What Has Become Of You Part 19

-Really? People are talking about me?

-To say the least.

-I don't mean to worry people, but I've figured some things out. That last Friday, after I got back from the hotel, I didn't go in the house right away. Instead I lay in the gra.s.s in the backyard and looked up at the stars for a long time. I hadn't done that since I was a kid-not since I'd done it with Annabel. Annabel is real, didn't you know? Just like Scotty is real. Just like everything is real, in its own way.

After I'd been lying there for a while, it became clear to me that I didn't have to die. Not yet. But I also knew I couldn't go on living the way I was living. I couldn't do anything until I felt like doing it. So what I decided to do was nothing. Nothing except disappear . . .

Vera interrupted her internal script to knock on the front door. There was no answer, no pale face appearing behind the gla.s.s window. She knocked again, bowing her head, as though someone were more likely to appear if she averted her eyes. Still no response. She moved away from the doorway and pressed her face to the nearest window, hoping to see something through the blinds, but saw only a muddied hint of yellow that seemed to bathe the entire room. Yellow curtains, Vera thought. She pounded on one of the windows, then tried to open it, but as she had expected, it was locked up tight.

She went around to the other side of the house. The hill sloped downward on this side of the hill, making the windows seem higher-just an inch or two out of her reach-and she noticed right away that something else was different here. One of these windows was open a crack. She felt victorious. Not many people would leave a window open overnight in April, in a currently vacant property-unless, that is, someone was inside.

She wished there were something for her to stand on, to give herself some added height and leverage. A ladder was too much to hope for, but an upturned trash can, a stray bucket, a st.u.r.dy plant pot all might make enough of a difference in helping her reach the screen. Lacking any of these, she could only stand on her toes and pound on the window some more, feeling her fatigue give way to mounting hysteria as she did so. I need to stop this, she thought; I need to stop carrying on like this-but that voice in her head seemed faint and far away.

Behind the window, something shifted-an advancing shape that was clearly human. But the shape was wrong, the silhouette too big.

The shades jerked up, and Vera found herself eye to eye with a startled-looking man, his face pockmarked and haggard.

She screamed-a m.u.f.fled scream, but one that frightened her almost as much as it frightened the man on the other side of the gla.s.s. "Jesus, lady!" she heard him say, and as he fumbled for the window, she pivoted on her heels and broke into a run.

She was still running down the hill when she heard the window wrench the rest of the way open and the man weakly yelling after her, "Christ, lady, I just needed a warm place to sleep. Hey, you calling the cops? Don't do that, okay? I wasn't bothering n.o.body!"

Vera wasn't sure how long she ran for-five minutes, maybe as many as ten-but she had never had a runner's strength and stamina. She dropped down on the ground on the outskirts of some woods, clutching her tote bag to her and gasping for air. She put her head between her knees and tried to slow her breathing, tried to recollect herself. A homeless man, she thought, that's all. She should have known. She remembered overhearing a story from one of her former Dorset Community College colleagues about being shown an empty apartment and having a terrified homeless man spring out of the walk-in closet when the landlord opened it.

She got up in search of a road sign to determine her whereabouts. She was on the Old Roland Road, a good forty-minute walk back to her apartment. Best to head back in that direction, she knew, but she was not ready to concede defeat just yet.

She walked about twenty minutes before stopping for a rest in downtown Dorset near the small waterfront parking lot where skateboarders often practiced their flips, grinds, and jumps. But it was too early for skateboarders. She looked out over the river, spotting the distant heads of ducks gliding along the water's surface; they were her only company.

"You're right, Elliott," she said out loud. Now that she thought of it, she couldn't remember ever not seeing ducks year-round. She remembered something else-sitting in the Roundview Hotel room across from Jensen as she mentioned the line about Holden at the lake in Central Park.

Do you know what I think is beautiful? That part where Holden says he feels like he's disappearing every time he crosses the street. And then there's the ducks in Central Park. How he wants to know where they go in the winter.

She could still visualize how Jensen had looked as she'd said these words, one leg crossed over the other as she perched on the edge of the hotel bed, her face contemplative and a little childlike.

Elliott's voice in her head again: The ducks never go anywhere, have you noticed?

She thought of Jensen's parents. She thought of Les Cudahy saying, She's a good girl, mostly. A good girl. And of Jensen saying her parents would do anything for her.

Where had Jensen redirected herself, if she had left New York City?

Back to ME.

Back to ME I suppose.

