Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (87 page)

We sat in the dark for several minutes after the police car was gone, staring down the road, into the woods, into nothing. The moon continued to rise above the mountains, and it had just reached into our shadows when I started the car and drove back towards the inn.

# # #

The sun crept up over the Atlantic, its rays gliding gently across the water, into the coast, and over the Green Mountains. They warmed the window near my bed, brightened the room, and turned the morning sky from black into royal blue. I burrowed deeper beneath the quilts, shielding my eyes from the new, morning light. With the blankets over my head, I shut out the sun and slept until I woke from restfulness alone, not the piercing rays which showered in between the curtains.

I kicked the covers onto the floor and lay on the naked bed in boxer shorts. A cool draft tickled my chest and I shivered. On the bedside table, the clock read 10:29, and it pleased me to be waking at a reasonable hour. As I sat up, I felt the raging hunger in my stomach. In fifteen minutes, Walter and I would be sitting before the fireplace downstairs, drinking coffee, eating hot pastries. Last night would be a fading nightmare, nothing more.

I planted my feet on the floor and stared across the room at Walter's bed, neatly made. Slowly I came to my feet, glancing around the room, but he wasn't here. As I approached his bed, I saw a piece of white paper, folded in half, standing like a tent on the smoothed, plaid bedspread. I reached down and picked it up, and when I saw the words, my knees gave out.

You stupid fuck. I watched you sleep for an hour last night. I stood at the end of your bed and thought about cutting your throat so you couldn't scream while I disemboweled you. Why didn't I? Because I have plans for you. This is only the beginning.

Poor Walter. What are you gonna tell his wife, Andy? That he's rotting on a mountainside in Vermont? That I took all of my rage towards you out on him for several horrible hours? Maybe you shouldn't tell her anything. Maybe you should do her a favor, too.

Go back to North Carolina, Andy. I'll contact you before Christmas. And save yourself the trouble of wondering how I got out of that hole, how eight bullets at point-blank range couldn't kill me, because I got a little tidbit for you, brother: I was never in that fucking hole.
  

# # #

My mother was discovered eight days after Orson murdered her when a neighbor noticed newspapers collecting on her porch and phoned the police. They found her in bed, under the covers, stiff and cold, tucked in as lifeless and cozy as a Barbie Doll in her blue dress with yellow sunflowers. There was only one bruise on her entire body--a thin, purple ring encircling her neck. The pantyhose which Orson used had been balled up and thrown under the bed.

I arrived home from Vermont on Sunday evening, and at nine-thirty on a cold, rainy Monday morning, a police officer was banging on my front door. His grave eyes might have been unbearable had I not already known. Even when he told me, I couldn't muster tears, so I buried my face in my hands and asked him for a moment alone. Shutting the door and leaving him standing on the front porch, I rushed to the kitchen sink and dabbed water on my cheeks and rubbed my eyes so they’d look red and swollen. How could an innocent man explain not crying when he learns his mother has been murdered? Even the guilty manage tears.

Walter's Cadillac sat in my garage. I'd intended to sink it to the bottom of Lake Norman after dark, but that was impossible now. I’d have to go to Winston to handle my mother's affairs.

Most of Monday, I spent at a police station in Winston, identifying my mother's body for the police and the coroner before noon and answering questions for two detectives afterwards. From the outset of their questioning, it was obvious they were baffled as to why my mother had been murdered. Did I know of any reason someone would want to kill her? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she use drugs? To my knowledge, had she ever borrowed money from anyone?

Sitting in front of the two men in the interrogation room, I wondered if they suspected me. I sat comfortably in a chair, but the gray, windowless room felt intrusive. The detectives had been pleasant, but behind their smiles and professional sympathy for my loss, I sensed their predatory urge to begin the process of breaking me.

I’d been with my mother several hours before she died, but the detectives didn't know this. Certainly someone must have seen my jeep parked on the curb in front of her house. Hell, I’d waved to her neighbor across the street. The detectives needed to hear it from me that I'd been with her, before a neighbor tipped them off, making me look suspicious and evasive.

"Look," I began, twisting my glass of water on the tabletop. Exhausted, I'd been patiently answering their questions for the last hour. "I don't know why I didn’t mention it before, but I saw my mother on the 30
^th
."

"Where?" Detective Hadley asked, a young man, possibly under thirty, with a muscular build beneath his gray suit, a clean-shaven face, and short, neatly-trimmed, blond hair.

"At her house. I took her to dinner at K&W and got home around ten that evening."

The detectives sat across from me, staring at each other with poker faces. The older one of the two, a balding man with black hair and a bushy mustache, looked slowly back at me while his partner lowered his eyes, focusing intently on the surface of the table.

"Mr. Thomas," he began, pursing his lips for a moment before continuing. "Here's the thing. Nothing was stolen from your mother's house, and there was no sign of forced entry. Now this means one of two things. Either your mother slept with her doors unlocked, or whoever killed her had a key. You told us no one besides you has a key to that house. And now you're telling us you were with your mother, possibly on the day she was murdered. If you were on this side of the table, what would you think?"

"Maybe some psychopath convinced her to let him in," I said.

"Psychopaths torture their victims, Mr. Thomas," Detective Prosser said, as if I should've known. "Your mother wasn't tortured. She wasn't raped. She wasn't even beaten." He smiled warmly. "She was simply strangled."

I pushed my chair back and walked to the door. The detectives didn't move. "Look," I said, my hand squeezing the doorknob, "I got a bunch of shit to do. You wanna talk again, you know where to find me."

"Have a nice day," Hadley said, smiling.

