"Insurance companies will insure anyone who's willing to pay enough freight," he said, "and Gerald's insurance agents didn't see him chain-smoking and belting back the booze. You did. All protests aside, you must have known he was a heart attack looking for a place to happen. The cops know it, too. So they say, 'Suppose she invited a friend down to the lake house and didn't tell her husband? And suppose this friend just happened to jump out of the closet and yell Booga-Booga at exactly the right time for her and exactly the wrong one for her old man?' If the cops had any evidence that something like that might have happened, you'd be in deep shit, Jessie. Because under certain select circumstances, a hearty cry of Booga-Booga can be seen as an act of first-degree murder. The fact that you spent going on two days in handcuffs and had to half-skin yourself to get free militates strongly against the idea of an accomplice, but in another way, the very fact of the handcuffs makes an accomplice seem plausible to ... well, to a certain type of police mind, let us say."
I stared at him, fascinated. I felt like a woman who's just realized she has been square-dancing on the edge of an abyss. Up until then, looking at the shadowy planes and curves of Brandon's face beyond the circle of light thrown by the bedlamp, the idea of the police thinking I might have murdered Gerald had only crossed my mind a couple of times, as a kind of grisly joke. Thank God I never joked about it with the cops, Ruth!
Brandon said, "Do you understand why it might be wiser not to mention this idea of an intruder in the house?"
"Yes," I said. "Better to let sleeping dogs lie, right?"
As soon as I said it, I had an image of that goddamned mutt dragging Gerald across the floor by his upper arm--I could see the flap of skin that had come free and was lying across the dog's snout. They ran the poor, damned thing down a couple of days later, by the way--it had made a little den for itself under the Laglans' boathouse, about half a mile up the shore. It had taken a pretty good piece of Gerald there, so it must have come back at least one more time after I scared it away with the Mercedes's lights and horn. They shot it. It was wearing a bronze tag--not a regulation dog-tag so that Animal Control could trace the owner and give him hell, more's the pity--with the name Prince on it. Prince, can you imagine? When Constable Teagarden came and told me they'd killed it, I was giad. I didn't blame it for what it did--it wasn't in much better shape than I was, Ruth--but I was glad then and I'm still glad.
All that's off the subject, though--i was telling you about the conversation I had with Brandon after I'd told him there might have been a stranger in the house. He agreed, and most emphatically, that it would be better to let sleeping dogs lie. I guessed I could live with that--it was a great relief just to have told one person--but I still wasn't quite ready to let it go.
"The convincer was the phone," I told him. "When I got out of the handcuffs and tried it, it was as dead as Abe Lincoln. As soon as I realized that, I became sure I was right--there had been a guy, and at some point he'd cut the telephone line coming in from the road. That's what really got my ass out the door and into the Mercedes. You don't know what scared is, Brandon, until you suddenly realize you might be out in the middle of the woods with an uninvited house-guest."
He was smiling, but it was a less winning smile that time, I'm afraid. It was the kind of smile men always seem to get on their faces when they're thinking about how silly women are, and how it should really be against the law to let them out without keepers. "You came to the conclusion that the line was cut after checking one phone--the one in the bedroom--and finding it dead. Right?"
That wasn't exactly what happened and it wasn't exactly what I'd thought, but I nodded--partly because it seemed easier, but mostly because it doesn't do much good to talk to a man when he gets that particular expression on his face. It's the one that says, "Women! Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em!" Unless you've changed completely, Ruth, I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about, and I'm sure you'll understand when I say that all I really wanted at that point was for the entire conversation to be over.
"It was unplugged, that's all," Brandon said. By then he was sounding like Mister Rogers, explaining that sometimes it surely does seem like there's a monster under the bed, by golly, but there's really not. "Gerald pulled the t-connector out of the wall. He probably didn't want his afternoon off--not to mention his little bondage fantasy--interrupted by calls from the office. He'd also pulled the plug on the one in the front hall, but the one in the kitchen was plugged in and working just fine. I have all this from the police reports."
