Fatality

  She felt odd and floaty. Over and over she heard the voice on the phone saying, “Rose. This is Angelica Lofft.”

  She listened to herself hanging up once.

  Listened to herself hanging up a second time, having exchanged not one syllable with that ghost of the past.

  About eight-thirty, her father tapped on the door. “Rose,” he said, anxious enough for any ten people, “the police are here again.”

  Rose’s heartbeat doubled. She did not have the strength for this. How did people become career criminals? Why didn’t they drop dead at an early age from the stress? “Honestly, Dad,” she said, trying to sound like an ordinary grumbling teenager. “When they come to the door,” she added, opening her own, “you don’t have to invite them in for milk and cookies. Send them home.”

  “They’re my only source of information right now about my own daughter,” he said.

  Rose trembled at this misstatement. “Well, let’s go downstairs and see what they’re here for this time.”

  “I don’t want you to say anything until Mr. Travis is here.”

  “That was my plan, too, except I’m not going to say anything after Mr. Travis comes, either, because there isn’t anything to say.”

  “Maybe not, honey, but the police said this is urgent, so we’re waiting for your lawyer. Rose, I’m frightened for you. I’m frightened for all of us. Please take this seriously. I cannot fathom why you do not trust me.”

  “I trust you,” she whispered. But of course she did not. Of every terrible thing that had come from that weekend, this was the most terrible. She wept on his shoulder—two short beats of sob—and then pulled together. “Sorry, Daddy. I guess it’s wearing me down.”

  “It’s wearing me down, too, Rose!”

  She shrugged—at her father, whom she loved more than anybody!—and walked out, saying nothing more.

  On the stairs, he paused and seemed to reach a decision. “Rose, I know you have enough to worry about, but I have a new worry and I’m going to tell you what it is. This is expensive. Travis bills us for every hour. Every quarter hour, actually. I accept that you’re not going to trust me. So please trust him. What you tell him will be confidential, even from me. Even from your mother.”

  She had not known silence would cost anything. Not in dollars, anyway. Her parents were struggling, what with Tabor in such an expensive college and their share of paying for Nannie’s aides. “I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. “Maybe I could pay you back. When I’m sixteen I can get a job. That’s what I’ll do. It’ll be a debt for me to repay.”

  Rose felt better. Time would pass. She would turn sixteen; she could square herself with her parents. She smiled a real smile at her father, but he looked as if he could toss her down the stairs because of that smile. “I don’t know where this is going, Rose,” said her father. “You seem very sure of yourself. I’m not sure. Milton Lofft is described in financial journals as a cutthroat competitor. It’s one thing to cut somebody’s throat metaphorically, in order to get a better product and larger profits. But Frannie Bailey had her throat cut in real life. And you’re standing in the middle of that.”

  She gasped. “Her throat was cut? But —”

  He shook his head. “I’m just using the phrase. I’m desperate to get your attention, Rose. As I recall, she was hit over the head with something. Maybe you’re hoping to be hit over the head with something. But I’m not hoping for that. I want this over and I want my daughter back.”

  She had no choice but to shrug again.

  In her living room—hers!—two police in uniform leaned against the mantel. A woman in a silk blouse and challis skirt held a clipboard and a phone. And a man in a charcoal-gray suit, like an ad in a glossy magazine, stood by the bay window with Rose’s mother. Rose was shocked to see her mother crying.

  She felt a surge of panic. What could this be about? She wondered, horrified, sick, if something had happened to Anjelica.

  Had Anjelica called upon Rose for help? Only to be refused twice in five minutes?

  Rose’s head whirled. She of all people ought to grasp what was going on. But she didn’t. It was as if she had designed and cut a jigsaw puzzle and now she herself could not put it together.

  “Rose,” said the man in the suit, “my name is CJ Pierson.”

  Rose wanted to tell him that boys stopped calling themselves CJ by seventh grade. After that, even if their names were really Clarence Jenks, they used their names. “How do you do, Mr. Pierson.”

  “I’m a detective, Rose. Your situation has bumped up a notch.”

