The Dark House (26 page)

“What did he do?”

“Apparently, he stabbed someone in the eye.”

Marj gave Rollins a look.

“I didn't want to scare you.”

“Well, maybe there are things I should know, even if they do scare me.”

Rollins thought about fear, how it had paralyzed him all these years. “I wanted to protect you, Marj. That's all.”

“Well, maybe you can't.”

Schecter had been watching them, his eyes moving from one to the other during the argument. “Okay, ease back, you two,” he said finally. “You're going through some tough stuff here. So let's just take it slow.” He pulled out a photograph. “Take a good look at this one. Recognize anybody?”

Rollins looked carefully at the faces. He didn't recognize the two men out front, and two of the people cowering in the background were completely obscured by either a hand or an arm. But there was a woman on the far left, just stepping off the front steps and onto the brick walkway. Her face had been hidden behind one of the men in the first picture, but now, even though she had lifted a hand to conceal herself, Rollins could see some short hair swinging loose as she jerked her head away, and the outline of her face was plainly visible around the edge of her rising fingers. “Jesus,” Rollins said.

“What?”
Marj demanded.

“It's Elizabeth Payzen.”

“That's what she looks like?” Marj asked. “I thought she'd be younger.”

She did look somewhat haggard, Rollins realized. Graying. “Maybe it's the light.”

“I thought it was her.” Schecter thumped his hand down on the table with a big, self-satisfied smile.

“But what's she doing there?” Marj asked. “I thought she was a lesbian.”

“Who knows?” Schecter said dismissively. “Looks like it was pretty much a free-for-all.” Schecter gulped some beer. “But now wait, there's more.” He picked through several photographs of license plates. “Okay, take a look at this one.”

He pushed the glossy photo toward Rollins. A dark Saab. An antique. As he looked at it, Rollins could feel the blood drain out of his face, and there was a strange buzzing sensation deep behind his eyes.

“It's Father's car. A Saab '96.” Rollins shook his head slowly. “What's it doing there?”

“So they were right.” Shecter flipped over the photograph.
HENRY ROLLINS
said the label.

Rollins felt things swirling around him. “Now wait a second, that doesn't mean
he
was there. Somebody could have taken his car and—”

“Then you might want to take a look at this,” Schecter said and dipped into his briefcase for a second envelope.

He slid that one toward Rollins.

“Don't open it, Rolo,” Marj told him. “You don't need to know any of this.” She pushed the envelope back in front of Schecter. “Come on, let's leave. Let's just walk out of here.” She raised her voice to Schecter. “Thank you. It was good of you to be so helpful. But I think we're done now. Come on, Rolo. Let's go. We're out of here.”

Rollins could feel her hands on him, pushing him out of the booth.

“Okay, have it your way,” Schecter said. He reclaimed the envelope with his thick hands.

Marj continued to press against him, but Rollins did not budge. “No,” he said evenly. “You were right before. There are things I need to know, even if they scare me.”

“But not this, Rolo.”

Again Schecter pushed the envelope to Rollins' side of the table. “It's your choice, my friend.”

“I know.”

“Rolo,” Marj said.

Rollins said nothing. His fingers felt stiff as he opened the envelope, and slid out the photograph. Like all the others, it was in grainy black and white, with poor lighting. As he nervously scanned the scene, he saw only skin and shadows at first. But then he saw the man in a suit and tie, sitting in an upholstered chair in the far corner of the room. The hard eyes, the resolute jaw—the sight plunged into Rollins' heart.

“That's him in the chair?” Schecter asked.

Rollins couldn't speak. His mouth and throat were dry as paper.

 

“Do me up, darling?” from his mother, sweet-scented in the front hall, turning her back and lifting her hair away. And his father beside her in his evening clothes, his tassled shoes sparkling, reaching for the fastener at the back of her neck.

 

“This is just too—sordid,” Rollins declared, and he looked across at Schecter, searching his eyes for confirmation.

“I'm with you there,” Schecter said.

