Chapter 16
Condolences
Owen Maddox's funeral was held on a Thursday at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, and four hundred people came, which was a hundred more than anyone had expected and eleven more than had come to Ruth Bellamy's.
She counted. She stood at the back of the sanctuary in a charcoal dress she had bought for the occasion at the Walmart on Route 9, in the last pew, against the wall, with her hands folded, like a woman waiting to be called. Nobody looked at her. That was the astonishing part. She had thought they would. She had thought that the whole congregation of Calloway, Georgia, which had read the newspaper and held the opinions, would turn their heads as one and know.
They did not. She was a girl in a grey dress at the back of a church. She was no one.
The casket was white oak, with brass handles. It was surrounded by sprays of lilies and carnations and a large wreath in the shape of a fish, made of yellow chrysanthemums. A photograph stood on an easel. Owen at twenty-two, in a Georgia Southern jersey, with his arm round a golden retriever, grinning.
He was a good boy, she heard a woman say, two pews ahead, to another woman, in the low harsh whisper of the bereaved. He had his troubles. But he was good to his daddy.
Bud Maddox sat in the front row, in a black suit that hung on him like a coat on a hook. He was seventy. He had had his bypass. He did not weep. He held a folded handkerchief in his lap and looked at the casket with an expression of such blank, flat, uncomprehending grief that she felt it as a physical thing, as a pressure against the breastbone.
He's somebody's father, she thought.
She had known it. She had known it, in the abstract, the way you know the earth is round. But she had not expected to be looked at by it. She stood with her eyes on the back of the old man's neck, and the sunburned creases there, and the places where the barber's clippers had missed, and she thought: I did that to him.
No. I did that to Owen. This is what it did to him.
Is there a difference?
She did not know. She had thought she would have an answer. She had thought that after, there would be a reckoning, a clean line down the middle of the page. What he did, on the left. What I did, on the right. And a number at the bottom.
There was no number. There was only a back of an old man's neck.
She had been sleeping for two hours a night.
It was the second thing she noticed. The first was the appetite, which had left her on the Sunday, so completely that she had had to remind herself to buy bread. She had lost seven pounds in a week. She had begun to see, in the bathroom mirror, a face with hollows under the cheekbones, and eyes that looked larger than they should, and a set to the mouth that she could not identify.
It was a listening face.
She recognized it, with an odd start, as her mother's. It was the look Ruth had worn the last year, at the kitchen table, over the notebook. It was the face of a woman who has heard something in the next room and is waiting for it to be said again.
She went to work. She took calls. She said the fourteen sentences. She was, according to Troy, performing at a record level, and had been nominated for something called the Spirit Award.
"What's your secret?" he said again.
"I don't have one."
"You seem, I don't know. Different. Calmer. Like someone took a weight off."
"Do I?"
"Yeah." He looked pleased. "I'm glad. You've been through a lot."
"Thank you, Troy."
She smiled at him. It was a wonderful smile. She had practised it, in the mirror, for three days, and it was warm and slightly tired and entirely real, and it frightened her more than anything she had yet done.
I can do this, she thought. I can do this forever.
He found her at the reception.
It was in the fellowship hall of the church, a long low room with linoleum floors and folding tables covered in white paper. There was a ham, and potato salad, and a casserole made with canned soup. There was a tall metal urn of coffee. People stood in groups, with plates, talking in low tones. It was noon. It was ninety degrees outside, and the air-conditioning rattled.
She had told herself she would go in, and take a cup, and leave. It was a thing you did. She had come to pay her respects, and it would look odd if she didn't. She had not, however, counted on the fact that the cup of coffee she held was trembling very slightly, or that a man in a tan uniform would be standing, with a paper plate, six feet away.
"Ms. Bellamy."
She turned.
Dale Sutter was wearing his dress uniform, with a black band across the badge. He was thirty-four now, a little heavier than he had been, with the beginnings of a crease between the brows. A lieutenant's bars sat on his collar. He had a plate of ham and a plastic fork. He was smiling, a polite, regretful, tender smile. He looked like a man who has been asked to say a few words at a wedding and has decided to keep it short.
"Lieutenant Sutter," she said.
"I didn't know you'd be here."
"I didn't know you would."
"Well." He glanced round the room. "He was a friend. We grew up together. It's, I'm sorry. I know he wasn't, that you and he didn't, but he was a friend of mine."
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"I appreciate that." He cut a piece of ham with the side of his fork. He did it neatly. "Funny thing, a lake. I've been thinking about it all week."
"Have you?"
"It's such a thing. A man's out fishing. It's a nice night. He's got his beer, he's got his chair, he's done it a hundred times. And he steps wrong." He lifted the fork. "That's all it takes."
"Yes."
"And I thought, you know, it's a strange sort of thing to happen to a man like Owen. Because he grew up on that lake. He could swim like a fish. We used to dare each other off the diving platform at the club." He looked at her mildly. "He never so much as got his feet wet in his life without making a fuss."
"People drink."
