Red Leaves

  He was getting three million dollars. What was she warning him about?

  Why would Nathan give the money away? All that money must have seemed like a fortune to a pauper orphan from Texas. Yet he had given his share away as if it were an extra shovel in the sandbox. Had he been angry with her for not leaving him everything? But surely his pointless gesture would mean nothing to Kristina when she was dead.

  If he had not killed her for the money, why would he kill her? And if he had killed her for the money, why would he give the money away?

  One night, Spencer thought, he could have killed her. He could have slipped out unnoticed with the pillow under his coat and waited for her in the bushes near the bridge. Maybe that’s why he went to Frankie’s the afternoon before Kristina died. Not to see his friend but to walk through the woods, to plan his attack, to time himself getting back, throwing out the pillow, maybe even the coat. He could have slipped out that night, waited for her, killed her, quickly walked back through the woods, thrown the pillow and his gloves into the trash compactor, maybe even brought a garbage bag with him, put his coat, gloves, and the pillow in the garbage bag, and then tossed the bag in the compactor. This way he wouldn’t have to return the coat and gloves to his room. He would just go back into the lounge where the kid was sleeping and pretend he was there all along, watching TV.

  Spencer laughed out loud. His tortured mind was overacting. All he wanted to do was ease his pain. Even drinking heavily before bed was only good while he was actually drinking.

  And still he returned to Nathan Sinclair.

  Nathan waited in the woods for her, and then called her, and she came, because she didn’t fear him and she didn’t fear the night with him, nor the dark woods, nor the snow. She came to him in the snow. Did she kiss him? Did she smile? Did her eyes, looking at him, know it was the last minute of her life? Did she get scared and run?

  Did she scream?

  Spencer got stuck on her scream – night in and night out. What if she screamed and no one heard? To quiet her, he shoved her helpless body to the ground and knelt on top of her and put a pillow to her face. And she tried to roll away from his hands but couldn’t move with her bad ribs, bad shoulder. Spencer didn’t know, but he may have cried in the night, thinking about Kristina fighting against death.

  She makes you will your own destruction.

  It made no sense. Why would Nathan kill the only person who took care of him, who loved and nurtured him, who took him out of the tattooed gutter of juvenile courts and paid to change his name and move him to live close to herself?

  He couldn’t have wanted her money, for he gave away his share as if it were a quarter to a homeless bum.

  Why would he kill her? Spencer understood why Conni would. The irrational emotion was blazing in Conni’s eyes. She had been lied to so often and so long, she could no longer tell reason from insanity. Everything was jumbled up. She was out of control the first time she went to the bridge. The second time she decided to be more thorough. She brought props. Spencer could understand that.

  But why would Nathan kill Kristina?

  Then he remembered his own words to Kristina Kim the Sunday afternoon they had coffee together. ‘Power and intimidation,’ Spencer had said to Kristina. Suffocation was an act of power. During their final years together, Kristina had all the money, therefore all the power. Albert didn’t want to have the money doled out to him anymore by a girl who may have been fed up, who may have wanted out. Who knows, maybe Kristina stopped loving Albert, maybe that’s why she didn’t leave him all her money in the will. Albert wanted the last interaction between them to be one of him wielding his power over her.

  Conni’s words, ‘I didn’t do it,’ started to ring in Spencer’s head like church bells, unexpectedly breaking into a high-pitched song and bruising Spencer’s insides.

  His work was suffering.

  Finally, after an acute episode that lasted most of a rainy Sunday in March, Spencer sent Conni a short note, saying he hoped to come and see her soon. A few weeks later, having given her ample time to receive his letter, Spencer set out for New Hampshire.

  It had been two years since he had seen her, and she had changed considerably. Gone was the young girl. Her face was drawn now and full of bitter disappointment. Gone was the happy smile, gone the long blond hair. She was thinner, paler, tougher-looking. Conni was twenty-three; in another two and a half years she’d be eligible for parole. She smoked heavily now, as she had once nervously pulled out her eyebrows.

