Identical

6

Tim saw the first of Hal’s ads about Paul and the murder Monday afternoon, when he put aside his book of myths and turned on the early news at 5 p.m. He’d given up on the local TV journalism years ago-it was all about Chihuahuas hunting lobsters, or Jesus appearing on a grilled cheese sandwich-but he was excited to find himself with a role in current events. At his age, he was accustomed to feeling irrelevant.

Paul’s lawsuit had made headlines for a couple of days, and now Hal was hitting back. Tim watched the commercial in amazement. A piece of paper that could have just as easily been obliterated by the seepage in his basement was now made to look like holy writ. The camera zoomed in sideways on the police report, then jumped first to the header that read “Greenwood County Sheriff’s Police,” then the date and finally “Paul Gianis” in the box for “Witness.” The words attributed to Paul blackened to boldface and then rose off the page, all while some unseen woman with a scolding voice asked if we wanted a liar for mayor. Tonight the commercial was shown again a minute later as part of the news. Tim turned away from the screen with a small turmoil in his gut. Not a word in the ad was untrue. But he still didn’t feel quite right about it.

Tim was reconsidering all of this as he looked between the little leaded darts of stained glass in his bayed front window, already bundled in his woolen overcoat and wearing a felt hat. The BMW pulled up to the curb and he locked up and lumbered out.

“All of four blocks,” he told Evon, putting on his seat belt, “but the newcomers don’t shovel their front walks. I’m too damn old for mountain climbing.” There had been a serious snow last week, the first in a couple of years. When Tim grew up here, it got to twenty below for days in the winter and snowed like hell whenever it warmed up. No more. Right after the flakes stopped falling, young Dorie Sherman across the street had been out with her little guy, showing him the drifts, which he’d never seen.

Evon asked for more detail on the woman they were going to see.

“Not a lot to say,” Tim answered. “Georgia Lazopoulos. Georgia Cleon now. Paul’s girlfriend back then. Her dad was the priest at St. D’s.”

“The Greek priests marry?”

“Orthodox, right. But only before they’re ordained. Sometimes makes for a slow course through the seminary.”

“Where I came from, the ministers’ kids were mostly crazy.”

“She was a nice girl, so far as I remember. Sincere. You read the report I sent?”

“I tried. But it was hard to make out much on the fax.”

“She talked her head off on the initial canvass. Said Dita and Paul seemed to have words the day she was killed. That’s the kind of stuff you wanted me to dig up, right?”

“Exactly. Did she tell the cop that because it seemed odd?”

“Not hardly. Cop said to tell him everything she remembered and she did, even how many pastries she ate. But I thought may as well talk to her. Given I’m billing hourly and trying to work off that retainer.”

Evon slapped his hand, and Tim laughed.

“Turn here,” he told her. Georgia was in the same little bungalow she’d bought with her ex-husband, Jimmy Cleon. Jimmy had been her rebound after Paul, glib and good-looking, but he’d been on drugs all along and she didn’t know it until the wedding silver disappeared, not much after the honeymoon. At least that was the story. Since Georgia was the priest’s daughter, everybody talked about her.

When her father had been pushed out at St. D’s, he’d lost the parish house and moved in with her. Father Nik had gone odd. Brain tumor, as Tim remembered. The surgery had saved him, but he was never quite the same, and he’d had a stroke by now, too. Georgia’s mom had passed while she was in high school, so it was just her and her loopy old dad, exactly the fate Tim was still hoping to save his daughters from, who were always on him to move out to Seattle where they were.

“Does she know I’m coming?” Evon asked when they parked. He’d motioned her into a space down the street, where they could maneuver over the black ruts driven into the snow. In this neighborhood, parking in the winter could be a perilous act. The city plows never got to these small streets and homeowners spent hours shoveling their spaces, protecting them with lawn chairs or those orange cones filched from road crews. The last fistfight Tim had gotten into, more than forty years ago, was when some joker pulled into his space as soon as he went to put away his shovel. But it was 3:30 and there was still a fair amount of parking here while most people were at work.

