trunk made by shifting dead weight.
38
MONDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 11
Las Piernas
I looked out the window of Jo Robinson’s second-story office, idly wondering what other troubled souls might have shared this view, watching the rain plaster red and gold leaves to the black asphalt of the parking lot below. Autumn. I had almost managed to hold out until autumn.
“So Ben spent the summer with you and Frank,” she prompted. I had been trying to tell her what had happened since the last time I had seen her, outside Ben’s hospital room.
“Yes,” I answered her, still watching the rain. If it hadn’t ever rained again, I thought, I might have been all right.
“Ben and Bingle have moved back to David’s house. He’s doing fine there. Bingle, too.”
“And you?”
I didn’t answer.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“ ‘To know, love, and serve God so that I may be happy in the next life,’ ” I replied.
She waited.
I glanced back at her. “Sorry — knee-jerk
“You tell me.”
“I’m here because I broke something at work.”
“Really? I’d think a hardware store could be of more use to you, then.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“Tell me what happened.”
So I told her how, coming into work one day, I had been told to report to Winston Wrigley III’s “God office,” which is how the staff refers to the glass enclosure near the newsroom. Wrigley deigns to visit the God office when he wants to view his minions in action, or, more accurately, to spy on whatever young, new female employee he has added to the roster.
There hadn’t been any new additions lately — sexual harassment laws were severely cramping WWIII’s style — so his current visit had the rumor-fueled newsroom aflame with gossip. These flames were fanned by the fact that he had two elegantly dressed couples with him, who joined him around the conference table at one end of the room. Before John Walters summoned me, I had heard that the paper was being sold to a big chain, that there were going to be layoffs, and that John was going to be fired for letting Morry mouth off to Wrigley before Morry left for Buffalo.
I didn’t have a chance to hear any of the rumors that circulated after I got called in, but later Lydia told me that one of the best was that I was going to be asked to replace John after he was fired for letting Morry vent.
As I approached the God office, I was already tired and tense; I hadn’t slept well lately, and the previous three nights, hardly at all.
Until three days earlier, the Oregon killings had provided the last solid leads on Nick Parrish’s whereabouts. In June, the discovery of the bodies — one a legless torso — of two clinic workers had launched Parrish back into the headlines. The search for him intensified, but the rest of the summer had passed without any sign of him. I began to hope that he had been hit by a car.
But three days before I was summoned into Wrigley’s glass domain, the LPPD had received a report that Nick Parrish had been sighted not far from Las Piernas.
Despite the fact that these sightings of Parrish were usually unfounded, the police checked out all leads. But this call led to the discovery of a woman’s body in a trash container.
I’ve since wondered how things might have gone if Frank had been the one to give me the news. But on the day she was found, Frank was in court, giving testimony on another case. So I learned about Parrish’s newest victim at work, on a day when there wasn’t any way to contact my husband.
By the time Mark Baker arrived in the newsroom to file the story, there was already a buzz among the other reporters about it. I had already heard that Parrish had left another body somewhere. That news alone made me feel as if someone were sandpapering the ends of my nerves.
Mark had been in to talk to John, and John beckoned me in to join them. Looking grim, John said, “You should probably know about this before the others start asking you about it.”
“Asking me about it?”
So Mark gave me the details. “This Jane Doe’s fingers and toes were severed and missing. She was a blue-eyed brunette. Her name is not yet known, but your name was carved into her chest.”
I felt my stomach lurch; I quickly excused myself, ran into the bathroom, and got sick.
I washed up, then, looking into the mirror with a measure of detachment, studied my tense, too thin face and the dark circles under my eyes. Detachment was becoming one of my favorite emotional states. It was constantly being disturbed, though — this time, when the door opened, causing me to jump.
It was Lydia. She asked if I was all right.
“No,” I said.
“Maybe it isn’t him,” Lydia said. “It could be a copycat.”
“What a relief that would be,” I replied, and later wondered how much more of my sarcasm she could take.
“This happened three days before you were asked to see Mr. Wrigley?” Jo Robinson asked.
