"Thanks for bringing her home," she said.
"I think it was the other way around."
"Either way. Goodbye."
He watched her head back into the house, and noticed in pa.s.sing the little mezuzah on the right side of the door, sealed in a pewter case. So she was Jewish. He hadn"t asked her about Amanda"s illness, and it struck him that any such questions wouldn"t have been welcome. She didn"t appear to want anything to do with him, and she certainly didn"t give the impression that she wanted her daughter having anything to do with him either. That was fine. He wasn"t in a very sociable place, or he thought he wasn"t. He had enjoyed talking with Amanda, though. She reminded him of Sam, in some ways. He wondered again why she had asked him if Sam had blond hair. He was still mulling it over as he entered his house, and slipped off the laceless sneakers that he wore for walking. He sat down in an armchair facing the kitchen. It had a soft cushion, because his a.s.s still hurt from some of the shotgun wounds.
On the table before him lay his pills, but he didn"t have the strength to get up again and take them. He was on what was known as the "a.n.a.lgesic ladder" Tylenol, tramadol, MS Contin, gabapentin which, apart from constipating him like crazy, caused him to worry about becoming a prescription-drug addict. So he took the hardcore pills less often than he should have, and generally relied on the Tylenol.
Just before he fell asleep, he discerned a flash of movement in the shadows, and the blond hair of his dead daughter caught the fading afternoon light as she watched her father"s eyes close.
Amanda wasn"t sure what she was expecting from her mother, but it wasn"t to be wrapped in a huge hug, and kissed over and over again on the forehead and cheeks.
"I"m okay, Mom," she said. "Honest. Mr Parker is nice."
Her mother released her, and ruffled her hair. Behind her, the television was on low, and Amanda saw images of a burned house, and policemen, and a photograph of a family.
"Did something bad happen?" Amanda asked.
"Yes, honey," said her mother. "Something real bad."
10.
Amanda Winter often dreamed: strange, fevered visions, filled with confusion and dislocation. It was why the dream of the girl on the sand hadn"t disturbed her more, for she"d had worse. Had she been older, she might have understood it as a function of the headaches and muscle pains that she experienced. Sometimes her mother would give her half a sleeping pill to help her drift off, especially if her condition had been particularly bad for a couple of nights.
Her illness had a name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or more commonly myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME but one of the pupils in her old school, a girl named Laurie Bryden, had claimed that ME wasn"t really an illness at all. She"d heard her father say so. Her father said it was just something that lazy people used as an excuse not to get off their a.s.ses and work or, in the case of someone like Amanda, as a means of getting away with low grades because she was really kind of dumb. It had taken all of Amanda"s willpower not to sock Laurie Bryden in the jaw and knock her flat on her back, but what good would have come of it anyway?
Amanda hated being sick. She hated being tired. She hated waking up and wondering if today was going to be a good day or a bad day. On good days, she would sometimes try to do too much, with the result that the bad days to follow were so much worse. She hated the low-level headache that always seemed to throb in her skull, and how long it took her to recover from colds and infections. She hated the night sweats and the weird pains and the tenderness in her armpits. She hated the way some perfumes brought on her illness, and not being able to swim in heated pools because the chlorine made her head woozy. She hated knowing the answer to a question but not being able to find it in the muddle of her brain. She hated that, even among her friends, she was an outsider, because her stupid sickness meant that she kept on missing stuff: parties, movies, even just the day-to-day business of interacting at school. She wanted to be normal. She hadn"t chosen to be this way. She just was.
The doctors said her condition might last a couple of years, and then gradually start to disappear, but she had already endured it for two years and could see no sign of any improvement. Sometimes she got so depressed that she"d just lock herself in her room and cry, but that made her feel even more pathetic.
The girl with the blond hair returned to her in a dream that night, except Amanda wasn"t sure that she was dreaming. The pains in her limbs felt too real, as did the thumping headache and the discomfort in her right ear where she had sweated into the pillow and somehow irritated her skin. She could hear the sea and smell its salt, yet all of it was kept at arm"s length, for she was running a temperature, and so dream and reality were not so easily discernible from each other.