“Yeah. Said we were working for Hal. She didn’t sound pleased, but then again, she didn’t say no. Seemed to remember me.”

“Who could forget you?” Evon asked. “Tall, dark and handsome.”

He laughed. He was liking this Evon a good deal.

The woman who greeted them at the door was barely recognizable to Tim. Age had been unkind to her, had coarsened her skin and stolen the life from it, and like many of the girls in this neighborhood, she’d put on an awful lot of weight. She had been pretty, as Tim recalled, very pretty, and looking close you could see the remnants of that cheerful appealing face within a pudding of flesh. Maria had gotten pretty hefty, too, truth be told, not that he had ever thought much about that. In a long marriage, the present matters less, at least it did to him. Every day they’d been together was there in both of them, good days mostly. But he could only see Georgia as she was, and her appearance seemed to say she’d lost all connection with the girl she’d been. There was just this person who looked much shorter now, in a droopy shirt and leaving you to wonder what illusions made her put on stretch pants.

Tim reintroduced himself, mentioning neighbors he thought Georgia might recall, then asked how her father was doing. She made a face.

“You’ll see,” she said. “He wanders around here like he’s on a treasure hunt. My biggest problem is to keep him from picking up the phone. He gets on with these solicitors from like the Police Benevolent Fund and talks for an hour and promises them thousands. I finally just had to give him a pad of checks from a closed account. He loves to write checks. The big shot.”

She waved them into the dark living room. There were several beautiful icons on the wall, with their elongated flat look, and a lot of photos of Greece-the royal blue water and arid mountains-apparently taken on a family trip. Maria had wanted to go when the girls were young, but it was one more thing that got sucked under in the riptide after Katy’s death.

After his own wife died, Father Nik was overwhelmed by all the work of the parish and had needed Georgia to stay nearby. He hadn’t thought much of a girl going off to college anyway. She’d gotten a year of bookkeeping training and still worked in the headquarters of the big bank where she’d started at nineteen, which was now owned by an even bigger bank. She was the chief teller, counting other people’s money from 7 to 3 every day.

She brought them each a glass of water from the tap, then settled heavily on the print sofa. Evon sat beside her while Tim took an armchair. The TV was on and Georgia for a second couldn’t look away from some account of the latest goings-on with Britney Spears, who’d been hospitalized after locking herself in a room with her son.

“What a runny mess she’s turning into,” Georgia said, “and with everything she’s got.” She continued to gaze, enthralled. Her attitude was just like the Greeks with their gods, Tim decided, looking in on the life that was bigger than life, these grand figures whose triumphs were the stuff of dreams and whose hubris led to destruction so complete it made you happy to be living small. When the show went to commercial, Georgia clicked it off. But she pointed at the TV, an old walnut console, with the remote.

“I’ve been watching Hal’s ads,” she said, and her mouth soured. “I’m sure he sent you out here, thinking I’m the bitter old witch who’ll just crap on the guy who dumped her, but it’s not going to happen. I’ll tell you right now, I don’t believe Paul had anything to do with Dita’s murder.” The wide figure on the sofa tightened with these declarations, gripping her arms close to her body.

“Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that,” Tim answered. “You wouldn’t have spent all that time with somebody you figured for a murderer, right? But now and then people have another side nobody sees. Hal’s got his opinions and Paul decided to sue him for speaking his mind, so here we are. None of us was there when Dita was murdered. We just want to know what you remember. No desire for you to make anything up.”

Her brows were thick and she squinted at Tim a little, trying to figure out whether to believe him. He could see what had happened with her. Georgia was a little like a dog that had been beaten too much. She still had no idea what she’d done to bring all these troubles on herself, so she’d learned to distrust everyone.

