The Fury of Rachel Monette (4 page)

Ethel switched off the vacuum cleaner and led it away. A tangible and disturbing silence moved into the room to replace the noise.

Ed Joyce watched the woman sitting motionless in the rocker. Her dark liquid eyes were unaware of his gaze, or if they were not, uncaring. What rotten timing, the chief found himself thinking. He was two months short of the mandatory retirement age of sixty and what the retirement community brochures promised would be the secure and happy sunset years of his life. But it was a selfish and unworthy thought and he drove it away and gave himself a black mark for having it.

“So, because of the suspected kidnapping, we've had to call in the FBI.” Which meant some corporate type with a monogrammed shirt and a head full of ambition would soon arrive. “Which means that one of their agents will be here shortly. I know it's a lot to put up with at a time like this, but every minute can be vital in an investigation of this nature. Vital. I'm sure you understand that.”

A young policeman with broad shoulders, a deep chest, and a droopy mustache appeared in the arched entrance to the living room. “Hey chief, got a sec?” he asked.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Monette,” said Ed Joyce, standing up. The huge shoes toed out across the rug, leaving a track of deep depressions regularly spaced in the pile. Rachel knew that Ed Joyce was a man who never varied the length or pace of his stride, good weather or bad, indoors or out.

She got up and went to the window. Andy Monteith was shoveling the snow from the walk. He wore a long purple muffler which he couldn't keep from tangling with the shovel. There seemed to be no rhythm or system to his work. He stuck his shovel in here and there, casting the loads at the snowbank. But the wind had risen, and it lifted the snow into the air before it could land, shaped it into little clouds and blew them away.

“What a winter,” Ed Joyce said behind her. “I can't remember when we've had so much snow. Not since the war, anyway. What part of the country are you from, Mrs. Monette? I mean originally.”

“New York.”

“Oh, New York. My wife loves going to the shows. Two in the same day, sometimes.” Rachel heard him sit down, heard him take his notebook from his shirt pocket, heard the soft plastic click as he pulled the top off his ball-point pen.

“Now, Mrs. Monette, we're starting to get these times nailed down.” Rachel turned and looked at him, and saw his tired gray eyes and his tired gray skin. If he would go away she could imagine it was yesterday. She returned to the rocker and sat down.

“Here's the sequence so far.” Ed Joyce opened his notebook. “At eleven forty-five Mrs. Flores arrives. She doesn't knock or ring, and the door is never locked. According to her that's the usual procedure.” He looked up, his face inquiring. Rachel nodded. “So, she goes into the kitchen, puts on an apron, and starts doing the dishes. When she's finished one rackful, she goes into the hall and starts dusting. That way she doesn't have to dry the dishes, they dry themselves, and when they're dry she empties the rack and washes another load.

“Okay, I had one of the boys wash enough dishes to fill the rack. It took him twelve minutes. Now maybe, being a man, he's slower than Mrs. Flores.” He smiled at her; she stared blankly back. “Let's say it took her ten minutes. Add two for coming into the house and putting on the apron. That makes it eleven fifty-seven when she goes into the hall.” Joyce made a short notation in his book.

“While she is dusting the cabinet in the hall, she hears voices upstairs.” Rachel's hands gripped the arms of the rocker very tightly. “She says that isn't unusual—students often came to the house to see the professor.” Again he looked up and again Rachel nodded. “One of the voices she recognizes as Professor Monette's. The other is a male voice that she doesn't know. She can't hear the actual words, but she forms the impression that they aren't speaking English. Now, Mrs. Monette,” Ed Joyce turned to a fresh page, “do you know what languages the professor spoke?”

When Ed Joyce used the word
spoke
he set off a sudden shift in the balance of Rachel's mind. A fundamental realization settled in her at that moment, and although she did not understand it, and might never, it had entered and waited patiently to be dealt with. The newspapers like to use the adjectives
shock
and
disbelief
when describing first reaction to the death of a close relative. Perhaps if the newspapers thought about it they would describe the second stage as one of shock and belief. It was because Rachel had just arrived at this point that she was slow to answer Ed Joyce's question. None of this was she willing to admit out loud: she didn't want to say “he spoke” or “my husband spoke” so she gave the police chief a list:

“French, of course, and Spanish, some Portuguese, some Italian, good German.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Monette.” Joyce added the details to his written account. “That could be a big help, especially if we assume Mrs. Flores would have recognized Spanish if they'd been speaking it. We can probably strike it off the list, you see.”