But through that night landscape walked the girl, and although Amanda could still not quite see her face, she understood the sign that the girl was making, for she could spot the index finger of her right hand pressed against her lips. It was the universally understood gesture for silence. Slowly, Amanda turned her head on the pillow. She tried to make it look, as much as possible, as though she were simply shifting in her sleep. She kept her eyes almost but not entirely closed.
A wooden staircase led up the back of the house to a door at the rear of Amanda"s room. The view from the doorway wasn"t as good as the one from her bedroom window because it faced away from the sea. Nevertheless, Amanda sometimes liked to put on her coat and sit there with a book, and she"d watched one good sunset from it. Her mother insisted that she keep the door locked at all times, not that Amanda needed to be told: even somewhere as apparently safe and peaceful as Green Heron Bay might not be immune to lunatics and child-stealers. The door was slightly recessed, but if Amanda lay on the very edge of her bed, she could just about see it. The top half was mostly gla.s.s, with a shade that could be pulled down, but Amanda rarely bothered with that.
Now, through barely open eyes, she could see that a man was standing on the topmost step, peering in at her through the gla.s.s. His upper body was exposed, and Amanda had a gut feeling that he was naked from the waist down too. His face was cast in shadow, just like the dream girl"s, but Amanda could see that his skin was very pale, yet only as far as the base of his neck. From there it was curiously mottled all over the torso, the upper arms, even extending over his stomach to where she knew his thing was hanging loose below although there was a regularity to the pattern. It was, she thought, almost as though someone had pieced together a jigsaw puzzle of a man and placed it by her door, except that this one was moving. As she watched, the figure raised his left hand.
And waved.
In the dream that wasn"t quite a dream, Amanda understood that he wanted to be seen. He wished to get a reaction from her why, she did not know and it took all of her willpower not to rise up and scream for her mother. Instead she nuzzled into her pillow, still keeping one barely open eye on the man on the step, and she saw his hand flinch, then form a fist. For a moment she thought that he was about to thrust it through the gla.s.s, shattering it so that he could get at the bolt inside, but he merely lowered his head and moved away, and she felt rather than heard his footfalls on the wood of the steps. Even then she did not move, not until she was certain that he wasn"t playing some kind of trick on her. Then, and only then, did she climb from her bed and crawl carefully to the window. She shifted the drapes where they met, exposing the slightest triangle of sand and surf beyond the window.
The man was walking into the sea. His back, his b.u.t.tocks, and his legs, all were covered with the same patterning that she had seen on his torso and upper arms. Even though the water must have been very cold, he moved steadily into the darkness of it, step by step, the waves breaking against him, yet barely seeming to jostle his body. He was like a statue slowly sinking, a figure mired in the sand as the tide came in around him. The water reached his waist, then his chest, then his neck, but he did not try to swim into it. Instead, he was eventually immersed entirely, and then he was gone.
This was no dream. The presence of the girl had confused her, the girl with the blond hair. She was not of this world. She belonged in another, but she drifted between both. The man, though, was part of this one.
Only then did Amanda start to cry, and she did not stop until her mother appeared and took her in her arms.
"I saw someone," said Amanda, turning away from the black sea, weeping into her mother"s breast. "I saw a Jigsaw Man."
11.
Cory Bloom got the call just as she was heading home for the evening. It came from the dispatcher at the station house, Karen h.e.l.ler, who was also just about to leave. Bloom kind of wished that Karen had just let Stynes or Corbin take care of it. In fact, Bloom couldn"t understand why Karen was bothering her with this in the first place.
"You say there"s a man standing on the beach, near where the body was washed up?" she said.
"Uh, that"s right, Cory. Dan Rainey just called."
Dan had taken a proprietary interest in the whole matter of the drowned man. From what Bloom heard, he"d held court at the Brickhouse after the body was discovered, and hadn"t once needed to put his hand in his pocket to pay for a drink.