"They do." He smiled. "He did, I'll grant. But he was a very careful drunk. Always had been. He would always, if he'd had a few, he'd be sitting on the dock with one boot braced, like this." He demonstrated, with his foot. "Held his rod in his left. Beer in his right. I don't know that I ever saw him fall."
She said nothing.
"Of course, it happens." He chewed. "Accidents. You can't predict them. I suppose you'd know about that better than most."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing." His smile did not change. "I only mean, you've had your share of bad luck. In this county. I'd hate to think of anything more happening to a young lady in your position. You've got no mother. A brother in another county. It's lonely."
"I manage."
"I'm sure you do." He set down his plate. He took out a clean white handkerchief and wiped his fingers. He did it slowly, finger by finger, like a man who has never in his life been in a hurry. "Nate Feldman. He's still your lawyer?"
"Yes."
"Fine man. Good lawyer. Lot of energy." He folded the handkerchief. "I understand the civil suit's proceeding."
"It is."
"I hope it goes well for you." He said it with great sincerity. "I'd hate to see you waste your time. But I'd hate even more to see you waste it. If you follow me."
"I don't."
"No?" He put the handkerchief in his pocket. "That's all right. I'm only making conversation." He leaned a little closer. She smelled mint and starch and something sharper underneath, a clean, antiseptic, institutional smell, like a school corridor. "It's a funny thing, Ms. Bellamy. I've been a police officer for thirteen years. And in all that time, I've found that the best thing a person can do in a small town is to leave other people's business alone. It's a simple rule. It keeps everybody safe."
"Is that a threat?"
"Ma'am." He looked genuinely hurt. "I'm a sworn officer."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got." He lifted a hand, in a kind of benediction. "Take care of yourself. I mean that. I'd hate for anything to happen."
He walked away.
She stood still. Her coffee had slopped over the rim of the cup and was running down her wrist, scalding, and she did not feel it. She watched him cross the room, a tall, neat, courteous figure in tan, shaking hands, pausing to pat an old woman's shoulder, bending to speak to a small child in a clip-on tie.
At the far end of the hall, by the door, stood a man in a grey suit that was too tight in the shoulders.
He had been watching.
She knew him at once. He was thinner. He had a sallow, pinched, sleepless look, and his eyes were wide and pale and fixed. He was looking at her across the whole length of the fellowship hall with the expression of a man who has seen something move in the dark.
Terrence Boyle.
She held his gaze. She did not know why. She stood in the middle of a crowd of mourners, with her wet wrist and her paper cup, and looked at him, and he looked back.
He knows.
It was not a guess. It was something that moved between them, across forty feet of linoleum, as clear as a sound. She saw him swallow. She saw his throat jump. She saw his hand go up to his mouth, in that small boy's gesture she remembered from the church, and stay there, with the fingers pressed to his lips, as if to hold something in.
He did not say a word. He did not need to.
He turned, very slowly, and walked out of the room.
That night, Dale Sutter sat in his truck outside the home of Terrence Boyle, with the engine off, and waited for the porch light to go out.
It was nearly eleven. It was a small brick ranch on Pecan Street. A television flickered in the front window. A figure moved, once, behind the curtain, and was gone.
He had not come to do anything. He told himself that. He had come to check. He was a careful man. He had the habit of checking. It was a habit that had made his career, and, in a smaller way, kept him alive. He sat with a thermos of coffee and a bag of sunflower seeds and the window cracked, and watched the house.
At eleven-fifteen, the porch light went out. At eleven-twenty, the front door opened. A man in sweatpants and a t-shirt came out and stood on the steps. He was holding a cigarette. He did not smoke. Dale had known him since high school and had never seen him with one.
He lit it. His hands shook.
Dale got out of the truck.
He crossed the lawn, a small neat figure in a leather jacket, soft-footed, and stopped at the foot of the steps. Terrence Boyle looked up, and the cigarette dropped out of his mouth.
"Jesus Christ," he said.
"Evening, Tee."
"What are you, it's, you scared the, what are you doing here?"
"Checking on a friend."
"I'm fine."
"Are you?" Dale climbed the first step. "You didn't look it, at the church."
"I was upset. It was a funeral."
"You were upset," said Dale Sutter, "because you think somebody killed him."
The night was very quiet. Somewhere down the street a dog barked and stopped.
"It's not what I think," said Terrence Boyle. He was stammering. The words came out in short, hard, broken bursts. "I, it's not, I just, it's just a, it's a coincidence, is all. It's, he was the first. He was the first one, and now, and I, I keep thinking. I keep thinking about the. About her. She was at the, at the, she was at the church. In May, two years ago. She saw me. And I said, I mouthed, I, and she was looking at me, and today, today she was at the funeral. She was, she looked, Dale, she looked at me like, like she knew."
"Knew what?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know."
"I don't know," said Tee, and began to cry.
It was an ugly sight. His round face crumpled, and the tears ran down, and his shoulders heaved, and he put both hands over his mouth and made a sound like a person being sick. Dale stood on the step, a head taller, and watched him with a calm, patient, almost clinical interest.
