What The Dead Know Part 22

"Oh, Sunny," Miriam said, "what in the world is going on?"

CHAPTER 41.

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.

They wanted to know what she was thinking, what was running through her head, and that was it, exactly: The childhood song had come back to her that afternoon on the Number 15 bus, Heather sitting across the aisle from her, humming in that happily infuriating, infuriatingly happy way she had. Heather was still a little girl. Sunny was not. Sunny was about to become a woman. This bus, the Number 15, was taking other people to the mall, on ordinary errands, but it was taking her to meet her husband.

Buses were magic. Another bus had brought her to this place in her life, this moment where everything would change. She was running away, just as her mother had. Her real mother, the one with blond hair and blue eyes like hers. Her real mother was someone who would have understood her, someone to whom she could have spoken of all the things locked up in her heart, secrets so explosive that she had never written them down anywhere, even in her diary. Sunny Bethany was fifteen, and she was in love with Tony Dunham, and every song she heard, every sound she heard, seemed to pulse with that information, even the thrumming wheels on the bus.

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.

It had begun on another bus, the school bus, after the route was reversed at the other parents' insistence and Sunny ended up riding alone in the afternoons.

"Mind if I put the radio on?" the driver asked one day. He was a subst.i.tute, young and good-looking, not at all like Mr. Madison, who normally drove the route. "But you have to keep it a secret. We're not supposed to play the radio. My father, who owns the bus company, he's really strict."

"Sure," she said, embarra.s.sed at the way her voice squeaked. "I won't tell."

Then-not the next time he drove, or the time after that, or even the time after that, but the fourth time, in November, when the weather was turning colder: "Why don't you move up here to the front seat and talk to me, keep me company? It gets awfully lonely, sitting up here by myself."

"Sure," she said, gathering her books to her chest, feeling stupid when the bus. .h.i.t a pothole and she banged her hip hard against one of the seats. But Tony didn't laugh at her, or mock her. "My apologies," he said. "I'll try to keep the ride smooth from here on out, my lady."

Another time-the fifth time, or maybe the sixth. Their encounters were frequent enough to blend together now, although she seldom saw him more than two or three times a month. "Do you like this song? It's called 'Lonely Girl.' It reminds me of you."

"Really?" She wasn't sure she did like the song, but she listened closely, especially to the final line, about the lonely boy. Did that mean-but she kept her eyes on her notebook, a blue binder. Other girls inked the names of their crushes on the cover, but she never had dared. A few weeks later, she tried doodling a tiny "TD" in the lower right-hand corner. "What does that stand for?" Heather had asked, nosy Heather, always spying Heather. "Touchdown," Sunny said. Later she transformed the initials into three-dimensional shapes she had learned to draw in geometry.

More and more, Tony talked about himself, over the music. He had tried to join the army, go to 'Nam, but they wouldn't take him, much to his mother's relief and his disappointment. Sunny didn't know there were people who wanted to fight in the war. Tony had a heart defect or something, mitral valve prolapse. She couldn't believe there was anything wrong with his heart. He had feathered hair, which he groomed frequently with a small brush he kept tucked in the pocket of his jeans, and he wore a gold chain. He smoked Pall Malls, but only after the other kids had gotten off the bus. "Don't rat me out," he said, winking at her in the rearview mirror. "You sure are pretty. Has anyone ever told you that? You should wear your hair like Susan Dey. But you're already a cutie."

The wheels on the bus went round and round.

"I really wish we could spend time together. Real time, not just these bus rides. Wouldn't that be nice, if we could be alone somewhere?" She thought it might be, but she didn't see how it could be arranged. She knew without asking that her parents, as open and freewheeling as they professed to be, wouldn't let her date a twenty-three-year-old bus driver. She wasn't sure, however, what would bother them more-the twenty-three part, the bus-driver part, or the wanted-to-go-to-'Nam part.