“I believe Mrs. Flores is Portuguese,” Rachel said. As she said it, she felt a keen self-hatred, for allowing herself to play an active role in this petty alignment of detail, as if they were involved in a parlor puzzle to while away the day. Who cares about the minutiae, Andy Monteith had said, was it only last night? It's what it says that counts. Sensible boy, Dan had said. She looked at Ed Joyce. He would never find her son.

Ed Joyce felt abashed. He had made an assumption and been tripped up by it, a beginner's mistake. “We'll have to check that out,” he said.

Ethel Dawkins came into the room, carefully carrying a tray in her plump hands. “Tea, anyone?” she asked. She began moving magazines aside to clear a place on the table for the tray.

“Thanks, Mrs. Dawkins, love some.”

“You're very welcome, Mr. Joyce. And try the chocolate chip cookies. I made them myself.” Ethel looked around. “My, it's dark in here,” she said, and did a quick circuit of the room snapping on the lights.

Ed Joyce poured a cup for himself and stirred in cream and sugar. He poured another for Rachel and slid it across the coffee table to her, arranging the cream, sugar, and cookies in a little group nearby. She didn't touch any of it. Joyce held the Wedgwood cup delicately in his immense hand, his little finger stuck out for balance. The chief liked the pattern on the cup—it showed a cherubic swallow hovering over a floral scene that made him think suddenly of the Garden of Eden. He sipped carefully.

“Eleven fifty-seven,” he went on, holding the cup in front of him, “she's in the hall, hearing voices. She dusts the marble-top table, the vase that sits on it, and the bentwood chair. She dusts the doorknob of the hall closet. She goes to the front door and starts to work on the big brass handle. That's the last thing she remembers until you came down the stairs.” The chief leaned forward, reached across the table, took a cookie and bit into it. His jaw muscles bulged as he chewed. He washed the debris down his throat with a mouthful of tea.

“Time spent in the hall, at least by the young fellow I had duplicate all that dusting—four minutes. That brings us to one minute after twelve.” Ed Joyce turned a page in the notebook and pulled the floor lamp closer.

“Now, the kidnapping. Miss Partridge's class always starts eating lunch at twelve sharp. Miss Partridge estimates that they had been eating for ten minutes when she heard a knock at the door—the main door, not the one that leads out back. She opened it and was beckoned out into the hall by a tall, black-bearded man wearing a robe of some sort. At first she didn't realize that he was a rabbi. In fact not until he introduced himself as such. She doesn't remember the name he gave her but thinks it sounded Jewish.” Ed Joyce closed his eyes and sighed.

“This rabbi told her that Adam's father had just been killed in a car wreck, and that you had sent him to bring Adam home.” Rachel began to rock the chair slowly; one of the old wooden joints made a regular creaking sound. The chief didn't look up from his notebook, but he tried to make his voice sound softer, although he knew it was little suited to the task.

“Miss Partridge was puzzled by one thing, and I think she came close to upsetting the whole scheme right there. She didn't understand why you would send a rabbi. ‘Why not?' he kept asking her. Finally, he cottoned on, and explained that you were Jewish. Evidently that did the trick. Miss Partridge went back into the classroom, got Adam dressed in his outdoor clothes, packed the remains of his lunch in his lunch box, told him that you had asked the nice man to take him home, and sent him off. When she turned from the door she noticed the clock on the wall said twelve fifteen.” The creaking noise grew louder. Ed Joyce put down his notebook.

“I hope you're not thinking too badly of Miss Partridge. I'm sure she knows she's acted like a foolish old woman, but she said the man seemed very understanding and compassionate, even sad, she thought. He was very good at what he was doing, Mrs. Monette. And besides, she thought of him as a man of the cloth: that kind of thing means a lot to someone like Miss Partridge.”

