Gone for Good

14

Will left his apartment. The Ghost watched.

The Ghost did not follow him. He knew where Will was going. But as he watched, his fingers flexed and tightened, flexed and tightened. His forearms bunched. His body quaked.

The Ghost remembered Julie Miller. He remembered her naked body in that basement. He remembered the feel of her skin, warm at first, for just a little while, and then slowly stiffening into something akin to wet marble. He remembered the purple-yellow of her face, the pinpoints of red in the bulging eyes, her features contorted in horror and surprise, shattered capillaries, the saliva frozen down the side of her face like a knife scar. He remembered the neck, the unnatural bend in death, the way the wire had actually slashed deep into her skin, slicing through the esophagus, nearly decapitating her.

All that blood.

Strangulation was his favorite method of execution. He had visited India to study the Thuggee, the so-called cult of silent assassins, who'd perfected the secret art of strangulation. Over the years, the Ghost had mastered guns and knives and the like, but when possible, he still preferred the cold efficiency, the final silence, the bold power, the personal touch of strangulation.

A careful breath.

Will disappeared from view.

The brother.

The Ghost thought about all those kung fu movies, the ones where one brother is murdered and the other lives to avenge the death. He thought about what would happen if he simply killed Will Klein.

No, this was not about that. This went way beyond revenge.

Still he wondered about Will. He was the key, after all. Had the years changed him? The Ghost hoped so. But he would find out soon enough.

Yes, it was almost time to meet with Will and catch up on old times.

The Ghost crossed the street toward Will's building.

Five minutes later, he was in the apartment.

I took the Community Bus Line out to the intersection of Livingston Avenue and Northfield. The hotbed of the great suburb of Livingston. An old elementary school had been converted into a poor man's strip mall with specialty stores that never seemed to do any business. I hopped off the bus along with several domestic workers heading out from the city. The bizarre symmetry of reverse commute. Those who lived in towns like Livingston head into the city in the morning; those who clean their houses and watch their children do the opposite. Balance.

I headed down Livingston Avenue toward Livingston High School, which was clustered together with the Livingston Public Library, the Livingston Municipal Court Building, and the Livingston police station. See a pattern here? All four edifices were made of brick and looked as though they were built at the same time, from the same architect, from the same supply of brick as though one building had begot another.

I grew up here. As a child, I borrowed the classics by C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle from that library. I fought (and lost) a speeding ticket in that municipal building when I was eighteen. I spent my high school years, one of six hundred kids in my graduating class, in the cluster's biggest building.

I took the circle halfway around and veered to the right. I found the basketball courts and stood under a rusted rim. The town tennis courts were on my left. I played tennis in high school. I was actually pretty good too, though I never had the heart for sports. I lacked the competitive spirit to be great. I didn't want to lose, but I didn't fight hard enough to win.

"Will?"

I turned and when I saw her, I felt my blood turn to ice. The clothes were different hip-hugging jeans, circa-seventies clogs, a too-tight too-short shirt that revealed a flat, albeit pierced, belly but the face and the hair… It felt like I was falling. I looked away for a moment, in the direction of the soccer field, and I could have sworn I saw Julie out there.

"I know," Katy Miller said. "Like seeing a ghost, right?"

I turned back to her.

"My dad," she said, jamming her tiny hands into the tight jean pockets. "He still can't look at me straight on without crying."

I did not know what to say to that. She came closer to me. We both faced the high school. "You went here, right?" I asked.

"Graduated last month."

"Like it?"

She shrugged. "Glad to get out."

The sun shone, making the building a cold silhouette, and for a moment, it looked a bit like a prison. High school is like that. I was fairly popular in high school. I was vice president of the student council. I was co-captain of the tennis team. I had friends. But as I tried to dig up a pleasant memory, none came. They were all tainted with the insecurity that marks those years. In hindsight, high school adolescence, if you will feels a little like protracted combat. You just need to survive, get through it, come out of it okay. I wasn't happy in high school. I'm not sure you're supposed to be.

"I'm sorry about your mother," Katy said.

"Thank you."

She took a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket and offered me one. I shook her off. I watched her light up and resisted the urge to lecture. Katy's eyes took in everything but me. "I was an accident, you know. I came late. Julie was already in high school. My parents were told they couldn't have more children. Then…" She shrugged again. "So they weren't expecting me."

