Roy realized that he was sweating; his shirt was drenched and his hands were too wet to keep hold of the steering wheel. He sat there and didn’t even think to try to stop them as they threw bucket after bucket of red paint on the carriage house, on the stucco walls and the mailbox and the arbor where the wisteria had always grown. One of the men, perhaps it was Jeff Carson, dipped his hands into the paint and drew a five-pointed star on the door, as if a sign like that could ever ward off true evil. By the time the men had finished, Roy had stopped sweating, and his skin had turned clammy. He had a siren under his front seat, and he could have radioed in to the station, but instead he just watched, exactly as he had the previous night when Jenny Altero was murdered, when he’d followed Stephen all the way back here from Robin’s and parked in this same place, watching through the open window as the Wolf Man read a book with a leather binding, and not turning for home until at last those few birds that could tolerate winter on this island began to sing.
TEN
IT MAY BE TRUE THAT marjoram sprinkled onto the earth helps the dead sleep in peace, but it does nothing at all for the living. The living can pick wild garlic and place pots of clover on their windowsills and still not be able to rest. They can cut down a larch and huddle around it on a cold winter night as it burns and smokes for hours, down at the Point, where the fire ignites the black sky, yet continue to be afraid of the dark.
For the next three days, as soon as the sun went down, the main street of town became deserted, all at once, as though a curfew had been set. There were no customers at Fred’s Diner, and Harper’s began closing at six because even the regulars had taken to staying home and drinking gin or beer in front of their own TVs. Boys stopped playing hockey long before dusk, even when their mothers hadn’t yet called them home. Dogs went unwalked, and scratched at front doors. Every single cat had a bell around its neck, and even the toms had to wait until morning before going out on the prowl.
The only ones who ventured out after dark were the men who had formed the patrol, and they always went out in groups of no smaller than five or six, unless one of them had a gun. Sometimes people were already in bed when they heard the patrol round their corners. The sound of those men, whose only mission was to protect their neighbors, should have been comforting, but it wasn’t. Flashlights made shaky white circles on the lawns and the front porches, garbage cans were rattled and turned upside down as the men searched for anything suspicious, though at this time of year, on nights such as these, almost everything was suspect.
Whenever Stuart heard the patrol inspecting Kay’s street, he went down to the kitchen for tea and Alka-Seltzer, and then he would never get back to sleep. As soon as the board of Kelvin Medical Center was informed by the police that their patient had never been transferred, Stuart was asked to resign. There was no proof to tie Robin to Stephen’s escape, and no evidence that Stuart had been an accomplice, but the board had already tried Stuart and found him guilty of gross negligence. He dutifully composed his letter of resignation and mailed it to the medical center; in return no criminal charges would be filed against him. A request had already been placed to return Stephen to Kelvin, where he would be reevaluated and most probably sent upstate to the locked ward that had been his original destination. The hospital would wait until the criminal investigation on the island was completed, and this time they would send not only three attendants but two armed guards as well, just to make certain there wouldn’t be any trouble.
Stuart had never suffered from insomnia before, and now he understood why his patients who did often felt persecuted, as though sleep had somehow singled them out and denied them their rightful rest. Kay begged him not to go back to the shack, at least not for a while, and he’d thought she was overreacting, until he went to his usual AA meeting and discovered that no one would sit on the same side of the room with him. No one would wait on him in the hardware store or the bait shop. Sofia Peters, down at the library, indexed an entire tray of the card catalogue before finally checking out his books, and then she wouldn’t look at him, not even a glance.
Robin was having an even worse time of it. Some people actually spat on the floor when she walked into the market. She’d left without buying anything, and when she phoned and asked Max Schaeffer, who’d known her since she was ten, if she could have her groceries delivered, he told her that the delivery boy would refuse to come to her house and that he himself wouldn’t walk up the front steps for all the money in the world. The Doctor had come over and sadly informed her that five of her clients had phoned to hire him, and spring was still almost three months away. He’d turned them down, of course, but that didn’t mean they would be coming back to Robin.
“This is all Roy’s fault,” the Doctor said as he drank the tea Robin served him, made from the peppermint that grew in her yard, since she’d used up her last tea bag and had intended to buy more at the market. “If he hadn’t screwed up, you wouldn’t have divorced him, and this wolf fellow would never have come here.”
After the Doctor left, Robin found five hundred dollars under his teacup. She knew he could ill afford the loan, and she would have run after him and forced him to take it back if she hadn’t been so totally broke. She and Stephen had taken to eating Minute Rice flavored with coriander, and winter potatoes from the vegetable bin. At night, when they slept in Robin’s bed, they didn’t touch each other. In the morning, when the wind howled down the chimney, they sat drinking the last of the coffee at the kitchen table, but they didn’t dare talk. Suspicion grows that way, between the sheets, in the teacups, with every word that isn’t spoken. One day, while Robin was at the sink washing out soup bowls, Stephen came up behind her, and she jumped. She tried to blame it on too much caffeine and the awful sound of the wind, but Stephen knew that wasn’t what had frightened her.