I walked out and slammed the door behind me.

# # #

Despite ten days of decay, the mortician turned my mother's skin a glowing rose it had never held when she was alive, so on Tuesday evening, I held a wake for her at the
Haverty
Son's Funeral Home in downtown Winston. By seven-thirty, the formal, red-carpeted visiting room was packed with friends and family, most of whom I hadn't seen in more than ten years. They'd come from all over the country, for my mother and for me. Their sadness and love was more comforting than I'd expected, and through their tears, I allowed myself to grieve.

After two hours of standing in the receiving line with my mother's brother and two sisters, my mouth ached from smiling. With no visible end to the steady stream of mourners, I slipped away, into the crowd. As I searched for a chair or sofa to rest my legs, someone grabbed my arm from behind, and I spun around.

"Andy, I'm so sorry," Cynthia said, her eyes glistening. We embraced, and she squeezed me tightly, as if she could take my pain into herself and save me the tears.

"You didn't have to come down here," I said as we pulled away. "Thank you."

She took my arm, and we pushed through the crowd towards an empty sofa, collapsing onto the cushions. "When did you find out?" she asked, brushing graying hair out of her eyes.

"Yesterday morning. A police officer woke me up."

"Oh God. Do the police have any suspects or leads?"

I looked into Cynthia's eyes with a jaded scowl. "I think those fuckers suspect me."

"No."

"These two detectives were giving me shit yesterday. Since there was no forced entry or torture or rape."

"So that automatically means you did it?"

"That's what they seem to think. I don't know. They may've just been feeling me out."

Cynthia leaned back against the sofa and straightened her black suit, brushing particles of lent and strands of hair off her pants. "I tried to get a hold of you last week," she said. "I wanted to ask if you'd started anything. You go out of town?" I caught an edge of distrusting curiosity in her voice.

"I was in Barbuda. Didn't know I'd be coming back to this."

She placed her hand gently on my shoulder. "You'll get through it," she said. "You need anything, just call." She hugged me again and rose to her feet.

"Taking off?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm beat."

"You're welcome to stay at my place," I said. "It's just an hour from here."

"I appreciate that," she said, "but I'm staying at the
Radison
a few blocks away. I got an early flight out of Greensboro tomorrow morning. Gotta get back to New York."

I glanced past Cynthia and saw Beth Lancing making her way through the crowd towards me. She held the hand of her four-year-old son, John David. I couldn't face her.

"Take care, Andy," Cynthia said, taking my hands into hers. "Call me sometime this week, will you? Just to let me know how you're doing."

Beth now stood several feet away, waiting for me to finish. I stood and embraced Cynthia once more. Kissing her on the cheek, I said, "Thanks for coming. I'll call you soon."

As Cynthia walked away, blending into the pool of dark suits and dresses, I sat back down on the sofa. Before anyone else could get to me, Beth stepped forward with her son, and hesitantly, I looked up into her eyes. A stunning woman, tonight she wore a brown dress that dropped to her small ankles. Curly, blond hair bounced above her shoulders. As I looked into her face, I saw misery. The makeup couldn't hide the deep bags beneath her eyes. They were bloodshot, too, as if she hadn't slept in days. Weakly, I smiled at her and winked at John David, dressed like a man in his little, black suit. I stood and hugged Walter's wife, and she broke apart in my arms, her tears streaking the wool of my suit.

"Sit down, Beth," I said after a moment, and we both sat on the sofa as John David knelt on the floor and began crawling around on the dark red carpet.

"I'm sorry about your mother," she said, wiping tears from her eyes with a tissue.

"Thank you for coming," I said, but I knew why she'd really come. When I returned from Vermont, there were ten messages on my answering machine from her, wanting to know if I'd heard from Walter. "Anything from the police?" I asked, my voice soft and conciliatory. I touched her hand which rested on her knee.

"No, nothing." She shook her head. "They won't do anything, Andy. He'll have been gone a week tomorrow morning." Tears filled her eyes again. "The detectives think he left me. They won't come out and say it, but they keep asking if we had a good marriage. If he had ever cheated on me. But it makes me wonder after awhile, you know?"

John David jumped onto the sofa and snuggled up between me and Beth. His mother ran her fingers through his short, blond hair and he leaned back into her. "He asks about him constantly," she whispered, motioning to her son, and I felt tears coming from the iceberg of guilt that floated behind my eyes. "Jenna's a lot worse, though. She knows things aren't right."

"How are you?" I asked though I didn't want to know.

"If I didn't have to be strong for my kids, I might be dead. It's the nights that are especially hard." She looked down at her son, needing him in a way his innocent psyche could never comprehend. Kissing the top of his head, she smiled at him when he glanced up at her. "I know you're busy," she said, looking back at me. Then standing, she lifted John David into her arms, and he laid his head down on her delicate shoulder. "Can I call you tomorrow?" she asked.

"Sure," I said, rising to my feet. "I'll let you know if I hear anything. You do the same."

"Thank you, Andy. And I'm very sorry about your mother." She kissed my cheek and tried to smile, but it failed miserably. Then she turned and walked slowly away, towards the doors which would lead out of the funeral home, to an empty house.

# # #

When the visitors had gone, leaving only myself, family members, and the pale-faced funeral director, I walked towards the open casket. It had been crowded since I'd been here, so I had waited, wanting to see my mother for the last time, alone, in a quiet room, without the disturbances of a thousand acquaintances. The mortician had warned me that the bruise around her neck would be difficult to hide, and he was right. As I set my hands on the metallic shell of her casket and peered down at her vapid face, it was the first thing I saw.