3

  FINALLY, late in the day, the corridor dwindles to silence. George straightens the files on his desk and pulls the beaded gold chain of his desk lamp. In the darkening room he puts on his coat, staring out at the trees, then steps into the empty corridor. He walks a bit aimlessly, in no particular hurry, across the green linoleum. All along the corridor the large plate-glass windows are now painted white with winter sky. It puts him in mind of that painting at the MoMA, the Barnett Newman, a white canvas that asks for nothing, and it fills him with a kind of deluded hope.

  The overhead lights are dim, creating the strange, intermittent half-dark of a sinking ship, and his balance is briefly compromised. As he walks through the Art History Department, its stark walls corrupted by posters espousing every variety of life-changing opportunity, it occurs to him what a betrayal life is. How nothing turns out even close to what you thought.

  He drives home in silence with the heat vents blasting, the snow built up in heaps along the road. The salt trucks are out, making their rounds. After only half a year here in the country, the winter is already getting to him. Already he’s had enough of it.

  The house looks dark. He eases the car up the driveway and drives around to the garage, then gets out to open the doors, a routine he has come to hate. He always thought down the road they’d install an electric, overhead door, but there doesn’t seem much point in doing that now. He pulls into the darkness, like a cave, he thinks, and sits there a minute, letting the engine idle, pulling on his gloves.

  4

  TRAVIS’S SECRETARY TAKES the call at 4:57 on a Friday afternoon, just when he’s heading out the door. He didn’t get lunch and hoped to get home, but now that’s not happening. He can already predict the accidents, weekenders from the city with no business driving on unplowed country roads.

  It’s a friend of yours, Brigid says. A Joe Pratt?

  An old college buddy from RPI, now an engineer with GE. He takes the call in his office.

  I got my neighbor here, Pratt says. Something happened to his wife. He muffles the phone a minute, then comes back on. I think he may have killed her.

  Travis and his undersheriff, Wiley Burke, set out in the unmarked car, the tire-chains grinding through the snow. The snow is falling, thick and fast. They don’t have much cause to come this far north, the wealthiest section in their jurisdiction and filled with spoiled New Yorkers buying up the old farms. Too rich for my blood, he likes to goad the old-timers down at the Windowbox, people who grew up working these fields and tending the livestock and now can’t pay the taxes on their farms. Back in the day, he used to work summers on the Hale farm. Good memories.

  Pratt owns a small cape on the outskirts that might have been a sharecropper’s cottage at one time, a modest place with a split-rail fence and kennels in the back for the dogs. His wife, June, runs a rescue outfit in the back of the house, something he’s always respected her for. Just a little slip of a thing, working with dogs that could rip you to pieces. George Clare is standing in their living room like a man under a low-flying helicopter, looking windblown. The little girl fusses in his arms, wriggling to get down. Clare’s dressed in khaki trousers and an oxford shirt, penny loafers. He looks well tended.

  George, Travis says.

  Hello, Travis.

  Let’s go take a look, shall we?

  They leave the child with the Pratts and walk down the road up to the house. Even with the new paint it looks forlorn. Mary always says houses are like children, they don’t forget the bad things that happen to them.

  They go in through the porch, just as George had earlier that afternoon.

  Somebody did this, George says, pointing out the broken window, the glass scattered on the cement floor.

  Inside, like some choreographed procession, they climb the stairs in single file.

  I can’t go in there, Clare says.

  All right. You stay right here.

  The last time he was in this room was to clear out Ella and Cal. People say this house is cursed and he’s starting to believe it.

  Catherine Clare is lying in the bed with an ax in her head.

  In all his years of police work it is something he’s never seen.

  Facing the door, she lies on her side in an elongated fetal position. It comes to him that the flannel nightgown is familiar because it’s the same one he’s seen on his wife.

  They stand there looking at her.

  Jesus, Wiley mutters.

