CHAPTER 8
Amos Posner is virtually happy living in the metaphysical fog that allows him to speculate that Heidi’s body will never be found. There have been no more police visits or that of the doctor boyfriend from Manhattan. On top of that nothing has surfaced regarding the federal investigation into his activities except the ongoing knowledge that with every month that passes, the statute of limitations affords less time for the Justice Department to proceed against him. His mind gradually accepts the current status and the inevitability of living with thoughts of Heidi throughout his life.
He remembers a Woody Allen film,
Time has not healed the pain as much as he thought it would after the first few months. A distance between Sara and him remains, but he senses some very gradual improvement although he continues to sleep on the sofa bed when he’s in the city. He no longer asks if she plans to spend time in Amagansett and she never mentions it. His small attempts at what for him are unaccustomed displays of general household assistance acknowledge he’s somehow been at fault; he vacuums, empties the dishwasher, or scrubs the bathrooms. They begin to speak with some regularity, but limit their dialogue to commonplace matters; the dishwasher’s chronic need for repair, whether they should repaint the living room, a visit to the dentist, or the state of federal and local politics. But they do speak, which is a major advance. And he still disappears with regularity, as if on a schedule, for several days at a time back to Amagansett and to the beaches and ocean he loves so much. Time helps. His melancholy begins to ebb and he discovers that he can function in and around the house without the constant reminder of the tragedy that occurred. Yet he is often lonely and another fear takes hold; at times when he’s at the beach house and tries to reach her on some pretext to talk, there are those nights when she neither answers her apartment phone nor her cell, and where his imagination sees her with another man. He tries to reject this proposition. He tells himself that if he avoided infidelity no matter the horrific consequences that ensued, then she would follow suit, as it was in both their natures.
He realizes she hasn’t asked him about another woman in some time, and so contemplates asking her if she’s met someone else, but he rejects the idea as too petty before it gains traction. He cannot avoid the doubts, however, as the issue of sex no longer seems to arise.
He often considers moving far away, to California or even another country, and just as quickly gives up the thought as unrealistic and irrational. At this point, the truth is unlikely to ever emerge. Even so he has researched and discovered that the penalty for concealing a body is more or less minor, but only if no larger crime is involved. He cannot, however, take the risk of such consideration if he confesses. Every time he contemplates admitting the facts of what happened that chilly May day he returns to his original conclusion that he simply may not be believed.
At times he wonders whether he should leave some written record of the events that led to her death. Something that could someday be shared with her family back in Austria and friends like the doctor, yet he knows such an action is absurd. Still it bothers him that no one else knows what has become of her and that she lies in an unmarked grave just steps from the Montauk Overlook parking lot.
He visited the site only once since he buried her and that was just recently. Only days before there was a hammering rainstorm steered by violent winds. The intensity falls short of a hurricane, yet the results are as unnerving. The deluge lasts through the night and into the next morning. Branches and even whole trees lie scattered across roads and lawns. Power lines are down. Areas closer to the beaches like Posner’s actually suffer less from the violence as the storm flew in over land and not from the sea.
Posner waits a day, and then decides not to delay any longer. The town trucks come to clear the streets and the electric company restores power. It’s time. The transient summer visitors are gone and those that stayed on to enjoy Indian summer have fled back to their permanent homes to avoid the worst of the storm. So it isn’t a surprise that the highway from Amagansett to Montauk is relatively free of traffic at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning. Posner drives within the speed limit, yet is still riddled with anxiety as a police cruiser passes him going the other way. He has felt like this before and for the hundredth time wonders when the feeling will pass and concludes that it probably never will. Not as long as he remains a suspect, however distant and improbable that seems.
He pulls into the far side of the parking lot. The exact spot is etched into his memory and has been so for months. At first he’s surprised at the absence of debris, and then realizes that the space has already been cleared of the storm’s residue. Posner leaves the car and walks into the wooded area. He feels as if his body is simultaneously being pulled in two different directions. One part of him anxious to see that the grave is still covered, while another more desperate element is terrorized at the thought he’ll find an exposed silver trash bag with decomposed limbs protruding from animal-induced tears in the plastic.
Away from the sun, a thick cover of trees welcomes him into a cool dampness. He walks tentatively down the slope. At first he isn’t at all even sure he is in the right space, but some instinct takes hold, and then he sees the gnarled distended shape of the black pine and the roots he tripped over. The ground at the gravesite is still damp and covered with pine needles much like its surroundings. He can’t tell whether anything has ever altered the soil. The undisturbed state of the immediate area after such an extensive storm is such that he doubts anything ever will.
He stands there and the memory of her presence sweeps over him. Almost five months and a few feet of topsoil separate him from any chance to reclaim sanity. He stands with one hand on the twisted trunk of the sand pine and loses track of time, although he couldn’t have been there for more than a few minutes. The wail of a shore bird brings him back. He takes two steps up the incline when something catches his eye on the right side of the small clearing. Something small and man-made that doesn’t fit lies half hidden under a curtain of pine needles. He moves to the spot, bends and pulls out the broken heel of a woman’s shoe. It’s sooty and gray but he can see it had once been white. It’s Heidi’s. No question. It’s Heidi’s.
Posner shudders. The heel must have somehow broken off when he tripped and dropped the body. Memory summons up the image of the tear in the bag and the white shoe sticking out. He can’t imagine that in five months no one has stumbled on it. He slides the heel into the pocket of his windbreaker and trudges back up the hill, so oblivious to anything other than the cargo he carries that it isn’t until he is nearly back at the Lexus that he sees a small blue car on the far side of the lot. A slight movement behind the windshield betrays the presence of a driver but the tinted window makes any recognition impossible.
As he drives away, he watches the blue car through the rearview mirror. A cloud of blue-gray tobacco smoke begins to float from the driver-side window until a surge of air tears it away. He’s sure the occupant is watching him. It’s nothing, Posner thinks. Just a coincidence. Someone just happens to arrive in the lot at the same time he comes out of the woods. The lot is empty except for his car, so it’s natural to look at someone in an otherwise deserted place.
He keeps thinking about the man in the blue car. He assumes it’s a man, as he accelerates down the highway then catches himself as he sees the speedometer race to over seventy. He eases off the gas, coasts into Montauk village, and stops at a drive-in. He buys a coffee, gets back in his car, and steels himself that he will not let such coincidences bother him. He sips half of the coffee and drives home feeling more in control. And to the extent he can exercise his will, he doesn’t let the incident intrude on his life.
A few days later he stands in the middle of his living room and watches a procession of spindrift fly off rims of angry surf. There must have been a storm far out to sea, but the local forecast remains sunny with light breezes. For inexplicable reasons he keeps the heel, no matter the remote potential risk of its discovery. It rests in the zippered inside pocket of the windbreaker that hangs in the back of his garage together with other slightly out-of- fashion clothing he is not yet ready to give away. It is not by any means a trophy even though a prosecutor someday might call it such. No. He keeps it as a reminder of his own stupidity and the confusion between innocence and guilt.
The muted whirr of a phone call from Detective Wisdom draws him back. He hasn’t heard from the police in several months. Wisdom explains that it’s just a routine follow-up. Posner is happy Wisdom’s not there. If he were he might hear Posner’s sudden gasp as the detective announces himself, but whatever alarm he initially feels when he knows it’s Wisdom, begins to dissipate in seconds.
