Fault Line (Em Hansen Mysteries) Page 27

  “He’s that scared.”

  “Scared?”

  “Yeah, without you, how’s he supposed to deal with that family of his?”

  “No. No, you’re not going to lay that on me. I am not Ray’s savior. I was not put on this earth to—”

  “Seems like you’ve been doing a damned good job of it, though. He asks you to marry him the first time, and what do you do? You move here, set yourself up in an apartment, dodge his family when you can, take any number of knocks from them when you can’t, and keep on bouncing back for more like one of those inflatable clowns with sand in the bottom. Then he gets to say to his mother, ‘An heir? You want an heir? Hey, I got me a girlfriend right here, and just soon’s she’s ready, we’s gonna cook y’all any number of heirs.’”

  “That’s crazy,” I said, but even as I said it, I saw that she was right. I was the impossible girlfriend. He could laugh with Jenna, whoop it up, have a fine old time, and risk nothing. I was the holdout, his safety gasket. By committing himself to me, he committed himself to nothing. “Perhaps he’d had too much put on him too early. I mean, his dad died when he was still a teenager, and wham, he was the man of the family. Then he marries Lisa when he’s nineteen. And, well, I always had the impression he liked her and everything, but that she was more like a pal. It was Ava who told them to get married.”

  “Now you’re making excuses for him,” Faye said.

  I didn’t reply. I was too busy trying to remember the new land I had glimpsed, the one where no blood left a trail through the snow.

  “Come on, Em, time to cut the cord.”

  Just then, we heard a car pull into the driveway. Faye stiffened. It was Tom.

  I looked at her. “And what about you? What’s really keeping you from marrying Tom?”

  Faye’s face went blank. Her mouth opened. Numbly, she said, “The minute I marry, my trust fund ends.”

  “Matures?”

  “No, ends. Kaput. End of cash flow. No more poor little rich girl.”

  “But Tom has money! And you could get a real job.”

  Faye’s eyes were wide with fear. “I—I—it’s not as simple as you think! I—it’s always been there. My grandfather set it up. Sexist bastard. The idea is I’m supposed marry rich. Someone like ‘us.’ Discourage gold diggers. It’s like a curse … glue … but I can’t let go.”

  “You could just live together!”

  Faye began to claw at her face. “No! Not Tom! Haven’t you noticed? He won’t take a key to the house. He doesn’t even keep a toothbrush here! He won’t even put his fucking car into my garage, Em!”

  I considered pointing out that he had put his fucking something into her something else, but figured that it wasn’t the moment to help Faye get down on Tom. She was clearly terrified, and needed just the right kind of snap to send her flying beyond the gulf of fear that separated her from her lover.

  We heard the sound of the doorbell, then footsteps as Jack crossed to the front door from the kitchen and opened it.

  I said, “What does the money represent, Faye?”

  “What do you mean?” she whimpered.

  “It’s not granddaddy that you’re having trouble letting go of. Is it the security, or do you have that money confused with who you are?”

  “I’m scared, Em! I don’t want to go home, but neither can I throw away the key.”

  I suddenly saw a Faye I had never met before. A little girl Faye, a ghost Faye, an angry little girl playing with the dolls at her grandparents’ estate. She looked out at me through my friend’s eyes and said, This is the only place I’m happy, and I will not leave!

  In that moment, I came to know the splintering of the soul that can happen when a family constrains a child from finding her true self. Faye couldn’t let go of that trust because her family had buried her in it; a precious part of her had gotten caught in its amber. She had confused it with their love.

  Speaking gently to that child, I said, “Perhaps if you give up this thing you can’t live without, you’ll find that it’s precisely what’s been keeping you from getting what you truly need.”

  Faye’s face crumpled into tears. “Maybe you should listen to yourself”

  Tom appeared in the doorway, still wearing his heavy winter coat. He had an odd kind of smile on his face—shy, hopeful, a little bit mischievous. He looked only at Faye. “Hi, love,” he said softly. “How you feeling?”