  Just like Mary, she’s on the side closest to the door. Even dead, a mother can get her point across, and with a deal like this you can’t ignore the elusive systems of cohabitation, the humdrum accord of married life.

  Good and cold, isn’t it? Wiley says.

  Yup.

  They both look at the open window.

  Yup, it sure is. She’s good and stiff, too.

  I’ll go radio the unit, Burke says.

  Get him in the car.

  Out here, they don’t have their own forensic team. They have to call on Albany County for help. Eventually, in a case like this, the FBI will step in, but for now it’s him in charge. And a long night ahead.

  He looks at the woman, the taste of bile in his throat. Getting too old for this nonsense, he thinks. Gone soft, all out of heartless grit. Used to be he’d feel useful, even kind of a hero. Not anymore. Over the years he’s seen just about everything—every twisted machination, most ill-conceived or plain stupid—but you get to the point, you get to the fucking point where you don’t want to see it anymore. He’d had this Origin of the Species epiphany and from then on he’s been a changed man.

  Cops. They see things—they see.

  Mary’s the churchgoer in their house. She believes people get their just deserts. But what if they don’t?

  He stands at the foot of the bed, just looking at her. It’s an ordinary ax. Nearly everybody in town owns one just like it. Every hardware store has one in stock.

  He studies the bed. On her side the sheets are down near her ankles, but on his they’re undisturbed, the blanket and sheets still tucked in.

  We got company, Travis.

  He glances out at the lights as the parade starts—the crime-scene truck, three staties, a handful of pickups with cherry tops and volunteer firefighters, an ambulance they won’t be needing. The thing about rural towns, anybody with a pair of hands shows up to use them and help out. Travis can’t imagine what the world would be like without their good service. These people know how to work.

  He steps into the small master bathroom and a chemical smell hits his nostrils, bleach maybe. He notes the gleaming sink. None of the usual hairs and toothpaste globs, a hell of a lot cleaner than his own bathroom, in fact, and the toilet seat’s down to boot. Clare has better manners than he thought.

  When he gets home Mary’s up waiting, her eyes rimmed in red. I saw the news, she says. Who would do such a thing?

  God, I don’t know.

  It’s just awful, isn’t it?

  Yeah. It is.

  Do you want your supper?

  I guess I will.

  She takes a plate of meatloaf out of the oven and sets it in front of him and gets a fork and knife from the drawer and a beer and ketchup bottle out of the fridge and brings it all to the table. Then she sits in the chair across from him and opens the beer and pours it into two glasses. She drinks some of it, and they look at each other across the old oilcloth, her hair pulled back in a barrette, her skin scrubbed clean, the tiny cross at her throat. Looking exactly like the schoolgirl he married.

  How’s Travis? he says.

  Sleeping. She lights a Marlboro, blows out the smoke. They had a game today. Lost.

  Nothing wrong with being underdogs. It’s good training.

  I don’t know what for, she says.

  This is good, he says.

  It was better a couple hours ago. Poor thing—she didn’t deserve that.

  Nobody does.

  I just don’t know who would do such a thin
g.

  We’ll find out, won’t we?

  I pray you do, Travis.

  They look at each other again, a bargain of doubt.

  Where’s the husband now?

  At a hotel with his folks.

  I never liked that man. Not one bit.

  It don’t make him a murderer, Mary. You know that.

  Yeah. She stamps out her cigarette. Well, I’m no detective.

  Under the yellow circle of light her face looks worn. He reaches over and takes her hand. I want this solved just as much as you do.

  I know it.

  Been a long day, he says. Got another coming tomorrow. He swallows the rest of his beer, then gets up and sets his plate in the sink.

  I’ll tell you one thing, she says. That house—it makes its own plans.

  Yes, I guess it does.

  He watches her light another cigarette. I’m going up. You?

  Not just yet.

  He leaves her there to finish her beer. He knows she wants something from him, some kind of comfort, but just now he’s all out of tenderness. Come morning, he figures, he’ll find her on the couch, blanketed in newspaper, the ashtray full of butts. Marriage is a curious arrangement, he thinks, climbing the stairs. Even after all these years there are things about his wife that he will never understand. The mystery, he guesses, is what keeps it interesting.

