Slipping Into Darkness (37 page)

 

“I’ve been kind of half expecting you to call,” said Doug, now a jowly, slightly dissipated middle-aged version of the guy in the picture, wearing an old Lacoste shirt and chinos to the office on a Saturday afternoon. “Ever since I saw Allison’s case coming up in the newspapers again.”

 

“And why’s that?”

 

“I don’t know. I just had a feeling that certain things weren’t quite settled the first time.”

 

Francis, a little more alert after a few hours’ sleep, looked at the picture just behind Doug again. It was a measure of his desperation and confusion that he was here in the first place, back at square one, interviewing the original victim’s former boyfriend to see if there was something crucial they’d missed in ’83.

 

“You were out of the country for her funeral, weren’t you?” said Francis. “I don’t remember seeing you there.”

 

“I was living in a village where they didn’t have indoor plumbing, let alone telephones.” Doug ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair. “I didn’t hear about it until like a month afterward.”

 

“Must have been a shock.”

 

“Oh my God.” Doug’s jaw drew in, making a stubbly little croissant under his chin. “My ex-girlfriend gets killed in an apartment building owned by my father? I never even told my wife about it until just a few years ago.”

 

“Remind me how that happened again.” Francis flipped open his steno pad nonchalantly. “How’d she end up subletting in one of your father’s units after you’d broken up with her?”

 

“Not much to it. We stayed friends after we broke up and I knew she was coming back to New York after we graduated. So my father was managing all these co-ops and rentals, and I gave her a number to call. And that was that.”

 

“Did you ask your father to give her a break on the rent?” asked Francis, still not quite sure what he was fishing for at the moment, but certain a new approach was needed after yesterday.

 

“I didn’t get that involved. I just passed it on, as a favor to a friend. At the time, I didn’t even think I was going to go into real estate. I thought I was going to save the world. . . .”

 

His eyes drifted wistfully across the office, past the Turkish rug and Oriental vases, the framed civic citations and pictures of his father receiving awards from various mayors, and the sixty-fifth-floor view that made the intricate sprawl of downtown Manhattan look like the circuitry of a computer chip.

 

“I felt terrible about it afterward. Especially because I missed the funeral. My father sent a huge flower arrangement and paid for the limos out to the cemetery. He was devastated.”

 

“Why? Did he know Allison?”

 

“Well, no, but . . . ,” Doug sputtered. “She was killed in one of his apartments. By the son of one of his employees.”

 

“Anybody talk about suing him?”

 

“Why do you ask?”

 

“You said he sent flowers and paid for limos to the cemetery. I’m sure he was a very decent generous man, but somebody got killed in his building by the son of one of his employees. Sounds like he could’ve been liable.”

 

“Well, I never heard about any lawsuit, but I wasn’t involved in the business at the time.” Doug pushed up on the arms, as if he was trying to make himself look big enough to belong in the seat. “And unfortunately, my father isn’t around for you to ask him about it.”

 

“If Allison’s family had actually filed suit, though, you’d think you’d know about it. Wouldn’t you?”

 

“Probably. There’d be papers around.”

 

“Seems strange,” Francis said, realizing he hadn’t had reason to give it much thought before. “I know Tom and Eileen Wallis pretty well. They’re not greedy, but you know, money is money.”

 

“I always thought they were a little odd myself.”

 

“How’s that?” Francis looked up from taking notes.

 

“Oh, you know, Allison didn’t always get along with them when she was alive.”

 

“Since when?”
Francis heard himself sounding indignant, almost proprietary, like he was upset about being told something he didn’t know already. “I never heard that before,” he said, trying to sound more neutral. “I thought they were close.”

 

“They were. Maybe a little too close, if you ask me.”

 

“Whaddaya mean?”

 

“God, they were always going at it hammer and tongs.” Doug massaged his temples, like he still had the headache.

 

“About what?”

 

“About everything.” Doug frowned. “Food, clothes, you name it. They had some
serious
control issues.”

 

For some reason, Francis found himself picturing the little bear full of honey on Christine Rogers’s kitchen counter.