The sight of his father in the chair lived inside him now, feasting on him.

His eyes burned into the image on the photograph: A fleshy, heavily made-up woman is perched on his knee facing the camera. She is wearing nothing but a pearl necklace, which dangles down over her flabby breasts, while she paws at his cheek with her left hand as if trying to win his attention.

“At least he isn't doing anything too gross,” Marj added hopefully, patting Rollins' thigh under the table. “Just watching, looks like.”

Rollins twisted around to her, and Marj dropped her eyes, plainly regretting her choice of words.

Schecter cut in: “But now, you see who
that
is, don't you?”

Rollins returned to the photograph, where Schecter was pointing
to a couple his father appeared to be observing rather coolly. They are off to his right, a topless woman with short hair leaning into a thickset, shirtless man in the doorway. Looking more carefully, Rollins could see that she's fondling him through his unzipped fly.

“Oh, God,” Rollins said.

“It's your friend Jerry Sloane,” Schecter said.

“It
is
?” Marj looked again.

“And you see who that woman is, don't you?”

Rollins had. “Elizabeth Payzen again.”

“You're joking,” Marj said.

Rollins brought his hands over his face, cupping his palms over his eye sockets. He needed to close the world out for a minute, to think.

“So she had something going with Jerry?” he heard Marj ask.

“For a couple seconds anyway.”

“And his father
knew
these people?”

Rollins finally removed his hands. “I guess he must have.” The world looked soft and blurry now.

“I thought he was, like, classy.”

 

His laundered shirts in a box as if they were brand new, all his shoes shined every Monday, whether he'd worn them or not.

 

“So did I.”

“Chief knew all about Jerry,” Schecter said. “He used to deal a little drugs, but mostly he was a good-time guy who showed up wherever the action was.”

“Did your friend ever do anything about these?” Rollins tapped the photographs. He felt like he was suffocating. “The police chief, I mean.”

“Nope. He didn't go after any of 'em. He didn't really care, so long as it stopped. He pegged Jerry as the organizer, and he put in a call to him reminding him of his drug record. That was the end of it. The party went elsewhere. Chief put all this shit in the file and moved on to other things.

 

Their dinners came, and not a moment too soon. Schecter pushed the photographs aside and plunged right into his veal, but Rollins just stared at his fish. The head was still on it, the eyes like glass beads, wide open even in death. What had those eyes seen? He pushed the plate away. “How about Cornelia? You ask him about her?”

“The name rang no bells. Course, the chief doesn't get out much.”

Marj told Schecter about finding Cornelia's photograph in the
Globe'
s file on the house.

“Can't figure that,” Schecter said. “Unless she'd showed up here herself at some point. Chief said this shit had been going on for years. Maybe somebody ran to the
Globe
to try to shut it down. That's all I can think.”

“She's not in any of
these
pictures, is she?” Marj asked.

“These were just taken last year.”

Rollins looked over at him. “So?”

Schecter stared right back. “Rollins, I keep telling you. The woman is dead.”

Rollins reached across the table for the pile of photographs anyway. It was painful to see them all—all the bodies, all the anonymous sex, and his father on the big chair in the corner. He scrutinized the women's faces. None belonged to Cornelia. He passed the photographs back, glad to be free of them, but sorry, too. He didn't want to find her to be in with such a sleazy crowd. But he didn't want her dead, either. He wished he had other choices.

“You ever find out who owned the house?” Marj asked.

Schecter took another bite of veal. “Some people named Glieberman. California types, apparently. Free-living.” He turned to Rollins. “That's her on your father's lap, by the way. The
third
Mrs. Glieberman. Chief recognized her. Formerly Mrs. Reid.”

“The previous owner?” Rollins asked.

“You heard of her?”

“Neighbor told us.” He remembered Mrs. Beuley's account.

“I guess she came with the house.” Schecter laughed. “She does some business with the town, I forget just what. They finally bugged out a few weeks ago. I guess they had their old friend Jerry handle the sale.”

