Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

Dr. Leventhal had supported the idea that a young child’s mind could be so malleable that it would fabricate a memory, even a visual one. But the detail in Aidan’s story was so realistic: the finger was just barely attached… blood was dripping off it. From the little individual tooth mark he’d seen, filling up with blood, to the fact that his finger hadn’t quite been severed- it was You Are There, documentary realism.

Somehow, I didn’t think Aidan would be able to conjure such a detailed, lurid image of his injured hand. He didn’t seem that imaginative to me. It was one of the things I liked about him, that he was simple and straightforward. I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of hidden depths. Shiloh had plenty of them, and they’d ended up ruining his life.

Besides, to fabricate a memory was one thing, but a fear? Aidan was truly afraid of dogs. That indicated my theory, about the study and the loaded pistol, was wrong. I could deal with that. I’m semipro at being wrong; it’s a correctable situation. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was Marlinchen and her memory of what she thought was a lightning strike, but sounded to me like an accidental shooting in the house. A memory Aidan didn’t share. Either Marlinchen was mistaken, or Aidan himself was, and yet they both seemed convincing when they told their stories.

Then there was the old BMW. Hugh had locked it away for fourteen years. It fit in the same time frame as the carpet replacement in the study and Aidan and Marlinchen’s mismatched early memories. It was one more thing that occupied that fourteen-years-ago plateau. The threshold, as Dr. Leventhal had called it.

My first idea was that Hugh had put the car away because Aidan had bled copiously in it, and unlike the study, Hugh couldn’t get it properly cleaned up. But if Aidan shot himself in the hand, the universal first instinct would be to wrap the hand in a towel and keep pressure on it. Certainly it would have bled, but I couldn’t see it bleeding so much that Hugh couldn’t clean it up. And had he believed that someday someone would examine his car, looking for evidence that his son’s accident didn’t happen the way Hugh had said it happened? I’d seen some paranoia in my day, but that seemed outlandish.

It wasn’t impossible, though. The problem was that I knew so little of Hugh’s character. I couldn’t talk with him, and there were limits to what his children could explain.

What I really needed was the memories of an adult who’d been close to the Hennessys early in their marriage. One who’d known Hugh and Elisabeth well during that time of their lives. One who, like Aidan, had been banished from the Hennessy home. Whose banishment, like everything else, had happened on that fourteen-years-ago threshold.

It was two hours later when he came, a tall, thin man heading up the path, toward Elisabeth Hennessy’s grave, holding a small bunch of white narcissus in his hands. Time had changed J. D. Campion little. His black hair was still long enough to be caught back in a small ponytail on his neck, and he still wore a beard. There was no gray in either. The flowers he slipped into the recessed holder were wrapped in the clear cellophane that florists provide.

Campion had good hearing. He turned to watch me coming while I was still ten feet off.

“Mr. Campion,” I said. “My name is Sarah Pribek,” I said. “I’m a friend of Marlinchen Hennessy.”

“Marlinchen?” he said, surprised. “Then you know Hugh?” he said.

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“You’ve been waiting for me here?” he asked.

I acknowledged it. “You’re hard to track down otherwise. I tried to find you through your publisher and phone listings, but I didn’t have any luck.”

Campion watched a pair of squirrels fight over a perch high in a tree. “That seems like a lot of planning just to meet me,” he said, slowly. “You’re not here to talk about Vedic references in Turning Shadow, are you?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

“So how is it that you know Marlinchen, but not Hugh?” he said.

“I met Marlinchen only recently,” I explained. “Hugh had a serious stroke two months ago.”

“I didn’t read about that,” he said.

“It wasn’t in the news,” I said.

“How bad is it?” Campion said.

If I satisfied his curiosity right here, I’d give up an incentive for him to talk with me. “I’ll tell you all about it,” I said, “but I was hoping we could talk someplace more”- private wasn’t the word, as no one was within earshot-“comfortable.”

Campion didn’t bite right away. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t really understand who you are.”

“I’m a Hennepin County Sheriff’s detective,” I said, “but this isn’t an official investigation. I’m helping Marlinchen with a family situation.” I looked down the hill, to where I’d parked. “Like I said, I’d like to talk to you about it, but this might not be the place.”

“Maybe not,” Campion said. “Would you have a problem with a bar?”

I’d beencurious what sort of drink a poet might order in a bar. The answer wasn’t very exciting: Budweiser. I had a Heineken to keep him company. We sat at a table near the back of the bar, next to a pair of unoccupied pool tables.

In my line of work, you usually have the luxury of saying, I’m asking the questions here, even if you don’t have to say it in so many words. Either you’re interrogating suspects who are under arrest, or you’re interviewing witnesses who are intimidated by the gravity of the situation they’ve gotten involved in. In those situations, the answers generally flow one way, toward you.

With Campion, I had to give information to get information. It wasn’t that he was unfriendly. But he hadn’t been in contact with the Hennessy family for nearly fifteen years. He wouldn’t even understand the questions I was asking until I explained a few things about the Hennessys’ situation. Nor, I thought, would he be inclined to. He didn’t know me, and he only had my word that I was here on Marlinchen’s behalf.

I told Campion about Hugh’s stroke, Marlinchen’s quest to find her brother, and Aidan’s return, keeping quiet only about Hugh’s child abuse. When I was done, Campion said, “It’s been fourteen years. I don’t know what I can tell you that’ll help.”

“Tell me about fourteen years ago.” I drank a little of my Heineken. “What’d you and Hugh Hennessy fight about?”

“I don’t know,” Campion told me.

“Of course you know,” I said levelly. Campion didn’t seem the type to be offended by straight talk. “Friendships don’t break up permanently for no reason.”

“You’ll have to ask Hugh, when he’s better,” Campion said. “I know how it sounds, but to this day, I don’t know what he was so angry about.”

“Tell me how it happened,” I said.

He settled back in his chair. “I was on the road a lot back then. Minnesota was like a home base for me, because Hugh and Elisabeth were here.” He drank. “One night, I got into town late and went by their place. I hadn’t seen them in about four months. When I got there, Hugh wouldn’t let me in.” Campion shook his head, as if freshly baffled. “He said I was a bad influence on his kids, I’d always been jealous of his success, and he didn’t want me coming around anymore. Then he shut the door and didn’t open it again.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“I left,” Campion said. “I wasn’t going to mope at the door, like a dog who’d been bad. I called him a few days later, to see if he’d gotten over whatever it was. He told me not to call again, and hung up on me.”