‘Does it still count if you helped me?’ he asked, as they stood together.
‘I just walked with you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t carry you.’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘you kind of did. And we haven’t even been properly introduced.’
‘My name’s Amanda.’
‘I’m Charlie Parker.’
‘Winter. That’s my second name. Amanda Winter.’
‘Thank you, Amanda Winter. You just moved here, right?’
He turned back in the direction from which they’d come, and she turned with him.
‘Yes, me and my mom.’
‘What do you think of it?’
‘It’s pretty, but I miss my friends, and my grandma.’
‘And you’re not in school?’
‘I’ve been sick.’
‘Ah. I know what that’s like.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘You first.’
‘The doctors aren’t sure. I get real tired, and then I get sick, and it’s hard for me to move.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s not so bad. I just miss a lot of school. What about you? Why are you sick?’
‘I had an accident.’
‘In a car?’
‘No. At home.’
‘In that house?’
She pointed to his roof in the distance, just visible over her own because the road ascended slightly to the south.
‘No, at another one. I’m just staying here while I get better. My real home is down in Scarborough. You know where that is?’
He was walking more confidently now. Maybe moving the bag of stones along, even just a little, had energized him.
‘Near Portland,’ said Amanda. ‘I’ve been there. To Portland, I mean. Not Scarborough.’
‘Did you like Portland?’
‘It was okay. We had ice cream.’
‘Beal’s?’
‘Maybe. It was down near the water, on a corner.’
‘Yeah, that’s Beal’s. They make good ice cream. I take my daughter there sometimes.’
‘You have a daughter?’
Again, Amanda returned to her dream. There was something about the girl she’d seen, something familiar …
‘Yes. She lives in Vermont with her mom.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Samantha, but I just call her Sam. I think her mom calls her Samantha when she’s in trouble.’
‘My mom calls me Amanda Jane when she’s mad at me.’
‘You should treat it as a warning, like a siren going off, then run and hide.’
Amanda giggled.
‘How old is you daughter?’
‘Younger than you. Six now.’
‘Has she got blond hair?’ asked Amanda.
Parker stopped walking. He looked at her in a funny way.
‘Why would you ask that?’
She knew that she’d been careless, that she’d overstepped some line, so she lied, even though lying was wrong.
‘I just like blond hair, that’s all.’
She continued walking, and so did he.
‘No, she doesn’t have blond hair.’
‘Does she visit you?’
‘Like you, I’ve only just moved here, but she’ll be coming to stay very soon. I’ll introduce you, if you like.’
‘Sure.’
They kept pace with each other, talking about the sea, and birds, and the town, when Amanda’s mother appeared on the sand, walking quickly toward them.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Amanda. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.’
‘I bet she calls you Amanda Jane,’ he said, and even though her mother was trailing storm clouds, Amanda couldn’t help but laugh.
Her mother stopped when she was about five feet away from them, her arms wrapped around herself against the breeze.
‘Where have you been?’ she said. ‘I was worried.’
Not just worried, thought Amanda. You’re angry.
‘I was just walking,’ said Amanda. ‘And—’
‘I fell,’ said Mr Parker. ‘I fell on the sand, and I couldn’t get back up. Your daughter helped me. I’m sorry if I caused you any concern. You have a great daughter. Not every young woman would have stopped to help a man in trouble.’
Amanda glowed at being referred to as a ‘young woman,’ but she still feared her mother’s wrath. By walking and talking with Mr Parker, she’d done the wrong thing for the right reasons – or was it the right thing for the wrong reasons? No, it was definitely the first. She wanted to explain it to her mom, but this was between adults now.
Something softened in her mother – only a little, but it was there.
‘It’s just that – well, I’ve warned her about talking to, you know—’
‘Strange men,’ he finished for her, and she smiled slightly.
‘Yes, strange men.’
He reached out a hand to her.
‘My name is Charlie Parker. We’re neighbors.’
His hand hung in the air for a couple of seconds before she took it.
‘Ruth Winter,’ she said. ‘And I believe you’ve met my daughter.’
‘Yes. Like I said, a good kid.’
Amanda tried not to scowl now that she was back to being a kid again, but at least Mr Parker was doing his best to get her mother on their side.
‘Sometimes,’ said her mother. ‘Go on, Amanda Jane. Inside. I don’t want you catching a chill.’
Amanda did as she was told, but looked back over her shoulder and gave Mr Parker a smile. Amanda Jane. He’d been right, and he knew it. He couldn’t help smiling back. Her mother caught it, and turned to find out its cause, but by then Amanda was already running for the house.
‘Again,’ said Parker, ‘I’m sorry. I really did fall, and she really did help me. If she hadn’t, I might still be down there on the sand.’
‘You know how it is,’ said Ruth. ‘You can’t be too careful.’
‘I have a daughter of my own, younger than Amanda. I know.’
They stood awkwardly, facing each other, then Ruth Winter began to head back to her house.
‘Thanks for bringing her home,’ she said.
‘I think it was the other way around.’
‘Either way. Goodbye.’
