Lacy Eye (30 page)

Of course, it was Rud Petty who'd hit us, with what I learned later was a mallet from our own croquet set.

But it was Dawn, not Rud, who withheld Joe's inhaler from him and then crushed it to pieces. It was Dawn, not Rud, who pulled the phone cord out of the wall when I was trying to call for help. In the space where all this had happened three years before, I slumped onto the bed, once again feeling barely alive, although this time it was a psychic condition instead of a physical one. Then, shivering against the idea of lying there one moment longer, I forced myself to muster the energy to stand and leave, shutting the door behind me with an emphatic click that made Abby's ears rise.

She rustled along beside me, barely able to keep up as I pitched myself downstairs toward the kitchen. I found Dawn's cell phone number and dialed, but she didn't answer. Her recorded voice came on and told me, “Just wait for the ding-dong,” followed by the sound of a ringing bell.

I started to leave a message, then stopped, realizing that I had no idea what it was I would say to her.

As if observing my own actions from a distance, I rummaged in my junk drawer to find my address book, where I knew I had the number for Opal Bremer's house in Glen Cove. When Opal's mother, Saffron, answered, I tried to keep my voice normal and my manner as pleasant as possible, even though Opal had told us stories that made me critical of her. I reminded her who I was and asked to speak to Dawn.

“Why would Dawn be here?” I heard Saffron reach for something, then the flick of a cigarette lighter.

“I—well, she was going to your house.”

I couldn't tell if it was a laugh or a snort that came back at me.

“I don't know why she would come here.” Now I realized that the voice sounded medicated and off-speed.

“She thought Opal might be upset.” I felt the urge to hang up because I knew that whatever was coming, I did not want to hear it. But a mix of politeness and paralysis kept me on the line.

“Is this some sick kind of joke?” The laugh again, or the snort. I heard a long exhalation—either smoke or anxiety, or both. “Well, no, Dawn isn't here. And Opal isn't here, either, because she killed herself last month. After that D.A. came down and said she wanted her to testify again, at that asshole's new trial.

“No, don't say anything,” she told me, hearing the noise I made. “I don't want to hear it, especially from you. She was never the same after all that shit with your family.” In the background I heard a man's voice inquiring, and Opal's mother said, “Nobody.”

“You know what I think?” she asked me, even though I understood that it was not actually a question but a preamble for whatever she already planned to say. “Your daughter got Opal to lie for her, the first time. She never told me in so many words, but a mother knows.” Though I had used that same phrase—“A mother knows”—in defending Dawn to Claire, it carried no weight with me coming from this other woman. “I think my girl was afraid of Rud Petty. And she was too weak to say no. But she was never the same after that trial. The guilt got to her.”

I knew I should tell her I was sorry and just hang up, but against my better judgment I said, “Opal was always depressed. Since before she met Dawn.”

“I'm not talking about depressed. I'm talking about guilty. And scared. Because she perjured herself—that's a crime, right? And the district attorney knows it. So now my daughter's dead, and I have you to thank for that. You and your degenerate daughter. Same thing.” Another sucking sound, and she hung up before I could collect myself to do the same.

I sat for a moment just looking at the phone in my hand, feeling it vibrate as if Saffron Bremer's fury had been transmitted physically along with her words.

My head throbbed. My mind felt clogged, overloaded. As dazed as if I hadn't slept at all. I couldn't think how to clear it.

When Abby barked a warning, I almost didn't notice, but at the last minute I turned as I felt someone approaching behind me, from the stairs. I heard myself cry out, though I don't think it was an actual word. Instinctively I tried to move backward, but tripped over the dog. Squealing in panic, she caught me against her body before I could fall, and I righted myself by grabbing the kitchen counter to regain my balance.

I couldn't see him, but I knew that whoever came toward me held something high over his head and was preparing to hit me with it. Instead of closing my eyes and waiting for the impact, I swung wildly with both arms and knocked whatever he held to the floor, striking him on the wrist with the force of my resistance.

“Shit!” he spat out, grabbing his arm. “Son of a bitch!”

