The Incumbent (13 page)

Something else rose to the top of my attention. Aside from the presence of blood, and that amounted to only seven tiny drops, the crime scenes gave no indication of violence or great struggle. West told me about Lisa’s house: there was a tiny mess of cards on the table, and one vase was on its side. Not broken, just lying on its side as if it were set that way. Lizzy’s was no different. How does an abduction take place and leave so few signs?

It was as if both women had invited their kidnapper into the house. That would mean that Lisa and Lizzy knew their attacker. But who?

My neck ached. The stress was catching up. Weariness finally settled over me and I went to bed, but I didn’t go alone. The question, “Why?” followed me into slumber and haunted my dreams.

I
don’t believe in ghosts. Not in the usual sense. I’ve never seen gossamer shapes floating through my house, leaving ectoplasm footprints on my carpet. I’ve never heard the bumps in the night or seen books float across the room. I’m just not a believer. Too pragmatic. Too skeptical. The only immaterial thing I ever believed in is love: the love of my parents and the love Peter showed me every day of our married lives.

In that sense I am haunted. My husband is dead. I know that. I wake up to that ugly truth and it follows me into an empty bed every night. I consider myself fortunate that alcohol has never agreed with me. The few times I tried it in college, I became sick enough to cure my curiosity. Maybe it’s genetic. Neither of my parents drink. If I had been prone to the juice, I would have slid down the slimy slope of addiction. The pain was that great.

Still, I tell no one of the dreams that occasionally rise in my sleep-shrouded mind. In the years since Peter’s murder, he has come to me once or twice a month. When the sun is long set, when the stars cling to an obsidian sky, when sleep has filled the inside of my skull, he comes. I tell myself it is an illusion; still, he is there.

I’ve entertained the idea of seeking professional help, of spending time on the couch with some bearded man with a notepad sitting in a chair just out of sight and asking, “And how does that make you feel, Mrs. Glenn?” If that ever got out, my political career would implode. Perhaps that shouldn’t matter, but it does.

The dreams should bother me, but they don’t. In truth, I’ve come to enjoy them. A few moments with Peter in a dream are better than no moments at all. It may mean psychological instability but it is my instability and I have grown comfortable with it.

Some of the dreams are cathartic; others pierce the soul. The best illusions are those in which I hold him and he wraps his thick arms around me. If I’m lucky, I wake up still smelling his cologne; if not, he drips through my arms, becoming the nothing I now have, and I awaken to a wet pillow.

This night, I dreamt of him standing in my home office with a plain cardboard box in his hands. I recognized the box. It was the one on the floor of my office closet. It was brown and dusty. It was a box I had avoided over the years. A box I had left untouched since the police gave it to me. I knew what was inside. They told me. Not in detail but in general. At least I think they did. I was not at my best.

“These are his personal effects,” the detective had said. I can’t remember his name but I can see him standing in the LAPD substation not far from where my husband died. He was a stocky man with a thick face and kind eyes. I can’t remember the date. It was two weeks after the murder and one week after the funeral. “We can’t release the car yet, since it’s evidence in an ongoing trial, but both prosecution and defense have released these to you.”

I had taken the box in trembling hands and tried to whip my emotions back into the basement of my mind. I thanked him, went home, walked upstairs, put the box in the closet, and never looked at it again.

Now dream-Peter held it in his dream-hands. He didn’t speak. He never speaks in these dreams. He is just there until daylight melts him away. No words are needed. Communication happens through our eyes, through our expressions. He looked sad to me. His eyes met mine; then he looked down at the box.

I hated that box. Everything in it had belonged to him, and they were there when the bullet ripped his life away, killing his body and wounding my soul forever. The lid of the box was where I had left it when it first came to me—pressed down on its cardboard sides. Two things were impossible: throwing away the box and opening it.

Slowly, like the second hand of a clock, he raised the box, offering it to me.

