That’s pretty goddamn weird, don’t you think?”
“I’m the idiot in the family. You aren’t. I’m the one that screws things up, and you’re the one that does things right, and that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it still ought to be. You’re messing up my view of the universe, and I don’t like it one goddamn bit.”
Jimmy nodded. “I seem to be vying for the title of screw-up now.”
“Oh, you’ve taken the belt, brother. You definitely have the championship now.”
Jimmy sat there for a while, blowing out his breath, shaking his head, trying to collect himself.
“Does Trixie know?” I asked.
“Of course not. She did, you’d be talking to a mound of dirt and a gravestone.”
“Anyone else know?”
“Obviously. But I don’t know who.”
“Does anyone you know have any idea that you and Caroline had a thing?”
“I don’t think so. Of course, whoever sent the DVD may have told others. You got this stirred up, you know. You and that column. If you had just left it alone—”
“Jimmy. Are you nuts? Someone has known this for a long time. The column may have stirred them, but I get the impression they’ve been waiting on purpose.”
“This long?”
“All right. Maybe they haven’t been waiting. Maybe he, she, they, whoever, came across the DVD by accident? I don’t know. Maybe it was the column that stirred the blackmailer, or blackmailers, up. But in time, something would have got them on this track. Something like that has a pretty damn good shelf life, Jimmy. Shit, for all we know it’s on the Internet.”
“Christ,” Jimmy said.
“Did you know you were being filmed?”
“No.”
“How does that happen?”
“Hidden camera, I guess. We made love at her apartment many times, so it didn’t occur to me she was filming it. Or maybe someone else set up a camera. I don’t know. It seemed innocent enough then. I was just… enjoying. When I was with Caroline I felt special. It was nice. She had a kind of power over me.”
“Don’t give me that. Power? She had a power over you? What kind of bull is that?”
“It’s true. I’d do anything she wanted. She was experimental and I liked that.”
“Don’t tell me she did things you couldn’t get Trixie to do.”
Jimmy reddened. “It was the way she did it…I guess she really had me going.”
“I think you had a little to do with it, brother.”
“Sure I did. Back then, few weeks before Caroline went missing, I was thinking about leaving Trixie. We were having a few problems. Nothing big. Just that part where the relationship is moving from romance to something more solid. I missed the romance. I wasn’t mature enough to understand what was going on.”
“You’ve gotten more mature in a few months?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I just had the hots for Caroline and that’s the long and the short of it. I got the romance with her.”
“What you got was some humping, so don’t insult Trixie by pretending you were getting romance. Jesus, Jimmy.”
“When I was home with Trixie, well, it really wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t…exciting. Still, I couldn’t imagine being without her.”
“But you couldn’t let go of Caroline?”
“I couldn’t. And you know what? I’m going to backtrack. It wasn’t just the hots. It wasn’t purely sexual. I was in love with two women. They gave me different things.”
“That’s pretty cliched, Jimmy. That’s nothing more than the old bullshit about having your cake and eating it too.”
“I know. But it’s true.”
I leaned forward and put my forearms on the steering wheel. It seemed as if I were in a dream.
“Jesus, Jimmy.”
“I didn’t mean for me and her to happen. Everyone in the department, all the guys, probably half the women, had a crush on Caroline, even the women who were jealous of her. She was in a couple of my classes. Used to stop by the office, we had talks about history, then the talks went to other things. I couldn’t help myself. That skin of hers, it just needed touching. Cason, she had the softest, warmest, smoothest skin I have ever touched. I was a train going down a steep grade. I could see the tracks were out and the bridge was gone, but I couldn’t stop.”
“Did you get a note with the DVD?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Did it say something like, ‘You will want to see this’?”
“No. It said, ‘If you don’t want anyone to see this, await instructions.’”
“Blackmail,” I said.
“Why would you get a note too?”
“Wanted you to know there were more copies than one. That you had to watch yourself. Figured your brother would most likely help you out, help you come up with the money, otherwise it gets posted on the Internet. All done with the tap of a finger.”
“You got to help me, Cason.”
“I’m not sure what to do. Aren’t you the smart one?”
“You’ve got connections. You’re a reporter. You can talk to people I can’t. I start talking, pretty quick it’s going to get back I was having an affair with Caroline. That happens, the job is over, and so is the marriage. I might deserve it, but I don’t want it to happen.”
I let go of the wheel and shifted in my seat. Through the windshield I could see a red bird bouncing about in a tree. The way the light was falling over it, the bird looked as if it were turning dark, transforming into a totally different kind of bird.
“I got to ask you something, Jimmy, and you got to be straight with me. Not even an inch of the bullshit.”
“Shoot.”
“I don’t want to ask this, but I got to. You didn’t…You don’t know what happened to Caroline, do you?”
“You mean did I kill her? Jesus, man. You know me better than that. No, of course not. Are you crazy?”
“I had to ask. I been around enough to know shit can happen.”
“No. A hundred times no. How can you ask me that?”
“Okay. It’s asked. It’s done. Do you have any idea what happened to her?”
He shook his head. “We were supposed to meet that night. Out near the Siegel house, at the old abandoned train station. She was doing a paper on the history of the house. About the sisters, you know? She thought she could get something good she could write about for class, modify later, maybe sell somewhere. She was the kind of person that thought ahead. A very clockwork kind of mind. When you assigned reading she could tell you verbatim what the author of the book said. She was a little less good at presenting her own opinion.”
“But the two of you weren’t meeting out there to discuss her article, were you?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. I went out there and found her car and she wasn’t there. She had picked up some food for the two of us. Taco Bell or some hamburger joint. I don’t remember.”
“Seems like a bad place for a sexual rendezvous.”
“We were going to talk. I hoped it would become sexual after a while, as usual. But she said she had something she wanted to tell me. When I got there she was gone. I looked all over for her, even drove up behind the Siegel house, got out and looked around. I couldn’t find her. Got afraid that if I called anyone on my cell they’d know we were more than student and teacher. I had some idea if I did call, and she turned up, me and her could make a story about her doing a paper on the house, and she asked me to come out and see it, as a teacher, of course. But that seemed too risky, not likely to be believed. So I left. I didn’t think anything had happened to her at first. It was curious. And I was a little worried. But it’s hard to think something like that might really happen to someone you know. I panicked. I drove around a bit. I came back, and she still wasn’t there. Then I got afraid. I still didn’t want to use my cell, but I decided I had to call, so I stopped at a phone booth, called the cops, said there
