The Other Side of Dark (5 page)

Don’t worry? Oh, sure. I grip the arms of the chair. But the telephone rings. Someone at the front desk tells Dr. Peterson that two detectives from the Houston Police Department have arrived, that they want to talk to me.

Dr. Peterson opens the door wide and leans against the wall, arms folded, waiting for the detectives to join us.

“You don’t have to stay,” I tell him.

“I don’t have anything important to do,” he answers. “A head transplant, but that can wait.”

“I don’t need a baby-sitter.”

“Doctors never baby-sit. Their fees are too high.”

“I’m not going to laugh at your jokes. It will only encourage you.”

Two tall men block the door for a moment. Smoothly one steps aside, then follows the other into my room. They look the way I’d imagine detectives should look. Their business suits are taut across their broad shoulders, and they’re both big men. They have brown hair, and one has a mustache. It’s their eyes, I think, that label them as detectives. It doesn’t matter that the mustached one has brown eyes and the other has blue. I know they really see me, every detail of me, and they’re trying to probe below the surface, poking at the doors to my mind.

Markowitz and Johns, they tell me and shake hands
with Dr. Peterson. Markowitz has the mustache. I’ll try to remember that.

A voice comes from the doorway, and Dad appears. “What is this? Stacy, are you all right?”

Dr. Peterson fills Dad in, and everyone goes through the introduction thing again.

Dad shakes his head. “I don’t think Stacy is up to this yet.” But his words come out in a question, and he’s looking at Dr. Peterson, not at me.

“Stacy can handle it,” Dr. Peterson says.

“Hey, look at me, Daddy. I’m dressed and out of bed. I’m feeling a lot better. Honest!” I stand up and give Dad a hug.

He hugs me tightly, awkwardly. The shock I feel takes away the comfort I used to feel in my father’s hugs. My head once fitted snugly against his chest, and now I find myself looking over his shoulder. We stand back and stare at each other.

“You might want to sit down, Stacy,” Detective Johns says to me. “We won’t be long. Just a few questions.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, then takes them out again. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. I bet he’s trying to stop smoking.

“It’s about that newspaper article, isn’t it?” Dad asks as I move away from him and sit in the only chair. Everyone else is standing, and it makes me feel kind of strange.

“Yes,” Detective Markowitz says. “Stacy, according to the interview you gave the reporter for the
Evening News
, you saw a person run out of your house, the person who shot you.”

I nod. “But—”

“It’s been four years,” Detective Markowitz adds. “How good is your memory? If we show you some books of mug shots, do you think you might be able to recognize him?”

The sound that comes out of my mouth is a kind of desperate wail, and it shocks me as much as it does everyone else in the room. “I can see it happening in my mind,” I tell them. “It’s almost like a movie, running over and over. He comes out of the back door and stands there, staring at me. And I know him. I know that I do. But I can’t see his face!”

The detectives glance at each other quickly, then back at me. Johns rubs at an invisible spot on his chin. “Maybe it would help if you tried to describe exactly what you saw at the time,” Markowitz says.

And Detective Johns adds, “Like what he was wearing. Jeans? A T-shirt? Maybe a white one?”

“Yes, jeans,” I say quickly. “But not a T-shirt. It was kind of a plaid shirt—red, I think. Yes, red, but faded, and the sleeves were rolled up.”

Markowitz is writing. “Very good. What else?”

“What else? Uh—he has a gun in his right hand.” There’s a long pause as I try hard to remember. “Help me!” I beg. “I have to know who he is. He killed my mother, and I hate him!”

Dr. Peterson gives me a quick look. I’m startled myself at the bitterness I can taste in my words.

“Take it easy, Stacy,” Detective Johns drawls. “Just try to relax. We’ll ask some questions, and see if you can come up with the answers.”

He uses the telephone on the table next to my bed. The receiver almost disappears inside his hand. While
he makes his call Markowitz asks me to go over the physical description I have given and try to add to it. He asks a lot of questions: Did I hear a shot? How close was I standing to the back door? Had I heard a car on the street before it all happened? And how old was the guy I saw?

“A few years older than I was,” I tell him.

“Someone you knew at school?”

“No. Older. He goes—went—to high school.”

“How old was he?”

