She left it on. Beneath its polyester squeeze her hair probably looked as bad as Lester's.
Mr. Van Slyke was baffled for a moment. Then his face cleared somewhat and he said, "Of course. Won't you please come in? Please excuse the mess. I…"
The brittle safety of polite platitudes fell away and his words dried up. Sidling by ahead of Harry, Anna looked closely at him. His skin hung loose over muscles devoid of elasticity; his was the face of a man who'd had a small stroke or was in shock. Taking his hand she shook it as if they'd just been introduced. "Good to see you again," she murmured. His skin was dry and warm. Not shock. Probably just old-fashioned depression. She shied away from a sudden memory of the weeks and months after Zach died when she'd moved in slow motion, pushing through a life grown thick and suffocating as Delta mud. But then Zach never beat her. Zach was the kind of guy who put mice out, then left the door ajar in case it got cold and they wanted back in.
Even without Carolyn's ghost, the room would have been enough to depress Anna. As Les had warned, it was a mess. The contents of a backpack and a suitcase were disgorged over the available surfaces, along with the remains of an uneaten fast-food supper. There was a single chair of that sterile motel hybrid between kitchen straight-back and easy chair beside a round table piled with the soiled and disorganized guts of Lester's day pack, and the bed.
Out of deference to rank, Anna left the chair for Harry. Sliding loose change and motel brochures to one side, she perched on the low dresser beside the television. Lester hadn't turned it off when he'd answered the door. Garish colors and rude noises emanating from the set proved the only life the room had: distorted, invasive, inconsequential.
Anna composed herself to let Harry take the lead and watched the men settle, Harry, hat in hand, at the small cluttered table and Les Van Slyke on the edge of the unmade bed, his bruised and bony knees sticking out from under the battered flannel robe. She was put in mind of Rory's image of Les as a whimpering dog. It was not a pretty picture, particularly of a boy to have of his father.
"Mr. Van Slyke-" Harry began.
"Lester, Les," the old man begged, and the humility on his face made Anna want to deliver a swift kick to his nether regions.
"Les," Harry amended. "We-or rather Anna here-has been talking with Rory. He suggested your relationship with your wife, Carolyn, was not as smooth as you painted it."
Lester tweaked at his bathrobe, arranging it demurely over his knees. As soon as he let go it fell away again. He left it alone. After enough time had passed that Anna had to actively clamp a lid on herself to keep from jumping in with questions of her own, he said, "All couples have their little troubles now and again.Carolyn was quite a few years younger than I am. I suppose she got restless sometimes."
"Did you argue?" Harry persisted.
"Most married people argue," Lester said, making eye contact with the rug between the toes of his mangy brown carpet slippers.
"Did she ever get violent?" Harry asked.
"Carolyn did have a temper," Lester said and, to Anna's surprise, he smiled as if at a pleasing memory. "She was a feisty one."
"Did she ever get violent with you?" Harry pressed patiently.
At that Lester looked mildly alarmed. His fleshless white hands skittered about over his knees like frightened cave spiders. "How do you mean?" he asked.
"Hit you, clawed you, threw things at you," Harry explained. Ruick, like Anna, had to know Lester was playing for time, but for reasons of his own the chief ranger had chosen to give it to him.
"She'd get frustrated," Lester admitted. "She threw things once or twice. Carolyn was a complicated woman and I've always been a simple man. Sometimes it was too much for her. Especially with her having that high-stress job. She needed to let off a little steam once in a while."
Anna should have admired his loyalty but she didn't. Domestic abuse cases occurred wherever people cohabited, whether it be in houses or tents or camper trailers. Over the years her sympathies with the abused person's attachment to the abuser had hardened into an impatience that verged on anger. Molly had explained the psychological dynamics of the victim/victimizer relationship and, though Anna had come to accept it intellectually, viscerally it still pissed her off.
Other than the fleeting smile at his deceased wife's "feistiness" Lester showed no emotion. Now Harry shot Anna a look, eyebrows raised, lips crimped, that suggested, at least to Anna's mind, that Rory had been exaggerating or maybe out-and-out lying. Given Mr. Van Slyke's equanimity she could see how Harry might think that. But he hadn't been there, hadn't see Rory or heard his voice as the tale unfolded. Rory might not have his facts right, but Anna would have bet the farm that he believed the things he'd said.
She believed them too. Most people, when hit with the questions Harry had put to Les, would have said, "Why do you ask?" Les showed no interest. He'd been too busy evading, minimizing, rationalizing- major tools in the building and shoring up of denial.
Harry's eyebrows seemed to signal defeat. Anna took that as a call for backup and entered the fray.
"Mr. Van Slyke," she began and continued, bulldozing over his protestations that she must call him "Les." "When Harry asks about your wife hurting you, he means like the times she inflicted injuries that put you in the hospital. Your son said she broke your collarbone, burst your eardrum and once nearly cut your face in half with a kitchen stool."
The blunt assault of words didn't have the effect she'd been hoping for. Beneath the pasty sagging skin there was a rippling disturbance, but it could have as easily been brought on by Rory's bizarre lies as an unmasking of the truth.
"Why would Rory say that?" he asked, bewildered. Not quite bewildered enough. His left hand scampered up his right arm and his forefinger stretched out, gently stroking the scar that bisected his face.
Seeing the gesture, Anna willfully misunderstood his question. "Rory said it because the boy loves his father, loves you and seeing you hurt broke his heart."
That got the desired reaction. Not only are more flies caught with honey, more can be killed. Anna felt a pang of guilt for manipulating Les's emotions. It didn't last long.
He rubbed his eyes with both fists like a very small child. There were tears left like snail trails on his knuckles. The rounded shoulders shuddered with a convulsive sigh.
Harry had a look of annoyance on his face directed not at the weepy old man but at Anna. She huffed, a teensy puff of air from her nostrils. If he was thinking she should leap to the bed and put the feminine arms of comfort around Lester, he had another think coming. She leaned back against the mirror, made herself comfortable for the duration of the waterworks.
The chief ranger had, indeed, been expecting something of the sort. Seeing her settle in he put his hat on the top of the clutter on the table and stood. Stooping awkwardly, he patted Les's shoulder. Words failed him. Again Anna got the flash of annoyance. She considered suggesting the classic comfort "there, there" but thought better of it.
Lester calmed down. Ruick retreated with unflattering speed back to the safety of his lonely chair.