What if Jensen had gone back to Maine and had sought refuge in her own parents' house? What if they were hiding her? She pictured herself in the Cudahys' driveway, seeing the light from the TV reflected in one of the windows; she imagined knocking on the back door, which would be closest to the light, and hearing the ba.s.set hound bark l.u.s.tily in response. She imagined a long wait before she heard an inner door open and saw Mrs. Cudahy standing behind the screen door dressed in a nightgown, her gray hair in pink foam curlers. She even pictured herself from Mrs. Cudahy's perspective: worn and disheveled from traveling, her overstuffed bag in one hand.

But then what? If Vera were to ask if Jensen was hidden somewhere in her home, she could not imagine that this inquiry would be well received. I can't believe you, of all people, would come here and suggest a thing like that to me, Mrs. Cudahy might say. Don't you think the house has already been searched? That was the first thing those cops did. Parents are always the suspects first, even when there isn't a crime.

And what would Vera say in response? Look, Mrs. Cudahy, I know you've lost two children already. And I know Jensen wanted to disappear. Perhaps she's returned but has asked you to pretend she's still lost out there somewhere so that she wouldn't have to go to school, wouldn't have to go out among people. Maybe there's another reason, too-a bigger reason that she'd want to stay hidden. These things aren't unheard of. These things happen. And I imagine that someone who's lost her first two children would do just about anything for her daughter, if she asked.

No. She couldn't say any of that. It was something only a madwoman could cook up, and the only net result would be Mrs. Cudahy calling the cops on Vera and having them remove her from their home. If anyone's going to call the police on me, Vera thought, it's going to be myself. They're expecting my call, anyway.

She realized that she was too tired to walk back to the Greyhound depot and pretend she had called Detective Ferreira as soon as the bus came in, as she had promised she would. Like a sheepish teenager asking to be picked up at a party that had gotten out of hand, she called the detective's number and told him where he could find her. She remained seated on the low brick wall that formed a border on one end of the parking lot, dully half watching a flock of crows' raucous fight over a bag of fast-food leftovers that they'd found in a nearby trash can.

The detective's sedan pulled up in less than ten minutes. Vera lowered herself off the wall and walked toward the vehicle as the detective rolled down his window. "Whatever happened to calling when you got to the bus station?" Ferreira asked.

The detective looked almost as fatigued as Vera felt. The furrows between his eyebrows ran deep, and his thick, gently graying hair was ruffled up like rooster feathers at the back of his head.

"Sorry, Detective. I had a little nervous energy I needed to blow off first."

"Seems a little early for nervous energy. Hop in the back, why don't you."

Vera did so. "I was in New York checking in on a few things," she said candidly as she fussed with her seat belt, sensing that Ferreira was planning to ask her about the reason for her out-of-state trip. "I don't know that I accomplished anything, really."

"Checking in on a few things, eh? Sounds like trouble to me."

"I talked to Bret Folger. Jensen Willard's boyfriend."

"No wonder you didn't accomplish anything. Kid's got nothing to contribute." Detective Ferreira turned around in the front seat, slowly and deliberately, and glared at Vera as he put the car in drive. "These little exploits have got to stop. I'm telling you, if you were anyone else, I'd have charged you with obstructing justice by now."

"But you haven't," Vera said.

"Want to press your luck?"

"Oh, no, I don't want to press my luck," Vera said, sitting up straighter like a child who is being upbraided. "But you did say I might be of a.s.sistance to you here."

In the rearview mirror she could see the detective purse his lips as though weighing this comment in the balance. "You know," he said, still staring ahead at the road, "when someone puts themselves into an investigation as much as you do, usually I a.s.sume one of two things. One, that the person is involved in the crime somehow. Or two, that the person is simply a megalomaniac who gets a charge out of being overinvolved."

"Megalomaniac. That's a good word."

"Some bored little schoolteacher trying to scare up some excitement for herself," Ferreira went on, ignoring her interruption. "And that doesn't usually get rewarded, believe me. Don't think you're special just because we'd like your input on something."

"I don't think I'm special, Detective. I promise you I don't. I'll behave."

Vera caught the detective's face in the rearview mirror. He was trying not to smile.

"Music?" he asked, reaching for the radio dial.

"I don't mind it."

The detective settled on a station playing cla.s.sic rock-a song that had been popular among the big-haired metalhead girls when Vera had been in high school. For some reason-perhaps because she was so tired and dreams seemed so close-she felt as though she'd been transported back to a high school dance in her old gymnasium, and as she closed her eyes and reclined against the back seat, she thought she could almost see, toward the very back of the crowd, the swaying, bouncing, undulating form of her onetime cla.s.smate Heidi Duplessis.

Back at the police station once again, Vera was led into the same claustrophobic interrogation room she'd been in previously. In true Ferreira style, he cut to the heart of the issue and broke through the glaze of her dissociation-that tired, disembodied, almost drunken feeling that had begun to overtake her again. "What have you heard about Ritchie Ouelette and the Angela Galvez murder?" he fired at her as soon as she'd sat down.

