Gerald’s Game

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

That eased my mind a little bit but then I thought, “He could be crouched down back there so the mirror doesn’t show him.” So I managed to get turned around, although I could hardly believe how weak I was. Even the slightest bump made my hand feel like someone was jabbing it with a red-hot poker. No one was there, of course, and I tried to tell myself that the last time I saw him, he really was just shadows… shadows and my mind working overtime.

But I couldn’t quite believe it, Ruth-not even with the sun coming up and me out of the handcuffs, out of the house, and locked inside my own car. I got the idea that it he wasn’t in the back seat he was in the trunk, and if he wasn’t in the trunk, he was crouched down by the back bumper. I got the idea that he was still with me, in other words, and he’s been with me ever since. That’s what I need to make you-you or somebody-understand; that’s what I really need to say. He has been with me ever since. Even when my rational mind decided that he’d probably been shadows and moonlight every time I saw him, he was with me. Or maybe I should say it was with me. My visitor is “the man with the white face” when the sun is up, you see, but he’s “the thing with the white face” when it’s down. Either way, him or it, my rational mind was eventually able to give him up, but I have found that is nowhere near enough. Because every time a board creaks in the house at night I know that it’s come back, every time a funny shadow dances on the wall I know it’s come back, every time I hear an unfamiliar step coming up the walk I know it’s come back-come back to finish the job. It was there in the Mercedes that morning when I woke up, and it’s been here in my house on Eastern Prom almost every night, maybe hiding behind the drapes or standing in the closet with its wicker case between its feet. There is no magic stake to drive through the hearts of the real monsters, and oh Ruth, it makes me so tired.

Jessie paused long enough to dump the overflowing ashtray and light a fresh cigarette. She did this slowly and deliberately. Her hands had picked up a small but discernible shake, and she didn’t want to burn herself When the cigarette was going, she took a deep drag, exhaled, stuck it in the ashtray, and returned to the Mac.

I don’t know what I would have done if the car battery had been dead-sat there until someone came along, I guess, even if it meant sitting there all day but it wasn’t, and the motor started on the first crank. I backed away from the tree I’d hit and managed to get the car pointed down the lane again. I kept wanting to look in the rearview mirror, but I was afraid to do it. I was afraid I might see him. Not because he was there, you understand-I knew he wasn’t-but because my mind might make me see him.

Finally, just as I got to Bay Lane, I did look up. I couldn’t help it. There was nothing in the mirror but the back seat, of course, and that made the rest of the trip a little easier. I drove out to 117 and then up to Dakin’s Country Store-it’s one of those places where the locals hang out when they’re too broke to go over to Rangeley or to one of the bars in Motton. They mostly sit at the lunch counter, eating doughnuts and swapping lies about what they did on Saturday night. I pulled in behind the gas pumps and just sat there for five minutes or so, watching the loggers and the caretakers and the power company guys go in and come back out. I couldn’t believe they were real-isn’t that a hoot? I kept thinking they were ghosts, that pretty soon my eyes would adjust to the daylight and I’d be able to see right through them. I was thirsty again, and every time someone came out with one of those little white Styrofoam cups of coffee, I’d get thirstier, but I still couldn’t quite bring myself to get out of the car… to go among the ghosts, you might say.

I suppose I would have, eventually, but before I could muster enough courage to do more than pull up the master-lock, Jimmy Eggart pulled in and parked beside me. Jimmy’s a retired CPA from Boston who lives at the lake year-round since his wife died back in 1987 or “88. He got out of his Bronco, looked at me, recognized me, and started to smile. Then his face changed, first to concern and then to horror. He came to the Mercedes and bent down to look through the window, and he was so surprised that all the wrinkles were pulled out of his face. I remember that very clearly: how surprise made Jimmy Eggart look young.

