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Emily likes that word.
3
Holly mounts the Harris porch and rings the bell. The door is opened by a tall slim man wearing dad jeans, mocs, and a polo shirt with the Bell College logo on the breast. His eyes are bright and intelligent, but beginning to sink in their sockets. His hair is white, but far from the luxuriant growth Hugh Clippard sports; pink scalp peeks through the comb-strokes. There’s the ghost of a bruise on one cheek.
“Ms. Gibney,” he says. “Come into the living room. And you can take off the mask. There’s no Clover here. Assuming there is such a thing, which I doubt.”
“Have you been vaccinated?”
He frowns at her. “My wife and I observe healthy protocols.”
That’s answer enough for Holly; she says she’ll be more comfortable with her mask on. She wishes she’d worn a pair of her disposable gloves as well, but doesn’t want to take them out of her pockets now. Harris is obviously cocked and locked on the subject of Covid. She doesn’t want to set him off.
“As you wish.”
Holly follows him down the hall into a big wood-paneled room lit by electric sconces. The drapes are pulled to keep out the strong late-afternoon sun. Central air conditioning whispers. Somewhere light classical music is playing very quietly.
“I’m going to be a bad host and not ask you to sit,” Harris says. “I’m writing a lengthy response to a rather stupid and badly researched article in The Quarterly Journal of Nutrition, and I don’t want to lose the thread of my argument. Also, my wife is suffering one of her migraines, so I’d ask you to keep your voice low.”
“I’m sorry,” says Holly, who rarely raises her voice even when she’s angry.
“Besides, my hearing is excellent.”
That much is true, Em thinks. She’s in the spare bedroom, watching them on her laptop. A teacup-sized camera is hidden behind knickknacks on the mantel. Emily’s most immediate concern is that Rodney will give something away. He’s still sharp most of the time, but as the day grows late, he has a tendency to misspeak and grow forgetful. She knows this is common in those who are suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s or dementia—the syndrome is called sundowning—but she refuses to believe that can be true of the man she loves. Still, a seed of doubt has been planted. God forbid it should grow.
Holly tells Harris the car-theft story, which she has refined on the way over—like the little girl in the Saki story, romance at short notice is her specialty. She should have used the story with Clippard and Welch, but it came to her too late. She certainly plans to use it when she talks to Ernie Coggins, who interests her the most: still bowling and still married. The wife probably not suffering from sciatica, but it’s possible, it’s possible.
4
Barbara goes down to their father’s old office. Jerome’s computer is now on the desk, with papers piled on both sides of it. She assumes the thick stack on the right is the manuscript of his book. She sits down and thumbs through it to the last page: 359. Jerome wrote all of this, she marvels, and thinks of her own book of poems, which will run to perhaps a hundred and ten pages, mostly white space… assuming it’s published at all. Olivia assures her it will be, but Barbara still finds it hard to believe. Poems not about “the Black experience,” but about coping with horror. Although sometimes there may not be that much difference, she thinks, and gives a short laugh.
The orange flash drive is where Jerome said it would be. She turns on the computer, types in Jerome’s password (#shizzle#), and waits for it to boot up. The wallpaper is a picture of Jerome and Barbara kneeling on either side of their dog Odell, who has now gone to wherever good dogs go.
She plugs in the drive. There are drafts of his book numbered 1, 2, and 3. There’s correspondence. And a file labeled PIX. Barbara opens it and looks at a few photos of their notorious great-grandfather, always dressed to the nines and always wearing a derby hat slightly cocked to the right. Signifying, she thinks. There are also photos of an all-Black nightclub where dressed-to-the-nines patrons are jitterbugging (or maybe Lindy Hopping) while the band is knocking it out. She finds the one of the Biograph Theater, and then one of John Dillinger himself, lying on a mortuary slab. Oough, as Holly would say. Barbara closes the PIX file, drags it to an email addressed to her brother, and sends it off with a whoosh.
To the left of the computer is a litter of notes, the one on top reading Call Mara abt promo. The ones directly underneath appear to be about Chicago, Indianapolis, and Detroit in the thirties, each with many references to books about those places during Prohibition and the Depression. Hope you’re not overdoing it, J, Barbara thinks.
Beneath the notes is a MapQuest printout of Deerfield Park and the surrounding area. Curious, Barbara picks it up. It has nothing to do with Jerome’s book and everything to do with Holly’s current case. There are three red dots with Jerome’s neat printing below each of them.
Bonnie D, July 1 2021 is on the east side of the park, across from the overgrown few acres known as the Thickets.
The dot for Ellen C, November 2018 is on the Bell College campus, placed directly on top of the Memorial Union, home of the Belfry. Barbara and some of her friends sometimes go there for burgers after using the Reynolds Library. As high school students they don’t have check-out privileges, but the reference room is good, and the computer room is awesome.
The last red dot is for Peter S, Late November 2018. Barbara also knows this location: it’s the Dairy Whip, considered déclassé by high school students, but a favorite hangout of the younger fry.
One of them could have been me, she thinks. There but for the grace of God.
Her chore in here is done. She shuts down the computer and gets up to leave. Then she sits down again and picks up the MapQuest printout. There’s a coffee mug filled with pens on the desk. She takes the red one Jerome must have used to mark the map. She makes another dot on Ridge Road, across from Olivia Kingsbury’s house. Because that’s where she saw him the night she was thinking about the poem she says was her last good one.
Beneath the dot she prints: Jorge Castro, October 2012. Even as she does it, she feels she’s being silly.
Probably Castro just said “Fuck this stupid English Department” and left. Also “Fuck Emily Harris and her unsuccessfully disguised homophobia, too.”
But with Castro added to Jerome’s map, she sees something interesting and a tiny bit disturbing. The dots almost seem to circle the park. It’s true that Bonnie’s came a bit sooner than the others, summer instead of fall, but didn’t Barbara see somewhere—maybe on that Netflix show Mindhunter—that homicidal maniacs have a tendency to wait a shorter and shorter time between their kills? Like drug addicts shooting up at ever more frequent intervals?
Ellen C and Peter S don’t fit the pattern; they came close together. Maybe because the killer didn’t get whatever he wanted from one of them? Because he or she didn’t fully turn on the killer’s bloodlight?
You’re giving yourself the creeps, Barbara thinks. Seeing monsters—like Chet Ondowsky—where there’s really nothing but shadows.