I stood motionless as a marble statue. Didn’t he understand? Couldn’t he comprehend? Sadness was in that box—ugly, mournful, searing sadness. To open it was to face the murder all over again. To open it was to be reminded that evil wins and goodness dies. To open it would be to face the very thing I had worked so hard to keep out of my mind. Those weren’t just his personal effects; they were witnesses to the cruelty. They would not remind me of him as my house did, as photos did; they would remind me of the small bullet hole in the side of his head and the gapping crater it left on the other side. They would conjure up the evil spirit of the men who held life as no more important than a hamburger wrapper, something to be wadded up and thrown away.

Why couldn’t dream-Peter understand that?

I looked up from the box and into my husband’s eyes. There was silent pleading there, coaxing, encouraging, compelling me to take the box and to open it.

I shook my head.

Peter dissolved.

The box lay where he had stood.

I cursed my cowardice and prayed for sunrise.

chapter 9

T
he radio alarm came to life at 5:30. The sonorous voice of the announcer slapped me awake. More startling were his words. I have the radio set to a local station that plays adult contemporary music, broken only by commercial spots and twice-hourly news. This was the bottom-of-the-hour presentation. “Another abduction took place late yesterday afternoon when Elizabeth Stout disappeared from her home in Santa Rita—”

I slapped the off button. I had gone to bed with the kidnapping on my mind and now I awoke to it. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and sat for a moment. My stomach was sour and I was depressed. Not the way I like to wake up. The dream hung in my mind like a foul English fog.

Rising, I wobbled into the bathroom and did what I do every morning. After splashing water on my face, I changed into a pair of shorts and a cotton T-shirt. I then donned a pair of gray and orange Skechers sneakers. I spent the next forty-five minutes on the treadmill. It was normally an invigorating experience, but this morning I struggled with the task. My heart just wasn’t in it. Still, I put one foot after another until I had cranked out a quick two miles. I know women who jog every day. Up at dawn and onto the streets, and they do so eagerly. For me exercise is a discipline, one to which I am committed but seldom enjoy. By the end of the walk I was fully awake, and my coursing blood and heavy breathing made me feel more alive.

A shower followed. I love showers as much as I hate exercising. There is something meditative and therapeutic about standing under a stream of warm water. It seems a good place to spend a few hours, something I would have done this morning had I not been afflicted with an incurable case of responsibility and duty, something for which I blame my parents. Reluctantly I got out, toweled off, and used the blow dryer to clear the condensation off my mirror.

The mirror is a prize Peter found at some garage sale. It is oval with gold antiquing around the frame. He loved it and I have grown attached to it over the years. However, the image it reflected this day was that of a different person. The dark hair was there, but it hung down over my shoulders, sodden and heavy. The face that gazed back had dark circles under moist eyes.

“Great. I’m going to have to put my makeup on with a trowel.” A bag over my head would have been easier and perhaps more attractive. I began the ritual and when done, felt a little better about myself.

At seven o’clock I emerged from my lair and walked down the stairs into a thick, enticing aroma. I found Jerry sitting at the table in the dining area, a newspaper in his hands. In front of him was a large mug of black coffee.

I made a face. “How can you drink coffee black?”

“It’s a guy thing. I prefer a large latte with a double shot of vanilla, but I was afraid you’d think I was a wimp.”

“No need to put on airs with me. I wouldn’t consider you a wimp, just prudent.” I poured myself a cup, dumped in a packet of Equal, and added a splash of evaporated milk.

“How did you sleep?” He carefully folded the section he had been reading and reinserted it into the newspaper. For a moment I expected him to roll up the paper and replace the rubber band.

“Okay, I guess.” I took a seat at the table. “Not my best night.”

“Restless? I can imagine.”

“How about you?”

“Like a log.”

“No bad guys coming through the window?”

“If they did, they were quiet. What say we go out for breakfast? We could go over to Hennison’s for some eggs Benedict.”

“I don’t normally eat breakfast, at least not a big breakfast.”

“You should make an exception. You’re under a great deal of strain. Stress is hard labor. It taxes the body. You need a consistent supply of food to keep going.”

“Is that your considered medical opinion?”

“It is. And a little change of scenery will help you cheer up.”

“What makes you think I need cheering?”

Jerry leaned over the table and his tone turned serious. “Even I can see that this is starting to wear on you, and it’s only been, what, a couple of days? Go to breakfast with me.”