  Rose said nothing. She focused on his tie. She loved men’s ties, the sheen of the silk, the shaping of the knot. She loved buying ties for her father, who did not love wearing them, and now had a large collection of completely untouched neckties. Perhaps by the time Rose became an impressive figure in science or history, women would be wearing ties and she would have a big start on everybody else.

  “One of the men picking up trash with you yesterday,” said CJ Pierson, “reported that a dark green Chevy Tahoe intentionally tried to hit the worker standing on Willow Creek Road Bridge.”

  I didn’t make it up, thought Rose, relieved. I wasn’t a jerk when I leaped over the railing and tumbled down onto the pavement below. I didn’t know it was Willow Creek Road. Now I know.

  She was aware of how much she loved facts. She would hold onto that new fact—the name of the road—and it would strengthen her against another fact—that somebody had tried to run her down. Although she didn’t remember the vehicle either being green or being a Tahoe.

  “There was also a report from a driver calling it in on his car phone; he said it was a black Durango intentionally trying to hit somebody on a trash detail. Both sources thought the highway worker was a man. But it was you, wasn’t it?”

  What if I hadn’t jumped? she thought.

  She imagined relatives gathering for her funeral, rafts of them filling the pews, weeping and crying, Why? Why darling, sweet Rose?

  She said to CJ Pierson, “Huh?”

  Her father grabbed her. He was trembling, his hands rough in his fear. “Rose, what is going on?” He shook her, trying to find the daughter who had vanished on him. “Rose! How can you stand there so blandly? How can you just say ‘huh?’ as if you don’t have enough brains to come in out of the rain? I can’t understand a thing that’s going on! You have been the perfect daughter! And now—”

  “Daddy, calm down. Nothing like that happened. It must have been somebody else. Both witnesses said it was a man that the SUV nearly hit. Besides, although a Durango and a Tahoe are both midsized, they don’t look that much alike, and green isn’t the same as black, so those don’t sound like very solid witnesses to me.”

  Her father stepped away from her. He reached for Mom, who was sobbing audibly now. “Oh, Tommy,” she cried. Rose loved it when her mother called him Tommy instead of Thomas. It made Dad sound young and Mom in love.

  CJ Pierson seemed to find Rose more interesting than he had a moment ago. His voice was neither angry nor demanding, just working to follow her thoughts. “Rose, why deny it?”

  I do deny it, she thought. Nobody would try to run me over. Or if they did, it doesn’t have anything to do with this. It was just a road rage nutcase and I happened to be there, a nice bright orange anonymous target.

  “Everything you’ve done defies rational explanation, Rose. Yet from what I hear, you are a very rational young woman.”

  Rose tried to look dense instead.

  “Who owns a green or a black SUV?” her mother demanded of the police. She was shouting in her fear. She had not wiped the tears from her cheeks. She looked awful. “Does Milton Lofft?”

  “Yes, he has two, as a matter of fact,” said the detective. “A black Benz and a green Range Rover. Problem is, half the population owns a dark SUV, Mrs. Lymond. Your son’s friend Alan Finney has a black Explorer. I have a steel gray Xterra, and my brother-in-law has a dark green Grand Cherokee. El
even teachers in your daughter’s school drive dark SUVs. I bet I saw another half dozen parked in driveways on this street. Just for starters. So, Rose. You got any more detail on that car? You gonna be able to tell us the make? Model? Year? Plate numbers? You recognize the driver?”

  Rose had forgotten that Alan Finney drove a black Explorer. Alan …who had asked which highway she would be working on. Her mind thrashed around like a fish on the sand. She stuck to her original lines because she had no others. “I didn’t see anything, Detective Pierson,” she said. It felt awkward to address him like that “I don’t know anything and why you won’t believe me, I cannot imagine.”

  “Rose! We’re not dealing with the weekend you visited the Loffts!” shouted her father. “We’re dealing with somebody trying to run over you. Thousands of pounds of metal. Why didn’t you tell us? What’s the matter with you, Rose? You have to stop this nonsense! Somebody wants to hurt you!” He let go of Mom, who was still crying, and he said brokenly, “Rose, what would our lives be without you? There simply cannot be a good enough reason for your silence.”

