?Nothing happened,? Daniel said softly, putting his arms around her.
Laura-who always seemed to know the right thing to do and the right thing to say-was at a complete loss. She wrapped her arms around Daniel?s waist and burst into tears. He led her into the darkened hallway and closed Trixie?s bedroom door so that she wouldn?t be disturbed. ?She?s home,? he said, forcing a smile, even though he could see the scrapes on his knuckles, could feel the bruises that bloomed beneath his skin. ?That?s all that counts.?
The next morning, Daniel assessed the damage in the bathroom mirror. His lip was split; he had a shiner on his right temple; the knuckles of his right hand were swollen and raw. But that inventory didn?t even begin to address the harm done to his relationship with his daughter. Because she?d fallen asleep, exhausted, Daniel still hadn?t had the chance to explain what had happened to him last night, what beast he?d turned into.
He washed his face and toweled it dry. How did you go about explaining to your daughter-the victim of a rape, for God?s sake-that violence in a man was like energy: transformed, but never destroyed? How did you tell a girl who was trying so hard to start fresh that you couldn?t ever obliterate your past?
It was going to be one of those days when the temperature didn?t climb above zero. He could tell, just by the bone-deep chill of the floorboards on his bare feet when he went downstairs and the way the icicles pointed like arrows from the outside overhang of the kitchen window. Trixie was standing at the refrigerator, wearing flannel pajama bottoms, a T-shirt that had gone missing from Daniel?s own dresser, and a blue bathrobe that no longer fit. Her wrists and hands stuck out too far from the sleeves as she reached for the orange juice.
Laura glanced up from the table, where she was poring intently over the newspaper-looking, Daniel assumed, for a story about his brawl with Jason last night. ?Morning,? Daniel said hesitantly. Their eyes met, and they passed an entire conversation without speaking a word: How is she? Did she say anything? Do I treat this as an ordinary day? Do I pretend last night never happened?
Daniel cleared his throat. ?Trixie?we have to talk.?
Trixie didn?t look at him. She unscrewed the Tropicana and began to pour some into a glass. ?We?re out of orange juice,? she said.
The telephone rang. Laura stood up to answer it and carried the receiver into the living room that adjoined the kitchen.
Daniel sank down into the seat his wife had vacated and watched Trixie at the counter. He loved her, and in return she?d trusted him-and her reward was to see him turn into an animal before her eyes. It wasn?t all that different, really, from what she must have experienced during the rape-and that alone was enough to make Daniel hate himself.
Laura came back into the room and hung up the phone. She moved stiffly, her features frozen.
?Who was it?? Daniel asked.
Laura shook her head, covered her hand with her mouth.
?Laura,? he pressed.
?Jason Underhill committed suicide last night,? she whispered.
Trixie shook the empty container. ?We?re out of orange juice,? she repeated.
In the bathroom, Trixie ran the hot water for fifteen minutes before she stepped into the shower, letting the small space fill with enough steam that she wouldn?t have to see her reflection in the mirror. The news had taken up residence in their house, and now, in the aftermath, nobody seemed to know what to do. Her mother had slipped out of the kitchen like a ghost. Her father sank down at the table with his head in his hands, his eyes squeezed shut. Distracted, he didn?t notice when Trixie left. Neither parent was around to see her disappear into her bathroom or to ask her to leave the door wide open, as they had for the past week, so that they could check up on her.
What would be the point?
There would be no rape trial anymore. There was no need to make sure she didn?t wind up in a mental hospital before she took the stand as a witness. She could go as crazy as she wanted to. She could secure herself a berth in a psych ward for the next thirty years, every minute of which she could spend thinking about what she?d done.
There was one Bic razor hidden away. It had fallen behind a crack in the sink cabinet and Trixie made sure to keep it there, in case of emergency. Now she fished for it and set it on the counter. She smacked it hard with a plastic bottle of bath gel, until the pink caddy cracked and the blade slipped out. She ran the tip of her finger over the edge, felt the skin peel back in an onion fold.
She thought about what it used to feel like when Jason kissed her, and she?d breathe in air that he?d breathed a moment before. She tried to imagine what it was like to not breathe anymore, ever. She thought of his head snapping back when her father hit him, of the last words he had said to her.
