No he’s not, thought Paz, and said, “Mr. Doe?another hard question. We’ve heard there was … well, tension between your daughters, and we’ve heard that your elder daughter was, maybe, not completely in her right state of mind, that she had a history of … say, imbalance, an unhealthy interest in cults and black magic. It’s probably no secret that people in the local police think it’s possible that, well, that she was involved in Mary’s death. Do you think there’s anything to that?”
Doe turned his glass-green gaze onto Paz, and they stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed like a very long time. Paz kept his own eyes steady, as a cop must, but he grew increasingly uneasy. Doe’s look was far from hostile; more like curiosity, but he seemed to be sucking out of his inspection more than Paz was giving, was assessing various hidey-holes in Paz’s highly compartmentalized soul, and not liking much what he found there. Paz’s mother, of course, did this all the time. Barlow broke in then, or, Paz imagined, they might have been there until the sun sank.
“Sir, we’d really appreciate anything you could tell us. I have to say there are some mighty scared folks down there right now, and the only thing we really got to go on now is that this perpetrator was very likely connected in some way to your family. And I personally got no doubt in my mind that if we don’t catch him real quick some other poor girl’s gonna end up like your Mary.”
Doe seemed to sag in his chair; he closed his eyes and let out a long, long breath. They waited, and watched him suffer. It was perfectly pure suffering, uninterpreted by words or relieved by cries. “You have to understand, Jane almost died in Africa,” Doe said. “When my son, I should say my stepson, Josiah Mount, found her in that hospital in Bamako, she weighed ninety-seven pounds. She was covered with sores, and she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk. Just made these cat sounds. It was the scariest thing I ever heard. I was sure we’d lose her. In any case, we got her into a clinic in the city that specializes in liver diseases; this was at New York Hospital, because we all thought that’s what it was?hepatitis. She was yellow as a canary when she got here, from jaundice, we thought.”
“And was it hepatitis?”
“It was not. The tests for hep A, B, and C were all negative. Her liver had shut down pretty good, but there was no what-d’y’-call-it, no pathogenic agent, not that they could find. No cancer either. I sat with her, sometimes all day long, and Josey did, too. My wife doesn’t much care for hospitals. And after a while she started in talking, not talking to me, mind you, just sort of babbling, sometimes in other languages, too. What I could make out of it, well …” Here he seemed to choose his words with some care. “It was all about magic, black magic, I guess, and a kind of war that they were fighting in this native tribe she was visiting, a guy named Oo-looney, she was on his side, against some people named Doo-rack and Mundeli and there were a lot of other funny names, but those came up most. And … well, there was one part where they, this guy Doo-rack sacrificed a pregnant woman, and ate parts of her and the baby, and Jane couldn’t stop it, and somehow, this sacrifice gave the bad guy some kind of power over her. And the good guy, Oo-looney, couldn’t help her for some reason. That’s a summary of what went on for the eighteen weeks she was more or less out of it. It didn’t make much sense to me then, and when Witt came back she seemed not to babble as much. And that’s also when she started to get better. The liver necrosis vanished, her color came back, and she started to put on weight.” He paused. “Of course, the part about the sacrifice … I remembered that when the thing happened with Mary.”
“Did you tell the police about that at the time, sir?” asked Paz.
“I did not. It was just one of a lot of details that she was babbling. By the time I thought of it, I mean, by the time the autopsy told us what was really done to Mary, Jane was gone, and why bring it up then?”
“Just a moment, Mr. Doe,” said Barlow, breaking in, to Paz’s annoyance, “her husband didn’t come back from Africa with her?”
“No, he was still out with the natives when she came back to Bamako. Apparently, it’s a very isolated village. Josey had people try to locate him, spent a good deal of money there, but they never did. Then he just walked into the hospital one day.”
“And what was your daughter’s reaction to her husband?” Paz asked.
“Well, as I say, she started to get better. I can tell you, I was glad to have some relief. But you mean on a personal level. I don’t know. I liked Witt, I always did. He’s funny, doesn’t take himself too seriously. A tremendously talented fellow, too, and Jane seemed to love him. That’s all I was interested in. My children both more or less decided what they were going to do with their lives with no help from me, I have to say. But there was … I won’t say something was wrong, maybe hollow, or missing, is the right word. I mean before. I hope this won’t sound narrow, but he hadn’t any faith. Well, that’s common enough nowadays, I mean the lack of actual religion, but most irreligious people set up something else they can believe in?their families, say, or the environment, or justice; or money, for that matter, that’s fairly popular, I believe. But Witt didn’t seem to have anything like that, and it was like he had no … bottom, and all the verbal fireworks seemed to me to be filling that hole. Anyway, when he got back from Africa, he seemed steadier, more sober. I thought maybe he had had an experience, some epiphany, to use an old-fashioned word, but he never said, and, of course, you can’t just ask a man. But I’ve gotten off the track?you wanted to know about Jane and Mary. I’m sorry, I don’t talk much about these things anymore.”
“That’s all right, sir,” said Barlow, “you just take your time.”
“They were not close, let me start by saying that. It would’ve been hard to pick sisters more different. Mary was close to her mother, Jane was my kid. Families often break out that way. Jane was like me, also, in that she kept it all pretty close, a private person, not demonstrative. Mary was, let’s say, operatic. Like her mother. When she was down, the whole house knew it, and when she was up, she lit the place like a floodlight. And, also, I guess you know, she was fantastically beautiful, from an early age, and she found that she could use that to get her way. She kind of ruled the roost, if you want to know.”
“And Jane resented it?” asked Paz.
Doe thought for a few moments. “You know, I can’t really say that she did. Maybe my stepson would know about that. He was sort of in the middle, and Jane and he were like that”?here he held the first two fingers of his right hand up, closely touching?”all while they were growing up. We sent the girls to different schools, though, because Jane kind of just faded into the wallpaper when Mary was around. But resentment? No. Jane was always trying to get closer to Mary, be a real sister. She was the one who tried to keep in touch, even when she was traveling. Letters and photos and all. I don’t think Mary ever wrote a letter in her life. But what you really want to know is, did Jane hate Mary enough to kill her? Was she jealous enough? And believe me, I’ve lain in bed all night running it through my mind. Did it happen that way? Could I have done something? Was it our fault, the way they were raised? I have to say that I don’t know. The Jane I knew, or thought I knew, I’d have no trouble saying, no, never. But … her profession, the places she’s been, the things she’s seen … maybe something was released from a dark place. We’ve all got those dark places. I guess you know that in your business better than I do.”
“Do you think she killed herself?” asked Paz, hearing the brutality in his tone, not caring. “Was there a note?” Again, that long green look. Doe said, “The explosion had to be intentional. Jane was a careful sailor and Kite was a safe boat. I can’t think of another explanation for what happened.” The direct answer finessed; the man seemed practiced at such avoidances. He looked out over the descending lawn, the lonely unused pool, the boathouse, and the empty dock. The lowering sun found a break in the cloud it had paused behind and sent an oblique shaft across the scene, lighting it like a stage set in a play about the acme of domestic felicity. It was stunning enough to distract all three of them. Barlow said, “My, my!”