“Well, I won’t keep you from your family any more. I just wanted to tell you that I’d prefer not to go ahead. But if you still feel it’s important, I will. Is it still important?”
“I think so, but it’s still up to you.”
“Then let me know what you decide. I did promise you I’d do it and I will. It’s funny. When I called you tonight, I was planning to tell you I absolutely didn’t want to go ahead. But now that I’ve told you why, it isn’t so important anymore. Thank you for listening. Call me when you decide what to do. Goodbye.”
Wisdom doesn’t have a chance to speak before he hears a dial tone. He didn’t have time to tell her that now there’s a risk in going ahead with her plan that they hadn’t given much thought to up till now. Even if they decide to go ahead, he’d have to fill her in on the possible danger, however remote. He moves back into the kitchen and Karen looks up.
“Sorry about that. She’s a possible witness in the disappearance case.”
“Is that the sister you told me about?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s from Europe.”
“I mean what’s she like, I could tell she was foreign?”
“Nothing special. A woman trying to forget about a problem she had with her sister a long time ago.”
“Will she?”
“Will she what?”
“Forget about her problem.”
“Time heals lots of things. For her, I think it will take longer than most.”
CHAPTER 14
Posner sits alone on the top step and looks down at the red quarry tiles that in seconds changed his whole life. A part of him still thinks he’s been caught up in some colossal hallucination. Heidi is, in fact, just a fictional character. Someone he’s never met and only dreamt about. A make-believe person conjured up from a movie or book who died right here. Although they’ve been bleached and then washed many times, he can never look at the tiles and see anything other than splattered blood.
He moves down the steps and stands at the base of the stairway. The hall light is on directly above his head, as it has been on constantly since that day. Some part of his brain insists that every step be visible so no one can ever fall again. He bends down and draws his fingers across the cool tiles, eventually moving them into the gray channels of grouting. Some of the grout now has a lighter shade where he’s applied some bleach. His eyes bore into the floor with almost radiographic intensity, but his sight cannot penetrate the tiles’ facade. There is no trace of blood, yet he knows that chemical tests would prove otherwise. An objective observer such as a real estate appraiser would describe the space as the entrance area of a modern house in a beach community. The red tiles are not exceptional. There are tiles like these in probably half a million homes across the country, but these particular tiles are matchless. They alone and uniquely have been an instrument of death.
He leaves the house in faint darkness and enters his car. He looks around, but there in the early dawn sees no sign of the little blue car. Maybe he’s still sleeping, he muses as he releases the hand brake and rolls down the driveway. He also doesn’t see the police car that Wisdom promised. Probably too early for them as well. He looks at his watch just as the hands form a straight line from twelve and six.
The highway ahead is empty and spotted with wisps of ground fog. He keeps checking his rear mirror, but there is no sign of another car. In the east, the sun rises to meet his eyes above the horizon of wooded hills and lofty dunes. At this hour it’s an oversized orange ball that summons him even as it jumps from dune to dune atop the highway as he moves eastward. There is warmth in this light that is almost spiritual. It signals him with a beacon’s energy to return to the overlook and check to see if the man in the blue car or anyone else has been there.
His conversation with Wisdom convinces him the police have not been involved. In retrospect it was a smart move, however uncomfortable, to draw them in, if only to further defray any possible suspicion. Although he has not seen the face of the man in the blue car, he is sure it must be the doctor boyfriend, Henry. Posner has no reason to suspect this other than by deduction. Since he was one of the few people on the bus who spoke to Heidi, the doctor has probably targeted him and whoever else was there as suspects. Yet the doctor hasn’t a shred of evidence to link Heidi to him or else he would have already given it to the police. His trip this morning is to insure that the spot near the overlook still remains in its natural state after his first encounter with the blue car.
He arrives at the overlook just as the daylight begins to march across the pines. He has no need of a flashlight although one lies in his trunk cradled by a rake and shovel. They have rested there in the same place without use since that evening in May. Everything has long since been cleaned; the trunk vacuumed of obvious sand traces and the shovel’s shiny steel blade washed and dried.
The air at this dawn hour delivers a sharp chill that slices through the fleece sweatshirt under his windbreaker. He disappears into the pines at the edge of the lot and is swallowed from view if there was an observer, but he’s alone. He’s already checked and waited several minutes before leaving his car and setting out into the trees.
He soon comes upon the space and lurches to a wobbly stop as dawn bathes the area near the landmark pine tree in a pale orange. He immediately sees the ground’s been disturbed. Someone’s been here in the last few days. He bellows a string of curses as he moves around a few random shallow remnants of holes that radiate from where he knows the grave site lies. He approaches the unfilled areas and starts to scrape soil with the edge of his shoe into the remaining open cavities. In minutes he is done and steps back against the gnarled sand pine to observe his effort. His breath comes in short bursts from the effort, but he feels satisfied until he realizes that the area still doesn’t look untouched. Twigs, pines cones, and needles aren’t as random as they should be. The space definitely looks as if there have been recent visitors. A new chill dances across the back of his neck. Not from early morning dampness, but from the renewed fear of discovery.
He tells himself to stay calm and think. The grave is still undisturbed, so whoever was here failed to find anything.
“Good, good,” he repeats aloud as he jogs back up the hill to the lot, fixated on what he must do next. The sun is higher now, and the lot is already half-washed in light. He pulls the rake from his trunk and returns to smooth over the soil. The work is so easy he nearly laughs until he remembers that a body rests just below his feet. He pushes the pinecones and needles back into some reasonable random pattern. He stops and inverts the rake to pull some clods of wet soil from its tines when his fingers grasp the utterly foreign texture of silver plastic, just like the material in the bag he used to bury Heidi.
Posner stares at the tiny silver flake between his fingers, an indestructible polymer that will survive all normal conditions save fire. He looks again at the ground. Maybe there’s more he thinks, but he soon verifies that his fingers hold the sole confirmation that anything was ever put in this sandy soil. He puts the artifact in his jacket pocket and realizes that it now rests alongside the bit of broken heel. One last look at the site verifies that he has returned it to a semblance of its original state. He walks back to his car. It is nearly seven and the lot is still thankfully empty.
He drives back toward home, yet he doesn’t want to be confined indoors just yet. He pulls into a beach access less than a mile from his house and looks out over a calm ocean. Again he’s alone. It is as if all the people have gone. Except that he knows they haven’t. Wisdom is there and the man in the blue car whom he might as well start calling the doctor. He’s the one who worries Posner far more. Anyone who stalks someone like that could be dangerous. Wisdom didn’t mention any possible danger. Maybe he didn’t want him to worry, but now he’s worried all the same. What if the doctor comes looking for him with a weapon?
Think! Think! He’s got to sort this out.
He opens the door and leaves it ajar as he walks a few steps onto the beach. It’s the same beach that he took Heidi to so many months ago. He pictures her standing there only a few feet away, posing in a pink-and-white dress with the spray of the surf soaring in the background. A vivid image of her posing him for a photo morphs into one of her sitting on his couch, legs spread around a black patch, and then immediately transforms in a flash of color as he imagines her falling in a grotesque cartwheel down the stairs creating a pool of blood. He shudders and gasps until his pulse calms.
