The Twisted Thread (32 page)

“Scotty doesn't want to answer my question,” Vernon told Matt.

“What did you ask him?” Matt looked around the enclosure, a space of about forty by sixty feet. Tufts of grass sprouted along the fence. Water tubs stood by the door. Mostly, the area was covered with dirt and holes where the animals had dug. Matt understood the holes. Any dog in its right mind would want to tunnel out of here.

“Why he thought it was okay to kidnap a newborn and spend a few million taxpayer dollars on a nationwide search,” said Vernon. He and Matt were on either side of the gate.

“You fucking assholes,” Scotty said, almost conversationally, glancing up for the first time since Matt had come inside the enclosure. He looked nothing like the boy they'd first seen in the station. His hair was unwashed, a spray of acne was sprouting along a high cheekbone. His fingers were lost in the scruff of a wide-necked mutt at his feet.

“Probably a legitimate question, Vernon,” Matt said. “And he is actually very lucky, because Claire's parents don't want a lot of legal hassle. They're not pressing charges. But I think I know some of the answer anyway. And it starts in October or November of last year.” He was keeping his voice low and almost neutral, and he wasn't looking at Scotty. One of the dogs came over and gave Matt's pant leg an experimental lick. Why were shelters always in the drabbest parts of town? The answer was obvious. No one wanted to think about abandoned or angry animals. Stashing them somewhere unappealing, as if they were living toxic waste, made it easier for most people not to have to deal with them.

Matt continued, “Claire went up to Damariscotta for a few days last summer, and somehow she and a friend wound up in Castine. And there was Miles McLellan, ripe for the taking. My guess is he had had a crush on her for years that she had slowly manipulated. Claire knew something that Miles probably did not: her mother and Porter had had a relationship at college and then Porter had left Flora for Lucinda. That information wouldn't be something that Lucinda would want her kids to know about, I'd guess. But when Claire had the chance to hook up with and dump Miles, she took it. Claire thought she could get a kind of revenge, not just on Miles but on Porter. He had a family, three handsome boys, a loving wife, a sterling reputation. He could have been, she fantasized, her own father. But instead, she had a man who rarely saw her, a mother on her third marriage in Europe, and not a single adult who knew or cared about her in any kind of substantive way.” He glanced at Scotty, who was holding one of the pit bulls in his lap.

“But she made a mistake. She got pregnant. And at first, she might not have believed it. When she did, she thought about it and realized what she could do with this baby. She wouldn't just humiliate and embarrass Miles: she could destroy his whole family. She could tarnish the whole academy. She could make a really, really big scene, and then somebody might just pay some attention to her.” Matt paused again.

“So she set a plan in action. She tied the thread with the girls in the Reign, to keep them off her back. Then she roped some other girls in because basically she didn't like or respect the Reign and she needed more support. She tied the thread with them, too, and they did her bidding because of the tradition and because she was Claire Harkness and it was the biggest story in town. At some point, probably much earlier, Scotty, she let you in.”

The boy gave him a quick look and then almost immediately glanced down again. The dogs had wandered off and were chasing one another around. One of them lapped up water. The day gleamed and bathed the small yard in light that revealed every scrape or sore on the dogs' bodies. Matt continued, “I don't know why you let her stay. I'm still trying to figure that piece of it out. Did she threaten to give herself an abortion if you told? That's what she did with the girls in the dorm, even after she'd sworn them to secrecy. And you were worried she would kill herself in the process. Maybe she threatened that, too, when you kept asking her who the father was.”

Now Scotty was watching Matt's face, and his color was mounting again. “But you went along with what Claire wanted, Scotty. And you helped her with her homework, and covered for her in class, and organized the girls to get her food and whatever she needed. You pounced on Kayla when you saw what she could offer: someone who could deal with babies, actual babies, not just pregnancy.

“And it almost worked. You had set up the mirrors so if Claire needed you, you could be there. You had Kayla in place. But then Claire had the baby much faster than she or you or anyone could have expected. And it was terrifying. And you were both unprepared. Where did it happen, Scotty? In the tunnels, in the computer room?”

