The Abortionist's Daughter (25 page)

“Carolyn,” he said, sitting on the chair that faced the sofa, “we have to talk.”

She was not surprised. In fact, her calm acceptance of his revelation bothered him somewhat, which in turn added to his misery. She asked a few questions. Did he want to call things off? What did he want from her now? Huck didn’t have any clear answers. That didn’t surprise her, either, and Huck wondered if her lack of drama signified that she’d been through this before.

“I don’t think I want you here tonight,” she told him finally.

That was fair.

“And don’t call me tomorrow,” she added, which struck him as unfair, but he was not in a position to complain.

On his way home that night he asked himself, if she had done this to him, would it have been harder, or easier?

—————

Early the next morning he called Ernie and told him to stop by on his way into work and pick up Bill’s list.

“Another list?”

“Cell phone numbers.”

“Why can’t you bring it in?”

“I’m not coming in.”

“Sick?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t get sick.”

“Well, I’m sick today,” said Huck. “Come pick it up.”

“If you’re sick I don’t want to come into your house.”

Huck sighed.

“Oh fine,” said Ernie.

Ten minutes later Ernie pulled up in his Subaru station wagon.

“Where’s Carolyn?” he asked when he came in, looking around.

“Already at work,” said Huck. “Here’s the list.”

Ernie made a face as he took the piece of paper. “Guy’s kind of a lameass, isn’t he?” He opened the refrigerator and ducked inside. “He ever say anything about the pictures to you?”

Huck thought back to Bill’s last comment about using a video camera.

“No,” he said.

Ernie took out a jug of orange juice but found it empty. He put it back. “Frightening,” he said, straightening up. “The things kids do now for kicks. Megan ever explain it to you?”

“No,” said Huck.

“Every time I hear about something like this I think, it could be Claire. You know what scares me the most sometimes? Being one of those parents who later says, ‘But I never dreamed my kid might be doing blankety-blank.’ So I make a genuine effort to dream up everything possible—and then Claire says I don’t trust her. You can’t win.” He shook out a handful of Frosted Flakes from the open box on Huck’s table. “Ever think about where things are going with her?”

“With who?” said Huck, startled.

“Carolyn!”

“I do,” Huck allowed.

“She’s a nice gal,” said Ernie, using a word that Huck knew would make Carolyn wince. “If you’re going to be in my shoes sixteen years from now, you might as well be there with someone like Carolyn. What’s the matter?” he said when Huck didn’t reply. “You don’t really want my advice right now?”

“That’s right.”

Ernie perused the list. “Why’d you sit on this all day yesterday?”

“I was busy.”

“Down in Records?”

“It gets busy there. How’s Marcus doing?” Huck asked.

“Useless. What do you eat this shit for? It’s pure sugar. What’s wrong with you, anyway?” He poured himself another handful. “Well, off to the races. You don’t look so sick, by the way.” He zipped up his jacket and started out but then happened to glance at the basket by the door.

“Hey. Where’d those come from?”

Bill’s gloves were still on top of the pile, where Carolyn had dropped them the day before.

“They’re Bill’s. Take them. If he turns up at the station, you can give them back to him.”

But Ernie was frowning. Huck knew the look. Ernie knelt down, and Huck squatted beside him. The gloves lay nestled together, cold and flabby and curled. One was plain black, the other brown with little pinholes.

“What’s the deal?” he asked Ernie.

Ernie didn’t reply. From his pocket he took out an exam glove and pulled it on, then took out a plastic bag and put the gloves into the bag and sealed it shut.

“Are you reasonably certain these are Bill’s?” he asked.

“Yeah. So what?”

“That’s what you get for being down in Records. We’ve got a glove.”

“From where?”

“Frank’s backyard.”

Huck looked at the plastic bag. “And one of those is the mate?”

“The brown one. What’s Bill been doing, hanging around their house?”

“Well, he and Megan were going out,” Huck offered.

“But they broke up over a year ago,” said Ernie. “And the glove we found has sure as shit not been sitting out in the elements for a year. I’d like to talk to the fellow. Where did you say he is?”

“Back at school,” said Huck.

