The Last Good Night (27 page)

I stared out the window, looking for Sophie, my forehead pressed against the pane.

It was three o'clock, four o'clock.

At four-thirty, Harraday called. My heart leapt. They had found her.

Flanders, David, and I grabbed various extensions.

“No sightings,” Harraday said.

The receiver loosened in my hand.

“But the FBI let us use their computers,” Harraday continued. “Case like this, they always agree. Anyway, we ran a check on Pierce. Seems this guy has a record,” he told us. “He served time in Florida for involuntary manslaughter for the death of a man named Frank Xavier.”

“Did you know about this?” David asked when we had all hung up.

He and Flanders both looked at me.

“Yes.”

They stared incredulously.

“You're going to have to talk to Harraday,” Flanders said, “and tell him what you know.”

David ignored him and took a step to me. “You knew this guy killed a man and you never thought that maybe seeing him was not such a great idea? That never fucking occurred to you?”

“David, please.”

“What's wrong with you? Our daughter could be dead because of you.”

“Don't say that.” I reached over and slapped him hard across the face. “Don't say that! Don't even think that! They're going to find her. They have to find her. You said so yourself.”

David turned his back to me while Flanders called Harraday back.

“Don't you think you'd better call the studio?” David asked me when Flanders was done.

“About what?”

“To tell them you won't be doing the news tonight.”

 

T
HERE ARE NO
rules of conduct for a time like this. No rituals to observe that would distract us from our grief.

Not grief. I was not going to feel grief. I was not even going to imagine it.

No rituals, anyway, for this.

There was nothing.

The light changed, evening fell.

At some point in the night, I heard David bang his fist into the wall and cry out.

And at some point in the night, I went into Sophie's room and shut the door.

She was everywhere in the smell, the dust, the very air.

I opened the bureau drawers and touched her neatly folded clothes, the fuzzy one-piece sleeping sacks, the leggings, the tiny flowered socks.

I reached over and took the white netted bag we used for her laundry from its hook. Inside were the clothes she had worn for the past three days, the soft cotton side-snapped undershirts, the terry cloth stretchies. I held them close, breathing in her scent. I pulled out a white velour shirt with two purple stains from the jelly I had let her lick off my finger, her velvet gummy toothless mouth clamping around my forefinger.

I picked the teddy bear with the bells in its belly out of the crib and hugged it to my chest, rocking back and forth, back and forth.

She was out there someplace, someplace without it, someplace alone.

I touched the towel we rolled up and leaned her against to sleep so she could not roll onto her stomach and suffocate.

Were they doing that for her? Did they know?

I crawled over to the almond-hued metal diaper pail by the side of her dresser and opened it up. Inside there was a single Pampers from the morning that no one had thrown out.

I opened up the plastic strips covered with bunnies holding pastel balloons and buried my face in it, the loose shit, cold now, smearing across my face.

 

I
DON'T KNOW
how long I lay there.

Later, I got up, washed my face.

I could hear David still pacing.

I could hear Flanders in the living room, slurping coffee he must have made himself.

I crept into the den and shut the door.

I didn't turn on the lights.

I sat down on the floor, hugging my knees tight to my chest.

And then I picked up Harraday's card from the top of my desk and slowly dialed his home number.

H
E PICKED UP
on the third ring, his voice heavy with sleep. “Yeah?”

“It's Laura Barrett.”

“Miss Barrett.” I could hear his voice kick into alert. It was five in the morning, but neither of us mentioned it. There was a long silence. David was in the bedroom, finally asleep.

“There's something I need to tell you,” I said quietly.

“Yes?”

“The other day, a photo came in the mail.”

“What kind of photo?”

I paused. “Can we keep this confidential?” I asked.

“If it has nothing to do with the case, I'll keep it to myself. I won't even tell my partner. That's all I can promise.”

“And if it turns out that it does have something to do with the case?”

“I can't give you any guarantees.”

“All right.” I rearranged my legs on the cold wooden floor. And then I told him about the picture of the Breezeway and the scrawl on the back,
Everyone has to pay. Even you
.

“Pay for what?” Harraday asked.

I took a deep breath.

All the years spent avoiding questions, running and ducking from them, now came down to this, sitting in an expensively furnished den in the dark, talking to a stranger I prayed could help me.

I no longer feared the questions.

The worst had already happened. Sophie was gone.

My voice was a hoarse whisper as I began to tell Harraday about the August night twenty-one years ago when I had struggled with Frank Xavier, told him how Jack had come up the path, seen us battling, seen the brick.

“Miss Barrett,” he interrupted.

“Laura.”

“Laura, I have to warn you before you say anything else. You should know, if you say what I think you're about to, legally, I'll be obligated to inform the D.A.”

“Even though it was twenty-one years ago?”