He moved out that afternoon. When he put on his black coat Robin didn’t try to stop him. He ran all the way to Poor-man’s Point. It was almost dusk and the patrol always began its rounds as darkness fell. The sky was as gray as stone when Stephen reached the carriage house; the oaks and the Russian olives no longer cast shadows across the lawn. He saw the pools of red paint in the driveway and the ruined stucco walls, but he walked right past them. Stephen refused to be stopped by the mark on the front door. He went inside and locked the door behind him before he went upstairs. He left the lights off and closed all the windows, then sat down in the overstuffed chair beside the bookcases to wait. They weren’t about to let him go, not when they had every advantage. That’s what men called a fair fight, when they were a dozen strong; not one of them would have approached on his own, except for Jeff Carson and a few of the others who had guns, and even they might have turned and run when the branches of the oaks shifted in the wind.
They didn’t come up the driveway until a little before eight, and they stayed for more than an hour, huddled around a fire they made in one of Old Dick’s garbage cans, after they’d chopped down the wisteria for kindling. The wood gave off a sour scent as it burned, and yellow sparks shot out, so that several of the men’s coats were singed. The carriage house looked abandoned, and after a while the men guessed that Stephen hadn’t come back, that he wouldn’t have dared to, and they left to patrol the town green, throwing a few rocks at the windows just for good measure.
Stephen didn’t bother with the broken glass. He didn’t sweep it away, although there were shards of it on the table and all across the orange-and-black Persian rug Old Dick had had carried across the bridge by two strong men whose knees buckled under its weight. He didn’t get up and light the stove to boil water for coffee or tea, or fix himself supper, although there were still cans of vegetables and soup in the pantry. He didn’t have to make a choice anymore; the choice had already been made for him. Robin had watched him put on his coat, and when he’d left she’d locked the back door. At that instant, when he heard the turn of the lock, he knew he had lost her. It was as simple and quick as that. One way open, the other closed.
<
br /> All that night Stephen listened to the wind through the broken windows. It was a sound he recognized, and it made him feel homesick in some deep, awful way. In the morning he changed his clothes; he showered and shaved and took some scissors to his long hair. He might as well look like other men, at least until he was gone. He ate half a package of crackers, the kind Old Dick preferred, even though they tasted like sand. It wouldn’t do him the least bit of good to get sick or weak now, not when he had so far to go, not when the snow along the ridgetops would already be deep and thick, slowing him down, it was true, but also covering his tracks.
“You let him go back to the carriage house?” Stuart said when he came to see Robin. He’d brought along a basket of corn muffins Kay had baked and two bags of groceries they’d shopped for off the island, at a Grand Union on the North Shore. “With the way feelings are running around here? You don’t think that’s dangerous?”
Robin had been up since dawn, but she hadn’t bothered to dress and was still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants she’d slept in.
“He’s not my puppet,” Robin told her brother. “I don’t tell him what to do. Was I supposed to throw myself across the door and force him to stay?”
“He shouldn’t have left,” Stuart insisted. “There’s something wrong with these people. They want a monster. They won’t be satisfied until they have one.” He grabbed a corn muffin and ripped it in two. “Kay could sell these. They’re better than the ones at the bakery.”
Stuart reached for a pot of jam and happened to see Robin’s unguarded face. She was so pale it almost seemed possible that the monster he’d spoken of had just appeared at the back door.
“Robin,” Stuart said.
“I’ll make coffee.” Robin went to the stove for the kettle, but Stuart followed her.
“You think he might have done it,” Stuart said.
“You’ve always liked to tell me what I think,” Robin said. She filled the kettle and pleated a paper towel into quarters. It was cheaper than using coffee filters but for some reason folding it made her feel like weeping.
“Stephen doesn’t fit the profile.”
“There you go,” Robin said. “You do know everything.”
“He is not obsessive-compulsive, he has absolutely no violent history, no sexual perversions—unless you want to correct me on that—no abnormal aggression.”
“And no alibi,” Robin said.
“They’re wrong about Stephen,” Stuart said. “He didn’t kill that girl.”
“You’re so sure of yourself,” Robin said. “Aren’t you the person who lives in a shack and has a nervous breakdown at the drop of a hat?”
Stuart put his corn muffin into the sink, uneaten. “I don’t deserve that.”
“No,” Robin said. “You don’t.”
“I was fired,” Stuart told her. “Asked to resign.”
“That’s it,” Robin said. “I’ve ruined everything.” She turned, so that Stuart wouldn’t see her cry.
“Stop it,” Stuart said. “I wasn’t certain I was ever going back. To tell you the truth, I’m not quite certain of anything.”
