I didn’t actually remember printing the article or leaving the library. Or starting my Vespa, for that matter. The first place I found myself after my shock subsided enough for me to form a thought was the main post office on Whitehead Street.
A Coppertone-colored bum making a straw hat on the curb glanced up as I swerved to a dust-raising stop. There was a pay phone inside the post office, I remembered. It was inside a dark, old-fashioned phone booth with a door that closed, like a confessional. I had actually called my college from this secluded booth to tell them I wasn’t coming back.
That was exactly what I needed now, I realized. Privacy, darkness, confession.
I thought of another headline as I entered the post office, like a movie zombie.
“Cop’s Wife Goes Nuts.”
Chapter 34
AS IF IN A TRANCE, I pushed into the post office and fished out a bunch of quarters. I collapsed in the circa 1930s phone booth in the corner and closed its folding door behind me. Quarters rang off the dusty marble between my feet as I dropped several while dialing 411.
I needed to know what happened after Peter had spoken to the detectives. I needed to go to the primary source, get to the bottom of this.
If it had a bottom.
I got the Boston PD number from information, dialed, and began feeding the phone quarters.
One fact actually made me dry-heave as it kept repeating in my mind like a news crawl across the bottom of a TV screen.
Amanda Fournier was pregnant.
Just like me.
My sweat almost made me drop the receiver as the last quarter bonged home and the phone rang.
“Boston.”
“Hello. May I speak to Detective… Yorgenson?” I said, reading from the printed article in my hand.
“Hold on,” said the gruff Boston cop.
“Yorgenson,” said an even gruffer voice a moment later.
“My name’s Jeanine Baker,” I said with a convincing Southern twang. My current state of insanity apparently was a wonder for my acting chops. “I work for Tony’s Bail Bonds down here in Miami. We’re doing an employment check on a Peter Fournier. Rumor has it he was involved in some kind of homicide. I got your name from a Boston Globe article. Can you give me some clarity on Mr. Fournier?”
Even at that point, I was hoping for some good news. Even after the lies and strange behavior, I was hoping that there was some reasonable explanation. That it was all one big mistake.
“Miami?” Yorgenson said. “So that’s where that virus Fournier turned up. I’d be delighted to give you some clarity on Petey. The son of a bitch killed his wife and got away with it. He should be in a jail cell.”
Chapter 35
I OPENED THE BOOTH DOOR at the dusty post office, unable to breathe. The air had a strange new pressure, a new weight, as if the room had been suddenly filled with water when I wasn’t paying attention, and now I was drowning.
“A shock, isn’t it?” the cop said. “I know. Pete doesn’t look like a psychopath, does he? He’s a real charmer, especially with the ladies.”
“How can you be so sure he did it?” I said.
“After his wife turned up dead, we went by the book, looked at Pete straight off the bat more to clear him than anything else,” Yorgenson said. “But we found out some very interesting things about Mr. Rookie of the Year.
“Like how he had dozens of brutality complaints. Like how he was rumored to love to party with nose candy. Like how he and Amanda had been separated. One of Amanda’s friends told us it was because of the baby. He wanted her to abort it. She filed for divorce instead. He’d been harassing her for months before the shooting. Stalking her at work. Following some of her male coworkers home. ‘If I can’t have you, nobody will,’ he told her on several occasions.”
Yorgenson paused, letting it all sink in.
“I don’t remember if it was in the papers, but Amanda was shot several times. The first time in the abdomen. The first officer to arrive on scene retired soon after on a psychiatric disability pension. I hear he lives in the subway station down at the Government Center now.”
Yorgenson chuckled bitterly.
“Think Petey Boy was nervous when we came to question him? Think again. He sat there with those big cold baby blues of his and a shit-eating grin, like we were best buddies watching a Sox game at the corner watering hole. Had his alibi information ready and waiting for me. He didn’t even bother asking if we had any other leads. The whole thing seemed to amuse him.”
“But why didn’t he—?” I started.
“Go to jail?” Yorgenson finished. “I ask myself that every day. Classic stalker-husband-kills-wife open-and-shut case, right? Wrong. The DA wouldn’t prosecute, wouldn’t even help us get a search warrant to look for the murder weapon.
“If I had to bet, Peter’s uncle, Jack, who was the head of Boston PD’s Internal Affairs, used every dirty secret and favor and string he had to squash our case. At least the stink I made got the punk to resign from the force.”
I closed my eyes, my forehead banging against my knees as all the breath escaped my lungs.
“If you ask me—” Yorgenson started.
Then my time had elapsed and the phone went dead.
The phone clicking back into its cradle sounded like a pistol shot in the silence. A bullet right through my brain. I stared down at my hands as they shook in time with the painful thump of my heart.
I wandered outside dazed. Blinking in the sunlight, I felt weary, drained, like I’d just completed a stint of hard labor. The sun-blasted steps and sidewalk were empty. The George Hamilton look-alike bum who’d been weaving palm frond hats was long gone.
What a coincidence, I thought, glancing up into the painfully blue sky. So was my mind.
I left my moped where it was and decided to walk. I headed south past a construction site where a bunch of black and Mexican laborers sat in the shade of a king palm on a metal tool cart, staring blatantly, silently, and rapaciously. Usually I was nervous about such scenes, but that morning, I stared back defiantly, daring them to whistle, to say something to me, to set me off.
Where was I going? I wondered as I made a turn and wandered down a picket fence–lined street. I didn’t have a home anymore. I’d never had one, in fact.
How stupid could a person be? I thought. Red flag after red flag had been raised, and I’d pushed them aside time and time again. It was over. I’d been duped, scammed, fleeced. The strangest and by far the worst part of all was that I was the one who’d conned myself.
Peter wasn’t my best friend, wasn’t the love of my life. I thought about the happy life of ease and suntan lotion on the deck of Peter’s Stingray I’d been envisioning less than twenty-four hours ago, and I started laughing. Instead of tanning myself topside, I was in a hole as black and deep as they come, and I had no idea how to get out of it.
It was a rabbit hole, I realized as I walked down the sunlit street, skating along the edge of my sanity. And I was Alice. Peter was the White Rabbit. Who had Elena been? The Queen of Hearts, I thought. And off went her head.
Key West was actually Wonderland, I thought. The theory made a lot of sense, especially if you’ve ever been to Duval Street after midnight.
Chapter 36
I RETRIEVED MY MOPED and got back to the house twenty minutes later. I went straight to the bedroom closet and took down a suitcase. I opened it on the floor of the closet and threw in some underwear, my shirts, my jeans.