"Only what little they printed in the newspaper," Vera said, and she recapitulated what she remembered from the brief article.

"So you know we have a different suspect in custody now. A minor."

Vera nodded.

"I've brought you here this morning because there's something I'd like you to hear. This is not something we've shared with anyone else outside the department except for Jensen's parents hearing a little. I want you to listen, and there's no need to comment until you're spoken to, got it?"

"Got it."

"Here's the context so far as we know it. Short and sweet. This seventeen-year-old punk kid shows up at the station the other day, copping to all kinds of stuff, including the murder of Angela Galvez. After we cracked down on him for a day and a half, we got him to confess to the Ahmed killing, too. What you're about to hear is only a small part of that confession."

Him, Vera thought, exhaling with a sense of relief. So the voice on the tape, the underage confessor, was not Jensen Willard. Why, then, would the police want to share it with her? She leaned toward the tape player, which the detective had placed between them, resting the weight of her upper body on her elbows and propping her fists under her chin, her eyes shut tight so as to listen without distraction.

The detective hit the PLAY b.u.t.ton, and the room welled up with the husky voice of a very young boy. His words sounded a little m.u.f.fled, and Vera could not tell if this was due to the poor quality of the recording or if the speaker was in the throes of a head cold.

"When Angela Galvez died, it was just something that happened. I was kind of made to do it on the spot. I didn't have anything against that kid personally. For months before that I'd been getting pressured to see what I was made of. To see if I could take a life, just to prove that I could, and to prove that something like life and death really doesn't matter."

Vera heard Ferreira's voice on the tape then: "And who was pressuring you, to see what you were made of?"

"The girl I was with."

"And the girl was Jensen Willard, wasn't it?"

"I'd rather not say."

"You killed Jensen, too, didn't you, Frank? You know there's no logical way your brother can take the heat for this one."

"No, I didn't kill her. I don't know where she is now. She just took off."

"Took off where?"

"She just took off, like I said. We got as far as New York City together, and then she was just gone."

"But she didn't make it to New York City, Frank. She didn't get there because you killed her before you ever left Dorset. We found her combat boots by the riverside."

A feeling began to uncoil in Vera's stomach-the sick feeling of some hibernating creature, like an ancient slumbering eel stirring within her guts. She looked at Detective Ferreira, her lips starting to form a question, but the detective gave her a look that warned her to hold off.

"If I killed her, why would I leave her boots behind? That doesn't even make any sense. Drain the river, I guarantee you won't find her. She left those boots there herself to make it look like she was dead. I lent her a pair of my Chucks, and I gave her my hat to hide her hair under so people wouldn't recognize her right off."

"So you say. We can get back to that a little later. Let's review what you said about Sufia Ahmed. Or are you going to tell us Jensen Willard pressured you to do that, too?"

"I got nothing to say about that."

"But you already have, Frank. You admitted in your statement earlier that you killed Sufia."

Vera heard a sigh and a long, staticky pause.

"She had a plan for it, that's all. Jensen wanted to do three killings, and she was thinking maybe with the second one we could make it look like this teacher of hers had something to do with it-this dumb subst.i.tute teacher who was all into murder and stuff. We didn't get very far with that, though."

The detective turned off the tape. "No prize for guessing who the dumb teacher is," he said.

"Me?" Vera, who had not breathed for the last thirty seconds, shuddered at how her voice came out sounding: thick, husky-not unlike the boy's on the tape.

"Bingo. Do you recognize the speaker at all, Vera?"

"No. My G.o.d, should I?"

"Not necessarily. I just wonder where Jensen Willard and this kid would get the idea to try to implicate you. If you give me a sec, I'd like to show you something we received shortly after the Willard girl went missing."

The detective took out his phone and tapped the screen a few times until he found what he wanted. He held it out for Vera to examine, and she squinted at an image of blurred text that looked like it might have been photographed from a microfilm screen. "I can't read that," she said. "Is there any way to enlarge it?" She was glad the detective did not invite her to hold the phone herself, for her hands were trembling so badly that she was sure she would have dropped it.

Ferreira adjusted the image until the text popped into Vera's view. HUNDREDS MOURN HEIDI, the old newspaper headline read, and Vera remembered the photo that had accompanied it: two students from her high school, hugging each other, their faces exaggerated caricatures of grief. The rest of the old article was there, too-the coverage of Heidi Duplessis's funeral, and Vera's infamous quote toward the end of the article: People are acting like no one ever died before. But really, death is just a part of life.