He watched her head back into the house, and noticed in passing the little mezuzah on the right side of the door, sealed in a pewter case. So she was Jewish. He hadn’t asked her about Amanda’s illness, and it struck him that any such questions wouldn’t have been welcome. She didn’t appear to want anything to do with him, and she certainly didn’t give the impression that she wanted her daughter having anything to do with him either. That was fine. He wasn’t in a very sociable place, or he thought he wasn’t. He had enjoyed talking with Amanda, though. She reminded him of Sam, in some ways. He wondered again why she had asked him if Sam had blond hair. He was still mulling it over as he entered his house, and slipped off the laceless sneakers that he wore for walking. He sat down in an armchair facing the kitchen. It had a soft cushion, because his ass still hurt from some of the shotgun wounds.
On the table before him lay his pills, but he didn’t have the strength to get up again and take them. He was on what was known as the ‘analgesic ladder’ – Tylenol, tramadol, MS Contin, gabapentin – which, apart from constipating him like crazy, caused him to worry about becoming a prescription-drug addict. So he took the hardcore pills less often than he should have, and generally relied on the Tylenol.
Just before he fell asleep, he discerned a flash of movement in the shadows, and the blond hair of his dead daughter caught the fading afternoon light as she watched her father’s eyes close.
Amanda wasn’t sure what she was expecting from her mother, but it wasn’t to be wrapped in a huge hug, and kissed over and over again on the forehead and cheeks.
‘I’m okay, Mom,’ she said. ‘Honest. Mr Parker is nice.’
Her mother released her, and ruffled her hair.
Behind her, the television was on low, and Amanda saw images of a burned house, and policemen, and a photograph of a family.
‘Did something bad happen?’ Amanda asked.
‘Yes, honey,’ said her mother. ‘Something real bad.’
10
Amanda Winter often dreamed: strange, fevered visions, filled with confusion and dislocation. It was why the dream of the girl on the sand hadn’t disturbed her more, for she’d had worse. Had she been older, she might have understood it as a function of the headaches and muscle pains that she experienced. Sometimes her mother would give her half a sleeping pill to help her drift off, especially if her condition had been particularly bad for a couple of nights.
Her illness had a name – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or more commonly myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME – but one of the pupils in her old school, a girl named Laurie Bryden, had claimed that ME wasn’t really an illness at all. She’d heard her father say so. Her father said it was just something that lazy people used as an excuse not to get off their asses and work or, in the case of someone like Amanda, as a means of getting away with low grades because she was really kind of dumb. It had taken all of Amanda’s willpower not to sock Laurie Bryden in the jaw and knock her flat on her back, but what good would have come of it anyway?
Amanda hated being sick. She hated being tired. She hated waking up and wondering if today was going to be a good day or a bad day. On good days, she would sometimes try to do too much, with the result that the bad days to follow were so much worse. She hated the low-level headache that always seemed to throb in her skull, and how long it took her to recover from colds and infections. She hated the night sweats and the weird pains and the tenderness in her armpits. She hated the way some perfumes brought on her illness, and not being able to swim in heated pools because the chlorine made her head woozy. She hated knowing the answer to a question but not being able to find it in the muddle of her brain. She hated that, even among her friends, she was an outsider, because her stupid sickness meant that she kept on missing stuff: parties, movies, even just the day-to-day business of interacting at school. She wanted to be normal. She hadn’t chosen to be this way. She just was.
The doctors said her condition might last a couple of years, and then gradually start to disappear, but she had already endured it for two years and could see no sign of any improvement. Sometimes she got so depressed that she’d just lock herself in her room and cry, but that made her feel even more pathetic.
The girl with the blond hair returned to her in a dream that night, except Amanda wasn’t sure that she was dreaming. The pains in her limbs felt too real, as did the thumping headache and the discomfort in her right ear where she had sweated into the pillow and somehow irritated her skin. She could hear the sea and smell its salt, yet all of it was kept at arm’s length, for she was running a temperature, and so dream and reality were not so easily discernible from each other.
But through that night landscape walked the girl, and although Amanda could still not quite see her face, she understood the sign that the girl was making, for she could spot the index finger of her right hand pressed against her lips. It was the universally understood gesture for silence. Slowly, Amanda turned her head on the pillow. She tried to make it look, as much as possible, as though she were simply shifting in her sleep. She kept her eyes almost – but not entirely – closed.
A wooden staircase led up the back of the house to a door at the rear of Amanda’s room. The view from the doorway wasn’t as good as the one from her bedroom window because it faced away from the sea. Nevertheless, Amanda sometimes liked to put on her coat and sit there with a book, and she’d watched one good sunset from it. Her mother insisted that she keep the door locked at all times, not that Amanda needed to be told: even somewhere as apparently safe and peaceful as Green Heron Bay might not be immune to lunatics and child-stealers. The door was slightly recessed, but if Amanda lay on the very edge of her bed, she could just about see it. The top half was mostly glass, with a shade that could be pulled down, but Amanda rarely bothered with that.
