“No thanks,” I said.
Yolanda. was glaring at me. I saw the glitter of her tongue ring when she opened her mouth.
“I know who killed Kyle,” Nancy said. “I know all about what Richard did. I’m glad the man is dead. I’m glad there won’t be a trial, delays, testimony, excuses, deals. The only thing wrong with the scenario is that I don’t know why he killed my son. Why would a college teacher purposely run down a fourteen-year-old boy?”
Choices. Tell her the truth, that a man who prided himself on his understanding of morality, of right and wrong, had turned into a vengeance-seeking animal because his Down’s syndrome daughter had been spat upon? That her son had stopped in the street and taunted his pursuer with an upraised finger, defied him because Kyle Root was frightened and angry and fourteen years old and had never thought about death? Tell her to ask Andrew Goines, her son’s friend who could have been the one John Welles had chosen to follow, to kill?
“Was he drunk, high?” Yolanda said. “Was he insane?”
Her face was tight. Her eyes met mine. She was trying to tell me something. I thought I knew what it was.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “He didn’t get a chance to tell me. I think he was going to talk about it but your ex-husband showed up. Welles had a gun…”
I shrugged.
Nancy Root sank back in her chair once again, adjusting the sleeves of her sweater. She folded her hands and put the white knuckles of her thumbs to her lips.
I looked at Yolanda. I couldn’t swear to it but I thought she gave me a barely existent nod of approval.
“Okay,” said Nancy, suddenly standing. “I’ll get your check.”
She hurried out of the room.
“Andy told me,” Yolanda said.
“Told you?”
“Told me about what he and Kyle did,” she said.
I looked toward where Nancy Root had exited.
“She’ll take a few minutes,” Yolanda said. “She’s crying. I know Kyle. Knew him. She just thinks she does. If that dead guy backed him into a corner, Kyle would just tell him to screw himself or give him the finger.”
Something must have shown on my face. Yolanda smiled, but there wasn’t any satisfaction in the smile.
“Got it, right?” she asked.
I didn’t say anything. Nancy came back in, check in hand, eyes red. She handed me the check.
“Yola’s moving back in with me,” she said. “We need each other.”
Yolanda didn’t deny the mutual need, but I didn’t see any sign of it on her part.
“That’s right,” she said.
Nancy Root walked with me out to the elevator, adjusting her sleeves one more time as the bell dinged and the elevator doors opened. I got in.
“Thank you,” she said and as the doors closed, she added, “The hardest part is not knowing.”
It was almost ten. Ames and I drove to the Texas, had a beer and burger and looked at the manuscript of Two Many Words. Part One, Too Many Words, was about fifty pages long, each one with a crude drawing and no words. The drawings were of birds, people, pieces of luggage piled in an airport waiting area, a clock, a pencil, tables, a rabbit that resembled Bugs Bunny. Part Two, To Many Words, was also about fifty pages long, neatly handwritten in black ink, probably the longest single sentence ever written.
I began my search for the sunlight as I came out of the womb, my search for sunlight and God, and found sunlight pretty quickly, and darkness too, but I have the feeling that someday I’ll go back into that womb and find that God had been there waiting for me the whole while and he’ll say, Where the hell have you been, and I’ll say, Looking for you, and he’ll say, What the hell for, to which I will tell him that I wanted to know why I had been plucked timely from the warm darkness and sent out to grow old, feel pain and doubt, love and be loved, laugh and be laughed at, doubt and be doubted, and old God will answer saying I had just answered my own question
And words kept coming, but I stopped reading over Ames’s shoulder. I left him sitting there and knew that he would keep reading to the last word. I wondered if there would be a period after the last word. I meant to ask Ames in the morning.
Back in my office, it took about ten minutes before the phone rang. It was Viviase.
“Alberta Pastor is gone,” he said. “Packed up, got in her car, ran. Her lawyer says he doesn’t know where she went. She’s got no money but whatever she had on her and a Visa credit card. We’ll track her down. Looks like we’ll drop the charges against you and McKinney, except for the illegal weapon. Given the situation, the district attorney is willing to accept a fifty-dollar fine, an apology and the promise that Mr. McKinney’s love affair with firearms will not be hands-on.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I thought about telling you to stay out of trouble,” he said. “But that won’t happen, will it?”
“It finds me,” I said.
“Maybe you welcome it.”
“You sound like Ann,” I said.
“Ann?”
“My therapist,” I said.
We hung up and I did a dangerous thing. I should have washed, gotten into my pajamas and watched a Thin Man movie, but I sat at the desk, looked at the painting of the dark jungle on the wall, had trouble finding the spot of color and thought.
I thought about a dead philosopher and a smiling parentless girl with Down’s syndrome. I thought about a father who had lost his only son and had helped the boy’s killer commit suicide. I thought of a mother whom I had faced and told about what had happened to her dead son. I thought about an old woman whose mind was slowly slipping away and I tried not to wonder what would happen to her. I thought about my dead wife and my dead life. I thought about them till I fell asleep at the desk with my head on my arms.
I wanted nothing but to be left alone, maybe for a day, a week, a month, a year, forever.