"Oh my G.o.d," Vera said again. "Why would someone send you this awful old thing?"

"Beats me. We already knew about what you said. I know you don't believe it, but we do our homework. The question is why someone else would want to bring our attention to it. Among other reasons, it was just one more mandate to keep a close eye on you. We couldn't trace where the text came from because the sender had a disposable phone, but guess who didn't throw away his disposable phone? We found this same image in the kid's stored photos when we took him into custody."

"Who is this kid, though? Can you at least tell me who he is?"

"His name is Frank Ouelette Jr." The detective waited a beat, and then, before Vera could ask, supplied the rest. "Ritchie's little brother."

Vera sank back in her chair. "Wow" was all she could say.

Ferreira took in Vera's reaction with what she thought was grim relish. "Quite the heartwarming family story this is. Ever since Ritchie's been trying to raise his brother on his own, the kid's been a mess. Dropped out of school, spent some time in a psych ward for a half-a.s.sed suicide attempt, disappears for weeks at a time. One day this kid comes into the police station of his own volition, confessing that he'd let his brother take the heat for Angela Galvez."

Vera shook her head. "I'm not seeing where I fit in here."

"Ouelette and your student Willard were schoolmates for a very brief period. Where you 'fit in,' as you put it, is not entirely clear, but if you don't know this Ouelette kid, chances are he learned about you from the girl."

"But do you really think . . . do you really think Jensen isn't alive? You really think this Frank might have killed her? I find that almost impossible to believe." Vera dug clumsily around in her tote bag, feeling under layers of cosmetics and pajamas and bus ticket stubs until she found the two stolen library books and the J. D. Salinger postcard she'd found within one of them. Handing the postcard over to Ferreira, she said, "I'm pretty sure this is Jensen's handwriting. I found this in New York City just a couple of days ago. And it wasn't the first message I got from her." She relayed the earlier message she had received back at headquarters. "I couldn't prove she wrote the first one, but once I saw this one, I knew the author had to be one and the same."

"So this is what you were doing in New York," the detective said, looking at the postcard from every angle, then turning it back to its front and giving Salinger a second appraisal. Taking in the herringbone tweed coat and narrow tie, he snorted. "We'll check it out. For now, though, just so we're clear, I'm putting it on the record that you don't recognize this kid's voice. And I take it you've never heard Jensen Willard say anything about being friends with a Frank Ouelette Jr."

"Definitely not. Not in her journals or elsewhere."

"There's just one more thing, then. The kid has asked if he can speak to you personally."

"To me? What for?"

"Says he won't be right with his conscience if he doesn't." The detective uttered the word conscience with an inflection that told Vera he doubted that Frank Ouelette Jr. even had one. "He'd have his lawyer present, and I'd be there with you, too. But this is only going to happen if you're willing to do a little jail trip later this afternoon. Today's the last day we can hold him, and after he goes home for a while, there's no telling if he'll change his mind about wanting to talk. Ever visited a jail before, Vera?"

When Vera stammered that no, she never had, the detective handed her a brochure and told her she might find it handy: WHAT TO EXPECT DURING YOUR FIRST PRISON VISIT, read the boldfaced heading on its cover. "To sum it up," Ferreira said, "no sharps, no weapons, nothing that's going to give you a hard time going through a metal detector. Leave your purse at home unless you want to pay to have it put in a locker. No phones, no cameras. No low-cut blouses or short skirts."

"No low-cut blouses or short skirts?" Even in her state of relative shock, Vera could not keep the irony out of her voice.

"That's what I said, isn't it? Come to think of it, whatever you wear, bring a sweater. A big, baggy, frumpy one-just in case."

As Vera waited in her studio for Ferreira to pick her up later that afternoon, she changed into her longest black skirt and a drab, oversized crew-neck sweater, but she could not refrain from fussing with her hair and dabbing on some dark lipstick. She had tried to rest, per the detective's suggestion ("Get a couple hours of sleep-you look like s.h.i.t" had been his piquant way of putting it), but had found that as tired as she was, she could not rest. Her mind kept crackling with agitation and confusion as it reviewed the morning's new information, which seemed to cast its particular, cruel new light on everything that Vera had a.s.sumed about her student Jensen Willard.

Her mind wanted to reject it all. The girl may be dark, even darker than Bret Folger knew her to be, but she could not imagine her coercing anyone into murder. She thought of the girl's journal entries-so often funny, self-effacing, filled with adolescent pathos and precocious intelligence. True, she had given Vera occasion for fear and doubt more than once, but the accusations leveled by Frank Ouelette Jr. had to be false. Had to be. She wanted nothing more than to look the boy right in the eye and see this lie for herself.