  5

  EUGENE’S GRANDMOTHER LETS him stay for dinner and they have fried chicken and mashed potatoes and she’s the best cook around, hands down. After they eat they watch The Dukes of Hazzard and he says good night. Walking by Blake’s, going home, he sees her face on the ten o’clock news. People crowding around the bar to watch.

  Where you been? Eddy says when he walks in.

  Eugene’s.

  They’re watching it on TV, him and Rainer and Vida. Sitting there, glued.

  At the commercial, Rainer asks, Were you over there today?

  Some instinct tells him to lie. He shakes his head.

  I didn’t get that, his uncle says.

  No, sir.

  Cole tries to think if anybody saw him. He doesn’t think so. Only Franny.

  Something happened to that woman.

  What?

  Come over here, Eddy says, reminding him of his father. How he’d question him every time he did something stupid. You just couldn’t lie to him. For some reason his legs go weak and he sinks down into the couch.

  Catherine, Eddy says. She’s dead. Murdered.

  Cole feels the money against his leg. He concentrates on his hands like he does at school when somebody pisses him off and he has to control himself. The afternoon feels like a dream he can’t remember.

  You don’t look right. Did you eat?

  At Eugene’s. Call his grandmother if you don’t believe me!

  Quiet, now. It’s coming on. They’re doing a report.

  They show the coroner’s truck, the same one that took his parents away. They show the yellow streamer pulled across the front door. They show a picture of Catherine with her twinkly eyes and white teeth, then one of Mr. Clare. They show the house, an old picture from before, when it was still a poor people’s house. They watch the flashing pictures one after the other, and their uncle says, Well, I’ll be fucking damned.

  They sit there in silence.

  What a horror, his uncle says, taking Vida’s hand.

  Eddy looks mad. He sits there with his arms crossed over his chest.

  Cole can’t look at him. He stares down at his hands again. For some reason he feels guilty, not just because he lied but also he maybe did something wrong, like he was part of it.

  He should have opened that door, he thinks. He should’ve done something.

  I’d put money on it, Eddy says. That son of a bitch killed her.

  —

  AT DAWN, Eddy shakes him awake. Get up, he says.

  They tiptoe downstairs and put on their coats, their boots.

  The whole world is white with snow.

  Eddy has his trumpet. They walk through the neighborhood, behind the sleeping houses, through the empty lot and into the woods. The woods are still. The trees stand there like people waiting to be told the news. All the animals seem to be hiding. They come to the ridge and stand there looking down at their old house. There’s nobody there now. The place looks desolate. You can see the thick tracks their trucks made in the snow.

  This is for her, Eddy says, and brings the horn to his lips. It’s a song most people know, the only song to play at a time like this. Taps.

  6

  THE NEXT MORNING, George Clare doesn’t show up and Travis isn’t surprised. He probably knows he doesn’t have to—there’s no law. Plus, he has an alibi. Another conversation would have been helpful, though. For one thing, he was the last person who saw his wife alive. That fact alone makes him more than interesting.

  Maybe he’s just too broken up to talk, Travis thinks. It’s not every day your wife gets bludgeoned to death with an ax.

  And yet after the interview—granted, it was late—Travis overheard him remark to his father that he didn’t see the point in going over it again. He’d given his side and that was all there was to it.

  Not quite, Travis thinks now. No, sir, not quite.

  He spends the morning fielding telephone calls, mostly townspeople calling to goad him. He tracks down Wiley at the coffeemaker and asks him to load the tape of the interview on the VCR in his office. Compared with Clare’s unmarked face, Travis looks old and bothered. He has to wonder what Mary sees in him. Across the table sits the professor, his arms crossed, as ornery as a street hood. Like a foreigner unscrambling sentences, he takes his time answering questions, offering only brief, elementary statements, as if he lacks the vocabulary to explain himself fully.

