“So long, then.”
“And to you,” he said.
I slipped back into my running shoes and as I knelt to tie the laces, I thought about bees and about the dark places I’d already been.
THIRTY-FOUR
This time it is her eyes, Sashi’s eyes. They are on me and in the realm of pinned and wriggling, Prufrock is a distant second. Her lids are closed, not squeezed shut, just closed and transparent, a clear reptilian membrane through which her green eyes accuse. She stares down from Tier-ney’s mildewed walls, the black-eyed saints all gone. I hold the hog-tied teddy bear in my arms. I am frozen, unable to move, to look away. Then, a gunshot. A window breaking. My legs working, I run up the stairs. John Tierney, nude but for little girl’s white panties, is dead in his chair. His head impossibly intact, his eyes blackened. I stand in the doorway, pinned again. I unfreeze, step into the room and slip on the blood. I fall through the floor into an ocean of blackness. My eyes won’t close. Above me, I somehow see the headless teddy bear floating just out of reach. I extend my arm. I grope for it and the ocean is gone. Now I am falling through air, endless black air, the wind rushing in my ears. I am falling and falling and falling and…
When you’re twenty and wake up in a sweat, you’ve had too much to drink. At my age, it’s probably lymphoma. Not this time. It hit me as soon as I woke up from my endless fall: there was more wrong with the accepted version of Sashi’s kidnapping and murder than the panties and the vandalism to my car. In his psychosis, John Tierney had blackened the eyes in every photograph and painting and drawing in his house. Tierney had even done it to paintings in portfolios and photo albums stored in boxes in his attic. Why did he do it? Maybe he did it for the same reason he turned the TV to the wall and cut off the utilities. Maybe it had some quasi-religious significance that only he understood. The reason was beside the point. What he hadn’t done was to blacken the eyes in the pictures of Sashi that were found on top of the altar. Why do it to the paintings and drawings and photos of Sashi that were in the collage on the wall behind the altar, but not to those on the altar?
If I hadn’t already burned both bridges, I would have been on the phone to McKenna and Dr. Ogologlu. Unfortunately, I had burned those bridges. There weren’t going to be any second looks at the evidence nor would there be any more polite philosophical conversations with the doctor. Both of them, McKenna and Ogologlu, were right about me, but they were wrong, too. I wasn’t going to a dark place. I was already there and I was there alone. I wasn’t sure I believed in undeniable facts, bumblebees notwithstanding. I was less and less convinced that John Tierney had anything to do with Sashi Bluntstone’s murder, no matter what all the hard evidence indicated. That was ice-cold comfort because there was the part of me that distrusted my own motives for believing in John Tierney. Because if Tierney was guilty, he really wasn’t. That’s what’d gotten lost in all of this heartache. Tier-ney wasn’t responsible for the chemical imbalance in his brain or for the genetic flaw in his DNA. If he killed Sashi, he was an innocent monster. And if he was, the only guilt left on the table would be my own.
Then, as if on cue, Declan Carney called and asked me to come get the paintings and the test results.
Dressed in carpenter pants, a paint-smeared Hunter College sweatshirt, and work boots, Declan Carney wasn’t quite as fancifully decked out as when we first met. Gone were the Hawaiian shirt, kilt, tube socks, and Birkenstocks. He’d also shaved his head of the Mohawk, side curls, Fu Manchu, and soul patch. But I found out soon enough that his newfound Bohemian look did not mean he had abandoned his idiosyncrasies. When I made to shake his hand, he backed away.
“Take no offense,” he said, “but on Skajit it is our holy month and physical contact with other sentient beings is forbidden.”
“No offense taken.”
Outside, on the street in front of his building, they were tearing up the pavement. And though the noise was far from unbearable, it was enough to get your attention. It certainly had Carney’s attention. He could not seem to stop himself from staring over his shoulder at the filthy windows that would have looked down on the work below.
“Mr. Carney, can I have the results, please?” He didn’t react immediately, apparently still distracted by the work noise. “Please,” I repeated.
“Yes, the results.”
Continuing to look over his shoulder, he walked over to a workbench and grabbed a bound report about an inch thick. “These are my findings. There is a detailed analysis of the tests I ran, the methods I used…” His voice drifted off as he handed me the file. He made sure our hands didn’t touch.
I flipped through the report. It seemed incredibly thorough, but frankly, I didn’t give a shit about anything other than his conclusions.
“So, what’s the verdict?”
“Excuse me,” he said, his attention elsewhere.
“What are your conclusions?”
“The results are there in the-”
“Look, Carney, no offense, but I’d like a few minutes of your time. I realize we didn’t agree on a price, but by the appearance of this report, it’s not gonna be cheap.”
“What?”
I repeated myself.
“I will send you the invoice. The paintings are there.” He pointed to a crate at the side of his workbench. You’ve got to love someone who returns things in better packaging than the packaging you delivered the goods in. “Please, just leave.”
“Will you go look out the goddamned window already so we can talk.”
He relented. “All right. What is it you want to know?”
“Did Sashi Bluntstone do those paintings?”
“Yes and no.”
“Well, that just clears everything up, doesn’t it? Did she or didn’t she?”
“The first painting shows a consistency of brush stroke, material-”
I was beginning to lose it. “For fuck’s sake, Carney, just give it to me in English, clear, concise English for idiots.”
“She did the first painting entirely on her own. The second painting she had some help with. The third painting was done almost entirely by the person who helped her do the second painting. Now that you have your answer, please leave.”
“The last time I was here, you warned me about monsters.”
“Yes.”
“Innocent monsters in particular.”
“Yes.” I seemed finally to have drawn his attention.
“I found one, you know?”
“I know, the man who murdered Sashi Bluntstone.”
“Him, yeah.”
“I was saddened to hear of the child’s death, but it is what you anticipated.”
“Yes and no,” I said, tweaking him a bit.
He smiled briefly. “But you expected she would already be dead, so what is the matter?”
“I did, but I was shocked-I am shocked by who they say did it.”
“You do not believe this man Tierney killed her?”
“I don’t want to believe it.”
He smiled again, but this time it looked like a gunshot wound. “It would seem you are his second victim, then.”
“You know I did a little checking up on you.”
“To what end?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I was a little curious and I felt sorry for you.”
