Raveling (45 page)

“Did you eat anything?”

“Just coffee, mostly. Sometimes I’d let him make me some eggs.”

“Your mother—”

“—drinks tea,” I finished. “Why?”

Katherine didn’t answer, just as she didn’t respond to my questions about Eric. “Pilot,” Katherine said, “how many pills are
you taking right now? I mean, how many a day?”

“Three,” I said. “But sometimes I miss one.”

“Do something for me,” she said. “Reduce it by half. You can cut those pills in half, right?”

“Sure,” I said. “They have a little notch in the middle.”

“From now on, take half a pill three times a day instead of three whole ones, all right?”

I realized how cold it was out here, even though it was Florida, and that I had forgotten to wear a jacket, and that there
were few cars in the parking lot, and that the sky was more green than blue. “Okay,” I said. Talbot was making a
funny face at me, stretching his mouth open with his fingers. Behind him, I could see his mother, a large-boned woman with
mouse-brown hair, looking at whale calendars and
Star Trek
calendars. What month was it? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember what month it was.

Jesus Christ, it was cold. Could I actually be in Florida? It was probably Blue Whale month. Or Klingon Battle Cruiser month.

“But if you start feeling strange,” said Katherine, “if you start feeling at all unusual, hearing voices, seeing things, fearing
things, then please go back to your regular dosage right away.”

“Fine,” I said. “The medication just makes me groggy and stupid, anyway.”

“And call me.”

“Call you.”

“Pilot,” Katherine said, and I knew she was looking at her watch. “I have to go now. But will you call me in a few days?”

“Of course I will,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“It’s my job to worry about you, Pilot.”

Talbot stuck his pink little tongue out at me from the other side of the glass. “Bye, Katherine,” I said. I could see his
tongue flattening against the window. I remembered the taste of glass from my childhood, the sooty, filmy sensation of my
tongue on a window.

“Good-bye, Pilot.”

I hung up the phone, taking a step toward Talbot, and he panicked and ran to his mother. November, I think. It had to be November.
But he had no reason to be afraid of me.

Katherine followed Jerry Cleveland’s directions onto Sky Highway, scanning the numbers over the doorways. When
she saw it, though, she thought she must have made a mistake. She pulled her sapphire-blue VW into the lot and looked around.
Huge red, white, and blue streamers hung from wires that had been strung across high poles. Everywhere were banners advertising
amazing deals on pristine-condition previously owned, reconditioned automobiles. An older black man wearing a plaid jacket
and white pants walked up to her car window right away. She rolled it down. “We have some incredible things to show you, Miss,
absolutely incredible things. Why don’t you pull right over there—” he pointed to an empty space “—and we’ll walk around and
take a look at a few models that will absolutely blow your—”

She recognized his voice. “Detective Cleveland?” Katherine said. “I mean—”

“Miss Joy!” The old man laughed.

“You’re a used-car salesman?”

“I was an average detective,” he said smiling. “I’m a
great
used-car salesman.” He waved his whole arm. “Go ahead and pull in over there, then we’ll talk.”

Katherine pulled her car into the space he indicated, and Cleveland was right behind her, opening the door. “Thank you,” she
said, stepping out. “It’s DeQuincey-Joy, by the way, with a hyphen.”

“Come right in and I’ll pour you a nice cup of coffee, Miss DeQuincey-Joy with a hyphen.”

Katherine followed him into the small dealership offices, where three other salesmen sat around a portable radio drinking
coffee and smoking cigarettes. Cleveland led her into the back office, the one that had a
MANAGER
plaque over the door.

“You’re the manager?”

“Nah.” He shrugged. “But that guy’s never around, so we use his office when we want some privacy,” he said. “Take a seat.”

Katherine took the old gray metal folding chair opposite the old gray metal desk in the center of the room. There was one
other chair, and on the wall was a colorful poster of a burgundy-mist Mercury Cougar.

“Coffee?” Cleveland said.

Katherine shook her head.

Cleveland sat down, too. “Now,” he said, “I want you to explain to me once again what it is you’re after, young lady. I’m
afraid I didn’t get everything that was going on with you on the phone there.” He spoke methodically and carefully. “Just
that you’ve got some new information about that missing child. Is that true?”

“Well,” Katherine began, “her brother Pilot Airie is my client.”

“You’re a psychiatrist?”

“Psychologist,” Katherine said. “A counseling psychologist. I don’t have a medical degree.”

“Okay.”

“Pilot Airie, my patient—he claims to have some new evidence.” Katherine looked out the window. It was a bright day, and the
chrome of hundreds of cars sparkled in the sun. “Well, not new, exactly, but evidence that he’s held on to since, since it
happened.”

Cleveland was scratching the back of his head. “That was more than fifteen years ago, Miss DeQuincey-Joy.”

“Twenty.”

He sighed. “What kind of new evidence does he have, anyway? Do you have it?”

“I have part of it.” Katherine removed the half shoelace from her purse and placed it on the empty desk.

“A shoelace?” Cleveland picked it up. “This is from a shoelace?”

“Don’t you remember?” Katherine asked. “Pilot Airie
found a single sneaker in the woods, and no one could find the other shoe.”

Cleveland nodded. “I remember the shoe. Is this the lace from that shoe?”