The light dawned, then, Ruth. I suddenly understood that all of them--all the men investigating what had happened out at the lake--had made certain assumptions about how I'd handled the situation and why I'd done the things I'd done. Most of them worked in my favor, and that certainly simplified things, but there was still something both infuriating and a little spooky in the realization that they drew most of their conclusions not from what I'd said or from any evidence they'd found in the house, but only from the fact that I'm a woman, and women can be expected to behave in certain predictable ways.
When you look at it that way, there's no difference at all between Brandon Milheron in his natty three-piece suits and old Constable Teagarden in his satchel-seat bluejeans and red firehouse suspenders. Men still think the same things about us they have always thought, Ruth--I'm sure of it. A lot of them have learned to say the right things at the right times, but as my mother used to say, "Even a cannibal can learn to recite the Apostles' Creed."
And do you know what? Brandon Milheron admires me, and he admires the way I handled myself after Gerald dropped dead. Yes he does. I have seen it on his face time after time, and if he drops by this evening, as he usually does, I am confident I will see it there again. Brandon thinks I did a damned good job, a damned brave job ... for a woman. In fact, I think that by the time we had our first conversation about my hypothetical visitor, he had sort of decided I'd behaved the way he would have in a similar situation ... if, that is, he'd had to deal with a high fever at the same time he was trying to deal with everything else. I have an idea that's how most men believe most women think: like lawyers with malaria. It would certainly explain a lot of their behavior, wouldn't it?
I'm talking about condescension--a man-versus-woman thing--but I'm also talking about something a hell of a lot bigger and a hell of a lot more frightening, as well. He didn't understand, you see, and that has nothing to do with any differences between the sexes; that's the curse of being human, and the surest proof that all of us are really alone. Terrible things happened in that house, Ruth, I didn't know just how terrible until later, and he didn't understand that. I told him the things I did in order to keep that terror from eating me alive, and he nodded and he smiled and he sympathized, and I think it ended up doing me some good, but he was the best of them, and he never got within shouting distance of the truth ... of how the terror just seemed to keep on growing until it became this big black haunted house inside my head. It's still there, too, standing with its door open, inviting me to come back inside any time I want, and I never do want to go back, but sometimes I find myself going back, anyway, and the minute I step inside, the door slams shut behind me and locks itself.
Well, never mind. I suppose it should have relieved me to know my intuition about the telephone lines was wrong, but it didn't. Because there was a part of my mind which believed--and believes still--that the bedroom telephone wouldn't have worked even if I had crawled behind that chair and plugged it in again, that maybe the one in the kitchen was working later but it sure as hell wasn't working then, that it was get the hell away from the house in the Mercedes or die at the hands of that creature.
Brandon leaned forward until the light at the head of the bed shone full on his face and he said, "There was no man in the house, Jessie, and the best thing you can do with the idea is let it drop."
I almost told him about my missing rings then, but I was tired and in a lot of pain and in the end I didn't. I lay awak
e for a long time after he left--not even a pain-pill would put me to sleep that night. I thought about the skin-graft operation that was coming up the next day, but probably not as much as you might think. Mostly I was thinking about my rings, and the footprint nobody saw but me, and whether or not he--it--might have come back to put things right. And what I decided, just before I finally dropped off, was that there had never been a footprint or a pearl earring. That some cop had spotted my rings lying on the study floor beside the bookcase and just took them. They're probably in the window of some Lewiston hockshop right now, I thought. Maybe the idea should have made me angry, but it didn't. It made me feel the way I did when I woke up behind the wheel of the Mercedes that morning--fitted with an incredible sense of peace and well-being. No stranger; no stranger; no stranger anywhere. Just a cop with light fingers taking one quick look over his shoulder to make sure the coast is clear and then whoop, zoop, into the pocket. As for the rings themselves, I didn't care what had happened to them then and I don't now. I've come more and more to believe in these last few months that the only reason a man sticks a ring on your finger is because the law no longer allows him to put one through your nose. Never mind, though; the morning has become the afternoon, the afternoon is moving briskly along, and this is not the time to discuss women's issues. This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert.