I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly that they burn. “I should know!”

“He lives in your neighborhood? Your mother knew him, too?”

“Maybe. Oh, no. I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

I try so hard, but I still can’t see the murderer’s face.

Finally Markowitz pauses. “I think that’s it for now,” he says.

“Wait. Let me ask you something,” I say. “Why was this guy in our house? Why did he kill Mom?”

“It’s listed as robbery,” Markowitz answers. He looks at Dad, and Dad nods.

“He took my wife’s wallet out of her handbag,” Dad says. His voice rises as though he still couldn’t believe what he’s telling me. “And it was only ten or twelve dollars. She asked me that morning if I’d stop by the bank on the way home from work.”

“Ten dollars? And he killed her?”

“One of the policemen who came after it had happened said he guessed the killer was someone looking
for money to buy drugs, and he probably thought the house was empty. Maybe he panicked.”

“Why did it have to be Mom?” I cry out. “Mom was gentle and loving and funny and kind. And she trusted everybody!”

Even when I was a very little girl, I wanted to be like Mom. But I wasn’t like her at all. I’d get mad and shout and stamp, and Dad would march me off to my room to “think things over” and cool down. Thinking things over never seemed to help much.

Dad sighs. “Honey, we just don’t know what was in the—murderer’s mind. There’s no way of knowing.”

“We’ll know when we arrest him!”

They look at me, and Markowitz says, “To make a solid case, the DA needs two kinds of evidence: an eyewitness to place someone at the scene of the crime and physical evidence that the person was there.”

“I’m the eyewitness! I’m going to remember! I am! And you must have something from the house!” I think about some of the detective movies I’ve seen. “What about fingerprints? Could you look for fingerprints?”

Dad reaches down and takes my right hand. His forehead is wrinkled with worry. “Calm down, Stacy. Don’t get overexcited.” He looks at Dr. Peterson as though he were begging for help, but Dr. Peterson just gives a barely noticeable shake of his head.

“Granted, fingerprints can last for years,” Markowitz tells me, “but chances are any fingerprints were cleaned up long ago.”

I impatiently tug my hand away from Dad’s. “But what about when the police investigated after Mom
was murdered? Wouldn’t they have taken fingerprints then?”

Markowitz nods. “We’ll pull the file and see what they’ve got. There may be a chance they got some prints. Maybe even some clear ones. Obviously, if they had them, they didn’t get a make on them; but maybe our boy’s been in trouble since then, and we’ll be able to match them. There may be some other physical evidence that may help. With luck they’ll have the bullet that killed your mother. We won’t know till we check it out.”

“What good will the bullet do without the gun?”

“It might be worth something. It might not. It’s our job to find out.”

“Will you tell me? The minute you know?”

“These things take time,” Johns says. He turns to Markowitz and mumbles, “Got a cigarette?”

The look Markowitz gives his partner is enough of an answer.

“Okay, okay, forget it,” Johns says. He turns to me. “We’ll try a computer search. May just luck out.”

“Computer?”

Dr. Peterson smiles. “You’ve got a lot to catch up on, Stacy. Everyone does everything by computer now.”

“What will happen to the murderer after you arrest him?”

“He’ll go through all the legal processes,” Johns says.

“Will he get the death penalty?”

Dad looks startled, but Johns takes the question as though he’d heard it over and over again. “Depends on
the jury,” he says. “In Texas the death penalty can be given if robbery, sexual assault, or kidnapping are associated with the murder. With this one we’ve got a robbery charge.”

Markowitz tucks his notebook into his inside coat pocket. I get a glimpse of a gun in a shoulder holster. I remember another gun, and I shiver.

“I’m afraid we’re tiring you,” Markowitz says. As though they could read each other’s mind, he and Detective Johns turn toward the door at the same time.

I climb out of my chair and walk a few steps with them. “I’m not tired. I won’t get tired. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”

Markowitz hands me his card. “You can reach me through this number at any time. If you need us, don’t hesitate to call.” They stride from the room.

Dad follows them. So does Dr. Peterson. Because they’ve left the door open, I can hear the deep rumble of their voices, but only a word or two, so I stand just inside the door, where they can’t see me.

“Well, yes, there is a possibility,” Johns says. “But it’s a slim one.”

