The Silent Wife (28 page)

The story is bigger than she anticipated, starting on the front page and flowing over to an inside spread. She didn't foresee the murder of a small-time property developer as being of any special interest to the public at large, but reporters are using it to get on their hobbyhorses, spinning out copy about the drug trade and the firearm crisis. There's a lot of madcap speculation—for instance, that the killing was an opportunistic attack by gun-happy, amphetamine-crazed teenagers. Another theory involves the mob. Conjectures aside, the facts of the case are plainly stated.

A man was gunned down in his car yesterday afternoon as he waited at a stoplight in Chicago's South Loop. The victim has been identified as Todd Jeremy Gilbert, 46, a local businessman. He was shot in the head at approximately 12:45 pm at the corner of Michigan and Roosevelt. According to eyewitnesses, a vehicle pulled up beside him and one or more gunmen opened fire. Police are seeking a description of the vehicle in question. After the shooting took place, the victim's car rolled into the intersection, bumped against a curb, and came to a stop. The driver was found slumped over the wheel. No bystanders were harmed.

She thinks about the lunch-hour traffic, the seclusion afforded by the two cars, the factors that remain as question marks. “One or more gunmen,” the article says. Even their number is a point of speculation. But there would have been two men, one to drive and one to shoot, and no more because a third would have been superfluous, and there was only so much money to go around. Whether or not one of them was Renny, she can't say. She has the impression that Renny keeps his hands clean, and Alison spoke of recruits. Either way her mental image of the men is vague. She has never met Renny, has never even seen his picture.

She is struck by the timing at play. A car is idling at a stoplight and shots are fired from its window. In spite of the public setting—a major intersection during the lunch-hour rush—the car disappears before anyone can register what's happened. This is evident because, otherwise, the police would have a description of it. She thinks about it. The prompt escape could only come about if the light turned green precisely as the killing took place. They must have waited for it. With the seconds fleeing by and their weapon at the ready, they waited for the very instant when the light would turn and they could take off across the intersection.

She needs to walk through it step by step, to imaginatively reconstruct the phenomenal, shattering event that she is still unable to accept. She pictures him leaving the office, walking to the parking lot, getting into the Porsche, and heading north on Michigan. He's in the right-hand lane when he stops at the light. He has to be in the right-hand lane because the shooter
would be in the passenger seat of the car adjacent. Close to his mark and sure of his aim. Not taking any chances.

Let's say that Todd and the perpetrators, idling side by side, are first in line at the traffic light. Todd is oblivious. He has no inkling that he's become a mark, no clue that he's in danger. The two men, meanwhile, do not have an exact plan. They're really just ad-libbing, waiting for the auspicious moment, the ripe opportunity. If necessary, they'll get out of their car and stalk their prey on foot, but in the best-case scenario it won't come down to that. The sooner they get this over and done with, the sooner they can go back home and collect their pay.

It's by sheer chance, a chance determined solely by the flow of traffic, that he is caught by the red light, and it's also by chance that the spot next to him becomes vacant. Once in place beside him, they see their opportunity. Taking stock, they identify the need for an escape route. As soon as the deed is done they will have to move, and so they watch and they wait. They watch the traffic and the pedestrians crossing in front of them and wait for the flow to subside. They watch the green light directing the flow and wait for it to change to orange. They watch the left-turning cars move into the intersection, and still they wait, like the half-mad, risk-taking mercenaries they are. Finally, the one who is not driving, the designated shooter, takes aim, extending his weapon through the open passenger window.

How many shots did he fire? The news story doesn't specify, but the wording of it, the notion that “one or more gunmen opened fire,” implies a volley. Did the first of the bullets
hit home? Or did he have a moment to realize his peril, consider what was happening and why? She finds now that she wants very much for him to have seen it coming. This is her wish. That he registered the truth, understood it as her doing, saw that he'd brought it on himself. And yet she doubts that he would think of her because as far as he knew it wasn't in her nature to cross him. The Jodi he held in his heart was not someone who could do this.

