The Tenth Circle

She turned at the sound of her name, wiping her cheeks. ?I?m sorry?it?s wrong, I know?but I keep thinking about him.?

  Him. Daniel?s heart turned over. How long would it be until he could hear a sentence like that and not feel as if he?d been punched?

  ?It?s just?? She wiped her eyes. ?It?s just that he was someone?s child, too.?

  Jason. The immediate relief Daniel felt to know that Laura wasn?t crying over the nameless man she?d slept with evaporated as he realized that she was crying, instead, for someone who didn?t merit that kind of mercy.

  ?I?ve been so lucky, Daniel,? Laura said. ?What if Trixie had died last week? What if?what if you?d told me to move out??

  Daniel reached out to tuck Laura?s hair behind her ear. Maybe you had to come close to losing something before you could remember its value. Maybe it would be like that for the two of them. ?I would never have let you go.?

  Laura shuddered, as if his words had sent a shock through her. ?Daniel, I-?

  ?You don?t need to cry for us,? he said, squeezing her shoulder, ?because we?re all going to be fine.?

  He felt Laura nod against him.

  ?And you don?t have to cry for Jason,? Daniel said. ?Because Jason deserves to be dead.?

  He hadn?t spoken the words aloud, the ones he?d been thinking ever since Laura had taken that phone call days before. But this was exactly the sort of world he drew: one where actions had consequences, where revenge and retribution were the heartbeat of a story. Jason had hurt Trixie; therefore, Jason deserved to be punished.

  Laura drew back and stared at him, wide-eyed.

  ?What?? Daniel said, defiant. ?Are you shocked that I would think that??

  She was quiet for a moment. ?No,? Laura admitted. ?Just that you said it out loud.?

 

  The minute Bartholemew entered the digital photo of the footprints on the bridge into his software program and compared it to an inking of Jason?s boot, he got a match. However, there was another footprint with a tread on the sole that was different from Jason?s, possibly from their suspect?s shoe.

  With a sigh, Bartholemew turned off his computer screen and took out the bag of evidence collected from the crime scene. He rummaged for the cell phone that Jerry had found near the victim. A Motorola, identical to the one Bartholemew carried-up here in Maine, you just didn?t have all the cellular options available in a big city. Jason had probably bought it from the same store where he?d bought his. The same sales rep had probably programmed it for him.

  Bartholemew started punching buttons. There were no messages, text or voice. But there was a memo.

  He hit the shortcut button, *8, and suddenly the sound of a fight filled the room. There were punches being landed, and grunts and moans. He heard Jason?s voice, pleas that broke off at their edges. And another familiar voice: If you ever, ever come near my daughter again, I will kill you.

  Bartholemew stood up, grabbed his coat, and headed out to find Daniel Stone.

  ?What do you think happens when you die?? Zephyr asked.

  Trixie was lying on her stomach on her bed, flipping through the pages of Allure magazine and looking at purses and shoes that she would never be able to afford. She didn?t get purses, anyway. She didn?t want to ever be the kind of person who couldn?t carry what she needed in her back pocket. ?You decompose,? Trixie said, and she turned to the next ad.

  ?That is so totally disgusting,? Zephyr said. ?I wonder how long it takes.?

  Trixie had wondered that too, but she wasn?t going to admit it to Zephyr. Every night since his death, Jason had visited her in her bedroom in the darkest part of the night. Sometimes he just stared until she woke up; sometimes he talked to her. Finally he left by blasting through her middle.

  She knew that he hadn?t been buried yet, and maybe that was why he kept coming. Maybe once his body began to break down inside its coffin, he wouldn?t show up at the foot of her bed.

  Since Trixie had returned from the hospital, it had been like old times-Zephyr would come over after school and tell her everything she was missing: the catfight between two cheerleaders who liked the same guy, the substitute teacher in French who couldn?t speak a single word of the language, the sophomore who got hospitalized for anorexia. Zephyr had also been her source of information about how Bethel High was processing Jason?s death. The guidance counselors had led an assembly about teen depression; the principal had gotten on the PA during homeroom announcements to have a moment of memorial silence; Jason?s locker had become a shrine, decorated with notes and stickers and Beanie Babies. It was, Trixie realized, as if Jason had grown larger than life after his death, as if it was going to be even harder now for her to avoid him.

  Zephyr rolled over. ?Do you think it hurts to die??

