Too Close to Home

“Okay,” she said, so far unconvinced.

“Now, since it doesn’t appear to be a murder-suicide, let’s move on to the next scenario, which is that the Langleys were killed for a specific reason. Or maybe just Langley himself, and Donna, and Adam, they were killed because they were witnesses, something like that. Maybe it’s related to some case Langley’s been working on, maybe the one where he got that kid off, the one who beat the other kid to death. I’m sure Barry’ll be combing through all his files, interviewing others at the law firm, looking at all the things Langley’s been up to, who might be pissed at him because he didn’t keep them out of jail, and those who might be pissed that he kept others from going to jail they thought should have.”

“Try to say that one again,” Ellen said.

“Yeah, well, you get my drift. Regardless, there could have been a specific reason for what happened, which again means there’s no reason for us to be worried for ourselves.”

I watched Ellen for some kind of reaction. There wasn’t much of one, but her skepticism was detectable. “This is what you do,” she said. “You always find reasons for me not to be worried. Well, this is something to worry about. It could have been a robbery. Someone broke into the Langleys’ and ended up killing them. You can’t tell me something like that couldn’t happen here, couldn’t happen anyplace.”

“Okay, point taken. Let’s say it’s a robbery, or some totally random, crazy act. A roaming serial killer. He happens upon the Langley house out of the blue. The odds of something like that happening to a family, even though there’s a serial killer industry out there in the movies that makes everyone fucking paranoid, are absolutely a million to one. Probably a few hundred million to one. When you figure the odds are like that, what are the odds that something like that would also happen to the people who lived right next door?”

“That’s your theory,” Ellen said. “That we’re somehow bulletproof”-and then she winced at her own analogy-“because it’d be like lightning striking twice. A crazed serial killer isn’t going to hit two houses side by side.”

I took a sip of my iced tea. “Yeah.” Another argument had occurred to me. “Let’s say it was the other way around, that something good had happened to the Langleys. Let’s say they’d won the New York State lottery. Would you feel like you were next in line to win?”

“I’d probably at least go out and buy a ticket,” Ellen said. She studied me for a moment, then said, “I think you’re talking out of your ass. We should put the house on the market and get the hell out of here.” Then she got out of her chair and went back inside.

To be honest, even as I was saying it, I knew I was talking out my ass, too.

We had several calls from reporters. A young woman from the Promise Falls Standard tried to get a quote out of Ellen when she answered the phone, and when I took two different calls from the Times Union and the Democrat-Herald in Albany, I said I had nothing to say. Something I’d learned while working for the mayor’s office was that it was very rare someone’s life got better after being quoted in a newspaper. I also spotted an assortment of TV news vans up on the highway at different times through the day, but the cops weren’t letting anyone come down the lane. I figured Barry would be happy to answer questions for the cameras. He loved to be on TV, loved to see himself on the evening news. I just hoped he thought to tuck in his shirt beforehand. I wasn’t sure viewers were ready for a shot of his hairy, perspiring gut.

When cops weren’t actually questioning us, they were wandering all over the place. Guys in white Hazmat suits had been through the Langley home. Others were wandering through the backyard of the house, like they were examining each blade of grass. One time, looking out our front window, I caught glimpses of them taking baby steps through the woods, searching for what, I had no idea. Later in the day, a towing firm on contract with the Promise Falls Police Department hauled away Albert Langley’s Saab SUV and Donna Langley’s Acura.

Late afternoon, the phone rang yet again and I picked up.

“Jim.”

There aren’t that many people who can put so much into one word. Who can, in doing nothing more than speaking your own name to you, somehow assert their authority and sense of superiority. Conrad Chase packed arrogance and pretension and condescension into a single syllable like he was stuffing an overnight bag with a truckload of cow shit. Maybe he was entitled to. He was a former professor who’d become the president of Thackeray College, a onetime bestselling author, and on top of all that, he was Ellen’s boss. He’d been involved in our lives, in one way or another, from the moment we’d moved to Promise Falls, and maybe by now I should have found a way to tolerate him. But some things don’t come easily to me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Conrad.”

“Jim,” Chase said, “I just heard about Albert. And Donna, and their boy, Adam, too? Good God, it’s beyond imagining.”

“That’s right, Conrad.”

“How are you folks doing? How’s Derek? He and Adam were friends, weren’t they? And Ellen? How’s she bearing up?”

“I’ll put her on.”

“No, that’s okay, I don’t want to disturb her.”

Of course he didn’t.

“I just wanted to see how you all were doing. Illeana and I, we’re terribly upset about all this, and while it’s horribly tragic for the Langleys, it must be a shock for you, living right next door to something like this. Did you hear anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“They were all shot, isn’t that right?”

“That’s my understanding.”

“Three people, shot to death, Jesus, and you didn’t hear anything?”

Like it was our fault. Or maybe just mine. If I’d heard something, if I’d heard the first shot, maybe I could have prevented it from being the total bloodbath it turned out to be.

“No,” I said. “We didn’t hear anything.”

“Do the police know what happened?” Conrad asked. “Surely to God it wasn’t a murder-suicide kind of thing.”

“Doesn’t appear to be that,” I said. “But beyond that, I really don’t know.”

“Illeana and I, we’ll drop by, see how you’re doing,” he said.

“We’ll certainly look forward to that,” I said.

“Okay then,” he said. For an acclaimed author and former English professor who should know a thing or two about irony, Conrad seemed strangely oblivious to sarcasm.

“I’ll tell Ellen you called,” I said, and hung up.

By nightfall, things seemed to be settling down, but it would be a stretch to say things were back to normal. I wondered whether life around here would ever really be normal again. But Ellen and I did pull together a dinner- nothing too fancy, a salad and burgers on the barbecue-and the three of us did sit together at the table to eat.

There wasn’t a lot of conversation, however.

Ellen told me to take it easy after dinner, go watch TV or read the paper, she’d clean up. I wondered if what she really wanted was for me to leave her alone in the kitchen. I left for a few minutes, then wandered back in on the pretext of making some coffee, and saw an almost empty wineglass next to the sink, where Ellen was standing. She was reaching for it when I said, “Hey.”

She jumped, and as she turned knocked the glass into the sinkful of hot, soapy water.

“Jesus,” she said. “Don’t do that. Especially now.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. I mean, Jesus, no, I’m not fine. Who could be fucking fine?”

I took the long-stemmed glass from the water, set it on the counter. “It might get broken,” I said, “in there with the regular stuff.”

Ellen looked at me. “I was just taking the edge off.”

“Sure,” I said.

“It’s been that kind of day,” she said. “If there ever was a day I’m entitled to a drink, this is it. At least I’m not smoking again.”