Rachel said nothing. She was thinking of Adam's lunch box with the picture of Porky Pig on the front. She got out of the chair and went to the liquor cabinet. She had been debating with herself for some time the question of whether she should have a drink. She wanted one but it seemed self-indulgent, frivolous. And yet what would it prove if she stopped eating, stopped drinking, stopped eliminating, withdrew from the chain of life, or whatever they called it in grade school? That was the question of course—whether to go on living. To go on living felt immoral.

“Have a drink, Mrs. Monette,” said Ed Joyce quietly. “I wouldn't mind one myself, whatever you're having.”

Rachel opened the cabinet and took out two glasses. She seldom drank anything other than a glass or two of wine at dinner, and perhaps beer at lunch. As she reached for the Scotch she glimpsed the dark frosted green glass of the squat armagnac bottle. She paused, bent over the cabinet, one hand around the neck of the bottle of Scotch. There was really no question at all, not while Adam was out there somewhere. Would she know if something happened to him? She had read of mothers sensing that their sons had died in far-off battles at the moment the deaths occurred. She didn't believe in psychic power; at the same time she could think of no reason why anyone would kill a five-year-old boy.

The doorbell rang. Hard shoes walked across the hall. Rachel heard a murmur of male voices and then a man said, “Hello, my name's Trimble and I'm from the FBI. May I come in?”

Rachel turned to face him. He was young, even younger than she perhaps. A barber had neatly trimmed his dark hair, a dry cleaner had neatly pressed his dark suit. An optician had sold him expensive aviator-style spectacles and the family genetic pool had given him small even features, even teeth, a light tenor voice, and faint acne scars.

“Yes,” she said. He entered and sat in the rocker.

“I'll take a rain check for now, Mrs. Monette, if you don't mind,” said Ed Joyce. Rachel closed the liquor cabinet and remained standing in front of it. No drinking with the FBI. To Trimble he said, “I'm Joyce, chief of the force here. Have you seen the preliminary report?”

“What there was of it.”

Joyce took a deep breath before he cleared his throat and resumed: “I've been explaining the details to Mrs. Monette. I was about to go over some of the questions they raise in my mind.” Trimble held out his hand, palm up in invitation to proceed.

“First, no sign of a car. Mrs. Flores didn't see one in front of the house. A fellow walking around in that getup would attract a lot of attention. But no one remembers seeing him. Therefore either he had someone drop him off in a car, or he took off the robe when he walked to the school.”

“Or he walked wearing the robe and no one saw him,” said Trimble trying to make his high voice sound bland.

“It's possible.” Ed Joyce rubbed his fleshy nose with the side of his fist. “We do know he left the house by the back door. There was no way he could have gone out the front with Mrs. Flores lying there on the floor. And one of the boys found tracks in the snow in the backyard. They weren't very good, with the wind and all, but we took impressions anyway and sent them to North Adams. The tracks lead to the side of the house, so he probably went around to the road. It's unlikely he went through the fields—at this time of year he couldn't make it to the school in nine minutes, not without skis or snowshoes.”

“This is all very interesting,” said Trimble. “But the big question raised in my mind is motive. Why?” Joyce and Trimble gazed at each other in silent contemplation.

Rachel left the living room. She went into the kitchen and opened the door to the basement stairs. She touched the light switch before she remembered that it was broken. They had been making do with the other light switch, the one at the foot of the stairs. The light from the kitchen cast a faint illumination in patches high on the opposite wall of the basement, but the corners and the lower parts lay in complete darkness. She had never been afraid of darkness before, and almost turned back before it occurred to her that fearing shadows was a luxury: she had reality. She slowly descended the stairs, her ears alert for any sound. Quite clearly she heard Ed Joyce saying, “How the hell should I know about the God-damned papers? Half of them aren't even in English, for Christ's sake.” It must be a trick of the pipes, she thought as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She switched on the light and quickly looked around.

The basement was the way it always was—crates of books, old trunks, broken bicycles, skis and ski poles, Dan's snowshoes still leaning in the corner. The pipes gave Trimble's high voice a sharp metallic tone. “I'll want to examine all of it anyway. It could be no more than a mess caused by the struggle. Or it could be the reason for it. Anything reported missing?”