection than fragrance, that meant I was
home
.

“Julie, what happened here?” I asked. “It’s
terrible.
”

“I still can’t believe it. That poor woman. Can you imagine?”

“Who is she?”

“Zara Moklas,” Julie said. “She’s a Hungarian im-migrant—I mean,
was
. She worked as a part-time secretary in town and she also cleaned houses. I was thinking of hiring her myself. One of my neighbors told me she lived with her brother and
he’s
into all kinds of shady construction deals, maybe even tied to the Mob.”

“Around
here
?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“And the sister, Zara, she paid the price for that?”

“Who knows?”

“Well, it’s awful,” I said.

And Julie echoed:
“Awful.”

We paused to watch the emergency workers place Zara’s body on a stretcher, cover her with a sheet and load her into the back of the ambulance. Julie reached over to smooth a finger along Lexy’s soft, soft cheek.

And then she looked at me. “I guess you don’t know who found her.”

“Was it you?”

“Nope.
Bobby.
”

“Bobby’s
here
?”

Julie nodded, pinching in one side of her mouth. I knew what
that
meant: unbelievable but true.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

“But how did he get here so fast?”

“He caught a flight right after yours,” she said. “He rented a car and drove straight here, got here half an hour ago. Why did it take
you
so long? Did you stop?” It was a rhetorical question and I didn’t answer. I always stopped on the road; she knew that.

“Did he think I would just turn around and go back with him if he showed up?”

“Would you?”

My heart answered
yes
, my mind
no
. “Where is he?”

“In the house. I poured him a drink. He’s in bad shape.”

“So
he
found the woman? Was she—?” Julie nodded. “But only just. Listen, Annie, before you see him, you should know that he kind of freaked out on the lawn. That’s what got the neighbors out in the first place. Bobby just lost it, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“He thought what you thought.”

“He thought it was you?”

“No, he thought it was
you
.”

Half an hour ago, it would have been just starting to get dark. Twilight. The least visibility of any time of the day or night, that mysterious lilac moment of near blindness. Bobby must have arrived here just in time for the half-light to trick him when he saw the woman on the ground. I could feel him
seeing
me lying there, his inner freeze, just like when I
saw
Julie lying in that pool of blood.

The ambulance drove off. Neighbors started to go home. The police ambled around finishing their work.

The night air became sharply cold.

Holding Lexy, I crossed the lawn to the house. Julie was right there with me and I knew what she was thinking, that I didn’t even know where the front door was (she was right), this being a renovated barn and not a traditional house. She led us around the corner to a two-step stoop and a screen door through which I caught a gauzy glimpse of just the kind of high-tech kitchen Julie would build. She went in first, holding the door open for us. We stepped into a large room of mahogany cabinets, granite counters and stainless-steel appliances, all shiny and new. A small flat-screen television, perched on the counter, was angled toward a wooden table beneath a window filled with darkness.

That would be where Julie ate her lonely meals, with the TV for company. The sight of her fancy, under-used kitchen troubled me. Moving here had been a leap of faith—buying the barn on impulse during a leaf-peeping weekend meant to distract a broken heart, gutting it, uprooting herself from a lifetime in Connecticut and installing herself, alone, in this large house. She had not been here long enough to make a new social life and I knew from our conversations that all she had these days was work, occasional contact with old friends, cyber-dating that had yet to go off-line—and me.

Julie walked through a doorway leading out of the kitchen and I followed. Even in our haste I could see it was a lovely house. We passed through an antique dining room, then a small sitting room with a perfectly square curtainless window, and finally into a large comfortable living room with a cushy mocha-colored L-shaped sectional couch, a big square coffee table littered with newspapers, books and magazines, a fireplace and above it a large flat-screen television hanging on the wall. There were chairs and side tables and lamps. A big bouquet of spring flowers.

Off in the corner, at a small round table where two windows met at the joint of two walls, Bobby sat face-to-face with another man. Bobby was talking and the man was listening, writing things down.

Lexy at this point was trying to get to my breast and I had to hold her pretty tightly. I felt terrible making her wait, but I had to greet Bobby first. He stood up.

He was wearing jeans and the red sweatshirt with an il-lustrated fish that we’d bought last summer on vacation in Cape Cod. He came over to us and took Lexy into his arms. The man seemed to watch his every move. Lexy curved herself into Bobby’s chest as he ca-ressed her little back and then she twisted around and reached for me.

“I guess you better nurse her now,” he said. The soft grittiness of his voice evoked a longing in me. I had left him. We were
separated.

“You okay?” I asked him.

Bobby looked at me—his face was so sad—and didn’t answer. I heard him exhale as I turned around and settled into the couch, next to Julie, unbuttoning the bright sweater and angling myself so she could help me slide out of it. She folded it on her lap and I let Lexy into my shirt. My darling baby sucked fero-ciously, her chubby hands pressing on my swollen breasts; I could feel the warm milk pass through my ducts, from my body into hers, relieving me and sating her. Julie watched closely as Lexy nursed. I could hear the man stand up and walk around the couch until he was facing me.

He was small, on the thin side. His hair was pitch-black and tousled, obviously dyed, and the contrast with his pale skin made him look older than he probably was. I put him at fifty-five, give or take. His gray eyes looked tired, but he had a friendly mouth. He half smiled at me and it seemed as if he wanted to speak but wasn’t sure what the rules were when a woman’s naked breast was showing. He avoided looking at it.

Lexy must have sensed he was there because she smacked off my nipple to face him, then nuzzled her face against my exposed nipple and latched back on.

The man’s face reddened as he introduced himself.

“Detective Gabe Lazare, Great Barrington Police.” Ah, of course: a detective.

“I’m Annie,” I said.

“Figured as much.” His hand inched forward, then pulled back when he realized I wouldn’t be able to shake, as my arms were full of Lexy.

Behind me, Bobby paced the room. Detective Lazare sat down on the opposite branch of the couch, away from Julie and me. He was calm, deeply calm. I felt it immediately, how the mood in the room shifted from edgy to oddly tranquil. Something about this man made me feel he must be a good detective, the way he altered the tone just by sitting down with us, just
being
there
and waiting. What were we waiting for? I supposed we were waiting for the woman’s killer to waltz in and introduce himself:
Here I am! Sorry for the inconvenience.
But that wasn’t going to happen. Already whole minutes were sliding by with no one speaking.

This could be a long wait. And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered what it had to do with us.

She had been killed on my sister’s lawn—no, on the road in front of her lawn. Not, officially, her property.

It was a terrible,
terrible
thing. That poor woman! But for us, realistically, it would probably be over by morning.