Trixie pulled off her pajamas and stepped into the shower. She crouched in the tub and let the water sluice over her. She cried great, damp, gray sobs that no one could hear over the roar of the plumbing, and she carved at her arm-not to kill herself, because she didn?t deserve such an easy way out-just to release some of the pain before it exploded inside her. She cut three lines and a circle, inside the crook of her elbow:
NO.
Blood swirled pink between her feet. She looked down at her tattoo. Then she lifted the blade and slashed hatch marks through the letters, a grid of gashes, until not even Trixie could remember what she?d been trying to say.
5
W hen Jason Underhill?s ghost showed up that night, Trixie was expecting him. He was transparent and white faced, with a gash in the back of his skull. She stared through him and pretended not to notice that he had materialized out of nowhere.
He was the first person Trixie knew who?d died. Technically, that wasn?t quite accurate-her grandmother had died in Alaska when Trixie was four, but Trixie had never met her. She remembered her father sitting at the kitchen table with the telephone still in his hand even though the person on the other end had hung up, and silence landing on the house like a fat black crow.
Jason kept glancing at the ground, as if he needed to keep track of his footsteps. Trixie tried not to look at the bruises on his face or the blood on his collar. ?I?m not scared of you,? she said, although she was not telling the truth. ?You can?t do anything to me.? She wondered if ghosts had the powers of superheroes, if they could see through linen and flannel to spot her legs shaking, if they could swallow her words and spit her lie back out like a bullet.
Jason leaned so close that his hand went right through Trixie. It felt like winter. He was able to draw her forward, as if he were magnetic and she had dissolved into a thousand metal filings. Pulling her upright in her bed, he kissed her full on the mouth. He tasted of dark soil and muddy currents. I?m not through with you, Jason vowed, and then he disappeared bit by bit, the pressure against her lips the last thing to go.
Afterward, Trixie lay in bed, shaking. She thought about the bitter cold that had taken up residence under her breastbone, like a second heart made of ice. She thought about what Jason had said and wondered why he?d had to die before he felt the same way she had felt about him all along.
Mike Bartholemew crouched in front of the boot prints that led up to the railing of the bridge from which Jason had jumped, a cryptic choreography of the boy?s last steps. Placing a ruler next to the best boot print, he took a digital photo. Then he lifted an aerosol can and sprayed light layers of red wax over the area. The wax froze the snow, so that when he took the mixture of dental stone and water he?d prepared to make a cast, it wouldn?t melt any of the ridge details.
While he waited for his cast to dry, he hiked down the slippery bank to the spot being combed by crime scene investigators. In his own tenure as a detective, he?d presided over two suicides in this very spot, one of the few in Bethel where you could actually fall far enough to do serious damage.
Jason Underhill had landed o
n his side. His head had cracked the ice on the river and was partially submerged. His hand was covered with dirt and matted leaves. The snow was still stained pink with blood that had pooled beneath his head.
For all intents and purposes, Jason had done the taxpayers a favor by saving them the cost of a trial and possible incarceration. Being tried as an adult for rape made the stakes higher-and more potentially devastating. Bartholemew had seen lesser motives that led folks to take their own lives.
He knelt beside Jerry, one of the forensic cops. ?What have you got??
?Maria DeSantos, only seventy degrees colder.?
Maria DeSantos had been their last suicide plunger in this location, but she had been missing for three weeks in the heat of the summer before the stench of the decomposing body had attracted a kayaker on the river.
?Find anything??
?A wallet and a cell phone. There could be more, but the snow?s pretty deep.? Jerry glanced up from his collection of blood on the body. ?You see the kid play in the exhibition game last night in town??
?I was on duty.?
?I heard he was hammered?and that he was still a hell of a player.? Jerry shook his head. ?Damn shame, if you ask me.?
?I didn?t,? Bartholemew said, and he stood up. He had already been to the Underhill house, to bring them the news of their son?s death. Greta Underhill had opened the door, looked at his face, and burst into tears. Her husband had been only superficially composed. He thanked Bartholemew for bringing the information and said he?d like to see Jason now. Then he?d walked outside into the snow, without a coat, barefoot.