The boy leaned back on the door that led to the shelter and said in a voice they could barely hear, “The tunnels. We met down there because Claire said she was feeling sick. And then she bent over and started to scream.” He stopped then, but as with Kayla, Matt sensed it was something of a relief to finally say what had happened. He could do so only here, where he and Claire had met Kayla and spent time with animals. One of the dogs trotted over and pawed at him, though for the first time since they had been here, Scotty ignored the animal's overture. “It was so fast. She just kept screaming, saying it was tearing her up. And then there was water everywhere, and blood. And then we saw the head. This little head. And she pushed him out. But when he came out, the cord was all twisted around his neck and he wasn't breathing. He was blue and I thought he was dead. But then I unwound it and I started to rub his back and he gave this cough and started to cry. I nearly dropped him, he was so slippery. Like a fish. But even then, the blood kept coming. I had a Swiss Army knife with me. I don't know why. I don't carry one mostly. But I had it in my pocket.” He stared again at his fingers, as if amazed at what they had done. Like all rowers' hands, they were raw with blisters. He looked up at them, eyes red. “I did some reading. I knew you had to wait to cut the cord. In the pictures, it looks blue and wide. But it's not. It's kind of red and gray.”

Vernon and Matt looked at each other. Watching two dogs scuffle, Scotty said, in a voice that was softer than they'd ever heard him use, that he had gotten sheets from a laundry room in a nearby dorm. He had wrapped up Claire and the baby. He had taken her back to the dorm, and she had told him to find Sally. He had gone back with cleaning supplies he'd found in the tunnels and mopped up the whole mess. Then he'd burned it all in the furnace below Nicholson. He didn't know how it worked; he just kept pushing levers and buttons until it fired up, and then he shoved everything in. “My clothes and Claire's, too. They were ruined.”

Neither Matt nor Vernon said anything in the silence that followed. One of the dogs gave a low howl and then abruptly broke off. It must have been hellish. In the dark, with an infant, Claire in agony, blood everywhere. Vernon was studiously examining his nails, something he did, Matt knew, only when he was feeling sympathy for someone. At last, Matt said, “You were very brave to manage it alone. You realized Claire could have died, and the baby, too. But something else happened during the birth, Scott. I think Claire told you who the father was and why she'd done what she'd done. Then once you'd gotten her back to the dorm and gotten everything taken care of, you couldn't help yourself. You went to Miles McLellan and you told him what you thought of him, and you probably would have beaten him up except that he said his father would get you expelled and your acceptance retracted from Harvard. But before you told him, he didn't know. I don't think he even knew Claire was pregnant until quite late in the spring, and he was too ashamed to tell his parents. I'm still wondering who sprang it on him. One of the girls, one of the Reign most likely, but he had no idea that he was the father because Claire had confessed to no one. And Claire was furious, wasn't she, and she was scared when she found out what you'd done. Miles had fallen hard for her. She had dumped him with no qualms. He wasn't predictable. He had a temper.

“So early Monday morning, she signals you to come over and she gives you the baby. She says, Take him to Kayla, I don't want Miles to find him here. And you do. But then something happens you can't predict. Miles does go to see Claire, soon after you've left with the baby, and he is incredibly distraught. He is terrified. He begs her to tell him where the baby is and to explain why she has done what she's done. Why has she broken his heart this way? And he holds her and shakes her and she is exhausted and weak and he pushes her a fraction too hard and she hits her head in exactly the wrong spot and she's dead.”

Three of the dogs had discovered something interesting in a patch of dirt by the door and were scrabbling fiercely to find it. From inside the building came a volley of barking. Vernon shifted next to him, still unwilling to look up from his nails. It was a fantastic day in early summer, an exact balance achieved between humidity and temperature, and a light wind swept through the small yard.