  She had never dreamed how deeply this invasion would stab. How badly silence would work as a strategy. But she didn’t have another one.

  “They’re going to talk to everybody now,” said her mother, wiping away tears. “Your English teachers, in case you ever wrote a revealing essay. Your softball coach, in case you ever confided in her. Your art teacher. What kind of person will you look like when they’re done? It will look as if you’re some—”

  Her father sprang immediately to her defense. “Now, Julia. Rose will look fine, because she is.”

  “Fine but stupid,” said CJ Pierson. “Rose, a woman was murdered. Can you understand that? A hard, tough, demanding, high-energy woman who had the world on a string. Somebody ended her life very simply. One heavy rock against one fragile skull. Maybe she was as stupid as you at the end, maybe not. We don’t know much about Frannie Bailey’s death. Whoever you’re protecting, Rose, whether it’s Milton Lofft or somebody else, that person has decided he or she cannot count on your silence. That person has decided that eventually, you’ll tell us what you saw. So it’s better if you’re dead.”

  Oh, no. It was infinitely better to be alive. Rose loved her life. The whole problem was that her life was precious just as it existed. She could allow nothing to interfere.

  Being murdered would indeed interfere with life as Rose knew it.

  “So what’s next, Rose?” said CJ Pierson, his voice getting louder. “We gonna find out we don’t know much about your death, either?”

  Rose’s mother put her hands over her ears, wincing at the word “death.”

  “You hoping for a future, Rose? College? Career? Wedding? Babies? A home of your own? Whaddaya want out there, Rose?” CJ Pierson stepped into her stare spot.

  Rose’s hands were so cold she wanted mittens.

  “Rose,” said her mother very softly. “Are we on your list of reasons to stay alive?”

  Rose saw her parents very clearly at that moment: her father in such bad shape that even a relative stranger like Augusta was upset by it; her mother cut to the bone by Rose’s sudden change of personality; both of them in terror for their little girl’s life and safety.

  She knew then that she was going to have to tell.

  How would she do it? In what order? Which people would she include? With what words would she explain?

  And when she was done—what would their world be?

  Which kind of shattered world was better—one with silence or one with explanation?

  She held out her arms to her parents, who sprang forward, as if thinking that explanations and long paragraphs would come along with hugs. Her cheek pressed against Dad’s shirt, and she saw that one of the buttons had come off at some point and been stitched back on. The thread did not quite match. Rose imagined her mother standing over the ironing board, threading the needle.

  CJ Pierson sighed. “Okay, Rose. We aren’t going to waste more time. You got second thoughts, you call us. You’re not gonna do traffic detail again. How about we assign you clerical work in the police department? You willing to do that?”

  “Awesome,” said Rose, before she could stop herself.

  Everybody laughed for a moment, even Rose, and then the strangers drove away, and Rose was left with the parents to whom she was now a stranger.

  They’re suffering too much, she thought. Tell them.

  … But once they know, they’ll suffer even more. So don’t tell them.

  Her parents had coffee. Mom could not pour without spilling. Finally she gave up. “Rose, do you know I can’t sleep? I get up every few hours all night long and look in on you. I haven’t done that since you were a newborn. I used to be afraid of crib death. I worried all the time when you and Tabor were babies. I used to tremble that we’d put you safely to sleep one night and in the morning you’d be blue and silent and dead. I was so glad when you got beyond the age for crib death. I thought I’d never be so scared for your life as I was the first few months. But I was wrong. I’m that scared now.”

  Rose could not look at her mother. She looked instead at one of the family portraits on the wall, a beautiful photograph of her parents before they had had children. Her father—so young! So slim and so much hair. Her mother—slender as a high school girl, with hair and makeup on which she clearly spent hours. Now they were both chunky, Dad’s hair merely a fringe. There was hardly a trace in him of the eager, exuberant young man with the lovely young wife.