Through my shock and the thunder of my heart beating in my ears, I saw that it was Stew. The “go-between,” Dawn had called him. “Oh, my God,” I said, my voice sounding unfamiliar to myself.

He gave out what sounded like a growl and thrust himself toward the weapon he'd dropped, but I stepped on his hand, and we both heard something crunch before he began cursing loud enough to make Abby back away.

I leaned over to pick up what he'd been reaching for. It was the trophy Dawn had won in fifth grade for her participation in the egg-and-spoon race. “You've got to be kidding me,” I said, and the absurdity of it made me feel like laughing, though my stomach still curled in alarm.

With the trophy in my hand I looked down at him writhing on the floor below me. “I know who you are, you know. You're the cousin. Right?”

“The fuck you know that?” He was still folded over his injured hand.

“It's online. It's out there for everybody to see.” Emboldened at seeing the trepidation this raised in him, I went on. “They'll be looking for you. If you hurt me now, everyone will know who did it. It'll be a no-brainer.” I picked up the phone and pressed the buttons for 911.

He turned and ran, almost tripping over himself in his rush toward the back door. As the operator answered on the other end of the line, I could have sworn I heard Dawn's voice in the driveway shouting, “You fucking wimp!” and the sound made my heart go cold. For a moment I couldn't speak into the phone, until the operator prompted me, and I said, “I want to report an intrusion,” knowing that it was much, much more than that, but not having the courage to come up with the right word.

Kenneth Thornburgh arrived within seven minutes. I know because I watched the clock the whole time—he pulled in with a screech, his red light flashing, at 12:04. I told him what had happened, leaving out only the part about thinking that I'd heard Dawn's voice after Stew bolted from the house. I could have been wrong, couldn't I? In my confusion, couldn't I have hallucinated that sound?

“He must have been hiding in here, waiting,” I said, putting it together only as I thought back to what had happened since I'd returned from Warren's house. “In Dawn's room. The dog was trying to tell me, but I didn't listen.”

The detective cleared his throat in that nervous way he had, when he didn't want to say the next thing but knew he had to. “Do you have any idea where your daughter might be, Mrs. Schutt?”

I shook my head. “Why?”

Before he could answer, Warren stepped into the house and said, “Hanna? You all right?”

I told him I was fine, although of course he could see that I wasn't. He came over to put his arm around my shoulder, and I felt grateful for the support.

“They're trying to find Dawn,” I whispered.

Thornburgh said, “We have a ‘Be on the Lookout' issued for her, as of yesterday. Totally separate from this incident, but now, of course, we want to talk to her more than ever.”

“Yesterday? What happened yesterday?” I could barely hear my own voice.

“Well, for one thing, your other daughter reported Dawn committed a fraud. Trying to secure a loan in your name.” I closed my eyes, understanding that Iris was receiving reports not only from Peter, but from Tom Whitty, too.

“But more serious than that, it appears she tried to use a stolen credit card. It belonged to a woman named Dorothy Wing. Your daughter delivers meals to her, correct? She has access to Mrs. Wing's house and property? Apparently she stole the card and attempted to—use it.” At the last minute he faltered.

“Use it how?” Though I knew I would not want to hear the answer, I also had the distinct sense now that it was my next line in a script already written for me.

“She tried to pay for an attorney's services.” A slight pause, the one a hangman might take before dropping the noose. “Rud Petty's attorney.”

Warren said, “Oh, my God.” At the same time, I said, “What?”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Schutt. But it looks like when Rud's family paid for his defense the first time around, his mother was still alive, and she persuaded the father to take out another mortgage. But she died last year, and the father isn't about to cough it up for this new trial. Rud had to raise money somehow. That's why Dawn did that interview for
The Bloody Glove
. I'm not saying it was Rud's idea—he probably didn't even know about it. He's not that stupid.” I could tell he said these last words before realizing how they would sound:
Rud's not that stupid, but Dawn is.
I was glad he didn't try to take it back or fix it. “I know Gail Nazarian's been in touch with you about this: it seems Dawn and Rud have been communicating for some time.”

I nodded to indicate that, yes, Gail Nazarian had told me she suspected that. But I couldn't speak.

