Head Wounds

TWENTY-FIVE

AMANDA’S LIGHTS WERE ON when I got back from Rosaline’s. I turned off my headlights, parked on the road and walked down our common driveway. I felt like a jerk sneaking into my house, but I wanted a chance to look at those phone records before Amanda knew I was home. As promised, Will Ervin had left them wrapped in a plastic bag and stuck partway under the doormat on the side porch.

I made a cup of coffee to dilute the effects of Rosaline’s vodka and took the phone records and some notes out to the pine table on the screened-in porch. I brought along a yellow legal pad on which to draw boxes and arrows like engineers used to do before we drew them with keyboards and liquid-crystal monitors.

I liked this kind of work, making flow schemes and process diagrams. Not as a tool for analysis but as a way to graphically represent a conclusion I’d already drawn.

I’d expected to search through pages and methodically pull numbers out of long columns, then cross-check those numbers with another set. But that work had already been done. I now knew why Sullivan said to be as specific as possible with what I was looking for. What I held weren’t the records themselves, but the answer to a query. A report developed by a type of analytical software. Of course.

So it didn’t take very long to fill in my boxes and draw my arrows. It was mostly a pro forma exercise. But rather than a petrochemical product at the end of the process it was the consummation of entirely human motivations and behavior. A schematic of pathological cause and effect.

I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face and ran some though my hair. I caught myself looking in the mirror. That was something I rarely did, because I never liked what I saw. It wasn’t all vanity, though I admit I’d turn my head a little to get a better angle on my busted nose. I saw things when I looked into my own eyes that seemed to betray thoughts or feelings I was unaware of. It was unsettling.

I pulled myself away and went to put on a clean shirt. Then I called Amanda to tell her I was on my way.

“Right now?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t laugh,” she said, and hung up the phone.

She answered the door with a towel wrapped around her head.

“I just got out of the shower.”

“No kidding.”

“I need a few minutes.”

“Take all you want. I know where the Scotch is.”

“Bring it out to the terrace. I’ll meet you there.”

The terrace was actually a patch of lawn on the side of the house facing the channel to the lagoon where she kept a set of white plastic recliners and a small glass table. It wasn’t long before she was out there with me, dressed in a silk kimono, her wet hair brushed smooth, a glass of wine in one hand and the bottle in the other.

“Did you sleep?” I asked her.

“Like a dead person. I knew I would. Lately I’d be just about asleep when I’d think of those two men from the DEC with their maps and charts and official-looking papers. A jolt would run through me and I’d be wide awake for hours. This time all I had to do was remember your voice saying the cellar was all clear. And I blissfully fell into the abyss.”

“I’ve fallen in a few of those. Weren’t so blissful.”

She frowned at me.

“One was in your shower, as I recall,” she said. “Any word on that?”

“Nothing official. Had a little chat with Markham Fairchild.”

“And?” she asked.

“He’s worried about my right prefrontal cortex.”

“Me, too, even if I don’t know what it is.”

“A part of the brain. Apparently controls social behavior.”

“Then I’m not so worried,” she said.

“You’re not?”

“You’ve been very social to me. And always well behaved.”

“That’s because I love you,” I said.

“You love a lot of people, Sam. You can’t help it. You try not to, but it happens anyway. And they love you back. Whether you like it or not.”

“Geez.”

“I know, you hate this kind of talk. But it means what happens to you is no longer your concern alone. It affects other people. That wasn’t true when I first met you, but it is now. You’re a full citizen in the land of the living. And some of us here care about the condition of your brain, by reputation a pretty good one.”

I didn’t know what to say to all that, but I had brains enough not to argue. I wouldn’t have put it the way she did, but she had a point. It was a realization I’d come to late in life. People will grow on you if you let them. They’ll work their way right through the prefrontal cortex and down into your vital organs, lodging themselves around your heart. They might even save your life, even if you don’t realize they’re doing it. What I’d learned was you didn’t have to fear any of it. Even if sometimes it meant you had to feel the pain of loss. The occasional charges were worth the investment. In fact, it was the only investment worth making.

“I don’t know how good it is, but my brain’s been getting a workout lately,” I said.

“I can imagine. How are things progressing?”

“Word is the indictment could show up any minute,” I said.

“Oh dear.”

“But I’ve been able to put a few thoughts together.”

