Red Leaves

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Kristina.

  ‘He denied everything.’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘Well, now I have a choice - either I believe my boyfriend, who I love and who I’m going to marry, or you, just a friend. And I have decided for better or worse to believe Albert, because it’s what I can live with, okay? And I never want to talk about it again.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kristina. Inside, she was sick. Sick for Conni, sick for herself, and furious at Albert.

  Still holding her cheek, Conni backed away, and then turned around and ran down the hall and through the fire doors.

  Kristina wanted to say to Conni, okay, so you think you figured him out. You alternate between going off the deep end and swimming in denial. And when you snap, you never snap at him, only at me.

  Kristina sat on her bed and thought about Conni.

  Then she looked at the clock.

  Twelve thirty.

  Kristina slowly took her clothes off. The feeling in her chest was so strong and so despondent that she slumped onto the bed. She grabbed Conni’s bottle, held it between her bare legs, and unscrewed the cap. She was going to take a slug, but the open bottle disgusted her. Opening her legs slightly, she let the bottle fall to the floor. She didn’t want that foul drink, not even for a walk on the bridge, not even to ease her heart.

  Kristina turned off the lights and went to the window. The soft, untouched snow was beautiful. The first snow of the year. Ordinarily, many students would be out, but tonight they had all gone home or were asleep. The Feldberg Library across from Hinman was still lighted. Kristina wondered if Frankie was really waiting for her to walk the wall.

  She was going to do it. There was something about walking that wall in the snow while drunk that rid her of all the bad inside her. She felt like a flightless bird, ready for takeoff, one with nature, her footsteps softened by the snow. The alcohol in her blood steadied her step so that if at any moment she was to meet her maker, she’d be ready.

  After yesterday, Kristina had realized she wasn’t ready at all.

  And today she was scared. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered. ‘Forgive me for living, for not wanting to see You yet, for wanting to live. Dear God. I want to live well. I just don’t know how.’ She bowed her head. ‘Please show me how.’

  Yesterday she had been given another chance at life, and she was going to take it. She had been given a chance to do right, to live right. But how?

  Give up Albert, she thought. Give him up. Let Conni have him, let her have him and get on with your life. Without him.

  The yellow streetlights cast a lonely hue on the blue-white snow.

  Usually, she walked the bridge without shoes, but that was before she had the black boots. She finally had something decent to wear. Her ribs and shoulder hurt and the boots were a bitch to put on with only one arm working, but she slowly managed.

  She had laced one boot when there was a knock on the door.

  Her heart started racing. She was panting even before the second knock.

  Kristina didn’t want to open the door. But Aristotle’s tail wagged as it wagged for only one person, and Kristina wanted to say have a happy holiday to him. Have a great wonderful holiday at Cold Spring Harbor.

  Outside her door stood Albert.

  ‘Come in,’ she said to him, moving her naked, one-booted body to face him, desperately wanting to touch him.

  ‘Came to see how you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m doing great,’ she said, moving back inside the room and sitting down on the bed near her other boot.

  ‘I thought you’d be walking your wall,’ he said. ‘You never could resist a dare.’ He carelessly plopped himself down in the lounge chair and looked around the room. His eyes stopped at the bottle of Southern Comfort, which had leaked into the carpet.

  Kristina said quietly, ‘Where are we going, Albert?’

  ‘Going nowhere, Rocky. You know that.’ He looked out the window, then reached over and closed it. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.

  ‘Leave it open,’ Kristina told him. ‘I get so hot at night.’

  He got up. ‘Listen, if I don’t see you tomorrow, have a great Thanksgiving.’

  ‘Yeah,’ answered Kristina, looking away from him, ready to cry. ‘Thanks. You, too. You have a good one.’

  ‘You sure you don’t want to come with us?’

  Now she looked up. ‘Yeah, I’m sure, Albert. Sure.’

  He came over to her, but Kristina backed away from his hand. She looked up at him with a mixture of anger, regret, and love, all doing battle on the frontline of her soul.

