Twenty-One

Charlie noticed the edgy state I was in the next morning, but he said nothing about it. Perhaps by then he’d grown accustomed to the frayed rope I had become. Certainly nothing had happened in the last few days to allay the doubts he had about me, the erratic work, the tense look, the river of fear that carried me along, and which, by then, had merged with the river of anger.

“Hello, Dave,” he said cautiously as I swept by his office.

I only nodded and fled into my own.

The phone rang on Lily’s desk at precisely 9:13, and I should have known how fateful that call was because an old literary image suddenly returned to me, Satan stepping off the rim of heaven and into the cheerless void.

“Stewart Grace for you,” she said.

I picked up the phone. “Good morning, Stewart.”

“I think you should come over to my office right away,” Grace said.

I heard it in his voice, distant, ominous, the foghorn of the Titanic.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Mark’s on his way, too,” Grace said. There was a brief pause, then he added, “Things have gotten worse, Dave.”

I told him I’d be right there, then put down the phone and headed for my car, my mind now entering a fantasy of its own, a vision of Diana leaning against the hood of my car, eating an apple. As I approach she smiles as brightly as when she was a little girl. Then she tosses the apple and it rises in a wide arc, unraveling the dark weave of her groundless suspicion as it soars, so that by the time it touches earth again, she is free of it entirely, all the hellhounds of her mind brought to heel at last.

It was the last image I had of her salvation.

I brushed it easily from my mind.

Grace was seated behind his desk when I came in. He rose immediately and offered his hand. “Thanks for coming right over, Dave,” he said. His tone was more grave and solemn than I had ever heard it, so that he no longer seemed entirely confident that he knew his way out of the bramble. “Mark will be here in a few minutes.” He sat back down and nodded to one of the two chairs that faced his desk. “Please.”

I took my seat and waited, now reviewing all the many steps I’d taken, the decisions I’d made, the observations they’d been based upon, signs glimpsed, signs missed, the whole sorry scheme of things entire.

“As I said, things have gotten worse,” Grace told me.

As if on cue, Mark burst through the door. He was dressed in a white shirt and black pants, both neatly pressed, but some part of him, his hair, his eyes, struck me as peculiarly in disarray.

“Dave,” he said with a quick nod. “Stewart.”

Grace rose from his desk and they shook hands. Then Mark turned to me. “Has Stewart told you?”

I shook my head.

Mark sat down in the chair next to mine but seemed hardly able to stay in his seat, his manner jumpy and alert, as if, at any moment, he expected to be attacked. With a shaky hand he took a thin stack of photographs from his jacket pocket. “She’s done it again,” he said. “Just what I was afraid of.”

“And at his workplace,” Grace added grimly.

“She must have come to the center last night,” Mark said. There was something frantic in his voice. He looked truly frightened. “I was pretty much alone there. Working late.” He thrust the photographs toward me. “Look what she did.”

There were four photographs, each of Mark’s car, but from different angles, one from each side of the car, one of the front, one of the rear. The car rested in Mark’s reserved space at the research center. It was a black sedan and the dark red letters of the word that had been painted the full length of each side and across the hood and trunk were as visible as blood on black velvet: MURDERER.

“Terrible,” Mark muttered. “Scary.”

Which was true. Because in the photographs the word appeared larger and more grotesque than I would have thought possible, so that the car looked like a huge black animal that had been flayed open, with dripping streams of red flowing down its wounded flanks. In such a state, the translucent headlights appeared pale and lifeless, the dead eyes of a dead thing. I could not imagine the car ever moving again, or making even the slightest sound. Nothing came from it but death.

“It’s obvious how serious this is,” Grace said.

Mark took the pictures from me and handed them to Stewart, who looked at them only briefly, then placed them on his desk and settled his gaze on me. “Well, Dave?” he said.

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know what to say, or what I was expected to say, save that Diana had clearly gone over the edge, that she was now hurtling forward in a wild, whitewater madness.

“Surely you see how this is escalating,” Stewart said. “Diana’s actions, I mean.”

