Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

In the silence that fell, Tess became acutely aware of breathing, hers and Daniel’s. Breathing is one of those odd things people take for granted-until they lose it. The air comes in, the lungs fill, the air goes out, the lungs deflate. Where was Cecilia? Was she still breathing? He had said four hours, maybe three. She cautioned herself to use the time, not rush from the room in a blind panic to do his bidding.

“You and Bobby were partners in this. You helped him pull off these burglaries.”

“Not all of them. I didn’t start out to do most of what I did, but who does? I ran into Bobby at the Midtown Yacht Club last spring, and he was flashing all this cash. He was dying to tell someone what he was doing. It was gossip to him, nothing more. It was my idea to start stealing things back. Rare items belong to the people who truly appreciate them, who can care for them. That’s why I had to liberate all these books from the library. I couldn’t stand to see other people touching them, defiling them. Someone had to protect them. I thought the Pratt was close to figuring it out, back when Bobby stole the pillbox. So I ratted on him. He never knew. Bobby was such an innocent in some ways.”

“So you were involved in the burglaries at Ensor’s house, and Pitts’s?”

“Of course,” he said, laughing at her. “Do you think Bobby Hilliard could carry a thirty-one-inch television by himself? Not likely.”

“What went wrong at Shawn Hayes’s house?”

Daniel’s laugh died abruptly. “That was Bobby’s idea. The security system was too elaborate; we couldn’t break in. It was his idea that we should go to a local bar that Shawn Hayes frequented, strike up a conversation, go home with him. You see, Shawn didn’t know me, and Bobby said I was his… type. ”He likes Eddie Bauer boys’ was how he put it. I was to get Shawn to give me a tour of the house while Bobby walked the dog. He pocketed the items on the way out, and it was his plan to hide them somewhere, a place where we could get them later. It was easy enough. After all, Pitts had bragged about the rare things he and his friends owned, told Bobby where Shawn kept the bug and the locket.“

Daniel fell into an abstracted silence, chewing his bottom lip. Tess assumed he was thinking about that night. It was the night he had crossed over, when his carefully rationalized crimes of “liberation,” as he would have it, had entered a violent territory he had found all too pleasing.

“Shawn Hayes made a pass at you.” She tried to make it sound as a statement of fact, as if she knew what happened.

“Not exactly. He asked me if I was interested, and I said no. He seemed unfazed but a little offended. He called me a tease and said it wasn’t the first time. He said… he said he had met other men like me. Like me, as if he knew anything of me! ”Fence sitters’ was his term. He said, “You’ll be happier when you admit what you really are.” But I’m not-I would never-and I didn’t have to take that from some sick fag. A fag who was a thief, who stole from his friends, who wanted to own everything worth owning. Who was he to have all those wonderful things? That’s what made me angry. I could steal the locket and the pin, but he would still have so much, so much more than I could ever have. If I could have owned what he owned-but I couldn’t. I don’t. It’s not fair, when such coarse people can own such fine things.“

His fists were clenching and unclenching at his side, but he didn’t seem to be aware of it. Tess worried that she had pushed him too far. She wanted him to feel cornered but not desperate.

“Daniel, I don’t know how much money you need, but Whitney, Crow, and I together couldn’t get more than nine hundred dollars. ATM accounts have three-hundred-dollar limits, and the banks are closed.”

“But Whitney is rich,” he said.

“Her family is rich. It’s not like they have big boxes of cash sitting around.”

Daniel looked surprised, as if he had assumed wealthy people did have currency scattered around the house-stuffed in the upholstery, brimming out of wastebaskets.

“I’ll settle for the locket and a head start. Bring me the locket and I’ll go; then I’ll call you within an hour, from the road, to tell you where she is.”

“I can’t do that, Daniel. How do I know you’ll keep your word? I won’t even risk leaving you alone.”

“Then call Crow and tell him to bring the dog here. Once I have the locket, I’ll tell you where she is.”

Tess shook her head. “No deal. Look, you killed Bobby on impulse. Even Yeager’s death can be manslaughter, if your lawyer’s smart enough. It’s Cecilia’s death that will get you death by lethal injection in this state.”

“Frankly, I don’t care if some dyke suffocates.”

“I know,” Tess said. “You don’t care about anyone. But I know what you do care about.”

She switched her gun to her left hand. She had been foolish to think she could bully Daniel or scare him. His regard for human life was so low he didn’t even value his own. She walked over to the shelves, trying to remember where he kept his Poe books.

“This poetry book, the one you consulted the other night.” She found it on the shelf. “It’s stamped enoch pratt. Did you steal it?”

“Not necessarily,” Daniel said, licking his lips, his face pale. “Many of my books were obtained legitimately, when they were discarded or put up for sale.”

“Well, I guess there’s only one way to know.” Tess threw the book in the fireplace flames. Daniel kept his seat, although it appeared to take some effort. He was literally holding on to the chair, keeping himself in place.

“Hmmm, I guess that wasn’t a rare one. I’ll have to keep tossing volumes until you tell me what I want to know.” She ran her fingers along the spines of the old books, slightly sick to her stomach about what she intended to do. She found a book so dusty and cracked that it either had to be extremely valuable or practically worthless, except for the words inside. She chucked that one into the fire and it almost smothered the flames, then caught and went up in a blast that was more blue than orange, as if the fire were consuming the old ink. Daniel didn’t move. She picked another Poe book, an old copy of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. This one burned red. Still Daniel sat, his face so full of hate she was almost scared to look at him, lest he turn her into stone.

Her fingers closed on a slender book, really more of a pamphlet, with a single story printed inside, “MS in a Bottle.” It appeared to be a special printing of that first award-winning story, or perhaps the pages had been taken from the Saturday Visiter and bound in leather on some later occasion. It was small and light, and tossing it into the fire was as easy as throwing a Frisbee.

“You bitch!” Daniel plunged into the fire headfirst, trying to grab the book before it ignited, and his sweater seemed to explode with flames. Indifferent, he yanked the book out and rolled back and forth on the floor. It wasn’t clear to Tess if he had the presence of mind to remember the old rule for how to put out a fire or if he was in some childish tantrum.

“She’s under us, okay?” he said, sobbing. “She’s been here all along, under the floorboards. I wish I had killed her. I wish I had killed you.”

“Beneath the floorboards? Where, Daniel? How?”

He didn’t reply, just continued rolling frenziedly It was impossible to know if the low, keening sound he made was for his own pain or for the singed book he held to his chest. Tess looked around wildly, and her glance fell on the Winans pike in the corner. With great deliberation, she drove the pointed end into one of the gaps between the planks and used it as a pry. The pine boards came up easily. After all, they had already come up once that day. She found Cecilia beneath the table where she had pretended to eat. Her eyes were wide, her features stretched with a strange combination of terror and relief. If she had been drugged, the effects had worn off long ago. She must have heard everything. She had probably feared that Tess was going to leave her here or allow the house to burn with her in it.