“No. This is the lace from the
other
shoe.” Katherine tried to pull the whole mass of her hair toward the back of her head. When she released it, though, it all
just fell back into her eyes. “Pilot says he found both of them all those years ago, and that he found a knife as well. A
bloody knife. He says he found them in his brother’s room and that he hid them.”

“The other brother,” Cleveland said. “What was his name?”

“Eric,” Katherine said. “He’s a doctor now.”

“Does he know about this?”

“Most of it.”

“Boy, that must make him feel good.” Cleveland dangled the half shoelace in front of his gray face. Then he said, “This has
been cut in half—recently.”

Katherine smiled. Vettorello had noticed the same thing. “I did that,” she said. “The police have the other half.”

“It’s not going to tell them much.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“They can probably verify if it’s the right age, but they can’t do much more.” He smiled and shook his head. “You’re going
to need the rest of the evidence to confirm anything. The knife, for example. Do you have that?”

“That’s a problem,” Katherine said. “Pilot’s telling me he’s not sure where he put it.”

“I thought you said he’s had it for twenty—”

Katherine looked at her hands, which were small and white in her lap, the fingertips chewed beyond recognition. “Pilot had
a psychotic episode, and he said he moved the evidence during that time.”

“I see.”

“And in the process he remembered having the evidence in his possession, but then he doesn’t quite know what he did with
it.”

“This was recently?”

“Two and a half months ago.” Katherine cleared her throat. “He was discovered in the woods behind his mother’s house after
a three-day search.” Katherine looked across the desk directly into the old man’s eyes. “What was your opinion at the time?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that man—his name was Bryce—”

“Bryce Telliman.”

“Yes,” Katherine said. “He was the lead suspect?”

“According to the papers,” Cleveland said, “and that seemed to be what the family and most other folks wanted to believe.”

“Did you agree?”

“I thought he might have done it. There wasn’t any real evidence pointing to him, though. That man was a homosexual. Why would
he be interested in a little girl?”

“Were there any other suspects?”

Cleveland shifted in his chair. “Everyone at that party was a suspect as far as I was concerned.”

“Anyone in particular?”

The older man rubbed his hands together, and Katherine could actually hear his rough skin. “I have to say I never really considered
the boys,” Cleveland said. “Either one of them.” He paused for a moment and scratched the back of his head again. “I always
thought it was the father.”

Katherine leaned forward. “What made you think that?”

“Bryce Telliman,” Cleveland said, his voice pitched high. “It was
his
theory.”

“Bryce Telliman had his own theory?”

“Sure he did. He said he saw the way the father looked at the little girl and he thought it was creepy. That was the word
he used—
creepy
.”

“Creepy,” Katherine repeated. “Did you investigate the father at all?”

“We asked him some questions but, Miss DeQuincey-Joy, you’ve got to know, we didn’t have a lick of evidence. We never even
found the girl’s body.” He smiled thinly. “No body, no murder charge, you know what I mean?”

Katherine nodded. “Pilot hasn’t spoken much about his father.” She said this more to herself than to the old detective.

Cleveland touched his chin. His eyes flickered back and forth.

My father kept going over checklists. “Propane stove?” he said. “Hibachi? Briquettes? Starter fluid? Matches?” We were packing.

Patricia only smiled, repeating, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” She had thought of everything, of course, especially of the food we
would eat. It seemed she always thought of everything, taking care of my father like a nanny. Patricia had even packed Christmas
decorations.

It was my father’s job only to worry about the plane.

Only that.

I made certain, of course, to bring my medication, a backpack full of books, and the single blue canvas duffel bag I had brought
with me from East Meadow.

The take-off went easily, as take-offs go. The truth is, I had never been flying with my father before and was a little more
than nervous when we rose from the choppy water like a seagull, rushing forward on the surface until the wind caught our wings
and lifted us into the air. That morning it had seemed to me it was getting cold out, but my father said
it would be warmer out on the island. “It catches those Caribbean winds,” he said. “It’s different out there.”

“It’s beautiful,” Patricia reassured me, shouting over the engine. “You’ll really love it, Pilot. You really will.”

“Trust us.”

In the air I could see the coast of the United States falling away. There were no sailboats at all, only waves, slate blue
and flat in the gray winter daylight. I sat in the front with my father, and Patricia sat in the back, where there was barely
enough space for even her, we had brought so many supplies. Dad turned to me, though, not her, asking, “Are you all right,
son? Are you comfortable?”

An overcast day, with a solid cloud stretching all the way to the horizon. “This is great,” I told him. “This is awesome.”
I said this through clenched teeth. I could feel all those snakes beneath my skin coiling and slithering. I never could express
enthusiasm—even when it was genuine.

The engine was loud, and cold air leaked into the cabin of the little seaplane in squealing fissures through the fuselage.
Dad turned to me with a conspiratorial smile. “Your mother would never have gone flying like this.” He said it as if she were
dead.

“You’re right,” I agreed. But I also knew that he never would have invited her.

“I’m glad you could come.” He had to shout this over the noise of the engine and the wind coming into the plane.

“Have you ever taken Eric up here?”

“He’s always too busy to visit,” my father said. “The big brain surgeon has more important things to do than visit his old
dad.”

“How much more flying,” I asked, “until we get there?”