Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

“Preoccupied?”

“My word, I’m sure-not hers. She said you were working really hard on Bobbie’s photos, that’s all. She said you were trying to put together a few bits and pieces about his life.”

Laurel could tell that Katherine had told her more. Implied more. Katherine had probably said that her brittle young protégée was obsessed-yes, obsessed- with the old photographer and his real identity.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” she told Emily. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, then. No offense intended. Ask away: What don’t you know about Bobbie Crocker that I could possibly tell you? I have a feeling you know considerably more about the Hotel New England’s favorite eccentric than I do, but fire away.”

“What do you know about his son?”

“His son? I didn’t even know he had a son!”

“How about his parents?”

“Next to nothing,” said Emily.

“Next to nothing? Or nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“His sister?”

“He never said a word to me about her.”

“Did he ever say anything about his childhood?”

“I’m sure he did. And I’m sure I can’t remember.”

“I understand you took a peek at the photos before you passed them on to Katherine. Did you notice anything interesting?”

“The ones Bobbie took? I looked at them briefly. I flipped through them. I thought they were pretty good. But, honestly, you’d know better than I. Were they?”

“Yes. Bobbie was talented.”

“And so you’ll put together a show?”

“Eventually,” Laurel answered. “Did he mention any friends? Any extended family? Any surprising people in his life?”

“Other than the people whose pictures he took?”

“That’s right.”

Emily sat back in her chair and wrapped her fingers together across her tummy. Irises peeked out from behind her thumbs. “Okay, I’m thinking.” After a long moment, she said, “Once, when we were downstairs at the day station together, just hanging around for a few minutes, a man came in. Bobbie didn’t need the day station by then, he was all set at the New England. But, you know, we quickly became like his alma mater. Anyway, a guy comes into the day station, and while Bobbie is getting out the Wonder Bread and making him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it comes out that the guy had done jail time.”

“Where?”

“ Vermont.”

“Which facility?”

“ Saint Albans, I think. But it might have been Chittenden County.”

“How long had he been out?”

“Six months. Maybe eight. He didn’t want to make a mistake and go back. And Bobbie asked him if he knew someone there. In prison.”

“What was the inmate’s name?”

“I don’t remember. But that doesn’t matter; that’s not the interesting part. What is, is this: Whatever the guy’s name was, this new client at the shelter had known him. He had real contempt for him because this other prisoner had been a sex offender. But he was also scared of him. Really scared. And so was Bobbie. And so I asked Bobbie how he’d met this character, the one who was still in jail. After all, Bobbie had never done any time, at least none that I knew of. And so it had to have been on the outside. But Bobbie wouldn’t tell me. Once he had been assured that the man was still behind bars, he wouldn’t hear another word about him.”

Laurel knew the names of the men who had tried to rape her. How could she forget? The bodybuilder from Montana was Russell Richard Hagen. The drifter was Dan Corbett. No middle initial. Wouldn’t abide the name Daniel.

“Was the inmate named Russell?” she asked Emily.

“No.”

“Richard?”

“Nope.”

“Dan?”

“You know, that rings a bell,” Emily answered. “What, did Bobbie ever tell you something about this person?”

“He did,” Laurel lied. “It’s just one of those sad coincidences. I think this Dan fellow may have tried to bully him once. On Church Street.” She didn’t want her associate to know that her search was leading her back to the assault up in Underhill. Emily would worry. They all would. And so Laurel thanked her, told her she understood how much paperwork she had to pile through after her lengthy vacation, and returned to her office. She was supposed to meet with a fellow from the Veterans Affairs group who worked with homeless veterans about new VA services, and she wanted to have a list of clients handy who might benefit. And then she needed to craft a memo for Katherine telling her that-and this lie came to her instantly, too-her mother was hospitalized and she’d have to go home to Long Island for a couple of days. She would tell Katherine that she’d call her from the road with the details and her boss needn’t worry. Her mother would be fine. And she would be fine.

And if Katherine should try to reach her at her mother’s? She’d get only an answering machine, because her mother was now at a cooking school near Siena. She was, literally, on the other side of the world.

But she wanted the memo to be on Katherine’s desk when the woman returned from her meeting. She didn’t want to have to explain her sudden departure in person.

SHE WAS NOT GOING to Long Island, of course. At least not yet. First, she was going to see the Crime Victim Services department in another part of the state and then meet with the superintendent of the prison in Saint Albans. She was going to set up her clarification hearing with inmate Dan Corbett. And she wanted to meet with him as soon as possible.

She left BEDS through the back entrance, rather than through the front door. Her meeting with the VA staffer had lasted till nine-thirty, and by the time she had written a memo to Katherine that struck the right chord-one that would not panic the director, yet would suggest there had been a need for a certain urgency-it was nearly ten. Katherine would be back any moment, and Laurel didn’t want to run into her in the lobby or on the main stairway.

The sun was high in the sky now, unlike when she had left her apartment hours earlier. She’d been careful to escape before Talia had awakened, and she was especially glad now: It would make it easier for her to disappear. To remain patient and focused, unencumbered by her roommate’s doubts, while she did the hard work looming before her. She would tell Talia-she would write Talia-precisely what she had told Katherine. What she would tell David. She was back home in West Egg.

Shame on them. Shame on them all.

Doubting her. Doubting Bobbie.

All along, she had presumed that poor Bobbie Crocker was scared of his sister, when-the truth was-he was scared of his son.

P AMELA MARSHFIELD spent most of Monday morning on her living room sofa, feeling older than she ever had in her life. There was an ache in the upper part of her spine, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if her physician told her at some point in the coming winter-after, no doubt, an almost killing battery of modern tests-that it was cancer. She was finding herself uncharacteristically short of breath. And her hip-replaced fifteen years ago-was throbbing. In addition, nothing had tasted very good at breakfast. The truth was, nothing had had any taste at all.

Across from her in one of the metallic gold easy chairs that her mother had picked out seventy-five years ago-the chrome siding meticulously restored not once but twice since then-sat Darling Fay, eldest daughter of Reginald Fay of Louisville. Reginald was her cousin, long deceased. His father had been Daisy’s older brother. Darling, like most of the Buchanans and the Fays, was remarkably well preserved for a sixty-two-year-old, in part because of those fabulous genes, in part because she’d never married or had children, and in part because twice a year she flew to Manhattan so a cosmetic surgeon could shoot her face full of Restylane. This was why she was in New York now. This morning she was making what Pamela understood was an onerous and obligatory journey to the tip of Long Island to see her father’s doddering cousin, but if Darling wanted to come all the way out here Pamela wasn’t about to stop her. The two women were sipping tea, though only Darling was enjoying it.