In five minutes, I’d reburied the body and the marker. I took a small chunk of granite from the shore and placed it on the thicketed grave site. Then I returned to the house. It was quarter to eight, and there was hardly any light left in the sky.
Two hours later, sitting on the sofa in my living room, I dialed the number on the slip of paper. Every door to the house was locked, most of the lights turned on, and in my lap, a cold satin stainless .357 revolver.
I had not called the police for a very good reason. The claim that it was my blood on the woman was probably a lie, but the paring knife had been missing from my kitchen for weeks. Also, with the Charlotte Police Department’s search for Rita Jones dominating local news headlines, her body on my property, murdered with my knife, possibly with my fingerprints on it, would be more than sufficient evidence to indict me. I’d researched enough murder trials to know that.
As the phone rang, I stared up at the vaulted ceiling of my living room, glanced at the black baby grand piano I’d never learned to play, the marble fireplace, the odd artwork that adorned the walls. A woman named Karen, whom I’d dated for nearly two years, had convinced me to buy half a dozen pieces of art from a recently deceased minimalist from New York, a man who signed his work 'Loman.' I hadn’t initially taken to Loman, but Karen had promised me I’d eventually 'get' him. Now, $27,000 and one fiancee lighter, I stared at the ten-by-twelve-foot abomination that hung above the mantel: shit brown on canvas, with a basketball-size yellow sphere in the upper right-hand corner. Aside from Brown No. 2, four similar marvels of artistic genius pockmarked other walls of my home, but these I could suffer. Mounted on the wall at the foot of the staircase, it was Playtime, the twelve- thousand-dollar glass-encased heap of stuffed animals, sewn together in an orgiastic conglomeration, which reddened my face even now. But I smiled, and the knot that had been absent since late winter shot a needle of pain through my gut. My Karen ulcer. You’re still there. Still hurting me. At least it’s you.
The second ring.
I peered up the staircase that ascended to the exposed second-floor hallway, and closing my eyes, I recalled the party I’d thrown just a week ago — guests laughing, talking politics and books, filling up my silence. I saw a man and a woman upstairs, elbows resting against the oak banister, overlooking the living room, the wet bar, and the kitchen. Holding their wineglasses, they waved down to me, smiling at their host.
The third ring.
My eyes fell on a photograph of my mother — a five-by-seven in a stained-glass frame, sitting atop the obsidian piano. She was the only family member with whom I maintained regular contact. Though I had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, Florida, and a handful in the Carolinas, I saw them rarely — at reunions, weddings, or funerals that my mother shamed me into attending with her. But with my father having passed away and a brother I hadn’t seen in thirteen years, family meant little to me. My friends sustained me, and contrary to popular belief, I didn’t have the true reclusive spirit imputed to me. I did need them.
In the photograph, my mother is squatting down at my father’s grave, pruning a tuft of carmine canna lilies in the shadow of the headstone. But you can only see her strong, kind face among the blossoms, intent on tidying up her husband’s plot of earth under that magnolia he’d taught me to climb, the blur of its waxy green leaves behind her.
The fourth ring.
'Did you see the body?'
It sounded as if the man were speaking through a towel. There was no emotion or hesitation in his staccato voice.
'Yes.'
'I gutted her with your paring knife and hid the knife in your house. It has your fingerprints all over it.' He cleared his throat. 'Four months ago, you had blood work done by Dr. Xu. They misplaced a vial. You remember having to go back and give more?'
'Yes.'
'I stole that vial. Some is on Rita Jones’s white T-shirt. The rest is on the others.'
'What others?'
'I make a phone call, and you spend the rest of your life in prison, possibly death row….'
'I just want you —'
'Shut your mouth. You’ll receive a plane ticket in the mail. Take the flight. Pack clothes, toiletries, nothing else. You spent last summer in Aruba. Tell your friends you’re going again.'
'How did you know that?'
'I know many things, Andrew.'
'I have a book coming out,' I pleaded. 'I’ve got readings scheduled. My agent —'
'Lie to her.'
'She won’t understand me just leaving like this.'
'Fuck Cynthia Mathis. You lie to her for your safety, because if I even suspect you’ve brought someone along or that someone knows, you’ll go to jail or you’ll die. One or the other, guaranteed. And I hope you aren’t stupid enough to trace this number. I promise you it’s stolen.'
'How do I know I won’t be hurt?'
'You don’t. But if I get off the phone with you and I’m not convinced you’ll be on that flight, I’ll call the police tonight. Or I may visit you while you’re sleeping. You’ve got to put that Smith and Wesson away sometime.'
I stood up and spun around, the gun clenched in my sweaty hands. The house was silent, though chimes on the deck were clanging in a zephyr. I looked through the large living room windows at the black lake, its wind- rippled surface reflecting the pier lights. The blue light at the end of Walter’s pier shone out across the water from a distant inlet. His 'Gatsby light,' we called it. My eyes scanned the grass and the edge of the trees, but it was far too dark to see anything in the woods.
'I’m not in the house,' he said. 'Sit down.'
I felt something well up inside of me — anger at the fear, rage at this injustice.
'Change of plan,' I said. 'I’m going to hang up, dial nine one one, and take my chances. You can go —'
'If you aren’t motivated by self-preservation, there’s an old woman named Jeanette I could —'
'I’ll kill you.'
'Sixty-five, lives alone, I think she’d love the company. What do you think? Do I have to visit your mother to show you I’m serious? What is there to consider? Tell me you’ll be on that plane, Andrew. Tell me so I don’t have to visit your mother tonight.'
'I’ll be on that plane.'
The phone clicked, and he was gone.
2
ON the muggy morning of May 21, as raindrops splattered onto the sidewalk, I locked the door to my lake house and carried an enormous black duffel bag toward a white Cadillac DeVille. Walter Lancing opened the trunk from the driver’s seat, and I tossed the bag inside.
'Where the hell are you going?' he asked cheerfully as we rolled slowly down my drive. I’d called him three hours ago, told him I needed a ride to the airport, and to pick me up by 10:30, hanging up before he could question me.
'Going away for a while,' I said.
'Where? That’s a big piece of luggage you got back there.' He was smiling. I could hear it in his voice as I watched my house dwindle away in the side mirror.
'Just away,' I said.
'Are you being intentionally vague?' Beads of sweat had formed on his unshaven face, and he ran his fingers through his short gray hair. He glanced at me, awaiting my reply as rain fell in sheets from the charcoal sky, followed by a growl of thunder. 'Andy, what’s wrong?'
'Nothing. I finished my book. I’m tired. I need a break — you know how it goes.' Walter sighed, and I stared
