Prisoner, Benjamin thought.
There was no prisoner. No one had been arrested or even detained for very long though hundreds had been questioned, everyone who lived in the neighborhood or worked there or had reason to come to deliver mail or newspapers, to read meters or to service water softeners, to sell cosmetics or religion; migrant fruit pickers, registered sex offenders living in or passing through town, even a self-styled holy man who claimed to live only in the past and in the future. After sampling the food and accommodations at the county jail he conceded he knew nothing of the future, remembered only a few fragments of the past and preferred to spend the present on the outside rather than the inside. He went back to banging his tambourine and panhandling along the beach-front, and the death of the little princess remained a mystery.
Her parents, Kay and Howard Hyatt, sat in the front pew with Howard’s father. It was the old man who insisted on a formal funeral. So Kay, who understood the depth of his grief, allowed the small bones to be wrapped in the blue down-filled comforter from the child’s bed and placed inside the coffin.
The bones weighed seven and a half pounds. Benjamin was with Kay when she heard this news and it was the last time he saw her cry.
She sobbed against his shoulder. “Oh dear God, that’s what she weighed when she was born.”
Ben had cried too. Seven and a half pounds at birth, seven and a half at burial. It was a crazy coincidence but there was a certain rightness about it also, like the closing of a circle.
The captive worms in Mrs. Cunningham’s lap still struggled to escape.
“I’ve started to fibrillate, Peter,” she said. “Feel my pulse if you don’t believe me. Fibrillation can be very dangerous.”
“So stop doing it.”
“I’m not doing it deliberately. I can’t help it. I’ve always had this tendency—”
“I know all about your tendencies,” Peter said.
“Why are you so cruel to me, Peter? I’m hyperventilating and I’m fibrillating and you won’t even let me have a Valium. I could be cruel myself if I wanted to.”
“Try it.”
“There are some things you think I don’t know about. But I do. And I could tell people if I wanted to. I could tell a great deal.”
“Go ahead.”
“Of course I won’t. I’m not capable of cruelty. I just don’t have it in me.”
“What you have in you,” Peter said, “is enough booze to float an oil tanker and enough pills to choke a herd of whales.”
“You shouldn’t speak like that to your mother. No son should speak like that to his mother.”
“Maybe I’ll start a trend.”
“You made me leave the house with only one tiny drink.”
“Two.”
“Both seemed very weak.”
“They were doubles.”
“You contradict me all the time.”
“No,” Peter said. “Only when you lie.”
Benjamin turned and said, “Sssh,” not loudly, but directly into Mrs. Cunningham’s left ear.
Shrinking away from him as if he’d blown poison gas at her she clasped her son’s arm. “Peter, that man told me to ssssh.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I consider it very rude for a stranger to address me in such a manner, especially when I’m fibrillating.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know you’re fibrillating. Let him feel your pulse. He’s not, by the way, a stranger.”
“I’ve never seen him before. He must be one of your friends.”
Peter raised one carefully trimmed eyebrow. “No. No, I think not.”
Benjamin had met the Cunninghams casually at a number of social functions. Mother and son always arrived together, both elegantly and rather formally attired, Peter in dark vested suits or dinner jackets, Mrs. Cunningham in silks and brocades and velvets, jeweled and perfumed and elaborately coiffed. Their arrival usually created a stir. Peter at fifty was a handsome man, with his silver wig and deep bronze tan, and Mrs. Cunningham still showed traces of beauty. Throughout any social affair Peter remained the same but Mrs. Cunningham seemed to be struck by a series of inner earthquakes and aftershocks that loosened her coiffure, dislodged hairpins and left little gold curls dangling helplessly by their gray roots. She staggered and clutched at people to retain her balance. (“Oh, I’m so sorry. This frightful migraine has made me quite dizzy.”) She bumped into furniture, dropped glasses and spilled food down the front of her dress. (“How clumsy of me. I seem to have lost my contact lenses.”) And she departed early, leaning heavily on the arm of her son. Peter never appeared embarrassed or angry, merely rather amused as though he’d been playing a walk-on role in some dreadfully amateur drama.
“If he’s not one of your friends,” Mrs. Cunningham said, “and he’s not one of mine, who is he?”
“An architect.”
“We don’t need an architect, do we?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t have to pay any attention to him when he tells me to ssssssh, do I?”
“No. So I’ll tell you. Shut up.”
The music stopped and the Reverend Michael Dunlop began to speak. His training and years of experience seemed to be forgotten. His voice was not the one he used in Sunday sermons to teach, exhort, inspire or downright terrify. This voice was uncertain and so soft it was barely audible in the back rows. He had officiated at hundreds of burials but the deceased had been old or ill or had died in accidents or by their own hands. Annamay Rebecca Hyatt was eight years old and she had, in the words of the coroner’s jury, died at the hands of another.
He was angry, baffled. He questioned his faith and the wisdom of God, the competence of the police and the motives and veracity of his audience. He paused between sentences, almost as if he expected someone might stand up and confess to the crime or at least to the suppression of evidence.
“And we entrust to Your loving care the soul of this beautiful child who eight years ago was christened at this very altar, Annamay Rebecca Hyatt.”
He paused again. There were coughs, sobs, sniffles, but no confession. He wanted to accuse, to threaten someone with the wrath of God, the fires of hell and eternal damnation. But he didn’t believe in hell, and he had no power or right to threaten anyone, no reason to believe there was a murderer in the audience, or a murderer’s friend. But he had an almost overpowering feeling that there was: One of you did something, knows something, and by God, I’d like to force it out of you—
His wife, Lorna, sitting in her usual place on the aisle in the middle row, was sending him her special Look which indicated he was making mistakes, saying things he should have omitted and omitting things he shouldn’t have. Lorna was a good Christian and an even better critic. She was paying careful attention so she could tell him afterward what mistakes he had made in delivery, content and demeanor. Lorna was always eager to help people improve, especially him.
He would hear about it all later, probably just before dinner which was his lowest point in the day and, maybe not coincidentally, Lorna’s highest. “What’s the use of speaking, Michael, if you cannot be heard by everyone in the church?”… “Goodness me, you sounded emotional. You can’t afford to have feelings, you’re a minister.”… “And those long pauses when you seemed to be trying to establish eye contact with somebody. It says in the book you’re never to do that. Why did you?”
Why? he thought. Why indeed?
Lorna wouldn’t understand that he was looking for a murderer or a murderer’s friend. She would consult her book and find that it was against the rules.