“It doesn't matter. Homicide cases never get closed out. As long as I have probable cause to believe a felony was committed, I've got to act. I want you to know that.” His voice softened. “Look, my only concern right now is finding your daughter. But, like I said, I can't make any guarantees.”

The glass panes rattled in the brisk night wind. “All I care about is getting Sophie back.”

No sound came in from the streets below as I continued without interruption, summoning that long gone night from the subterranean cave where it had lurked for so many years. Gradually, it entered and filled the room, the soupy humid air, the smell of chlorine from the pool, the fear, the blood.

And something Harraday would never see, never smell: Garner, the men.

“So Pierce went to jail?” he asked, his voice objective, uninflected.

“Yes. He got ten months and five years' probation.”

There was a long pause.

“It would certainly give him a motive,” he said finally.

“I know it looks that way, but if he wanted to hurt me, why would he have waited all this time? It doesn't make sense.”

“He didn't know where you were before. He didn't know
who
you were.”

“Maybe. But I don't really believe that. He's a good man,” I said softly. “I don't know how to explain it to you, but he's a good man.”

“Good can turn bad,” Harraday replied simply.

“Now what?” I asked.

“I'll make some calls as soon as I get in this morning.”

“Is one of them going to be to the D.A.?” I asked.

“I don't know. Give me a little time to work on this.” He began thinking out loud. “It is a different jurisdiction, after all. I can keep it quiet for a little while. I'm not really sure what purpose it would serve at this point. You did instruct us to look for Pierce. We'll have the photo to go on. And we already know his record. You deserted him, he resents you for it, that's motive enough for now. Laura?”

“Yes?”

“Who else knows about this?”

“No one.”

“All right. I'll come by this morning and pick up the photo. We'll check for fingerprints, handwriting. That much will have to become common knowledge. What did the postmark say, by the way?”

“There was none.”

“Then whoever sent it not only knew where you lived, they knew how to get in. I'll send some men to talk to the doormen, the postman, whoever else might have seen something.”

I was just about to tell Harraday about the postcard of the
Breezeway that had come to my office last month when I heard a rustling and I looked up, startled.

David was standing in the doorway, his face shining in the darkened room.

When I met his eyes, he turned and disappeared.

“I've got to go,” I said to Harraday, and hung up the telephone.

 

I
FOLLOWED
D
AVID
into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at him, his eyes weary and distrustful, his body limp, bruised, near defeat.

“I don't know who you are,” he said.

I took a deep breath, searching for an answer to give him, but I found none.

“You killed a man,” he uttered in disbelief.

I stared at a wrinkle in the quilt. “Yes.”

He clutched the sheet in his fist tighter and tighter until his knuckles turned white. “Who was Xavier?”

“He was staying at my parents' motel.”

“And?”

I looked at the back of David's head, mossy and soft. “He was…” I stopped.

“What?”

“We were struggling. I only wanted him to stop touching me. I never meant to kill him. Oh God, I never meant that.”

“But he died,” David said harshly.

“Yes.”

“If it was self-defense, why did you run?”

“I panicked. It was a mistake, David. An awful mistake. I know that. I was just so scared.” I looked at the window, then back to him. “I know it's no excuse, but I never thought Jack
would go to jail. I called my mother and she told me he was going to get off. The way the brick hit Xavier, forensics couldn't prove he hadn't just fallen on his head the way Jack said.”

“You're right. That's no excuse. You knew about the trial. I just don't understand. How could you not have gone back?”

I longed suddenly to tell him all of it, to be bleached, emptied out.

“David, I know nothing I say will ever change what I did. Nothing can make it right. But I need you to at least try to understand. There are things I never told you, things I never told anyone.”

He lay completely still, waiting. The room was silent except for our breathing.

“I don't know where to begin.” I paused.

“Try,” he said bitterly.

“I told you I only met my real father once.”

“Yes.”

“David, my mother, Astrid. She wasn't just the brokenhearted teenager I made her out to be. Maybe she started out that way, I don't know. But it's more complicated than that.” I stopped, shifted my legs, began again. “We were very poor in Germany. She was just a teenager when she had me. Her mother had died and her father was so mad at her he kicked her out. She never finished school, so it was hard for her to find work. She took in people's clothes to sew, she tried to get work in the factories. Astrid always had some plan, some idea that would magically make things better, but they never worked out. The only way she ever really made any money was men.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She was…she went with…”

He turned to look at me. “Are you telling me your mother was a prostitute?”

“In Dortmarr. Before we came here.”

“Good Lord.”

“Then she latched onto Garner, or he latched onto her, I don't know. And that was almost as bad. Maybe it was worse. Oh God, David, I don't know how to make you understand what it was like then. I've kept it all buried for so long. I know I lied to you. But it was only because I was trying so hard to forget it all. Astrid, Garner, all of it. None of it was what you think.”

