The Clairvoyants(59)

Mary Rae wanted to share something with me. I’d heard her voice at the encampment: “Oh, don’t, Billy.” I’d seen her outside the apartment, as if waiting for me. Sitting in the dark, neither Del nor I talked about David Pinney, or about that summer. That time in our lives seemed to have been snipped out by a great pair of shears—leaving a blank space we had never bothered to fill in. Wasn’t that the problem, though? There remained a dark hole either of us could fall into. I felt myself there—teetering on the edge.

Del fell asleep on the couch, and I left her apartment. I could understand William’s anger but not the desperation in it. I pictured him trudging through the snow to campus, his foot bleeding into his boot. Upstairs, I entered the empty apartment. I felt my way toward the cedar closet in the dark, and I took the portfolio from its hiding spot and sat in the duck-carved chair. I flipped through the images again by candlelight. I reached the last one and discovered a pocket in the back of the cover and, hidden away, a sleeve of negatives. I got out my loupe and went through each image. Despite the quality of the flickering candlelight, I could see they were of Mary Rae. Her hair covered one of her breasts, her mouth was pursed in sleep—a pouf of pretty lips.

Mary Rae’s death had yet to be deemed a murder. Her face came on the evening news, in the daily newspaper—the dimpled cheek, the soft hair—and now I pictured her with William, the two of them drinking wine at Anne’s, side by side on the velvet couch. I imagined her asleep in a room, and William’s camera whirring and clicking, or in the back of Geoff’s car. I’d hidden the necklace in a small plastic bag taped to the back of the bureau. I didn’t know where else to put it where it wouldn’t be found, though I hadn’t been sure who I was hiding it from. Was I more sure now?

Before I hid the portfolio away, I paged through it again. Each girl was lovely in her own way, unique—bare breasts, arms thrown over heads, sheets threaded between legs. There was a sense of the abandon that sleep provided, a stillness so like death. How had William managed to capture them that way? Spagna had used a time-release camera placed in the room. But these were from differing angles, as if he’d been beside them while they slept and chosen each shot. What had prompted him to take each one? The slant of light? Maybe something in the aspect of each woman’s face: the way her lips parted, the veins on her eyelids, the luminosity of her skin. Who was she, sleeping, but whatever he determined? He’d come into my apartment while I slept. Were we all someone he wished would awaken to love him?





25




I sat by the window most of the night keeping watch with my candle, frightened by the images of Mary Rae in the back of the portfolio. Had William hidden them when she went missing to avoid being implicated? I kept trying his cell, and at first the calls went to voice mail, but the thought of leaving an apology, my recorded voice saying those words, irked me. Eventually, the calls stopped going through at all, and I guessed the cell was dead. I had no idea where he might go in the middle of the night—if he had colleagues he socialized with, if he might find a business open. He’d invited people to a party he’d given the night I first met him; he had to know someone in town.

Yet, the only people I’d seen him with were in Milton. He must have stayed in his office. Surely he wasn’t out in the night, just walking in the snow. I fell asleep in the duck-carved chair and dreamed of William’s body covered in ice like the homeless people you saw occasionally on television, like the vision I’d had of Mary Rae in the Silver Streak. I wasn’t sure whether I was keeping watch out of fury or fear. I couldn’t assess my feelings for him. I was holding my watch for Mary Rae—determined to find out the truth.

I was awakened by a scream—one I quickly identified as Del’s. It came up the stairwell, and Geoff threw open his door. The power was still out, but weak daylight came in through the window and I could see my breath. I rushed to the door. Del was down in the foyer crying over and over, “Oh my God!”

Geoff stood with Suzie at the top of the stairs. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said.

He looked toward my door, where a trail of blood began, and then down the stairs, where it continued—large, vivid smears on every step. Del rushed up the stairs, avoiding the stains. “I thought something terrible had happened to you,” she said.

“Call the crime scene detectives,” Geoff said. He was half asleep, his hair sticking up at the top of his head.

The blood, in the daylight through the transom, was terrible. I found the trail of it in my apartment, all of it smeared over by my own footprints the night before. I’d tracked some into Del’s apartment, too. Blood covered the bottoms of my feet.

“William cut his foot,” I said. “I’ll clean it up.”

“Well, is he OK?” Del said, wiping her eyes with her shaking hand.

“He’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened. I went into my apartment. I got a bowl and filled it with water and dish soap. Del stood in the doorway as if afraid to come inside.

“Where is he?” she said.

I carried the bowl out to the landing and began to wipe up the blood. Geoff went back into his apartment and I could sense Suzie behind the shut door, sniffing at the crack. My head felt heavy—I had barely slept.

“I don’t know,” I said.