 

“Sure you’re not confused about this?” said Francis. “It’s a long time ago.”

 

“Trust me. I haven’t forgotten. She’d talk to her mother on the phone and then be hysterical for hours afterward. Nothing you could do or say would console her. That’s one of the reasons I stopped going out with her. You know what it’s like when you’re seeing someone and you just realize at a certain point that there’s this thing standing between the two of you that you’re never going to get on the other side of? That’s how it was. Like something was in front of the sun.”

 

Francis set his pad aside. “I gotta tell you, Doug. This doesn’t sound right to me. I worked this case a long time. I interviewed the people who worked with her, kids she treated, other people in her building. And none of them described what you’re talking about.”

 

“Well, they can say whatever they like.” Doug sighed, leaning on his elbows. “But I was there when she’d starve herself or lock herself in the bathroom. A couple of times she had these cuts on her arms and wouldn’t tell me where she got them.”

 

“No shit,” said Francis, trying to recall whether he’d seen marks like that on the body and just assumed they were made by her attacker. “Do you have any idea what
that
was about?”

 

“No. It was way beyond what I was equipped to deal with when I was twenty. I remember once she said, ‘I wish I could just disappear sometimes.’”

 

“Those words exactly?”

 

Francis had the uncanny sensation that someone else had just walked into the room, just outside his line of vision.

 

“Well, I don’t know about ‘exactly,’” Doug said. “She was a funny girl. Sometimes you got the impression she just didn’t like living in a world with grown-ups.”

 

“What makes you say that?”

 

“Because the only time I remember her really happy was working with kids over at the clinic in Springfield. We had a thing where we’d volunteer to help do intake at one of the local hospitals two days a week. And after we were done, I’d be out in the parking lot, ready to go for a beer or something. And she’d still be hanging around with the kids inside, playing with dollhouses or building Lego castles in the waiting room. That’s who she was comfortable around. I’m not judging her. I’m just saying it wasn’t so easy to be in a more mature kind of relationship with her.”

 

“I’m not sure I follow you here.”

 

“Well, I don’t want to get too graphic but —” Doug dropped his voice. “She was a little, um, weird about the physical side of things. You kind of got the sense she’d rather be playing Monopoly.”

 

Francis scratched the side of his jaw.

 

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.” Doug shook his head. “But it wasn’t just
me.
She didn’t have a lot of boyfriends, period. Before or after, as far as I know. It’s like something else was taking up that space in her life.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“No idea. After college, I only saw her once in a while, when I was in town to visit my folks. But all she ever wanted to do was watch
Star Trek.
”

 

“Yeah, she was into that, wasn’t she?”

 

“I used to tease her that her tastes never developed past the age of twelve.”

 

There was that déjŕ vu brownout again.
Star Trek.
Francis tried to follow the string of associations back to the point of origin. “The Cage.” Captain Pike. The guy from
The Searchers.
The girl who disappeared. It was like a trail of Christmas lights. One blink, yes. Two blinks, no.

 

“You know, I saw her a few years ago.” Doug sat forward abruptly.

 

“Who?”

 

“Allison’s mom. Eileen. I was in a restaurant and tried to say hello, but she looked right through me.”

 

“Maybe she didn’t recognize you. I hate to tell you, Doug, but none of us are getting any younger.”

 

“No, that wasn’t it. She knew who I was. I introduced myself.” Doug looked back at the pictures on his credenza. “But she didn’t want to see me how I am now. Because she knew Allison would never be this age. Some people just never adjust.”

 

 

43

 

 

 

M
ISS, CAN YOU
help me, please?”

 

Eileen was in the children’s department at Bloomingdale’s, trying to buy the girls winter coats at the Columbus Day sale. They need to cover up in layers, their mother, Jennifer, was always saying. Under the quilt herself today with one of her mysterious flus. The poor thing was having more and more trouble coping.
Layers. We all need layers to protect us.
Something to trap the air between.