“Well, you know what? I think I’ll give him a little call,” said Ernie. He picked up Huck’s phone and unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket and dialed a number. He paused blankly, then abruptly started pacing. “Yeah, Bill, this is Detective Vogel calling back. Yeah, sorry it took so long. Got a minute?”

Feeling too fidgety to listen to a one-sided conversation, Huck fussed about the kitchen. He tied up the trash bag and took it outside to the Dumpster. He checked his mailbox, even though it was still early in the morning. When he returned inside, Ernie told him they were going up north, pronto.

“And we’re taking Megan,” he added.

Huck hiccuped loudly, clumsily. “Why?”

“Because Mr. Bill here is suddenly getting cold feet. Says he’ll only talk to us if he can talk to Megan first.”

“Not a good idea, Ernie,” Huck said, feeling the heat rise in his neck. “The guy’s been stalking her. He’s wacko. No way should they be in the same room together unless it’s at headquarters.”

“I already called campus police,” Ernie said. “They’re going to meet us at Bill’s room. Why? What’s the matter?”

“We shouldn’t take her up there. He’s dangerous. Call the chief. Get his okay at least.”

“Hey. Who’s handling this case?” When Huck didn’t reply, he went on: “We’ll even get the local police there if it’ll make you feel better. Where’s Megan right now?”

“How should I know?”

“You really want me to answer that? Get your coat, Arthur. We’re going to go find her, and then we’re going to take a ride up north and hear what this guy has to say about Diana Duprey.”

“I’m not on the case,” Huck reminded him, pulling on a sweatshirt.

“As far as I’m concerned, you are. I want a psych eval on this guy,” Ernie said as they headed out to his car. “What do you know about him, anyway? How’d he get past our radar?”

Huck climbed into the front seat of Ernie’s car, tossing candy wrappers and empty water bottles into the back to make space for his feet.

Ernie jammed the car into reverse and twisted around to back up. “When did he break up with Megan? How much contact has he had with her since then? What’s his relationship with Diana?”

“Slow down,” said Huck. “Let me tell you about obsession,” he began.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

——————

BY SHEER LUCK
they found Megan on the broad front steps of the campus library, talking with a group of students. She was dressed in gray midcalf sweats, along with a skimpy purple top with little mirrors that caught the sun when she moved. No coat, no hat, no gloves. Not having seen her in the last few weeks, Huck lagged behind as Ernie approached her. Ernie spoke briefly. Megan turned in mid-sentence and looked at Huck.

Huck dug his hands into his pockets and in a rare moment wished he were not a cop.

“I told you, my mother wasn’t doing meth,” Megan said breathlessly as they hurried back to Ernie’s car. “Listen. She smoked pot, and she kept some speed in the car for when she got tired. That’s it.”

“Good,” said Ernie. “That helps us.”

“But this is such a wild-goose chase! There’s no way she was in trouble with some meth dealer!”

“Keep saying that,” Ernie said. “Huck, pick up the pace.”

Huck had been trailing behind. They hadn’t seen each other since their night together last month, and he felt like Megan was handling it a lot better than he was.

As if sensing his thoughts, Megan looked over her shoulder. “I thought you got kicked off the case, Huck.”

“I did.”

“But for right now, he’s back on,” said Ernie.

“How’s Carolyn?” Megan asked.

“She’s fine,” said Huck.

“And her mother?”

“Doing pretty well.”

“Good. Shotgun,” she said as Ernie unlocked his car. Then she looked at the two men and colored. “Habit. You can sit in front,” she told Huck.

“No,” said Ernie, “you sit up front, Megan. Huck, you’re in back.”

Megan slid into the front seat. “A siren. Cool. Your car didn’t have a siren,” she said to Huck.

“That’s because Huck has a weenie car,” Ernie said.

Megan grinned, and Huck was grateful for Ernie not knowing anything, so Ernie could make fun of Huck like this, and he and Megan could pretend everything was up-front and normal.

They sped out of town and headed north through corn-stubbled fields, Ernie for the most part keeping the conversation light by telling Megan about his daughter Claire and their continuing arguments about the clothes she wore.

“Any advice for an old geezer?” he asked her.

“Ignore it,” said Megan. “Even if you forbid it, she’ll just change her clothes as soon as she leaves the house.” She dug through her book satchel and found a water bottle and drank. “I get the feeling this isn’t about any meth dealer,” she said after a while. “What exactly do you want from Bill?”