  Not as much as it hurts to live, Trixie thought.

  ?Do you think we go somewhere?after?? Zephyr asked.

  Trixie closed her magazine. ?I don?t know.?

  ?I wonder if it?s like it is here. If there are popular dead people and geeky dead people. You know.?

  That sounded like high school, and the way Trixie figured it, that was more likely to be hell. ?I guess it?s different for different people,? she said. ?Like, if you died, there?d be an endless supply of Sephora makeup. For Jason, it?s one big hockey rink.?

  ?But do people ever cross over? Do the hockey players ever get to hang out with the people who eat only chocolate? Or the ones who play Nintendo twenty-four/seven??

  ?Maybe there are dances or something,? Trixie said. ?Or a bulletin board, so you know what everyone else is up to, and you can join in if you want and blow it off if you don?t.?

  ?I bet when you eat chocolate in heaven it?s no big deal,? Zephyr said. ?If you can have it whenever you want it, it probably doesn?t taste as good.? She shrugged. ?I bet they all watch us down here, because they know we?ve got it better than them and we?re too stupid to realize it.? She glanced sideways at Trixie. ?Guess what I heard.?

  ?What??

  ?His whole head was bashed in.?

  Trixie felt her stomach turn over. ?That?s just a rumor.?

  ?It?s totally not. Marcia Breen?s brother?s girlfriend is a nurse, and she saw Jason being brought into the hospital.? She popped a bubble with her gum. ?I hope that if he went to heaven, he got a big old bandage or plastic surgery or something.?

  ?What makes you think he?s going to heaven?? Trixie asked.

  Zephyr froze. ?I didn?t mean?I just?? Her gaze slid toward Trixie. ?Trix, are you truly glad he?s dead??

  Trixie stared at her hands in her lap. For a moment, they looked like they belonged to someone else-still, pale, too heavy for the rest of her. She forced herself to open her magazine again, and she pretended she was engrossed in an ad about tampons so that she didn?t have to give Zephyr a reply. Maybe after reading for a while, they would both forget what Zephyr had asked. Maybe after a while, Trixie wouldn?t be afraid of her answer.

  According to Dante, the deeper you got into hell, the colder it was. When Daniel imagined hell, he saw the vast white wasteland of the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta where he?d grown up. Standing on the frozen river, you might see smoke rising in the distance. A Yup?ik Eskimo would know it was open water, steaming where it hit the frigid air, but a trick of the light could make you believe otherwise. You might think you see the breath of the devil.

  When Daniel drew the ninth circle of hell, it was a world of planes and angles, a synchronicity of white lines, a land made of ice. It was a place where the greater effort you made to escape, the more deeply entrenched you were.

  Daniel had just put the finishing touches on the devil?s face when he heard a car pull into the driveway. From the window of his office, he watched Detective Bartholemew get out of his Taurus. He had known it was coming to this, hadn?t he? He had known it the minute he?d walked into that parking lot and found Jason Underhill with Trixie.

  Daniel opened up the front door before the detective could knock. ?Well,? Bartholemew said. ?Tha
t?s what I call service.?

  Daniel tried to channel the easy repartee of social intercourse, but it was like he was fresh out of the village again, bombarded by sensations he didn?t understand: colors and sights and speech he?d never seen or heard before. ?What can I do for you?? he asked finally.

  ?I was wondering if we could talk for a minute,? Bartholemew said.

  No, Daniel thought. But he led the detective inside to the living room and offered him a seat.

  ?Where?s the rest of the family??

  ?Laura?s teaching,? Daniel said. ?Trixie?s upstairs with a friend.?

  ?How?d she take the news about Jason Underhill??

  Was there a right answer to that question? Daniel found himself replaying possible responses in his head before he balanced them on his tongue. ?She was pretty upset. I think she feels partially responsible.?

  ?What about you, Mr. Stone?? the detective asked.

  He thought about the conversation he?d had with Laura just that morning. ?I wanted him to be punished for what he did,? Daniel said. ?But I never wished him dead.?

  The detective stared at him for a long minute. ?Is that so??

  There was a thump overhead; Daniel glanced up. Trixie and Zephyr had been upstairs for about an hour. When Daniel had last checked on them, they were reading magazines and eating Goldfish crackers.

  ?Did you see Jason Friday night?? Detective Bartholemew asked.

  ?Why??

  ?We?re just trying to piece together the approximate time of the suicide.?