 

She was going from rack to rack, trying to find the right sizes so the girls didn’t look like they were being swallowed up in giant down potatoes again, with their little stalklike legs sticking out the bottom. Don’t let them get swallowed.
You have to protect them. You have to hold on.

 

“Excuse me?” She waved to a slender salesgirl heading to the stockroom with an armload of red sweaters. “Can you help me find something here?”

 

“Ask Karen. She’s over in Juniors.”

 

Eileen wended her way around frilly nightgowns and flannel skirts. Had they changed the layout here? Wasn’t it just the other day she was buying a Sunday coat for Allison? Navy felt with a soft velvet collar she liked to rub on her cheek. Weren’t they playing this same song, “Dancing Queen,” on the sound system?

 

A cloud of red hair drifted out from behind a row of party dresses. Her heart gave a fierce start. It’s her. It’s not her.

 

“Hello . . . I need assistance. . . .”

 

Everything comes back. Plaid skirts, dying stars, certain fairy tales. You need to stay strong. Don’t let them get swallowed. Our skin isn’t enough to protect us. We need more layers.

 

She saw the sign for the Juniors section and turned left. The clothes were too big for the girls here. They were still so small. How could they defend themselves? Their mother couldn’t protect them. She was huddled under too many layers herself, a sweet Indiana girl in the big city, afraid to look at what was right in front of her.

 

The cloud of red hair went past a row of jeans. Eileen felt that tilt in her stomach and that old familiar tension in her hamstrings, the queasiness of seeing a child hang too far out over the edge. A small-boned girl with tiny hands disappeared around a line of blouses. Playing hide-and-seek with her. Eileen found herself starting to follow. It can’t be. It can be. Dying stars can reignite.

 

She caught up just outside the dressing rooms. Out of breath, an old woman shouldn’t have to run. She reached for a thin delicate wrist.
There you are, I’ll never let you get away again.
She seized the fragile bones and squeezed. The girl, who turned around, had somehow been transformed. The eyes were brown. The skin was copper. The child wasn’t there anymore.

 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Eileen let go and backed away. “I don’t know where my mind went.”

 

 

44

 

 

 

AS SOON AS Hoolian walked in the kitchen at the Elmont Catering Hall that night, he could see things had changed.

 

Zana was leaning against a stove, smoking a cigarette and talking to one of the other waiters. She brushed her hair back from her ear, turning her wrist out slightly, and gave the other man the same smile that Hoolian had thought she would give only him from now on.

 

He hung up his jacket near a cutting board and cleared his throat, making his presence known.

 

“Yo.” He gave her a confident little wave, meant to show he was cool about her talking to another guy.

 

She put her head back and laughed at something the waiter had just said, blowing a trail of smoke at the ceiling and keeping her elbow tucked in protectively against her ribs.

 

The kitchen was a steam room, full of hot plates coming out of the Hobart dishwasher, butter sizzling in skillets, prep cooks laying small strips of salmon on pumpernickel, and lobsters thrashing around in boiling pots. In the main room next door, the deejay was doing a sound check for the wedding reception, playing “Celebration,” with the bass turned up so loud that the bride and groom atop the wedding cake in the corner vibrated.

 

“Hey, you get any of the messages I left?” Hoolian came over to touch her shoulder. “I’ve been trying to get you on the phone for two days now. There’s some things I think I need to explain to you.”

 

The man she’d been talking to turned around, a tiny gold stud winking in a meaty pink earlobe.

 

“You mind?” said the guy she was talking to.

 

He was a pumped-up white boy in a rented tux, with a redwood neck, a shaggy mullet, and ruddy shiny features that looked slightly bloated by steroids. In spite of his size, Hoolian sensed something a little soft at the core of him, as if he were only an actor trying to play a tough guy.

 

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Hoolian put his shoulders back.

 

Zana nervously pinched the cigarette between her thumb and forefinger and brought her elbow in closer to her body, as if she were trying to demonstrate a kind of delicate European sophistication.

 

“Since when do you smoke?” asked Hoolian. “You don’t do that around your kid, do you?”

 

“Please, it’s not necessary to embarrass me.”