The Affair

Chapter 37

Janice May Chapman’s back yard was not maintained to the same standard as her front yard. In fact it was barely maintained at all. It was almost completely neglected. It was mostly lawn, and it looked a little sad and sunken. It was mowed, but what had been mowed was basically weed, not grass. At the far end was a low panel fence, made of wood, starved of stain or protection, with the center panel fallen out and laid aside.

What I had seen from the door was a faint narrow path through the mowed weeds. It was almost imperceptible. Almost not there at all. Only the late-afternoon sun made it visible. The light came in low from one side and showed a ghostly trail, where the weeds were a little brushed and crushed and bruised. A little darker than the rest of the lawn. The path led through a curved trajectory straight to the hole in the fence. It had been made by feet, going back and forth.

I got two steps along it and stopped again. The ground was crunching under my soles. I looked down. Deveraux bumped into my back.

The second time we had ever touched.

“What?” she said.

I looked up again.

“One thing at a time,” I said, and started walking again.

The path led off the weeds, through the gap in the fence, and out into a barren abandoned field about a hundred yards in width. At the far edge of the field was the railroad track. Halfway along the right-hand edge of the field were two tumbled gateposts, and beyond them was a dirt road that ran east and west. West, I guessed, toward more old field entrances and a link to the winding continuation of Main Street, and east toward the railroad track, where it dead-ended.

The old field had tire tracks all the way across it. They came in between the ruined gateposts and ran through a wide right-angle turn straight toward the gap in Chapman’s fence. They ended close to where I was standing, in a wide looping triangle, where cars had backed up and turned, ready for the return trip.

“She got sick of the old biddies,” I said. “She was playing games with them. Sometimes she came out the front, and sometimes she came out the back. And I bet sometimes the boyfriends said goodnight and drove right around the block for more.”

Deveraux said, “Shit.”

“Can’t blame her. Or the boyfriends. Or the biddies, really. People do what they do.”

“But it makes their evidence meaningless.”

“That’s what she wanted. She didn’t know it was ever going to be important.”

“Now we don’t know when she came and went on that last day.”

I stood in the silence and looked all around. Nothing to see. No other houses, no other people. An empty landscape. Total privacy.

Then I turned and looked back at the weed patch that passed for a lawn.

“What?” Deveraux said again.

“She bought this place three years ago, right?”

“Yes.”

“She was twenty-four at the time.”

“Yes.”

“Is that usual? Twenty-four-year-olds owning real estate?”

“Maybe not very usual.”

“With no mortgage?”

“Definitely not very usual. But what has that got to do with her yard?”

“She wasn’t much of a gardener.”

“That’s not a crime.”

“The previous owner wasn’t much of a gardener either. Did you know him? Or her?”

“I was still in the Corps three years ago.”

“Not a long-time resident, that you remember from being a kid? Maybe a third old biddy, like a matched set?”

“Why?”

“No reason. Not important. But whoever, they didn’t like mowing their lawn. So they dug it up and replaced it with something else.”

“With what?”

“Go take a look.”

She backtracked through the gap in the fence and walked halfway along the path and squatted down. She parted the weedy stalks and dug her fingertips into the surface underneath. She raked them back and forth and then she looked up at me and said, “Gravel.”

The previous owner had tired of lawn care and opted for raked stones. Like a Japanese garden, maybe, or like the low-water-use yards conscientious Californians were starting to put in. Maybe there had been earthenware tubs here and there, full of cheerful flowers. Or maybe not. It was impossible to tell. But it was clear the gravel had not been a total success. Not a labor-saving cure-all. It had been laid thin. The subsoil had been full of weed roots. Regular applications of herbicide had been called for.

Janice May Chapman had not continued the herbicide applications. That was clear. No hosepipe in her garage. No watering can. Rural Mississippi. Agricultural land. Rain and sun. Those weeds had come boiling up like madmen. Some boyfriend had brought over a gasoline mower and hacked them back. Some nice guy with plenty of energy. The kind of guy who doesn’t like mess and disarray. A soldier, almost certainly. The kind of guy who does things for people, gets things neat, and then keeps them neat.

Deveraux asked, “So what are you saying? She was raped here?”

“Maybe she wasn’t raped at all.”

Deveraux said nothing.

“It’s possible she wasn’t,” I said. “Think about it. A sunny afternoon, total privacy. They’re sitting out back because they don’t want to sit on the front porch with the old biddies watching every move. They’re on the stoop, they’re feeling good, they get right to it.”

“On the lawn?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

She looked right at me and said, “Like you told the doctor, it would depend on who I was with.”

We spent the next few minutes talking about injuries. I did the thing with my forearm again. I pressed it down and mashed it around. I simulated the throes of passion. I came up with plenty of green chlorophyll stains and a smear of dry stony mud. When I wiped off the dirt we both saw the same kind of small red marks we had seen on Janice May Chapman’s corpse. They were superficial and there was no broken skin, but we both agreed Chapman might have been at it longer, and harder, with more weight and force. “We need to go inside again,” I said.

We found Chapman’s laundry basket in the bathroom. It was a rectangular wicker thing, with a lid. Painted white. On top of the pile inside was a short sundress. It had cap sleeves and was printed with red and white pinstripes. It was rucked and creased at the waist. It had grass stains on the upper back. Next item down in the laundry pile was a hand towel. Then a white blouse.

“No underwear,” Deveraux said.

“Evidently,” I said.

“The rapist kept a souvenir.”

“She wasn’t wearing any. Her boyfriend was coming over.”

“It’s March.”

“What was the weather like that day?”

“It was warm,” Deveraux said. “And sunny. It was a nice day.”

“Rosemary McClatchy wasn’t raped,” I said. “Nor was Shawna Lindsay. Escalation is one thing. A complete change in MO is another.”

Deveraux didn’t answer that. She stepped out of the bathroom into the hallway. The center point of the little house. She looked all around. She asked, “What did I miss here? What should be here that isn’t?”

“Something more than three years old,” I said. “She moved here from somewhere else, and she should have brought things with her. At least a few things. Books, maybe. Or photographs. Maybe a favorite chair or something.”

“Twenty-four-year-olds aren’t very sentimental.”

“They keep some little thing.”

“What did you keep when you were twenty-four?”

“I’m different. You’re different.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying she showed up here three years ago out of the blue and brought nothing with her. She bought a house and a car and got a local driver’s license. She bought a houseful of new furniture. All for cash. She doesn’t have a rich daddy or his picture would be next to the TV in a silver frame. I want to know who she was.”