  ‘How’ve you been, Conni?’ said Spencer, sitting down across from her. They were separated by a glass partition, but they could see and hear each other without phones.

  ‘Fine, as you see. You look different.’

  Spencer ran his hand through his hair. ‘My hair – it’s not a crew cut anymore.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. You don’t look as tough.’

  ‘Very deceiving,’ said Spencer.

  Conni smiled. ‘You look good. Really.’

  Spencer hadn’t come three hundred miles to talk about himself.

  ‘Get a lot of visitors?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, my parents come all the time. My brother comes, like, five times a year, which is pretty good for him, since he lives in LA and all.’ She paused. ‘That’s not what you meant, is it?’

  Spencer shook his head.

  ‘My lawyer comes, too. Not too often. If I’d been convicted, we would have appealed and then I would see him a lot more often. Now there’s nothing to appeal, and I’m out one visitor.’ She paused again. ‘It’s nice of you to come.’

  He waved her off. ‘It wasn’t nice of me to not come for so long.’

  ‘Well, why should you come?’ Conni said mildly. ‘The district attorneys don’t come.’

  ‘Of course they don’t. But they …’ Spencer was stumped. They what? They don’t wake up with sweats?

  ‘What, detective?’

  ‘Spencer. Call me Spencer.’

  ‘AH right, Spencer,’ said Conni. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘I came …’ He looked down at the gray countertop. ‘Well, you know, I’ve been thinking of you a little bit.’

  ‘You have?’ She smiled. ‘Good or bad?’

  ‘Neither. I’ve been thinking of you here, been thinking of you back at Dartmouth, too. Do you ever see your old friends?’

  ‘You know, I was just going to ask you the same question. Do you ever see my old friends?’

  ‘No, never. Haven’t been back to New Hampshire since the sentencing.’

  She fell quiet, as if she were struggling with how to find a way to say what she wanted and needed.

  Spencer wanted to help her, but he didn’t know how either. Years of work had made him adept at interrogation, not conversation. And years of no personal relationships had made him wary and introverted.

  They sat there for what seemed like a long time, while Spencer battled with himself. Finally he looked at her and quietly said, ‘You didn’t do it, did you, Constance?’

  Conni’s voice cracked when she replied. ‘No,’ she said.

  Spencer nodded. Somehow he was finding it easy to believe her. ‘You did try to kill her a year before her murder?’ In his detective mode, Spencer was more comfortable.

  ‘Sort of, but not really.’

  ‘So why did you plea-bargain?’

  ‘It was either that or face a life sentence on conviction. Five years somehow seemed better than a life.’ Conni bowed her head.

  ‘Conni, if you didn’t do it, you should’ve stuck to your guns and gone through with the trial. Taken the stand. Told your side. Innocent people don’t usually get convicted.’

  ‘But sometimes they do, don’t they?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Spencer allowed.

  ‘Spencer, listen, there’s nothing I can tell you except the same old thing, and you must be so tired of hearing it.’

  Spencer, who’d heard the same old thing day in and day out for the last two years, nodded.


  Conni leaned into him. ‘Go look up Albert, Detective O’Malley. Look up Albert. See what he’s up to these days.’

  Spencer’s face hardened and he leaned back. ‘I doubt Albert’s up to much.’

  ‘Look him up, detective. Find out what Albert Maplethorpe is doing these days.’

  Placing his hands palms down on the table, Spencer sighed. ‘What do you think he’s doing these days, Conni?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘But he has never come to visit me here.’

  ‘Did you think he would?’

  ‘I thought he would, yes.’ And she almost started to cry; her eyes remained dry, but her face became contorted.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something, detective, something I haven’t told anybody before today, not even my brother, not my parents, not Jim, nobody.’

  She paused.

  ‘The night Krissy died, I ran out. I was half crazed with anger, with jealousy. Kristina and I had just had a big fight. I went looking for Albert, but he was nowhere to be found, and neither was Kristina. It was just too much coincidence, and it was always the same. When she was missing, so was he, and vice versa. And now again.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘After one. Maybe one-ten, one-fifteen.’

