The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (14 page)

"Oh, Patsy," I said. "Don't. Not you. Please."

"I talk to my mother every day, Gus. More than I did when she was alive. In fact, we were having just the pleasantest chat on the way over here."

"Christ."

"She asked me what you were like. And I said well, he's a bit on the old side, and he talks a lot of bunkum, but he's got these lovely big hands, Mother, and these ribs. I do love feeling his ribs."

"And she--what?--listens? Talks back, does she?"

"Sometimes. When I need her to."

I jumped to my feet. The chill had worked its way right up to my chin now, and I had to walk about the kitchen a few circuits, chaff the blood back into my arms.

"The people we love are always with us," she said, quietly. "You should know better than--" "I don't see anyone else here," I said. "Do you? As far as I can tell, we're all alone."

"Oh, you can't believe that, Gus. You can't stand there and tell me she's not here."

The sky that night was a deep-roasted purple, and the hills couldn't be seen except where a single light winked from Dolph van Corlaer's farmhouse. And somewhere a cock, roused too soon, was in the midst of a long tapering crow.

"It's a funny thing," I said. "I never could get used to sharing my bed. The elbow in my face and, I don't know, someone's hair in my mouth. But now, all these years later, I can't get used to having it to myself. Can't even bring myself to take up the whole bed. I just lie there, on my side, trying not to use up too much blanket." I pressed my hands against the windowpane. "Well," I said, "she's been gone a long time now."

"I wasn't speaking of Amelia, Gus."

"She's gone, too."

"That's what you say."

No point in arguing. My daughter was gone, that was plain to see. For all anyone could tell, she'd never been there in the first place, and even I, in those days, tended to remember around her. I'd recall, for instance, how often my wife used to apologize for never having given me a boy. And how I'd always comfort her by saying, "A daughter suits me better anyway." For who else would fill up the silences so well? The quiet of an evening like this, when I'd be lost in my usual pursuits--my "bachelor moods," Mattie used to call them--and I'd look up suddenly... and there she would be, on the far side of the room. My daughter. Slim and straight, her cheeks turned to coral from sitting so near the fire. She'd be, oh, sewing up a sleeve or writing to her aunt or smiling at something Mr. Pope had once written. Once my eyes had found her, they would never permit themselves to leave her again.

And the longer I looked, the more my heart would crack, for it seemed to me I was already losing her. Had been losing her from the day I first held her in my hands, violet and squalling. And there was nothing, in the end, that could stop her from being lost. Not love. Not anything.

"The only one I miss right now is Hagar," I told Patsy. "My coffee could use some cream."

She watched me. Very studiously, like someone poring over a deed.

"Gus, you don't take cream in your coffee."

Narrative of Gus Landor

11

November 1st to November 2nd

Four o'clock is the closest thing West Point has to a magic hour. The afternoon recitals are finished, the evening parade hasn't yet been called, and the cadets have a brief gap in the day's long march, which most of them use to storm the female citadel. At four o'clock on the dot, a regiment of young women, gallantly fitted in pink and red and blue, are already pacing Flirtation Walk. Within minutes come an invading horde of "grays," each offering his arm to a pink or a blue, and if things are very far along--say, a day or two--you may see a gray removing the button nearest his heart and exchanging it for a lock of the pink's hair. Eternal troth is pledged. Tears are shed. It's all over in half an hour. Nothing to beat it for efficiency.

On this particular day, it had another useful result. It cleared the remaining grounds of cadets and left me quite alone, standing by the northern entrance to the icehouse, facing an empty Plain. The leaves fell in a steady draft, and the light, which had been a naked glare until today, lay soft and muted on a rising crest of mist. I was alone.

Then there came a rustle... the snapping of a twig... the barest of footfalls.

"Ah, good!" I said, still in the act of turning. "My note reached you."

Not stopping to reply, Cadet Fourth Classman Poe danced round the side of the icehouse, wrenched open the door and dropped inside. A gust of cool air spilled after him.

"Mr. Poe?"

From somewhere in the dark came a long croaking whisper: "Did anyone follow me?"