Now, through barely open eyes, she could see that a man was standing on the topmost step, peering in at her through the glass. His upper body was exposed, and Amanda had a gut feeling that he was naked from the waist down too. His face was cast in shadow, just like the dream girl’s, but Amanda could see that his skin was very pale, yet only as far as the base of his neck. From there it was curiously mottled all over – the torso, the upper arms, even extending over his stomach to where she knew his thing was hanging loose below – although there was a regularity to the pattern. It was, she thought, almost as though someone had pieced together a jigsaw puzzle of a man and placed it by her door, except that this one was moving. As she watched, the figure raised his left hand.
And waved.
In the dream that wasn’t quite a dream, Amanda understood that he wanted to be seen. He wished to get a reaction from her – why, she did not know – and it took all of her willpower not to rise up and scream for her mother. Instead she nuzzled into her pillow, still keeping one barely open eye on the man on the step, and she saw his hand flinch, then form a fist. For a moment she thought that he was about to thrust it through the glass, shattering it so that he could get at the bolt inside, but he merely lowered his head and moved away, and she felt rather than heard his footfalls on the wood of the steps. Even then she did not move, not until she was certain that he wasn’t playing some kind of trick on her. Then, and only then, did she climb from her bed and crawl carefully to the window. She shifted the drapes where they met, exposing the slightest triangle of sand and surf beyond the window.
The man was walking into the sea. His back, his buttocks, and his legs, all were covered with the same patterning that she had seen on his torso and upper arms. Even though the water must have been very cold, he moved steadily into the darkness of it, step by step, the waves breaking against him, yet barely seeming to jostle his body. He was like a statue slowly sinking, a figure mired in the sand as the tide came in around him. The water reached his waist, then his chest, then his neck, but he did not try to swim into it. Instead, he was eventually immersed entirely, and then he was gone.
This was no dream. The presence of the girl had confused her, the girl with the blond hair. She was not of this world. She belonged in another, but she drifted between both. The man, though, was part of this one.
Only then did Amanda start to cry, and she did not stop until her mother appeared and took her in her arms.
‘I saw someone,’ said Amanda, turning away from the black sea, weeping into her mother’s breast. ‘I saw a Jigsaw Man.’
11
Cory Bloom got the call just as she was heading home for the evening. It came from the dispatcher at the station house, Karen Heller, who was also just about to leave. Bloom kind of wished that Karen had just let Stynes or Corbin take care of it. In fact, Bloom couldn’t understand why Karen was bothering her with this in the first place.
‘You say there’s a man standing on the beach, near where the body was washed up?’ she said.
‘Uh, that’s right, Cory. Dan Rainey just called.’
Dan had taken a proprietary interest in the whole matter of the drowned man. From what Bloom heard, he’d held court at the Brickhouse after the body was discovered, and hadn’t once needed to put his hand in his pocket to pay for a drink.
‘With respect, Karen, it’s still a free country. Also, the beach isn’t sealed off, and even if it was, we couldn’t do a whole lot to stop the tide from washing away any more evidence.’
‘I know that,’ said Karen, and Bloom detected the note of annoyance in her voice. Clearly there was something here that Bloom wasn’t fully understanding, but it would sure help her a whole lot if Karen would just get around to telling her what it was, which Karen duly did.
‘It’s the private detective,’ she said. ‘It’s Charlie Parker who’s standing out at Mason Point.’
Bloom parked at the ed
ge of the strand. She knew better than to drive down onto the beach, even with the Explorer. That damn sand was treacherous, and not a week went by in the summer without some dumb tourist ignoring the signs about not parking on the strand, and being forced to call Smalley’s Towing Service to get a vehicle back on terra firma.
If Parker heard her pull up, he gave no sign. He simply continued to stare out to sea, and she might have thought it nothing more than a man seeking a slight change of surroundings on a cool evening in late spring were it not for the fact that he was standing almost exactly on the spot where the body had washed up. He was wearing a dark overcoat that hung just below his knees, the collar raised to cover his neck. The wind created sand specters, and Bloom felt fine grains sting her cheek.
Only when she was almost within touching distance of him did he turn slightly to acknowledge her approach, speaking her name at the same time. She wondered how he had known. In all the time she had been watching him, his gaze had not left the sea.
‘Chief Bloom,’ he said, and she experienced a kind of nervousness, a sense that the world had shifted slightly off-kilter. He had about him a conflicted air, a fusion of contradictions: pain, yet peace; rage, yet equanimity. She caught the white patterns in his hair, the suffering etched in his face.
And his eyes … Had she been on more friendly terms with Bobby Soames, they might well have found common ground in their impression of Parker. She had only ever seen pictures of him before he arrived, but she wondered if his eyes had always been so haunted, and so haunting. They were the eyes of someone who had witnessed events beyond the comprehension of others, and perhaps even beyond his own. She knew that his heart had stopped three times after the shooting, and he had been resuscitated on each occasion. Perhaps the victim of such traumas lost a little of himself every time, and left part of his being behind in the darkness. Or perhaps he brought something of the darkness back with him. Yes, that was it. These were not the eyes of a man who was less than he once was. No, they were the eyes of one who was much more.