  Tell, thought Rose, tell them now and get it over with.

  But she had used silence one time too many.

  Her mother slammed the coffeepot down, and since it was glass, it smashed on the table and hot coffee flooded the place mats and dripped on the floor. “You explain to me what’s going on, young lady!” shouted her mother. “Don’t you dare pull any fast ones with me.”

  You pulled a fast one once, thought Rose, and for the first time, Rose slightly hated her mother. The only surprising thing was that it had taken so long.

  The hate was satisfying and exonerating. Inside the hate, Rose could be silent forever. “I’ll clean up the coffee,” she said primly.

  The hate had vanished before she reached the paper towels, but her parents had vanished before she got back with them. She heard doors slamming as they chose solitude over another minute in their daughter’s presence.

  She wondered why Anjelica Lofft had called twice. Whether she would call again.

  And whether it had been a black Explorer that had waited so patiently in the emergency lane to see who wore the orange trash vest.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON, FROM two to five, Rose Lymond found herself at the police department, assigned to CJ Pierson. She knew from two days of transport van gossip that nobody got rehabilitated on a weekend. Saturday and Sunday were your own, in which presumably you tried to consolidate your gains, thinking about your crimes, planning to omit future ones. On Monday, you arrived in good spirits for more rehabilitation, eager to improve.

  Her parents and the police must have decided on a Saturday schedule for Rose. If only Rose were as tall and strong as Megan Moran. Then she could look down on people. CJ Pierson could not be so relentlessly in charge if Rose were taller. Chrissie, at five ten, truly mourned her lack of height, and for the first time, Rose understood.

  “Hello, Rose,” he said cheerfully.

  She decided to be cheerful right back. It was a weapon she had not yet used. “Hello, Detective Pierson,” she said brightly. “What fun. Look at all the stray papers on your desk. I hope I get to file. Don’t worry if I throw a lot out. I’ve developed a trash habit.” This sort of flippant banter was so unlike Rose that it undid her instead of him; she felt her chin tremble and her eyes water.

  “You know, Rose, you’re growing on me,” he said. “The problem I see, though, is what’s gonna be growing on your grave if you don’t talk.”

  Rose pulled herself
together. “A person’s community service time is not the time in which a person should be interrogated by a law officer. A person being rehabilitated should work diligently and not be distracted. Concentration—”

  “Yeah, have a seat, Rose. I’m looking through some old newspapers. I thought you might want to browse with me.”

  Rose sat before she saw the dates of the newspapers. She was very sorry she had sat down. She picked out a spot on the window to stare at. The windows were filthy and there were a multitude of spots to stare at, some of them alive and moving. Perhaps she would assign herself Windex and paper towels.

  “Friday through Wednesday,” said CJ Pierson. “Of a famous weekend. Come on, Rose. Rehabilitate yourself. Read every word and tell me what you think.”

  His shirt was white, with heavy starch. The collar was very crisp above his fine tie, a silky horsetail gray flecked with tiny dark red diamonds. Rose distracted herself by listing the people she felt like strangling with that tie.

  CJ Pierson spread a four-year-old Friday paper on his desk and began tapping headlines and advertisements, announcements and fillers. His pencil eraser made a soft, friendly little thud on the newsprint.

  Rose had never glanced at the newspapers back then. She had been twelve, after all. How many twelve-year-olds curled up with a newspaper? She didn’t know what was in the papers. But since the news of Frannie Bailey’s murder had not been available to television until Monday, it wouldn’t have been in the newspaper, either.

  “So here’s my current guess,” said CJ Pierson, smiling at her. He had a nice smile. It reminded her of Grandfather’s, whose portraits were everywhere in Nannie’s house and with whom Nannie was convinced she would live again after death. Grandfather had not been a talker, like Nannie and Dad and Tabor. He had been an audience.

  They all want to be my audience, she thought. They all want to sit quietly while I entertain them with my story.

  “See, what I’ve been thinking is,” said the detective, “suppose we’re heading in the wrong direction when we question you about Frannie Bailey. Suppose the real story is here in these newspapers.”