  Something about this guy rubs me the wrong way, Burke says.

  Travis backs up the tape and again watches Clare’s mannerisms. At one point Burke asks him about the Hale boys. Now, which one painted your house—was it Eddy?

  Clare nods, his jaw noticeably tight.

  He’s a good kid but he’s had it awful rough, Travis says. They all have. It’s made them hard around the edges.

  I wouldn’t know.

  People say Eddy’s got an attitude—a chip on his shoulder over losing the farm. You notice that?

  He shakes his head.

  What about your wife? She ever say anything?

  About him? No.

  He’s got that girlfriend, Burke says. The one from the inn. He gives Clare a knowing smile. You ever seen her? Man, what I wouldn’t do for some of that.

  For a minute George says nothing. You can see his jaw tensing up again, like he’s clenching his teeth. I don’t think I know her, he says.

  Oh, you’d know if you’d seen her. Black hair, a body like—

  What does this have to do with my wife? Clare shouts.

  For a minute nobody says anything and the air turns thick as old lard.

  Let’s rewind that a minute, Travis says. That part right there, about the girl.

  They watch it again. The look that crosses Clare’s face when Burke mentions the girl, an expression, Travis thinks, that distinguishes him as a person with the capacity to go beyond the limits of civility. But maybe he’s got it wrong. Maybe killing comes naturally to people, an instinct nobody likes to admit, a survival reflex inherited from our Neanderthal cousins. So maybe it’s the other stuff, the good manners that supposedly make us human, that are the real aberrations.

  Good-looking is a fair description of Clare, he decides. On the surface, this man doesn’t look like he has it in him, but Travis has learned all too often not to draw conclusions based on physical attributes. Ordinary people have demons inside them.

  And in that singular moment, Travis Lawton sees the demon inside George Clare.

  7

  EDDY’S GETTING THE PAPER off the front porch when he sees her. She wanders up like a nomad, pale and nervous. Says she’s leaving town, has her stuff al
l packed. She has to go, she tells him. She has to go now.

  What’s the big hurry?

  I’m done here, she says.

  She stands there on his uncle’s porch with her bony shoulders and boy’s haircut, gnawing her swollen lip. I wanted you to know, she says. I wanted to say goodbye.

  He wants her to come inside, to take her up to his bed, but he can see her mind’s made up. Where you going?

  California.

  He watches her nervous little dance and how her eyes shift around, her pupils big as peas.

  You coming?

  Is that an invitation?

  She smiles, a jagged little grin that leaks so much sadness. Yes, she says. I want you to.

  He touches her cheek and her eyes get watery and when he kisses her he can taste the sad story on her tongue.

  All right. I guess I could go.

  Her eyes go as bright as a little kid’s.

  Just give me a second to get my stuff.

  He goes upstairs, taking care not to wake his brother. Cole rustles under the covers and Eddy stands still, waiting for his sleeping face to go calm again, the new little hairs cropping up on his chin, a boy deep in dreams. He pushes his things into a knapsack he once used on a camping trip. In the doorway he looks once more at his brother, deciding in that instant that he’s grown up enough to leave behind and knowing, too, it’ll be a good while before he sees him again.

  —

  THEY TAKE Rainer’s hearse, just walk right in there and take it. He leaves his uncle a note: Going out west to find my fame and fortune. Borrowing your car. Promise to return it.

  It’s a decent set of wheels, if a little creepy. While he drives, she holds his free hand. Hers is sweaty and cold and he can feel her trembling. It’s like they have some kind of secret, one she hasn’t told him yet. She leans up against the window, looking out, not talking, pale and trembling like she’s sick. What’s wrong with you?

  Nothing.

  He has a painful love inside of him. Don’t worry so much, okay?

  She nods and pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt. Her eyes, rimmed in black, remind him of their old cows, how they sometimes looked after they were milked, like they’d given so much.