Mother's Day (18 page)

Larry did not look at Greg. He continued to speak to Walter, who was still peering at the contents of the bag. “It’s splattered with something. Could be blood.”

“Get it to the lab,” said Walter. He turned and faced Greg. “Mr. Newhall, we’re going to have to take you in.”

“No,” Jenny howled, grabbing on to the sleeve of her father’s bathrobe.

Larry called the officers down from the upstairs and ordered one of them to take in the evidence. Then he turned to Greg. “You have the right to remain silent…”

Karen watched in numb disbelief as Officer Tillman droned on through the Miranda rights. Jenny was shaking her as if to try to awaken her. “Do something, Mom. What’s going on?” Her voice was frantic.

For a moment Karen and Greg looked at one another. Then Karen looked away. “I don’t know,” she said.

Officer Tillman took out a set of handcuffs and gestured for Greg to raise his wrists.

“Handcuffs?” Jenny howled. She tried to bat them out of Larry’s hand, but Walter caught her wrist and held it.

“Take it easy,” said Walter.

“Wait a minute,” said Greg. “I’m in my pajamas. Can’t I even put my clothes on?”

Walter hesitated. “All right,” he said.

Jenny knelt down in front of Karen and grabbed her arms. “Mom, why don’t you help Daddy? Why are they doing this? Stop them!”

Karen felt as if she were encased in a layer of cold, transparent gel. “There’s nothing I can do,” she said.

Greg walked up the stairs like a man mounting a scaffold. Officer Tillman, who was accompanying him, did not speak as Greg pointed out the bedroom. He followed Greg in the room.

“Sorry, no privacy for you,” he said in a clipped voice.

“I understand,” said Greg. He crossed the room to the armoire and opened the door. Carefully he slid the hangers down the rod, examining the pants that were hanging there.

“Don’t take all day,” said Larry. “You’re not going to a fashion show.”

“No,” Greg agreed in a shaky voice. He put on a clean shirt and a pair of pants, scooping his wallet, keys, and change off the bureau and into his pockets.

“You won’t need that stuff,” Larry observed.

Greg shrugged. “Force of habit,” he said. He tucked in his shirt and buckled his belt. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Larry motioned for him to cross in front of him to the door. Greg did as he was told. In the hallway outside his bedroom he turned and walked toward the stairs. To his left, at the head of the staircase, was a pine table holding a blooming white cyclamen plant. Above the plant was a window. Greg took hold of the staircase bannister and took one step down. Larry Tillman followed. Then, with one swift, well-considered motion, Greg turned, grabbed Larry under the armpit, and jerked him forward. Taken by surprise, Larry tumbled down half a dozen steps and broke his fall only by grabbing on to the bannister as he cried out. In the time it took him to scramble to his feet and rush back up the stairs, Greg had mounted the top step, leapt up on the table, and hurled himself out the open window, kicking the table and potted plant over as he went. He broke through the screen and landed on the eaves below the window.

“Hey,” yelled Officer Tillman, drawing his gun. “Stop him!”

But Greg had worked on every inch of that house and knew his way down off the roof like a cat in the dark. By the time the startled officer had galvanized the others and managed to fire a shot out the window, Greg had rolled down the pitch, dropped, with the aid of a tree branch, to the ground below, and disappeared into the darkness of the woods behind the house.

Chief Matthews glared at the redheaded officer
who stood before him, turning his hat in his hands. “Jesus Christ, Tillman, how did you manage this?”

Larry did not need reminding or reprimanding. He would never forgive himself for making such a colossal mistake on the most important case of his brief career. It was all he could do to keep from crying. “I’m sorry, sir,” he muttered.

“Yeah, well, you’re going to be sorrier.” The chief straightened out the front of his trench coat with a jerking gesture and snorted with disgust.

“He took us all by surprise, sir,” said Walter Ference. “I’ve been a cop for a long time and I never saw it coming.”

