The Dead Place (10 page)

Kate was gone when Ian woke on Saturday morning and when he stretched his hand out to her side of the bed, the sheet was cool. He felt groggy, as if he’d had too much to drink the night before, and was surprised to see that the clock read nine-fifteen.

Under the hot spray of the shower, he struggled to clear his head, thinking about the conversation he needed to have with Kate. He would offer to do the work of finding another therapist. Hell, he’d go and do therapy with her if that’s what she wanted, but this wasn’t something they could deal with alone. It needed professional help.

Steeling himself for an unpleasant conversation, he wasn’t prepared to find Kate sitting on the kitchen floor in her pajamas surrounded by papers. As he stood there, stunned, she dug through the pile of papers in the wicker basket they used for recycling. As she pulled out another one, she looked up and saw him.

“Oh, hi. I didn’t hear you get up.” She didn’t sound as if anything was wrong, which made it stranger. She nodded at the counter. “I made coffee.”

He saw her own mug sitting next to her on the floor and looked at the half-full pot in the coffee maker. Just how many cups had she had? He poured himself a cup and took a badly needed swallow. “Bad night?”

“Yeah, but weird, too.” Talking rapidly, she described seeing lights on in their neighbor’s basement and how he’d carried out women’s clothing to his car and how even Margaret had commented on the enormous bag of trash he’d been carrying.

“Whoa, wait, I’m confused.” He held up his hand to stop her, trying to make sense of what she’d said. “Our neighbor had the lights on in the middle of the night—”

“His
basement
lights.”

“His
basement
lights on in the middle of the night and because of that you think he’s up to something?”

“Yeah, and because of other things. Lots of things. Look at this.” Kate stood up, thrusting a paper at him. She looked like a little kid in an oversized striped pajama top that hung almost to her knees, the baggy sleeves making her own skinny arms look even smaller. It was his, she was always appropriating his shirts, though they were way too big for her. He felt a surge of affection, and reached out a hand to push one of her curls back from her face, ridiculously pleased when she didn’t shy from his touch.

“Look,” she insisted, tapping the page. It was the front-page story about the photo of Lily Slocum being found.

“Okay, I’m looking. What is it?”

“Flowers.” She tapped the slightly fuzzy reproduction of the photo of Lily Slocum lying on a chaise lounge surrounded by flowers.

“What about them?”

“They look real, don’t they? Who do we know that has access to lots of fresh flowers?”

The laughter bubbled out of Ian before he could stop it. Kate’s mouth dropped open in surprise and then she frowned. “I’m serious, Ian.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it.” He tried to stop, but dissolved in laughter again. When he caught his breath, he said, “Oh, c’mon, it’s absurd. You think our neighbor is a killer.” He’d used a spooky voice, but she didn’t smile.

“I’m glad you find it so amusing.”

“Kate.”

She folded the paper with short, sharp movements. “I told you about his weird doll collection. She’s posed just like one of his dolls.” She didn’t look at him.

Ian sighed and swiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “I’m sorry I laughed, but this is just crazy.”

She looked up then, eyes blazing. “Crazy like I’m crazy?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“But you meant it.”

Christ, he didn’t know how he ended up in these conversations. He paused, burying himself in his coffee for a moment, struggling with how to proceed. “About last night,” he said after a minute.

She looked up at him from under her eyebrows with a glint in her eyes. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry for how I acted, reacted, but I think we need to take a good hard look at what’s going on and realize we could use some help.”

“We?” Her voice was cold. She stood up and held onto her own mug, her knuckles white. “Don’t you mean me?”

“No, not just you. It’s me, too. We’ve all been affected by what happened.”

“Rape. I was raped, Ian.”

His temper frayed. “I know! Jesus Christ, Kate, do you think I don’t know that? I can say the word—it’s you who doesn’t like to say the word!”

She reacted as if he’d slapped her, taking a step back, tears flooding her blue eyes. She let her coffee cup drop on the table and walked out of the room. Ian followed her. “Kate, wait.”

“Leave me alone!”

“No!”

She ran up the stairs and he ran after her, slowing to a walk when he realized this was like a scene in a bad movie. The slam of their bedroom door made him wince. He paced the hall for a minute, taking deep breaths and resisting the urge to throttle her and her artistic temperament.

She was overreacting because she was tired, tired because she didn’t sleep, didn’t sleep because she had bad dreams, and had bad dreams because she needed to talk with someone about what had happened. It all made perfect sense, but knowing this didn’t make it any easier to deal with nor did it mean she would accept the logic of it.

When he finally opened the bedroom door, it was to find her lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling. She sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, and he braced himself for more anger, but instead she said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Knocked off balance, as he always seemed to be by her despite eighteen years together, he managed to say, “Me, too.”

They talked about other things then, the ability to let an argument go part of the glue that held a marriage together. She showered and dressed and he took off to run some errands, and neither of them spoke about what she’d seen at Terrence Simnic’s house.

She folded up the old papers she’d scattered across the kitchen floor and tossed them back in the recycling basket, adding the one with Lily Slocum’s picture last, pausing to look at it again and then out the window at Terrence Simnic’s house.

The curtains were still drawn, but the van wasn’t in the driveway. He’d probably gone to work; florist shops were open on Saturday. Maybe Ian was right and it was crazy to suspect her next-door neighbor, but there’d been so many cases where the mild-mannered guy living next door turned out to be a cold-blooded killer. It always happened, so why not here? She knew better than anybody that nobody was immune.

