Megan Abbott - Bury Me Deep

They registered as Mr. and Mrs. Leroy and it was not until Dr. Seeley had shut the creaking door behind them and the dust motes rose and settled that Marion asked him what in fact his plan was.

“Leaving town now has become hazardous. Police will be watching the train station. This way, we have perhaps purchased a day, maybe two. I have thoughts. I have thoughts. We may shore ourselves up by culling as much on this man as possible.”

“How will that stop the law?”

“He has powerful friends. That is clear. After the news story he will be rounding up his horses. Marion, he does not intend to go to the gallows. We will not let him place you there in his stead.”

“That is his plan, back to the wall,” Marion said, surprised by the coolness in her voice. The hardness wedged tight between teeth. What had happened to her? Where was the shuddering young girl, gone forever? In some strange way, she was glad. That girl was her doom.

“That newspaper article,” she went on. “What will the afternoon edition hold?”

Two hours, and Dr. Seeley went to the newsstand and returned, ashen-faced.

Marion looked at the front page. It was a muted blow; she, beaten now to smoothness, expected no less.

Police continue their investigation of the disappearance of local nurse Louise Mercer and her roommate, Virginia Hoyt. At the investigation’s center are two trunks delivered to the Southern Pacific Station from the girls’ home on Saturday. Police confirm that a friend, Mrs. Everett Seeley, was present when deliverers picked up the trunks, but they are still confirming where the trunks were shipped. Miss Mercer and Mrs. Seeley met as employees of Werden Clinic.

“Mrs. Seeley is cooperating with us,” Sheriff Pete Healy confirmed. “We will be speaking with her today.” The Courier was unable to locate her at press time.

Mrs. Seeley appears to have been a frequent guest at the missing girls’ home since moving to the area last fall. According to several witnesses, the three were immediately attracted to each other and Mrs. Seeley regularly spent the night at the house. But it appears the friendship became troubled in recent weeks.

“There were many men at the house and there were arguments over who was the favorite among different men,” said one source. “The parties were wild and unruly.”

Mrs. Florence Loomis, a friend to all three girls, pointed to Mr. Joe Lanigan, prominent local businessman, as the source of much of the jealousy. “All the girls loved him. He was very kind to them. But Mrs. Seeley was particularly fond of him. She did not like the other girls spending time with him.”

Other friends of the girls’ intimated trouble in recent weeks, including jealous fights and heavy alcohol consumption among the women.

“Something like this was bound to happen,” said Mr. Abner Worth, owner of Worth Brothers Meat Market, who knew the girls. “Mrs. Seeley had a fiery temper and the girls were all prone to drinking and wild ways.”

According to sources at Werden, Mrs. Seeley’s husband, Dr. Everett Seeley, holds a position with Ogden-Nequam Mining Company in Mexico and Mrs. Seeley intends to join him. It is not known whether the girls’ disappearance is connected to Mrs. Seeley’s planned relocation.

Three o’clock, Dr. Seeley looked itchy, scratching his neck, and sweaty-collared, said if she felt safe, he would return to his investigation.

“Where will you go?”

“I need to see how wide the ring expands, Marion,” he said, straightening his tie, twisted so thin from wear.

Marion wanted to remind him he was not a policeman, not a private detective from the Saturday matinee. She wanted to tell him none of it would matter. She thought of Joe Lanigan at his lodges, his friars’ clubs, his Chamber of Commerce gatherings, his men’s clubs, the smokers from which he was always returning, gin-soaked and tomcatted. What did girls like Louise and Ginny matter in the face of that, and what did she, some vagabond wife picked up for dallying and set down in a corner when done?

“Last night when I came home, it was too late,” he said to her. “I was too disordered. I didn’t want to worry you. Now there is no choice. Let me share all I saw, all I’ve learned about this man. Then you will have no doubt we will ensnare him. We must. He is a dangerous…He is…”

She put her hand on his arm. “You can tell me,” she said. Even knowing there would likely be no surprises. The only surprise would be having to look full-face again at what she had blotted out, lo these months. What worse?

He told of a day and a night spent in joints, judas holes, lowdown nighteries and barrelhouses, trailing the wastrels on Thaler Avenue and in Gideon Square. The sad tramps and drifting souls who seemed, somehow, to wear his own face. He saw their sorrow and their weakness and it trembled through him and he could almost not bear it. But he did. And he struck up conversations and no one questioned this shabby man with all the right words and most of all the right look in his eyes, the look of lostness. At last, a man named Farriss took him to a house on Clawson Street where he met a woman named Clara who explained how every four days, the Worth Brothers Meat Truck came to the Dempsey Hotel and you went to the third floor, room 308, and Mr. Worth, only he called himself Mr. Tanner, but everyone knew, would sell you your kit. Whatever was wanted. And sure, she knew Ginny too. Ginny used to work the Dempsey for Joe till the TB got too bad. Louise, sure, everyone knew Louise, Louise was the one before the new one. The new who? The new nurse. Everyone knew Joe Lanigan’s private nurses were also his whores. His private whores, mind you. The new one, word was the new one wasn’t even a real nurse, this one, she was a schoolgirl plucked from St. Monessa’s.

A coldness swept across Marion’s chest.

The nurse. Of course. The nurse. It was like everything else about Joe Lanigan. Seamy, rotten. Ruined.

Looking at Dr. Seeley, she pushed it all away. She looked at him.

“And you mean to go there. You mean to go to where these narcotics are…”

“I do, my dear,” he said, and he kept her gaze. “Marion, if he can so effectively marshal the powers that be in this town to protect himself, we must put the fear in him to offer up those steel walls to you as well. He must find another goat, Marion, from among his drossy minions. It won’t be you.”

“But for you to move back in these worlds…”

“Marion, the more we know about his affairs, the more chips we have at our disposal. We need to put the fear in him. I must go.”

Marion felt a tightening in the air between them. “Everett, I…”

“I will be fine, Marion. You know I will. I am strong for us both now. As you always have been. It is my chance. This is my chance.”

Marion looked at him and he looked at her, his eyes open and waiting, asking her something that he could not say. She looked at him and she could not help but feel the largeness of the moment and it frightened her. It felt like they were spinning on an axis after a life of stillness. Or stillness after four marital years of spinning. She did not know what it meant.

“Of course, Everett. Of course.” She had to say it. And she so wanted to believe it, all of it.

And maybe he was right. Maybe there was more still to uncover about Joe Lanigan, more even than she knew, enough to matter more than his rich-man, gold-cut cruelty, and maybe it could matter. Who was she to guess, given the quaking surprises of the last week, most of all the ones she’d sprung on herself. It is you, Marion, who started the bloodbath. It is you who took hammer to teeth, acid to flesh—would you ever have guessed the limits of your own darkness?