Raveling (61 page)

I took my father’s sparkling blue four-wheel drive, blue like the sky that late December day, and drove it out to Sky Highway,
traveling along the strip malls and shopping plazas, the apartment complexes and office parks that led to the Better-Than-New
Auto World where Katherine had told me the old police detective worked. In the passenger seat beside me was the evidence,
the plastic Wonderbread bag, amazingly, still intact. I pulled into the parking lot next to a row of old Buicks, Mercurys,
and Lincolns and waved off the redheaded salesman who came toward me in a gray suit, his tie brightly patterned, his hand
out for a shake. “I’m looking for Jerry Cleveland,” I said.

His shoulders slumped. The guy hooked his thumb toward the lot, where car after car glinted and glittered in the bright winter
sun. “He’s out there,” the salesman said, “with a customer.” He squinted at me. “Sure there’s not something I can show you?”

“Thanks,” I said, “but no.” I climbed out of my four-wheeler, closed the door gently, and walked off through the lot. It was
jam-packed with dark late-model luxury sedans, Lincoln Continentals, one or two Cadillacs, their sleek, chromed bodies tucked
together like a school of fish. Out toward the perimeter, there were the more practical vehicles, the minivans and four-wheel
drives like mine, even a couple of old woodgrain-paneled station wagons. I could see him, an old man, gesturing toward one
car after another, leading a young couple through the lot, car by car, describing past owners, delineating the features and
extras, the miles driven, the detailing and tune-ups. He was commanding, I have to say. His voice boomed across the roofs
all the way to me. When I finally reached them, Cleveland had opened a Ford Taurus, and the couple—not much to describe, really,
the woman was blond, pregnant, the man was short, dark—were sitting inside it. The short, dark man was gripping the wheel,
pretending to drive.

“Go on.” Cleveland was chuckling. “Get a feel of it.” He was laughing at them, I thought. “You look good in that color, ma’am.
I have to say you were right about the red one. You look better in the green.”

The woman smiled at Cleveland, flattered. Her husband gripped the wheel, imagining a curving highway ahead of him.

“Mr. Cleveland.”

He turned to me. His eyes flickered across my face and then down to the Wonderbread bag. “Just a minute,” he said.

I knew that he knew me. I knew that he remembered.

“You do all the financing here?” the man asked him.

“Yes, we do,” Cleveland said. He stood with his hand on the roof of the car. “Yes, sir, we do.”

“What do you think the monthly would be?” The man pretended to turn sharply to the left. Now to the right.

“The monthly. Can’t say exactly,” Cleveland said, scratching his chin. “But I imagine around one-sixty. Could be wrong.”

The woman put her hand over her husband’s, which was still gripping the steering wheel. “That’s not bad,” she said encouragingly.
“Honey, that’s not—”

“It’s not bad at all,” Cleveland stated. “As a matter of fact, I
challenge
any other dealership to do better.”

“Mr. Cleveland,” I said again. “Excuse me, but—”

“Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy,” Cleveland said, “would you mind terribly if I took a moment to speak with my son?”

The couple turned to look at me, eyes wide, noticing me here for the first time. “Oh, not at all.” The woman smiled warmly.
From here I could see that she was pretty, with rounded features.

“We’ll be here.” The man nodded, hands on the wheel, eyes focused on some imaginary point in the distance.

“Come on.” Cleveland put his arm around my shoulder and led me about fifteen cars away. He was wearing a wine-red blazer with
large yellow stitching in the lapel. He smelled like cigarettes.

“Your son?” I said.

He winked. “I don’t want them to think you’re another customer.”

“You remember me.”

“You’re a lot older now,” Cleveland said. “But so am I.” He laughed a little bit. “And I’ve been expecting you.”

“You have?”

He reached out his hand. “Can I see?”

I handed over the bag. “Careful,” I said. “There’s a knife in there, and it’s still sharp.”

He looked inside it. He nodded, looking up. “You ever touch these things?”

“No,” I said. “No one has. Not since—”

“—they were put in the bag.” He furrowed his brow. “Excellent. But I’m not a detective anymore. You understand that, don’t
you?”

“But you know what to do with it.”

Cleveland rolled his neck, rubbing his hand on the back of it. He grimaced as if in pain. “Yes,” he nodded. “Yes, I do.” He
paused now, looking at me directly, his eyes boring into mine. “You knew what happened.”

“Yes.”

“You could have told me then.”

“Yes.”

“This is no recovered memory.”

“It’s just a regular memory,” I said.

Cleveland nodded. “That’s good.”

Behind him, the pregnant woman was approaching. She was beaming a look of pure joy in our direction. “Mr. Cleveland?” she
said.

“It’s Jerry.”

“Jerry,” she said, “we’ll take it.”

“That’s good,” he said again, only this time to her, and grinning hugely. “That’s outstanding.”

Dawn Costello tore little strips off her napkin, creating a pile of white shreds on the red-checked tablecloth. Her lower
lip trembled a bit. “No one ever spoke to me about it,” she was saying, “not from the police, at least, no one that was ever,
you know,
official
.”

Katherine stirred a spoonful of sugar into her coffee. The restaurant was closed, but loud, banging noises and rich garlicky
smells came from the kitchen, the sound of saucepans
hitting the stovetop, the smell of bread baking; a radio was tuned to a football game, crowds cheering, commentators announcing.
“Well,” Katherine said, placing her spoon in the saucer, “can you remember much about that night now? I mean, I know it was
a long—”

“Like it was yesterday.” Dawn exhaled roughly. “Like it just happened.”

