Without a Word (23 page)

But he didn't answer me. He was barely moving now, his hands as heavy as lead, his legs like two sawn logs, his eyes getting glassy, his lids drooping the way one of Madison's did. I glanced back at the posters of Ted in costume, then pulled out my cell phone and dialed the precinct.

It was eight-thirty by the time I went upstairs and knocked on Leon's door. If he was surprised to see me, it didn't show.

“Where's Madison?” I asked, still standing in the doorway, waiting for Leon to move out of the way so that I could go in.

“Reading in her room,” he said.

I nodded.

“Do you want to see her?” he asked.

“Not just yet, Leon. I'd like to talk to you first.”

He stood looking at me before standing aside so that I could walk in. There was music coming from Madison's room, the first time I'd heard that, the first time I'd heard her do anything that made noise. I guess that's why she hadn't heard me knock, and for now, though I'd avoided this conversation as long as I could, I was glad she hadn't heard me. I was glad I could talk to Leon alone.

We walked into the living room. Leon sat on the daybed. I sat on the love seat.

“I have a lot to tell you, Leon, maybe too much. I don't know how much of it, how much of the detail, you're going to want to hear, so I'm going to tell you the bottom line first.
I had a lead about Sally, something old. I had, I thought, the slimmest chance on earth of finding her, but I promised you I'd try my best and I always try to keep my promises. When you and Madison took care of Dashiell, I was in Florida looking for Sally.”

He never moved while I spoke, not his hands, not his posture, not anything on his face. Somehow, I thought, it would have been easier if he looked heartbroken, if he showed hope, if I could see what he was feeling in any way. But that didn't happen. Not yet anyway.

“I found her,” I said. “So at least we know she's alive.”

“At least? What does that mean?”

“She's not going to come back, Leon. If I went back now, or you did, she wouldn't be there.”

For a moment, we just sat there, Leon staring into his lap, me wishing I were somewhere else, anywhere but where I was.

Then I asked him how much he wanted to know, and he said he wanted to know everything. So I told him how Sally had left the house to walk the dog because she needed to get out and didn't want to be questioned. I told him how she kept walking, how she kept delaying going home. I told him about Paul, the truck driver, and about Sally going down to the Keys, to the place where she got pregnant with Madison. I told him, as best I could, about the life she was leading, a life with as few demands on her as was possible, a dead-end off-the-books job for subsistence, a library card in another name I was sure, the ocean across the road, her only companion the dog.

“She still has Roy?” he asked. And for a moment, Leon Spector came to life. She hadn't thrown everything of him away. At least she had his dog.

“She does,” I said.

I took the digital camera out of my pocket and showed
him the pictures, Roy waiting at the shore, as focused as if he were holding a flock, and then Sally, her mask still on, Roy swimming out toward her.

“That's all?”

“I couldn't take more. It would have made her run sooner. I wanted, at least,” there it was again, “to get the story for you. I thought you'd want to know what had happened.” Thinking there was no way I could tell this that wouldn't be like driving a knife into his heart, no way at all.

But Leon was no longer looking at me. He was looking past me, toward the far end of the living room. I turned, and there was Madison.

She was wearing pajamas, but she had a baseball cap on and work boots that were several sizes too big for her feet. She wasn't wearing dark glasses and I could see that the droopy eyelid was a tiny bit less droopy, which was good, but the other eye was twitching like crazy and her cheeks were jumping as well. But the worst of it was her right arm, slightly bent and jerking, completely out of control.

I looked back at Leon. He seemed paralyzed. He'd just heard that his missing wife was alive and well and not returning. And his daughter had heard it as well.

When I saw that Leon wasn't moving, I got up and walked over to Madison, putting my arms around her and holding her close. I thought she might kick me, struggle to get away, punch me, bite me, but she didn't. She went limp, so much so that I thought if I let go, she'd land in a heap on the floor. So I didn't let go. I held tight, the arm jerking against my side, her eyelid twitching so hard that I could feel it through my shirt. And then Leon was there, too. I stepped back and he picked her up, as if she were a baby, carrying her back to the couch, sitting down with Madison on his lap, her head against his chest, her face hidden by her father's arms.

Leon was bending, whispering in her ear. Then her arm stopped moving, but she stayed with her face buried in his chest. When Leon looked at me again, I began to speak, quietly, calmly.

“You hired me to find Sally and bring her back in the hope that her return would inspire Madison to start speaking again so that she could tell us what happened that terrible day with Dr. Bechman. I know you both wanted more, and God knows, you deserve more, but the point was exonerating Madison,” I said, “and that's done.”