Uncharacteristically, she gets ready for bed without setting the house straight first. Her dishes are in the sink unwashed, her suitcase in the foyer unopened. Sleep is a default mode brought on by her spent circuitry, but once the first layer of exhaustion has been sloughed off she finds herself back on the surface with her eyes open. Ambient light reveals the dark shapes of furniture and the orientation of windows and doors, but these fail to coalesce into anything she can recognize. The day, the place, the circumstances of her life all evade her, as if her mind were a glass of water that's been poured out. She waits, and when her faculties return she identifies the breach as a complication of jet lag, compounded by her wish that she could go back in time and reconsider her choices.

The sense of security and optimism she felt after reading the article in the paper—neither the car nor the perpetrators had been identified—is now displaced by the belated realization that being the victim's ex-spouse automatically makes her the prime suspect, and that it will only be worse if she's named in the will. The fact that this did not occur to her before—while she was plotting and scheming with Alison, hawking her household
goods, fleeing to the tropics—she finds astonishing. It's as if she's been in some kind of trance, a self-induced hypnotic state, a stupor of wishful thinking. She panicked when the call came through in Florida, but that was nothing.
That
you could sleep off or drown in drink.
This,
what she feels now, is vicious and barbed, like circulation returning to dead limbs, like someone has shaken her up and made her blood fizz.

Todd was a child in so many ways, in Freudian terms a case of arrested psychosexual development, a phallus-fixated five-year-old preoccupied with sexual ascendancy, still in love with his mother, displacing his desire onto all women, the embodiment of the Oedipus complex. Freud has never inspired her, but he really knew how to crucify a person. Let's just say that Todd was not one for self-reflection and did not typically factor his own shortcomings into his worldview. Though in all fairness he also overlooked what was indefensible in others. He was a forgiving man. But that in no way absolves him. She would like to believe that in death he'll be forced to face up to things, that even now he's reflecting on his wrongdoings, whether in purgatory or elsewhere. But she can't dismiss the feeling that he has somehow managed to escape, has finagled things so he gets off scot-free, like always.

When the knock comes in the morning she's drinking coffee and reading the paper. Today's story, downsized to a single column, provides no new information. Still damp from her shower, wearing a terry robe and white cotton socks, she's thinking that once she's finished her coffee, which she hopes will take care of
her headache, she'll go back to bed and catch up on the sleep she missed last night while lying awake with her mind racing. There are no clients due and she has no obligations since according to her schedule she's still in Florida. She doesn't know who's knocking, but it has to be the doorman or one of her neighbours. Anyone else would have to buzz her from the lobby. Or so she assumes, forgetting that policemen have special privileges and go where they please.

The detective, in his mid to late thirties, is a stocky man with a square face and eyes the colour of soil, topped by eyebrows like dashes, straight and true. Under his coat, which is hanging open, he's wearing a brown suit, a light blue shirt, and a tie with a bold, uncomplicated diagonal stripe. Even before she takes note of his wedding band she has him pegged as a family man—a man with three or four children under the age of twelve and a wife who likes the security he doubtless provides.

“Miss Jodi Brett?” he asks.

She nods.

He takes out his wallet, flips it open, and holds it at eye level so she can see his ID.

“Detective Sergeant John Skinner. Mind if I come in?”

She stands aside and he steps into the foyer, closing the door behind him.

“Sorry to intrude at such an early hour,” he says. A reference to her bathrobe. “If I may, I'd like to offer my condolences. I'm aware of how deeply affected you were when we gave you the news. It's unfortunate that it had to happen that way—over the
phone, I mean. We'd been in touch with the Jacksonville force, but there was some kind of mix-up.”

“Was it you I spoke to?” she asks.

“No, ma'am. That was Constable Davey. But he did inform me as to your considerable distress.”