Scotty was standing now and trembling, as if a wave of electricity were passing through his body. “You loved her, Scotty. So did Miles, in his way. She had the misfortune to be someone you only have to look at to love.” He wanted to keep talking, to say, But it started earlier. Her beauty and how she used it was one of the roots of this whole, sad mess. It started with someone not loving her for anything other than that hair and face. People just didn't want to peer beneath that elegant surface. How could anyone who looked like Claire not be happy? They didn't want to take the time. But Matt didn't say more. Scotty knew already.

The boy was surrounded again by a group of dogs, whining and tugging at his pants. He was sobbing now, ragged sounds that might well have come from one of the unfortunate animals. He knelt down again and let them lick him and offer him their comfort. Vernon walked over to the boy and crouched next to him. A feat, Matt knew, since Vernon didn't like dogs and had resisted for years the entreaties of his wife and children to get a puppy. “I'm sorry, Scott,” he said. “I'm sorry I treated you like an asshole. But you need to go home now. Your parents are worried. You need to go home.” The boy slowly gathered himself, though he still sat there, surrounded by the worried dogs. “We can drive you back, Scott,” Vernon said. “Let us drive you back.”

The boy got to his feet, and for all his height and strength, he looked like he might fall over. Matt wondered when he'd last eaten or slept. Scotty steadied himself against the cinder blocks of the building and slowly, leaning down to give the dogs a last caress, came with them. He didn't say a word the whole trip back or when they reached his dorm, where they saw his parents standing on the steps, ready to charge at the cops, faces tight with fury. The boy got out of Matt's car and faced his parents. “Leave them alone,” Scotty said, “they didn't do anything.” He turned back to Matt and Vernon, and seemed to try to say something. His face was splotched and his mouth was working, but no words came out.

Vernon and Matt drove away. They, too, seemed unable to speak, and Matt felt a terrible heaviness descend on him as he walked back through the station. They sat at their desks, still in silence, until Matt put his head on the smooth surface and said, “Vernon, do you ever feel like you will never recover from being a cop? That you're as bad or worse than anyone you ever arrested? Vernon, I am so fucking tired.”

Vernon sighed. “Enough with the melodrama. I'll be right back,” he said, and in a few minutes, he was, holding two mugs full of something scalding. Lines of steam rose upward in lazy spirals. It was the most relaxing thing Matt had seen in days, that steady kink of vapor. Vernon sat down and pushed one toward him. “Drink it. You'll feel better.”

Matt sat up long enough to take a slow sip and let the flavor seep into his mouth. “Vernon, you finally did it. You got me to drink green tea.”

“Like it?” his partner asked quite hopefully.

Matt took another sip. “I know what it tastes like now. I know what it reminds me of,” he said, “and I don't know if it's good or bad.”

“Yeah?”

Matt watched his partner. “What are you going to do tonight, Vernon?”

“Go home and see my kids and talk to them until they're sick of me. And then I'm going to do the same with my wife.”

“Exactly,” Matt said. “And the tea. It tastes like gunpowder.”

EPILOGUE

W
hat a long, freakish summer it had been. It had started
with what Vernon discovered in Harvey's apartment. Camera equipment and a minuscule darkroom converted from a half-bath. Vernon said, “I saw that stuff and I wanted to be sick. I was sure it was little boys.” But it wasn't. It was years of portraits of girls. All of them clothed. All taken without their subjects' knowledge. Candid pictures from soccer games. At theater performances. Always chaste. All of them taken in places where no one would have remarked on Harvey's cameras, which were uniformly small, though fitted with long lenses. The files were meticulous, begun about a decade earlier, and they cataloged obsessions with various students throughout their Armitage years. But only by their first names: Mary, Lily, Alex, Rebecca. Each would graduate and he would have to choose a new muse. His last had been Claire. What struck Matt was that Harvey had captured some of her loneliness, some of her fear. They were head shots, the last series, which dated from April. There was no way, looking at that face, you would have guessed she was pregnant. But Harvey had also shot pictures in Castine, and those were the photos that Tamsin had been shredding. Harvey, knowing a warrant would discover his obsession, had panicked and taken the pictures to Porter in a desperate measure to blackmail him. How pleased he must have been to discover her there so unexpectedly. Even pieced back together with tape, Claire looked gloriously pretty in those summer photographs, but not happy. Not once in any of his pictures did she look happy. Tanned, lithe, intelligent. But never relaxed, contented, open. It was a face that knew, well before Harvey's documented interest, that it was watched.