“Well, I don’t really remember much after all this time,” Georgia said. “You know. The event stands out. How often are you with a girl and she turns up dead a few hours later, murdered no less? But who knows with the rest of it? What’s it been? Twenty-five years at least.”

“Of course,” said Tim. “But memory can be funny. Sometimes you can say to a gal, just an example, but years later, do you remember what dress you were wearing that day? And they do.”

“I do,” said Georgia instantly. She smiled for the first time since they’d come through the door. “It was a little blue gingham sundress. I looked good in it, too.” Her quick laughter drove her back into the sofa. She was, very briefly, pleased with herself.

“I’m sure,” Tim answered. Beside Georgia on the sofa, Evon had relegated herself to the role of taking notes. Most of the city homicide dicks she knew weren’t much on interviewing technique. They’d come in and ask a few questions with their faces turned to one side, waiting for the moment when they could say, ‘Don’t bullshit me, if you don’t tell the truth you’re going to jail.’ But Tim was earnest and kind. It was like talking to somebody’s grandfather who was in a rocking chair on his front porch.

“I’ll tell you something else I remember,” she said. “You may not care to hear it, but when I saw that commercial, saying Paul lied to the police, it pretty much came back to me. That was exactly what Paul told me that night. That he was going to meet Cass at Overlook? I can’t tell you if he did or he didn’t, but I remember his plans.”

Evon felt jolted.

“Any reason that stands out in your memory?” she asked.

Georgia turned to her, plainly feeling challenged. “Yeah, because I was really surprised. It was a Sunday night, and my dad always went off with the men’s club and that meant we had the run of the house. Guys being the way they are, Paul always liked to take advantage of that.” She nodded decisively, like she’d put Evon in her place, which she had.

Behind Georgia, leaning forward in an easy chair, Tim let his fair eyes rise to Evon. He didn’t want her breaking his rhythm, and eased back in.

“Did Paul say why he wanted to go out there?”

“I could guess. He needed to talk to Cass about Dita, I think. The two of them had an argument about her once a week. He was afraid Cass was going to marry her and tear his family apart.”

Evon rolled over the details. It wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. Maybe Paul had met Cass at Overlook and hatched some kind of plan. But one of them, perhaps both, had left there soon and killed Dita.

“I don’t want you to think I’m taking Paul’s side,” Georgia said. “I’m not. He was a louse to me. You know, women say, ‘He took the best years of my life’? He really did. I was the girl from the neighborhood he was too good for as soon as he finished law school. And I could have had a ton of boys in those days. The way I looked? It still aggravates me. But I’ll tell you the truth. I vote for him. I probably will this time, too.” Georgia looked at her plump hands for a second, trying to discern the meaning of what she had just revealed.

People could get stuck in love, Evon realized, and then never recover. The best love of Evon’s life had come almost a decade ago, with Doreen. They’d had six good months before Doreen was diagnosed, and another year and a half with Evon helping her die. She’d been devastated afterward, in part because the normal times hadn’t lasted long enough to find out what the relationship might have been. She wondered now, if, like Georgia, she had never found her way back from mourning that lost possibility. People didn’t generally think that love could ruin a life. But perhaps. Evon felt her entire body pressed down by the sheer unhappy magnitude of the idea.

“So let’s go back to the day of that picnic,” Tim said to Georgia. “Anything stand out in your memory about Paul that day?”

She snorted. “Well, I remember he bumped into Sofia Michalis. I could just see by the way he was talking to her something was going on. When he broke up with me, he blamed it on this whole thing with Cass being a suspect. He said he was too mixed up with all that happening. But he was married to Sofia within six months. He wasn’t so confused then.”

“Do you recall anything about him and Dita?” Tim asked.

She shook her full face. It wasn’t clear, though, if that was a lack of memory or if she was distracted by the thought of Paul and Sofia.

“One of the officers who talked to you,” Tim told her, “he said that you recalled that Paul seemed to have had words with Dita.”