Katherine picked up her cup. “Good. Tell me what you remember.” She took a sip.

Dawn Costello had eyes like a deer, enormous and dark brown. She had olive skin and wavy, ash-colored hair. She had a way
of smiling with her mouth, kind of sideways, when she talked, her lips everywhere. She had the manner of an animal that has
been hit one too many times, Katherine thought. She struck Katherine immediately as a good person, no doubt a kind mother—she
had four children—and a good friend. Dawn reminded Katherine of the abused women she had met so many times in her career.
Everything, the whole story, she knew, was ready to spill out of her; she had only been waiting for someone to ask. “He was
taking speed.”

Katherine leaned forward. “Do you remember what kind?”

“White Cross. It was everywhere in those days. I mean, everybody had it.”

“Did you take it, too?”

“Nah, I was too intimidated, and it made me too jittery. I just smoked a little pot, drank a little beer, you know.”

“You were a cheerleader?”

“Yeah.” Dawn shrugged, placing another bit of torn napkin onto the pile. “I was one of the good girls.” She smiled her sideways
smile.

“So Eric was on speed, and—”

“Well, no, let me back up.” Dawn took a drink of her own coffee. “First we were at his house, in his bedroom,” she said. “We
used to go there and make out, you know, on his
bed. But then the party downstairs started getting really loud, and every now and then somebody would wander upstairs looking
for the bathroom. You know how it is at parties.”

Katherine nodded.

“And
then
Eric started with the White Cross.”

“Did he have any particular reason for taking it that night?”

“He just wanted to have some fun, I guess, and that’s what he had.”

“Did he take a lot of it?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s how he did so well in everything. He was studying all the time and even in our freshman year he was the
best running back in the history of Albert Einstein, you know. Eric took speed practically every day.”

Katherine sipped her coffee. It was strong and hot. This would keep her up all night, she realized. “Did you have sex with
him that day?”

Dawn fluffed her little pile of napkin tearings. “I remember I, I gave him, you know…”

“You gave him—”

“I can’t say it.”

“—a blow job?”

She tore another bit of her napkin off. She made a small snorting noise. “Yeah.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.” Katherine smiled reassuringly. “And then you went to the party.”

Dawn said, “We went to Brian Kessler’s house.”

“Were there a lot of people there?”

“Everybody was there.”

“All the popular kids,” Katherine said.

“Yeah, I guess so.” She looked up. “All the popular kids.”

“What happened next?”

“We just… you know how kids are. We smoked pot. We drank beer. We listened to music. We made out.”

It was another life, but Katherine remembered parties at a
girlfriend’s mother’s apartment on the East Side, her sister Michele making out with two different boys in the same night.
She remembered someone handing out yellow Valiums to all the girls. She remembered holding a cigarette in her fingers, that
awkward feeling, knowing how foolish she looked. “Can you tell me anything about Eric’s mood? Was he different in any way?
Was he agitated? Was he—”

“He was, he was the same, I suppose. He was the same until—”

“Until what?”

“It wasn’t unusual.”

“What wasn’t?”

Dawn looked around the restaurant. She smiled that sideways, trembly smile. “Sometimes Eric would get kind of excited.”

“Like how?”

“Like he would get all pumped up about his future, start talking about being a doctor, how he was going to cure cancer, run
for president…”

“Interesting.”

“He would say you have to, you have to prove yourself, prove you have the guts, that he had to prove himself, and then he
would just do something crazy.”

“Something crazy.” This is what Katherine had been looking for. “Like what? Did he do anything crazy that night?”

“No, I guess not.”

“What do you mean by doing something crazy?” Katherine put her hand on the table, and her bitten fingertips were clearly visible.
“Can you give me an example?”

Dawn pushed the hair out of her eyes. “What happened to your fingers?”

“I bite my fingernails.”

“I’ve never seen anything—”

“It’s a problem, I know.” Katherine put her hand in her lap again. “But what did you mean when you said Eric would—”

“One time he held his hand over a burner on a stove until his palm was all blisters, like in that movie… you know the one.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, later, after he got a driver’s license, he would take the car out at night, when it was completely dark, and he would
turn the lights off and put his foot on the gas pedal.”

“He couldn’t see anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“Did you leave with Eric that night?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“I couldn’t keep up with him,” Dawn said. “He was all wild, you know, because of the speed, I guess, and whatever else, and
then he left.”

“On his own?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No, but I didn’t think he was going home.”

“What time was it?”

“I think it was still early, around eleven-thirty.”

“Is there anything else about Eric that you can tell me, anything that might be—”

Dawn put her hand out, stopping Katherine. “Okay,” she said, “but you have to promise never to tell anyone.”

Katherine nodded.

“Promise.”

“I
promise,
” Katherine said.

“I’ve never said this before, not to anyone.” Dawn looked around, and then lowered her voice, whispering, “Eric got
me pregnant. It was a couple of years after his sister, after Fiona disappeared.”

Katherine allowed a moment to pass, and then she said, “You had an abortion?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Dawn.” Katherine reached across the table for Dawn’s hand.

Dawn flinched, pulling away. “I know, but—”

“But what?”

She finished tearing her napkin apart, and now she looked at her empty hands. “He didn’t want me to go to the doctor.”

“But how did he—”

“He wanted to do it himself.”

“Did you let him?”

She closed her eyes. “Yes.”