  Daniel?s mind spiraled backward. Had Jason said something to the cops about the incident in the woods? Had the guy who?d driven by the parking lot during their fistfight gotten a good look at Daniel? Had there been other witnesses?

  ?No, I didn?t see Jason,? Daniel lied.

  ?Huh. I could have sworn I saw you in town.?

  ?Maybe you did. I took Trixie to the minimart to get some cheese. We were making a pizza for dinner.?

  ?About when was that??

  The detective pulled a pad and pencil out of his pocket; it momentarily stopped Daniel cold. ?Seven,? he said. ?Maybe seven-thirty. We just drove to the store and then we left.?

  ?What about your wife??

  ?Laura? She was working at the college, and then she came home.?

  Bartholemew made a note on his pad. ?So none of you ran into Jason??

  Daniel shook his head.

  Bartholemew put his pad back into his breast pocket. ?Well,? he said, ?then that?s that.?

  ?Sorry I couldn?t help you,? Daniel answered, standing up.

  The detective stood too. ?You must be relieved. Obviously your daughter won?t have to testify as a witness now.?

  Daniel didn?t know how to respond. Just because the rape case wouldn?t proceed didn?t mean that Trixie?s slate would be wiped clean as well. Maybe she wouldn?t testify, but she wouldn?t get back to who she used to be, either.

  Bartholemew headed toward the front door. ?It was pretty crazy in town Friday night, with the Winterfest and all,? he said. ?Did you get what you wanted??

  Daniel went still. ?I beg your pardon??

  ?The cheese. For your pizza.?

  He forced a smile. ?It turned out perfect,? Daniel said.

  When Zephyr left a little while later, Trixie offered to walk her out. She stood on the driveway, shivering, not having bothered with a coat. The sound of Zephyr?s heels faded, and then Trixie couldn?t even see her anymore. She was about to head back inside when a voice spoke from behind. ?It?s good to have someone watching over you, isn?t it??

  Trixie whirled around to find Detective Bartholemew standing in the front yard. He looked like he was freezing, like he?d been waiting for a while. ?You scared me,? she said.

  The detective nodded down the block. ?I see you and your friend are on speaking terms again.?

  ?Yeah. It?s nice.? She wrapped her arms around herself. ?Did you, um, come to talk to my dad??

  ?I already did that. I was sort of hoping to talk to you.?

  Trixie glanced at the window upstairs, glowing yellow, where she knew her father was still working. She wished he was here with her right now. He?d know what to say. And what not to.

  You had to talk to a policeman if he wanted to talk to you, didn?t you? If you said no, he?d immediately know there was something wrong.

  ?Okay,? Trixie said, ?but could we go inside??

  It was weird, leading the detective into their mudroom. She felt like he was boring holes in the back of her shirt with his eyes, like he knew something about Trixie she didn?t know about herself yet.

  ?How are you feeling?? Detective Bartholemew asked.

  Trixie instinctively pulled her sleeves lower, concealing the fresh cuts she?d made in the shower. ?I?m okay.?

  Detective Bartholemew sat down on a teak bench. ?What happened to Jason?don?t blame yourself.?

  Tears sprang into her throat, dark and bitter.

  ?You know, you remind me a little of my daughter,? the detective said. He smiled at Trixie, then shook his head. ?Being here?it didn?t come easy to her, either.?

  Trixie ducked her head. ?Can I ask you something??

  ?Sure.?

  She pictured Jason?s ghost: blued by the moon, bloody and distant. ?Did it hurt? How he died??

  ?No. It was fast.?

  He was lying-Trixie knew it. She hadn?t realized that a policeman might lie. He didn?t say anything else for such a long time that Trixie looked up at him, and that?s when she realized he was waiting for her to do just that. ?Is there something you want to tell me, Trixie? About Friday night??

  Once, Trixie had been in the car when her father ran over a squirrel. It came out of nowhere, and the instant before impact Trixie had seen the animal look at them with the understanding that there was nowhere left to go. ?What about Friday night??

  ?Something happened between your father and Jason, didn?t it.?

  ?No.?

  The detective sighed. ?Trixie, we already know about the fight.?

  Had her father told him? Trixie glanced up at the ceiling, wishing she were Superman, with X-ray vision, or able to communicate telepathically like Professor Xavier from the X-Men. She wanted to know what her father had said; she wanted to know what she should say. ?Jason started it,? she explained, and once she began, the words tumbled out of her. ?He grabbed me. My father pulled him away. They fought with each other.?