  “Good enough,” she replied, quickly pulling herself as much together as she could get.

  “Go for a walk?” he inquired.

  Faye looked at me, then back at Tom. She raised her shoulders slightly and dropped them. In a tiny voice, she said, “Okay.”

  He put a gloved hand on her elbow and led her down the hallway to the door. Faye put on her ski parka, gloves, and a fuzzy hat. As the two were heading out the door, Tom asked, without even turning around to look at me, “Em, how far do I have to go to get past that debris flow?”

  “Go uphill about a hundred yards, then contour across the slope until you run out of big rocks,” I said. “It’s a conical thing, feeding out of that chute straight uphill from the house. But don’t worry, it’s not likely to move today. Ground’s frozen. You’re safe unless we get a big quake while you’re up there.”

  Tom paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I don’t want to take any chances,” he said simply, pulled the door shut, and left.

  I GOT MYSELF a beer and joined Jack by the picture window at the breakfast table, where we had a ringside view of Faye and Tom’s progress up the hill. The snow had stopped falling for the moment, but the sky had gone cold and gray, and the whiteness that coated the ground had lost its brilliance.

  My two cerebral friends followed the path up through the boulder train for a short distance, then cut northward. Holding hands. Walking slowly, meditatively. They began to converse. Now and then, one of them would pause, head bowed, and think for a moment, then say something to the other, who would by then have stopped to wait and watch. Finally, long after they were free of the rocks that delineated the tumble of earth that waited precariously above Faye’s house, Tom went down on one knee in the snow, held his hands up toward Faye in supplication, and asked her a question.

  Faye raised both hands to her face and placed the palms together, her thumbs touching her mouth and nose. Without breaking their union, she drew her hands down to her breast, pressing them into the yogic mudra that honors the heart. She was smiling, her face shining brightly enough to make the earth glisten on a moonless night.

  29

  JACK AND I DRAINED OUR BEERS AND VAMOOSED. IT SEEMED a good time to be somewhere else, to be giving Tom and Faye a little privacy.

  We went back to my place first, but we didn’t stay. I was halfway up the stairs, thumping along on my crutches, when Mrs. Pierce barreled out of her downstairs apartment and addressed my back.

  “Consider this notice of your eviction,” she said. “I don’t allow my girls to have men up in their rooms.”

  I thought of informing Mrs. Pierce that I wasn’t one of her “girls,” but I bit my tongue. And I thought of telling her that Jack was actually a cross-dressing roller derby queen, then thought better of that, too. I even considered asking Jack to flash his badge and recite something from the local renter’s laws. 1 tossed that idea, as well. Who cared what the law said? If Mrs. Pierce didn’t want me—not just the me who left trails of longing in the snow but the larger, more complete me—in her house, then I didn’t want to be in it, either. “I’ll be out as soon’s I can. find another roost,” I answered evenly.

  Jack gave his own interpretation of the law by picking me up in his great strong arms and carrying me the rest of the way up the stairs and across the threshold into my apartment, cackling like a madman.

  Riding in his arms felt good. It felt joyous. I laughed with all my body as he set me down on my bed and kissed me on the forehead. I arched my back on the pillows and said, “Thank you, most kind and noble sir.”

/>   “Want me to bring the law down on her?” he inquired.

  “Nah. I think I just outgrew this place anyway.”

  I was still laughing when I looked at my answering machine. I said, “Oh, look: We got us a telly-phone message.” Thinking nothing could daunt me just then, I punched the play button.

  The message was from Katie. Her voice sounded exuberant. “Ray told Mama, and Mama told me the happy news!” she had chirped into the mechanical ear. “Well, I think this is a cause for celebration. There’s a funeral tomorrow, as I’m sure you know, so we’re tied up until late afternoon, but let’s get you up here for dinner. Now, don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll arrange all the food, and all you have to do is get yourself dressed. Ray will pick you up. Say six o’clock. Great! Give me a call, okay?”