“Did I?”

Tim reached into his tweed jacket and pulled out the report casually, as if it were just another piece of paper an old fellow would have in his pockets, like a grocery list, or a note about calling his daughter. Georgia spidered her hands on her forehead as she read the highlighted part. Eventually, she started to nod.

“I just saw them talking. Dita went stalking off and I remember the look on his face. But that was nothing new. Paul hated Dita.”

“Is that what he said that day? That he hated her?”

“I don’t remember what he said. Did I tell that to the cop?” She took the report back from Tim’s hand without asking and swung her head laterally as she read. “I really don’t recall even talking about her with Paul that day. Except maybe when he said he was going to the Overlook, and I’m not clear on that.”

“But you say he hated her?”

“There was a lot not to like. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead”-she made the sign of the cross over her chest with impressive speed-“but I have to tell you the truth. Dita was just a very spoiled girl with a very sharp tongue. She was like, ‘My dad is one of those guys, emperor of the universe, so I can say damn well what I please.’ She was gorgeous, so there were always boys after her, the whole damned cavalry, but except for Cass, she managed to drive every one of them away after a while.”

“Is that what Paul didn’t like about her? Her attitude?”

“You know. He said she was wild, leading his brother astray, said his mom hated her, too, and Dita knew it and just liked egging all of them on. I don’t know. You ask me?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Tim said.

“I think he was jealous. That’s a hard row to hoe. With twins? Identical twins? He loved his brother. There isn’t even a word for it really. Lidia always told the same stories about when they were little, how they couldn’t stand being different. She sewed their names into their clothes and they tore off the tags. They ate off each other’s plates. At night they ended up in the same bed, sleeping in each other’s arms. The neighbors’ collie bit Cass, and everybody swore Paul cried first, before either of them knew the dog had drawn blood. It was like they were joined at the heart. And that never quite stopped. I mean, Paul wouldn’t really accept that Cass was guilty.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, even after Cass pled, Paul was saying he was innocent.”

“Did he?” said Tim, who allowed none of the surprise Evon felt rippling through her thorax to reach his expression. He maintained a purely conversational tone. “When was that?”

“That day. The day Cass was in court pleading guilty. I was there actually. Paul and I had been broken up for months by then, but I don’t know, I wanted to support the family or something. I don’t know,” she repeated. “Probably I was looking for an excuse to see Paul.” She winced, pained by the memory and the futility of her longing. With her eyes closed, Tim noticed that her face was turning blotchy with age. “Anyway, he thanked me for coming. We went over to Bishop’s, and had a beer, and he was just blown away. I mean, you can imagine, somebody’s been like another part of your body all your life and they’re about to lock him up for twenty-five years. He was really blue and he just said to me, ‘He’s innocent, you know.’”

Evon intervened. “And did you ask how he knew that?” She tried to evoke Tim’s mild tone, but again, Georgia’s response to her was sharp.

“Well, he was his twin brother for God’s sake,” she answered. Evon had Georgia’s number by now. She was one of those women who didn’t really like other females, while the men she’d loved-Paul who’d thrown her over, and Jimmy Cleon with his drugs, and her dad who’d kept her from college-had all done her wrong. Life had put her in quite a bind. “I suppose I figured Cass told him that. But I was trying to console him, not play detective. Paul was miserable and I was listening to him. I thought we could be friends. Does that ever work?” She kept touching the front of her short stiff hairdo to keep it in place, after every shake of her head. “And of course, right before I got up to leave, he told me he was going to marry Sofia in a couple of weeks, so Cass could be his best man before he went inside.”

Tim was quiet for a second while she dwelled with that memory, which, like much of what she’d said about Paul, struck her hard.

He asked a few more questions about what had happened on the day of the murder, whether anyone else had had a visible conflict with Dita. Finally, he looked to Evon to see if she had something else to cover, which she did. She flipped back to some notes she’d made that morning.