I felt that I could do nothing but offer, however briefly, a meek, legalistic defense. “Is it absolutely certain that Diana did this?”

Mark sprang to his feet. “Oh, come on, Dave. Who else could it be?”

Again, I dodged the issue, though by a move I knew to be a feint. “Before .  .  . when we talked before .  .  . you mentioned a man at work who—”

“Gillespie?” Mark interrupted. “No way. He wouldn’t do something like this. Besides, he’s in Toronto.” He snapped the pictures from Stewart’s desk and thrust them toward me. “This is Diana’s work, and you know it.”

“Mark,” Stewart cautioned. He nodded toward the chair. “Please.”

Mark sat down, but again he seemed barely able to remain in place. “I’m a busy man, Dave,” he said. “You know that. I can’t let this go on. I told you that.”

“And we won’t let it go on,” Grace added calmly. He looked at me for assurance. “Will we, Dave?”

“No,” I said quietly, “but—”

“But what?” Mark snapped. “I can’t believe you’re defending her, Dave.”

“I’m not defending her,” I said.

He looked at me, thunderstruck. “Surely you don’t believe a word of what .  .  .” He stopped. “Maybe you do,” he cried. He began searching through his pockets, one after the other, in a kind of frantic quest. Then he found what he sought and pressed it toward me. “The badge,” he said.

It rested in his open hand, made of tin, a five-pointed star with faded letters inscribed in the middle, badly rusted, impossible to identify.

“Go ahead, take it,” Mark said. “Give it to the cops. Put it through the lab. See if you can find some kind of evidence on it.”

I left the badge in Mark’s hand. “It’s not evidence, Mark. I know that.”

Mark returned the badge to his pocket. “Diana thought I used a badge to murder my son,” he told Grace. “Crazy. And now my car. She’s ruined my car.” His eyes snapped over to me. “I had to drive that car over here, Dave. Through the town. The whole fucking town. With MURDERER written all over it in big red letters.”

“Mark,” Grace cautioned again. “I’m sure this is as worrisome to Dave as it is to you.”

“I wish I could be sure of that, Stewart,” Mark said. His gaze bore into me. “Can I be sure of that, Dave?”

Before I could answer, Grace said, “We all have certain options here, and I think we all agree that something has to be done. We know this can’t continue, and we know that if it does, it will get worse.” He looked at me pointedly. “And certainly no one knows this better than you, Dave, that a condition like this only deepens.”

As my father’s had, which was precisely what Grace was getting at. He’d started with the mildest of suspicions, with a short enemies list, then descended into a near total paranoia, firing off letters to newspapers, along with various threatening ones to scores of momentarily addled critics, colleagues, even former students. Mark had no doubt told Grace all of this, and now it was to be used as evidence against Diana, proof of her tainted blood.

“Perhaps we should explore this situation clinically for a moment,” Grace said.

“Clinically?” Mark asked, clearly somewhat exasperated by the pace of the proceedings.

“She’s never received any kind of treatment, isn’t that true, Dave?” Grace asked.

I nodded.

“But you mentioned it to her, didn’t you? The possibility of her getting help? You told me that you would, and I assume you did?”

“Yes. I told her she needed to see someone.”

“What was her reaction?”

“Not good.”

“I see.” Grace nodded toward the photographs Mark still held. “This is destruction of property, Dave, a clear escalation in Diana’s behavior. I’m sure you remember our last conversation. About having to act if things appear to get worse. Well, things have gotten worse, don’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

Grace leaned forward and folded his arms on his desk. “So, Dave, what do you want us to do? Do you think a restraining order would have any effect on Diana’s behavior?”

“No,” I said.

“A talk with you? Or with me?”

“She wouldn’t listen to either one of us.”

“What then can we do?” Grace asked.

I thought only of Patty, how, step by step, Diana had stolen her from me. I reviewed all I’d done in the last few weeks, all the conversations I’d had with Diana and others, the treatment I’d offered for her steadily increasing derangement, a failure that stoked a fire in me that seemed even more fierce than the one I’d felt the night before.