  You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather. I grabbed up the phone and dialed Ava’s number. Katie answered. “Katie,” I said, shaking with rage. “It’s Em. Just what the fuck do you have up your sleeve?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she cooed. “Just welcoming you into the family, dear.”

  I could get no sounds through my windpipe for several seconds. Finally, I spluttered, “Well! I take it you haven’t heard from Ray yet about Enos!”

  Katie let out a smug snort. “Oh, that. Em, dear, you have to understand, a wife can be open-minded about her husband’s interests in other women.”

  “Interests?” I squealed. “Interests?”

  “Really, Em. Ray told me that you tried to tell him that Enos had been unfaithful to me. Of course that’s not true, but so what? Even if he was you don’t think that would matter, do you?” With each word, her voice heated a degree. Alternate meanings seemed to slither through her words like poisonous snakes.

  “Is Ray there?” I asked, my throat constricting.

  “No. He has gone to work. He works.”

  And I lie around and take up space, I thought, anger once again edging ahead of fear. “Listen, Katie, I—thank you for your invitation, but I won’t be available.” I was descending quickly to her game of using one statement to make another. Then suddenly, what she had been saying hit me; Ray had not announced that Enos was a murderer; he had told his family that the man had been committing adultery! Ray had misunderstood everything I’d told him. I rewound the tape of memory and replayed it, this time hearing all the double entendres.

  I dropped the phone into its cradle without bothering to say good-bye. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and stared straight at Jack in horror.

  Jack studied me with intense interest. “What?”

  “I’m rethinking the conversation I had with Ray in the car. I—I asked him to deal with his brother-in-law. He said he would. And I … and he … I suppose I never once said murder … you know, being polite … but I thought he understood.”

  Jack arched one eyebrow. “Did you mention both women?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Ray went home and accused Enos of adultery.”

  “Yes. Or … that’s what Katie just spat back at me.”

  “Then that means that Enos isn’t our killer,” he said simply. “Either that or your boy Ray’s in some weird, weird space.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Ray’s a cop, Em. He thinks his brother-in-law is guilty, but not of murder, and murder has certainly occurred. You can’t name murdered people around a cop and have him think adultery unless he knows your suspect is innocent. And that means that Enos has an alibi. Or worse, maybe your pal Ray is playing some kind of mind game on us all. Are you sure he didn’t kill those women?”

  “Maybe he’s in denial.” I suggested, knowing as I said it that I was being absurdly hopeful.

  Jack said, “If he’s that far from reality, I guess it’s a good thing I helped you get that ring off.”

  I began integrating this new piece of the puzzle. “But Ava got all jumpy around me when I mentioned earthquakes and Dr. Smeeth and Enos, and she wouldn’t talk to me this morning. She knows something.”

  “She has a huge share of that company, Em. You think she doesn’t know what’s going on there? Come on, she’s no room-temperature IQ.”

  My stomach sank through my socks. “I don’t like this, Jack. This means we can’t rely on Ray to be a good cop and lock Enos up.”

  “You still think it’s him?”

  “Yes. The tidiness with which they were each killed. Those killings were engineered. And each was about to expose him.” I stared at the floor. “I know how to make sure if it isn’t him.”

  Jack shook his head. “You can’t take any chances, Em.”

  I began to tremble with fear and rage. “Chances? Somebody out there is killing women who know too much about the projects Enos Harkness works on, and I’m the next logical target.”

  Jack put an arm around my shoulder. “Come on, Em, I’ll take you to my place. You can stay there until this clears up.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said. “But I can’t hide. If I’m the prey, I’ll draw the wolf wherever you put me.”

  Jack’s lips set into a straight line.

  I said, “I just realized something.”

  “Tell me.”

  “If I’m the bait, then we are in charge of the trap.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “The Ottmeier funeral is tomorrow. Everyone who is anyone in the Mormon community will be there, and that will include all the Raymonds; and unless I misunderstand the way business is done in this town, Hayes himself will also attend. We’ll have to get Jim Schecter to help us, and get the use of the clock tower at the City and County Building.”

