The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (50 page)

T
HEY SIT IN THE
kitchen drinking the coffee Henry made and going over their story again and again in preparation for Bill Lunde. Henry’s never met a private detective before. He pictures a boxy-jawed guy in a fedora, some Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade wannabe.

“Suz packed her stuff and left at the end of the summer. She said she was going out west. California.” Tess recites the carefully rehearsed lines as she clutches her coffee mug.

“Right,” Henry says. “Good.”

He keeps thinking about the message painted on the trees. How he pointed the beam of the flashlight from tree to tree, not believing what was illuminated there. As if the flashlight had somehow cut through the years, and there they were, peeking back through time at one of their own messages.
THE COMPASSIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE

Henry stares down into his mug of coffee, wishes to god it was wine.
Later,
he promises himself. When he’s done here, he’ll head to the barn and pour himself a nice full cup. Then maybe things
will start to make a little more sense. His headache will improve. The clouds will lift.

“I don’t like that this Lunde guy is going out to Sexton,” Tess says.

Henry sits up straight on his stool, sets his coffee down on the tiled counter. “There’s not much to find. We got rid of all our records. He might run into some people who remember us, but what’s that going to prove?”

Tess shakes her head. “I don’t like it. What if he tracks down Berussi?”

Henry feels himself stiffen. The pain in his head is a many-tentacled monster, reaching, grabbing hold of the back of his eyeball and squeezing.

Berussi. Christ.

“D
O ME A FAVOR
, huh?” Suz whispered to Tess. “Keep Berussi busy in here for a few minutes, okay?”

They were in the sculpture studio and Berussi was over in the corner, fiddling with some welding gear. Henry was chiseling away at a large wolf sculpture.

Tess nodded. Called over to him, “Hey, Jon, could you give me a hand with something? I’ve got some tricky cuts to make on a piece of Plexiglas and I’m afraid I’ll screw it up.”

“Sure, Tess,” he said. “I’d be happy to.” He joined Tess over at the scroll saw.

Henry put down his mallet and chisel, and followed Suz out into the entryway where she picked up the campus phone and punched in some numbers.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

She smiled, put her finger over her lips to shush him.

“Hey, Roz, this is Suz Pierce. Is the dean around? Yeah, I guess it’s kind of urgent. I’m over here at the sculpture building—there’s some kind of trouble in Berussi’s office, and I think
the dean better get over here. And maybe it would be a good idea to send campus security too—wait a sec. Wow, Roz, I’m hearing a lot of yelling. I think the more people you send, the better.” Suz hung up.

“What is this?” Henry asked.

“Wait and see, babycakes,” she said, leaning over to give him an excited little peck on the cheek.

Berussi was still helping Tess in the sculpture studio, the scroll saw screaming, the air stinking of melting plastic, when the dean arrived with campus security; Boris, the visiting poet in residence (who had become fast friends with Berussi); and one of the burlier maintenance men. They went straight for Berussi’s office. Boris knocked once, then threw open the door.

Henry peered over the dean’s shoulder through the doorway.

The men stood awkwardly, staring down at Winnie. She was sitting on the floor, a Mexican blanket wrapped around her. Her face was red, her eyes glassy with tears. Dangling from her neck on a thin, gold chain was Berussi’s class ring. Boris spoke first.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“He says he loves me,” Winnie said, voice cracking, her tone dramatic and profoundly wounded. “That he’ll die without me. But I don’t love him. I love Suz. I keep trying to break things off, but he…he gets so angry.”

“Who? Who are you talking about, Valerie?” the dean asked.

“Jon.” She sniffled for a moment, tugged at the ring on the chain around her neck. “I’m afraid of what he might do. The jealousy makes him so crazy. He made up this whole thing about the Compassionate Dismantlers, you know? Just to frame Suz and get her kicked out of school. Look,” Winnie said, and stood up, still draped by the blanket. She went to Berussi’s desk and opened the top drawer, pulling out a stack of photocopied notes that said
The Compassionate Dismantlers Were Here
. She thrust the papers toward the dean.

