Vanished in the Dunes (25 page)

“At first I didn't want to get him, I mean Stern, in trouble. I didn't tell you the whole truth about that day I saw the blue car following me when I drove to Montauk village.”

“What happened?” Cooper does the talking. Bennett listens and Wisdom has his notepad ready.

“After the blue car went past me, I followed it beyond the village until it turned off.”

“Where was that?”

“At the Montauk Overlook. When I got there, he had just left the car and was walking into the woods. I slowed down enough to see him stop by a bent sand pine. Then I drove off quickly without stopping again, but I'm pretty sure it was him. Stern.”

“Can you show us the spot? I mean, right now.” Bennett's tone shows his own concern.

Posner nods. Wisdom guesses that if the man tries to speak anymore, his voice might dissolve into inaudibility. Wisdom calls ahead to have backup meet them at the traffic circle in Montauk village. Cooper uses his cell and confirms that County will send two more of their own cars.

Wisdom has a strong hunch. Despite the man's instability, he's convinced Stern hasn't run away. He feels that Stern is somehow compelled to bring Brigid to the spot where he buried Heidi, perhaps as an act of confession, but who knows what someone in his mental state might do. Wisdom's intuition is well respected and he convinces Bennett and Cooper that Stern and Brigid might be there. All he can do now is hope that he's right, and that she's still okay by the time they arrive.

They sit in the parked car and she decides to lie, or at least say what she thinks Heidi would say, or more to the point, what Stern would like to hear her say. Stern seems to be warming to the prospect of hearing good words about himself from Heidi. Brigid looks over at him as he leans against the driver-side window. He appears like a beaten man. He's actually quite handsome if he were to shave off his stubble and comb his hair. She could see why Heidi would have been attracted to him. Still, he does look trampled in some way. Flattened by sad events and unfilled needs; a duo she knows intimately. He looks as if he needs sleep and confirms this as he yawns without stop and rubs at his eyes. She's also tired. It's time for her to deliver and hope it's enough to calm his baser instincts.

“Everything I know about you came from her letters. You understand that?”

“Yes. Do you have any with you?”

“Sorry. I don't. Actually I'm not sure I've even kept them back home.”

“Where is home? In Vienna?”

“Oh, no. I live in Geneva and have for several years now. First in school and for the last six years at the United Nations.”

“I didn't even know Heidi had a sister.”

Brigid shrugs her shoulders.

“Maybe she didn't want you to know. Maybe she was afraid you might become interested in me.”

Brigid smiles and allows the words to hover above them. She's using Heidi in some posthumous way to get even for an old injustice she is still unable to ignore or forgive. Nothing less. How ironic would it be if she were to steal Heidi's lover. But how, after all, does one steal the lover of someone who's already dead? Is it theft to steal property from someone who is no longer in a position to claim a loss? She still hates Heidi and always will, but she is not Heidi. She will not do what Heidi did. If she had wanted to be that way she would have tried to seduce Detective Wisdom. She almost did, but then caught herself in time. No, she's not Heidi, but the idea of a jealous Heidi pleases her immensely. At this thought her facial muscles surrender to an involuntary grin.

“You're smiling. Is something funny?”

“No. Sorry. I'm just thinking of the good times Heidi and I used to have.”

He's silent, yet looks at her expectantly.

“Where shall I begin? You knew Heidi for over a year. Isn't that right?”

“Yes. Probably closer to two years since we first met.”

“When did you meet exactly?”

“It was at one of the hospital Christmas parties. Two years this December.”

“Then, right after the New Year started, she wrote to me about meeting a very extraordinary man. Your first name's Henry, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that makes you the one. She doesn't write that often, but whenever she does, you're mentioned. She tells me she loves you and always wants to be with you. I'm a little embarrassed to also say that she felt sex with you was like nothing she ever experienced before.”

