He cuffed my head with one hand, but there was no force in the blow-the assault was over. Then I felt his weight lift off me and he sat on the forest floor with his knees up and his arms wrapped around his legs and sobbed to himself without speaking. I got my breath back and then sat up myself. My ankle still hurt badly and my throat felt sore, but I was otherwise all right. We stayed like that in those woods, the two of us, for fifteen minutes, not talking, letting the panic subside, and then we walked to his car-me limping on my damaged ankle.
It took a little while for him to start talking about why he’d fixated on me as the cause of everything that had gone wrong in his life. When he did, the truth spilled out unchecked for over an hour. I sat there listening as I’d been trained to do, interjecting occasionally to try to convince him I was innocent-although I wasn’t sure I was. He was only a few years younger than me, but he seemed like a child. I felt sorry for him. He’d been exploited to hide the truth about Greene’s death. I almost liked him, although he had inherited his father’s arrogance. He needed therapy, but I wasn’t going to volunteer. The best I could offer was to forget about his twin assaults and having trashed my apartment.
It was quiet there-there wasn’t anybody around. Once I heard the sound of an engine from the airfield, and I looked over to see a small plane landing in the distance. Otherwise, we were by ourselves. If he’d really meant to kill me, I’d taken him to a perfect spot.
After we’d finished, I made him promise to drive back to the city and wait for my call. The resistance had gone out of him, and I trusted him to do what I advised. My ankle was hurting and he drove me to where my car was parked, still alone in the lot. I steered it down through the woods to the highway and headed toward the woman who’d made me his target.
27
When I reached the entrance to the lane, I halted the car and got out, standing where Bruce Bradley had stood that day. To my left was the road to the sea, with surf now being blown from green waves. The beach was empty, as usual. The hedges and flowers along the lane were verdant, and blossoms had cascaded from a sculpted tree in the front yard of a home nearby, carpeting the lawn and drive.
Halfway along the lane, a line of contractors’ vehicles were parked outside a house at which someone was having work done. Mostly, there was silence-interrupted only by the wind whistling in the telephone wires and the distant roar of the sea. I squinted along the lane at the Shapiros’ house but couldn’t see any sign of life. I tried to imagine the view as it would have been that Sunday, the lane jammed with police vehicles. Pagonis and Hodge would be picking up Harry to take him to Yaphank.
I thought of what Nathan had just told me and tried to piece it together with the rest of what I’d learned. I’d taken it on trust for so long that Harry had killed Greene-everyone had. He’d confessed to the crime, not just to the police but also to my face. But what if he’d been lying? Anna’s complaint about psychs not checking on whether their patients were telling the truth had stuck with me since she’d said it. To us, truth is something to be found inside a patient, and only he can dig it out from his subconscious. We assume they are trying to be truthful, apart from the things they don’t even know about themselves. That was why they have paid us money to talk.
Yet most of what I’d found since I’d met Harry were half truths and deceptions-not the distortions with which people comfort themselves, but blatant lies. I’d found that out only when I’d broken my profession’s rules. The biggest deception of all was the one thing I’d never thought to doubt-that Harry was the boss. He had been the CEO, the banker who’d ruled Wall Street. Those around him were, as Felix had insisted, helpers and servants. I hadn’t realized that one of them was in charge.
I got back in the car and drove down the lane, on alert for any human presence, but the white gates and the trees did their work, screening the lawns and houses from scrutiny. At the foot of the Shapiros’ drive, I halted the car and looked from my side window at the property. Still nothing. I eased the car up the drive, this time taking the slope at a steady speed, and halted on the square of gravel by the house. A few yards past the service sign, I tapped on the kitchen door and put up my hand to shelter my eyes from the glare coming off the sea, peering through the glass into the empty room. Then I stepped onto the lawn at the rear to gaze through the conservatory windows at the living room. The contractors had done their work well, and the scene of the death shone in fresh colors, like a frosted cake.
I heard a whirring sound behind and turned sharply, but it was only a bird washing itself in the pool and shaking off the water in a spray. My ankle was bothering me and I limped around the house, emerging next to my car. I rested a hand on its roof and gazed down at the gravel beneath my feet, as if I might see all past tire marks if I looked hard enough.
Squatting, I passed a hand over the surface, feeling a prickle from the sharp stones as they rubbed across my palm. I looked down the slope toward a row of flowers. As I did it, I noticed from the corner of my eye the curtains move in a window of the single-story house across the lane: the Shapiros’ guesthouse. When I looked again, the fabric was still, but I knew I hadn’t been mistaken. I made my way slowly down the drive, leaving my car behind and gazing at the window. At the bottom, I crossed the lane and opened the small wooden gate guarding the entrance. It was a white clapboard cottage, not as intricate as their house but pretty all the same. The lawn was neatly trimmed and rhododendron bushes were set into oval beds, wood chips scattered around their roots.
As I paused, with the top of the gate still in my hand, the cottage door opened and Anna stood there. She was wearing a pink dress, with mother-of-pearl buttons on scalloped material running to the waist between her breasts, and the same black flip-flops in which I’d met her. There were five yards between us and we both stood in place, looking at each other. Her neck and cheeks were flushed and she twisted the strap of one flip-flop between the toes of one red-nailed foot.
“Why are you limping?” she said.
“Your boyfriend caught up with me. He talked to me, after he stopped throttling me. He told me a lot of things.”
“That bastard,” she said. “Don’t believe a word he says.”
We both stayed where we were, still frozen.
“Why did you run away?” I said.
“I was scared.” Her lip trembled and she pinched one side between her teeth, the top ones shining white in the light.
“You told me to work it out myself. I’ve done that.”
I walked along the path toward her. She was only five or six paces away, but they went very slowly and the gap hardly seemed to close until I was right by her. I took in her scent and felt the warmth of her body under the thin cotton. I reached through her dense hair, my fingers searching for the back of her head, and as I pulled her toward me, she stood on her toes so that our lips touched. Her tongue brushed against mine and I felt the softness of her mouth. We stayed together for several seconds and then she pulled back, looking up at me.
“This isn’t very professional,” she said.
“Fuck my profession,” I said.
I pulled her to me, and as we kissed again, I could feel her draw back. She kept her arms slung around my shoulders as she moved, leading me back toward the open door. I walked along with her and caught her by the small of her back as she almost stumbled passing over the threshold. She pulled me to my right, her back against the hallway wall, as we got inside and reached under my arm to push the door closed. It swung toward the latch but failed to click and I kicked backward with my heel. My foot missed, tipping me to one side and making her giggle. She ducked under my arm and shoved the door with both hands, ramming it closed, then turned to face me again.
I took her face in my hands and kissed her slowly, and then I reached down to the top of her dress and felt for the first of the mother-of-pearl buttons. It was small and thick and I could not catch it at first, wrapped against a scallop of cloth. Then I pushed at it with my thumb and felt it slip through the buttonhole. The next five went faster, and as I got to the last, she pulled away from me, glancing down.
“Keep going,” she said.
“Shut up,” I said.
I pushed her dress off one shoulder and then slipped one bra strap after it and bent my head to kiss her shoulder. Squeezing her body between my hips and the door, I reached down to gather her dress up her legs. I