Of course, Matt and Vernon told Sarah Talmadge. Of course, Harvey abruptly lost his job. Harvey had been purple with outrage and had threatened all kinds of lawsuits. But Matt advised Sarah to tell him that withholding evidence in a possible murder case could earn you quite a jail sentence, and he was gone within two days, Sarah said, the apartment looking as if no one had ever lived there.

All of July was mired in depositions needed from the rafts of lawyers every individual involved in the case had hired. Then Vernon got so cranky, he said he was going to take every speck of comp time ever owed him and that would mean he would be unavailable until November. At that point, they had a few pitiful cases of embezzlement on their desks and not much else to occupy their days except avoiding attorneys and the journalists intent on tracking down scraps of the Armitage case. What was upsetting, Matt thought, was that, after something so wrenching, it was hard to get excited about less vivid transgressions. This realization was harder on Vernon than it was on Matt. Vernon had spent so much time keeping his job within manageable proportions, eminently easy to put aside at the end of the day. When it turned out he had an appetite for excitement, it made him almost unbearable. At that point, Angell ordered them both out of the office for two whole weeks. Vernon grumpily packed up his Prius, and he and Kathy and the girls sped off to a cabin on a lake. They might, Vernon confessed, be getting a dog on the way back.

Matt spent four days with Barbara and Inge in Connecticut, taking walks, cooking, drinking, and talking through what sort of sperm donor they should pursue. They'd worked out their disagreement, Barbara had told him, and were ready to pursue parenthood. The two women were thrilled and scared and all the things you ought to be before embarking on such an adventure, such a duty. They were ready to have their lives revolutionized, which Matt thought was probably an appropriate response to something as small but complex as a baby. He still had not quite gotten over the minute perfection of Claire's child. He had so rarely met someone so new. In his mind, he called the baby Pablo, the name Kayla had given him. “We should just ask Matt,” Inge said one night after a bottle or two of wine. “Barb, he's smart, he's handsome, he's as close to you as we're going to get genetically. And if you carry the next baby, then they're really related.” Matt felt a flush of intensely complicated feelings at that moment. Fear, closer to terror, a tentative hopefulness that they would ask him, and a fervent wish that they really would not. Barbara looked at him closely, gently. “He would do it if we asked, Inge. He would. He's that good a brother. But maybe he's not ready to be a father. Give him a little time.”

The next day, before he left, Barbara said to him, “She was serious. She was drinking, but she meant it. She wants you in the baby's life. Me, too.” They were on the porch of Barbara's pretty house. Inge was a demon gardener, and the window boxes were flowing over with sweet potato vine and white geraniums. They could hear her in the house, humming. She was a brilliant carpenter, too, and an excellent cook. Barbara had been incredibly lucky to find her. She'd never had a girlfriend before, calling herself a lesbian of circumstance for falling in love with Inge. “But,” as she had told Matt, “if someone who looked like Inge told you she liked you, wouldn't you change your orientation?” Matt had had to agree. The Swedish woman was six feet tall and had had a career as a model before becoming an art restorer. That she was smart and kind and emotionally balanced were additional reasons to welcome Inge into his sister's life.

Matt looked at his feet, which were in running shoes, and he wondered how fast he could actually go if he really wanted to avoid this conversation. “Barb, if you want me to, I will.” He contemplated the doctor's visits, the room with the tawdry pornography; he'd had friends go through the process and he knew some of what was involved. “But no matter what, I'll be in the baby's life. That's a given.” She kissed him, and Inge gave him a huge basket of food to take on his drive to Maine. He waved to them as they stood on their porch, blond and brunette, arms twined around each other's shoulders, to wish him good-bye. He was on his way to Acadia, where he had rented a cabin for a week of total peace.

