What The Dead Know

“I was abused,” Heather said. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“You’re talking about thirty years ago, right?” Kay felt that rush of unbecoming prurience, the desire to know exactly what had happened to this woman. “I hardly think-”

“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.” Even as her words seemed to promise agreement, Heather swung her head vehemently side to side, so her blond curls, short as they were, bounced and shook. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you, and you’ll know why I can’t go to jail, why I can’t trust these people not to hurt me.”

“Not in front of Kay,” Gloria commanded, but Heather was wound up now, impossible to stop. She doesn’t know I’m here, Kay thought. Or she knows but doesn’t care. Was it trust or indifference, a vote of confidence or a reminder that Kay was of no significance to her?

“It was a policeman, okay? A policeman came to me and said something had happened to my sister and I needed to come quick. And I went, and that was how he got both of us. First her, then me. He locked us in the back of the van and took us.”

“A man pretending to be a cop,” Gloria clarified.

“Not pretending. A real police officer, from right here in Baltimore, from the county, with a badge and everything. Although he wasn’t wearing a uniform-but policemen didn’t always wear uniforms. Michael Douglas and Karl Malden-The Streets of San Francisco-they didn’t wear uniforms. He was a policeman, and he said everything would be all right, and I believed him. That’s the only real mistake I ever made, believing that man, and it ruined my life.”

With that final word, life, some long-held emotion was released and Heather began crying with such raw force that Gloria reared back from her, unsure of what to do. What could Kay do, what would any feeling person do, but reach around Gloria and try to comfort Heather, remembering to be especially gentle, given the temporary splint on the left forearm, the general all-over soreness left by a car accident.

“We’ll work something out,” she said. “We’ll find a place for you. I know someone-a family in my neighborhood, away for spring break. At the very least, you can stay there for a few days.”

“No police,” Heather choked out. “No jail.”

“Of course not,” Kay said, catching Gloria’s eyes to see if she approved of Kay’s solution. But Gloria was smiling, smug and triumphant.

“Now this,” the attorney said, her tongue darting over her lower lip, as close to a literal smacking as Kay had ever seen, “this gives us leverage.”

CHAPTER 15

One more night. One more night. Everyone had said she couldn’t stay in the hospital beyond today, but she’d gotten one more night out of them, which just proved what she had always believed: Everybody lied, all the time. One more night. There had been a hideous pop song with that title, years ago, a spurned lover begging for a final bout of lovemaking. It was a frequent motif in pop music, come to think of it. Touch me in the morning. I can’t make you love me if you don’t . She had never understood this. When she was younger, still trying to date-and, big surprise, failing miserably time and time again-the men usually ended up leaving her a few months in, almost as if they could smell the rottenness coming off her, as if they had found her secret sell-by date and realized how ruined she was. At any rate, when a man broke off with her, the last thing she wanted from him was one more night. Sometimes she threw things, and sometimes she cried. Sometimes she laughed, relieved. But she never resorted to begging for one more night, a touch in the morning, a pity fuck however you sliced or diced it. You took your pride where you could find it.

She eased herself out of the bed, everything aching, her body already sensing that the left arm was not to be counted on, not for a while, that the right arm had to pick up the slack. Amazing how quickly the body adjusted, much faster than the mind. Her mind was far from reliable these days. Did I see a boy and think he was a girl, or was there never a face at the window at all? She went to the window, pulled aside the curtain, and studied the landscape-the parking lot, the smudge of city skyline in the distance, the clogged lanes of I-95 at rush hour. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! A line of poetry stuck in her head, a legacy of the nuns, who believed you could memorize your way to intelligence. The highway was near, not even a mile away. Could she get there, put out her thumb and hitch a ride home? No, she’d be a fugitive twice over then. She had to tough this out. But how?

It wasn’t the lies that worried her. She could keep track of the lies. It was the bits of truths that put her at risk. A good liar survives by using as little truth as possible, because the truth trips you up far more often. Back when she’d been in the habit of changing names, she had learned to create each new identity fresh, to carry nothing forward. But the threat of jail this afternoon, just like the possibility of arrest that first night, had freaked her out. She had to say something. It had seemed pretty inspired, telling them about the cop, throwing Karl Malden into the mix. Odd, tangential details like that made everything else sound authentic. But they weren’t going to settle for Karl Malden. They were clamoring for a real name, and she was going to have to give them something, someone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the night sky.

She wasn’t sure who worried her more, the dead or the living, who posed the most risk. But at least you could bluff the living. You couldn’t put anything over on the dead.

PART IV. PRAJAPATAYE SVAHA. PRAJAPATAYE IDAM NA MAMA. (1976)

Agnihotra mantras are to be uttered in their original form in Sanskrit.

They are not to be translated into any other language…

Agnihotra mantras are to be uttered in rhythmically balanced tone so the sound vibrates throughout the entire household. The tone should not be too loud or too weak nor should it be done in a hurry… The feeling of total surrender is developed through the utterance of these mantras.

– Adapted from instructions on how to perform the Agnihotra, the sunrise/sunset ritual central to the practice of the Fivefold Path

CHAPTER 16

Sunset fast approaching, Dave grabbed the ghee from the refrigerator and headed into the study, leaving Chet at the kitchen table with Miriam and their mugs of tea. They weren’t even trying to speak, just sipping herbal tea and staring off into space. Everyone was exhausted and hoarse after the full day of interviews, although Dave had done most of the talking. Miriam deferred to Dave, and the detective seldom spoke at all. Sometimes Dave found Willoughby ’s silence comforting. Men of action should be laconic. Other times he suspected that these still waters didn’t run particularly deep. But Chet was familiar to them now, like a dignified stray they had adopted after years of saying they didn’t want the bother of a dog.

In his study he sat cross-legged on his rug, not a proper prayer rug-other than the copper pot for the offering, the Agnihotra did not require ritual objects, which was a large part of its charm-but a dhurrie he’d found in an Indian market years ago, when he was traveling after college. His mother had still lived in Baltimore then, and he’d shipped his treasures to her apartment, despite her complaints and suspicions. “What’s in these boxes?” she had berated him upon his homecoming. “Drugs? If the police come to my door, I am not lying for you.”

He put a dung cake in the pot, adding a piece of ghee-soaked camphor, followed by the rest of the dung and the rice grains, checking his watch to see if the exact moment of sunset had arrived.