When the call for Padillo came, the three of them had almost finished a celebratory dinner in honor of Erika McCorkle’s completion of her university studies. All celebration ended when Padillo returned to the table, sat down as if he had grown suddenly weary, pushed away his plate and said, “Isabelle’s dead. Apparently murdered.” He then repeated in a low voice everything he had been told about the death.
McCorkle was the first to speak, but only after he leaned back in his chair to study Padillo carefully. It was then that he sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Mike. There was always something splendid and unique about Isabelle. I’m going to miss her.” He paused. “They have any idea of who did it?”
“No.”
Erika McCorkle had turned pale. When she tried to speak, it came out as a croak. She cleared her throat, and this time it came out as a whisper. “In her—bathtub?”
Padillo nodded.
“Drowned?”
“Possibly.”
Still whispering, she said, “Then it’s all my fault.”
“Why yours?” Padillo said. “And why all the whispering?”
She made no reply, letting the silence continue until she finally spoke again in a voice not much louder than her whisper. “Because I used to daydream about her drowning. But not in a bathtub. In the Anacostia.”
McCorkle, an eyebrow raised, looked at Padillo, as if hoping for an explanation. But Padillo only shrugged. McCorkle turned back to his daughter and asked, “Why did you dream about her…drowning?”
“I told you. I was jealous.”
“You didn’t tell me,” McCorkle said.
She frowned, staring at him. A moment later the frown vanished and she said, “Right. It wasn’t you. It was Granville Haynes I told. This afternoon.”
“You told him you were jealous of Isabelle because of her and Steady?”
The frown returned. “Not of her and Steady.” She looked at Padillo. “Of Isabelle and you.”
Padillo stared at her as his right hand dipped automatically into his shirt pocket, seeking the cigarettes he had abandoned five years ago. “Christ, kid,” he said. “Isabelle and I ended it when you were thirteen, maybe fourteen.”
Although her expression seemed to be one of pity, there was only scorn in Erika McCorkle’s voice when she said, “You have no idea, do you?”
“Of what?” Padillo said.
“Of what vicious daydreams a lovesick thirteen-year-old can have when the man she’s in love with is fucking somebody else?”
Nodding calmly, Padillo said, “Go on.”
“With what?”
“With why it’s all your fault.”
“Because I used to daydream about it and—and, oh God, I’m so sorry she’s dead.”
McCorkle leaned toward his daughter. “Erika, may I say something?” he asked in a gentle voice.
She nodded.
“This is the silliest goddamn conversation we’ve ever had.”
It was as if he had struck her. First came the surprise, then the hurt and finally the anger. “You guys can’t even remember what it was like being thirteen.”
“Thank God,” McCorkle said.
“It hurt.”
“Everybody hurts at thirteen,” Padillo said. “They hurt so much they later write books about it. The same book. Over and over. But you’re a long way from thirteen.”
“And you’re suddenly more—” She stopped and began again. “I’m sorry. I guess the shock brought on the silly talk. Poor Isabelle. When I was thirteen she was everything I wanted to be and now that she’s dead I just can’t accept it.”
“You and Haynes talked about her?”
Erika nodded. “He told me how they used to go skinny-dipping when they were six or seven, around in there, and I told him how I’d daydreamed about her drowning in the Anacostia but he said there wasn’t much chance of that because she was a damn fine swimmer and—aw, hell, Pop, can we go home now?”
“What a great idea,” McCorkle said.
Chapter 12
It was the first time the Burma analyst, Gilbert Undean, had been to the house of the courtly Hamilton Keyes. The house was in the exorbitantly priced Kalorama Triangle whose isosceles tip points south, just touching Dupont Circle, with legs formed by Connecticut and Massachusetts and a base that rests on a slice of Rock Creek Park to the north.
