Vanished in the Dunes (18 page)

He drives back toward home, yet he doesn't want to be confined indoors just yet. He pulls into a beach access less than a mile from his house and looks out over a calm ocean. Again he's alone. It is as if all the people have gone. Except that he knows they haven't. Wisdom is there and the man in the blue car whom he might as well start calling the doctor. He's the one who worries Posner far more. Anyone who stalks someone like that could be dangerous. Wisdom didn't mention any possible danger. Maybe he didn't want him to worry, but now he's worried all the same. What if the doctor comes looking for him with a weapon?

Think! Think! He's got to sort this out.

He opens the door and leaves it ajar as he walks a few steps onto the beach. It's the same beach that he took Heidi to so many months ago. He pictures her standing there only a few feet away, posing in a pink-and-white dress with the spray of the surf soaring in the background. A vivid image of her posing him for a photo morphs into one of her sitting on his couch, legs spread around a black patch, and then immediately transforms in a flash of color as he imagines her falling in a grotesque cartwheel down the stairs creating a pool of blood. He shudders and gasps until his pulse calms.

He's almost back at his car when the simplicity of a strategy hits him. There is no reason to believe that the doctor will ever cease his harassment. If he is obsessed with Posner, the stalking can only
continue and lead to confrontation. In such conflict only one can win. And to Posner this only means that only one can live.

He drives back to his house in a sudden state of relaxation. As he leaves the car at the top of the driveway, he is engrossed in thought and fails to look around. If he had turned a full circle and had far better eyesight, he might have even seen Dr. Stern peering out from the second floor window of the house down the street and at the far opposite corner. But he neither stops nor turns. His mind is engrossed entirely on the upstairs bedroom closet shelf. Somewhere in the back of that shelf beneath a carton of old sweaters there is a small box. It is a relic from Sara's brief tenure some years before as a State Supreme Court Justice, compliments of her extensive earlier activities on behalf of the Queens County Democratic Party. In the box lies a revolver. Posner hasn't seen it in years and it may not even work, but he does remember that Sara has mentioned cleaning it at least once a year, so it should be okay.

He finds it almost immediately and pulls the box down and rests it on the bed beside him.

It's not locked, yet it still takes time to bring himself to the point where he slides the lid open. When he does, he sees the weapon, a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special that sits on the cushion of a soft hand towel. He remembers that the revolver is compact, which makes it lighter than many handguns. He also recalls that it only carries five rounds. Beyond that he can't remember much from the one lesson he had years before on loading and firing. He knows it would be a comforting thought to have the gun available if the doctor invades his home, and so he lifts it from the box. He stands and holds the revolver as he had been taught in his right hand with the left hand steadying the right wrist. He pans the room. There is an unmistakable sense of power. At first he thinks he would be afraid to use it, but just holding
it allows him to feel like a different person. The only issue now is whether he waits for the doctor to come to him or he seeks him out. He thinks that it would be better to meet him on his own terms, which means here in his home where he could easily claim self-defense against an intruder. As his mind runs through this scenario, he realizes that just the act of holding the gun permits him to no longer fear this man and he decides he is prepared to kill if necessary. No. More than that. If he is to ever have peace again, he will have to kill this man. He replaces the revolver in its case, slides the box closed, and returns it to a lower shelf in a spot that's easier to reach.

He walks to the door, then stops, turns, and faces the floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows. The shades are open and a concentrated beam of white outside light slashes across the room. “An artist's light,” people have called it; an indigenous element that runs throughout the East End of Long Island that supposedly attracts creativity in the fine arts. Such enlightenment is not on Posner's mind at that moment. His eyes follow the shaft of light that arrives and settles on the king-sized bed. He cannot help but imagine for the thousandth time what might have happened if he'd taken her hand and moved into the bedroom instead of allowing her to slip into eternity.

They have sex, but he is far from perfect. Too far. It's all over in minutes. They dress without speaking in what seems like seconds and the silence continues as he drives her back to the bus stop. She walks from his car without a goodbye and he goes home. End of story.

That is how it might have been. Maybe he would have felt guilty, but that could have passed by now. She might have mocked him, but he would have deserved it and nothing more would have ever developed. No one would have died. His earlier fears about federal crimes would return as his only worry.

He calls Sara to find out her travel plans. This will be her first trip out since that day. She says she's getting a lift and is already in the car with a neighbor's family who are coming out for a few days. They've left early and traffic is light. She won't be too long. She's anxious to see him.

Everything's changed in the last month. Things between them were still in limbo, trapped somewhere between reconciliation and the edge of collapse, until he arrived unannounced at the apartment one afternoon. He knew he was losing her. Or driving her away. It was all the same. She might even be seeing someone else. He's thought of that and worried about the possibility. And the jealousy of it all made him want her like he hadn't in months. So he'd made a decision to surprise her and see where things went. Maybe she wasn't interested anymore, but he had to find out. When he opened the door, he was half afraid someone else would be there, but she was alone. Even so, her only greeting was a glare. When she spoke her voice was clipped and impersonal.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were back at the house staring at the ocean. And how long has it been since you were here? A month? Longer?”

She moves to the living room window, turns her back to him, and appears to stare across the street at the corner of Third Avenue and Ninetieth. He stays in the middle of the room, several feet from the door he's just entered. One hand leans against the polished wood arm of his favorite wing chair. A small bag rests at his feet. He takes a step toward her and then stops. He almost wants to ask her if she's missed him, but decides it's wiser not to go there.