“Jon Berussi is the only Dismantler!” Winnie cried. “And he’s got me so messed up. So confused. I can’t stand myself anymore. I hate what he’s made me become.” And with this came the grand finale: Winnie dropped the blanket to the floor. She was wearing only a bra and panties, and the scars on her arms, legs, and stomach were painfully obvious. Even Henry, who knew about the cutting, who knew this was all an act, was shocked. “See what he’s made me do!”

Boris the poet cried out. The campus security guy clapped his hands over his eyes. The burly maintenance man marched off in search of Berussi, clearly intending to wring his neck. The dean moved forward, picked up the blanket, wrapped Winnie back up, and promised, “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of this. We’ll take care of you. Everything is going to be okay.”

The next day, an emergency board meeting was called and Berussi was fired. When the meeting disbanded and Berussi finally stepped out—his face pale and puffy, his hair and beard disheveled and barely confined by their ponytail holders—a small parade marched by the administrative offices, then on through campus. Some of the students carried signs that said:
JON BERUSSI IS A PREDATOR
and
KEEP SEXTON SAFE: ZERO TOLERANCE FOR HARASSMENT AND ABUSE
.

Leading the parade of earnest, angry students was Suz, playing a dirge on a red and black accordion.

“E
VEN IF
L
UNDE TRACKS
Berussi down, what’s he gonna say?” Henry asks, taking the last swallow of cold coffee.

Tess shakes her head. “You can bet Berussi remembers the Dismantlers pretty clearly—and they aren’t fond memories.”

“So what?” Henry asks, turning the empty coffee mug in his hands.

“So what? Christ, Henry. It ties us to Spencer—everyone knew how bad he wanted in, and the pranks we pulled on him.
Lunde’s gonna make the connection between ‘
Dismantlement Equals Freedom
’ on the postcards and the Compassionate Dismantlers in a heartbeat—which ties us to Spencer’s suicide. And most of all, it ties us to Suz. If he figures out that she disappeared that summer, Spencer will be the least of our worries.” Tess is looking at him as if he’s an idiot.

“Okay, I get it,” Henry sighs, pressing his palm against his eye.

Tess shakes her head. “When we meet with Lunde, we’re not going to have any idea what he knows or doesn’t know about the Dismantlers. And we can’t afford to get caught in any lies.”

Henry nods. Tess looks off into the distance.

“Even one little lie is a red flag, Henry. A warning that there are others—bigger, better lies just waiting to be dredged up.”

Henry shivers.

Dredged up.

Why, of all words, did Tess have to use those?

H
ENRY LEFT THE KITCHEN
to go work on his canoe. Tess checked that Emma was sleeping soundly, and now heads for her own studio. She closes the front door behind her, makes her way down the steps, across the driveway and over the lawn to the small gravel path that winds through the sculpture garden, ending at her studio.

Jon Berussi. Fuck. Tess still bristles at the memory of what Suz and Winnie had done. It wasn’t the first or last time Tess fought with Suz, but it was their biggest blowup.

“I thought we were supposed to be a group, a collaborative!” Tess snapped when she saw Suz later that day, after the so-called protest was over. They were alone in the dingy coffeehouse in the basement of the admin building. “How could you and Winnie just do something like that without any input from us?”

Suz smiled. “I’m sorry if you felt left out, Tess, but for certain missions, it’s got to be on a need-to-know basis. Great art isn’t made by committees.”

“That’s bullshit! You and I both know your
mission
was motivated by your personal grudge against Berussi, not art. And
you have the balls to involve Henry and me in something like this without our knowledge? You realize that women actually
do
get sexually harassed, right? And that they are always accused of being lying, manipulating bitches, putting on a big act, just like Winnie’s Oscar-worthy performance? Congratulations on confirming every sexist motherfucker’s suspicions, Suz. Nice fucking job.”

Suz had stopped smiling. Her eyes narrowed and her voice lowered to a hiss.

“Spare me the Feminism 101 lecture. I know more about how women are abused and hurt and treated like shit in this society than you could ever
dream
of. Berussi may not have been fucking Winnie, not individually, not specifically. But I guarantee you that he has violated someone—some girl, some woman—sometime, at some point. What man on earth hasn’t? We gave her, or them—I bet there’ve been dozens—justice today.”

“Justice? With you as judge, jury, and executioner? You seriously call that justice?”