I saw his mouth forming the words “Jessie, are you all right?” I wanted to open the door, but all at once I didn’t quite dare. This crazy idea came into my head. That the thing I’d been calling the space cowboy had been in Jimmy’s house, too, only Jimmy hadn’t been as lucky as I had been. it had killed him, and cut off his face, and then put it on like a Halloween mask. I knew it was a crazy idea, but knowing that didn’t help much, because I couldn’t stop thinking it. I couldn’t make myself open the fucking car door, either,

I don’t know how bad I looked that morning and don’t want to know, but it must have been bad, because pretty soon Jimmy Eggart didn’t look surprised anymore. He looked scared enough to run and sick enough to puke. He didn’t do either one, God bless him. What he did was open the car door and ask me what had happened, had it been an accident or had someone hurt me.

I only had to take one look down to get an idea what had put a buzz under him. At some point the wound in my wrist must have opened up again, because the sanitary pad I’d taped around it was entirely soaked. The front of my skirt was soaked, too, as if I’d had the world’s worst period. I was sitting in blood, there was blood on the steering wheel, blood on the console, blood on the shift-lever… there were even splatters on the windshield. Most of it had dried to that awful maroon color blood gets-to me it looks like chocolate milk-but some of it was still red and wet. Until you see something like that, Ruth, you just don’t have any idea how much blood there really is in a person. It’s no wonder Jimmy freaked.

I tried to get out-I think I wanted to show him I could do it under my own power, and that would reassure him-but I bumped my right hand on the steering wheel and everything went white and gray. I didn’t pass out completely, but it was as if the last bunch of wires between my head and my body had been cut. I felt myself failing forward and I remember thinking I was going to finish my adventures by knocking most of my teeth out on the asphalt… and after spending a fortune to get the top ones capped just last year. Then Jimmy caught me… right by the boobs, as a matter of fact, I heard him yelling at the store-'Hey! Hey! I need a little help out here!'-in a high shrieky old man’s voice that made me feel like laughing… only I was too tired to laugh. I laid the side of my head against his shirt and panted for breath. I could feel my heart going fast but hardly seeming to beat at all, as if it had nothing to beat on. Some light and color started to come back into the day, though, and I saw half a dozen men coming out to see what was wrong. Lonnie Dakin was one of them. He was eating a muffin and wearing a pink tee-shirt that said there’s no town drunk here, we just all take turns. Funny what you remember when you think you’re getting ready to die, isn’t it?

“Who did this to you, Jessie?” Jimmy asked. I tried to answer him but couldn’t get any words out. Which is probably just as well, considering what I was trying to say. I think it was “My father.”

Jessie snuffed out her cigarette, then looked down at the top newsprint photograph. The narrow, freakish face of Raymond Andrew Joubert gazed raptly back… just as he had gazed at her from the corner of the bedroom on the first night, and from her recently deceased husband’s study on the second. Almost five minutes passed in this silent contemplation. Then, with the air of one who starts awake from a brief doze, Jessie lit a fresh cigarette and turned back to her letter. The copy-minder now announced she was on page seven. She stretched, listened to the minute crackling sounds from her spine, then began to touch the keys again. The cursor resumed its dance.

Twenty minutes later-twenty minutes during which I discovered how sweet and concerned and amusingly daffy men can be (Lonnie Dakin asked me if I’d like some Midol)-I was in a Rescue Services ambulance, headed for Northern Cumberland Hospital with the flashers flashing and the siren wailing. An hour after that I was lying in a crank-up bed, watching blood run down a tube into my arm and listening to some country music asshole sing about how tough his life had been since his woman left him and his pickup truck broke down.

That pretty well concludes Part One of my story, Ruth-call it Little Nell Across the Ice, or, How I Escaped Handcuffs and Made My Way to Safety. There are two other parts, which I think of as The Aftermath and The Kicker. I’m going to scamp on The Aftermath, partly because it’s only really interesting if you’re into skin-grafts and pain, but mostly because I want to get to The Kicker before I get too tired and computer-woozy to tell it the way I need to tell it. And the way you deserve to have it told, come to think of it. That idea just occurred to me, and it’s nothing but the bald-assed truth, as we used to say. After all, without The Kicker I probably wouldn’t be writing you at all.