"With respect, Karen, it"s still a free country. Also, the beach isn"t sealed off, and even if it was, we couldn"t do a whole lot to stop the tide from washing away any more evidence."
"I know that," said Karen, and Bloom detected the note of annoyance in her voice. Clearly there was something here that Bloom wasn"t fully understanding, but it would sure help her a whole lot if Karen would just get around to telling her what it was, which Karen duly did.
"It"s the private detective," she said. "It"s Charlie Parker who"s standing out at Mason Point."
Bloom parked at the edge of the strand. She knew better than to drive down onto the beach, even with the Explorer. That d.a.m.n sand was treacherous, and not a week went by in the summer without some dumb tourist ignoring the signs about not parking on the strand, and being forced to call Smalley"s Towing Service to get a vehicle back on terra firma.
If Parker heard her pull up, he gave no sign. He simply continued to stare out to sea, and she might have thought it nothing more than a man seeking a slight change of surroundings on a cool evening in late spring were it not for the fact that he was standing almost exactly on the spot where the body had washed up. He was wearing a dark overcoat that hung just below his knees, the collar raised to cover his neck. The wind created sand specters, and Bloom felt fine grains sting her cheek.
Only when she was almost within touching distance of him did he turn slightly to acknowledge her approach, speaking her name at the same time. She wondered how he had known. In all the time she had been watching him, his gaze had not left the sea.
"Chief Bloom," he said, and she experienced a kind of nervousness, a sense that the world had shifted slightly off-kilter. He had about him a conflicted air, a fusion of contradictions: pain, yet peace; rage, yet equanimity. She caught the white patterns in his hair, the suffering etched in his face.
And his eyes ... Had she been on more friendly terms with Bobby Soames, they might well have found common ground in their impression of Parker. She had only ever seen pictures of him before he arrived, but she wondered if his eyes had always been so haunted, and so haunting. They were the eyes of someone who had witnessed events beyond the comprehension of others, and perhaps even beyond his own. She knew that his heart had stopped three times after the shooting, and he had been resuscitated on each occasion. Perhaps the victim of such traumas lost a little of himself every time, and left part of his being behind in the darkness. Or perhaps he brought something of the darkness back with him. Yes, that was it. These were not the eyes of a man who was less than he once was. No, they were the eyes of one who was much more.
"Mr Parker," she said. "You mind if I ask what you"re doing out here?"
"Did I miss an ordinance about not enjoying the view?"
He didn"t speak testily. He sounded only amused.
"We haven"t pa.s.sed that one yet, although there are some folks in town who"d like to find a way to charge for it, if they could. No, I"m simply wondering if it"s a coincidence that you"re filling your lungs steps from where, as I"m sure you know, a body was recently washed up."
"Do you have a name yet?"
She noticed that he hadn"t answered her question, although in a way, he just had.
"We haven"t made an official identification, but we"ve found what we believe to be his vehicle."
He waited. She sighed. This wasn"t the way that it was supposed to go, but, d.a.m.n, the man had a way about him.
"Bruno Perlman, forty-five. Resident of Duval County, Florida."
"Long way from home. Rental?"
"No, it"s his own."
"He drove all the way up here from southeast Florida?"
"It seems so."
"Just to throw himself in the ocean?"
"We haven"t yet made any determination on that."
"You sound like you"re already practising your lines for the press."
"Maybe I am. We"ll be releasing the name once his family has been informed. It"s just that-"
Again, he simply waited.
"Well," Bloom continued, "he doesn"t seem to have any close family that we can find. He appears to have been pretty much on his own."
"What about the state police?"
"They have their hands full looking for that Oran Wilde kid. Same with the ME"s office: she"s got four charred corpses on her hands. They"ll all get to us when they can. They"ve been in touch, but ..."
She trailed off. He finished for her.
"It"s a car by a beach, and a body on another beach a body, what"s more, that n.o.body is rushing to claim or mourn. Did you find a note?"