Suz laughed now. She must have sensed that she was winning. She always won.

“It’s not society’s justice. It’s not the machine’s justice. It’s justice Dismantler style, babycakes. And seriously, if you don’t like the ride, you can get the fuck off. Makes no difference to me. Or to Henry.”

Suz turned her back on Tess, and strolled up the stairs and out into the daylight, leaving Tess with her anger coiled in her guts.

M
AKING HER WAY ALONG
the gravel path, Tess stops, holding her breath. She sees a flickering light up ahead. A single candle is burning out at the grotto where she’s lined up a row of small glass votive holders. But she hasn’t been out there tonight—it’s too close to the woods, to the message painted on the trees that Emma showed her only a couple of hours ago.
THE COMPAS
SIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE
. The words like bloody slashes done in vermilion paint.

No matter how hard she tries to rationalize things, to come up with plausible explanations, some part of her wonders if Suz is somehow responsible for the words in the trees.

Suz, who’s been dead for ten years.

Our Lady of Compassionate Dismantling.

Has she found a way, Tess wonders, to dismantle death?

Is it possible that she didn’t really die?

Tess closes her eyes. Remembers Henry gathering stones on the beach, stuffing them into Suz’s clothing.

“Do you have to do that?” Winnie asked. She was on her knees in the sand.

“We’ve got to weight her down,” Henry said. “So she won’t float.”

Winnie let out a howling moan, wrapped her head in her hands. “This isn’t happening!” she screamed.

Weight her down
.

T
ESS KNOWS
H
ENRY WOULDN’T
go near the grotto, afraid of Suz now, of his own memories of her.

So she won’t float.

Tess sees clearly that a single candle is burning at the base of the grotto and slowly, on trembling legs, steps forward to investigate.

There’s a warm breeze coming through the trees, toward her, teasing the hair back away from her face. She makes her way into the garden, through the trellised roses, past the small pond across which the mermaid and merman stare at each other longingly. The goldfish shimmer in the moonlight, working their way toward the edge of the pond, sensing her presence, expecting flakes of fish food to fall from the sky. She is God to these little fish, God of the pond, of the garden, creator of all. It is the only place
she feels she fits these days, the only place (other than her boxing room in the basement) that makes any sense to her.

Her sneakers crunch on the gravel path as she nears the grotto, the lone candle beckoning like a light at the end of a pier. Behind the grotto, just beyond the edge of the garden, the woods begin, thick with hemlock, beech, and red maple. She hears footsteps in the leaf litter. Sees movement there—a flash of white floating through the trees. Hair. Blond hair. She blinks and it’s gone.

“Wait!” she calls out, running toward the edge of woods, but by the time she gets there, the figure has disappeared. Was this just her mind playing tricks on her? Years of buried guilt making her crack, hallucinate?

Out on the road a motorcycle buzzes by.

She turns, walks back to the grotto.

Tess stands before the shrine, before Suz illuminated by the single flickering votive candle in a clear glass holder. Then she notices what’s been left beside it.

“Impossible,” she mumbles as she leans down, and from somewhere deep in the woods behind her, she’s sure she hears a soft, breathy chuckle.

Tess stares down at the battered pocketknife resting in front of the row of votives. Something made for Boy Scouts, with a red handle, large blade, small blade, bottle opener, and spoon and fork that all fold together neatly. It is, Tess recognizes at once, the very knife Suz is using in the photograph in the plastic case, the knife that never left her pocket that summer. The knife Suz had taken from an unconscious Spencer Styles on the side of the highway in Nowhereville, Maine.

And now, ten years later, Spencer had been found dead, holding a postcard from Vermont with a Compassionate Dismantlers message. And here, laid out on the grotto, is his knife.

Nothing to worry about.

Right.

Tess kneels down, picks up the knife and turns it in her hands, her heart thudding in the small birdcage of her chest, her mind reeling. She’s sure Suz had the knife in her pocket the night she died.

Knife in hand, Tess turns, her eyes searching the dark woods.

“Hello?” she calls. Then, in a near whisper, “Suz?”

Maybe Henry’s right. Maybe there are ghosts after all. If Suz has found a way back somehow, Tess knows just what she’s come for. She knows, but would never dare say.