  Albert reached out to touch her, but she backed away farther and he stopped. ‘Let me help you with your boot,’ he said gently.

  Kristina let him. He knelt down in front of her, and she gave him her foot. She was naked and she saw him looking at her with longing, his lips slightly parted.

  ‘Do you want me to lace it up?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, and Albert did, kneeling in front of her for a few extra moments. His hand reached out to caress her thighs, but she closed her legs and tried to move away. He lifted his hand and touched her face.

  ‘What happened to your cheeks? They’re all red.’

  ‘You, Albert. You happened to my cheeks,’ said Kristina.

  He didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer. Getting up off the floor, he moved to go. ‘I’ll see you, Rocky.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Kristina said, turning her face away from him. ‘See you.’

  She felt him watching her for a couple of seconds and then he left.

  With her boots on, she fell back on the bed as the ceiling swam in front of her eyes. Please don’t cry, she said to herself. Stop feeling this way. Cheer up, you’re going out in subfreezing temperatures. If that doesn’t brighten your spirits, nothing will.

  In a few minutes Kristina got up, prodding Aristotle with her foot on the way out, and headed down the stairs.

  She walked out the side entrance. The cold and blowing snow hit her. She hastily wrapped one arm around her breasts. I’d better do this quickly, she thought. But she knew she couldn’t do it quickly. She must watch every move and walk as if she were in slow motion. She had spent the day delirious with pain, rambling and tossing with bad feelings. She wanted the cold to numb her, to make her feel better.

  Kristina looked up at Feldberg Library, trying to see Frankie by one of the windows. He was her nightwatchman, but Frankie hadn’t said he’d be waiting for her all night. Kristina smiled to ward off the spirits and crossed herself as she came to stand by the head of the bridge.

  Up you go, Kristina, up you go. The stone ledge was three feet high and nearly two feet wide. She slowly climbed on top of it, favoring her right knee, and stood up. She tried to extend both her arms at her sides before she took a step. Only the right arm obeyed her.

  With the left arm at her side, Kristina extended her right arm, and, trembling, took two, then three, then four tentative steps, whispering, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear the very stones prate of my whereabout. At this end, if she fell, it wouldn’t be bad. It was only three feet down to the bridge on the right of her and about the same down to the snow-covered ground on the left of her. Then the embankment on the left got much steeper, eventually stopping at the utility driveway. Kristina moved along the ledge, suspended seventy-five feet in the air. She was a naked bird with her one wing outstretched, her long legs stepping carefully, her black boots making slow and deliberate marks on the snow-covered wall, her black eyes fixed ahead, whispering haltingly, And take the present horror from the time, which now suits with it.

  The black boots were helping her gain traction, but fear raged in her heart. Whiles I threat, he lives. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. She shivered and shifted to one side, her right arm insufficient to keep her balance. Against all reason, she tried to lift her left arm, and the sudden and sharp pain made her jerk involuntarily, and when she jerked she slip
ped on the snow and fell.

  She slipped sideways and backward, hitting her right leg on the sharp side of the stone. She thought her heart would explode. For a moment she just sat on the ledge in an awkward position, too terrified to move, and then she inched her way down onto the bridge.

  Oh, God, oh God, oh, God, she kept stuttering. Her heart would not calm down. God, that was close; God, that was close.

  Kristina had never been this scared, not even during the crash.

  Well, this is no fun, she thought. Losing to Frankie in poker is more fun. Thank God I’m all right. Amid the superficial relief, black fear beat her from the inside out.

  She walked unsteadily to the end of the bridge, whispering inaudibly, ‘I go, and it is done: the bell invites me. Hear it not, Kristina; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.’

  A little path wound behind Feldberg Library at the edge of the pine woods. One yellow bulb lighted a service door to the building.

  I’m crazy, Kristina thought. Crazy. Never again. Never, ever again. Spencer Patrick O’Malley, I promise, I will live long enough to have dinner with you.