"It's not like the rest of us are well planned," I said.

She laughed a little at that, and the sound echoed deep inside me. It was Julie's laugh, even the way it faded away.

"Sorry about my dad," Katy said. "He just freaked when he saw you."

"Ishouldn't have done that."

She took too long a drag and tilted her head. "Why did you?"

I thought about the answer. "I don't know," I said.

"I saw you. From the moment you turned the corner. It was weird, you know. I remember as a little kid watching you walk from your house. My bedroom. I mean, I'm still in the same bedroom, so it's like I was watching the past or something. It felt weird."

I looked to my right. The drive was empty now, but during the school year, that was where the parents sat in cars and waited for their kids. Maybe my high school memories are not all good, but I remember my mom picking me up there in her old red Volkswagen. She'd be reading a magazine and the bell would ring and I'd walk toward her and when she'd spot me, when she first raised her head and sensed that I was coming near, her smile, that Sunny smile, would burst forth from deep in her heart, that blinding smile of unconditional love, and I realized now with a hard thud that nobody would ever smile at me that way again.

Too much, I thought. Being here. The visual echo of Julie on Katy's face. The memories. It was all too much.

"You hungry?" I asked her.

"Sure, I guess."

She had a car, an old Honda Civic. Trinkets, lots of them, hung from the rearview mirror. The car smelled of bubble gum and fruity shampoo. I didn't recognize the music blaring from the speakers, but I didn't mind it either.

We drove to a classic New Jersey diner on Route 10 without speaking. There were autographed photographs of local anchormen behind the counter. Each booth had a mini-jukebox. The menu was slightly longer than a Tom Clancy novel.

A man with a heavy beard and heavier deodorant asked us how many. We told him that we were two. Katy added that we wanted a smoking table. I didn't know smoking sections still existed, but apparently big diners are throwbacks. As soon as we sat, she pulled the ashtray toward her, almost as if for protection.

"After you came by the house," she said, "I went to the graveyard."

The water boy filled our glasses. She inhaled on the cigarette and did that lean-back-and-up blowout. "I haven't gone in years. But after I saw you, I don't know, I felt like I should."

She still would not look at me. I find this a lot with the kids at the shelter. They avoid your eyes. I let them. It does not mean anything. I try to hold their gaze, but I've learned that eye contact is overrated.

"I barely remember Julie anymore. I see the pictures and I don't know if my memories are real or something I made up myself. I think, oh I remember when we went on the teacups at Great Adventure and then I'll see the picture and I won't know if I really remember it or if I just remember the picture. You know what I mean?"

"I think so, yes."

"And after you came by, I mean, I had to get out of the house. My dad was raging. My mom was crying. I just had to get out."

"I didn't mean to upset anyone," I said.

She waved my words away. "It's okay. It's good for them in a weird way. Most of the time we tiptoe around it, you know. It's creepy. Sometimes I wish… I wish I could just scream, "She's dead." " Katy leaned forward. "You want to hear something totally freaky?"

I gestured for her to go ahead.

"We haven't changed the basement. That old couch and TV. That ratty carpet. That old trunk I used to hide behind. They're all still there. Nobody uses them. But they're there. And our laundry room is still down there. We have to walk through that room to get to it. You understand what I'm saying? That's how we live. We tiptoe around upstairs, you know, like we're living on ice and we're afraid the floor is going to crack and we're all going to fall down into that basement."

She stopped and sucked on the cigarette as if it were an air hose. I sat back. Like I said before: I'd never really thought about Katy Miller, about what the murder of her sister had done to her. I thought about her parents, of course. I thought about the devastation. I often wondered why they'd stayed in the house, but then again, I never really understood why my parents had not moved either. I mentioned before the link between comfort and self-inflicted pain, the desire to hold on because suffering was preferable to forgetting. Staying in that house had to be the ultimate example.

But I'd never really considered the case of Katy Miller, about what it must have been like growing up among those ruins, with your sister's look-alike specter forever at your side. I looked at Katy again, as if for the first time. Her eyes continued to dart about like scared birds. I could see tears there now. I reached out and took her hand, again so like her sister's. The past came at me so hard I nearly fell back.