“Promising thoughts?”

“Depends on how you look at it. I’m still curious about some stuff. I need to talk it out.”

“I’m glad to help if I can,” she said. “Actually, you’re the only one who can.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. Like for starters, when did he approach you?”

“And that would be?”

“Milhouser.”

She took a long pull of her wine and let her head fall back, showing off her long lean neck, to which the hard year of stress and striving had added new lines and bands of sinew.

“He approached me when I said he did,” she said.

“At the restaurant.”

“No, Mr. Inquisitor. I’d spoken to Robbie Milhouser at the project on Jacob’s Neck. If you don’t believe me, get Joe Sullivan to give me a lie detector test.”

I stood up from my plastic chair and walked halfway across the lawn toward the lagoon. The houses lined up along the northwest shore were all lit up and you could hear voices bouncing across the water, though you couldn’t hear what they were saying. Words without meaning. Sound without comprehension.

I went back to Amanda, who was pouring another glass.

I sat on the edge of the chair and leaned toward her, my elbows on my knees.

“It was a Milhouser. But it wasn’t Robbie.”

The look on her face betrayed a chorus of conflicting impulses.

“Oh God, Sam, do we have to?”

I tried to make it as easy as I could.

“I think we do.”

“And if I say I’d rather not you’ll just persist. That’s your way.”

“Sometimes.”

“Dammit, I hate this.”

“It was Robbie’s father Jeff,” I said. “He’s the one who approached you. On Robbie’s behalf.”

She pushed her seat into recline and wrapped the kimono around her knees.

“All my life people have been trying to tell me I can’t do things I think I’m able to do,” she said.

“Is that what he did?”

“In effect. Someone on the architectural review board told him about my master development plan. He said it was too big a project for a person of my experience, meaning none, to handle on my own. I needed a construction manager and another crew. Robbie’s.”

“Okay. So you told him to get lost. Like you told Robbie at the restaurant.”

She looked like she wanted to be absorbed into her recliner, but answered me anyway.

“This is the part I knew you wouldn’t understand. I actually told him I’d think about it. I was so tired. We were just finishing up the north house. I don’t know what felt worse, my nerves or my back. I was having self-doubt, okay? I’m making him sound worse than he was. He was a pretty slick old guy. Fatherly,” she added, as her voice trailed away.

“Nothing would have come of it,” she said, her voice coming back. “Even if I thought I needed help, I wouldn’t have chosen Jeff Milhouser. And certainly not Robbie. I know I should have told you, but I was ashamed of the thoughts going through my head. And then after the restaurant thing I was embarrassed that I hadn’t said anything.”

“I’d’ve helped you if you’d asked,” I said.

“It happened during one of those funny times when neither of us was trying very hard to see the other.”

“I still would’ve helped.”

She looked up into the night sky.

“I know. I wanted you to think I was strong enough to do this on my own.”

“You are. Strong enough and doing it on your own.”

I liked the vantage point on the lagoon from Amanda’s terrace. In front of the houses on the other side of the channel you could see the outlines of Boston Whalers and shoal-draft sailboats tethered to moorings throughout the little body of water. It was hard to imagine that over a hundred years ago it was crammed with steamboats and fast-passage schooners trading with the bustling industrial plant.

“What about the other time?” I asked her.

“Sorry?”

“The other time Jeff Milhouser came to see you. There has to be another time.”

“What difference does it make how many times he came to see me?”

“Every difference in the world,” I said.

“I don’t know why you’re so interested in this.”

“Tell me.”

“You’re not letting this go are you?” she said.

“What did he say to you?”

She sank even further into her chair, collapsing into herself.

“It was the day after the house fire. I was staring at the ruins and suddenly there he was, like he appeared out of thin air, like Beelzebub or something. He said this was the kind of thing that happened when you lacked professional construction management. He said I’d been rude to Robbie, but he was still willing to help. That he was only trying to protect me. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the brave thing and ran away. Just like I did when I ran from Southampton the first time. And then when I ran back again. I ran in fear. Then Robbie’s killed, and I think, oh God. And then they arrest you. What am I to do? Tell everything that happened and hand them a motive? I hid in the City, but after a while I thought, Burton will never let this get too far. They couldn’t possibly win a case against an innocent man. And I wanted to come back. I wanted to see you. I wanted everything back to the way it was before. But that old bastard was right. It just keeps getting worse.”

