The day of Huston’s funeral was appropriately gray and chilled. Now that his innocence had been proclaimed over the Internet and beamed from one broadcasting tower to the next across several continents, his colleagues and neighbors were quick to claim him again as a close friend whose innocence they had never doubted. The jealousy they had felt for Huston alive became a personal sense of loss for Huston dead. On the day of the announcement of his death, every bookstore in the country sold out every copy of his work in stock, and tens of thousands of copies were back-ordered.
At the crowded gravesite, coeds hugged copies of Huston’s novels to their Halston stadium jackets, sobbed, and shivered while thin, sensitive boys looked on longingly and plotted ways to turn grief into sexual conquest. The poet Denton, in a charcoal cashmere overcoat, a lavender wool scarf wrapped twice around his throat, spoke for fifteen minutes about the special relationship he and Thomas Huston had shared. “Colleagues, friends, and even collaborators,” he said, “laborers toiling side by side in the vineyards of truth,” “brother soldiers…warrior poets.” Afterward, he threw back his head and recited Poe’s “Lenore” and “Annabel Lee.” His shaggy chestnut hair lifted in the gusty breeze, his eyes glimmered with tears, and his voice quavered just enough to be heard.
DeMarco stood well behind the deep half-moon of mourners. Only occasional snatches of Denton’s recitation reached his ears. DeMarco had meant to remain at the ceremony only briefly, then to return to the silence of home and the thoughts that nagged at him, but he lingered on until shortly after the coffin was lowered into the ground and the feature-length histrionics of sobbing and keening began. Rosemary and Ed O’Patchen were the first to lean over the grave for a final good-bye. They stood side by side, motionless for half a minute, Ed’s ungloved hand resting in the middle of his wife’s back. When the couple turned away to make room for the others queuing up behind them, Rosemary’s eyes found DeMarco at the rear of the crowd, and with a whispered word, she directed her husband’s gaze to him. Though their cheeks were red with cold and shiny with tears, both O’Patchens greeted DeMarco with a subtle smile only he understood. He nodded once, then turned and walked the long, winding asphalt pathway back to his car alone.
What had been troubling DeMarco was the nagging question of why Inman had shown up at DeMarco’s house three nights earlier. Why would he risk capture by confronting DeMarco? The two men shared no history. DeMarco had never busted him, had had no role in any of Inman’s previous arrests. All DeMarco could figure was that, at some point, Bonnie had mentioned the sergeant to her boyfriend, and something in her tone of voice had tripped Inman’s jealousy trigger again, so he made a slight detour in his escape route, slit Bonnie’s throat, and came after DeMarco. Given the convolutions of the criminal psyche, DeMarco considered this a plausible explanation, yet it failed to quiet the mumblings in his brain. For that reason he had ordered that Bonnie’s vehicle be impounded and scrutinized, but it produced no further rationale for Inman’s behavior. The small trunk was crammed with their clothing in two suitcases and three duffels, the glove box held road maps for Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Texas, and in Bonnie’s purse was their traveling money, two packets of three thousand dollars each in Citizen Bank wrappers. None of it spoke to DeMarco, not a word of insinuation. It left him only with a vague uneasiness that refused to gel.
And now footsteps intruded on the uneasiness, long strides coming up from the rear—brisk movement, the solid slap of soles growing louder by the second. A man, DeMarco thought, or a tall, athletic woman in flats, not heels. Slowing only a little he turned at the waist.
“Hey,” Nathan Briessen said. His black overcoat hung open, black cable-stitched turtleneck sweater and jeans. His cheeks were red from the cold, eyes red rimmed from a deeper chill.
“Hey,” DeMarco answered.
The young man came alongside and matched his stride to DeMarco’s. For a while they walked in silence. Then DeMarco told him, “I’m sorry, Nathan. I know he was a good friend to you.”
The young man nodded. His gaze held the distance. “How did you like the show?” he asked.
“Touching,” said DeMarco.
“I’m surprised he didn’t set up a table and do a book signing while he was at it.”
“Denton?”
“Fucking self-promoting son of a bitch. I wanted to strangle him.”
DeMarco cut a glance at the young man’s face, the grim set of jaw. And now he understood Nathan’s need for company, the anger, outrage mixed with grief.
Nathan said, “To use a man’s funeral like that. Especially a man like Thomas. He’d have been disgusted by that, you know.”
“Maybe,” DeMarco said. “Or maybe just amused. Able to forgive his friends their excesses.”