“Is there someplace you can stay tonight?” Ken Thornburgh looked not at me but at Warren as he said this.

Warren said, “Of course,” and we walked outside with the detective. Abby cringed behind me, and I could tell how spooked she'd been by the whole thing. “It's okay, girl,” I told her, rubbing the spot between her ears and doing my best to sound as if I believed it. For the second time that night I entered Warren's house, and before he went to sleep down the hall in the room that had been his son's, he tucked me into his own bed the way you would a child who'd suffered a bad dream.

I
n the morning, I called Iris's house from Warren's phone, intending to ask her to come to me. Archie answered and told me she was already on her way. He said that Peter had called the night before to tell Iris about the website interview, and though her impulse was to get in the car immediately, Archie convinced her to wait. I asked him to let her know I was across the street, instead of at my own house.

“Thank God,” I said to Warren, as he made us toast. “What if she'd come and found out I wasn't home? She'd have no way of knowing I was here.”

“She would have called the police. Thornburgh would have told her.” He spoke calmly, but I could tell he was just trying to assuage my anxiety; the sleepless look in his face told me how upset he'd also been by the events of the night before.

When Iris arrived, she pulled me close and murmured, “Oh, Mommy,” so fervently it surprised me. I could feel her shaking. Warren set down a plate for her, but she waved it away and said she was too upset to eat. “They could have killed you,” she kept saying to me, so many times that I thought she must be in shock. “I should have known better than to leave you alone in that house.”

“It wasn't anything like that, Iris. It was just a little boy with a plastic trophy. He was more scared than I was.”

I'd hoped she might smile at that, but I could see what a strain she'd been through. “I'm sorry,” I told her, hating how distraught she looked, and feeling responsible. “I'm sorry to put you through all this.”

“It wasn't you,” she said. “Don't you know that? None of this is
you
.”

Before we left the breakfast table, Thornburgh came to tell us that they had apprehended Stew and Dawn in northern New York State, near the border, “attempting to flee.”

“They were together?” I said, closing my eyes against the realization that what I had heard in the driveway must have been Dawn's voice after all. “Why?”

“We can only assume they thought you were going to testify against Rud Petty in his new trial. And they were trying to—​d
issuad
e you.” He appeared to stumble in choosing the last words, then added, “Most likely at Rud's command.”

“Oh, God. I told you, Mom.” Iris emitted a violent whistle between her teeth.

“We don't have all the facts yet,” Thornburgh said. “I'm sure it will all come out.”

I asked if I could see Dawn, and he told me she wouldn't be back in Everton, for questioning, for another few hours. He coughed slightly and added, “I should prepare you for the fact that there may be more charges pending than just the credit card fraud.” As the detective and I spoke, Iris and Warren had moved away slightly, as if to give Thornburgh and me privacy, though of course they could still hear it all.

“What charges?” The memory of Gail Nazarian's threat to try to indict Dawn again stirred in my stomach.

“I shouldn't say, because I don't really know yet. It isn't for me to decide.” He put a hand across the space between us to touch my shoulder. “Mrs. Schutt—
Hanna
—I'm sorry about all this.” And I knew he was, just as I knew he'd been sorry to have to tell me, a few weeks earlier, that Rud Petty had won his appeal.

Around noon, after calling to confirm that Dawn was there and that they would allow me to speak to her, I asked Iris to drive me to the police station. Warren stayed behind to take care of Abby, who still hadn't been able to settle down.

Despite all the contact I'd had with the Everton officers during the past three years, these encounters had always taken place either at my home, in the hospital, or at the courthouse. The only time I'd been inside the station before was back when the girls were little and the town ran an antitheft campaign by asking kids to register their bicycles. Remembering how proud Dawn had been to put that neon orange ID sticker onto her little bike with the white wicker basket, I had to reach out and clasp the railing along the steps for a moment. Iris looked concerned, so to distract her I said, “Was that always there?” nodding at the row of oakleaf hydrangeas lining the walkway.

“I think so. Why?”

“I would think I'd have remembered.” Feeling slightly more stable, I took my hand off the railing to test myself.

