Hard Case Crime: Witness To Myself (9 page)

Alan sat down at a long table, and after a while Sam began bringing them up on a cart, fifteen issues at a time for him to go through before Sam brought up others. Wanting only to get to July 8th, he had to pretend to be going through each earlier one carefully. But fortunately the papers were thin in May, growing thicker as summer approached, and now July —

His body was icy as he lifted the July 8th issue off the pile and put it down in front of him. And it was with a burst of joy that he saw nothing about any crime on the first page, and nothing on the pages after that. But then he remembered that the earliest the story could have appeared would have been the following morning. He reached for that paper. And within seconds his heart felt as if it had exploded.

The headline, in huge screaming print, read:

GIRL FOUND MURDERED
IN WOODS BY BEACH

He saw a large picture of her face, the face he’d lived with for so long, narrow and pretty and wide-eyed, posed in a formal portrait at a slight angle and with a shy smile. Not just a pretty but a beautiful face, with a name under it, Susheela Kapasi, and her age, thirteen — she had looked even younger! Next to her picture was a view of the scene, with the trees he remembered and even the kite. And the story — he could hardly read it. He caught only fragments, isolated words: “strangled,” “brutal.” Phrases. Something about her father finding the body.

He wanted to read all of it, not only the whole story but the stories from the next day and the days after, but he looked up and saw the librarian staring at him. He didn’t know what caused what happened next, but he’d probably brushed against the pile of papers in his panic. A wave of copies crashed to the floor; he bent over quickly and began gathering them up. Then when he sat up he saw that the librarian was gone and that Sam was by himself, watching him from the counter. Alan could only think that she might be calling the police — a suspicious stranger! — and he knew that he had to gather up all the papers and not walk out fast or break into the run he was fighting against. He brought the papers to the desk and even looked at Sam to thank him, but Sam was looking down at something on the counter — deliberately, Alan thought. He walked out, and then hurried with long strides down the steps and along the sidewalk to his car.

He pulled away fast — but then for the next five or ten minutes didn’t know which street to take to get to Route 6 and away from South Minton. He tried several, twice finding himself at places he’d already been to. Then he heard the whine of a siren. He had no idea where it was coming from or where it was heading to or if it had anything to do with him. He pulled to the curb and looked to the side, hoping that the wail, if it was on this street, would just go by him. And then it died away, going on to somewhere else.

But going on to where? The library?

He drove on, taking two or three wrong turns in his confusion, searching for some kind of landmark and hoping that he wasn’t just heading back to the library. He saw a service station — God, he needed gas but mustn’t stop! — and he was sure he’d seen it before. There were two streets leading away from it. He picked one — and in front of him, soon, was Route 6. He turned onto it, nearly skidding.

He forced himself to slow down, to drive just a little above the speed limit, though several cars sped by him. He felt his heart racing. And through his fear ran the thought that he
couldn’t
have... strangled her, that his arm hadn’t been that tight around her throat, that his other hand had just taken hold of her shoulder and halter strap.

But gradually, as if through a mist that years of hoping and praying and denial had formed, he was back among those trees again. And this time... this time his arm was cinched tight and then tighter around that fragile throat.

Kill yourself or give yourself up.

One or the other.

No other alternative.

And yet his eyes kept frantically checking the gas, seeing the needle almost on empty but afraid to stop because he had to get away, must get away. When he finally did see a service station he started to drive past it, but then stopped and backed up and turned in at the pump the farthest back from the street.

Kill yourself or give yourself up!

Yet as the tank was slowly filling he was suddenly frantic with the thought that the librarian may have gone outside and gotten his license number, that he could be stopped at any point or might drive home only to find police cars waiting for him.

Driving away, once again he tried to be careful not to go too fast or too slow, though at times his body felt as if it were running ahead of the car.

Why did I ever go up there?
It struck him that he could have checked a lot more newspapers on his computer, but it had been as though he wanted to come here, just as he had wanted to see that lane again. He had known how dangerous it was, hadn’t he? But why, why
now
when his life had become so good? He loved Anna, she loved him. And his work at the Foundation these first two weeks was so promising. Why had he ruined everything?

Even at the library, why had he gotten so scared and hurried out? So he’d dropped the newspapers, and the librarian had disappeared from where she’d been; so what? What he’d done was make a suspicious ass out of himself!

But look, he tried assuring himself, he could be wrong about the whole thing. They still might not be suspicious of him. Maybe it was all in his head.

Yes, but what about that siren he’d heard?

And what about — the thing he could no longer deceive himself about — his having murdered that girl? Though for the moment he was consumed only with the need to flee, his brain, his whole body felt in flames as though the crime and its savagery were all brand new.

Driving on, he was trying to convince himself of the wisdom of giving up. After all, he’d only been a kid when it happened and he hadn’t meant it — meant to kill her, that is; he’d panicked — and he’d never done anything wrong before or after. He’d been a good kid and he was a good guy, he’d done well in school, he was a lawyer, he was vice president and on the board of directors of this great charitable foundation. And though he would have to face a firestorm of publicity, of cameras in his face and on his handcuffed hands in back, of being dissected forever on CNN and Fox News and by Larry King and a hundred others, he’d get through it, he’d live through the shame and —

But then, as he’d done many times before, he thought of all the stories he’d read or heard about, of people arrested years after their crime, like that fellow in Connecticut, some sort of Kennedy family relative, sentenced to twenty years to life for the murder of a girl years ago.

Twenty to
life!

It scared him almost to paralysis. How could he live with this absolute terror of police he felt spiraling through him as he drove up to his apartment house, the same terror he’d felt fifteen years ago returning home from that trip? But, as then, no cops were waiting to converge on him. A couple of people standing by the elevators smiled and he thought he smiled back. Everything seemed so normal. Then when he got to his apartment he saw the morning’s paper lying folded in front of the door. And the part of the headline he could see read:

SLAIN GIRL...