He was going to hike, fish, read, sleep. No telephone, no computer. His car was full of tackle and books, fleece jackets and food. He couldn't wait.

And the week was everything he had hoped for. He barely spoke to a soul except for a few other people on the trails he walked. He woke at chilly dawn and drank coffee in the mist on the small porch. He prowled the glorious rocks and tide pools and made a couple of very quick forays into icy water. He caught a few fish and cooked a few good meals. And throughout, he thought about whether or not he should help out Inge and Barbara and, more to the point, become a kind of father before he found his own partner. When he had his own children, if he had his own children, would the existence of this child blur the lines of paternity in useful or destructive ways? He thought about his own parents and their stern devotion, and he thought about Vernon's abject adoration of his wild twins. It seemed quite clear that having kids required an absolute yielding to responsibility blended with a helpless love. It seemed to tap into something deeply human and impossibly burdensome at the same time. He wanted to be sure. He wasn't sure he was. A week of solitude produced deep bodily relaxation and an emotional readiness to entertain difficult questions. Barbara and Inge weren't the only people on his mind. He was thinking about Vernon, about committing for another year to Greenville; a conversation with Angell was on the horizon. He was thinking about his father, increasingly frail. He was thinking about a fall full of testimony and a reimmersion in that awful case. And he was thinking about Madeline.

The day he left Acadia, Mount Desert Island was wrapped in fog. He was sad to leave, and a familiar post-vacation dread of the upcoming week shrouded him the same way the dense mist hugged the roads. Gradually it lifted, and he noticed that the gas gauge was low. He figured he could make it to the next exit, which was for Castine. He had noticed the town's location on the way up and wondered if he'd managed to avoid refilling the tank just to make a spontaneous stop in the place where the whole debacle had had its start.

After finding a gas station, he was suddenly reluctant to get back on the road. He ought to. He had no call hanging around here. But in spite of himself, he drove downtown, wedged the car in a parking spot, and walked out along the pier. Gracious houses, a harbor the shape of a horseshoe, dotted as he suspected it always was in summer with elegant sloops. Painters and poets lived and worked here. Small cafés and shops lined the waterfront. He could see the town's crisp appeal and wasn't surprised that Porter and his family had retreated here when their lives collapsed.

He could imagine Harvey here, too. The town had a certain briskness that Matt felt would appeal to the man. He might be here now, up in his cottage, though Matt doubted he would seek out the same place in which Porter and his family had found refuge in the wake of the sensation that the case had caused. Castine was too small and the chances that they would bump into each other too great. Harvey Fuller, bitter and warped, wounded and scorned, had gone to ground elsewhere, Matt suspected.

He should leave himself. It was unseemly, this curiosity, this courting of connection. How many degrees separated him from someone like Harvey? He didn't have a camera. He didn't pretend to be what he was not. But still he shouldn't lurk around here. He turned to go back to his car, and then he saw them. They had just left a coffee shop. Porter, Lucinda, and Miles. The mother and son wore sunglasses though the day was overcast, a habit that had come with their sudden notoriety. Lucinda immediately, instinctively wrapped her arm around Miles and ushered him off. A boy of eighteen, far taller than she, a boy who had killed someone, but to whom she still reacted as if electricity or dangerous surf, barbed wire or a snarling dog might threaten his safety. When would she release her hold? Matt wondered. He had seen the boy only twice since that rainy evening, and he had sat there, slumped and anxious and scolded to near silence by two lawyers, looming like falcons on either side. The boy had appeared beaten, empty. And each time, Lucinda had been waiting outside the room, ready to throw that protective arm around his shoulders. Or was all that care a sign that she was one of the good mothers? One of the ones who watched and counseled, a mother who was always there.