"Tee," he said, after a while. "Look at me."
"I can't."
"Look at me."
He did. His eyes were red-rimmed and swimming.
"Owen fell off a dock," said Dale. "He was drunk. He's been falling off things since he was fourteen. It's a sad thing. It's a terrible thing. But it's an accident, and I've closed the file."
"You've closed it?"
"As of this afternoon."
"But the phone, Owen's phone, it wasn't, they didn't find—"
"It's in the lake."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." He gave a short, soft, reassuring smile. "Tee. Look. You've been upset for four years. I understand that. It's been hard. You're a decent guy. Nobody's blaming you for being, for feeling things. But there's a thing you've got to do, now. You've got to stop. Stop thinking about it. Stop looking at people. Stop talking to your mother."
"I haven't—"
"She called me, last week. She was worried. She said you weren't sleeping."
"She called you?"
"She's a good woman. She wants to help." Dale's voice was very gentle. "I told her you'd be fine. I told her I'd look in on you. And I will. That's what friends do."
There was a long silence.
"It wasn't an accident," said Terrence Boyle, very softly.
"What?"
"You think I'm stupid. I'm not. I know what you, what you do. I remember. I remember what you did to the phones. I remember how you took the, you told us to, and Caleb, what about Caleb? You said you'd, you promised you'd find him. You said he'd, he was the one who, who called, wasn't he? And you said he had a, that he had something, and you'd take care of it. And you did. He left. Everybody just, he went away. What did you do to him, Dale?"
Dale Sutter did not move.
He stood quite still, one foot on the step, one hand on the rail. His face did not change. It was pleasant and attentive and open. But something went out of it, very slowly, the way the colour goes from a sky at dusk, and in its place came something flat and level and utterly without feeling.
"Caleb's in Savannah," he said.
"Is he?"
"He tends bar. He's fine. I've seen him."
"You've seen him?"
"Twice."
"Why?"
"Because I like to keep track of my friends." He took his hand off the rail. "Go to bed, Tee. You're tired. Take a pill. Call your mother. And if anybody comes to see you, anybody at all, a reporter, a lawyer, a girl in a grey dress, you call me. Do you understand? You don't talk. You call."
"Dale—"
"Do you understand?"
A long pause.
"Yes," said Terrence Boyle.
"Good boy."
He went down the steps. He crossed the lawn. At the truck, he turned back. The porch was empty. The front door was closed. In the front window, between the curtains, a pale round face was watching him, and when it saw him look, it withdrew.
He got in. He sat for a minute. He took out his phone. He scrolled, slowly, to a number he had not dialled in three years, and held his thumb over it.
Savannah.
He did not press it. Not yet. He put the phone away. He started the truck.
On the dashboard, in the green glow of the instruments, a small plastic Saint Christopher, glued there by his wife, trembled in the idling of the engine.
She noticed the grey sedan on the Friday.
It was a Chevrolet, an older model, the colour of dishwater, with a dent in the rear bumper. It was parked on Dellwood Street, two doors down from her house, under the big water oak. It had been there when she left for work. It was there when she returned. It was not a car she knew.
She said nothing. She put her groceries on the counter. She put away the bread. She stood in the kitchen, in the late sun, with a can of soup in her hand, and counted. She counted the tiles on the floor. There were sixty-four. She counted the knobs on the stove. She counted the seconds until a man got out of the car.
Nobody did.
At nine-thirty, she turned off the kitchen light. She went to the front window, in the dark, and stood to one side of the curtain, as she had once seen a woman do in a film. She looked out.
The sedan was still there. In the dim light she could see the shape of a man in the driver's seat, still, with his arms folded. On the dashboard glowed a single small point of red.
It was the tip of a cigarette.
Oh, she thought.
It was quite calm. It was the calm she had noticed on the dock. She stood there, in the dark, with her hand on the curtain, and she felt something move in her, small and cold and precise, like a clock being wound.
They know.
Dale knows.
Or he doesn't, but he thinks. And that's the same.
She had known it would come. She had known it at the funeral, in the smell of his cologne. And now that it was here, now that there was a man in a car with a cigarette outside her window, what she felt was not fear.
It was something very much like interest.
She thought of the notebook, in its place under her mattress. She thought of the column headed DALE. She thought of a lieutenant's bars, and a clean white handkerchief, and a small boy in a sailor suit with a cowlick, who had not asked for any of it.
He wants me to be afraid, she thought.
She let the curtain fall. She went upstairs, in the dark, and lay down on the bed with her clothes on and her hands folded on her chest, like a woman on a tomb. Outside, the streetlight shone its steady white glare on the road. She watched the ceiling.
One, she counted. Two.
It was going to be a very long year.
She did not sleep. But toward morning, in the grey time before the birds, she realized with a faint sense of surprise that she was no longer counting the seconds.
She was counting the names.
Four, she thought. Four.
She did not say who the fifth was. She had not yet decided to understand it. But she lay in the half-light with her eyes open, and a name lay on her tongue like a stone, and she did not spit it out.
Caleb.
Where are you?