She stops talking and steals a look across the seat at him. A smile creeps across his face and she sees straight white teeth. He has not
smiled before and it clearly enhances his looks. His eyes are closed now. Perhaps this little bit of lie is enough? Perhaps he is satisfied that Heidi and he are now joined in some kind of spiritual peace. His eyes open and he shakes his head as if to clear his vision.

“That woman at Posner's house who I stuck with the needle. It was an accident, you know. I tripped on the stairs. I never intended to hurt anyone. All I wanted to do was scare Posner into confessing. I never intended to hurt anyone. She's dead, isn't she? I saw the ambulance gurney leave the house. I was hiding down the street in an empty house. Then I followed you. But I didn't mean to hurt her. I didn't.”

“I know you didn't and I'm sure the police know it as well.”

He looks at her for a moment, his mouth partly open as if about to speak, then decides against talk and turns to gaze out the window. He turns back and sees her eyes quiver for a moment then close. A few seconds later she jumps awake.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to, well, you know, fall asleep.”

“It's all right. You can sleep if you want. I won't hurt you. I promise, but then I need to look for where Heidi's buried and I want you to come with me. For now, rest a while. You're tired. We both are.”

“Can I trust you?”

“Yes. Just rest. Rest. I'll be here.”

She just closes her eyes without even repositioning herself or adjusting her clothing. In seconds a gentle snore fills the car. It has a relaxed rhythm, and in moments he feels like joining her, but he can't afford to. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a small bottle. He uncaps it and draws out a few pills. He swallows them blindly and shakes his head. He's good for another six hours at least. That's enough. More than enough.

He replaces the bottle and feels the barrel of the pistol. He takes it out and lets it rest softly in his palm as if it were a small bird. What
am I doing with this, he wonders? Or am I just going crazy? He holds it by the barrel and swings it in a tight arc behind him so he can position it beneath the back of the passenger seat.

She wakes after a several hours. An intense early afternoon sun fills the car, and in the warmth she shrugs out of a zippered cardigan. They are still parked in the small space behind a dumpster and between two shuttered motels. Henry stands a few feet beyond the car's hood and smokes. The more she studies his face without interruption, the more she's convinced he had no part in Heidi's disappearance. It is a gentle face. There is tenderness there that lies beneath his good looks. He also seems very troubled, and she can't help but wonder what Heidi made of that aspect of his personality.

She doesn't know about Posner. She's never even met him, doesn't even know what he looks like. From what Wisdom's told her, he wouldn't be a person they thought capable of such violence. She'd like to believe the story he told Henry, that Heidi's death was accidental and that Posner found and buried her out of panic. At this point though it doesn't matter anymore. She accepts that Heidi is dead. She wants to agree that it was an accident. She wants this all to be over and go back home to Switzerland and worry about Third World economics again. She doesn't want to see where Heidi is buried. She's sorry she can't feel grief, but that's it.

Stern turns and looks at her through the windshield. He tosses his cigarette away, moves a few steps, and reenters the car.

“I said you could rest. No one came. It's very quiet here. The season is long over. These motels are empty and most of the stores as well.”

He slides into a sitting position behind the wheel, yawns deeply, and shakes his head once as if to clear away sleep, yet he seems very alert. He starts the engine and at first the noise seems deafening there in the quiet alley across from the beach. He lets it run for a few minutes,
as if to awaken its six cylinders to join them for the final leg of the trip.

She looks at her watch. It's a little before two in the afternoon. She watches him drive with more restraint than he showed when they left the house that morning. The trip doesn't take long. They swing off the main road at a sign that announces the Montauk Overlook. He parks at the far end of the empty lot and cuts the engine just as he flips the trunk open with the inside handle. He slips out of the car and makes it obvious when he leaves the key in the ignition. It's a way of telling her that she can leave if she wants. Anytime she wants.

He moves to the trunk, reaches in, and comes away with a spade.

“I didn't have time to think of getting a proper shovel. It's the only thing I could find back in your house, but it should do. The ground here is very soft.”

He goes back to close the trunk.

“Are you coming?”

“No. I accept that she's dead. That's all.”