Before I get to it, though, I have to tell you a little more about Brandon Milheron, who really sums up that Aftermath period for me. It was during the first part of my recovery, the really ugly part, that Brandon came along and more or less adopted me. I’d like to call him a sweet man, because he was there for me during one of the most hellacious times of my life, but sweetness isn’t really what he’s about-seeing things through is what Brandon is about, and keeping all the sightlines clear, and making sure all the right ducks stay in a row. And that isn’t right, either-there’s more to him than that and he’s better than that but the hour groweth late, and it will have to do. Suff ice it to say that for a man whose job it was to look out for a conservative law-firm’s interests in the wake of a potentially nasty situation involving one of the senior partners, Brandon did a lot of hand-holding and encouraging. Also, he never gave me hell for crying on the lapels of his natty three-piece suits. If that was all, I probably wouldn’t be going on about him, but there’s something else, as well. Something he did for me only yesterday. Have faith, kid-we’re getting there.

Brandon and Gerald worked together a lot over the last fourteen months of Gerald’s life-a suit involving one of the major supermarket chains up here. They won whatever it was they were supposed to win, and, more important for yours truly, they established a good rapport. I have an idea that when the old sticks that run the firm get around to taking Gerald’s name off the letterhead, Brandon’s will take its place. In the meantime, he was the perfect person for this assignment, which Brandon himself described as damage control during his first meeting with me in the hospital.

He does have a kind of sweetness about him-yes, he does-and he was honest with me from the jump, but of course he still had his own agenda from the beginning. Believe me when I say my eyes are wide open on that score, my dear; I was, after all, married to a lawyer for almost two decades, and I know how fiercely they compartmentalize the various aspects of their lives and personalities. It’s what allows them to survive without having too many breakdowns, I suppose, but it’s also what makes so many of them utterly loathsome.

Brandon was never loathsome, but he was a man with a mission: keep a lid on any bad publicity that might accrue to the firm. That meant keeping a lid on any bad publicity that might accrue to either Gerald or me, of course. This is the sort of job where the person doing it can wind up getting screwed by a single stroke of bad luck, but Brandon still took it like a shot… and to his further credit, he never once tried to tell me he took the job out of respect for Gerald’s memory. He took it because it was what Gerald himself used to call a career-maker-the kind of job that can open a quick shortcut to the next echelon, if it turns out well. It is turning out well for Brandon, and I’m glad. He treated me with a great deal of kindness and compassion, which is reason enough to be happy for him, I guess, but there are two other reasons, as well. He never got hysterical when I told him someone from the press had called or come around, and he never acted as if I were just a job-only that and nothing more. Do you want to know what I really think, Ruth? Although I am seven years older than the man I’m telling you about and I still look folded, stapled, and mutilated, I think Brandon Milheron may have fallen a little bit in love with me… or with the heroic Little Nell he sees in his mind’s eye when he looks at me. I don’t think it’s a sex thing with him (not yet, anyway; at a hundred and eight pounds, I still look quite a bit like a plucked chicken hanging in a butcher shop window), and that’s fine with me; if I never go to bed with another man, I will be absolutely delighted. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like seeing that look in his eyes, the one that says I’m part of his agenda now-me, Jessie Angela Mahout Burlingame, as opposed to an inanimate lump his bosses probably think of as That Unfortunate Burlingame Business. I don’t know if I come above the firm on Brandon’s agenda, or below it, or right beside it, and I don’t care. It is enough to know that I’m on it, and that I’m something more than a

Jessie paused here, tapping her left forefinger against her teeth and thinking carefully. She took a deep drag on her current cigarette, then went on.

than a charitable side-effect.

Brandon was right beside me during all the police interviews, with his little tape-recorder going. He politely but relentlessly pointed out to everyone present at every interview-including stenographers and nurses-that anyone who leaked the admittedly sensational details of the case would face all the nasty reprisals a large New England law-firm with an exceedingly tight ass could think up. Brandon must have been as convincing to them as he was to me, because no one in the know ever talked to the press.