Eventually, Tony said he wanted to marry her, that if she met him at the mall some Sat.u.r.day, they could drive up to Elkton, get married at the little chapel where people from New York got married, because there was no waiting period, no blood tests required. No, she said. He couldn't be serious. "I am, I will. You're so pretty, Sunny. Who wouldn't want to marry you?" She remembered that her mother, her real one, had run away at seventeen to marry her true love, Sunny's real father, and people grew up faster now. She heard her parents say that all the time. Kids grow up so fast now.

The next time she saw him, the week of March 23, she said yes, she would meet him, and now, a mere six days later, she was on another bus, heading to see him. She was going to go on her honeymoon tonight. She shivered a bit, thinking about that. They had never been able to do more than kiss, and only a little, but it had made her insides flip. Tony's father knew his schedule too well, questioned him closely if he returned home late, sniffed the interior of the bus and asked if he'd been smoking. It was funny, but being the son of the man who owned the bus company didn't get Tony any special privileges, just the opposite. The only reason Tony still lived at home, at age twenty-three, was that his mother would be heartbroken if he left.

"But we won't live with them, after we're married," he said. "She won't expect that. We'll get an apartment in town, or maybe over to York."

"Like the Peppermint Patty?"

"Like the Peppermint Patty."

The wheels on the bus went round and round.

AND THEN HEATHER had to go and ruin everything, following Sunny not only to the mall but into Chinatown, where Sunny was supposed to rendezvous-his word-with Tony. Once they were thrown out, Sunny had fled, not sure what to do. How would she find Tony now? She went to Harmony Hut. Music was their common bond after all, the thing that had brought them together. Eventually he did find her, but he was angry and out of sorts, as if the ruined plan were all her fault. Then Heather had found them, spotted Sunny standing in Harmony Hut, right in front of the Who records, holding a man's hand. Heather began making a fuss, saying the same man had tried to talk to her by the organ store, that he was a creep. She said she was going to tell. They had to take her with them, right? If they left Heather alone, Sunny told Tony, she would tattle to their parents, and that would ruin everything. They promised Heather candy and money, said she could go home after they were married, that she could be the flower girl, the witness. The flower-girl part seemed to win her over. But out in the parking lot Heather decided she didn't want to go, and Tony grabbed her a little roughly and pushed her into the car. In the scuffle she dropped her purse, but Tony refused to go back for it, and she had cried and whined all the way up the highway about that stupid purse. "I lost my purse. With my Bonne Belle. And my comb, the souvenir one from Rehoboth Beach. I lost my purse."

Only there was no wedding when they got to Elkton. The courthouse was closed, so they couldn't get a marriage license. Tony pretended to be surprised, but he had made a reservation at a motel down in Aberdeen. Why would you call ahead for a motel, but not check on whether the courthouse was open? Sunny had a sick feeling in her stomach, not at all like the flips she'd felt while kissing. In the room with Tony and Heather-Tony glowering because he couldn't be alone with Sunny, Heather still whining about her lost purse-Sunny had felt trapped, confused. She wasn't sure if she was angry with Heather for interrupting her honeymoon or relieved. It was beginning to seem like a stupid idea. She wanted to go to high school and then college, travel through the world as her father had, with nothing more than a backpack. She volunteered to go across the street to a diner and buy them all dinner. She decided not to mention that she would be using the money she'd taken from Heather's bank.

The diner was called the New Ideal, and it was the old-fashioned kind her father loved best, where everything was made from scratch. Burgers like that took longer, but they were worth it. In fact, diners were the only place her father ever ate burgers. Even a health nut, he said, had to let loose every now and then. He had made them chocolate-chip pancakes that morning, and she hadn't finished hers. She wished she had. She wished she could go back to this morning, but that was impossible. Still, she could go home. She would go back to the room, ask Tony to take them home, come up with a lie and persuade Heather to back her up, bribing her with her own money.

She paid for the cheeseburgers, never guessing that her life had ended while she waited in the New Ideal Diner.

WHEN SUNNY RETURNED to the room, Heather was lying on the floor, not moving. An accident, Tony said. She was jumping on the bed making all this noise and I told her to stop, tried to grab her arm, and she fell.