“I can see why you wouldn’t tell the cops, but how come you didn’t tell me?” I asked.

She turned her face away from me as she talked, so it was hard to hear what she was saying.

“When he told me he wanted to protect me I told him I had all the protection I needed. And then he said, ‘Yeah, but who’ll protect the protector?’ It took me a second to figure out what he meant. Then it all became clear.”

“Misplaced concern,” I told her. “I’m still here.”

“That night of the fire, I was so angry, confused and afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I was on the verge of driving back to Oak Point to beg forgiveness when Milhouser showed up with his offers and not-so-hidden threats. I was afraid everything was about to turn ugly. I didn’t know what he could do to you. I didn’t know what you would do if threatened. I thought if I just left for a while so we couldn’t talk about it all the trouble would just blow away.”

“Never does.”

“I know. I was just afraid. Didn’t you tell me fear makes you stupid?”

“Yeah. Fear and anger. And I think there’s a third thing.”

“Scotch?” she asked, holding up the bottle. I took it from her and poured another one.

“Okay,” I said, “a fourth. You already brought it up.”

“Love?”

“Worse than all that other stuff combined, because it’s with you twenty-four hours a day. Makes you deaf, dumb and blind.”

“You’re just discovering this?” she asked.

“Yeah. I should alert the world.”

“When did this revelation come to you?”

“It crept up on me. I’ve been thinking a lot about not thinking clearly. You get out of practice when you’re working with your hands all day. Not that it’s stupid work, but there’s a routine to it that doesn’t stimulate the brain cells the same way. We were both up to our ass in construction for months on end, as you recall.”

“Hope to be again.”

“That’s the other thing that crept up on me. Letting work interfere with living some sort of normal life. I thought I’d done that once and learned my lesson. But there we were, passing each other in the driveway, not talking for days at a time. And when we did it was all shop talk.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said.

“One of those conversations sticks in my head. It was out in the driveway, as usual. It wasn’t that long ago. You were really busting ass getting that north property finished. Things had gotten a little out of sequence, you remember? Like you had the kitchen cabinets already delivered but there was a piece of wall between the kitchen and garage that hadn’t been closed in yet, and you couldn’t get the insulation sub back on the job. As it turned out, I had a couple rolls of insulation left over from my addition stashed in the shed. I went and got it for you. I said I’d put it in for you to keep things moving, but you never wanted me to do that kind of thing. You said, ‘Come on, Sam. Even I can install insulation.’ So I said, ‘Okay, let me give you the necessary equipment,’ and I went back to the shed and got my insulation installation kit. It was a little white cardboard box. Everything you need for the job. Staples, a little cat’s paw and needle-nose pliers to pull out misplaced staples. A special tape that’ll adhere to the vapor barrier in case it rips. And of course, the main attraction, my hammer stapler with the orange handle. We stuffed the rolls of insulation in the trunk of your car and I dropped the box in the back seat. And that’s the last I saw of the hammer stapler until that day at Southampton Town police headquarters when Sullivan held it up in a plastic evidence bag.”

There’s no such thing as utter silence. I learned that years ago sitting at night in my Adirondacks at the edge of the breakwater. The water itself always made little lapping, gurgling noises. And there were always bugs in the wetlands to the west and planes flying in and out of the City, gaining and losing altitude. Motorcycles or cars with bad tailpipes out on Noyac Road.

“When we were talking about fear and anger, we forgot to mention hate,” she said finally. “Robbie Milhouser was all three of those to me. You can’t imagine.”

“I can get a start. I know something happened in high school.”

Her hand was shaking, but she managed to get the wine glass up to her lips.

“Of course you do. That’s when the fear started. I was trapped. It wasn’t that anything actually happened. It’s that it could have and I would have been helpless. And it wasn’t even Robbie, it was all the jerks who hung around him who were egging him on. The whole school thought we were secret lovers, but I’d never had anything to do with him. He wanted people to think that. So when those boys caught me at the back of the bus, he thought he had to do something to prove we were together. I could see what was coming. I was terrified. If two of my girlfriends hadn’t been there, who knows what would have happened.”

She was quiet again. I didn’t know if she was finished, so I lit a cigarette to fill the dead air. She did have one more thing to say.