The worst of the questioning came during the three days I spent in “guarded conditional Northern Cumberland-mostly sucking up blood, water, and electrolytes through plastic tubes. The police reports that came out of those sessions were so strange they actually looked believable when they showed up in the papers, like those weird man-bites-dog stories they run from time to time. Only this one was actually a dog-bites-man story… and woman as well, in this version. Want to hear what’s going into the record books? Okay, here it is:

We decided to spend the day at our summer home in western Maine. Following a sexual interlude that was two parts tussle and one part sex, we showered together. Gerald left the shower while I was washing my hair. He was complaining of gas pains, probably from the sub sandwiches we ate on our way from Portland, and asked if there were any Rolaids or Turns in the house. I said I didn’t know, but they’d be on top of the bureau or on the bed-shelf it there were. Three or four minutes later, while I was rinsing my hair, I heard Gerald cry out. This cry apparently signalled the onset of a massive coronary. It was followed by a heavy thump-the sound of a body striking the floor. I jumped out of the shower, and when I ran into the bedroom, my feet went out from under me. I hit my head on the side of the bureau as I went down and knocked myself out.

According to this version, which was put together by Mr Milheron and Mrs Burlingame-and endorsed enthusiastically by the police, I might add-I returned to partial consciousness several times, but each time I did, I passed out again. When I came to the last time, the dog had gotten tired of Gerald and was noshing on me. I got up on the bed (according to our story, Gerald and I found it where it was-probably moved there by the guys who came in to wax the floor-and we were so hot to trot we didn’t bother to move it back where it belonged) and drove the dog off by throwing Gerald’s water-glass and fraternity ashtray at it. Then I passed out again and spent the next few hours unconscious and bleeding all over the bed. Later on I woke up again, got to the car, and finally drove to safety… after one final bout of unconsciousness, that is. That was when I ran into the tree beside the road.

I only asked once how Brandon got the police to go along with this piece of nonsense. He said, “It’s a State Police investigation now, Jessie, and we-by which I mean the firm-have lots of friends in the S.P. I’m calling in every favor I have to, but in truth I haven’t had to call in that many. Cops are human beings, too, you know. These guys had a pretty good idea of what really happened as soon as they saw the cuffs hanging from the bedposts. It’s not the first time they’ve seen handcuffs after someone popped his carburetor, believe me. There wasn’t a single one of those cops-state or local-who wanted to see you and your husband turned into a dirty joke as a result of something that was really no more than a grotesque accident.”

At first I didn’t say anything even to Brandon about the man I thought I saw, or the footprint, or the pearl earring, or anything else. I was waiting, you see looking for straws in the wind, I suppose.

Jessie looked at that last, shook her head, and began to type again.

No, that’s bullshit. I was waiting for some cop to come in with a little plastic evidence bag and hand it to me and ask me to identify the rings-finger-rings, not earrings-inside. “We’re pretty sure they must be yours,” he’d say, “because they have your initials and those of your husband engraved inside them, and also because we found them on the floor of your husband’s study.”

I kept waiting for that because when they showed me my rings, I’d know for sure that Little Nell’s Midnight Caller had just been a figment of Little Nell’s imagination. I waited and waited, but it didn’t happen. Finally, just before the first operation on my hand, I told Brandon about how I’d had the idea that I might not have been alone in the house, at least not all the time. I told him it could have just been my imagination, that was certainly a possibility, but it had seemed very real at the time. I didn’t say anything about my own missing rings, but I talked a lot about the footprint and the pearl earring. About the earring I think it would be fair to say I babbled, and I think I know why: it had to stand for everything I didn’t dare to talk about, even to Brandon. Do you understand? And all the time I was telling him, I kept saying stuff like “Then I thought I saw” and “I felt almost sure that.” I had to tell him, had to tell someone because the fear was eating me from the inside out like acid, but I tried to show him in every way I could that I wasn’t mistaking subjective feelings for objective reality. Above all I tried to keep him from seeing how scared I still was. Because I didn’t want him to think I was crazy. I didn’t care if he thought I was a little hysterical; that was a price I was willing to pay to keep from getting stuck with another nasty secret like the one about what my father did to me on the day of the eclipse, but I desperately didn’t want him to think I was crazy. I didn’t want him to even speculate on the possibility.

Brandon took my hand and patted it and told me he could understand such an idea; he said that under the circumstances, it was probably tame. Then he added that the important thing to remember was that it was no more real than the shower Gerald and I took after our athletic, bump-and-bruise romp on the bed. The police had gone over the house, and if there had been someone else in there, they almost certainly would have found evidence of him, The fact that the house had undergone a big end-of-summer cleaning not long before made that even more likely.