He doesn't speak, only turns and begins to walk into the cover of pine and cedar that extends outward from the parking lot before it dips down toward a beach. She looks around and sees why they call this place an overlook. From the car she has a clear view out to the northeast, all the way across a body of water to some distant low landmass that rises and falls out of a haze.

Her eyes follow him into the woods, but her view is clear. The sand pines and cedars are not thickly clustered, so she can follow him until he stops at a base of a misshapen sand pine shaped like the letter
L
. He rests one hand at the elbow of the bent tree, turns to face her, and then focuses his attention on the ground. He walks a few feet away, circles back around, stops, and begins to dig.

He works at it with intensity. Every few minutes he moves a few paces farther away from his last shallow trench. She wishes he would
give it up, yet knows he won't. In less than ten minutes, he stops and bends down. He has found something. She knows. Just as he rises, she half turns her head in reaction to the grumble and screech of automobiles. She pivots in time to see two town police cars enter the lot in tandem. They are followed by two unmarked cars, one of which she recognizes as Wisdom's. They spread out across the empty parking area except for Wisdom's car, which heads straight for her. In seconds, a number of policemen are out and running across the lot toward the woods. Their pistols are drawn.

She turns her attention back to Stern who also hears the cars approach. He stands straight up and switches his hand grip around the spade as if to turn it into a club. He begins to wave it back and forth like a bat. She leaps from the car and begins to run toward him without stopping. From somewhere behind she hears Wisdom call her name.

“No. No, Henry. Put it down.”

The words fly from her as she runs into the woods, but Henry doesn't seem to hear. He stands as before, holding the spade in two hands as the thought flashes through her that she has no idea whether he's defending himself or Heidi's grave.

At a quarter past two, Posner rides in a column of four cars that moves east from Montauk village. Two are unmarked sedans. All have overheads blinking into a bright early afternoon light. It doesn't take long for the convoy to reach a destination only a few miles east of the village. They slow and exit into the overlook before they fan out. If viewed from above, these maneuvers might look almost balletic.

The lot is empty except for a red Audi. Posner is in Bennett's car, which follows Wisdom's and parks in a spot parallel to, but twenty yards away, from the Audi. A woman with short dark hair is clearly visible in the passenger seat. Posner stays in Bennett's car with one officer. The plan is to bring him out as soon as the situation is secure. From the rear seat of the cruiser, Posner watches the exercise unfold. He can see it all. The woods seem far less overgrown than he remembers. Stern stands in front of the twisted tree; Posner's all too familiar grave site landmark. Stern's two hands grip what looks like a shovel, which he swings back and forth as if it were a baseball bat.

Four uniforms enter the woods from opposite sides and approach Stern in a pincer movement. Once in the woods they slow up, taking cautious steps around a range of scattered fallen branches and undergrowth while they keep their weapons pointed downward. In seconds they appear to be closing a circle around Stern.

The woman makes a sudden exit from the Audi and runs toward Stern shouting something. Posner imagines he recognizes a blurred
facial resemblance to Heidi. She turns and moves away before he can get a better look, but he still feels an immediate fleeting angst that grabs his stomach muscles in a vise. Not possible, he mumbles to himself more than once. Not possible. He tells himself that whoever she is, she's not Heidi, and this process of rationalization begins to restore calm. With the windows closed, he only catches part of what she shouts, but the name “Henry” is unmistakably clear.

Wisdom runs behind the woman and calls out to her. Bennett trails Wisdom in a moderate jog. It's all a bit of a circus with everyone in motion.

Posner feels like everything that unfolds before him is in some bizarre way a tableau of his own creation; the phalanx of police cars, the officers converging on a lone man with their guns drawn, a woman he's never seen, two detectives he has, a wooded setting, and the man they're chasing. The poor dumb schmuck of a doctor doesn't have a chance. And all because Amos Posner either wasn't faithful enough to Sara by bringing the woman home in the first place, or wasn't unfaithful enough to have just fucked the woman and moved on. He has choreographed a disaster and is ordained to watch it all unfold.