“There was never a time when I didn’t wish him dead. And now this evil old bastard trying to force him on me. Threatening me. Threatening you. What could I do?”

The bugs were out in full, though the bay was quieter than usual. I was glad to have the cigarette to occupy my hands. I took a puff and let the smoke drift on its own out of my mouth.

“You could make a calculation,” I said to her softly. “Of the two Milhousers, Robbie was the bigger threat. Literally and emotionally. The old man was spooky, but without his son, less able to intimidate. Or maybe it was Robbie’s turn to put the pressure on. Call you the day after the fire and ask you over to his project. ‘Come on, Amanda,’ he’d say. ‘Think how easy this can all be.’ Wouldn’t be hard to convince him to come alone. Could be just you and him in the big, dark, empty house.”

This time her whole body shook, as if a little tremor had started at her shoulders and run down to her feet. She put the wine glass on the table.

“Dear God,” she said.

“Before you leave, you pop the trunk of the Audi and look around for a little protection. Maybe in the heat of moment you forget the stapler was mine, maybe you remember but don’t think about things like fingerprints or UPC codes. The stapler was too convenient. Heavy and hard edged, but slim enough to slip into the back waistband of your jeans.

“You get there and Robbie’s alone as promised. He’s on his best behavior, trying to win you over with his boyish charm. All this does is convince you that his interest is both commercial and romantic. This is beyond intolerable. It can’t go on anymore. It has to end there.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Okay, handsome, show me around the place.’ Which puts him in front of you as you walk about, so when you get out to the sunroom there’s plenty of room to get in a good swing. The first one drops him. But he’s pretty big, so it takes a couple more to finish him off.

“But now what? You hadn’t planned for this, exactly. In a slight panic, you run outside and throw the stapler into the beach grass. Then you do the only thing you can do at that point. Run. You need time to recover. And until you recover your self control, stay clear of the cops and other suspicious types. Like me.

“As it turns out, you don’t have much to worry about. All the attention is immediately drawn to me. Since you know I didn’t do it, you have all the confidence in the world they won’t be able to prove it, especially with Burton looking after me. But I’m such an obvious suspect nobody even thinks of looking anywhere else. And certainly not at you. The only one who could do that was me.”

“You really think I’m capable of such a thing?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I do. I saw you the night of the fire. I recognize the condition. Blind, crazy fury, fueled by bitterness, disappointment and fear. So yes, I think you are capable of such a thing, under those circumstances. That was the most obvious assumption as I stood there with Sullivan in the squad room, even without all the other evidence popping up. In particular, the so-called incident on the bus.”

She looked like she was about to say something, but I raised my hand to cut her off.

“My brain had all the answers, but my heart wasn’t in it,” I said. “I wanted to believe there was a different truth out there. Only now I’ve got an interesting little problem. I had to find a way to track down this alternate truth without making things worse for me, or drawing attention to you. Especially among the people I usually count on to help me figure things out.”

Especially them. Beloved people who had enough worry on their minds. Some of whom, like Burton, loved Amanda, too. The isolation I felt, with my greatest fears locked out of sight, had been another lesson. There was a time when I locked my whole self away. I didn’t want to go back there.

“What do you believe now?” she asked, when I gave her a chance to speak.

“What should I believe?”

“That I wanted to kill Robbie Milhouser. And you’re right. I could have. But I didn’t. And now you want me to say that. It’s important to hear the words.”

“It is,” I said. “And I believe you.”

She took in a long breath.

“I never got to use your insulation kit,” she said. “The subs showed up the next day. I don’t even know where it is.”

“That’s ’cause you left the box at the house, didn’t you. You don’t know by now what happens to your tools when you leave them on the job?”

I tossed my watered-down Scotch, uncharacteristically neglected, out on the lawn. Then went to get a fresh one.

I stayed at her house that night and watched her sleep, overcome with relief and exhaustion. But no chance of rest for me. I had a head full of calculations and probabilities which were enough to keep me awake most of the night. That was fine. I now only had one theory to concentrate on. And I admit it, the favored of the two, once not much more than a matter of faith and hope.

My alternate truth.

I worked in her bedroom on a yellow legal pad, a soft reading light over my shoulder. It wasn’t an easy workspace, but what the heck. There are worse ways to spend your time than looking at Amanda doing anything, awake or not.