Jefferson Street at approximately four-thirty in the afternoon, burns in me still, as I sit here in Tom Pasmore’s vast, eccentric living room waiting to hear from Sergeant Pohlhaus or one of his juniors.
This, too, was a blessing, and I had kept it a secret since the day Philip called to accuse me of hiding his son in my loft. I could have said, “Actually, Philip, two days after he vanished, Mark sent me an e-mail,” but certain things about the e-mail made me decide to keep it to myself, at least until I got to Millhaven. The “Subject” and “From” lines would have raised questions I could not have answered, and they might even have led Philip and the authorities to question its authenticity. Certain
He had made our drinks. We were sprawled on the sofas in the section of the big, mazy room where the sound equipment lives. Tom was tilted back like Henry Higgins, his eyes closed, listening to whatever he’d put in the CD player. Mozart piano sonatas, maybe, Mitsuko Uchida or Alfred Brendel, I don’t know which—I wasn’t paying attention to either the music or what he told me about it.
“This is going to sound pretty crazy to you,” I said.
Tom opened his eyes.
“When we were stopped at Cathedral Square, I saw Mark through the Starbucks window. He was with Lucy Cleveland.”
“You mean Lily Kalendar?” Tom said.
“What she calls herself doesn’t matter,” I said. “You should have seen her.”
“As beautiful as Mark told his friend.”
“You have no idea.”
“If you’d said something at the time, I could have seen them, too.”
“I don’t think I could have said anything. I was so stunned, and then so grateful.”
“You’re sure it was Mark?”
“I couldn’t be wrong about this, Tom.”
“How did he look?”
“A little older. More experienced. Very, very happy.”
“I take it this—
“He wanted me to see them. He wanted me to know he was all right.”
Tom said a strange thing then. “Maybe you think he’s all right because the Sherman Park Killer is being arrested this evening.” When it became clear that I had not understood his remark, he added, “Because he can tell us where he put the bodies.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t really get you.”
“Final resting places and all that. Decent burials. No more speculation on the part of the families. Everybody can get down to the business of grief.”
“I don’t have to grieve for Mark,” I insisted. “I’ll see him again, here and there. Maybe I won’t see him now for years, but I will see him again. He can show himself to me anywhere. And he will always be with Lucy Cleveland.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Tom said. “You might see him anywhere.”
“Which means, Tom, that he was not a victim of that monster I talked to today. He was not mistreated and tortured. He was not subject to the desires of that psychotic creep. What happened to Shane Auslander and Dewey Dell and all the others did not happen to Mark Underhill. His name is not on that list.”
“I see,” Tom said, meaning that he didn’t.
“You will,” I said. “I want to show you something. Would you mind going back up to the computer room?”
“You want to show me something on a computer?” He was already standing up.
“I want to show you something on my computer.”
He led me up the stairs. Inside the room, he went around turning on the lights.
“Should I use a specific machine, or doesn’t it matter?” I asked.
“Use the one I used to look up the address.”
I sat down in front of the keyboard and typed in Gotomypc.com, a site that lets me connect to the monitor of my own computer from the keyboard of a remote machine.
I got to the website and put in my user name and password. Much faster on Tom’s T1 line than on Mark’s computer, the screen changed and asked me for my access code. I tapped it in.
On Tom’s beautiful nineteen-inch screen, my seventeen-inch screen appeared, a little smaller and muddier than in reality, but my screen all the same.
“Fascinating,” Tom said. “Do you use all those programs?”
“Of course not,” I said, and clicked on the envelope that stood for Outlook Express.
Three-fourths of the headings in boldface were spam. Size Does Matter, Earn $50,000 in Three Days at Home, Other Singles in Your Area, Free Viagra Pak. I took a moment to delete them.
“Now look at this one.” I clicked on Subject: lost boy lost girl; From: munderhill. “Do you see that date?”
“Um,” Tom said. “Looks like it was sent on Sunday, the twentieth of June.”
“That was two days after Mark’s disappearance.”
“My goodness.” Tom put a hand to his mouth and bent toward the screen. “Right you are. Extraordinary.”
This e-mail appeared on my screen and Tom’s.
From: munderhill
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 4:32 AM
Subject: lost boy lost girl
u know u have done work enuf
u can rest old writer
we r 2gether
in this other world
rite next door
m
“Print that out,” Tom said.
“If I did, it would use my printer, not yours.”
He grimaced. Nice as he is, Tom likes getting his own way. “‘u can rest old writer’?”
“He’s telling me not to worry about him.”
“‘u know u have done work enuf’? What does that mean? He wants you to stop writing?”