“I was planning to go into the office early—”

“Go to breakfast with me.”

“Okay, okay. You win. You should have been a salesman.”

“I would have made better money.”

“Oh, come on, all doctors are rich,” I teased.

He shook his head. “I’m in peds.” He pronounced it
peeds.
“You’re thinking cardiologists and surgeons. A man doesn’t go into pediatrics to get rich.”

“You’re rich in other ways, Jerry. Anything in the paper about Lizzy?”

“A short article. Not much in it. They probably had to squeeze it in at the last moment.”

I nodded. “I wish I could do more.”

“Like what? There’s nothing more you can do.” He paused. “I’m still worried about this whole thing . . . about you. I don’t like it that you’re living alone. I gave it a lot of thought last night. I think you should stay someplace safer.”

“Safer than my home?”

“Yes. Lisa and Lizzy were snatched from their homes. Who’s to say the same can’t happen to you?”

“No, Jerry, I won’t go there. I’m not going to let myself be intimidated or to live in fear.”

“Fear can be a good thing.”

“No, it can’t,” I snapped. “When Peter was killed, I lived in fear for months. I lay awake at night jumping at every sound. I was sure his killers were going to come after me. It made no sense. He was killed in a carjacking. He was not the target, the car was, but I still felt someone—that elusive, ill-defined someone—would come after me. That was a bad time, Jerry, very bad. I won’t go to that dark land again. If someone wants me, then let them come get me.”

Jerry stared at me. My tone had been more harsh than I intended, and certainly sharper than anything he had ever heard from me. I felt no pride.

“You need a friend, Maddy. I want to be that friend. You know how I feel about you.”

I did know. In high school Jerry had an on-again-off-again crush on me. The passing years and the fact that we both had been married had never changed that. The truth was, his affection had grown. I looked at the man across the table, the man who had insisted on spending the night so he could defend me from anyone wishing me harm, and saw what I had always seen: a sweet, dedicated man of great intelligence and wit. He was handsome, with eyes that glittered when he laughed. His chin was strong and his mouth comfortable with a smile. He had always been supportive, and a single word of encouragement from me would free him to fall headlong into love. I wasn’t ready for that.

“Jerry, I’m not ready for any more relationships, especially romantic ones. Maybe I shouldn’t be avoiding them but I am. It’s me.”

“You’re not avoiding romantic relationships, Maddy. You’re shielding yourself from possible pain. You’re acting, or maybe I should say being inactive, because of fear. You’re afraid you’ll lose another person you love. You know what, Maddy? You’re going to. That’s the course of life. I will, too. It can’t be helped. You need to open yourself to the possibility that another man can love you and that you can love him.”

An odd image popped into my mind. It was the image of Detective West. I drove it away. I barely knew the man. It was ridiculous. “I appreciate your concern, Jerry. I appreciate your friendship, but I think it would be best if you left my romantic life to me. After all, it’s my life.”

There was sadness in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth dropped. “I’m trying to be a part of that life.”

I knew that. That truth was in my head and had been there a long time, but hearing it was painful. I felt awash in conflicting emotions, as if I were in a boat being battered by rogue waves. Any woman would be blessed to have a man like Jerry in her life. Why was it so hard for me to see that? I tried to imagine us dating, courting, marrying, but it all seemed wrong, like a pretty shoe that fit badly.

“I know, Jerry. I know.” I rose from the table and put my coffee cup in the sink. There were words that should be spoken here, I told myself, but they remained out of reach. “We have to pick up my car at my parents’. I want to check on Celeste, too. Then we can go to Hennison’s.”

“Okay,” he said. His previous enthusiasm had waned. I had just crushed a rose under my feet.

T
he office was a welcome sight. I arrived later than planned but I was at last there. For me the office is more than a place of work; it’s a haven. I have no hobbies and very few outside interests. Politics and family are all that occupy my mind. When I cross the threshold into my inner sanctum, things take on a new meaning. I feel alive with purpose. There are things to do, decisions to make, people to meet. And I love almost every minute of it. Almost. There are days when I would sell the whole thing for a buck and be willing to give change, but those days are few.