“Elizabeth's the one that puzzles me,” Marj said. “What was
she
doing there?”

Schecter sliced up the last of his veal. “Maybe she got into Jerry. Maybe she's trying to lose herself in the fuckfest. Maybe she's there for the drugs. It could go a lotta different ways.”

Rollins straightened up in his seat. “One of Cornelia's neighbors told me that Elizabeth had gone out the night that Cornelia disappeared and come back very late, around three. Did you know that? She made it sound very suspicious.”

“I never did get a really good explanation of where she was that night,” the detective admitted.

“That doesn't bother you?” Marj asked.

“Only a little. People's lives are messy. Look at yours—hanging out with
this
guy.” Schecter took another bite. “A lot of people wondered about Payzen. But I know the cops talked to her at least once.”

“The neighbor said they never did,” Rollins said.

“Neighbors never know anything. Which one was it? That tight-ass, the stay-at-home?”

“Nicky Barton.”

“Right. Nicky Barton.” He grinned again. “Personally, I think she had something against dykes.” He took another gulp of beer. “There may have been some history between the two of them. Neighbors can be like that. Real bitchy. But I checked Lizzie out. There were some problems there. She said she wasn't in Londonderry that night, but she wouldn't tell me where she was. But still, I had trouble picturing her as a murderer. I mean, where was the heat?” He wiped his fingers and picked out the photograph of her from the manila envelope again. “Okay, check this out. You see a couple of animals coming at the photographer, but Payzen's pulling back, all wimpy like. That's not the face of a killer.”

“Maybe that's what Wayne Jeffries is for,” Rollins said. “Or Jerry Sloane.”

“Or your father,” Marj said.

“Now cut that out!”

That brought silence to the table. For the first time, Rollins was
conscious of the noise all around them—the clattering of knives and forks, the chatter of conversations. It was like the roar of a vast ocean.

Schecter broke the tension. “Why hire anyone to kill her? Why go to all that effort?”

“And why would these people zero in on you later?” Marj added, with a look toward Rollins. “It's not like you saw anyone do it, right?”

“Me?” Rollins touched his chest. “No. God.”

“You have to keep asking him these things,” Marj told Schecter. “You know how he is. He won't say anything otherwise.”

“I've noticed that, yeah.” Schecter's head bobbed in laughter, then he popped a last slice of veal into his mouth.

“So what do
you
think happened to Cornelia?” Marj asked him.

Schecter set down his knife and fork. “I spent a solid year on that case, and I've thought about it a lot since.”

“And?”

“And frankly? I don't have a clue.”

 

After dinner, Rollins offered to put Schecter up in their spare room at the Ritz. “What, and listen to you two humping all night?” Schecter said. “No thanks.” He'd already made arrangements with an old friend in Belmont. He'd do what he could to track down the Gliebermans, to see what light they could shed on the connection between Sloane and Lizzie Payzen, and he'd keep after his California connection about the fax line. “Now, you sure you don't want me to put the squeeze on this Tina Mancuso for you?” he asked Rollins as he was leaving. They'd discussed her a little over dessert. “Ask her what she's trying to pull?”

“Leave her alone,” Rollins told him. “She's minor.”

As a precaution, Rollins had the restaurant call a cab so they wouldn't have to wander out into the night on their own. But after Schecter had driven off, and they were in the cab by themselves, Marj told him he should reconsider Schecter's offer.

Rollins shook his head.

“Why not?”

“It wouldn't go well for Heather, okay?” Rollins finally said.

“Okay,” Marj said quietly. “I can see that.” She nodded slowly, tak
ing this in. “You might have said something to Al. But yeah, I can see that.”

He rode along in silence. “My aunt and uncle might help us more.”

“Why's that?”

“They made their own deal with Jerry, don't forget. And they must know about the money.” Seeing a pay phone along the Common, he had the cabbie pull over.

“You're going to call them
now
?” Marj asked.