‘Are we flirting, Ben?’
‘I don’t know. Aren’t we?’
She pretended to fiddle with a thread.
‘Do you know your dad goes to your sister’s grave every day?’
‘Yes.’
‘Every day. Still.’
‘It gets better, Ben. It takes time.’
‘That’s just what your father told me.’
I sipped some more, the warmth of the bourbon streaming through me now.
‘Ben… I don’t feel like I owe you an apology for last week. But I hope you understand. I had to be careful. At the time it seemed like Gittens was right about you and Danziger. You had motive, means, opportunity.’
‘Sometimes you have to forget all that Agatha Christie crap, Caroline. You have to look at the person too.’
‘Okay. I guess that’s right.’
‘The other thing is, about when my mother killed herself-’
‘Ben, I don’t want you to tell me anything about that. You’ll put me in a terrible position.’
‘We have to get past it sometime.’
‘Ben, please, don’t. I mean it.’
‘Okay’ I tapped a knuckle against the window. ‘You know, last winter my mother got in a car accident. She wasn’t supposed to be driving at all. We weren’t supposed to let her. I used to unhook the battery cables so the car wouldn’t start. But somehow she got it started. Either I forgot or she figured it out. Maybe someone helped her reconnect the battery, someone who didn’t know what was going on. My mother could be… insistent. Anyway, she got all the way out to I-95. Who knows how. I guess she just kept driving and driving. Maybe she was lost. Or maybe she was trying to drive all the way down here, to Boston, to come home. She was born here, did I ever tell you that? She loved this place.’
My eyes began to seep.
Caroline was silent.
‘Somehow she wound up on the wrong side of the highway. She was going north in the southbound lanes. She must have gone on the wrong ramp or got confused by the signs or something. It must have been terrifying, all those cars coming at her. She drove into a concrete bridge support.’
Caroline made a soft, startled sound.
‘She was okay. Bumps and bruises. She had a black eye. It took forever to heal. The car was totaled. My dad had a fit.
‘That was when she decided. She said, ‘I don’t want to be a vegetable, Ben. I’d be mortified.’ That’s the word she used, mortified. She said she did not want to go through it alone and my father was not someone she could turn to, not for that kind of help. She was-’
‘Ben, please. Don’t do this.’
‘She got a book. That was Anne Truman: She researched the whole thing. The Seconal, she had a doctor friend. I won’t tell you his name. He gave her an anti-nausea drug too, so she could keep it all down.’
‘Ben, I don’t want to hear this. I can’t.’
‘There were ninety pills. We had to empty them all into a glass of water. Ninety red gel-capsules, one by one. They didn’t want to dissolve. We had to keep stirring and stirring.’
‘Ben-’
‘It was supposed to taste bitter. She said you were supposed to chase it with something to dull the taste. Jell-O or applesauce or something. She used bourbon.’
Caroline walked over to the window where I was standing. She stood in front of me, close, and said, ‘Ben, stop. I can’t hear this.’
‘I need you to understand.’
‘I do understand.’
‘Mum said, “Ben, hold my hand.” So I held her hand. And she said, “My Ben, my Ben.” And she went to sleep.’
‘Ben, no more. For your own sake, please. Please. I understand.’
I brushed my eyes. ‘Do you?’
‘I understand,’ she whispered.
We kissed, leaning against the window. It was a different — better — sort of kiss, because this time Caroline gave herself to it completely.
44
I woke up early the next morning, just after dawn, and stood by the window. The city was gray, the sky above it a dark slate that was reluctant to brighten. I drew a circle on the glass with my finger, a little greasy circle around the area I took to be Mission Flats.
‘What are you doing up?’ Caroline said.
‘I need to find out more about the Trudell case.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Braxton said — Where can I find more information?’
She groaned. ‘You’ve already seen the files.’
‘There has to be more.’
‘Ben, it’s too early-’
‘I can’t sleep. I keep thinking there has to be more. What else is there?’
‘Do we have to talk about it now?’
‘No. Sorry, go back to sleep.’
‘Try the detectives’ notebooks.’
‘Good.’ I thought a moment. ‘Wait — what detectives’ notebooks?’
‘Homicide detectives keep notebooks on every investigation. It’s routine. Sometimes there’s information in the notebooks that doesn’t make it into the reports. You might find something there.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Archives, I imagine.’
‘Okay, then I need to see those notebooks. Can you get me into the archives?’
‘Not right this minute.’
‘Alright, when it opens, then.’
Without lifting her head or even opening her eyes, she said, ‘Ben, all the Trudell files are privileged. They’re not circulated. Lowery saw to that. You’ll need to file a request with Archives, and it probably won’t be granted. You could file a Freedom of Information request with the AG, but it would take a while.’
‘How long is a while?’
‘Six months. Maybe a year.’
‘A year! We don’t have a year.’
‘What can I tell you.’
‘You can tell me how I get in to see those notebooks today’
One of Caroline’s eyes popped open. She propped herself on one elbow. ‘Chief Truman,’ she said carefully, ‘if this case ever comes to trial, it will be important that the prosecutor not be aware of any improprieties in the way evidence is obtained. And it would be unethical for me to tell you how to evade the public-records laws.’
‘Right. Sorry. I shouldn’t-’
‘What I will say is this: If — I said if hypothetically — you needed to get those records without the proper clearance, the best way would be to take my dad with you and see a man named Jimmy Doolittle over at Berkeley Street. And you would never ever tell the prosecutor that you got those notebooks illegally, because then she would have an ethical obligation to report it to the court.’