“Diana has to be stopped,” I said, my voice suddenly as hard as a hammer on a nail.

Grace looked relieved by the bluntness and determination.

“For her own good,” I added.

Grace and Mark nodded. Then Grace said, “How can that be done, Dave?”

“The police can do it,” I answered. “They can arrest her.”

Grace appeared surprised by the extremity of the action I’d just proposed.

“You mean have Mark file a complaint with the police?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Grace didn’t seem convinced that such was the proper action. “But we don’t really have any actual evidence that Diana did it.”

“No,” I agreed, “but we have plenty of evidence for suspicion.” Then I made the case against my sister, her puny evidence, the weird faxes and e-mails, her freakish “research,” the accusation she’d left on Mark’s car, followed by a series of threatening quotations. I nodded toward the photographs Mark still held in his right hand, the butchered car, dripping with bloodred paint. “Now this.”

It was a convincing argument. I could see how successful it was; perhaps, in all my life, my first success.

“So we have to take this step,” Grace said. “You see no less .  .  . dramatic .  .  . way of intervening with Diana?”

“No,” I answered crisply. “Diana won’t listen to me. She won’t listen to anyone. She needs help. It has to be imposed upon her.” I drew in a long breath. “Like Dad.”

Grace nodded slowly, like a man accepting a course of action to which he could lend only tepid support. “Of course, it’ll take a little pressure to get it done immediately.”

But I knew he could get it done, and so did he.

“Are you in agreement, Mark?” Grace asked.

Mark’s eyes brightened. “I think it’s a good idea. Get a criminal complaint, get a cop to serve it.” He looked at me. “Show Diana that she’s crossed the line.”

I nodded. “For her own good,” I repeated.

Mark could barely conceal his eagerness. “A shock,” he said. “A shock to her system.”

Grace leveled his gaze on me. “Final call, Dave.”

“Do it,” I said, and added nothing else.

You smile, though you realize how coldly inappropriate it is, how it may seem to make light of all that has happened. But you can’t remove this arctic smile from your lips. It holds there, like an accusation.

Petrie stares at you distantly. “What?”

“An old Irish saying just occurred to me,” you tell him.

“Which is?”

“That if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

Petrie notes this comment in his notepad.

You watch the slender shaft of his blue pen flit left and right, quick as a dragonfly.

“All right,” Petrie says when he looks up again. He starts to ask another question, but glances at his watch instead.

“How long?” you ask.

“Three hours so far.”

“How much longer?”

“Until we know.” He drops his head slightly, then stretches his arms outward, briefly assumes the hallowed Christlike position.

“I never believed in anything,” you tell him. “Neither did Diana.”

You see her in her awful panic, running, running, and know that at that moment she had felt no metaphysical protection, no staying hand, that it was all a snake pit she was desperate to escape.

“No God. No afterlife.”

Now you are at the Old Man’s grave. Diana tosses in the rose, then strolls at your side down the hill to the waiting car, speaking quietly as she walks, reminding you of the good days you’d all had together, the little trips, the sudden sparks of wisdom that had come from the Old Man. Madness, she says, must be forgiven. But you cannot forgive the Old Man, though you don’t admit this. But more than anything, you know now, you could not forgive her either. Dust is not capable of forgiveness.

You feel suddenly helpless before your own ground-down aridity. “Nothingness is dangerous,” you tell Petrie.

Petrie stares at you silently.

“Nothing good fills a void,” you add.

You see that Petrie understands the truth you have just stated, as well as how starkly it plays upon the matter at hand.

“We’ll know soon enough,” he tells you.

Three deaths, the Wicker Man mutters. And you think, So far.

“Until then,” Petrie adds, “we go on.”

In your mind, a phone rings, and you feel your body jerk involuntarily, as if each cell is wired to the bell’s jarring clangor.

Ring, ring.

Suddenly, you recall three phrases you had no idea you’d memorized, the final words of excommunication. Ring the bell; close the book; quench the candle.

Ring, ring.

As you must, you answer.