“It's only been a few weeks plus a couple of days since I was here.”

“It seems longer.”

“I can't help what it seems like.”

“You can't help anything anymore.”

She turns back from the glass and faces him. Her eyes widen. He feels the heat of anger.

“For months now you've been distant. You've changed. You can't keep sweating out what the Feds might do, or keep cursing the bastards at your old firm for throwing you to the wolves. We've covered all of that already, and I'm fed up with your self-pity. All you've done for several months now is sit around the beach house and keep away from me. It all started back in May. Did something happen then? Something that made you change even more?”

He ignores the fact that she's the one who's been distant and wanted to separate, yet realizes that she isn't accusing him of having an affair. Not this time. His reaction spills out. Almost too fast, but he has prerehearsed a possible answer for months.

“No. I swear. It's nothing. And it's not you. I just can't take the city anymore on top of my issues with the Feds.”

“Bullshit! You've worked here all your life.”

“It's not the same when you're not working. Now all I sense is the crush of people, the noises, the trash, and, most of all, the loneliness of someone without a place to go.”

“This marriage hasn't had a place to go either. It's close to being finished as far as I'm concerned.”

“Stop it. I love you.”

That's when he should tell her about what happened. But he can't. He can swear fidelity all he wants, but fidelity was what got him here.

“Then prove it.”

Her voice has softened and is now throaty and barely audible. She again turns back to the window without waiting for an answer, but he knows that if he says or does nothing it would all be over. Done. Finished.

He doesn't speak again, but moves up from behind and presses into her. The window reflects a faint yet true image of her eyes closing
even as her mouth parts to pull in short breaths. She moves a few inches, as if to reaffirm the source of the pressure. They stand like that. A car horn blares from the street, but they don't move. Not an inch.

“Get undressed,” he says at last.

There's no answer, but she doesn't move away.

“Take off your clothes before I tear them off.”

The smile in the reflection widens.

“Go ahead and tear away, but take care of the blouse. It's silk.”

That's when it all changed. She wants him again and that's all that matters. He still isn't sure why, but his sex drive is all the way back and it elates him despite all the issues that still exist. He still hasn't told her about what happened. He can't. He knows she senses his worry and assumes she just attributes it all to his potential matters with the Justice Department. Now it's much too late to tell her the truth, although he longs to do it.

He sees a light out there somewhere. He can't risk losing her after he came so close. The longer he's waited the less likelihood there is for anyone to believe him. All he can think of now is deflecting attention to Stern if it comes to that. Our marriage or Stern? No choice. No choice at all.

Her attitude has also made a complete shift in the past month. It's clear that she now seems to want to put the past behind them and make a new start. In the past few weeks she often speaks about moving away. This is new. She says she's grown tired of the firm, the hours, and the useless feeling she gets from some of her clients. She says more than once that she's mostly tired of not being with him. Since he'll only stay in the apartment for limited periods, her solution is to switch her career and move if he wouldn't mind.

Wouldn't mind? The thought makes him positively giddy, and he embraces the idea. Yes, sell the apartment. Yes, sell the house. He can bear it he says as he withholds his hope that he might never again see
the red quarry tile floor. She even has a future career plan. A law school friend is a dean at Cal-Davis in California. There's an associate professorship opening in corporate reorganization law available and she's interested. What does he think? He doesn't hesitate to affirm her idea. A new start for both of them. And it's all her idea. Wonderful. Now all that's left is to take care of the doctor.

He goes back and reenters the bedroom. He pulls the box from the closet and moves it to a shelf in the upstairs hall closet just feet off the living room. What better place to keep a weapon than near where he would entertain an unwelcome visitor. He moves back into the main room with the ocean view. He's ready in case the doctor decides to pay a visit, although he has doubts the man would actually try.

She leans into the cushioned backseat. Her eyes flutter closed.

“Relax. Grab some sleep if you like.” Ed Whelan's voice is soothing. He's even been told he sounds like warm syrup.

“It's just past noon and we're between rush hours, so we should be there in less than three hours.”

Ed and Frances sit in the front of the Volvo and listen to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony on a CD. The volume is down. They have an apartment a few blocks away from the Posners' in Manhattan and a house just around the corner in Amagansett, which makes it easy to give Sara a lift to or from the city when the timing works out.

The music rolls through the car in quiet waves. There's an image of a forest clearing. Red-and-yellow foliage enclose the open space. A spotted fawn stands nearby and arches its neck toward a low-hanging green morsel. After several minutes, Ed tilts his head toward the backseat and blinks his eyes a few times. Frances nods.

“Yes. She's asleep. Let's be quiet.” She mouths all of this.

There's no need for speech. They've already played catch-up gossip an hour earlier while they waited in their car for Sara to come downstairs.

Frances keeps pivoting her head to view the front door of Sara's apartment house while they speak. It wouldn't seem right to have Sara interrupt them.

“She was really shaky when we met for a drink several months ago. First his old firm screwed him over for doing what they asked him to do. Then they hung him out to dry when the Feds got involved. He seemed to be handling it pretty well though until last spring. That's when she said he fell into some kind of deep depression and shut everyone out. Especially her. I gather they might even have separated for a while. I know she hasn't been out to the beach for months.”