“Just take a seat,” he called. “I’ll be right out.” He splashed some water on his face, dried himself off, and fixed his hair in the mirror.
Oh yeah—Bradley Cox was ready.
“Sorry,” he said, coming out of the bathroom. “I was still pretty gross from the—”
Cox froze when saw the man in the ski mask coming for him—was about to scream, but the foul-smelling rag in his face silenced him immediately.
Chapter 70
Markham sat down beside his wife’s grave and began to cry. The emotion came upon him without warning, frightening him with its rapidity, but soon he gave in, weeping openly until it passed.
He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and breathed deeply—gazed around at his surroundings and tried to imagine Michelle sitting there with him. The Elm Grove Cemetery had been one of their favorite places—an impeccably landscaped park set on the Mystic River less than a half-mile from the Aquarium. They often strolled here on Sunday mornings; actually had a picnic once by the water on a sunny-cool Sunday like today—a bit morbid, they agreed, but comforted themselves with the knowledge they were imitating their Victorian ancestors, whose Sunday outings often included a stroll through the local cemetery, too.
“Did I really used to talk like that?” Markham asked. “Words like stroll and outing?”
A breeze whispered its consent in the trees. Markham smiled.
“I don’t know who that guy is anymore,” he said. “Buried here with you, I guess. Weird thing is, I look back and I don’t like him; don’t pine away or long for him—don’t even see him anymore, really. There’s only you back there now—still whole, yes, but with these other pieces, like parts of a shadow that I assume is me. I think that’s what’s so hard now. More and more lately it seems like the shadow-pieces are trying to make you into shadow-pieces, too.”
You think too much, he heard his wife say. You’ll always miss me, but the missing will change as you change. It’s the cliché of not moving on that bothers you.
“Yes,” Markham said. “I think I thought my self-awareness of the cliché, the whole I’m-going-to-join-the-FBI-to-avenge-my-wife’s-death syndrome would keep something alive—you, me maybe. Christ, I don’t know anymore. It’s all the same now in the shadows; something’s lost in there—in the work, everything I’m doing. Gates called me out on it, you know—back at my town house in Quantico. Was one hackneyed phrase away from calling me a shell of a man. He settled for something subtler about my work defining who I am.”
It’s the cliché, Michelle repeated, combined with the futility of knowing none of it will bring us closer together. Let it go. Clichés are clichés because they’re true. Stop being so smart about it all.
“I don’t think you’d like the new digs,” Markham said, smiling. “Hardwood floors, yes, but the rest is pretty standard contractor grade. No wainscoting or built-ins—none of the character of the old place. Nice pond in back, though. Lots of ducks. You’d like them.”
Let it go.
Markham sat for a moment listening to the breeze, then asked, “Would you care for a stroll down by the river, madame?”
I ’d be delighted, Michelle replied.
He rose to his feet and started off toward the water, when suddenly he felt his BlackBerry buzzing in his pocket. He stopped and checked it. An e-mail from Schaap.
Think this has anything to do with our boy?
was all it said, but a link had been inserted into the body of the message above the words Sent from my Verizon BlackBerry. Markham clicked it—an article from the Raleigh Sun dated Tuesday, November 1, 2005.
Halloween Theft at Taxidermy Studio
By Jonathan Vaughn—Staff Writer
DURHAM—Somebody might have had their heart set on being a lion this year for Halloween, say Durham Police, who are currently investigating a break-in at Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium.
According to Detective Charles Gray, chief investigator on the case, the robbery took place just after 3 a.m. this morning. “The thieves knew exactly what they were going for,” said Gray. “They entered at the rear of the establishment and used their vehicle to break down the door and tripped the silent alarm. Unfortunately, they made off with the lion’s head before we could get there.” Gray went on to say that no other items were reported missing, and that the owner’s safe, which was empty at the time of the robbery, remained untouched.
“That’s the worst part,” said Tom Rowley, owner of Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium. “Of all the things in the store, what they could hope to gain by taking old Leo is beyond me.”
A family business owned and operated in the same location for over 50 years, Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium is part taxidermy studio, part museum, and the animals inside have become old friends to both locals and curious tourists alike. Leo, a monstrous African lion’s head, had been a fixture on the wall behind Rowley’s counter since the early 1980s.
“It was one of my father’s most prized possessions,” Rowley said. “[Leo] had been in our house for years and was a gift from a friend who he served with in World War Two. It was shot on a safari back in the 1930s. These kinds of things are getting harder and harder to find, and to this day a lot of the kids used to come in here just to look at him.”
Durham Police Department spokeswoman Sh-eryl Parks said she does not believe the burglary to be related to the break-in at nearby Lynn’s Craft Store in mid-October, in which thieves made off with over $1,000 in cash. Parks, however, did advise business owners in the area to install loud alarms. “It is our experience that an audible alarm is a better deterrent than a silent alarm.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” said Tom Rowley. “It’s just sad that we live in a world where we have to worry about stuff like this.”
Markham was about to read the e-mail again when Michelle interrupted him.
No shadow-pieces in there now, she said. Everything so clear when you’re working; everything so alive. So what if your work defines who you are? You might be a shell of a man, Sam Markham, but I ’d still do you in a heartbeat.
Markham laughed, swallowed the tears that threatened to follow, and powered off his BlackBerry.
Then he took his wife’s hand and strolled with her down by the river.
Chapter 71
“Where the hell could he be?” George Kiernan muttered, glancing at his watch.
1:51 p.m.
At first he’d been furious and started his note session chewing ass as planned. But soon his fury turned to panic when the minutes ticked by and Bradley Cox still didn’t show. The rest of his cast, including Cindy Smith, had gotten off light. He had bigger fish to fry now, and that son of a bitch Cox was going to get it. Kiernan would have him thrown out of the department unless he was dead, he told the rest of the cast, and sent a pair of assistant stage managers out looking for him.