She has the fleeting, wily thought that fainting the way she did has garnered her some sympathy and may conceivably be the reason for this excessive politeness. She invites him in and leads the way to the living room, which at the moment is spectacularly lit by the morning sun. Gravitating to the view, he says, “You must get a lot of enjoyment out of this.”

“We do,” she says. “Or we did.” She falters and then collects herself. “I love the view and so did Todd. It's pretty much the reason we took this place, which isn't as big as some we were—” She lets the sentence drop, suddenly embarrassed by her privilege, thinking of the poky little house that would be all he could afford on his policeman's salary, especially with a family of five or six.

“Can I offer you coffee?” she asks.

“Well now. If it wouldn't be too much bother.”

“No bother. I have some made.”

“Black will be fine,” he says.

When she's back with a mug of coffee she hands it to him and excuses herself. “If you'll give me a minute, I'll just get into some clothes.”

Escaping into the bedroom gives her a brief but much-needed respite. Her hands are clammy; her hairline is damp; she
feels grubby in spite of having showered. If she had stopped to imagine a visit from the police it would have been nothing like this. To begin with there would have been two of them—don't they normally travel in pairs?—and they would have been hard on her case, capitalizing on her state of undress to keep her off balance, using the conversational ball as a weapon. That, at least, would have drawn out her mettle and roused her defences. Whereas this—a lone detective with an overly diffident manner—what can it mean?

She returns to the living room in pressed trousers and a fresh shirt. She's applied some colour to her cheeks and tamed back her hair. The detective, who is standing at the window looking out, turns when she enters. She has made no sound, but he's caught her in his peripheral vision. They both sit down, her on the sofa, him on a facing wing chair.

“I know the news has come as a blow,” he begins. “In a perfect world we would give you time to recover before barging in on you, but we need to jump on this without delay. We have very little to go on, and with every hour that passes the trail gets colder. I'm sure you can appreciate what we're up against.”

He raises his hands, palms up, a plea for understanding. “Without knowing it yourself,” he continues, “you may have information that will help us in our investigation. Details of the victim's lifestyle, an account of his movements in the days and weeks leading up to the crime. These can be critical in piecing together what actually happened. Something he said or did, which you may have ignored at the time, could turn out to be an important piece of the puzzle. I can't emphasize enough
how valuable you could be in helping us solve this case. You are extremely important to us, and I want you to think of yourself in just that way.”

She finds, to her dismay, that she can't look him in the eye. Her guilt must be utterly transparent to a man like this, a stalwart man with a big backlog of experience. Why else would he torment her with all this guff about her value and importance?

“I'm sorry but I've forgotten your name,” she says.

He repeats his name—Detective Sergeant Skinner—but even as he says it she's forgetting it again, still thinking of him as the family man.

“About this business of prying into your affairs,” he says. “Believe me, I wish there were another way. Someone dies, you barely have time to register the fact, and here we are grilling you, asking you to dredge up memories that can only be painful to you at such a time.”

His voice has a quiet, lilting quality that gets on her nerves. He's poised, complacent, sure of himself, a cat grooming his prey. She looks at his squared-off fingers with their clean nails, at the virtuous stripe of his tie, at the lobes of his ears, which curve deftly into the sides of his head with no superfluous flap.

“This part of the job is hard on everyone,” he says. “We don't like it any more than you do. We try to go as easy as we can, but people are apt to take offence, and you really can't blame them.”

She feels hot and cold at the same time: head hot, extremities cold. Any second now she's going to burst out laughing. She
gets up from the sofa and rummages in the credenza for the pack of Marlboros that she knows is there. She doesn't smoke, but right now it seems like a good idea.

“Can I offer you one?” she asks the family man, holding out the package.

He declines. She finds a book of matches and lights one for herself. She last smoked a cigarette twenty or more years ago, when she was still in school, but she inhales deeply nonetheless. Not surprisingly the room spins. She waits it out and then returns to her seat, cigarette in one hand and in the other her souvenir ashtray from Mont St. Michel, which she keeps because it's cheerful.