Dad is demanding. “But he could be a danger to Stacy.”

There’s a pause, and Markowitz answers, “Yes. It’s a long shot, depending on where this guy is and whether he saw that newspaper article and how his mind works, but I suppose we could say there’s a possibility that Stacy could be in danger.”

“Then shouldn’t we get protection for her?” Dad asks.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to butt in.” Dr. Peterson
doesn’t wait to find out if he can or can’t and just goes on talking. “It’s important that Stacy lead as normal a life as possible so that she can get all the pieces together.”

“But I think—”

I don’t hear the rest of what Dad says as they move farther away. I lean against the wall, waiting for Dad to come back to my room. I’m tired. I’m angry. And I’m scared because I don’t know what will happen next. The guy without a face who murdered my mother. And Stacy McAdams. Who’s going to find the other first?

When Dad comes back to my room, he tries to hide his worries under a broad smile, but his eyes give him away. He hugs me again and mumbles against my hair, “Oh, Stacy, you can’t know how wonderful it is having you back. You just can’t know!”

It’s warm inside Dad’s hug. It’s safe. “I don’t want to stay in this clinic,” I murmur. “I’m feeling all right now. Really. I want to go home with you.”

He backs off and smiles at me. “Dr. Peterson says most likely you can come home the day after tomorrow. Only—”

When he doesn’t finish his sentence, I ask, “Only what?”

For a moment he’s silent. Then he says, “Only you’ll be home alone, and I think someone should be with you.”

I open my mouth to say, “But Mom will be there,” and I have to remind myself that she won’t. It’s still so hard to believe. Dad is watching me, so I manage to stammer, “School. I have to go to school, Daddy.”

Dad takes my hand and leads me to the bed, sitting beside me. “There are a lot of things to work out, Stacy.
And school is one of them. You were just finishing the seventh grade when all this happened to you. But your classmates are now in the eleventh grade. You aren’t prepared for eleventh-grade courses, and naturally you won’t want to go back to seventh grade. So maybe tutors? Home study? I don’t know yet. It hadn’t occurred to me to find out what to do.”

“I don’t want to go to school at home by myself.”

Dad rubs a hand over his forehead and sighs. “No, no. Of course not. You’d be lonely.”

“Maybe they’d let me take exams for the courses I was taking in seventh grade and make up eighth grade in summer school. That way I’d be in high school in the fall. I’ll work real hard, Daddy, and not stay on the phone too long or watch too much television, and Mom will—”

The word enters us like an ache, and we just sit there, staring at each other.

“I—I’m sorry, Dad. I keep forgetting.”

He puts an arm around me. “Honey, I still do. So many times I come home in the evening and for an instant actually expect Jeanne to call out to me.”

“It hurts so much.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Will it ever stop hurting?”

“I don’t know. We’ll never stop remembering, but I don’t know if the hurt will always be part of the remembering. I wish I could give you an answer that would help.”

“If we had wishes, I’d wish none of this had happened. I’d wish we could go back. Have a second chance.”

“Life doesn’t give second chances, Stacy.”

“Then I don’t like life very much.”

Dad’s arm is strong, and he tightens his grip a little on my shoulder. “At some time or another everyone gets hit by problems that seem almost impossible to handle. You can give up without a fight, or you can climb over those problems and move on, because there are lots of good things ahead for you to discover.”

“You make it sound too easy, Dad. Maybe you could do it, but I don’t know yet if I can.”

“You can.” He makes a strange sound that startles me. I don’t know if it’s a laugh or a sob, so I twist to look at him. I can see the tautness of the muscles that are throbbing in his cheeks and chin. “Stacy, when Jeanne died, I wanted to run away, to hide, to do anything in order to escape all the pain.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“I don’t understand. You’re here, Daddy.”

“And I’ll continue to be here with you, honey.” I listen to footsteps pass my door and to someone laughing down the hallway. It seems a long time before Dad continues. “I drank a lot. Too much. It didn’t help me escape anything. It just made it all worse. It was a stupid thing to do.”

“Don’t say you’re stupid, Daddy! It wasn’t your fault. It was the murderer’s fault.”

“You can’t blame him for everything, Stacy. I’m certainly not going to blame him for something I chose to do.”