Chief Matthews shook his head. He had arrived at the Newhall house only moments before. He had driven back to Bay land from Boston, where he’d been attending a seminar on law enforcement administration at Boston University. He had come back to his hotel after a pleasant dinner with a chief from the Jersey shore, and another from Minnesota, only to find the message about Greg’s escape waiting for him. The drive back was a blur. He felt as if his blood pressure was off the charts. “I don’t want to hear excuses,” he said. “There are procedures, and you didn’t follow them. Tillman, until we find this guy, we’re going to need every available hand. Once he’s apprehended, you’re busted. You’re walking the beat again.”

“Yessir,” Larry mumbled miserably.

Mentally Dale Matthews counted to ten. He didn’t want to light into Walter. He was the most experienced man he had, and besides, it would be like berating his own father. But he was tempted. “All right,” he said. “It’s spilt milk.” He glared at the uniformed officers in the room. “Let’s not waste any time.” He began to instruct the other officers on their next move.

Walter leaned over the back of the sofa. “You might want to call a doctor, Mrs. Newhall. You’ve had a shock. He could give you a sedative or something.”

“No,” said Karen shortly. She was already numb. In the hours after Greg’s escape her house had been besieged by police, some with tracking dogs, technicians who put a tap on her phone, reporters, cameramen, curious neighbors, and onlookers. Her front yard looked as though somebody had set up a macabre carnival there in the middle of the night.

Through it all, Karen sat in the living room like someone in the eye of a hurricane. She answered questions funneled to her by Detective Ference. She gave them the names and addresses they requested—friends, family, places Greg might have gone. She agreed without argument to the surveillance methods they wanted. She made no effort to resist them or correct their impressions. She was dimly aware of Jenny, flailing out at the invasion, cursing the intruders in their house, but she made no effort to stop her or join her. She just sat.

Finally, now, after hours of this, the last of the swarming interested parties were retreating from her property. “We’ll be going, then,” said Walter. “Don’t get up.”

Karen almost laughed at that. As if she could get up. Her legs felt as if they belonged to somebody else.

Walter Ference handed her a card with his name and two numbers on it. “This is the police station,” he said, “and this is my home number.”

Karen looked at it blankly.

“Mrs. Newhall, the sooner we apprehend your husband, the better it will be for all of you. You and your daughter are caught in the crossfire here. You’re going to be made to feel like criminals because of his actions. As long as he is at large, you will not have an unobserved moment, a private telephone conversation, nothing.”

“Yes, I know,” said Karen.

“If you have any information, give me a call. I’ll treat you fairly. We have no quarrel with you or your daughter.”

“Thank you,” said Karen. She stared at the card and then put it in front of her on the coffee table.

The police had gathered up their things and, led by the chief, were straggling out through the front door like the last revelers at a party. “Good night,” said Walter. He followed the rest of his men outside.

Karen heard Jenny slam the door on the departing detective.. After a moment, Jenny came into the room and stood in front of her mother.

“Is it true?” said the girl.

Karen looked up helplessly at their daughter, whose face was bright pink. “They found the room key in his van. With blood on it. They seem to think—”

“I’m not talking about that,” said Jenny impatiently. “I want to know if it’s true that he’s my real father.”

Karen felt the question pierce through the numbness that enveloped her. “Yes,” she said in a flat voice. “Apparently, it is.”

Before she could say more, Jenny turned on her and ran out of the room, clattering up the stairs.

“Jenny,” Karen called weakly after her. But there was no answer. You should get up, she thought. You should go after her. This is a terrible shock for her.

But she couldn’t. Her own feelings overwhelmed her. She kept seeing Greg’s face as he admitted to their accusations. Every time she pictured it she was stunned all over again. She would have been less surprised if the coffee table had suddenly started to speak.

She knew him. They had been together more than twenty years, and she knew him inside out. For all these years they had shared their thoughts. In bed, in the morning, they described their dreams. At night, if they couldn’t sleep, they told one another their fears. She had never doubted his love, never suspected his actions. Because she knew—she was the center of his world. He was the center of hers—it was a given. They would never let anything threaten that. They had promised. It was written in stone.

Karen looked over at the club chair where he always sat in the evening, his feet on the footstool in front of it. He never changed chairs. When she offered to buy him a new one, he demurred. “I love this chair,” he would say. “Why would I want another one?”