Lucinda barked something at Porter, clearly telling him to come with her. But Porter shook his head and pulled himself away from his wife and son. For a moment, he stood there. And then he walked toward Matt, one hand lifted in a motion that wasn't so much a greeting as an acknowledgment. Behind him, Matt heard the halyards of the boats moored in the harbor start to clank in the rising wind.

“I was just about to go,” Matt said as he shook Porter's hand. The day was starting to darken further. “I don't mean to keep you.”

“If you're headed back to Armitage, it's a long drive,” Porter said, almost wistfully. He would of course know the way intimately.

“I'll take it slowly,” Matt said, glancing at the sky. He was suddenly very embarrassed, as if he'd been caught snooping, as unabashed as any reporter from a tabloid, which was not an inaccurate analogy. It was also certainly unwise, given that nothing about the case was resolved, and sooner or later, he would see Porter in a courtroom. “I shouldn't be bothering you, but I'll admit I was curious to see this place. I was coming down from Acadia.”

Porter stood next to him, and together they looked out at the ruffled water. “I'm spending a lot of time up there these days. There's a lot of solace in those woods. Lucinda's worried I'm turning into a hermit. She wouldn't let me take
Walden
on my last trip.” He tried to grin. Matt watched him looking out at the neat white boats tugging at their moorings. Porter was altered. He'd grown smaller, more wizened.

They were besieged right now, he said to Matt, but that was still no excuse for not trying to do your best. “I'm most worried about Lucinda, who is treating all this like a war, girding herself for some ultimate battle.” But Miles concerned him, too. He was spending too much time in his room. He refused to be coaxed out.

“What about you?” Matt asked him.

Porter shrugged. “I watch birds. I am trying to write. I'm reading or rereading. Thoreau, Emerson, Melville. Dostoevsky. I don't think more hours spent poring over testimony and being coached by lawyers will ultimately make much difference.” Those weren't the lessons he was prepared to draw from what had happened. Literature was a more useful guide. “I should go now,” he told Matt. “But I am glad to see you. It gives me a chance to say thank you for helping us at a critical moment.”

Matt could say nothing in response. That he'd been young once would sound callow. That he wanted to help preserve what he could of what had been an honorable man was even worse. He took Porter's offered hand and remembered that one of the comments people had always made about Porter McLellan was that he was very good at remembering to offer gratitude. And although the trip back to Massachusetts would take another eight hours, Matt sat in his car for a long time and looked at the storm preparing to blow into the small harbor.

BY THE END OF AUGUST
, the green of Armitage's maples had dulled to a color that looked better on old lizards than on trees, Madeline thought. She was sitting on a lawn chair outside her dorm collecting herself with a tall glass of ice water. She had just moved into her new apartment, and it was a vast improvement over her original digs. With the futon foisted on an old friend, she had bought herself a small sofa with a brown velvet cover, which now sat looking rather natty in the middle of her living room. She had some sharp new clothes in her closet, a haircut she liked, and a mind bustling with new tricks to try in the classroom. Sarah had called her in late June to ask if she wanted to attend a new-teacher institute, and it had been excellent.

Even so, she was hot, dusty, and a little confused by the welter of feelings that returning to Armitage was calling up in her. A sudden breeze ruffled the canopy of trees around the Quad, and abruptly, the leaves flipped to reveal the chalky gray of their undersides. She had seen Sarah as she'd driven her U-Haul onto campus, and the poor woman had looked even more tired than she had at the end of May. As expected, she had been appointed interim head, and she'd probably earned her salary twice over given the summer she'd had. The scandal had been splashed about the media, parents were in an uproar. Rumors were flying about a huge suit the Harknesses had filed, and she'd had even more faculty departures to contend with. Stunningly, Harvey Fuller had resigned. That, at least, had meant that Betsy Lowery could return to the biology department, a development that spread relief throughout the school. But still, the endowment was down, and even the cynical assessment of the head of admissions had not quite translated into full dormitories. Everyone was giving Armitage a year or so to tend itself, and then they'd see if the wounded beast might be worth the investment again.