"We have to call a doctor or take her to a hospital. Maybe she's not really dead." Hopeless words, said over the body of a clearly dead Heather, the back of her head as collapsed as a pumpkin the day after Halloween, blood seeping into a towel beneath her once-blond hair. Why had he put a towel beneath her head? And how do you hit your head so hard falling off a bed? But those were questions Sunny would not even dare to consider for several years.

"No," Tony said. "She's dead. We should call my dad. He'll know what to do."

STAN DUNHAM WAS far kinder than the tyrant described by his son over those months of confessional talks on the bus. He did not yell, or scream, or say, as Sunny's mother often did, What were you thinking, Sunny? Why didn't you use your head? Sunny could see how he might be strict, but not scary, never scary. If you were in real trouble, you would want to talk to someone like Stan Dunham.

"This is the way I see it," he said, sitting on the motel double bed, his hands on his knees. "We have lost one life, and we can't get it back. If we call the authorities, my son will be arrested and charged. No one will believe it was an accident. And Sunny will have to live the rest of her life with parents who will blame her for the death of her sister."

"But I didn't..." she protested. "I wasn't-"

He held up a hand, and Sunny fell silent. "It will be hard for your parents to think otherwise. Can't you see that? Parents are human, too. They won't want to hate you, but they will. I know. I'm a parent."

She bowed her head, out of arguments.

"But here's how I see it, Sunny? I'm right, it's Sunny, isn't it? You and Tony made a plan. I'm not sure if Tony knew that a fifteen-year-old girl can't marry without her parents' consent in this state"-he shot his son a look-"but this was your plan, and we're going to see it through. That's honorable, doing what you said you were going to do. You'll come live with us, under a new name. At home you can be Tony's wife, just like you planned. You'll share a room, even. I'm okay with that. Outside the house, you'll have to go to school for a while, be someone else. And when you're old enough, you can have a proper wedding. I'll work it out. I'll make everything work. You have my word."

With that he lifted Heather as any father might pick up a sleeping child, cradling her broken head and arranging her over his shoulder, then carrying her out to his car, telling Sunny to follow him. To her amazement she did-into the car, into another life, another world, where she would not have to be the girl who had caused her sister's death. Tony was to stay behind and clean the room, then spend the night there as planned, in order to keep people at the motel from becoming suspicious about events in room 249. Tony never meant to marry me, Sunny admitted to herself, sitting in Stan Dunham's car, her sister's body in his trunk. He was going to take her to this ugly motel off the highway, have s.e.x with her, then return her home, counting on her shame and embarra.s.sment to keep her from telling anyone.

It probably would have worked, too. She would have gone back to Algonquin Lane, concocted some story about what had happened, why she'd gone missing for several hours. But she couldn't go home now, not without Heather. Mr. Dunham was right. They would never forgive her. She would never forgive herself.

THEY CALLED HER Ruth, told people that she was a distant cousin, unknown to them before the fire that had killed her family. Outside the house that's all she was, a distant cousin who may or may not have been falling in love with her newfound boy-cousin, but she was Tony's wife from the day she crossed the threshold. She shared Tony's bed-and quickly discovered she didn't enjoy it. The sweetness, the compliments from their time on the bus-those were gone, replaced by an urgent, not-quite-brutal s.e.x notable primarily for its brevity. When she felt wistful for home, when she dared to say that perhaps she should go back, that there must be a way, Stan Dunham told her that she had no home. Her parents had broken up and drifted away. Her father was a failure, her mother an adulterer. Besides, she was an accessory now, someone who had helped to cover up a crime, and she would be charged if she came forward. "I used to be a police," he said. "I know what's happening with the investigation. You're better off with us."

It did not escape her that the Dunhams were the kind of family for which she had yearned in recent years. Normal, she would have called them, with a father who had a real job and a mother who stayed home and baked, tying bright ap.r.o.ns over her dresses. Irene Dunham seemed to have more ap.r.o.ns than dresses, in fact, and she baked every day of the week. Her piecrust was famous, she told Sunny, bragging on herself with a self-satisfied air that Irene found unacceptable in others. But her pie, for all the prizes it had won, was dust in Sunny's mouth, and she never finished a slice. Irene didn't seem to care for Sunny much, blaming her for everything that happened, standing by her son no matter what he did.