“Just a little information,” said Ernie.

“Has he done something?”

Ernie glanced in his rearview mirror. Huck was glad it was Ernie who had to invent excuses right now, and not him.

“Why don’t you just tell us a little bit about the guy,” Ernie began.

“Like why I let him take the pictures?”

“That’s telling us about
you,
” Ernie said gently. “I’m more interested in Bill. Start with when you broke up. When was that, anyway?”

“A year ago. New Year’s Eve, in fact.”

“Whose decision was it?”

“Mine.”

“And how did he take it?”

Megan pulled up her knees and clasped them to her chest. “He’s like, Oh, no, you’re the only one I love, blah blah blah. I figured he’d stay bummed for a week and then move on.”

“But?”

“Oh, you know. Roses in the locker. Chocolates. Weird e-mails.”

“What’d the e-mails say?”

Megan was silent. Huck wondered if she would have been more forthcoming had he not been sitting in the backseat. Ernie seemed to grasp this as well, for he didn’t press the matter.

“We can come back to that. Anything else?” he asked.

From his view in the back Huck couldn’t see her face, but he could see that she was holding her head very rigid, as though her hair were made of spun glass. An eighteen-wheeler shuddered by, going ninety-five. To the left was a slashed-up hillside for off-road vehicles, empty today. Megan murmured something.

“Excuse me?” said Ernie. “I didn’t catch what you said.”

All Huck heard was something like “. . . crap he did in my room.” Then she fell silent, and finally she turned around to look him square in the face. “I really wish you weren’t here, Huck,” she told him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me too,” she said.

Ernie’s eyes flashed at Huck in the rearview mirror. Just one second too long, so that Huck would understand that Ernie now grasped the full complexity of the situation here in the car. Huck shrugged, and Ernie refocused his glare on the road ahead. Huck did not envy Claire, being genetically obliged to report to this man.

“You want to finish with this later?” Ernie asked Megan.

“No,” she said. “I might as well tell you now. I had a job last summer. I was out of the house all day. He had a key, and he’d let himself in and go up to my room and get himself off. Ever hear of that happening?”

“Sure,” said Ernie, though he spoke for himself, and definitely not for Huck.

“There’s probably not much you haven’t heard of,” Megan remarked.

“Not a whole lot.”

“Well, it grossed me out,” said Megan. “It was like a dog, coming in to mark his territory.”

“Did your mother know?”

“No. She would have flipped. I washed everything before she got home. Here’s the thing, though,” she continued. “He was an asshole, and it was a disgusting thing to do, but I should have tried to be a little more understanding throughout it all. I wasn’t very sympathetic. I didn’t know what it was like! Nobody ever dumped me, and I just didn’t think about what he was going through. I could have been a little more human.”

“I’m sure he got all the compassion he needed from others,” Ernie assured her.

“But it wasn’t like he committed a crime or anything,” she went on. “He just felt . . . rejected. And so he got a little weird. He got a little desperate. I really wasn’t very understanding. You really can’t tell me what you want to talk to him about?”

“We just want to chat,” said Ernie. He turned off the interstate, and they headed through flat open farmland with wheat poking through patches of snow. For a long time nobody spoke as they drove. Huck wondered if she had any clue about why they were going to talk to Bill. He also wondered how much more he should have argued with Ernie about bringing Megan.

But there was no opportunity to talk with Ernie about this, with Megan right there in the car with them, and soon they were approaching the outskirts of the small college town. With Megan navigating, they drove toward campus, and she directed them to Bill’s dorm, a nondescript brick building with an army of bicycles out front. There were also two police cars, campus and town. Ernie parked his car, then turned to face Megan.

“I want you to wait here with Huck,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Like I would,” Megan murmured, glancing out her window. When Ernie had disappeared into the building, she turned to Huck and sighed. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Bill may have some information about the case. But he wants to see you too. Ernie’s gone up to make sure the place is safe.”

“He uses e-mails, not guns.”

Huck studied the carpeting. There was a large dark blot on the floor by his foot, something he wouldn’t have wanted to touch without a glove. They sat in silence. Megan applied Chapstick. Huck’s stomach rumbled. Neither laughed at the sound.