“Maybe they did find evidence of him,” I said. “Maybe some cop stuck that earring in his own pocket.”

“There are plenty of light-fingered cops in the world, granted,” he said, “but it’s hard for me to believe that even a stupid one would risk his career for an orphan earring. It would be easier for me to believe that this guy you thought was in the house with you came back later and got it himself.”

“Yes!” I said. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

He started to shake his head, then shrugged instead. “Anything is possible, and that includes either cupidity or human error on the part of the investigating officers, but… “He paused, then took my left hand and gave me what I think of as Brandon’s Dutch Uncle expression. “A lot of your thinking is based on the idea those investigating officers gave the house a lick and a promise and called it good. That wasn’t the case. If there had been a third party in there, it’s odds-on that the police would have found evidence of him. And it they’d found evidence of a third party, I’d know.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because something like that could put you in a very nasty situation-the kind of situation where the police stop being nice guys and start reading you the Miranda warning.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I said, but I was beginning to, Ruth; yes indeed. Gerald was something of an insurance freak, and I had been informed by agents of three different carriers that I was going to spend my period of official mourning-and quite a few years after-in comfortable circumstances.

“John Harrelson in Augusta did a very thorough, very careful autopsy on your husband,” Brandon said. “According to his report, Gerald died of what MEs call “a pure heart attack,” meaning one uncomplicated by food poisoning, undue exertion, or gross physical trauma.” He clearly meant to go on-he was in what I’ve come to think of as Brandon’s Teaching Mode-but he saw something on my face that stopped him. “Jessie? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Yes there is-you look terrible. Is it a cramp?”

I finally managed to persuade him that I was okay, and by then I almost was. I imagine you know what I was thinking about, Ruth, since I mentioned it earlier in this letter: the double kick I gave Gerald when he wouldn’t do the right thing and let me up. One in the gut, one smack in the family jewels. I was thinking how lucky it was I’d said the sex was rough-it explained the bruises. I have an idea they were light, anyway, because the heart attack came right on the heels of the kicks, and the heart attack stopped the bruising process almost before it could get started.

That leads to another question, of course-did I cause the heart attack by kicking him? None of the medical books I’ve looked at answer that question conclusively, but let’s get real: I probably helped him along. Still, I refuse to take the whole rap. He was overweight, he drank too much, and he smoked like a chimney. The heart attack was coming; if it hadn’t been that day, it would have been the next week or the next month. The devil only plays his fiddle for you so long, Ruth, I believe that. If you don’t, I cordially invite you to told it small and stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine. I happen to think I’ve earned the right to believe what I want to believe, at least in this matter. Especially in this matter.

“If I looked like I swallowed a doorknob,” I told Brandon, “it’s because I’m trying to get used to the idea that someone thinks I killed Gerald to collect his life insurance,”

He shook his head some more, looking at me earnestly all the while. “They don’t think that at all. Harrelson says Gerald had a heart attack which may have been precipitated by sexual excitement, and the State Police accept that because John Harrelson is about the best in the business. At most there may be a few cynics who think you played Salome and led him on deliberately.” “Do you?” I asked.

I thought I might shock him with such directness, and part of me was curious as to what a shocked Brandon Milheron might look like, but I should have known better. He only smiled. “Do I think you’d have imagination enough to see a chance of blowing Gerald’s thermostat but not enough to see you might end up dying in handcuff s yourself as a result? No. For whatever it’s worth, Jess, I think it went down just the way you told me it did. Can I be honest?”

It was my turn to smile. “I wouldn’t want you to be anything else.”

“All right. I worked with Gerald, and I got along with him, but there were plenty of people in the firm who didn’t. He was the world’s biggest control-freak. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that the idea of having sex with a woman handcuffed to the bed lit up all his dials.”

I took a quick look at him when he said that. It was night, only the light at the head of my bed was on, and he was sitting in shadow from the shoulders up, but I’m pretty sure that Brandon Milheron, Young Legal Shark About Town, was blushing.

“If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry,” he said, sounding unexpectedly awkward.