  ?What happened after that??

  ?Jason ran away?and we went home.? She hesitated. ?Were we the last people to see him?you know?alive??

  ?That?s what I?m trying to figure out.?

  It was possible that this was why Jason kept coming back to her now. Because if Trixie could still see him, then maybe he wouldn?t be gone. She looked up at Bartholemew. ?My father was just protecting me. You know that, right??

  ?Yeah,? the detective said. ?Yeah, I do.?

  Trixie waited for him to say something else, but Bartholemew seemed to be in a different place, staring at the bricks on the floor of the mudroom. ?Are we?done??

  Detective Bartholemew nodded. ?Yes. Thanks, Trixie. I?ll let myself out.?

  Trixie didn?t know what else there was to say, so she opened the door that led into the house and closed it behind her, leaving the detective alone in the mudroom. She was halfway upstairs when Bartholemew reached for her father?s boot, stamped the sole on an ink pad he?d taken from his pocket, and pressed it firmly onto a piece of blank white paper.

  The medical examiner called while Bartholemew was waiting for his order at the drive-through window of a Burger King. ?Merry Christmas,? Anjali said when he answered his cell phone.

  ?You?re about a week early,? Bartholemew said.

  The girl in the window blinked at him. ?Ketchupmustardsaltor-pepper??

  ?No, thanks.?

  ?I haven?t even told you what I?ve got yet,? Anjali said.

  ?I hope it?s a big fat evidentiary link to
murder.?

  In the window of the drive-through, the girl adjusted her paper hat. ?That?s five thirty-three.?

  ?Where are you?? Anjali said.

  Bartholemew opened his wallet and took out a twenty. ?Clogging my arteries.?

  ?We started to clean off the body,? the medical examiner explained. ?The dirt on the victim?s hand? Turns out it?s not dirt after all. It?s blood.?

  ?So he scraped his hand, trying to hold on??

  The girl at the counter leaned closer and snapped the bill out of his fingers.

  ?I can ABO type a dried stain at the lab, and this was O positive. Jason was B positive.? She let that sink in. ?It was blood, Mike, but not Jason Underhill?s.?

  Bartholemew?s mind started to race: If they had the murderer?s blood, they could link a suspect to the crime. It would be easy enough to get a DNA sample from Daniel Stone when he was least expecting it-saliva taken from an envelope he?d sealed or from the rim of a soda can tossed into the trash.

  Stone?s boot print hadn?t been a match, but Bartholemew didn?t see that as any particular deterrent to an arrest. There had been hundreds of folks in town Friday night; the question wasn?t who had walked across the bridge, but who hadn?t. Blood evidence, on the other hand, could be damning. Bartholemew pictured Daniel Stone on the icy bridge, going after Jason Underhill. He imagined Jason trying to hold him off. He thought back to his conversation with Daniel, the Band-Aid covering the knuckles of his right hand.

  ?I?m on my way,? Bartholemew told Anjali.

  ?Hey,? the Burger King girl said. ?What about your food??

  ?I?m not hungry,? he said, pulling out of the pickup line.

  ?Don?t you want change?? the girl called.

  All the time, Mike thought, but he didn?t answer.

 

  ?Daddy,? Trixie asked, as she was elbow-deep in the sink washing dishes, ?what were you like as a kid??

  Her father did not glance up from the kitchen table he was wiping with a sponge. ?Nothing like you are,? he said. ?Thank God.?

  Trixie knew her father didn?t like to talk about growing up in Alaska, but she was starting to think that she needed to hear about it. She had been under the impression that her dad was of the typical suburban genus and species: the kind of guy who mowed his lawn every Saturday and read the sports section before the others, the type of father who was gentle enough to hold a monarch butterfly between his cupped palms so that Trixie could count the black spots on its wings. But that easygoing man would never have been capable of punching Jason repeatedly, even as Jason was bleeding and begging him to stop. That man had never been so consumed by fury that it twisted his features, made him unfamiliar.

  Trixie decided the answer must be in the part of her father?s life that he never wanted to share. Maybe Daniel Stone had been a whole different person, one who vanished just as Trixie arrived. She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.

  ?What do you mean?? she asked. ?Why am I so different from you??

  ?It was a compliment. I was a pain in the ass at your age.?