dentist’s numbing shot is presently going to wear off.
Starting to grow curious at last, she harkened to what the men were saying.
“. . . so cold, it could be hard to tell.”
“Yeah.”
One took her arm to lift it. It clung to her side, amazingly stiff, resisting his pull without the least effort on her part.
He said, “My own guess is two, three days since she died.”
FOUR
Clarissa was sitting in the breakfast room, the cup of coffee that Judy had insisted on pouring for her still untouched, when the sound of wheels on the drive announced the return of Andrew and Lenore from the Chicago morgue.
Judy jumped up and hurried on ahead, and was almost in the front hall before the old woman could start moving. By the time Clarissa reached the entry, Lenore was inside the house, winter coat still on, sobbing in her younger daughter’s arms as if they were her mother’s. Andrew came in much more slowly, forgetting at first to shut the outer door behind him. His cheeks were for once unshaven, displaying sandy stubble, and loose flesh showed at his collar where it seemed that yesterday there had been none. His coat still on too, buttoned and forgotten, he leaned against the wall and muttered as if to himself.
“They’re going to do an autopsy on Monday. I asked, why not tomorrow? They said some toxicologist is coming in Sunday night, it would be better if they wait for him.”
The last word dissolved into a grating sob. Judy got an arm free from her mother, and pulled her father’s head down on her shoulder to give comfort.
* * *
Sometime much later in that dazed day, Andrew became aware that Joe Keogh was in the house, wandering about, looking as bewildered and grief-stricken as anyone else. Poor Irish roughneck cop who had thought he was going to marry into wealth. Never to have to face the prospect of him as a son-in-law now. Never have to. Never . . .
So peaceful Kate had been there on the antiseptic public table. He tried to hold in mind that peaceful, contented look, more like one sleeping than one dead. That look would seem to show she had not suffered. Dying there in that sleazy rooming house. What was she doing there? With whom? Someone must have been there. But Andrew was not ready to face those questions just yet.
So considerate were all the officials, holding down the publicity as well and as long as they could. Though in the long run they wouldn’t be able to, he understood that. He couldn’t estimate yet the effect on business, good or bad. Just one of those things that could not be planned for . . . time enough for that tomorrow.
. . . Judy of course went to place herself by the young man when he sat down, and held his prizefighter’s hand. That was her way.
Meanwhile more police—Andrew lost track of what separate organizations they all represented—were in the house and out again. They talked to Andrew, and ten minutes later he couldn’t remember what they had asked or he had answered. You planned and worked, and built up your business, all for your family, and then . . .
Johnny, as red-eyed as the rest of the family and for once subdued, came along in late afternoon with the word that he was going over to Clark’s for a while, if his parents didn’t mind. The Birches were close friends and it was natural that they would want to share the burden of the tragedy.
Andrew spoke to his son in a painful voice. “I don’t think you’re in shape right now to be driving.” He could not really remember himself driving home from Chicago. “I don’t think any of us are.”
“I’ll walk, Dad.” The Birches lived only about two hundred yards away along Sheridan road, where the shoulders, though unpaved, were smooth and plenty wide enough to walk on without having to dodge traffic.
“All right, then. Tell them we’ll call them later.”
Shortly after Johnny left, darkness fell.
The phone rang, rang. Neighbors and business associates who had just heard the news kept calling in to offer sympathy. There were reporters, who could be brushed off for now. But it was in the papers now anyway, and on TV. In the intervals between incoming calls, Lenore began phoning out, talking to relatives and old friends scattered around the country. As if it helped her, just to have the phone in her hand and talk. Andrew didn’t know where to look for something that would help him. There was Judy, of course. Thank God for Judy. She came and sat beside her father, saying little, just being there.
Somewhere along the line Joe Keogh had departed. A time came when all the police were gone. Lenore was on the phone, saying for what sounded like the hundredth time: we don’t know yet about the funeral. After tomorrow, sometime.
Then the family made an attempt at gathering for dinner. Andrew took over the phone, and rang the Birches. “This is Andy. I think a son of mine is over there?”
“Andy, good lord. Johnny was telling . . . it’s so terrible. What can we say?”
“I guess there’s nothing.” Andrew hardly knew any longer what he was saying himself. “Is John there?”
“Why, no, he left some time ago. I think about six. I thought he was going directly home, but he might have stopped in at the Karlsens’.”
“That’s probably it.” Andrew said goodbye, hung up, and punched for the Karlsens’ home.
But Johnny wasn’t there either.
Phone cradled again, Andrew tried to think. The Montoyas? They were in Mexico. Where else might Johnny be? Somewhere in walking distance.
Andrew slipped on a coat and without saying anything left the house and walked down the long, curving drive. He felt there was no rational reason for what he was doing, but he was not going to let that stop him tonight. He noticed that some stars were out. Could Johnny be standing somewhere, gazing at them? The boy would do that, sometimes. The telescope was put away, back in the small guest house near the lake.
As he walked down the drive he could hear distant surf behind him, smashing against the icefield, a different sound from that of its impact on rock and beach in summer. From in front came a murmur of light traffic, and passing headlights dazzled at him through the fir trees flanking his drive.
In the light of the next set of headlights Andrew saw that the flag on his mailbox had been raised. He himself had brought the Saturday mail in earlier in the day, and he had told the family often enough not to put anything out there over the weekend, not after that time when the checks were pilfered . . .
As he brought it back near the lighted house, Andrew’s mind registered that the little brown-paper-covered package bore no stamps, and that it was addressed, ballpoint in an unfamiliar, clumsy block printing, to himself.
He carried it inside with him, and as Lenore approached, wondering out loud where he had been, he opened it. Paper fell away, revealing a box that had probably once held a gift pen. It opened easily.
Looking at the object inside, a freshly amputated finger with a ragged, bloody stump-end that had left blood- smears on the inner lining of the box, Andrew felt something like the beginning of comfort. In a moment he recognized the comfort as of the sort experienced when the nightmare goes too far, and one knows at last that one is dreaming.
Except that even in his dreams he had never before heard Lenore, he had never heard anyone, make noises like the ones that she was making now . . .
* * *
An hour before midnight, with the drive again full of police cars, Clarissa found herself rising like a sleepwalker from her sleepless chair, moving away from the other members of her distraught family and letting herself be drawn back to the library.
Inside, she closed the door behind her, at the same time switching on one light. The shelves at the far east end were still in dimness.
In a pocket of her sweater her hand encountered a handkerchief, which, come to think of it, was part of her last year’s Christmas gift from Johnny. Dear God, let him still be alive! But it was too long since she had genuinely tried to pray.
At the touch of her foot, the library stool glided along the base of the shelves, then settled beneath her