I almost laughed. It would have been unkind, but just then he sounded about eighteen years old and fresh out of prep school. “You haven’t offended me, Brandon,” I said.

“Good. That takes care of me. But it’s still the job of the police to at least entertain the possibility of foul play-to consider the idea that you could have gone a step further than just hoping your husband might have what is known in the trade as “a horny coronary."”

“I didn’t have the slightest idea he had a heart problem!” I said. “Apparently the insurance companies didn’t, either. If they’d known, they never would have written those policies, would they?”

“Insurance companies will insure anyone who’s willing to pay enough freight,” he said, “and Gerald’s insurance agents didn’t see him chainsmoking and belting back the booze. You did. All protests aside, you must have known he was a heart attack looking for a place to happen. The cops know it, too. So they say, “Suppose she invited a friend down to the lake house and didn’t tell her husband? And suppose this friend just happened to jump out of the closet and yell Booga-Booga at exactly the right time for her and exactly the wrong one for her old man?” If the cops had any evidence that something like that might have happened, you’d be in deep shit, Jessie. Because under certain select circumstances, a hearty cry of Booga-Booga can be seen as an act of first-degree murder. The fact that you spent going on two days in handcuffs and had to half-skin yourself to get free militates strongly against the idea of an accomplice, but in another way, the very fact of the handcuffs makes an accomplice seem plausible to… well, to a certain type of police mind, let us say.”

I started at him, fascinated. I felt like a woman who’s just realized she has been square-dancing on the edge of an abyss. Up until then, looking at the shadowy planes and curves of Brandon’s face beyond the circle of light thrown by the bedlamp, the idea of the police thinking I might have murdered Gerald had only crossed my mind a couple of times, as a kind of grisly joke. Thank God I never joked about it with the cops, Ruth!

Brandon said, “Do you understand why it might be wiser not to mention this idea of an intruder in the house?”

“Yes,” I said. “Better to let sleeping dogs lie, right?”

As soon as I said it, I had an image of that goddamned mutt dragging Gerald across the floor by his upper arm-I could see the flap of skin that had come free and was lying across the dog’s snout. They ran the poor, damned thing down a couple of days later, by the way-it had made a little den for itself under the Laglans” boathouse, about half a mile up the shore. It had taken a pretty good piece of Gerald there, so it must have come back at least one more time after I scared it away with the Mercedes’s lights and horn. They shot it. It was wearing a bronze tag-not a regulation dog-tag so that Animal Control could trace the owner and give him hell, more’s the pity-with the name Prince on it. Prince, can you imagine? When Constable Teagarden came and told me they’d killed it, I was glad. I didn’t blame it for what it did-it wasn’t in much better shape than I was, Ruth-but I was glad then and I’m still glad.

All that’s off the subject, though-I was telling you about the conversation I had with Brandon after I’d told him there might have been a stranger in the house, He agreed, and most emphatically, that it would be better to let sleeping dogs lie. I guessed I could live with that-it was a great relief just to have told one person-but I still wasn’t quite ready to let it go.

“The convincer was the phone,” I told him. “When I got out of the handcuffs and tried it, it was as dead as Abe Lincoln. As soon as I realized that, I became sure I was right-there had been a guy, and at some point he’d cut the telephone line coming in from the road. That’s what really got my ass out the door and into the Mercedes. You don’t know what scared is, Brandon, until you suddenly realize you might be out in the middle of the woods with an uninvited houseguest.”

He was smiling, but it was a less winning smile that time, I’m afraid. It was the kind of smile men always seem to get on their faces when they’re thinking about how silly women are, and how it should really be against the law to let them out without keepers. “You came to the conclusion that the line was cut after checking one phone-the one in the bedroom-and finding it dead. Right?”

That wasn’t exactly what happened and it wasn’t exactly what I’d thought, but I nodded-partly because it seemed easier, but mostly because it doesn’t do much good to talk to a man when he gets that particular expression on his face. It’s the one that says, “Women! Can’t live with “em, can’t shoot “em!” Unless you’ve changed completely, Ruth, I’m sure you know the one I’m talking about, and I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that all I really wanted at that point was for the entire conversation to be over.

