THE MORNING AIR was biting cold. The sky was gray and glary in a way that pained Test’s eyes and made her squint. She felt listless from her pittance of sleep and from a brain that had refused to shut down even in her scant two hours of restless sleep.
She snapped on a pair of surgical gloves, tight as a second skin, and stepped across the dead, November grass of the backyard, which edged up to the woods. She walked with the deliberate, mindful motion of one navigating a minefield. After each step, she paused, sometimes for so long she had the sensation of turning into a painting of herself. She’d first experienced this phenomenon when she’d sat for Claude so he could paint her portrait to hang in his studio. She’d resisted at first. Could there be anything more preposterously vain or archaic than getting your portrait painted? It’s not for you, it’s for me, Claude had said. So, of course, she’d granted it.
She scrutinized the patch of earth where she was about to step. She stooped to poke at the lawn with an extendable pointer that reminded her of her old high-school geography teacher.
She poked at something now. Something stuck in the semi-frozen ground at the edge of the woods behind the house; woods anyone could have slipped out of and back into and hardly be seen, even in daylight. Except that these woods, even with aid of a flashlight, were so dense and tangled, one would never be able to find one’s way deftly at night.
Test could not see clearly the object she poked at now. She knelt over her find, feeling like a girl with a magnifying glass. With the camera around her neck, she took two photographs, one photo up close, another from a standing position. Then, with a precise movement, she plucked a metal pincers from her shirt pocket and extracted the artifact from the grass and held it before her eyes. It was a simple thumbtack. She fished an evidence bag from her jacket pocket anyway and dropped the tack inside. Sealed the bag. Marked the time and date and location on the outside of the bag, in each appropriate field, with permanent marker.
“Can I help you?” a voice calcified with contempt said from behind her.
“No,” Test said without acknowledging the voice in any other way.
“What are you doing here?” the voice said.
Clearly, Test was not going to be left alone, so she stood and turned, planted her hands on her hips.
Bethany Merryfield stared at her, the fuzzy pink slippers she wore on her feet tapping on the dead grass. Except for the slippers, she remained dressed in the clothes she’d worn the previous evening, her makeup smeared and face puffy. She had the baby done up in a front-riding baby sling. She seemed unsteady. Her color was no good, her eyes hidden behind the enormous sunglasses that were all the rage, with a certain type.
“You okay?” Test said with an empathy she’d lacked the previous night. She came and stood at Bethany’s elbow.
“Fine,” Bethany said.
“You’re doing better than I am,” Test said. “Your baby is adorable.”
Normally, a mother would have melted with pride at such a comment. Test sure had, and still did. She couldn’t help it.
“Thanks,” Bethany managed.
“I have two,” said Test. “Not babies. A boy and a girl. Just turned four and seven a week ago, born on the same day, three years apart.”
The melting frost was seeping through Bethany’s slippers. “Do you want to go back inside?” Test said.
“What have you got in that bag?” Bethany said. She seemed almost in a trance.
“Nothing,” Test said and held up the bag. “You need anything? You want a doctor?” The trauma of the night before might just now have been seeping into the woman, just dawning on her the magnitude of what had happened. Test worried she was in shock.
“No.” Bethany said and gave a pained grin. “Yes, actually. I need help back inside. I feel I might collapse. I seem to be stuck in place and feel like I was struck in the head.”
Test took her by the elbow and led her back into the house through a screen door.
Inside, Bethany sat on the couch with the Test’s help.
“What are you doing here?” Bethany said.
“I’d come by to ask a few more questions and have a look around in daylight.”
“I thought the state police were in charge.”
“I’m helping in whatever capacity I can.”
“I don’t want to have to tell ten people the same thing over and over.”
“I appreciate that. I just have a few questions. They may spur something new. Your husband and you were out last night at the Village Fare?”
“We went over that already.”
“What time?”
“Six until about seven. I told you all this.”
“I just want to re-confirm. It was an emotional evening. I want to make sure none of us missed anything. And now with daylight and your head a bit clearer—”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“What time did you get home?”
She sighed heavily. “Maybe seven fifteen. Why aren’t you writing this down? Why are you bothering me if it’s not important enough to write down?”
“Because it’s what you told me last night.”
“Which is why I just wish to be left alone and not have to repeat these boring questions.”
“A child was murdered in your home. Sorry if you find it boring. It’s not to me.”
Bethany gave her chin a tiny petulant shake and hugged her baby closer to her chest.
“So you drove to the restaurant?” Test said.
“Right.”
“Why?”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s a fifteen-minute walk or so. It was a beautiful if crisp night.”
“My husband’s been sick, for one. Two: We were running late. Three: It was actually cold last night. With that wind. Not crisp. I don’t see how any of this germane.”
The prickly demeanor bothered Test. Had from the start. Why the abrasiveness? Why the disdain? Did this woman think somehow that she was the one most victimized in all of this? Or was there something else at work? Test scribbled nonsense in the pad to buy herself time.
“About the voice-mail messages you received,” Test said. “The threats. I’d like to listen to them if I may.” She nodded at the cordless phone sitting on the coffee table. “If you could dial your voice mail and bring it up for me.”
The baby started to wriggle awake, stretching; he uttered a short, sharp cry so abrupt it startled Test.
“I’ll give you the number and password,” Bethany said, standing, rocking in place to try to lull the baby. Test picked up the phone and punched in the numbers as Bethany Merryfield recited them to her.
Test listened. Stared at the phone in her hand. “I thought you and Jon said you’d leave any threatening messages on the voice mail. There’s not a single message, that makes a threat or otherwise.”
“Maybe you did something wrong.”
Test handed the phone to Bethany. “Check for yourself.”
“I’m busy with the baby,” Bethany said.
“Check later. But there are no messages on your phone.”
“Did you accidentally erase them?”
“I don’t accidentally do anything.”
Test did not mention what she found even more odd: that the caller ID history had been erased completely.
“May I speak with your husband?” Test asked.
“Why would Jon erase the messages?”
“I’m not saying he did. On purpose. He mentioned perhaps there weren’t any threatening ones saved. It happens. As I said, last night everyone was in a state. I’d like to speak to him, however.”
“He’s not here. You can see his Rover’s not out front.”
“I thought perhaps it was in the garage.”
“We hardly ever use the garage. I hate that it’s not attached. What’s the point? You can check for yourself for the Rover.”
“That won’t be necessary. Do you know where he is?”
“He was gone when I awoke.”
Test wondered what could possibly have been so pressing that a husband would abandon his wife and his child the morning after such a heinous night? Why would he erase those messages? He, or someone else, had done so. If not, someone had certainly deleted the caller ID history.
“I’ll show myself out,” Test said. “I may be in your yard a while yet.”
BETHANY WATCHED THE detective from the kitchen-sink window.
She knew for certain messages had been on there as of the day before because she’d had to skip over more recent ones to get to one left by her Pilates instructor about the change of time for a weekly class.
Bethany turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face.
In the hallway, she inspected her image in the mirror. Ghastly. She plucked an eyelash from her cheek. As a girl, she would have made a wish and blown the eyelash off her fingertip. She flicked the eyelash away, not so naïve as to believe a wish could help her now.