As Sunny got older, she sometimes tried to say no to Tony when he wanted s.e.x, and he would hit her, blackening her eye on one occasion, dislocating her jaw another, punching her so hard in the stomach that she thought she might never breathe again. And one time, the last time, just about killing her. Admittedly, this was after she had struck him with the poker from the living-room fireplace, the same poker she had used to break the heads on Irene's beloved dolls.

This was their official wedding night.

It was almost midnight, and the elder Dunhams were asleep as usual, but for once they couldn't ignore the noises coming from Tony's bedroom. Irene Dunham had gone straight to her son's side, although he had nothing more than a bright red line of blood across his cheek, the one blow that she had landed before he pulled the poker from her and began beating her, then kicking her. Stan Dunham had gone to her, however, and in the moment that he reached for her and their eyes met, Sunny saw that he knew, had always known. He understood that his son had killed Heather, that her death was not an accident. She hadn't fallen and hit her head. Tony had beaten her, or thrown her to the floor and pounded her head until it broke. Why? Who knows? He was a violent, frustrated man. Heather was a mouthy little girl who had ruined his plan. Perhaps that was reason enough. Perhaps there could never be reasons enough for what he'd done.

"You have to leave," Stan Dunham told her, and if his family heard his words as a punishment, an exile, she knew he was trying to save her. The next day, he found a new name for her, taught her the trick of disappearing into a little dead girl's unclaimed ident.i.ty. "Someone born about the right time, who died before getting a Social Security card, that's what you want." He bought her a bus ticket and told her that he would always be there for her, and Stan Dunham was nothing if not true to his word. When she was twenty-five and decided she wanted to learn how to drive, he had come down to Virginia on weekends and patiently guided her through empty school parking lots. When she decided, back in 1989, that she wanted the training necessary to get hired on as a proper computer tech, he had underwritten it. When Irene died and Stan no longer had to worry about his wife's grudging oversight, he purchased an annuity for Sunny. It wasn't a lot of money, but it helped her make car payments and, lately, deposits to her savings account, which she hoped to use for a condo if the real-estate market ever cooled down.

It was only when Penelope Jackson showed up on her doorstep a week ago to the day that Sunny learned that Tony Dunham had an annuity, too. And that, when drunk, he had spoken of his crimes and his early marriage, telling Penelope that she would never get away from him because he had once killed a girl and covered it up, with the help of his father and the girl's very own sister.

"Here's where he grabbed out a square inch of my hair," Penelope said, showing a bald patch behind her ear. Then, tapping on a large, grayish front tooth, "This is a bond, and not a good one at that. f.u.c.ker pushed me down the front steps after I sa.s.sed him. When I found out that his father had paid for an annuity for some other woman, I thought I should come visit her, see what she went through that was worth getting money from the Dunhams. Because the only thing Tony's ever given me is a promise that he'll hunt me down and kill me if I ever leave him. He's after me now. You have to help me, or I'll go to the authorities, tell them what I know about you. You covered up a murder, and that's as good as being a murderer."

It had taken the better part of three days, but she used the methods that Stan Dunham had taught her long ago and found Penelope a new name, then obtained the doc.u.ments she needed to create a new life. She also had taken five thousand dollars from her savings account and given it to Penelope, who then booked a flight to Seattle out of Baltimore-Washington International. She had begged Penelope to pick another airline, one that flew out of Dulles or National, but Penelope was adamant about using Southwest. "You build up credits for free tickets with them really fast. Rapid Rewards, they call it."

So for the first time in almost twenty-five years, Sunny had crossed the Potomac and headed into Maryland, then up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. "Keep the car if you want it," Penelope said, but Sunny couldn't imagine doing that. How could she explain some old junker with North Carolina tags? Her plan was to park it at the airport and take a train back into D.C., the Metro the rest of the way home. But, having come so close to home, she couldn't see the harm in going a few miles north, then doubling back. As she got closer to Route 70, she began to think about visiting Stan, something she had never dared, no matter how ill he became, because a visit would mean signing in, leaving tracks. But Penelope had said he was bad, demented and nearly dead. If they didn't ask for ID, she could give them a fake name. Or perhaps she could go drive past Algonquin Lane, see if it really was the cherished home of her dreams or merely a ramshackle farmhouse in a not-great corner of Baltimore.