He grabbed it up, as though somehow he had already become encircled.

But it had nothing to do with him. The police, he saw quickly, had arrested the killer of the girl whose raped body had been found in the park.

Almost the first thing he did in the apartment, despite begging himself not to at least for a while, was go to the computer and type in the name Susheela Kapasi. A page of links appeared, with references to others he could open when he finished these. He tried three or four of them, what seemed to be the earliest ones. Susheela was described as an excellent student, a high school freshman who had had some childhood disease that affected her physical growth. She was the daughter of Indian immigrants, her father a professor at MIT, her mother an artist. She’d been an only child, a “beautiful, special girl,” as her father described her, who had been picnicking with them on the beach and then left them to run after her downed kite; a girl who’d wanted to grow up to be a scientist like him.

Sprinkled through the stories were “vicious,” “savage,” “a community in terror.”

Him.
It was hard to realize at first, and then not so hard, that they were referring to him.

In addition to the
Breeze
, one of the papers was from a nearby town while another was from Boston and carried a story by the Associated Press. He skipped several years ahead. Her friends had formed a club in her memory early on, and one story was about how they still met and the charity work they performed. Then there was a story two or three years later that retold Susheela’s “unsolved murder” and mentioned that both of her parents were dead, her mother from a heart attack and her father, a year after that, in an automobile accident.

He turned off the computer.

His feeling was one of fresh horror that if it weren’t for him none of this would ever have happened. But then came another feeling, which he was almost ashamed to admit to himself. Now he would never have to face them.

Meanwhile, the red light on his answering machine was blinking but he didn’t care who had called him. He was totally out of that world of friendships and telemarketers. But his throat was parched and he still needed water to drink; his face and hands were sweaty and they had to be washed. And after he drank and washed and dried himself he did go over to the machine. There had been three calls, one from me.

“Hi. It’s Colin. I just heard about your appointment. Congratulations. I can’t wait to talk to you about it. Call me when you can, will you?”

The second was from an old friend, Gregg Osterly.

“I’m letting you know that Sandy and I are having some people over for dinner this Saturday. Come with a date, come alone, but come. Let me hear from you, buddy.”

The third message was from Anna, whom he had promised to call when he got back.

“Just me, honey. I hope you had a successful trip. I just want you to know I won’t be home until about eight. Talk to you later.”

Standing there he couldn’t even remember the lie he had told her about his “trip,” only that it had something to do with work, and that he’d be going to Virginia, not the Cape. He had told a different lie to Elsa Tomlinson, one that had something to do with his family, because he’d had to go up there during the week, which meant, of course, that he’d had to take off from work. The library, he had learned through a call, closed at noon on Saturdays and he had been afraid he might need more time.

He suddenly became aware that he was being pounded by music that was coming through the walls from next door.

He’d heard it the moment he walked into the apartment but it hadn’t bothered him the way it did now. An architect and his wife lived there, two nice polite people when they weren’t drunk. He must have called them about their stereo at least four times in the past three months, and each time they were friendly and lowered it. Now he told himself to let it alone, he had enough on his mind, just let it alone. And as it turned out, he was right. This time his neighbor was angry when he answered the phone.

His first words were a drunken, “Yeah? Yeah?”

“Joe, this is Alan next door. Will you —”

“Yeah, Alan-next-door, what d’you want?”

“Would you please lower the music for me? Please?”

“Lower the music?” he shouted. “Lower it? That’s all I hear from you! Don’t you like classical music? Don’t you like good music?”

“I like good music but you’re playing it too loud. Lower it, will you?”

“Go to sleep! Go outside! Take a walk! Don’t bother me any more!”

“I’m just asking you to lower it a little!”

“Don’t yell at me! Who the hell are you to yell at me! Goddamn you, you call me again I’m calling the police! You hear me? You hear me?”

And with that he hung up. Alan sat there, gripping the phone. He didn’t know what he was afraid of most at that moment — the police? Or the rage in him, the feeling that given a chance he would kill the son of a bitch.

He didn’t know if he would ever call Anna again. Though he’d thought it before, this was different. He felt apart from everyone and everything, felt no longer even a small part of the world he had always known. But then at about eight she called from a cell phone in her car.

“Honey,” she said brightly, “I’m so glad you’re home. I’m just leaving work and I thought you might have tried me at home.” “No, I just got in.” “Tell me, how did it go?” “Okay. All right.”

A pause. “Honey, is something wrong? You don’t sound right.”

“No, no,” he answered quickly, “everything’s all right.”

“I was wondering if you’ve had dinner. I know it’s late.”

“No, but I’m not hungry.”

“Oh, you’ve got to have something. You should, you really should. What about this? I didn’t eat either. Can I bring us something?”

And all at once, hearing her voice in what was now the silence of his apartment — the music had stopped — he didn’t want to be alone.

She was there in about forty minutes, carrying a large bag of Chinese food. He tried not to just pick at his food and later even managed a joke about their fortune cookie messages. Then, while they were carrying the dishes to the sink, he heard her say, in anguish, “Terrible. Dreadful. Terrible.”

He looked at her sharply, and then in the direction she was looking. And there on top of the trashcan in the kitchen was that morning’s newspaper, with the headline: slain girl confession.

He had just glanced at it enough to know that a 46-year-old drifter, a paroled child molester, had admitted to her rape-murder. And now even as Alan wanted to cry out his old cry of I’m different, she was saying:

“You know, I don’t believe in capital punishment, I really don’t. But when I see something like this... I don’t care what they do to him. Right now I wish they would tear him apart.”