Lisa Unger - Die For You

Detective Crowe was my shadow. He was kind enough to offer his silence as he followed me from room to room, but I could feel his energy-anxious, agitated by the million questions buzzing around his brain. Grit and bits of glass crunched beneath my feet as I made my way, lifting a photo of my sister, touching a spot of red nail polish someone had poured on the bathroom countertop. It had taken on the shape of a heart.

Finally, in the small office off our bedroom where I did most of my writing, I sank into the chair in front of my desk and stared at the large blank monitor. It was huge, like a wall. When I wrote, my words were giant, swimming in a bright white sea. It helped me to see them so large, as though they had more meaning, the power to keep my attention, my focus if it threatened to wander. The dark screen seemed like a hole I could fall into.

I had all my files backed up and stored at Jacks office; I wasn’t worried about lost work. That was the least of my worries, and it would be hours yet before I started thinking about personal files, journals, calendars, account numbers, e-mail correspondence. Just two days before I had been sitting in this chair, Googling myself on the Internet, answering fan e-mail, visiting the Web sites of other authors-doing everything but what I should have been doing, working on my pages. I was annoyed at myself then, frustrated by my lack of focus and productivity. Today it seemed like a state of bliss. I’d have paid any sum to be back there.

“Mrs. Raine, did your husband have a history of violence or mental illness?”

I swiveled around to see that a petite woman had followed us into the room, stood behind and to the left of Detective Crowe.

“My partner, Detective Jesamyn Breslow,” he said with a nod.

“No,” I answered her, surprised by the question. “You think my husband did this?”

She cocked her head at me. There was a pixyish look to her, the features of her face small and perfect-a lovely upturned nose and perfect valentine of a mouth, almond-shaped eyes. She was bright, electric, as if she might glow with the force of her own coiled energy if we turned off the lights. She had short, clean fingernails, wore her hair in a neat bob. Her clothes were good quality but I could see a shine to her black blazer from too many trips to the dry cleaner. Her microfiber wedges were a bit worn at the toe. The two cops seemed striking opposites: She was a saver, he was a spender. He was cool, slow, dark; she was white hot, action first, regrets later. And yet she seemed more centered, more mature.

“There’s so much rage evidenced here,” she said. “The way personal things have been destroyed, photographs defaced.”

“The kind of rage only a husband could manage for his wife?” I asked. Detective Breslow shrugged. I saw her eyes dart; she was thinking of something in her own life, went internal for a minute.

“Or vice versa,” Detective Crowe chimed in. I remembered his true confessions from the night before, the wife who left him, his bitterness.

“There is no one cooler than Marcus,” I found myself saying. My tone was harsh, even hostile. They both noticed it, exchanged a look. “He rarely raises his voice. Anger makes him silent-colder, harder. He’d never do anything like this. He wouldn’t have it in him. A waste of energy, not fuel-efficient.”

I said too much, realized it too late. Looking at both of them standing there, it dawned on me that I’d made a mistake giving them permission to access and search my apartment. I’d only been thinking of Marcus as a victim, someone who needed help. I had nothing to hide. It never occurred to me that he might.

Isabel , he’d say, drawing out my name into a gentle, paternal reprimand. Very foolish. These people aren’t here to help you. They’re here to help themselves .

“Mrs. Raine,” said Detective Breslow. Her tone was tactful, respectful, but just ever so slightly condescending. “If you know anything about what’s going on here, now would be the time to tell us.”

“My brother-in-law gave him money,” I said. “A lot of money they don’t have.”

Detective Crowe nodded. “Did you know anything about that? I mean before he disappeared.”

Disappear: to get lost without warning or explanation, to become invisible, cease to exist. It’s a common word; you’d use it for anything. My sunglasses disappeared . The hope of a sudden reappearance is connoted in that word. The way Detective Crowe used it, it sounded final, like a verdict.

“Erik just told me. My sister doesn’t even know.” I wasn’t really talking to them; I was thinking aloud, still in that stunned place where my inner world and outer world were confused with each other.

“Mrs. Raine, have you checked your bank accounts?”

The question sliced me, its edge so sharp it didn’t hurt at first. Then I felt the slow, radiating throb of dread. I moved closer to the monitor, hands poised over the keyboard, but then I stopped myself. The computer, of course, was gone. The dark screen was connected to nothing. I turned back to him.

“I have been with Marcus for six years, married for five,” I said. “What you’re implying with all your questions. It’s just not possible.”

“What do you think I’m implying?” Detective Crowe asked. He’d taken that stance again, the spreading of the legs, the folding of the arms. Detective Breslow lowered her eyes, then turned and left the room. They had a routine, roles they played. I could see that already.

“I’m asking the questions I need to ask,” he went on when I didn’t answer him. “If your answers are painting a disturbing picture, you need to think about that, Mrs. Raine.”

I looked away from him again and this time caught sight of my reflection in the monitor. I saw a woman who’d been badly beaten and looked the part. Behind me loomed Detective Crowe, a deep, worried frown etched on his face, as if he couldn’t quite figure me out. I wasn’t acting like he thought a woman in my position should act. He wanted me to be a victim, I think, weeping and afraid. He didn’t know me very well.

“I don’t know what you want from me-my husband is missing. My home-my head-in pieces.” Outside I heard the wail of a distant siren, the thunder of a garbage truck. “If you think I have something to do with all of this, you need to arrest me and let me call a lawyer. Otherwise, you have to give me a minute to think.”

“Okay,” he said, lifting a palm, his frown softening. “I hear you. But hear me. We often know more than we think we do. Something like this happens and it seems to come out of nowhere. But it never does. When something is not right in our life, we know, even if we choose not to see it.”

There was the lightest strain of piano music coming from the apartment above me. It seemed ghostly, almost eerie. Chopin. Marcus always hated Chopin-“Anemic, unsatisfying, depressing as hell,” he would say.

“Philosopher cop,” I said now.

That shade of a smile again, the lightest upturning of the corners of his mouth, as though everything he saw secretly amused him. But no, it wasn’t awful like that. I think he was just someone who saw the humor, the divine joke of it all. He’d rather laugh than cry. Anyway, he was right.

MY MOTHER REMARRIED more quickly than was seemly. “He’s not even cold in the ground,” I heard her sister whisper at the small wedding in our backyard. It was less than a year after my father’s death that my mother dressed in tasteful champagne-colored chiffon and married a man my sister and I had met only twice. There was a tiered cake with flowers, tea sandwiches, some kind of punch. Frowning faces broke into tight smiles when my mother and her groom approached. My sister was as grim and silent as she had been at my father’s funeral. My mother was, as ever, lovely with her strawberry-blond hair and alabaster skin; she was appropriate, not giddy, I wouldn’t say happy. She looked relieved more than anything. And I stood on the edges of it all, watching faces, absorbing swatches of conversations, listening to the nuances of tone.