And then the car had slipped away from her, her life had slipped away from her, and in her panic and confusion she'd begun to tell the truth, only to regret it instantly. "I'm one of the Bethany girls." If she told them everything else, they would bring back Tony and make her admit to the world that her sister's death was her fault. Besides, who knew what lies Tony would tell, what violence he might do to her? So she blamed everything on Stan, knowing he was safe in his own way, and said she was Heather Bethany. Heather, who had never done anything worse than snoop and spy on an older sister. Their resemblance had always been profound, and there was nothing about Heather's life that Sunny didn't know. It should have been easy, being Heather.

The moment she heard that Miriam was alive, she knew she would be exposed. Still, she tried to brazen it out, tried to give them plausible answers so she could slip away before Miriam arrived. Irene was dead and Stan was beyond the reach of any form of justice. If she had known all along that Tony was dead, she might not have hesitated to tell the whole story. But Penelope Jackson had said that Tony was alive, that she needed money because he was determined to hunt her down and make her miserable for leaving him. Penelope had all but said it was Sunny's fault that Tony remained in the world, still hurting women, and wasn't that true? If she had called the police that night, in the motel. If she had just started screaming, bringing the other guests, the manager. But she had been scared and silent, wanting to believe there was a way to avoid telling her parents that Heather was dead-and it was her fault. "Look after your sister," her father had said. "One day your mother and I will be gone, and you'll be all you have." It hadn't worked out that way.

"BUT-" MIRIAM BEGAN, then stopped, her voice faltering as if the task before her was impossible, as if there were so many questions still to be asked that she could never choose just one. Sunny thought of all the things that mothers ask, day in, day out. Where have you been? What did you do? What happened in school today? She remembered how she had begun to chafe at her mother's curiosity when ninth grade started and she met Tony, how she had learned to hide all her emotions and secrets behind the laconic wall of adolescence. Nowhere. Nothing. Nothing. Now she would gladly answer anything her mother asked, if only her mother could figure out what it was she wanted to know. Sunny decided to offer the simplest and most private information she had, the very thing that she had been so reluctant to give up, believing it to be the last thing, the only thing, that belonged to her.

"I'm an IT person for an insurance company in Reston, Virginia. I use the name Cameron Heinz, but everyone at work calls me Ketch."

"Catch?"

"Ketch, short for Ketchup. Heinz, get it? She was killed in Florida, back in the mid-sixties, in a fire. Fires are always good. I just want to be that person again. But I want to be Sunny, too, and spend time with you, now that I know you're alive. Is there any way I can do both? I've been the wrong person for so long, can't I be the right person again, without anyone knowing?"

Lenhardt said, "I think there is if you're capable of a little deceit."

"I think I've proved," Sunny said, "that I'm capable of far more than just a little deceit."

TWO WEEKS LATER the Baltimore County Police Department released a statement that the bones of Heather Bethany had been discovered by cadaver dogs in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania. This was an out-and-out lie, and it amused Lenhardt no end how easily the reporters and the public swallowed it-cadaver dogs discovering thirty-year-old bones, which were identified quickly and automatically, as if there were no DNA backlogs, as if the theoretical possibilities of science could trump the day-to-day realities of overburdened bureaucracies and slashed state budgets. They said they had been able to identify the grave site with information developed from a confidential informant. This was technically true, if one considered Cameron Heinz a confidential informant, a person different and apart from Sunny Bethany. Police had determined that her killer was Tony Dunham and that his parents had entered into an active conspiracy to suppress his crime and hold hostage the surviving sister, Sunny. She had escaped from the family at an undisclosed time and was still alive, living under a different name. Through her lawyer, Gloria Bustamante, Sunny asked that reporters respect her privacy, grant her the anonymity that would be given to any s.e.xual-a.s.sault victim. She had no desire to speak of what had happened. At any rate, said Gloria, who adored talking to reporters, her client was living in a foreign country, as was her only surviving relative, her mother.