"Well, let me... no."

"You're certain?"

"Yes."

He consented then to move closer to the doorway--until the planes of his face were back in the light. A nose. A chin. The glacier of his brow.

"I am baffled by your conduct, Mr. Landor. You demand utter secrecy, and then you call me out in full daylight."

"There was no help for it, I'm sorry."

"But suppose I am seen?"

"A very good point. I believe it might be best, Mr. Poe, if you started climbing again."

I pointed to the thatched dome of the icehouse, silhouetted against the sky like a squashed arrowhead. Poe twisted his head round to follow the line of my finger, until at last he stood squarely in the light, squinting into the sun.

"It isn't so high," I said. "Fifteen feet, I'd say. And you're so good at climbing."

"But... whatever for?" he whispered.

"Now, I should probably give you a leg up, will that do? You might then try grabbing the top of the door frame--right there, do you see? And from there, you should have no problem reaching the cornice..."

He looked at me as if I were speaking in reverse. "Unless you're still tired from the other day," I said. "I'll certainly understand if you are."

What choice did he have now? He laid his hat on the ground, rubbed his hands together, gave me a frowning nod, and said, "Ready."

Being small, he could cleave to the icehouse's stone surface rather well, and he slipped only once, as he was climbing onto the cornice. But his right foot held fast, and soon he was drawing himself up and over. Half a minute later, he was crouched like a gargoyle on the crest.

"Can you see me from where you are?" I called up.

Kssst.

"Sorry. Can't hear you, Mr. Poe."

" Yes." A hissing whisper.

"You needn't worry. We're quite alone for the time being, and if anyone hears me, they'll just write me off as insane, which--sorry, what was that, Mr. Poe?"

"Please tell me why I'm up here."

"Oh, yes! What you're looking at is the scene of the crime." With my feet, I sketched out an area roughly twenty yards square. "The second crime," I corrected myself. "This is where Leroy Fry's heart was removed."

I was standing now just north and a little northeast of the icehouse door. To the northwest lay the officers' quarters, to the west the cadet barracks, to the south the Academies, and to the east the guard post at Fort Clinton. A very sensible choice our man had made: he'd found the one spot where he might be assured of carrying out his work unseen.

"Funny thing," I said. "I've searched all round this icehouse. Crawled on my hands and knees, got at least two pairs of trousers dirty. It never occurred to me until now to try a--a different vantage point."

His vantage point, I meant. The man who'd cut through Leroy Fry's flesh and bone, soaked his hands in the drip and stench of a once-living body.

"Mr. Poe, can you hear me?"

" Yes."

"Very good. I'd like you to look down now, to where I'm standing, and tell me, please, if you see any--any gaps in the ground cover. By that I mean, any places where the grass or the soil seems to be broken. Where a rock or a stick might have been driven into the ground."

There was a long pause. Long enough that I was on the verge of repeating myself when I heard a long hiss.

"Sorry, Mr. Poe, I can't--" "By your left foot."

"By my left... by my... yes. Yes, I see it."

A small indentation, maybe three inches round. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a shiny white stone--I'd collected a mess of them by the river that morning--pressed it into the crevice and stepped away.

"There you are," I said. "Maybe now you can see the value, Mr. Poe, of a God's-eye view. I doubt I would ever have caught that with my--my mortal eyes. Now, if you can just tell me where else you see gaps. Of roughly the same size and shape."

It was a halting business. He needed at least five minutes before he could begin in earnest. Between sightings, still more time elapsed, and on several occasions he changed his mind and had me remove the stone marker I had just set down. And because he insisted on whispering everything, the task of following his directions was a bit like groping down an alley with only a firefly as a guide.

He fell silent again. And then sent me scurrying in an unforeseen direction, some three yards away from the area I'd sketched out for him.

"We're leaving the crime scene, Mr. Poe."

But he insisted I put a stone there. And kept insisting and kept pushing the perimeter outward until it no longer made any sense whatsoever. I felt the stock of stones in my pocket dwindling, and a dismal feeling came over me as I saw the terrain I'd limned so neatly in my head popping its borders.