Bartholemew?s own boss had brought him the news about Holly. He?d known that the worst had happened when he saw the chief of police standing on his porch in the middle of the night. He remembered demanding to be driven to the scene, where he stood at the guardrail her car had smashed through. He remembered, too, going to identify Holly?s body in the hospital morgue. Bartholemew had pulled aside the sheet to see the tracks on her arms, the ones he?d been blind to as a parent. He?d put his hand over Holly?s heart, just to make sure.
The Underhills wanted to see Jason; they?d be given that privilege before the autopsy began. In this sense, accidents, suicides, and murders were all the same-any death that occurred without someone there to witness it was automatically brought to the medical examiner for a determination of cause. It wasn?t police procedure as much as human nature. We all want to know what went wrong, even when there isn?t really an answer to that question.
The Monday after Jason Underhill?s suicide, two psychologists were called to the high school to help students who needed to grieve. The hockey team took to wearing black armbands and won three straight, vowing to take the state title in homage to their fallen teammate. One entire page of the Portland paper?s sports section was devoted to a memorial of Jason?s athletic achievements.
That same day, Laura went out for groceries. She moved aimlessly through the store, picking up things like ugli fruit and bags of pitted prunes, slivered almonds, and balls of buffalo mozzarella. Somewhere in her purse she knew she had a list-ordinary items like bread and milk and dishwashing detergent-but there was a part of her that felt normal things didn?t apply anymore and therefore there was no point in buying them. Eventually, she found herself in front of the freezer section, the door open and the cold spilling over the toes of her boots. There must have been a hundred different ice cream flavors. How could you pick, knowing that you?d have to go home and live with the choice you?d made?
She was reading the ingredients on a peach sorbet when she heard two women talking one aisle over, hidden by the freezers. ?What a tragedy,? one said. ?That boy was going places.?
?I heard that Greta Underhill can?t get out of bed,? the second woman added. ?My pastor was told by her pastor that she might not even make it to the funeral.?
A week ago, in spite of the rape accusations, Jason had still been a hero to most of this town. But now death had swelled him to mythic proportions.
Laura curled her hands around the front bar of her grocery cart. She navigated around the corner, until she was face to face with the women who?d been talking. ?Do you know who I am?? The ladies glanced at each other, shook their heads. ?I?m the mother of the girl Jason Underhill raped.?
She said it for the shock value. She said it on the off chance that these ladies might, out of sudden shame, apologize. But neither of them said a word.
Laura guided her shopping cart around the corner and toward an empty checkout line. The cashier had a skunk-streak of blue hair and a ring through her bottom lip. Laura reached into the basket and held up a box of plastic knives-when had she taken those off a shelf? ?You know,? she said to the cashier, ?I actually don?t need those.?
?No biggie. We can reshelve them.?
Six packets of powdered hollandaise sauce, suntan lotion, and wart remover medicine. ?Actually,? Laura said, ?I?m going to pass on these, too.?
She emptied the rest of her shopping cart: bacon bits and baby food and Thai coconut milk; a sippy cup and hair elastics and two pounds of green jalape?os; the peach sorbet. She stared at the items on the conveyor belt as if she were seeing them for the first time. ?I don?t want any of this,? Laura said, surprised, as if it were anyone?s fault but her own.
Dr. Anjali Mukherjee spent most of her time in the morgue, not just because she was the county medical examiner but also because when she ventured abovestairs at the hospital, she was continually mistaken for a med student or, worse, a candy striper. She was five feet tall, with the small, delicate features of a child, but Mike Bartholemew had seen her elbow-deep in a Y-shaped incision, determining the cause of death of the person who lay on her examination table.
?The subject had a blood alcohol level of point one two,? Anjali said, as she rifled through a series of X-rays and headed toward the light box on the wall.
Legal intoxication was .10; that meant Jason Underhill was considerably trashed when he went over the railing of the bridge. At least he wasn?t driving, Bartholemew thought. At least he only killed himself.