"True enough," Lenhardt later said to Infante. "Reston, Virginia, is a f.u.c.king foreign country as far as I'm concerned. Ever seen that place, with all those office parks and high-rises? Anyone could disappear down there."

"Anyone could disappear anywhere," Infante said.

After all, Sunny Bethany had done just that, for more than thirty years-as a student in a parish school, as a Swiss Colony salesgirl, as a cla.s.sified-ad clerk at a small newspaper, as an IT person in a large computer firm. Like a bird who moved into abandoned nests, she had inhabited the lives of long-dead girls, counting on no one to see her, and the world had been almost too eager to grant her that privilege. She was, by design, one of the anonymous women who streamed through streets and malls and office buildings every day-attractive enough, worth a second look, yet deflecting all attention. Would Infante, champion cataloger of women, have noticed her, in any of her guises? Probably not. Yet now that he bothered to look, really look, he realized that Sunny's face was remarkably close to the computer projection of how Sunny Bethany would have aged, although the forecast had erred a little on the wrinkly side, creating p.r.o.nounced crow's-feet and deep grooves on either side of her mouth. She could have pa.s.sed for five, ten years younger if she pushed it. But she had settled for a mere three.

Go figure, Infante thought, closing the computer window that contained the likenesses of the two sisters, Sunny Bethany has no laugh lines.

PART X.

SWADHAYAYA.

The fifth and final step of the Fivefold Path,

swadhayaya, is liberation through self-knowledge:

Who am I? Why am I here?

-Adapted from various teachings on the Agnihotra

CHAPTER 42.

The moment that Kevin Infante crossed the threshold at Nancy Porter's holiday party, he knew there was a potential fix-up in the offing. He could spot the unlucky lady a mile away-a brunette in a bright red dress, not quite watching the door. She was pretty enough. Actually, she was exceptionally pretty, although in the style that other women found attractive-slim figure, bright eyes, abundant hair. That was the tip-off. She was Nancy's choice, and he had to admit that Nancy had pretty good taste. Still, he hated even pa.s.sive throw-them-together-and-see-what-happens matchmaking, which seemed to imply that he couldn't find women on his own, or that he was choosing poorly.

And so what if the latter was undeniably true? He was a big boy. Nancy should leave him to his own devices.

He scouted the room, looking for a conversation he could lose himself in, making him harder to approach. No sense trying to chat up the hostess at one of these things. Nancy was bustling back and forth between the kitchen and dining room, replenishing plates, piling more food on the buffet table. Lenhardt hadn't posted yet, and Nancy's husband had never been that keen on Infante, but then, Andy Porter would have been inclined to dislike any man who spent hours alone with his wife, even in the most innocuous circ.u.mstances. Scanning, scanning, scanning, feeling the brunette getting closer, Infante's eyes fell on a familiar face, although he needed a second to place the woman-round-faced, pleasant. Kay what's-her-name, the social worker.

"h.e.l.lo," she said, offering her hand. "Kay Sullivan. From St. Agnes?"

"Sure, the one who-"

"Right."

They stood awkwardly for a second. Kevin realized he would have to do better than this if he wanted even a temporary reprieve from Nancy's machinations.

"I didn't realize you and Nancy were pals."

"We became reacquainted, from the House of Ruth. She did a presentation for us on one of the county's oldest unsolved murders, the Powers case."

He remembered. He never forgot one of his own. A young woman, separated from her husband, a contentious custody battle. She had left work one afternoon. Neither she nor her car was ever seen again. "Oh, yeah, that one. How long has it been?"

"Almost ten years. Their daughter is in her teens now. Can you imagine? She has to know that her father was the number one suspect, even if nothing was ever proven. I didn't remember that he was a former cop, though, before he went into private security."

"Huh."

Another awkward pause, as Infante wondered why Kay Sullivan had brought up that one piece of information. Was she trying to say that Baltimore cops were, by nature, felonious? All Stan Dunham had done was cover up a murder.