  Spencer was trembling. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You don’t understand what I was feeling. I had called Albert’s room at twelve-forty five. Busy. I called again, and again, and again. Busy, busy, busy. Finally, I went up there a little after one. You think I didn’t knock on Kristina’s door? Of course I did. Only the dog was there. Then I ran down to the lounge. Tim was there, but Albert wasn’t. I didn’t stay long, but there was no noise in the hall, no noise coming from the bathroom.’ She paused. ‘I did notice a beer bottle on one of the tables. But it could have been anybody’s.’

  ‘It could have, yes. But it could also have been Albert’s.’

  ‘Yes, but where was he? How long does it take a guy to pee? I ran back upstairs, called his room again, called Frankie, called Jim. I was crazed. I thought he and Kristina were together. I took my coat and ran outside.’

  ‘You didn’t just run outside. You put on your coat.’ Spencer was thinking about hiding the pillow Kristina had been killed with.

  ‘It was snowing outside. I just threw it on.’

  ‘Did you put a pillow under your coat?’

  ‘A pillow? What are you talking about?’

  ‘A pillow. A little twelve-inch-square pillow. Soft. Just enough to cover Kristina’s face with.’

  Sighing, Conni said, ‘No, I didn’t. Can I tell you what happened?’

  Gently Spencer said, ‘Please.’

  ‘We’d just had a fight.’

  ‘I know. Your skin was under her nails.’

  ‘Yes, we had a fight. It was terrible, I don’t know what came over me. She had as usual denied everything –’ Conni paused, hurt and conflicted. ‘Well, not everything. I think she really was trying to tell me the truth. I just didn’t want to hear it. That’s why I got so upset. I thought, sure, tell me the truth, I want to know, but when she told me, I just freaked. I realized I didn’t want to know. I wanted to believe Albert. Why should I believe her? He was my boyfriend. Who was she to me?’

  ‘You must have suspected it was true about them.’

  ‘I didn’t want to think about it, Spencer,’ Conni said firmly. ‘I chose not to think about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ She seemed upset by the question. ‘Because,’ she answered sadly, ‘then I would’ve realized that Albert was lying. I would’ve realized that he had every reason to lie and had been lying to me for a long time, and if I realized that, I would have had to break up with him – and I didn’t want to break up with him. You know?’

  Spencer was incredulous. ‘Even if it meant living an out-and-out lie?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Conni quietly. ‘Even if it meant that.’

  Spencer had nothing to say.

  Conni continued, ‘Anyway, after we had the fight, I left, but then I couldn’t find him, then her, and I – I just went crazy. I ran out, looking for them.

  ‘I ran out, first to the parking lot, then down the stairs that led to the boat ramp, then back up the stairs, and I went to look for her on her bridge. I didn’t see her or him. I started calling her name. I went to the end of the bridge and looked to my right.’ She swallowed. ‘You know, I thought I saw something. Someone. I wasn’t sure. I don’t know if you’ve been back behind Feldberg at night. It’s dark.’

  Speechlessly, Spencer nodded. He knew the darkness behind Feldberg.

  ‘But still, I thought I saw something moving in the woods. I slowed down and moved down the path. There was no path anymore, only snow, and my footsteps made no sound. Suddenly I got scared. I can’t explain it. Just scared. Like I was a child out in the dark with the boogie man. It was whisper-quiet. Then I heard something. Or thought I heard something.’ Conni coughed. ‘I thought I heard the breaking of branches down the slope in the woods. Like footsteps.’

  Spencer stopped breathing, hanging on to her every word. ‘The noises, they could’ve come from down below, from Tuck Drive.’

  Shaking her head, Conni said, ‘No. There were branches breaking. And they sounded very close. So close that I thought I might walk into someone. I stopped hearing the footsteps because my heart was pounding too hard, you know?’

  Spencer knew.