“It was unplugged, that’s all,” Brandon said. By then he was sounding like Mister Rogers, explaining that sometimes it surely does seem like there’s a monster under the bed, by golly, but there’s really not. “Gerald pulled the t-connector out of the wall. He probably didn’t want his afternoon off-not to mention his little bondage fantasy-interrupted by calls from the office. He’d also pulled the plug on the one in the front hall, but the one in the kitchen was plugged in and working just fine. I have all this from the police reports.”

The light dawned, then, Ruth. I suddenly understood that all of them, all the men investigating what had happened out at the lake-had made certain assumptions about how I’d handled the situation and why I’d done the things I’d done. Most of them worked in my favor, and that certainly simplified things, but there was still something both infuriating and a little spooky in the realization that they drew most of their conclusions not from what I’d said or from any evidence they’d found in the house, but only from the fact that I’m a woman, and women can be expected to behave in certain predictable ways.

When you look at it that way, there’s no difference at all between Brandon Milheron in his natty three-piece suits and old Constable Teagarden in his satchel-seat bluejeans and red firehouse suspenders. Men still think the same things about us they have always thought, Ruth-I’m sure of it. A lot of them have learned to say the right things at the right times, but as my mother used to say, “Even a cannibal can learn to recite the Apostles” Creed.”

And do you know what? Brandon Milheron admires me, and he admires the Way I handled myself after Gerald dropped dead. Yes he does. I have seen it on his face time after time, and if he drops by this evening, as he usually does, I am confident I will see it there again. Brandon thinks I did a damned good job, a damned brave job… for a woman. In fact, I think that by the time we had our first conversation about my hypothetical visitor, he had sort of decided I’d behaved the way he would have in a similar situation… if, that is, he’d had to deal with a high fever at the same time he was trying to deal with everything else. I have an idea that’s how most men believe most women think: like lawyers with malaria. It would certainly explain a lot of their behaviour, wouldn’t it?

I’m talking about condescension-a man-versus-woman thing-but I’m also talking about something a hell of a lot bigger and a hell of a lot more frightening, as well. He didn’t understand, you see, and that has nothing to do with any differences between the sexes; that’s the curse of being human, and the surest proof that all of us are really alone. Terrible things happened in that house, Ruth, I didn’t know just how terrible until later, and he didn’t understand that. I told him the things I did in order to keep that terror from eating me alive, and he nodded and he smiled and he sympathized, and I think it ended up doing me some good but he was the best of them, and he never got within shouting distance of the truth… of how the terror just seemed to keep on growing until it became this big black haunted house inside my head. It’s still there, too, standing with its door open, inviting me to come back inside any time I want, and I never do want to go back, but sometimes I find myself going back, anyway, and the minute I step inside, the door slams shut behind me and locks itself.

Well, never mind. I suppose it should have relieved me to know my intuition about the telephone lines was wrong, but it didn’t. Because there was a part of my mind which believed-and believes still-that the bedroom telephone wouldn’t have worked even if I had crawled behind that chair and plugged it in again, that maybe the one in the kitchen was working later but it sure as hell wasn’t working then, that it was get the hell away from the house in the Mercedes or die at the hands of that creature.

Brandon leaned forward until the light at the head of the bed shone full on his face and he said, “There was no man in the house, Jessie, and the best thing you can do with the idea is let it drop.”

I almost told him about my missing rings then, but I was tired and in a lot of pain and in the end I didn’t. I lay awake for a long time after he left-not even a pain-pill would put me to sleep that night. I thought about the skin-graft operation that was coming up the next day, but probably not as much as you might think. Mostly I was thinking about my rings, and the footprint nobody saw but me, and whether or not he-it-might have come back to put things right. And what I decided just before I finally dropped off, was that there had never been a footprint or a pearl earring. That some cop had spotted my rings lying on the study floor beside the bookcase and just took them. They’re probably inthe window of some Lewiston hockshop right now, I thought. Maybe the idea should have made me angry, but it didn’t. It made me feel the way I did when I woke up behind the wheel of the Mercedes that morning-filled with an incredible sense of peace and well-being. No stranger; no stranger; no stranger anywhere. Just a cop with light fingers taking one quick look over his shoulder to make sure the coast is clear and then whoop, zoop, into the pocket. As for the rings themselves, I didn’t care what had happened to them then and I don’t now. I’ve come more and more to believe in these last few months that the only reason a man sticks a ring on your finger is because the law no longer allows him to put one through your nose. Never mind, though; the morning has become the afternoon, the afternoon is moving briskly along, and this is not the time to discuss women’s issues. This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert.