Iris came closer, putting an arm out to spot me. “People don't tend to remember things unless they have to.”

“Well, that's a dim view.”

“Maybe. But do you think it's not true?”

To avoid answering, I told her I was fine now, and said we should go inside.

Peter Cifforelli was already there, waiting on the bench outside Kenneth Thornburgh's office. I hadn't seen him since the trial, when I was used to him sitting in the courtroom in dark, well-​f
itting
suits, newly shined shoes, and ties in bold colors like magenta and deep yellow. In the friendship between him and Joe, Peter had always been the flashy one, the one who seemed to want to call attention to himself. I think that quality in his best friend amused Joe and also piqued his interest, because it was so unlike his own personality.

But today, a Saturday morning, he had on corduroys and a Buf State sweatshirt, with muddy sneakers and socks that didn't match. As Iris and I approached, I saw that he was scribbling notes on a pad. He jumped up when he saw me. “Hanna, what were you thinking? Letting her be in touch with Rud Petty, for God's sake?” He pushed his hair back on his forehead as if it might help him understand.

Trying to contain myself—not for his sake but for my own—I struggled to keep my voice calm as I told him, “I don't know they
were
in touch.”

“Trust me. There's a warrant out for her arrest in New Mexico. Credit card fraud. Apparently she was cleaning houses and stealing people's account numbers while she worked. It took them a while to catch up to it because out there she wasn't Dawn Schutt; she was using a different name.” He consulted his notes. “Cecilia Devereaux.” I did my best to hold in the gasp I felt, and he didn't seem to notice. “You think she'd be doing that if Rud Petty weren't behind it?”

He was on a roll, not about to let me get a word in, which was fine with me because I had none. “And you think Gail Nazarian doesn't have all the records she needs to make a jury believe they've been in contact? What do you think that moron Stew Jerome was doing in your house? Maybe he was even supposed to kill you—finish the job Rud botched the first time. How do we know?” Peter threw his hands high in a gesture I had seen often over the years. It was meant to lend dramatic effect to whatever words it accompanied, but to me it always just looked silly.

“Look, I know you've always been protective of Dawn,” he went on. “And I understand why you wouldn't want to see what's going on here. No parent would.” He tapped his sneaker for emphasis on the gray tile floor. “But she was in trouble even before she met Rud Petty. If you refuse to accept that, you're putting yourself in danger.”

That word again:
danger
. Now both Peter and Gail Nazarian had used it in referring to my daughter. I felt the anger sweep through me as I said, “You've never liked me, have you, Peter?” Suddenly it occurred to me that it hardly mattered, anymore, what I said to my dead husband's best friend. I couldn't see a reason anymore to pretend
we
were friends. “You've always thought I was stupid—too stupid to be with Joe. Well, maybe I am. Was. But I'm not
stupid enough to have known Dawn was talking to Rud Petty and not done anything about it. I mean, really—what do you take me for?”

He looked away, and it enraged me even further to see the pity in his eyes. “Hanna,” he said, “I don't think I can help her this time. That interview, the cousin—” He shrugged, as if to say,
What more can you expect from me?
When I didn't try to persuade him otherwise, he turned on his sneaker heel, squeaking down the corridor and out of my life. As good a friend as he had always been to Joe, I wasn't sorry to see him go.

Iris and I were heading to Kenneth Thornburgh's office when he came out of a room next to it, and instinctively I knew that Dawn was behind the door he'd just shut. “You can go in now,” he told me. “We just got through talking with her, and she's a little—confused, might be the best way to put it.” He hesitated, and I understood that for my sake he had chosen a more neutral word to describe Dawn's state than he'd originally intended. “Do you want me to fill you in, at all, on what she told us? Or—” He waved as if he knew I'd understand how to finish his sentence; we'd always had that shorthand between us.

“No, I just want to talk to her.” He nodded as if that was what he'd expected.

“Go ahead, Mom.” Iris sat down heavily on the bench and clutched her bag close, as if grateful she had something to hold on to. “If you need me, I'll be right here.”

