Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(70)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

“But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

“For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, with the night-tide, I’ll lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.”

This recitation was followed by several seconds of silence, then the beep that ended the recording. Then Nathan said, “Did you hear it okay?”

“He was reciting a poem, right?”

“Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee.’ It’s the last poem Poe ever composed.”

“I got the Annabel Lee part,” DeMarco said, “but why would he do that? Why would Thomas call you just to recite a poem?”

“I’m trying to figure that out myself. I think there’s a message in it.”

DeMarco pushed himself to his feet. He stared at the hazy moon. “Go on,” he said.

“We can assume, I think, that Annabel Lee refers to his wife, Claire.”

“I thought you said that the dancer from the club was part of his Annabel?”

“Well, yes, for the novel he was writing. But if you listen to the other lines of description, Claire is a better fit here. I mean they married young and she died too young. So that seems obvious. And they both grew up in the area, not by a sea but by Lake Erie, which, from certain rocky points, can look as vast as a sea. So that makes the first stanza fairly straightforward and autobiographical from Thomas’s point of view.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that. Keep going.”

“Of course, all of the poem can’t be autobiographical because Tom didn’t write it. But there are some lines that especially apply. The lines about the angels killing her because she was so beautiful—I don’t know if he meant those to apply or not. I mean Claire is gone, obviously, and I’m sure he’s grieving her. Maybe it’s no more than that, that he’s using the poem to express his own grief. But here’s the part that’s giving me chills, it’s four lines from the bottom. On the tape, Tom’s voice slows down and he’s sobbing. I mean, he sounds like he’s choking on his grief… And he says, ‘And so, with the night-tide, I’ll lie down by the side of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride…”

“And that means something to you, Nathan?”

“It’s not the way Poe wrote it. Not exactly the same words.”

“How is it different?”

“Poe wrote, ‘And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling,’ and so forth.”

“And Thomas’s version again?”

“‘And so, with the night-tide, I’ll lie down by the side of my darling.’”

For a few moments DeMarco considered the implications. “What are the chances that he just got it wrong? That he remembered it wrong?”

Nathan said, “Not a chance. I’ve heard him recite it in class. He knows dozens of Poe’s poems by heart. ‘The Raven,’ ‘Lenore,’ ‘The Lake,’ ‘To Annie’…dozens of them. Sometimes I think he fucking channels Poe.”

DeMarco said nothing. Slowly, his head turned from east to west, his gaze scanning the empty sky. On the far horizon the fallen sun had left a wide, irregular band of color, a graduated blending of rose, scarlet, and deep plum muted behind a haze of cloud. It reminded him of blood soaking through a bandage.

“Sergeant?” Nathan said. “Do you think it means what I think it means?”

DeMarco told him, “I’m afraid it might.”

The young man began to sob. “He called to tell me he’s going to kill himself. Tonight. That’s why he called me, isn’t it?”

“There were no other messages?” DeMarco asked. “Did I hear everything?”

“Just the poem, nothing else. Not even good-bye. Christ, can’t you guys do something to trace it? Plug into my phone records or something and find out where the call came from?”

“We’ll try, of course, but…I’m just not sure what good it will do. He’s not carrying his cell phone—we found that at the house—so he’s probably long gone from wherever he made the call.”

The sobbing became more desperate. “So it’s too late to stop him, isn’t it? Because I wasn’t here. If I had been here a couple of hours ago—”

“Listen, he reached out. That’s important. Maybe he’ll do it again. So you just sit by your phone, okay? Can you do that for me?”

“Of course I will.”

“Okay, I’m going to get to work on this. But you call me the instant you hear a word from him. The instant. You understand?”

“I will. I swear to God I will.”





Forty-Eight


DeMarco hurried back inside his house, left his beer and olives on the back porch, grabbed his car keys, and headed for the front door. He had his car in sight when the officer on duty at the barracks answered his call. He gave the officer Nathan Briessen’s phone number and the time of Huston’s call. “The second you get the address, get back to me with it.”