  ‘I had forgotten my anger, my jealousy, everything. I was just terrified. I stopped walking and listened for the noise again. There it was, but much farther away now. It was the sound of someone walking fast through the forest, toward the dorms.’

  ‘Did you see anything?’ said Spencer, literally at the edge of his seat.

  ‘You mean who or what it was? No. It could have been a wild animal. But it didn’t sound like one. Not that I know what one sounds like. I just know what a person sounds like. And this sounded like a person walking fast through the thick bushes. I didn’t hear any footsteps, only branches breaking.’ Conni paused. ‘The noise got fainter and fainter and eventually died out. Weird as it sounds, I wasn’t any less scared. There was something else I feared. Like … badness. Evil. I can’t explain it.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Spencer. He had no doubt at all that Conni Tobias was telling the truth. ‘Did you turn around and go back?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘Not then, anyway. I was just so scared in the darkness. There was no other noise coming from down the hill. I didn’t think there was anyone else down there. I just wanted to see if I was right, if there were footsteps, or if I was just imagining awful things, the way people sometimes do in the dark.’

  Spencer nodded.

  ‘I was taking little steps, keeping to the path behind Feldberg, trying not to make any noise myself. I reached just about the place I first heard the sound come from. I stopped and looked down the hill, but it was very dark. Not pitch-black, you understand. The trees were pitch-black. But there was light coming from some of the windows in Feldberg. The snow reflected light back to me. It wasn’t dark dark out. I could see the white snow and the cluster of pines about twenty feet down the hill. I took a few steps, then a few more. I wanted to see but didn’t. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘All too well,’ said Spencer, holding his breath.

  ‘I walked down to that cluster of trees. It took me, like, I don’t know, five – six minutes maybe. I’d take a small step, then stop and listen. Another small step. Listen again. There was no noise, I just wanted to be sure I hadn’t gone deaf or something.’ Conni swallowed hard and stopped looking at Spencer.

  He was transfixed on her face.

  ‘I was about five feet away when I saw, I thought I saw, I wasn’t sure, it’s only later that I can say I saw, but back then, I wasn’t sure at all of anything, I thought I saw … a pair of black boots.’

  Spencer breathed heavily out and fell back against the chair. ‘No,’ he whispered.

&
nbsp; Conni still didn’t look at him. ‘I couldn’t even place them at first. They made no sense to me. They were like two ink blots, I couldn’t place them at all. They almost looked like small tree stumps, or ears sticking out of the ground. But I stopped walking because I got scared again. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t take another step. Even before I realized what they were I couldn’t take another step.’

  Spencer said nothing, breathing heavily, almost panting.

  ‘It took a couple of seconds, but I remember my thoughts exactly, because when it became clear to me that the black things looked like boots, it took me a second to place the boots, and the very next second I pushed back so hard, I fell in the snow and couldn’t even get up. I crawled on my hands and knees up the hill, scrambled. Then I turned my back on what I’d just seen. I don’t know how I turned my back, but it was like trying to frantically wake up out of a nightmare. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. When I was at the top, I stood and, never turning around, ran back home. I wasn’t walking hurriedly on the bridge, detective, as Frankie said. I was running with all my might. Thank God I left my door open. I couldn’t have used the key, my hands were shaking so badly. No one was there. It took me a while to calm down. Then I called Albert’s room, busy. Frankie’s room, Jim’s, no answer. Then I went down to the lounge again and found Albert. I was so relieved to find him. He told me he’d been in the lounge all along, and I believed him.’

  Spencer didn’t say anything for a long time.

  ‘Did you see – her?’ he asked at last in a small voice. Naked, dead, with the snow falling on her.

  Conni shook her head vigorously. ‘Absolutely not. I never got past the black boots.’

  Spencer wanted to splash water on his face. That’s why Conni hadn’t looked for Kristina when they came back from Thanksgiving. She had known there was no point.

  ‘Conni,’ he asked, ‘why did you keep this to yourself? Especially in the light of what followed? Had it been nothing, I’d understand your not telling anybody, but since Kristina was found dead, why didn’t you say something?’