I took a deep breath as Thornburgh opened the door, and I followed him into the room. I felt far away from both my mind and my body, which in many ways was a relief. It wasn't the same kind of feeling as being drunk—that hazy, floating sensation you know will end in a headache you already dread. This was more of a numb suspension I would have been perfectly happy to sign up for if someone had been able to offer it to me as a steady state for the rest of my life.

Now, more than a year later, I am glad it wasn't an option. But at that moment, I wanted more than anything not to acknowledge all that was in my head and heart.

Though the room was only a small rectangle, it seemed to swallow Dawn up the way she sat in the metal chair on the other side of the table, slumped into herself. How many times, after Iris had gone away to college and Joe began working late on the Marc Sedgwick case—and even since she had returned home only two weeks earlier—had she and I sat in front of TV crime shows featuring police station interview rooms? On TV, the rooms were completely stark, and the cops and the district attorney observed from behind the one-way window. It didn't look to me as if this room in the Everton station had a one-way window, but I might have been wrong. I was beginning to understand that I couldn't trust my own perceptions.

On the wall behind Dawn was a mural-size map featuring an aerial view of Everton's territory bordered by the Hudson on one side and the conservation land on the other, along with the town's motto,
INQUIRY ABOVE ALL
, which had been coined by its founder, Josiah Everton, an inventor and scientist. The police map was not framed, but taped to the wall. After a moment I realized that this was not because the cops were cheap, but because the glass in a frame could have been used as a weapon in the wrong hands.

Dawn stood when she saw it was me. She let me come toward her, and Thornburgh stayed in the room to supervise our hug. “I'm going to leave you two to talk, but I'll be right outside, okay?” he said, and when the door closed behind him, I could see his head through the window at the door's top, his face tilted just enough that although he wasn't staring, he'd be aware of everything that went on in the room.

When I sat down across from her, Dawn tried to smile. At first I couldn't look at her, but when I did, I was astonished to see how far her bad eye had wandered. Could it have happened since we'd last seen each other the night before? Or was it possible it had been like that since she'd come home, and I hadn't recognized it for what it was? I understood now that this had to be the case, but the idea that I could see things so wrong made me breathless, and my heart skipped a beat.

“How are you, Mommy?” Dawn asked.

I tried not to look as shocked as I felt. Even Ding-Dong Dawn couldn't be that
clueless
, could she? “This isn't a social visit, Dawn,” I said, and immediately she plunged her glance down at the floor in the familiar attitude that announced she felt ashamed.

“Peter was just here,” I added. “He said he can't be your lawyer anymore.”

She nodded, and I couldn't tell whether this turn of events surprised her. Then she frowned. “Lawyer for what?”

I clucked my tongue in impatience, and then she did look up surprised; it was a sound she had heard often from Iris over the years, but never, I was sure, from me. We sat there looking at each other, each waiting for the other to speak. In thinking about it since, it has occurred to me that this was the moment we both understood there was no going back for us, however much we might have wished to.

“How could you?” I asked finally. I was referring to all of it, but couldn't bring myself to ask her specifically about what I'd read in the website interview. I was still hoping there was some explanation I hadn't yet figured out.

“How could I what?” She let her good eye dart toward me. But when I didn't answer, she looked away and murmured, “It was nothing personal.”

I made a noise that could have sounded like laughter, feeling a twist in my gut. “‘Nothing personal'? What could be more personal than trying to kill someone?”

She shrugged, but her shoulders were trembling. “Nobody tried to kill anybody.” She wanted me to believe her, but it was too late for that. “He was just going to scare you,” she said, and I realized she thought I was only talking about what had happened with Stew.

My mind played out, in all its panicked silliness, the bungled assault in my kitchen from the night before. “With that stupid trophy?”

Dawn winced at the word
stupid
. “He's an idiot. He was supposed to use the bat by your bed.” When I caught my breath sharply, she said, “To
scare
you, I said. He wouldn't have hit you with it.”

“I guess I'm lucky he's an idiot, then.” I didn't want to ask where in the house Stew had been hiding before he came at me, even though I was sure she knew. I assumed he'd been in her room, where the trophy was displayed so prominently that he decided to grab it instead of risking a trip to my bedroom for the bat.