  Brushing the snow off her chest, Kristina Kim crossed herself and thanked God. As she began to walk back to Hinman, she thought she heard a voice calling her. ‘Kristina… Kristina...’ She looked around but couldn’t see from where the voice was coming. I must be imagining things, Kristina thought, peering into the darkness, her heart slipping into the abyss.

  II

  SPENCER PATRICK O’MALLEY

  ‘Vox Clamantis in Deserto’

  (A Voice Crying in the Wilderness)

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  - Dylan Thomas

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In the Woods and on the Wall

  Spencer was looking into Kristina Kim’s empty auto accident file, drinking his seventh cup of coffee, when the dispatcher buzzed him on the intercom. He had been thinking about Kristina all week, hoping she wasn’t going to stand him up tomorrow night. He hadn’t heard from her and it was now Thursday, a week after Thanksgiving.

  After he heard from the other driver’s insurance company last Tuesday, he called Kristina’s room. When no one answered, he assumed she was in class. When he called from home Tuesday evening and again there was no answer, he assumed she hadn’t returned from her Thanksgiving break.

  But what if she had returned and was just blowing him off? The unsettled feeling didn’t tie in with what he had been thinking when he had last seen her – that Kristina seemed as pleased to say yes as Spencer was to hear it. Had he been wrong? He didn’t think so.

  ‘Trace, we just got a call about something at the college.’

  ‘Something?’ said Spencer absentmindedly. Then he became alert, then irritated. ‘"Something” is very vague, Kyle. What the heck does that mean?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t have more information,’ Kyle said. ‘A student called up, real nervous, saying he thinks he may have found something that may belong to a person. Something like that.’

  Spencer rolled his eyes. ‘Like what?’

  Kyle was quiet. ‘Look, it’s probably nothing, but go check it out.’

  ‘Did you get a name?’

  ‘Yeah. Milton Johnson’s the kid that called.’

  Spencer closed Kristina’s accident file and stuffed it into his drawer. Then he got up. ‘Kyle, who’d you send already?’

  ‘Fell was in the area. I sent him.’

  ‘Great,’ Spencer muttered. Then, louder, ‘Why don’t you radio him and tell him I’m coming right over.’ And then, quieter, while putting on his parka, ‘Maybe, possibly, they think…’

  On the way out, Spencer knocked on the chief’s door. The door was slightly ajar, but Spencer had been trained never to presume, never even to nudge the door.

  ‘Chief?’

  A grunt from inside the office. That was a good sign. Spencer came in. ‘Chief, I’m going to run down to the college. Some kid called about finding something weird.’

  ‘Weird?’ Chief Ken Gallagher said gruffly. Graying and overweight, he was sitting behind a shiny metal desk, and Spencer couldn’t tell what looked more out of place, the desk or the chief. Spencer and Gallagher were both Irish, and in the spirit of Irish camaraderie, they occasionally had a drink of whiskey together. Spencer became certain the chief had a soft spot for him when Spencer was promoted to detective-sergeant, over others like his partner, Will Baker, who had seniority. But the chief was as brusque with him as with everyone else in the department.

  ‘So what are you waiting for? The boys from Concord?’

  ‘Certainly not, sir,’ Spencer quickly responded.

  ‘Good. Go check it out. Ask Will for help.’

  Spencer didn’t think he’d need his partner’s help to examine a lost-and-found item. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Spencer was nearly through the glass exit doors when he turned around and called out to Kyle, behind the bulletproof glass of his dispatcher’s office, ‘Where?’

  ‘What?’ said Kyle.

  ‘Where am I going?’ Spencer shouted, walking back a few steps.

  The dispatcher checked his log. ‘In the woods, behind Feldberg Library. Between Tuck Drive and Feldberg.’

  Spencer left. He didn’t know where Feldberg Library was, but he knew Tuck Drive, leading down to the river, was a dark, winding road, nestled between hundred-foot-tall pines. He would drive there and hope to spot Fell’s police vehicle – a white Crown Victoria with cornflower-blue stripes.

  As Spencer walked to his car, something began to gnaw at him. Feldberg Library. Hinman was close to the river, it was one of the half-dozen or so dorms in what was called the River Cluster. The woods near Hinman dropped down onto Tuck Drive below.