Now Madison turned, and they were both looking at me.

“It seems Dr. Bechman needed more money than he was making, and he needed it not to show up with his regular income. Through Ms. Peach, he was selling narcotics, painkillers, to Ms. Peach's nephew, who was then selling the drugs at work and in the park. My best guess is that Dr. Bechman had a change of heart, and when the nephew came for the next batch of prescriptions, that would have been shortly after Madison's last appointment, he told the nephew that it was all over, that he could no longer supply him with the prescriptions that would get him the drugs to sell. The nephew fell into a murderous rage and there on the desk was the hypodermic needle full of Botox that the doctor had had ready for Madison.”

I stopped and waited, Madison blinking, Leon staring.

“I'm sorry to tell you that you know the person who did this,” I said, telling them it was Ted and how he'd used his knowledge of makeup and costume to help him pull it off.

I didn't say much more. I didn't want to talk about Celia in front of Madison. I didn't want to talk about Jim at all, unless Leon pressed me sometime to find out how I knew about the place in Florida and what had happened there. I thought I'd said enough for now, perhaps too much for both of them to absorb. I thought that would take weeks, maybe
months, until they made peace with everything they'd just learned.

When I stood up to go, it was so quiet for that moment, we could have been in Madame Tussauds wax museum. But then Leon thanked me and asked about the money. I told him the last few days were on the house, not what he'd hired me to do, and that I'd send a bill for the rest.

They both walked me to the door, but when I opened it to leave, Madison stepped into the hall, waiting for me and Dash, pulling the door closed behind her.

I waited, thinking she might say something now that there was no longer any point to keeping silent. But she didn't. She made no comment. She didn't go back inside either. She just stood in front of me looking up into my face. I put my arms around her and pulled her close.

“It wasn't because of anything you did,” I whispered. “Or didn't do. It wasn't your fault.”

After a long while, she stepped back, reaching behind her for the door, glancing down at Dashiell once before backing inside and closing it. I walked down the stairs to the first floor. There was yellow crime scene tape across Ted's door, forming an X.

I'd wanted to ask him what had happened that last day with Bechman. It obviously wasn't planned. You can't plan to kill someone by finding a hypodermic full of Botox to inject into his heart. The cops were right about one thing. The crime had happened in the heat of passion. Had the needle not been there, there would have been some other weapon of opportunity, a bookend, a letter opener, even bare hands, and the strength that comes from uncontainable rage. Whatever it was, whatever he'd picked up to use as a weapon, once he started, he would have had to finish the job. He was a careful man, not one to leave someone around who knew he'd committed a crime, someone who might one day need to
soothe his own guilty mind by confessing all to the appropriate authorities.

Had Celia convinced Bechman that they had to manage their finances another way, a way that one day they wouldn't be ashamed to tell their daughter about? Or had it been the doctor's idea to stop cold? Had he simply asked himself what on earth he'd been thinking, getting involved in the illegal trafficking of controlled substances? Had he come to his senses, not knowing it was all too late, and had he wondered what I'd been wondering while waiting for the detectives to arrive, how he'd become the man he now was and what had happened to the man he once was? How he'd forgotten the oath he'd taken years before? In those last days, perhaps seeing clearly for the first time in years, had he asked himself the question that was now on my mind: what the hell had happened to
first do no harm
?

It was dark out, as dark as it ever gets in New York City. I felt a wave of sadness, the kind I felt when my own mother disappeared and I didn't know for what seemed like ages if I'd ever see her again. I didn't think it was true that time healed all wounds. But somehow most people found a way to live despite them.

I was halfway home when my phone rang.

“Alexander,” I said.

There was no response, only eloquent silence. I was passing the Bleecker Street playground. I found an empty bench and sat, Dash hopping up next to me, my arm around him, the line open, the phone to my ear, waiting.

Kudos and gratitude to Stephen Joubert for designing and maintaining my Web site and making it an informative and fun place to visit,
www.CarolLeaBenjamin.com,
just in case you find yourself in front of a computer one day with a little time on your hands.

Boundless gratitude is due my agent, Gail Hochman, who goes to the ends of the earth for her authors. And for careful attention to detail and taking good care of her authors—and this author's dog, Flash—my thanks to my editor, Sarah Durand, and to Diana Tynan in publicity.

And since even on bad days I always get great reviews from my dogs, I thank Eugene Sheninger for two of my three, Flash and Peep. I'm not sure whom to thank for Dexter. Someone left him on the side of the road when he was a wee lad and a few weeks later we found each other at the ASPCA and since then have been making sure no one would leave either of us on the side of the road again.