Jessie sat back in her chair and lit another cigarette, absently aware that the tip of her tongue was stinging from tobacco overload, that her head ached, and that her kidneys were protesting this marathon session in front of the Mac. Protesting vigorously. The house was deathly silent--the sort of silence that could only mean that tough little Megan Landis had taken herself off to the supermarket and the dry-cleaner's. Jessie was amazed that Meggie had left without making at least one more effort to separate her from the computer screen. Then she guessed the housekeeper had known it would be a wasted effort. Best to let her get it out of her system, whatever it is, Meggie would have thought. And it was only a job to her, after all. This last thought sent a little pang through Jessie's heart.
A board creaked upstairs. Jessie's cigarette stopped an inch shy of her lips. He's back! Goody shrieked. Oh, Jessie, he's back!
Except he wasn't. Her eyes drifted to the narrow face looking up at her from the clusters of newsprint dots and she thought: I know exactly where you are, you whoredog. Don't I?
She did, but part of her mind went on insisting it was him just the same--no, not him, it, the space cowboy, the specter of love, back again for a return engagement. It had only been waiting for the house to be empty, and if she picked up the phone on the corner of the desk, she would find it stone dead, just as all the phones in the house by the lake had been stone dead that night.
Your friend Brandon can smile all he wants, but we know the truth, don't we, Jessie?
She suddenly shot out her good hand, snatched the telephone handset from the cradle, and brought it to her ear. Heard the reassuring buzz of the dial-tone. Put it back again. An odd, sunless smile played about the corners of her mouth.
Yes, I know exactly where you are, motherfucker. Whatever Goody and the rest of the ladies inside my head may think, Punkin and I know you're wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting in a County Jail cell--the one at the far end of the old wing, Brandon said, so the other inmates can't get to you and fuck you up before the state hauls you in front of a jury of your peers . . . if a thing like you has any peers. We may not be entirely free of you yet, but we will be. I promise you we will be.
Her eyes drifted back to the VDT, and although the vague sleepiness brought on by the combination of the pill and the sandwich had long since dissipated, she felt a bone-deep weariness and a complete lack of belief in her ability to finish what she had started.
This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert, she had written, but was it? Could she? She was so tired. Of course she was; she had been pushing that goddamned cursor across the VDT screen almost all day. Pushing the envelope, they called it, and if you pushed the envelope long enough and hard enough, you tore it wide open. Maybe it would be best to just go upstairs and take a nap. Better late than never, and all that shit. She could file this to memory, retrieve it tomorrow morning, go back to work on it then--
Punkin's voice stopped her. This voice came only infrequently now, and Jessie listened very carefully to it when it did.
If you decide to stop now, Jessie, don't bother to file the document. Just delete it. We both know you'll never have the guts to face Joubert again--not the way a person has to face a thing she's writing about. Sometimes it takes heart to write about a thing, doesn't it? To let that thing out of the room way in the back of your mind and put it up there on the screen.
"Yes," she murmured. "A yard of heart. Maybe more. "
She dragged at her cigarette, then snuffed it out half-smoked. She riffled through the clippings a final time and looked out the window at the slope of Eastern Prom. The snow had long since stopped and the sun was shining brightly, although it wouldn't be for much longer; February days in Maine are thankless, miserly things.
"What do you say, Punkin?" Jessie asked the empty room. She spoke in the haughty Elizabeth Taylor voice she had favored as a child, the one that had driven her mother completely bonkers. "Shall we carry on, my deah?"
There was no answer, but Jessie didn't need one. She leaned forward in her chair and set the cursor in motion once more. She didn't stop again for a long time, not even to light a cigarette.
37
This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert. It won't be easy, but I'm going to do my best. So pour yourself another cup of coffee, dear, and if you've got a bottle of brandy handy, you may want to doctor it up a bit. Here comes Part Three.