The thud of her backpack hitting the porch signaled Grace’s arrival home. Kate hurried to the door to let her in, hand already raised in anticipation of a thank-you wave to Haley Chin’s parents, but their car was nowhere to be seen. The street was empty.

“Hi, sweetie.” Kate folded Grace into a hug that her daughter endured for all of three seconds before pulling away. “Where’s Haley? Didn’t her parents drop you off?”

“Yeah. Her dad was in a hurry.”

That didn’t sound like Dr. and Dr. Chin. He was a meticulous anesthesiologist. She was a researcher. Something to do with cancer cells. Both of them were serious, smart, and mousy, just like their daughter. Kate felt annoyed that they hadn’t lingered long enough to see that their daughter’s friend made it safely into her house.

“Did you have a nice time?” Kate asked, picking up the jacket Grace discarded in the hall.

Her daughter shrugged. “It was okay.”

“What did you girls do?”

“Nothing much. I’m hungry—can you make pancakes?” She walked toward the kitchen and Kate trailed after her.

“Didn’t you eat breakfast?”

“Yeah. Hours ago. It’s almost eleven, you know.”

“I can tell time, you know,” Kate said, imitating Grace’s tone and stance, but her daughter only rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll make pancakes, though I think the word you’re looking for is please.”

Her daughter trailed her to the kitchen. “I said please.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Whatever. Will you please make pancakes, Mother?” Grace’s proper British accent made them both laugh.

Kate made the pancakes, knowing she was doing so because this, at least, was a need she could meet.

“So, what did you and Haley do? Watch a movie?”

“No.”

“I thought you were going to the mall to see a movie?”

Grace pulled a carton of orange juice out of the fridge and poured a glass. “We changed our minds.”

“So what did you do instead?”

Grace took a sip. “Stuff.”

“Like what? Games? Video games?”

“Like just stuff, okay? Jesus, Mom, what’s with the third degree?”

Kate wanted to smack her with the spatula, could actually feel her hand twitch with desire, but she took a deep breath instead. “It isn’t a third degree, Grace, it’s called parenting. What did you do?”

“We played video games.”

“At the arcade in the mall?”

“Yeah.” Grace took a sip of orange juice, and then held out a plate for the pancakes Kate neatly flipped onto it.

Grace sat down at the table and picked up the latest
Wickfield Gazette
, the only one Kate had left on the table. So like her father, she thought, watching her daughter absently twirl a strand of long, dark hair through her fingers. She ate quickly, just like Ian, as if the food was going to be taken from her. Kate had always assumed that came from his childhood, but now, watching Grace shoveling food into her mouth, she wasn’t so sure.

She sat down in the seat opposite. “How’s it going?”

Grace’s eyes darted up to hers and then back down at the newspaper. She took a long time chewing her bite of pancakes, as if willing her mother to go away. Kate sat.

“How’s what going?” Grace said at last.

“With you—with life, school, all of it.” Kate worked hard to sound nonchalant and took a sip of coffee to hide her interest.

“Life is going fine.” Grace shoved another bite of pancake into her mouth.

Kate flashed back to her own teenage years, wondering if she’d been like this with her parents. Had they worried about her in the same way she worried about Grace? And had she been this snotty? She couldn’t remember much of anything from that time, which was shocking. When had she gotten so old?

“I know this move has been an adjustment,” she said after serving Grace more pancakes. “But now that we’ve settled in, how do you like Wickfield?”

“It’s okay.”

“And your new school?”

Grace shrugged. “It’s school.”

“Do you like it more than your old school? Less?”

Grace actually seemed to be considering this as she reached for the syrup bottle and poured it slowly over her pancakes, back and forth, around and around. It reminded Kate of Spirograph. She resisted the impulse to tell Grace to stop, hoping to avoid seeing that shuttered look fall on her face.

“Well, I don’t have to wear a uniform.” Grace righted the syrup bottle and licked the excess slowly off her fingers.

Use a napkin, Kate thought. Stop slouching and sit up straight. Hold your fork like a fork, not like a club. She thought it all and sipped her coffee to keep from saying any of it. “Anything else?”

“The food isn’t as good.” Grace cut a wedge of pancake with the side of her fork. “But we can go outside for gym.”

“Do you like your teachers?”

“They’re okay.”

Okay. Fine. Good. The words used to shut her mother up and out. Kate remembered the days when Grace would tell her everything, rushing into her mother’s arms at the end of the day, pressing her body against Kate’s so hard that at times Kate wished for the intensity of her love to be less. She hadn’t felt worthy of this outpouring of affection or able to successfully navigate the tricky emotional waters of elementary school relationships and the clubs and cliques that consumed Grace’s thoughts.

There had been many times when she’d wished that Grace had less to say, would just stop talking so that Kate could have a moment’s peace and quiet. Now she had her wish and the silence threatened to engulf her.

Grace was reading the latest story on Lily Slocum. Kate looked across at the photo of a cluster of police officers standing on the bank of a creek or river. It was in black and white and the river looked black in it, a roiling black ribbon. She thought about that ribbon wrapping itself around a body and shuddered.

There was a second, smaller photo below, of a group of police vehicles, including a van marked with
CORONER
on the side, heading down a mountainside. A grim caravan.

“Have you noticed anything odd about our next-door neighbor?” Kate asked.

Grace stared at her mother, fork suspended in midair. “Why did you bring that up?”

“I’ve just noticed some strange things over there—”

“That’s so weird, Mom.” Grace shoveled in her last few bites of food.

“Why is it weird?”

“C’mon, Mom, spying on our neighbor? That’s the definition of weird.” Grace got up and carried her plate to the sink.