?There,? the medical examiner said, pointing at an X-ray. ?What do you see??
?A foot??
?That?s why they pay you the big bucks. Come over here for a second.? Anjali cleared off a lab table and patted it. ?Climb up.?
?I don?t want-?
?Climb up, Bartholemew.?
Grudgingly, he stood on top of the table. He glanced down at the top of Anjali?s head. ?And I?m doing this why??
?Jump.?
Bartholemew hopped a little.
?I meant jump off.?
He swung his arms, then went airborne, landing in a crouch. ?Goddamn, I still can?t fly.?
?You landed on your feet,? Anjali said. ?Like most people who jump. When we see suicides like this, the X-rays show heel fractures and vertical compressions of the spine, which aren?t present on this victim.?
?Are you telling me he didn?t fall??
?No, he fell. There?s contrecoup damage to the brain that suggests acceleration. When someone lands on the back of the skull, you?ll see injury to the front of the brain, because it continues to fall after the skull stops and hits it hard.?
?Maybe he jumped and landed on his head,? Bartholemew suggested.
?Interestingly, I didn?t see the types of fractures associated with that either. Let me show you what I did find, though.? Anjali handed him two photographs, both of Jason Underhill?s face. They were identical, except for the black eye and bruising along the temple and jaw of the second one.
?You been beating up the subjects, Angie??
?That only works premortem,? Anjali replied. ?I took these ten hours apart. When you brought him in, he didn?t have bruises?except for a subtle hemorrhage in the facial area that could have been caused by the fall. But he was lying on that side of his face when found, and the pooling of the blood might have obscured the contusions. When he was brought to the morgue and placed sunny-side
up, the blood redistributed.? She removed the X-ray they?d been examining. ?When I was doing an FP fellowship, we had a Jane Doe come in with no apparent external trauma, except for a slight hemorrhage in the strap muscles of the neck. By the time the autopsy was over, there were two obvious handprints on her throat.?
?Couldn?t he have banged himself up when he fell??
?I thought you?d say that. Take a look at this.? Anjali slid another X-ray onto the light box.
Bartholemew whistled softly. ?That?s his face, huh??
?It was.?
He pointed to a crack along the temple of the skull. ?That looks like a fracture.?
?That?s where he landed,? Anjali said. ?But look closer.?
Bartholemew squinted. On the cheekbone and the jaw were smaller, fainter fault lines.
?In the case of a blow and a subsequent fall, the fracture lines caused by the fall are blocked by those caused by the initial blow. An injury to the head caused by a fall is usually found around the level of the brim of a hat. However, a hard punch to the face usually hits below that.?
The fracture at Underhill?s temple radiated out toward the eye socket and the cheekbone but stopped abruptly at one of these hairline cracks.
?The subject also had extravasation of red blood cells on tissues around his jaw and ribs.?
?Which means what??
?It?s a bruise that didn?t get to happen. Meaning there was trauma to that tissue, but before that blood could break down and go black and blue, the subject died.?
?So maybe he was in a fight before he decided to jump,? Bartholemew said, his mind running fast with possibilities.
?You might also be interested in this.? Anjali passed him a microscopic slide with tiny filings on it. ?We dug them out of the subject?s fingertips.?
?What are they??
?Splinters consistent with the railing of the bridge. There were some wood slivers caught in the tails of his jacket, too.? Anjali glanced at Bartholemew. ?I don?t think this kid killed himself by jumping off a bridge,? she said. ?I think he was pushed.?
When Daniel heard sobbing, he immediately assumed it was Trixie. In the days since they?d heard the news about Jason, she would dissolve without any provocation-at the dinner table, while brushing her teeth, staring at a commercial on television. She was so firmly entrenched in memory that Daniel didn?t know how to pry her loose and bring her back to the real world.
Sometimes he held her. Sometimes he just sat down next to her. He never tried to stop her tears; he didn?t think he had that right. He just wanted her to know that he was there if she needed him.
This time, when the crying began, Daniel followed the sound upstairs. But instead of finding Trixie sobbing, he turned into his own bedroom to find his wife sitting on the floor, hugging a knot of clean laundry against her. ?Laura??