“How can I not think it?”
“You’re my brother!”
“I know. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to understand.”
In the past, when a case finally came into focus, I always got a wild burst of energy, a hunger to know. But now I felt heavy, sluggish, incredibly weary. If Easton ran, I wouldn’t have been able to go after him; I was on some other planet, with terrible gravity.
“I want both of you out of here!” he ordered. He scowled at Bonnie. “There is nothing to discuss.”
“There’s a lot to discuss,” I said.
“This is totally asinine.”
“No. This is very serious and important.”
“You have no proof of anything.”
“I have the murder weapon.”
“Oh, don’t be melodramatic! Are there fingerprints on it?
Are there?”
“There may be, even if you think you took care of that.
We use laser technology now.”
He shook his head. Either he didn’t believe me, he wasn’t impressed or he wasn’t afraid. “And what if there aren’t fingerprints?” he inquired.
“Who the hell else would take Dad’s .22 and shoot Sy Spencer? Mom?”
“You would bring her into it.”
“Relax. Who do you think she’s going to blame for all this? You or me?”
I got up and walked toward Easton’s closet. A regu-MAGIC HOUR / 419
lar closet, not a mahogany-and-brass state-of-the-art architectural space like Sy’s. But Easton aspired. Everything was in perfect order: suits, shirts, ties—more of Sy’s—slacks, blazers, shoes. Shoes in their cardboard boxes, stacked on the top shelf. The front panels of the boxes had been cut off so you could see each pair. Years of shoes: penny loafers, tassel loafers and oxfords; white bucks, golf shoes and rubber-soled boaters; tennis sneakers, running sneakers, sandals, slippers.
And thongs. Ordinary rubber thongs for the beach, the kind you can pick up anywhere. A men’s size eleven, my size, my brother’s size.
I covered my left hand with my handkerchief. I took out my pen with my right and, carefully, eased the box off the shelf and caught it in my left.
I said, “You hated to bet when we were kids. You know why? I always won. But I’ll bet you right now these thongs will match the molds we made from impressions in the grass right near Sy’s house, where the shots were fired. A fancy, hot-shit lawn, East. Turf, they call it. It’s a special variety of Kentucky bluegrass called Adelphi. The guy at the State Ag-ricultural Extension said it must have cost him a fucking fortune to cover all that ground. But what the hell. The right shade of green makes a statement.” I held up the box. “I’ll bet you we find a blade or two of Adelphi right in here.”
It took a while before Easton could get his eyes off the shoe box. Then, in an I’ve-got-a-secret boyish manner that my mother would have found enchanting, he gestured me over with his index finger. Without looking at Bonnie, he whispered: “Why is she here?”
“She’s been giving me some information on the case. Some insights into Sy.”
“Oh.” He seemed hesitant about what to do next. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
420 / SUSAN ISAACS
“Why don’t I tell her to take a hike?” He seemed so relieved. He inclined his head; it was almost a bow.
I walked over to Bonnie and spoke softly. “Can you drive a stick shift? Okay, you know where the nature preserve is, that swamp place, about a minute and a half north of here?
Go there. Watch birds or something for an hour and a half.
Then take back roads to your friend Gideon’s. Don’t park too close to his house. Don’t call him to tell him you’re coming. And make your approach from one of the houses behind his in case they’re surveilling his place. Got it so far?”
She was levelheaded, serious and terse. “Yup.”
“Explain to Gideon what’s happening. Under the circumstances, he won’t want you to turn yourself in. So just sit tight.”
“Do you need any help? Want me to call anyone?”
“No.”
“Promise me—”
“Yeah, I’ll be careful. Now look, if for any reason they find you and scoop you up—arrest you—don’t make any state-ments of any kind.”
“Okay.”
Her eyes darted over to Easton. I knew what she was thinking: There was a good chance that if I didn’t nail him, she’d be nailed. And maybe, in the final analysis, I couldn’t nail him. Or I wouldn’t be able to.
“I trust you.” That’s what Bonnie said instead of goodbye.
Then she held out her hand for my car keys and was gone.
“You killed Sy,” I told my brother.
“Please, Steve.”
“You killed him.”
He lowered himself on the chair Bonnie had vacated. “I didn’t mean to.” His voice had the emotional intensity of someone caught running a red light. “I’m sorry.”
MAGIC HOUR / 421
“You meant to kill Lindsay.”
“Yes. How did you figure it out? From that one conversation about lightning?”
“Just tell me what happened, Easton.”
“You know what’s funny?” He kept tugging at the hem of his bathrobe like a woman with lousy legs in a too-short skirt. “You always call me ‘East,’ and now you’re saying
‘Easton.’”
“What happened?”
My brother’s bright-blue eyes filled with tears. “I want you to know I really loved that man. There was only a sixteen-year age difference, but Sy was like a father to me.” He put his hands over his face and wept.
I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him. I wanted to be moved by his grief, but I had too many years in Homicide; I’d watched this movie, The Crying Killer, too many times.
People who commit murder are weird, and not just in their willingness to stick out their tongues at God, to steal His gift of life, to commit the one act that is unquestionably and universally wrong. No, what always got to me about murder-ers wasn’t their evil, their distance from the rest of humanity, but their closeness to it. I’d watched mothers sob at the coffins of babies they’d clubbed to death; I’d heard boyfriends scream out in anguish at the funerals of the
