The early-morning sun glared off the reservoir like a light shining in a mirror, causing Tee to squint as he maneuvered his car onto the broad lawn skirt that ran the length of the road alongside the lake. He pulled the cruiser as close to a cement wall as possible. The wall would shield the car from view to a certain extent from passersby but the protection was only partial. Sharp eyes would always find a police car. In Clamden there was never a place he could park with complete privacy, short of driving straight into the woods.
Despite the hour it was warm already, and Tee felt per spiration under his arms as he trudged up the hill parallel to the orchard where the bones had been found. Much of the acreage was still circumscribed by the yellow ribbons declaring it a crime scene, although Tee, the state police, and the FBI had scoured the area time and again. He wondered how many times he had walked through the orchard in the past few months, choosing its easier path up the hill, not knowing he was walking through a ghoulish graveyard.
The irony of the situation did not amuse him.
He carried the blanket that was always stored in the trunk of the cruiser and bore the stamp of the Clamden police. It was an aging brown, coarse and itchy, and it had draped the shoulders of people chilled by icy waters, covered the naked bodies of drunks and druggies, and had even been pressed into service as a shawl when the power was off in police headquarters in midwinter. It also served Tee's purposes on his weekly hike through the woods.
It took him five minutes to reach the crest of the hill; he clambered up bare rocks for the last fifty yards. He was sweating profusely by the time he reached the top and sat heavily on the worn rock overlooking the reservoir. The view was, as always, spectacular, but he avoided it now.
In a few minutes he would be called upon to admire it and he did not want his eyes to be jaded with its beauty. He was breathing hard from the climb and he thought, as he did every time, that he must lose weight. There was an easier route to the top from the other side of the hill, of course, but access to the hiking path would increase his chances of being seen. No one would see him arrive this way, no one would see him leave. Theoretically. As a policeman, he knew that the chances of actually doing anything unnoticed were not as good as they sounded in theory. People, witnesses, turned up in unexpected places, at unpredictable times. He took a risk every time he came, and he knew it and hated it, but was not able to stop himself from coming.
He heard the footsteps on the path long before she arrived. He sniffed at his armpits. She would be sweating too, but it never bothered him; he hoped it did not bother her. He smoothed the blanket on their rock and waited, pretending not to hear her until she was almost upon him.
She came from among the trees, following the narrow path over the rocks, across the stream, around the fallen timber, moving lightly as a deer.
Slender as a wand, she moved as gracefully as any of the creatures of the woods. Her pace increased as always as she threw herself into a sprint up the last, steepest part of the hill. He could hear her heavy breathing now and he turned to watch her, her face concentrating with the effort of the sprint, the red of her headband bobbing and flashing from behind the intervening branches like a cardinal on the wing.
Tee rose to greet her and she flung herself into his arms, panting, a smile bursting forth in the final moment before she pressed her head against his chest. He held her for a minute as she regained her breath, feeling her torso rise and fall, feeling her ribs slide up and down beneath his hands. He put his face to the top of her head and smelled her hair, a scent that was her own, fresh and faintly reminiscent of grapes. He thrilled to have her in his arms, so vital, young and lean, delicate yet strong when she clung to him. Everything about her was firm to the touch, smooth with a woman's softness, but solid, toned.
He lifted her easily-her diminutive size excited him, made him want to curl himself completely around her, to encircle and subsume her-and she clasped her legs around his waist. Her arms on his neck were damp with sweat.
'Hello, Chiefie,' she said, her southern tones faintly mocking as always.
'Hello, Mrs. Leigh,' he said. Whenever he spoke to her his voice was softer than usual, and he felt a shyness under her gaze that was unaccustomed. He knew that with her, for their brief moments together, he was a different person than the one the rest of the world knew. He was a different person than he normally saw within himself. When he looked into her pale blue eyes he felt he must surely tumble in, she made him so weak and wanting.
She squeezed him tightly with her legs, tightening her vise until his discomfort showed on his face, her eyes twinkling at the effect. He would not tell her to stop, he never told her she did too much of anything. It would be a contest, she would squeeze as long and hard as she could until he cried out in pain or she tired of the struggle. Tee tried to kiss her but she leaned her torso farther away from him, seeking greater leverage for her powerful thighs, clinging with her hands to his upper arms. Her eyes danced with amusement as she watched him trying not to give in to her will.
He gasped, putting his hands on her knees and prying them away from him.
She resisted him for a moment, then relinquished her grip, disappointed in him. She hung from his neck for a moment, making him bend, taxing his back, then dropped lightly onto her feet.
Tee felt that he had let her down in some way, that he should have stood there until tears came to his eyes. He wanted to lift her onto his waist again, to give himself another chance to do what she wanted, but she had apparently already forgotten the incident and was standing on the edge of the blanket, looking out at the view.
'Isn't it spectacular?'
'Yes,' said Tee, allowing himself to look at it for the first time.
'You don't see it though,' she chided him. 'Not really.'
Tee looked at the water, still shining silver in the early sun, the verdant sweep of trees, stretching for miles, obliterating the houses and roads that lay within them, the pale blue of the sky flecked with high, tracery clouds like fingers of lace. A hawk circled slowly, rising on the early thermals, wings spread as if fixed in space. He thought he saw it, he wanted to see what she saw.
'It's beautiful,' he said. He stooped over and put his arms around her from behind. His hands could nearly encircle her waist. 'You're beautiful.'
She shook her head, indicating that he was wrong, that he did not, could not understand what she saw and what she knew.
As always when with her, he began to dislike her. It was when she was away that he needed her so badly, when he longed to find the softness, the romance, the tenderness that was so seldom there in her presence.
For a moment he asked himself why lie was with her, why he put himself through it all with a woman he didn't really like; then the touch of her reminded him.
He pulled her gently into him, pressing his groin against her, burying his face in her hair once more. She made him want to scream, she made him weak. Sometimes when he kissed her he was so overcome that he trembled standing up and felt as if his knees would not support him. He cherished her for making him feel that way. He cherished her for making him desire.
'I would like to soar like that hawk,' she said, spreading her arms.
He kissed her neck, grasped one of her arms and ran his hand from her wrist to her armpit, relishing the moist texture of her skin, the little muscle, strong and firm under the taut skin. She seemed not to notice what Tee was doing, nor to respond to him so much as the surroundings.
'Sometimes when I'm up here I want to hurl myself off the edge,' she said.
'Don't. I would hate it without you.'
'I feel as if I could float just like that bird, all the way down to the water.'
Heights made Tee giddy. Sometimes he felt as if he might be forced against his will to leap, pulled by some unknown force to the edge and beyond. He tried to stay well back from balconies, railings, cliff edges.
He sat on the blanket and pulled her down beside him, relieved that she came without resistance. Some days he would have to coax, or listen to her for a long time while she told him the convoluted stories of her life, her dealings with her mother, her husband, a coterie of tortured girlfriends. Some days she would talk while Tee made love to her, giving him little encouragement, indeed little recognition until she was ready. Tee would feel belittled, insulted, humiliated, but it did not matter, he could not stop himself, he was crazy for her, crazy with his need for her.
'I swear, I must be nu-uts,' she said, elongating her vowels into two or three. 'My husband is on the brink of bankruptcy. Right on the brink, just every bit as close to it as I am to the edge of this cliff…'