The Last Chapter
That is the story I told Ann Horowitz. Not exactly in those words, but essentially that was it.
It took us through lunch. She called and had a pizza delivered, half double onion for me, half spinach for her. During my telling she had to use my phone to reschedule three appointments.
She assured me that none of the appointments was within years of approaching emergency status.
“You have forty dollars?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“We’ve been here four sessions,” she said. “I won’t charge you for a house call.”
“I didn’t call you and this isn’t a house,” I said.
“Sarcasm?”
“No,” I said.
“I was hoping for sarcasm. You are a tough case, Lewis. Are you sure you aren’t Catholic?”
“I’m sure.”
“You think it would work out if Georgia Cubbins moved into Seaside and shared a room with Dorothy Cgnozic?”
“No,” I said.
“How about if Jane Welles moved in with Adele and Flo?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you think either of those suggestions was serious?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’re too smart.”
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s getting late. I still have to get back to the apartment, put on my bathing suit and do my twenty laps. If I miss my laps I get grumpy. Have you ever seen me grumpy?”
“No.”
“I’ll have to let you see that side of me sometime,” she said.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
“So, let’s get to the heart of darkness,” she said.
“Why do you do what you do?”
“Serve papers?”
“Yes, and help people in need find other people they think they need,” she said.
“I serve papers to make enough money to live. I find people because I can’t stop people from finding me.”
“Because they sense in you a person who will empathize, will find, will give them closure?”
“Maybe.”
“You could make money other ways than serving papers, finding people.”
“I’m good at it.”
“Professor Welles could have shot you. Alberta Pastor could have strangled you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m suicidal, but I don’t want to commit suicide. I want someone to do it for me.”
“Like Welles?”
“No,” I said.
“No,” she said. “Here comes the profound part, the part where I really earn my money. You feel guilty about your wife’s death. You’ve convinced yourself at one level that you deserve to die, but you know you don’t want to die and that makes you feel guilty.”
“This sounds like the end of Psycho, ” I said. “Where the psychiatrist gives a pompous explanation of why Norman Bates isn’t a transvestite.”
“Interesting choice for comparison,” Ann said.
“In the end Norman Bates is sitting alone in his cell, smiling, determined never to speak again,” I said.
“I remember,” she said. “But I’ve got a solution for you, well, at least a possible solution. You are helping other people search because something is keeping you from searching for the person who might give you some relief. Who am I talking about? Who, with your skills, could you be looking for?”
Silence. Silence. Silence. Except for the cars whooshing down 301 beyond my window.
“Lewis, a swimming pool of uncertain temperature beckons.”
“The one who killed my wife,” I said.
“Why didn’t you, with your skills, stay in Chicago and find that person instead of driving more than a thousand miles to hide behind a Dairy Queen?”
“She was gone. Finding who did it wouldn’t bring her back,” I said. “We’ve talked about this.”
“No, Lewis,” she said. “I am old, nearly ancient, but my memory is trained and I take very good notes. If you’ve talked to anyone about it, it is Lewis Fonesca.”
“So?”
“You have clung with great tenacity to your grief,” she said.
“Finding the person who killed my wife…”
“Catherine.”
“Catherine,” I said. “Finding the person who killed Catherine might help me give up my grief?”
“You tell me,” she said.
“I don’t know. Even if I did try, where would I be if I failed?”
“It is a no-lose situation,” she said. “You find the person and that part ends. You fail to find the person and you know that you tried. Your life of quiet desperation will always be waiting for you in these two rooms, at least until they demolish the building.”
Ann got up. I opened my wallet and handed her two twenty-dollar bills, which she tucked into the outer pocket of her briefcase.
There was a knock at the door. Ann looked at me. I nodded my head yes to let her know it was all right to answer it.
Sally was standing there.
“Lew,” she said. “Thought you’d like to know that Jane Welles is going with her aunt to Reno tomorrow.”
Ann touched Sally’s shoulder and left the office. Sally stood in the doorway waiting.
“How would you like to go to Flo’s for a barbecue dinner tonight? The kids, Adele, Ames?”
“No,” I said.
“Good,” said Sally. “Because there is no dinner. What there is, is a pair of tickets to a movie at Burns Court. You can’t say no. I already bought the tickets.”
“I don’t go out to movies,” I said.
“You were going to take Darrell.”
“I would have found a way out.”
“Life is full of new and crazy adventures, Lewis,” she said. “Look, I just got off of a fourteen-hour day. My feet hurt. I can’t stop seeing the face of a ten-year-old girl I think is being abused by her stepfather and I need a movie. Help me out here. Don’t make me work for it.”
“Let’s go see a movie,” I said.
“Good. You were a real hit with Darrell.”
Sally smiled as I folded the empty pizza box and shoved it in the wastebasket. I tried to smile back.
“Made a decision,” I said.
“Tell me about it on the way,” she said. “The movie starts in fifteen minutes.”
“It’ll just take a few seconds,” I said. “I’m going to find the person who killed my wife.”
“Which means you’re not going to lock yourself in your office in the morning?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to lock myself in my office. No.”