Jessie sat back in her chair and lit another cigarette, absently aware that the tip of her tongue was stinging from tobacco overload, that her head ached, and that her kidneys were protesting this marathon session in front of the Mac. Protesting vigorously. The house was deathly silent-the sort of silence that could only mean that tough little Megan Landis had taken herself off to the supermarket and the dry-cleaner’s. Jessie was amazed that Meggie had left without making at least one more effort to separate her from the computer screen. Then she guessed the housekeeper had known it would be a wasted effort. Best to let her get it out of hersystem, whatever it is, Meggie would have thought. And it was only a job to her, after all. This last thought sent a little pang through Jessie’s heart.

A board creaked upstairs. Jessie’s cigarette stopped an inch shy of her lips. He’s back! Goody shrieked. Oh, Jessie, he’s back!

Except he wasn’t. Her eyes drifted to the narrow face looking up at her from the clusters of newsprint dots and she thought: I know exactly where you are, you whoredog. Don’t I?

She did, but part of her mind went on insisting it was him just the same-no, not him, it, the space cowboy, the specter of love, back again for a return engagement. It had only been waiting for the house to be empty, and if she picked up the phone on the corner of the desk, she would find it stone dead, just as all the phones in the house by the take had been stone dead that night.

Your friend Brandon can smile all he wants, hut we know the truth,don’t we, Jessie?

She suddenly shot out her good hand, snatched the telephone handset from the cradle, and brought it to her ear. Heard the reassuring buzz of the dial-tone. Put it back again. An odd, sunless smile played about the corners of her mouth.

Yes, I know exactly where you are, motherfucker. Whatever Goodyand the rest of the ladies inside my head may think, Punkin and I knowyou’re wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting in a County jail cell the one at the far end of the old wing, Brandon said, so the other inmatescan’t get to you and fuck you up before the state hauls you in front of ajury of your peers…if a thing like you has any peers. We may not heentirely free of you yet, hut we will he. I promise you we will be.

Her eyes drifted back to the VDT, and although the vague sleepiness brought on by the combination of the pill and the sandwich had long since dissipated, she felt a bone-deep weariness and a complete lack of belief in her ability to finish what she had started.

This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert, she had written, but was it? Could she? She was so tired. Of course she was; she had been pushing that goddamned cursor across the VDT screen almost all day. Pushing the envelope, they called it, and if you pushed the envelope long enough and hard enough, you tore it wide open. Maybe it would be best to just go upstairs and take a nap. Better late than never, and all that shit. She could file this to memory, retrieve it tomorrow morning, go back to work on it then-

Punkin’s voice stopped her. This voice came only infrequently now, and Jessie listened very carefully to it when it did.

If you decide to stop now, Jessie, don’t bother to file the document. Justdelete it. We both know you’ll never have the guts to face Joubert again-not the way a person has to face a-thing she’s writing about. Sometimesit takes heart to write about a thing, doesn’t it? To let that thing out ofthe room way in the back of your mind and put it up there on the screen.

“Yes,” she murmured. “A yard of heart. Maybe more.”

She dragged at her cigarette, then snuffed it out half-smoked. She riffled through the clippings a final time and looked out the window at the slope of Eastern Prom. The snow had long since stopped and the sun was shining brightly, although it wouldn’t be for much longer; February days in Maine are thankless, miserly things.

“What do you say, Punkin?” Jessie asked the empty room. She spoke in the haughty Elizabeth Taylor voice she had favored as a child, the one that had driven her mother completely bonkers. “Shall we carry on, my deah?”

There was no answer, but Jessie didn’t need one. She leaned forward in her chair and set the cursor in motion once more. She didn’t stop again for a long time, not even to light a cigarette.