“They ran the motel?” he asked, no longer certain of what was firmament and what was illusion.

“Yes. They ran the Breezeway.”

“And were there…did your mother…were there men there, too?”

“No. Yes. There was Garner, first of all there was Garner.” I stared up at the ceiling. “It's funny, but I thought I'd feel some relief when I found out he died, but I didn't. I didn't feel anything at all.”

“What did he do to her that was so awful?”

“Everything. Nothing. To me, too,” I added faintly.

David raised his head, the tendons in his neck bulging and tense. “What did he do to you?”

“Not as much as he wanted. He tried, but it never got that far. But it was like living in a warped world, David. I was frightened of Garner, I was ashamed to have friends, ashamed that they might learn about Astrid, about what my family was really like. About what I was really like.”

“What do you mean, what you were really like?”

“All my life, I was terrified that I'd turn out to be like Astrid.”

I stopped.

“Why would you think that?”

I buried my face in the pillow. I didn't want him to see me. “Because I did. I was.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Frank Xavier. I had slept with him before.”

“For money?”

“Yes.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“I don't believe this. How does that happen? How do you start sleeping around for money at sixteen? Tell me. I really want to know. Tell me how that happens.”

Before I could attempt to answer, David's voice softened. “Did your mother know? Did she put you up to it? Is that it?”

“No.”

He fell back, deflated. “I suppose Pierce knows all about this?”

“No. You're the only person I've ever told.”

He took a deep breath. “Why didn't you tell me any of this before?”

“I loved you. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. Would you have still wanted me if I had told you?”

“I don't know.” He looked directly at me. “You didn't give me the chance to decide. You took my choice away from me.”

“Don't you see, David, I wasn't hiding it from you. Not just from you, anyway. I was trying to hide it from myself. For years, I thought I was like Astrid, that I had to be like her. And then I escaped. And all I wanted to do was wipe her away. I even made sure I didn't look like her anymore. It wasn't her, of course. I know that. It was myself I was trying to erase. But I would have gone mad if I didn't pretend they never existed. That Marta never existed. It didn't work anyway, how could it? I could never wipe away what happened that night. I can never change what I did.” I stopped and looked at him. “I never meant to hurt you. That's the last thing in the world I ever wanted.” Even to my own ears, the words sounded hollow, inane. Nevertheless, they were true, if that mattered.

“Tell me about Pierce,” he said quietly. “When did you meet him?”

“We were young. Teenagers.”

“You're going to tell me all this was just a case of puppy love?”

“No. No, it was nothing like that. At the time it felt like…”

“Felt like what?”

“I don't know. Everything. It felt like everything. Didn't you ever have anyone like that, when you were young? Someone who meant the world, literally meant the world to you?”

David didn't answer. I knew that he had never had that first love that burns everything in its wake, burns youth itself. Not everyone does. I'm not sure who are the unlucky ones, the people who have known it and spend the rest of their lives comparing every love to that, or the ones who never knew it to begin with.

“He was the first person who made me feel I could get out,” I said. “That was an incredible gift.”

“Have you been in touch with him all this time?”

“No.”

“You never heard from him until now?”

“No.”

“Why should I believe you?”

There was no reason, really. Even I knew that. I didn't answer.

“What does Pierce want?” David asked angrily.

“I don't know.”

“You let the man go to jail for you. He must despise you.”

“I know. If I could change what I did, I would. You have to believe that, David.”

“You can't, though. You can't change what you did. Even if I come to understand what led you there, that doesn't mean I'll ever think there's an excuse for it. I don't care what happened or who your parents were, nothing could make it right.”

“No.”

“Pierce must want revenge.”

“I don't think so. No matter what, I honestly don't think Jack
has Sophie.” At her name, my voice caught. “It's just not the kind of man he is.”

“How can you tell what kind of man he is? I thought I knew what kind of woman you are and I wasn't even in the ballpark. I wasn't even in the fucking universe.”

Outside, a car honked loudly and then sped off. Dust motes caught the morning's first rays and did a slow waltz through the air.

“David?”

He ignored the question in my voice.

I moved to touch him but I felt his thigh flinch from my fingers in revulsion. “I love you,” I said quietly. “I've always loved you.”

David looked over at me, his face contorted by pain and confusion. “I just want Sophie back,” he said. “That's all.”

“I know.”

We sat for a long time in the quiet room as the dawn began to break and a sunless gray light filtered in.

There was nothing left to say, not now, not yet.

 

T
HERE WAS ONLY
Sophie, wanting Sophie.

Was she crying?

Was she being fed, changed?

Touched?

I thought of the coffee stain in the shape of Africa on her left calf. The slash of white on her ribs. Her wayward patch of curls.