  For the first time, Jack looked truly worried.

  30

  I saw waves coming up the street and the power lines. A child tried to outrun them on his bike, but the street threw him down. Then a wall hit me.

  —Jean Schnug, recalling the February 9, 1971, magnitude 6.5 earthquake in San Fernando, California

  AS HE WAITED IN LINE TO PASS THROUGH THE DOORS INTO the foyer in front of the sanctuary, Jim Schecter wished he had worn a hat. Saturday had dawned bright but windy, the very wind he feared might further load the weakened roof of the stadium, and the wind presaged another front with yet more snow.

  A harsh gust whistled around the entrance of the church, sticking its cold fingers into the faces of the gathering faithful who had come to offer condolences to the friends and family of little Tommy Ottmeier. The place was mobbed; Salt Lake City’s Mormon population was mourning as a community, as the integrated, faithful hive Brigham Young had envisioned, and Jim Schecter felt proud to be among them.

  He did not feel proud of the TV cameras and the reporters who had set up in siege along the sidewalk. They were unseemly. They were offensive. They were like vultures preying on the dead. Tommy had gone to be with Heavenly Father. It was a time of celebration for his departed soul, not an opportunity for mawkish voyeurism. His family, celebrants though they might be, must still live with the loss of his precious company.

  In unguarded moments Jim did wonder how Tommy’s parents must feel; they were, after all, negligent in having put such a heavy bookcase next to his bed, but then again, the earthquake might just as easily have occurred during the daytime, and the child could have been playing in the wrong place at the wrong time and have been killed all the same.

  The crowd inched forward. Jim passed now out of the wind and into the warm interior of the building. At least the wind might blow some of the snow off the roof of the stadium, he mused.

  He wrenched his mind from the thought of that roof. That’s what his doctor had taught him to do—not to dwell on things. Obsessive thoughts could bring on an attack, and that was to be avoided at all costs. It was okay to go to Tommy’s funeral, because that was a positive thing, a celebration, but he must not think about things like that roof.

  Or Pet Mercer.

  Until I get a chance to deliver my message, he reminded himself.

  Dear God, there’s Enos Harkn
ess, the structural engineer who specified the roof truss design that failed!

  Jim hurried into the sanctuary and sat down as quickly as he could, following the ushers. There, he began his breathing exercises, bringing the thudding in his chest back down to a trot. Ah. Okay, it was ebbing.

  The row filled in beside him, and then the one behind. He heard familiar voices threading in and out through the murmuring that rose and fell all around him as those gathered took their seats for the service. He heard a woman’s voice—Velma Williams, he was pretty sure—speaking to … he turned. It was Ava Raymond. I must deliver the message, he reminded himself. Follow my conscience. He glanced back nervously. It was good fortune that she’d been seated so close—by God’s will!—because that meant that the man he must address was there, too!

  “I hear it was shoddy workmanship,” Velma was saying.

  Ava did not answer. Her jaw was set in anger.

  “That bookcase was built in,” Velma continued, making a study of the way her words sawed at Ava. “It shouldn’t have fallen.”

  “The service is starting,” Ava replied harshly.

  Built in? Then it wasn’t the parents’ negligence! Jim reined in his galloping anxieties. I can wait until afterward to deliver the message, he decided. Have to. The service is starting. Then his eyes widened. At the far end of Ava’s row, moving in late past her string of beautiful daughters and grandchildren and her handsome son, Micah Hayes was just taking a seat.

  MICAH HAYES ARRANGED himself in the pew next to Ava Raymond, preparing to think about something else for the time it would take the congregation to dispatch their feeble grief. Then he would leave as quickly as possible.

  He looked around at the faces of the congregation, measuring their reaction to his presence. Something was wrong. He was an important, prominent man, and a visitor at this Stake. They should be looking honored that he would favor them by attending this funeral.