"Are there any more, Mr. Poe?" I called out wearily.

A good half an hour had passed by this point, and my little gargoyle declared that there was one more. Which was, for strange reasons, the hardest to find of all. Three paces north... five paces east... no, six paces east... no, you passed it... there... no, not there, there! His scratching whisper trailed me the whole time like a gnat... until at last the gap was found and the marker inserted, and I could hear the relief in my voice as I said:

"You may come to earth now, Mr. Poe."

Scrambling down, he jumped the last six feet and landed on his knees in the grass. Then melted once again into the blackness of the icehouse's interior.

"You mentioned the other day, Mr. Poe, how the nature of this crime-- the taking of Leroy Fry's heart--drew you back to the Bible. I must admit I was already moving in the same direction. Not to the Bible, exactly--there's not much that would make me do that--but I couldn't help wondering if there weren't something in this business that smacked of religion."

His hands flashed in the darkness.

"Well, really, the whole business smacks of it," I said. "Leroy Fry falls in with a "bad bunch' a couple of summers back and then does what? Runs straight to the prayer squad. Thayer sees Fry's body and thinks of what?
A religious fanatic. So then, let's take religion as our starting premise, and let's ask ourselves, might there be some traces left of the original act? Some signs of a rite--I mean, a ceremony. Stones or--or candles or some such, placed in an intentional way?"

Poe's hands were folded together now: soft, priestly hands.

"Well, then," I went on, "if such objects were used, it stands to reason our man would have removed them the moment he was done. No sense leaving evidence. But what of the--the impressions made by the objects? Those would have taken much longer to erase, and there was precious little time as it was, what with the search party already on its way. Not to mention, our man had a heart that needed seeing to. Very well, then, he takes away the objects, but he doesn't likely stay to fill the holes the objects made." I smiled at those hands in the icehouse. "That's what we're doing today, Mr. Poe. We're finding the holes he left behind."

I scanned the white stones studded like tiny grave markers amid the pale grass. From my coat pocket, I drew out a pencil and a notebook. Moving in a wave pattern, I began calibrating the distances between the stones, sketching as I went, until the paper held a lattice of dots.

"What have you found?" whispered Poe from the depths of the icehouse.

It was only when I handed him the page, I think, that I really saw what was there:

"A circle," said Poe.

Circle it was. Fully ten feet in diameter, by my estimate. Considerably more space than Leroy Fry's body would have consumed. Large enough to hold half a dozen Leroy Frys.

"But the pattern inside the circle," said Poe, his face bending low over the paper, "I can't get anywhere with that."

We both stared at it a little longer, trying to connect the inner to the outer dots. Nothing worked. The harder I looked, the more the dots seemed to scatter... until I let my gaze settle on the stones themselves.

"Hmm," I said. "It only stands to reason."

"What?"

"If we missed some of the dots on the circle's circumference--see?--I'd be willing to wager we missed some inside the circle as well. Let me just..."

I set the paper on top of the notebook and began drawing a line through the dots that were closest together, and then I kept going, barely aware of what I was doing, until I heard Poe say:

"Triangle."

"Yes, indeed," I said. "And from what they told me, I'm guessing that Leroy Fry was right inside that triangle. And our man was--he was..."

Where?

Years ago, the family of a farrier in the Five Points paid me (with several lifetimes' worth of savings) to look into his death. The fellow had been cudgeled and branded with one of his own irons. On his forehead I found a raised U of flesh, as though a horse had stepped on him. I remember running my hand along that scar and wondering about the person who'd done it and then looking up and seeing--no, I won't say that--imagining the killer standing by the door with the iron still smoking in his hand, and in his eyes a look ... rage and fear, I suppose, and a certain shyness, as though he doubted he was worthy of my notice. Well, the actual killer, when we found him, was very little as I'd pictured him, but the look in the eyes, that was the same. It stayed like that, too, all the way to the gallows.

That particular case made me a believer in, well, pictures. But that afternoon by the icehouse, Reader, there was no picture. No one looking back at me. Or maybe it's better to say that whoever was there kept changing position and shape... multiplying.