"This is so weird," she said.

Truer words, I thought. "For me too."

"It needs to end, Will. My whole life… whatever really happened that night, it needs to end. Sometimes I hear on TV when they catch the bad guy someone says, "It won't bring her back," and I think, "Duh." But that's not the point. It ends. You catch the guy, it gives it some kind of finality. People need that."

I had no idea where she was going with this. I tried to pretend that she was one of the center's kids, that she'd come in needing my help and love. I sat and looked at her and tried to let her know that I was here to listen.

"You don't know how much I hated your brother not just for what he did to Julie, but for what he did to the rest of us by running away. I prayed they'd find him. I had this dream where he'd be surrounded and he put up a fight and then the cops would smoke him. I know you don't want to hear this. But I need you to understand."

"You wanted closure," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "Except…"

"Except what?"

She looked up and for the first time our eyes locked. I grew cold again. I wanted to withdraw my hand, but I could not move. "I saw him," she said.

I thought that I heard wrong.

"Your brother. I saw him. At least I think it was him."

I found my voice enough to ask, "When?"

"Yesterday. At the graveyard."

The waitress came over then. She withdrew the pencil from her ear and asked what we wanted. For a moment neither of us spoke. The waitress cleared her throat. Katy ordered some sort of salad. The waitress looked at me. I asked for a cheese omelette. She asked what kind of cheese American, Swiss, cheddar. I said cheddar would be fine. Did I want home fries or french fries with that? Home fries. White toast, rye toast, wheat toast. Rye. And nothing to drink, thank you.

The waitress finally left.

"Tell me," I said.

Katy stubbed out the cigarette. "It's like I said before. I went to the graveyard. Just to get out of the house. Anyway, you know where Julie's buried, right?"

I nodded.

"That's right. I saw you there. Couple of days after her funeral."

"Yes," I said.

She leaned forward. "Did you love her?"

"I don't know."

" But she broke your heart."

"Maybe," I said. "A long time ago."

Katy stared down at her hands.

"Tell me what happened," I said.

"He looked pretty different. Your brother, I mean. I don't remember him much. Just a little. And I've seen pictures." She stopped.

"Are you saying he was standing by Julie's grave?"

"By a willow tree."

"What?"

"There's a tree there. Maybe a hundred feet away. I didn't come in the front gate. I hopped a fence. So he wasn't expecting me. See, I came up from the back and I saw this guy standing under the willow tree and he's just staring in the direction of Julie's stone. He never heard me. He was just lost, you know. I tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped like a mile in the air and when he turned around and saw me… well, you see what I look like. He nearly screamed. He thought I was a ghost or something."

"And you were sure it was Ken?"

"Not sure, no. I mean, how could I be?" She took out another cigarette and then said, "Yeah. Yeah, I know it was him."

"But how could you be sure?"

"He told me he didn't do it."

My head spun. My hands fell to my sides and gripped the cushion. When I finally spoke, my words came out slowly. "What exactly did he say?"

"At first, just that. "I didn't kill your sister." "

"What did you do?"

"I told him he was a liar. I told him I was going to scream."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Katy still had not lit the new cigarette. She withdrew it from her lips and put it on the tabletop. "Because I believed him," she said. "Something in his voice, I don't know. I'd hated him for so long. You have no idea how much. But now…"

"So what did you do?"

"I stepped back. I was still going to scream. But he came toward me. He took my face in his hands and looked me in the eye and said, "I'm going to find the killer, I promise." That was it. He looked at me a little more. Then he let go and ran off."

"Have you told "

She shook her head. "No one. Sometimes I'm not even sure it happened. Like I imagined the whole thing. Dreamt it or made it up. Like my memories of Julie." She looked up at me. "Do you think he killed Julie?"

"No," I said.

"I've seen you on the news," she said. "You've always thought he was dead. Because they found some of his blood at the scene."

I nodded.

"Do you still believe that?"

"No," I said. "I don't believe that anymore."

"What made you change your mind?"

I didn't know how to reply to that. "I guess," I said, "I'm looking for him too."

"I want to help."

She'd said want. But I know she meant need.

"Please, Will. Let me help."

And I said okay.