“Thinking back, do you remember Paul having any serious cuts around that time?”

Georgia considered the question for only a second before saying no.

“Would you have been aware of any deep cuts?” Tim asked. He was as easy as if he were asking the time, but Georgia fixed him with a knowing brown eye.

“I’d have known. We dated for nine years and I was sure I was going to marry the guy. I mean, the truth is I saw him less once Dita was murdered. He was finally going to move out of his parents’ after he started working, so he was looking for apartments, and then when Cass became a suspect he was completely focused on that, and we broke up.”

“So are you saying you might not have known?” Evon asked.

Georgia wheeled back, remaining cranky with her. “I’m saying I saw him less. But I saw him. And I would have noticed. Everybody knew there was blood all over that bedroom. Like I said. He hated Dita. I don’t think I’d have been that dense.”

Evon absorbed her answer without quarreling, but these kinds of retrospective would-haves were always baloney. If the man she loved had told her he’d cut himself fixing a fence in his parents’ yard, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But Georgia was touchy enough that Evon wasn’t going to argue. She looked down to her notepad.

“Is Paul right-handed?” Evon asked.

“Mostly.”

“‘Mostly’?”

“Cass is left-handed. Writes lefty, eats lefty. Paul is the opposite. I always wondered when I noticed that, years ago, if that meant they weren’t really identical, but apparently that happens a lot with identical twins. When Paul and Cass were little, though, like I said, they hated to do anything different from one another. So sometimes they’d both eat lefty and sometimes they’d both eat righty. They each ended up pretty much whatever the word is, both-handed.”

“Ambidextrous?” Evon said.

“Right. So, for example, when they started playing tennis in high school, they used to shift the racquet, hitting forehands from both sides, but the coach put a stop to that. Paul played righty and Cass played lefty. They were both strong singles players, but at doubles no one could beat them, because basically they knew exactly what the other one was thinking on the court. They were state champions two years running. That was a big deal around here. Guys from a city school winning against all these suburban kids from country clubs? There were articles about them in the Tribune. And there was this one great story.” Georgia fell back, smiling at the recollection.

“They were once in one of these home-and-home tournaments, Friday and Saturday, against a high school from Greenwood County, and when Cass finished his singles match the second day, the kid came after him with his racket. He was screaming, ‘I didn’t mind losing to you yesterday, but coming back and beating me left-handed today, that’s just being an asshole.’”

The three of them all laughed hard. But even amid the levity, Evon could see Tim had reabsorbed some of his anxious aspect.

“But Cass, he did wear a big ring on his right hand, didn’t he?” Tim asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “It was one of those Easton College class rings that Paul and him both bought when they graduated.”

Tim nodded, but his lips kept folding into his mouth. Evon realized he was wondering how they’d pinned a right-handed murder on a lefty.

Evon drank down some of her water, preparing to leave. They both thanked Georgia heartily for her time.

“The lawyers may want to talk to you,” Evon said. As had happened before, Georgia’s mood shifted sharply in reaction to her.

“The hell they will,” she answered. “This isn’t going to become my new profession. Tim called. I agreed to speak to him out of respect, and he said you were his boss and had to come, so I said fine to that, too. But I’m not repeating everything forty times to a bunch of lawyers so they can pick it apart. And I’m certainly not talking to any reporters. They just write what they want you to have said. This here, today, that’s the end of this for me.”

Tim took over again, smoothing her feathers.

“Well, no one knows anything for sure right now,” Tim said. “This could all blow over in a couple of weeks. But if they go to court, it’s hard to imagine you’re not gonna get dragged in a little. You were Paul’s girlfriend. There wasn’t anybody else who’d know more about him then. You have to realize you’re important.”

Tim was good, Evon thought. She had never really laid aside her native awkwardness with strangers. But Tim knew intuitively what would soothe Georgia. ‘You’re important.’