"No."
"There"s a lot of water to throw yourself into between Florida and here, most of it a lot warmer than this."
He gestured at the ocean with a pale hand. Bloom half expected to see an albatross appear, as though summoned before them.
"Is there a logic to taking your own life?" she asked.
He considered the question.
"You know, I expect that there probably is," he said. "Would you mind if I took a look at his car?"
"Why would you want to do that? And why are you so interested?"
"It used to be my job," he said.
"And now?"
He looked at her, and she felt the full force of his gaze.
"Call it my vocation," he said. "I"m out of practice. Indulge me, Chief Bloom. After all, what harm can it do?"
But those last five words came back to Cory Bloom later, as it all blew up, as she felt her life draining away, and she knew that she would take them to her grave.
The car, stored in the police garage at the back of the town office, was a 2003 Honda Accord in a dull silver-gray. It had 91,000 miles on it, according to the clock, but Bloom told Parker that it had probably turned over at least once, given that the car seemed to be held together with goodwill and Bondo, and the a/c was shot. She"d draped the vehicle with a tarp to protect it from getting any more fingerprints and marks on the paint job than it had already.
She handed Parker a pair of latex gloves.
"You can open the door and take a look inside, but try not to touch anything, even with the gloves on, okay?"
She felt ridiculous giving him the warning. After all, he"d once carried a detective"s shield. He might have been a renegade, but if so, he was one who knew the drill. He"d also annoyed her with his questions on the beach, and his wish to examine the vehicle. Bloom knew better than to make a.s.sumptions, or so she told herself, but she had to admit that she"d already mentally filed the corpse away as a probable suicide. Perhaps it was, in part, the reaction of the state police. Yes, the minds of its detectives were elsewhere on four bodies, and the missing, possibly troubled youth who might well be responsible for their deaths but, even so, they didn"t seem particularly troubled about the body that she currently had on ice. Right or wrong, these att.i.tudes were contagious. Now, though, Parker"s reactions reminded her of the importance of taking nothing for granted, and she didn"t want the chain of evidence interfered with, if it turned out that Bruno Perlman had not entered the sea of his own volition.
But Parker didn"t seem interested in searching the interior, not yet. He walked around the car under the bright fluorescents of the garage, his brow furrowed in the slightest of frowns. Only when he had done that did he open first the driver"s door, then the front pa.s.senger door. He took in the mess on the floor soda bottles, chip bags, candy wrappers, a copy of the Boston Globe dated a couple of days before the body washed ash.o.r.e then leaned in and searched the glove compartment without coming upon anything that caught his attention. He checked the newspaper, and the copy of The Yiddish Policemen"s Union that lay on the back seat, flicking through the pages but finding nothing. So much for not touching stuff, thought Bloom. He used the release handle in the car to open the trunk. Inside was a single traveling bag.
"Did you take a look in here?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "It"s just clothes and toiletries."
"You mind?"
"Sure," she said resignedly. "Go ahead."
He unzipped the bag carefully, and went through its contents piece by piece, searching inside T-shirts, underwear, and jeans. He even examined the cans of deodorant and shaving cream. Finally, he zipped the bag, closed the trunk and the two doors, and stepped away from the car. He removed the gloves and handed them back to her.
"Thanks," she said. "I"ll treasure them always. Are you done?"
"Sure," he said. "For now. Was I keeping you from something?"
"A husband. A dog. A bath. Dinner."
"Nothing urgent, then."
"Seriously, do you have any friends?"
"Enough. I"m not recruiting more."
"I wasn"t offering. Anything you want to share with me from your examination of the vehicle?"
"Suppose I sleep on it and we talk in the morning," he said. "After all, you have a husband waiting, and a dog, and a bath, and dinner. There"s nothing here that can"t hold, and Bruno Perlman won"t be any more dead tomorrow. He"s long beyond waiting on us to figure out his final moments."
They stepped out of the garage into the cool evening air.
"I have one last request," he said.