Stuart put his arms around Robin, then politely busied himself with pouring hot water over the ground coffee, while Robin wiped at her eyes and blew her nose. People really could be one way outside, when inside they were torn to shreds, a fine white powder of grief and regret replacing blood and bones, and no one even noticed. Robin and Stuart had their coffee, lightened with evaporated milk, but they were careful to speak only of the weather, which the meterologists swore would be warming in less than twenty-four hours. They’d done this when their father died and they’d sat on the living room couch in their Miami apartment, knees touching, as they waited to hear their fate. They’d done it on the plane years later, returning to Florida for their mother’s funeral. They’d become experts when it came to cold fronts and cumulus clouds, novices still when it came to speaking about real pain. Stuart had once had a patient, a teenaged girl who refused to eat anything but small portions of mashed potatoes. When he’d realized she thought of them as clouds, and that she was obsessively listening to the radio for weather reports, he felt such tender affection for her that he’d asked to be taken off her case. He didn’t have the heart to make her face her pain; he’d spent most of his last session with her discussing the lack of rainfall in the Southwest. As it was, when Stuart was leaving Robin’s he suggested that she wear a scarf if she went outside, since the wind-chill factor was high, and that advice alone nearly made Robin burst into tears. She knew what he’d meant by it, and she kissed his cheek before he left.
“Maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t be alone,” Stuart said, considering her through the storm door.
“Stop worrying about me,” Robin told him. “Thank Kay for the muffins.”
After Stuart had driven away, Robin stored the groceries he’d brought her, then wrapped Kay’s corn muffins in foil. She made buttered toast and sat down at the table, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat breakfast. She carried her dishes to the sink and told herself she’d be absolutely fine, but that wasn’t the truth, and she knew it. It wasn’t just that she missed Stephen terribly or that she felt she’d betrayed him, for reasons she still didn’t understand. She was sick to her stomach, as she had been every morning for the past three weeks. Only, this time when she went to the bathroom to vomit, she stayed there on her knees for a long while, just as she had when she knew she was pregnant with Connor, and she didn’t get back on her feet until she was certain she’d be able to stand.
They met just before dawn, when the birds were still asleep and the men in the patrol had all gone home to soak their frozen toes in tubs of hot water and crawl into their beds. Stephen got to the cemetery first. He stayed crouched down low until he heard footsteps, then he quickly rose to his feet. Matthew Dixon was having a hard time climbing up the hill. When he reached the top of the incline his face was blotchy and he’d just about run out of steam.
“I wasn’t sure you’d really show up,” Matthew said. “When I was a kid I wouldn’t even walk through the gates, let alone do it in the dark. It still kind of gives me the creeps.”
They were standing in front of Old Dick’s grave. The sweeping view of the island, from the beaches to the bridge, was nothing now but a black blanket, except for the cluster of lampposts set around the town green.
“Did you find out anything for me?” Stephen asked.
All fall semester Matthew had made certain that he had no classes before ten; he wasn’t used to being awake this early in the day, and his eyes looked swollen. Still, he grinned as he pulled a disk from the inside pocket of his parka. Stephen looked away when he saw that Matthew had printed WOLF-MAN across the disk.
“It’s all here,” Matthew said. “You know, I really envy you.”
“Don’t,” Stephen told him.
“No, really, I’m serious.” When Matthew spoke, great puffs of smoke rose into the air. He moved his weight from foot to foot and turned up his collar. “I’ll bet the cold doesn’t even bother you. I’ll bet nothing bothers you.” Matthew sat down on a wrought-iron bench that Old Dick had ordered from England during his first year on the island. Black swans were coiled along the back of the bench. “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” Matthew had lowered his voice. “I’m just interested in knowing what your most frequent prey was.”
Stephen looked at him, confused.
“What you killed most often to eat,” Matthew said.
“Beetles,” Stephen said.
“No way.” Matthew grinned. “Not little squiggly bugs.”
“You found out exactly where I came from?” Stephen asked, impatient. From this vantage point on the hill he could see that the lights around the green were growing dim; by sunrise they’d have turned off automatically.
“I pretty much have it pinpointed. I rolled the graphics in three-D from every single angle till I got it right. Information is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands
, which is why I’ll keep this file.”
Matthew put the disk back in his pocket and unrolled the printout of the map. For an instant he hesitated, perhaps only to see the craving on Stephen’s face; then he handed it over. Stephen folded the map, placed it in the pocket of his black overcoat, and shook Matthew’s hand.
“I really owe you,” Stephen said. “I know that.”
“Let’s have the truth,” Matthew said. “It wasn’t just beetles.”
“No,” Stephen said.
“I saw you that night with the deer. I know you wanted to kill it.” Matthew pushed his hair out of his eyes, then shook his head. “You really held yourself back. I wish you hadn’t.”
The birds in the quince bushes around Old Dick’s grave began to wake with their first tentative songs. To the right and the left grew hedges of boxwood, and in the spring there would be daffodils and sweet ivy.
“When you first get them and they’re too surprised to fight back? That’s the best part. You understand that,” Matthew said. “I can tell.”
Stephen didn’t move, but inside his coat, inside his skin, he felt as if something were crawling along his spine. This was the moment when he began to pay attention to everything: the movement of the wind in the branches, the last star disappearing above them, the way Matthew chewed on his bottom lip when he grew excited. It was easy to tell what men wanted to hear, even Matthew, who was breathing too hard, the way he had when he first climbed the hill.
“I understand,” Stephen said.