The Throat

I moved toward the lamp behind the Volvo, but he said, 'Theresa will do it.' He got into the car. Theresa smiled at me and went to pick up the lamp. He drove the station wagon into the wooden shell of the garage with excruciating slowness. She followed him in, set the lamp down in a corner, and went up beside the car. They whispered to one another before he got out of the car. As they came toward me, Theresa's eyes never left my face.

John opened the back door of the Pontiac for them. Before they got in, David took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the smudge from his wife's chin.

6

As if by arrangement, the Sunchanas did not mention either their former landlord or the Blue Rose murders while we were in the car. Theresa described how the policeman had miraculously walked into the smoke to carry them out through the bedroom window. 'That man saved our lives, really he did, so David and I can't be too tragic about the house. Can we, David?'

She was their public voice, and he assented. 'Of course we cannot be tragic.'

'Then we'll live in a trailer while we build a new one. We'll put it on the front lawn, like gypsies.'

'They'll love that, in Elm Hill,' John said.

'Are you staying in a hotel?' I asked.

'We're with my sister. She and her husband moved to Elm Hill years before us—that's why we came here. When we bought our house, it was the only one on the street. There were fields all around us.'

Other questions drew out the information that they had moved to Millhaven from Yugoslavia, where in the first days of their marriage they had rented out rooms in their house to tourists while David had gone to university. They had moved to America just before the war. David had trained as an accountant and eventually got a job with the Glax Corporation.

'The Glax Corporation?' I remembered Theresa's saying 'the Dragonette boy.' On our left, sunlight turned half the pond's surface to a still, rich gold. Mallards floated in pairs on the gilded water. 'You must have known Walter Dragonette.'

'He came to my department a year before I retired,' David said. I didn't want to ask the question anyone with even a tenuous connection to a famous or infamous person hears over and over. Neither did John. There was silence in the car for a few seconds.

Theresa broke it. 'David was shaken when the news came out.'

'Were you fond of him?' I asked.

'I used to think I was fond of Walter, once.' He coughed. 'He had the manner of a courteous young man. But after three or four months, I began to think that Walter was nonexistent. His body was there, he was polite, he got his work done even though he sometimes came in late, but he was not present.'

We drove past the low, red town hall. Visible around a bend in the road, the bare hill that gave the suburb its name raised itself into the sunlight. Mica glittered and dazzled in the gray paths that crossed its deep green.

'Don't you think they suffer, people like that?' asked Theresa.

Her question startled me with its echo of some barely conscious thought of my own. As soon as she spoke, I knew I agreed with her—I believed in the principle behind her words.

'No,' her husband said flatly. 'He was not alive. If you're not alive, you do not feel anything.'

I moved my head to see Theresa in the rearview mirror. She had turned toward her husband, and her surprisingly sharp, clear profile stood out like a profile on a coin. She moved her eyes to meet mine in the mirror. I felt a shock of empathy.

'What do you think, Mr. Underhill?'

I wrenched my eyes away to check for traffic before turning into the parking lot of the little shopping center. 'We saw part of his interrogation,' I said. 'He said that he had been sexually abused by a neighbor when he was a small boy. So yes, I do think he suffered once.'

'That is not an excuse,' David said.

'No,' Theresa sighed. 'It is not an excuse.'

I pulled into a space, and David said something to her in the language they had spoken in their garage. Whatever he said ended with the word Tresich. I am spelling it the only way I can, phonetically. She had anglicized her name for the sake of people like me and the Belknaps.

We got out of the car.

John said, 'If that communication was too private to disclose, please tell me, but I can't help but be curious about what you just said.'

'It was—' David stopped, and raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

'My husband mentioned to me how awful it is, that we have known two murderers.' That same forceful compassion came out of her again, straight at me. 'When we lived upstairs from Mr. Bandolier, he killed his wife.'

7

'We didn't know what to do,' Theresa said. Cups of coffee steamed on the pale wood of the window table between us. She and I sat beside the window onto the parking lot, David and John opposite each other. Two children rolled down the long green hill across the street, spinning through the grass with flying arms and legs. 'We were so frightened of that man. David is right. He was like a Nazi, a Nazi of the private life. And we were so new in America that we thought he could put us in jail if we went to the police. We lived in his house, we didn't know what rights he had over us.'

'Violent,' David said. 'Always shouting, always yelling.'

'Now we would know what to do,' she said. 'In those days, we didn't think anyone would believe us.'

'You have no doubt that he killed his wife?'

David shook his head emphatically, and Theresa said, 'I wish we did.' She picked up her coffee and sipped it. 'His wife was named Anna. She was a beautiful woman, blond, always very quiet and shy. He didn't want her talking to anyone. He didn't want people to know that he beat her.' Her eyes met mine again. 'Especially on weekend nights, when he was drunk.'

'Drunker,' said David. 'On the weekends, he drank more, even more than usual. Then began the yelling, yelling, yelling. And it got louder and louder, until the screaming began.'

'I would see Anna outside in back when we hung up our wash, and she had so many bruises. Sometimes it hurt her to raise her arms.'

'He beat her to death?' I asked.

She nodded. 'One night, I think in October, we heard the shouts, the curses. She was crying so pitifully. He started smashing furniture. They were in their bedroom, just below ours. That big loud voice, cursing at her. It went on and on, and then it just stopped. There was silence.' She glanced at her husband, who nodded. 'Their fights usually ended with Anna crying, and Mr. Bandolier, Bob, calming down and… crooning at her. This time the noise just stopped.' She was looking down at the table. 'I felt sick to my stomach.'

'But you didn't go downstairs?' John asked.

'No,' David said. 'Bob would not permit that.'

'What did he do, call an ambulance?' I asked.

Theresa shook her head vigorously. 'I think Anna was in a coma. The next morning, he must have put her in bed and cleaned up the room.'

This description was so close to what had happened to April Ransom that I looked to see how John was taking it. He was leaning forward with his chin propped on his hand, listening calmly.

'We never saw Anna anymore. He began doing all the washing. Eventually, he washed her sheets every night, because we could see them on the line in the mornings. And a smell began to come from their apartment.