I have all the newspaper clippings beside me on the desk, but the articles and news items don't tell all I know, let alone all there is to know--I doubt if anyone has the slightest idea of all the things Joubert did (including Joubert himself, I imagine), and that's probably a blessing. The stuff the papers could only hint at and the stuff that didn't make them at all is real nightmare-fodder, and I wouldn't want to know all of it. Most of the stuff that isn't in the papers came to me during the last week courtesy of a strangely quiet, strangely chastened Brandon Milheron. I'd asked him to come over as soon as the connections between Joubert's story and my own had become too obvious to ignore.
"You think this was the guy, don't you?" he asked. "The one who was in the house with you?"
"Brandon," I said, "I know it's the guy."
He sighed, looked down at his hands for a minute, then looked up at me again--we were in this very room, it was nine o'clock in the morning, and there were no shadows to hide his face that time. "I owe you an apology," he said. "I didn't believe you then--"
"I know," I said, as kindly as I could.
"--but I do now. Dear God. How much do you want to know, Jess?"
I took a deep breath and said, "Everything you can find out."
He wanted to know why. "I mean, if you say it's your business and I should butt out, I guess I'll have to accept that, but you're asking me to re-open a matter the firm considers closed. If someone who knows I was watching out for you last fall notices me sniffing around Joubert this winter, it's not impossible that--"
"That you could get in trouble," I said. It was something I hadn't considered.
"Yes," he said, "but I'm not terribly concerned about that--I'm a big boy, and I can take care of myself ... at least I think I can. I'm a lot more concerned about you, Jess. You could wind up on the front page again, after all our work to get you off it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Even that's not the major thing--it's miles from the major thing. This is the nastiest criminal case to break in northern New England since World War II. I mean some of this stuff is so gruesome it's radioactive, and you shouldn't plink yourself down in the fallout zone without a damned good reason." He laughed, a little nervously. "Hell, I shouldn't plink myself down th
ere without a damned good reason."
I got up, walked across to him, and took one of his hands with my left hand. "I couldn't explain in a million years why," I said, "but I think I can tell you what-- will that do, at least for a start?"
He folded his hand gently over mine and nodded his head.
"There are three things," I said. "First, I need to know he's real. Second, I need to know the things he did are real. Third, I need to know I'll never wake up again with him standing in my bedroom."
That brought it all back, Ruth, and I began to cry. There was nothing tricky or cafculating about those tears; they just came. Nothing I could have done would have stopped them.
"Please help me, Brandon," I said. "Every time I turn off the light, he's standing across the room from me in the dark, and I'm afraid that unless I can turn a spotlight on him, that's going to go on forever. There isn't anybody else I can ask, and I have to know. Please help me."
He let go of my hand, produced a handkerchief from somewhere inside that day's screamingly neat lawyer's suit, and wiped my face with it. He did it as gently as my Mom used to when I came into the kitchen bawling my head off because I'd skinned my knee--that was back in the early years, before I turned into the family's squeaky wheel, you understand.
"All right," he said at last. "I'll find out everything I can, and I'll pass it all on to you . . . unless and until you tell me to stop, that is. But I have a feeling you better fasten your seatbelt."
He found out quite a lot, and now I'm going to pass it on to you, Ruth, but fair warning: he was right about the seatbelt. If you decide to skip some of the next few pages, I'll understand. I wish I could skip writing them, but I have an idea that's also part of the therapy. The final part, I hope.
This section of the story--what I suppose I could call Brandon's Tale--starts back in 1984 or 1985. That was when cases of graveyard vandalism started popping up in the Lakes District of western Maine. There were similar cases reported in half a dozen small towns across the state line and into New Hampshire. Stuff like tombstone-tipping, spray-paint graffiti, and stealing commemorative flags is pretty common stuff out in the willywags, and of course there's always a bunch of smashed pumpkins to swamp out of the local boneyard on November 1st, but these crimes went a lot further than pranks or petty theft. Desecration was the word Brandon used when he brought me his first report late last week, and that word had started showing up on most of the police crime-report forms by 1988.