Once, when he went on a camping trip with some buddies, she’d had it reupholstered. He’d agreed reluctantly that it looked nice, but it took him weeks to get it comfortable again, and she knew that although its worn arms and frayed back had bothered her, he never saw it as shabby. It was his chair. He was not put off by imperfections—his affections increased with time. That was the way he was.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and tears rolled down her face. Her heart felt as if it were being hammered into something small and dented by the pain inside of her.

“I hate you,” she said aloud to the chair. “How could you lie to me like that? Not you. Anyone but you…”

Her thoughts reeled back to the time he mentioned. When she found out they could not have children. When they had begun to understand how difficult adoption would be. It was true, she had been depressed. It was true she didn’t want to make love. She could barely speak, or get out of bed, or get a meal together. The last thing she’d wanted was to frolic in bed. It was beyond imagining.

I understand, he would always say. Once in a while, she would worry—would he turn to someone else? But it was more of a worry for form’s sake. Because magazine articles and talk shows said it happened that way in normal marriages. But they were not like other people—they were special. He was hers, for better or for worse.

And he was always reassuring her. It’s not important, he would say. You’re everything I need. It’s just a phase. He never got mad. He never complained. And when she had the strength, she would thank her stars for such a husband. And all the while…he was deceiving her. He was living another life.

I’ll go mad if I sit here, she thought. But she couldn’t move. Outside her window, the moon was pale and translucent as a thin slice of lemon. The same moon they had admired at its rising only hours ago. She and her husband. And their daughter.

Jenny shuffled into the room, clutching a white afghan from her bed. “I can’t stay in my room, Mom,” she said. Her face was as white as the blanket. “Can I sit here with you?”

Karen looked gratefully at her child. She raised her arms up to her. Jenny came over to the couch and curled up against her mother’s side like a kitten. It seemed to Karen that they had not sat that way since Jenny was a weary little toddler. The warmth of her child resting against her side was inexpressibly comforting. Karen wrapped one arm around her gently, afraid to spook her, to drive her away. But Jenny did not resist. She snuggled closer to her.

They sat silently like that for several minutes, each lost in private fears. Then Jenny whispered, “He didn’t do it. He never would.”

Jenny was talking about the murder. Karen realized with a start that she had hardly given a thought to that, so consumed was she by the knowledge of his betrayal, the secret he had kept from her all these years about Jenny. She tried to focus on the question of murder—she tried to picture Greg, driven to such an act. “No,” she whispered. “No, not your…father.” But even as she said it, she felt a shiver of doubt. She had never imagined him betraying her, either. If anyone had asked her, she would have said that she knew him completely.

“So why are they trying to blame him, Mom?”

“He told a lot of lies,” Karen said. “A million lies.”

“He had to,” Jenny protested.

Tears welled up in Karen’s eyes. “He didn’t have to,” she said furiously. “Nobody has to lie like that.”

“But, you know Daddy would never do that. Hurt someone.”

A bitter laugh escaped from Karen. “Oh, no?” she asked.

“You know what I mean,” said Jenny stubbornly. “I mean, you know, hit a person, a woman like that. Kill her.”

Karen took a deep breath. “No,” she said. “He wouldn’t…he couldn’t do that. But the police—”

“You have to tell them that,” Jenny cried. “That he would never do it.”

“Jenny, the police don’t care what I might say about it. Besides, innocent people don’t run away,” she said.

Jenny tensed up and drew away from her. “Mother, you just said he didn’t do it.”

Jenny was staring at Karen, demanding consistency, reason, answers. Karen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I have no answers, she wanted to wail. But instead she focused on her child’s face. Your world has been turned upside down, she thought. You are trying to hold on for dear life. She searched for some words of comfort that would ring true. All she could think to say was, “There has to be some explanation.”

“That’s right,” said Jenny defiantly. She sat forward on the sofa, her back to Karen. “Are you mad that he kept me?” she asked.

Karen pressed her lips together and blinked back tears. The pain in her heart made it hard to breathe. The truth came readily to her lips. “I love you more than anything in the world,” she said.