She was not fully convinced. “Still,” she said.

They were all silent a second.

“Can I suggest something?” Tim said. “Why don’t I just get out my camera? It’s in my overcoat and it takes video, too. And I’ll record you responding to a few questions. And that will be that. At least on our side. If somebody else sends you a subpoena, then you can deal with that, but you won’t have to answer about the same things for now. Just tell the lawyers or reporters, whoever it is, you aren’t saying anything else.”

Georgia considered this. “Can I say this how I want?”

“Course,” Tim answered.

“And am I going to end up in another one of Hal’s commercials, all over the TV?”

Evon had no idea how Tim could soften that. When she’d told Hal Tim might have dug up a witness against Paul, he’d danced around his office and immediately called the ad agency. But Tim didn’t try.

“Probably,” he said. “That’s what I’d guess.”

Georgia looked around the dim living room for a second, as if she were taking account of her life. Then she nodded. Tim had Georgia figured. Paul had left her behind and blasted into the firmament. But she’d been the woman with him then. It wasn’t wrong if the spotlight fell on her for a second.

Georgia did two takes, the second less halting.

My name is Yiorgia Lazopoulos Cleon. I’m making this statement voluntarily, and I understand it might be on TV. I was Paul Gianis’s girlfriend in September 1982 and had been for a long time. I was with him at our church’s annual picnic the day Dita Kronon was murdered, and I do remember that Paul had words with Dita that afternoon. Paul hated Dita because he felt like she was trying to tear his family apart. I also recall that even after Cass pled guilty, Paul told me Cass was innocent. I still talk to Paul every once in a while and I’ve voted for him. I’d have a hard time believing Paul did something this awful, but I guess you never know for sure with people.

Georgia had added the last line on the second go-through. Evon, who was far from artsy, had learned enough from Heather that she could envision the way the director would present this, a tight shot, grainy, as Georgia spoke, all the worry and reluctance swimming through her face, even as the truth struggled to the surface. It was going to be strong.

Tim and she had just started moving toward the door when Georgia’s father came thumping into the room. He appeared intent on the TV, to which he pointed with his cane in clear instruction. Georgia told him it would be a minute. The old priest looked a wreck. He wore sweatpants and a Chicago Bears T-shirt on which a long soup stain was visible. His hair was wild, and his full gray beard looked equally untamed. The frames on his heavy Harry Caray glasses might have been thirty years old. Behind them, his black eyes seemed quick and uncomprehending. Nonetheless, Tim greeted Father Nik with just the barest bow.

“Father, bless,” he said, and the old man instinctively responded by raising his right hand with his thumb and first two fingers upward and making the sign of the cross, forehead to navel and then right shoulder to left. Tim reintroduced himself.

“You might recall, Father, you buried our little Kate.” Standing behind her dad, Georgia tensed and shook her head sharply, indicating that those kinds of inquiries were unwise. But the old man had enough sense left to say something appropriate.

“Oh yes,” he said, in his heavy accent. “Trejedy. Terr’ble trejedy.”

“It was,” said Tim. “Maria was never the same. None of us were.”

The old man turned back to his daughter, asking a question in Greek.

“No, Dad, they know you’re retired.”

Georgia looked at Evon and Tim with an impish smile. “He thinks you want him to perform your wedding. Dad, they just had some questions about Paul Gianis and Cass.”

The old man responded once more in Greek.

“No, Dad. It was Paul you saw on the TV. Cass is still in prison.” Her tone was patient but also exhausted. She recognized the pointlessness of explaining. She added another word or two in Greek, perhaps just repeating herself, but something about her answer inflamed him. The old man was instantly furious. He turned pink as a geranium, spit flying as he began to scream. His rage filled the house. He somehow was steadier on his feet in this state, and gestured widely with one hand. Every now and then Evon heard the word “Paulos” as Georgia tried to calm him.

Tim and she had their coats on and were out the door quickly.