What The Dead Know

situation, she had always needed someone else to force her out, encourage her to move on. How she had cried that day at the Greyhound station, while other people smiled and nodded, thinking she was nothing more than a scared teenager who couldn’t bear to leave home.

Her research done, the last thing she did was write a little code, her going-away gift to the Gazette. The next day, when Mrs. Hennessey logged on, the whole thing crashed, taking with it every article in progress, even those that more responsible reporters had diligently backed up. By then she was already in a diner in Anacostia, waiting for Stan Dunham. He had tried to persuade her to drive farther north, but she told him that she wouldn’t cross the district line into Maryland. And to this day, whatever she wanted from Stan Dunham, she got.

CHAPTER 36

“Because she was adopted, you know?”

Dave had been waiting in line for a cinnamon twist when this one sentence managed to break free of the general hum around him, flinging itself at him like a shoe or a small stone. The comment, however, was not addressed to him but was part of a conversation between two placid middle-aged women waiting behind him in line.

“What?” he asked, as if it had been their intent to involve him in their conversation. “Who was adopted?”

“Lisa Steinberg,” said one.

“The little girl in New York who was beaten by her adoptive father? It’s great that the bastard is going to jail. But they shoulda gotten the woman, too. No real mother would have sat idly by while that was going on. No way, no how.”

They nodded, smug and content, the entire world known to them. They were doughy, pasty-faced women, anti-advertisements for the baked goods sold at Bauhof ’s. Dave was reminded of a book that Heather and Sunny had loved, Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls, with whimsical drawings by someone of note. Addams? Gorey? Something like that, very clever line drawings. One story was about a boy who ate nothing but sweets until he melted in the sun, just a puddle of gelatinous flesh with facial features.

“How can-” he began, but Miss Wanda, attuned to his moods after all these years as neighbors, diverted his attention the way a mother might have headed off a son’s tantrum.

“Apple turnovers, today, Mr. Bethany. Still hot.”

“I shouldn’t…” he began. Dave was still at his college weight, but his own flesh was pretty doughy, too. Loose, with a slack to it that he couldn’t seem to overcome. He had stopped running a few years earlier, no longer having time for it.

“C’mon, it’s got apple in it. It’s good for you. An apple a day, like the doctor said.” And with the help of a turnover, Miss Wanda had him out of the store before he could lose his temper. A hot turnover, like a soft answer, turneth away wrath.

He had been out of sorts all morning, for the usual reasons and some news ones. His annual caller hadn’t checked in. It had been years since the guy had actually said anything, now preferring the passive harassment of a hang-up call, but the call had continued to come every March 29. Strange to mind that of all things, but it gnawed at Dave. Was the guy dead? Or had he given up, too? Even the creeps were moving on with their lives. Then Dave had called Willoughby. The detective hadn’t forgotten the date, far from it. He had offered the stoic understanding that Dave had come to expect, a wordless commiseration. No “Hey, Dave, what’s up?” No pretense of progress. Just “Hello, Dave. I’m looking at the file right now.” Willoughby looked at the file all the time, but he made a point of having it in front of him on this date.

Then Willoughby had dropped the bombshell on him.

“I’m retiring, Dave. End of this June.”

“Retiring? You’re so young. Younger than me.”

“We can go at twenty with full pension, and I’ve racked up twenty-two. My wife-Evelyn’s health has never been great. I’d like to spend some time with her before-They have these places, where you can live on your own, but then when you get sick, you stay on the premises, in your own apartment. We’re not there yet, but in five years or so…I’d like to have-what do they call it?-quality time with her.”

“Will you work at all? Freud believed work was essential to a man’s well-being. A person’s.”

“Maybe volunteer somewhere. I don’t need-Well, I have plenty of things to keep me busy.”

Probably he had been on the verge of saying: I don’t need the money. But even now, after knowing Dave for fourteen years, after speaking of things at once intimate and terrible, Willoughby had his pockets of reticence. Perhaps he was so used to being guarded about his trust-fund status around his colleagues that he couldn’t break the habit with Dave. Once, only once, he had asked Dave to a Christmas party, a pity invite. Dave had expected a raucous cop blowout. Yearned for it, in fact, for such a party would be a novelty to him. But it was more of a family and neighborhood affair-and what a family, what a neighborhood. This was the kind of gentle, assured social ease that the Pikesville families of Dave’s youth had been trying to achieve with all their noisy show and clamor, but it was impossible to imitate wealth at this level. Plaid pants, cheese puffs, gin martinis, thin-shanked women and red-faced men, all speaking quietly, no matter how much hard liquor they put away. It was the kind of event that he would have liked to describe to Miriam, if they still spoke. Miriam’s phone had been disconnected. He knew this because he had tried to call her last night.

“What will…who will…” His voice had gotten thick and he felt almost overwhelmed with panic.

“The case has already been assigned,” Willoughby said quickly. “A smart young detective. And I’ll make a point of impressing upon him that you’re to be kept in the loop. Nothing will change.”

That’s the problem , Dave thought bleakly. Nothing will change. Leads will pop up, only to evaporate like dew. Every now and then, a crazy person or a prisoner angling for special treatment will claim to have a tip, then be discredited. Nothing will change. The only difference will be that the new detective, whatever he knows, whatever’s in the case file, won’t have been with me every step of the way. It was, in some ways, more wrenching than the break with Miriam, and certainly more unexpected.

“Will we still…talk?”

“Of course. Anytime. Hell, I’ll be keeping tabs, don’t think that I won’t.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I have to be politic, of course. Can’t breathe down the new guy’s neck too much. But this case will always belong to me. It’s one of the two closest to my heart.”

“One of two?” Dave couldn’t help himself. He was shocked to hear that any other case had a claim on Willoughby ’s attention.

“The other one was solved,” Willoughby said quickly. “Long ago. That one was about…good police work, in the face of difficult odds. It doesn’t compare.”

“Yes, I can see how a case that centered on good police work wouldn’t compare to mine.”

“Dave.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just today. That today is today, that day. Fourteen years, and not even a bum lead, a wisp of a rumor, in the last two. I still don’t know how to do this, Chet.”

“This” being everything-not just his status as a perpetual victim of a crime that had never been delineated but his very existence. He had learned how to go on, because that phrase denoted a long, trudging trip to nowhere, pure inertia. Going on was easy. But he had long ago forgotten how to be. For the first time in years, he thought of his friends in the Fivefold Path, the ritual burning and meditation that he had abandoned because he could no longer pretend that he lived in any moment. In Alice ’s Wonderland, the rule was jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today. In Dave’s world, there was no today, only yesterday and tomorrow.

“No one’s equipped for what you’ve been through, Dave. Not even a police. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but-the file’s been in my house more often than not. Now, in light of my retirement…it has to go back, but it will always be in my head. You have my promise. I’ll be here for you. Not just today, not just