“Where is Mr. Verhoven?” asked Detective Yancy.
I set my tea down on the coffee table and took up the pack of cigarettes. “Arthur’s gone. He’s gone.” I shrugged. “If you find him, let me know.”
“Did you have a fight?”
“You might say that,” I said. “Why are you looking for Arthur?”
“His fingerprints were all over the suitcase,” said Detective Yancy.
“The suitcase was in this house.”
“His fingerprints were also on the dumpster.”
“And?”
Officer Brown and Detective Yancy exchanged a look.
“So Travis’s manuscript was in it. That’s hardly damning.”
“Mr. Connor’s manuscript,”said Detective Yancy. “Also Mr. Connor’s head, his hands, and his feet.”
I heard the water dripping in the sink. It seemed that for a moment no one breathed. “Oh my God,” I said. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“Did you call his mother?”
“I called Travis’s mother,” said Officer Brown. “She didn’t take it very well.”
“The poor woman,” I added.
There was another moment of silence.
“I see Mr. Verhoven’s van is parked out front.”
“Arthur left it here. Something’s wrong with the starter.” I looked first at Detective Yancy, then at Officer Brown. “No,” I said. “You don’t think…”
“When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Verhoven?”
“Tuesday.”
“How did he leave?”
“In a hurry,” I said. “We’d had a fight.”
“What did you fight about?”
I composed my thoughts. “He had a jealousy issue. It was an ongoing thing in our relationship.”
“He left the van here?”
“He made a phone call. One of his friends came and picked him up.”
“What was his friend’s name?”
“I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“What was this friend driving?”
“I didn’t look. I was sitting right here. We’d had a fight. I was mad.” I looked at Officer Brown, who seemed both sympathetic and embarrassed. “Is Arthur a suspect?”
“The suitcase,” said Detective Yancy, “was covered in a clay-like mud, the same kind of mud found on this property.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. And you think it’s Arthur?”
“His fingerprints, Miss Shea, were all over the suitcase.”
“Arthur is not a violent person,” I said. After the third try I managed to light my cigarette. I offered a cigarette to Detective Yancy and to my surprise, he took it. “How do you know,” I handed him the lighter, “that it’s not Bad Billy?”
“Because,” said Detective Yancy, “William Selwyn is lying on a table in the Portland morgue.”
“He is?” I said, shocked.
“You saw him there yourself. It was William Selwyn’s body that washed up on Wolf’s Neck.”
“What happened to him?”
“How did he die?” said Detective Yancy. “We think he froze to death. There was a week in early November when the temperature at night didn’t get above the teens.”
“I remember it was cold.” I felt sorry for Bad Billy and felt that I’d somehow failed him.
“How did he get in the ocean?”
“His campsite was near the water. A combination of the tides and the recent flooding could have done it,” said Detective Yancy, “But the fact that he’s been dead since early November leaves us with a few nagging questions.”
“And what are those?”
“Who killed John Nelson?”
I listened carefully.
“We’re assuming it’s the same killer who murdered Malley Borden.”
“Didn’t he die in early October?” I asked. “Wasn’t that Bad Billy?”
“It seems unlikely. The wound to the neck. The fact that the victim is male.”
“But what about Travis? His killing seems more like a Mafia slaying, with the head and feet and all.”
“We don’t know the connection yet,” said Detective Yancy dramatically.
“We haven’t found his neck,” said Officer Brown.
“And you think it’s Arthur?”
“A bartender at Gritty’s saw you talking to Malley Borden the night he was killed.”
“I remember meeting a ‘Billy’ at Gritty McDuff’s. ‘Billy.’ He worked at L.L. Bean.”
“Malley worked at L.L. Bean. Maybe you heard his name wrong.”
“It does get loud at Gritty’s,” said Officer Brown.
“Are you taking this down?” asked Detective Yancy.
Officer Brown began scribbling in his notebook.
“Tell me more about Mr. Verhoven’s jealousy.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“We are serious,” said Detective Yancy.
“No, I refuse to believe it,” I said. I began to cry.
“If you’re covering for him,” said Detective Yancy, “now is the time to stop.”
“Oh what’s the use?” I cried out. “He went to New York. He didn’t tell me why.”
“Write this down,” ordered Detective Yancy.
“He said he was going to his brother’s in Connecticut first to get some money. I thought he’d held up a convenience store, or something like that. I had no idea…”
“Anything else?” said Detective Yancy.
“Yeah,” I said. “He said he was going to shave his head.”
30
I got up late, around eleven. I was back on the couch, having decided that my mother was welcome to my bed. Having her around was a trial for me, even though she spent most of the day sleeping, the rest strangely quiet as if she was waiting for something from me. I hadn’t brought up the subject of the bones again because I knew all I wanted to.
“How did you get out of the hospital?” I asked her.
“Through the front doors,” she said.
“I assumed as much. What about Dad?”
“He’ll make his peace with it.”
“How did you get past him?”
“The only way I could,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You want me to leave, don’t you?”
“You’re not well…”
“You’re the one who should leave. You’re the one who’s in trouble, yet you stay here day after day, in this little house. What are you waiting for? Arthur’s gone.”
After that unenlightening exchange, I’d had a monumental headache and wrestling with it and all the frightening images it conjured up left me wasted when it finally quit. I’d gone into Arthur’s van with a bottle of wine— to get away from her, I suppose— and spent an hour or so looking through the pictures and albums, CDs, blankets, busted drumsticks, paperbacks of Kerouac, Denis Johnson, Vonnegut. His sleeping bag was still in there, but Arthur’s scent was disappearing. I sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine, for a moment wondered what it would be like to drive off the end of the point, into the water. Kevin, who was sitting in the passenger seat, looked at me accusingly and I remembered that the tide was out, that all I’d accomplish was sinking the van into the mud. And what good was that?
I made a strong pot of coffee. It looked like another glorious day and I was feeling more than a little resentful of it, the winking flowers, the shivering leaves, the cormorants set up like sentries along the pylons at the bay’s entrance. The tide was in and I could hear children somewhere yelling to each other. It was Saturday, after all. I had just started to brush my teeth, which I was doing at the kitchen sink, looking up the driveway where a rabbit was squatting up on its furry haunches, when I saw the black Lexus SUV. The rabbit managed to scurry away in time, but it was too late for me, and I knew this deep in my bones. I set down my toothbrush, overcome by weariness, and, honestly, an element of relief.