  Hinman. Spencer walked faster.

  His light blue Chevy Impala, rusty and beat-up, was parked on the side of the building next to the Hanover Country Club and golf course. For the last several years, the police and fire departments had shared offices in the modern building. Spencer had liked it better when police had their own space. In the old building the desks and the chairs were old, the floorboards were old, the window frames needed paint, the heavy wooden doors creaked, and the toilets had the high-up tanks and the nineteenth-century pull chains. It wasn’t sterile and it wasn’t clean, but Spencer considered it fitting for working and living in a small old town.

  Backing out of his space, he made a right on Route 10 and drove carefully to the college. The roads, even covered with salt, were slippery. He made a right at College Street, getting momentarily stuck behind a double-parked driver waiting for a space. Spencer beeped the horn; the guy didn’t move. One reeling, high-pitched noise from Spencer’s red siren, however, and the other driver decided parking could wait.

  The small Christmas trees that lined the common square in front of Baker Library looked festive with snow on them. At night the trees sparkled, with Christmas lights reflected in the snow on their branches. Spencer had sometimes seen the trees glittering on December evenings.

  Tuck Drive was empty. He drove toward the boathouse on the Connecticut River but saw nothing. Not even Fell’s police car.

  The road, the trees, the boathouse were covered with snow. The town had had a week of freezing weather after the blizzard before Thanksgiving that had covered Hanover with twenty-six inches of winter. Last night, everyone had been expecting more snow, but only one or two inches had fallen.

  Turning his car around, Spencer drove back up Tuck Drive. Through the trees up on a hill past the turning with the bridge hanging over the service drive, he saw a small crowd of people. He recognized Fell’s hat and the black shirt of his uniform. Spencer parked his car on Tuck Drive, left the police lights flashing, and started up the hill.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ Fell yelled, when he saw Spencer. ‘Careful.’

  Fell was telling him to be careful. It was almost humorous, except that Ray Fell was very serious. As if Spencer didn’t know how to be careful. Circumventing the
cluster of people by about thirty feet, Spencer made his way up the hill.

  Snow seeped into Spencer’s boots, melting into his socks and making his feet first cold, then wet. Damn boots. Not worth the cow they were cut from.

  ‘What’s up?’ Spencer said, coming up fast to Fell.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ replied Fell. ‘I’m keeping the people at bay.’

  Spencer looked at the handful of students gathered around, not moving anywhere except from foot to foot. They didn’t look as though they needed to be kept at bay. One of the boys stood a little apart from the rest, looking forlorn. Spencer made a mental note. That was probably Milton.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Spencer.

  ‘Don’t know yet. I was waiting for one of you guys to arrive.’

  ‘Where’s your partner?’

  ‘Out sick.’

  ‘Where’s Milton?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The student who called,’ Spencer said patiently. ‘Milton Johnson.’

  Fell pointed to the forlorn-looking boy. Spencer nodded. ‘Have you talked to him?’

  ‘Yeah. He pointed me to over there.’ Fell waved down the hill. ‘I don’t know, Sergeant Tracy. I think he’s just imagining things. I didn’t see anything.’

  Feeling less patient, Spencer said, ‘That’s fine, Ray. I’ll go check it out. Why don’t you go to the car and get us police tape and some sheets, just in case, all right?’

  ‘Sheets?’

  ‘Yes, Ray, so we don’t walk all over the evidence.’

  Spencer watched him lumber off around Feldberg, then turned to the woods. The birches and the oaks were gray. The conifers were heavy with snow. Spencer saw old tracks on the ground, under an inch of yesterday’s new snow, leading down off the path. He walked between two young Norwegian pines and stopped. His eyes followed the footprints, five, ten, fifteen feet down the hill to a cluster of conifers. There was something there. Squinting to see better, he reached into his pockets to get his notepad and pen. His hands were cold, and he kept fumbling while looking downhill. What is that? he thought, his heart beginning to thunder in his chest. What is that?