“But the DNA profile of the sperm sample matches the DNA from the kids.”
“So it was definitely her husband’s. Was the lab able to determine the age of the sperm?”
“It was from that night.”
“No sign of forcible rape?”
“None.”
“So he made love to his wife that very night.”
Trooper Morgan said nothing.
“He makes love to his wife. Then he gets dressed again and methodically murders his family one by one.”
“Unless he murdered them first and then got dressed.”
“I guess we won’t know that until we find him, see if there’s any blood on him.”
“How could there not be?”
“You ever see a murder scene as clean as that house was? Not a single bloody footprint. Not a blood splatter anywhere except in the beds. Nine drops of blood leading from the baby’s crib to the hallway. That’s it. Nine fucking drops.”
He was angry and the fluorescent light hurt his eyes. “So you know what we’ve got here?” he asked.
Morgan spoke softly. “No, sir, I don’t.”
“We have a lot of fucking questions and not a single fucking answer.”
Thirteen
It is important to understand things. This was what Thomas Huston kept telling himself. You need to figure things out.
He was walking through the woods now, picking his way between the hardwoods and birches, moving in what he hoped was a northeasterly line. He guessed the time at midafternoon; the light had softened and was slanting in behind him through the mostly leafless branches. There was a peculiar sensation of tunnel vision, of a blurry, black periphery wherever he looked, and when he tried to see into the distance, his gaze seemed too weak to travel more than forty yards or so. His head felt heavy, full of dark clouds, and though he ached in his neck and shoulders, knees and feet, the aches seemed somehow apart from him, as if he were experiencing another man’s pain.
You are a writer and a teacher, he reminded himself. A writer first and then a teacher. As a writer, it is your job to make order out of disorder. To find the meaning in metaphor. And as a teacher, it is your job to explain that meaning to your students. And now you are the student. You are the writer and the teacher and the student.
Find the meaning and explain it, he told himself. That is your job now.
Annabel could help. His writer’s instincts told him that Annabel would understand more of this than he did. Annabel lived in the kind of world where these things happened. He did not live like this. His life was blessed.
First things first, he thought, and paused for a moment, and looked around. Today is Tuesday. Thursday, you can see Annabel. So first things first: Find something to eat. Then find a place to stay. A warm place and dry.
Maybe somebody would help him, take him in. Give him a place to wait until Thursday. Who could he go to for help?
One by one, he considered his neighbors, his friends, his colleagues. Their faces seemed distant to him, people he had known a long time ago. Memories of memories. Only Annabel seemed clear and real, approachable. He had helped her and she would help him. But Annabel is Thursday, he told himself. Today is Tuesday.
Maybe you should go to the police. They will feed you and give you a place to stay. Yes, but they will want answers in exchange, and I have none. They will say where is the knife and I will say I drowned it. They will ask why did you drown it. I will say it was either that or cut myself to pieces with it.
And they will keep me from my job. My job is to find the meaning. Find the meaning and explain it.
Why can’t the police find the meaning?
Because they don’t know where to look.
You can tell them where to look.
No, I want to find the meaning myself. This is what I do. I will find the meaning and explain it, and then I will find my family again.
Do you really believe that is possible, Thomas?
I have to believe it. I have no choice but to believe it.
You stopped believing when you were fourteen, remember? Who was Cain’s wife? you asked. If God is the only God, why is he a jealous God? Who was God talking to when he said Let us create man in our own image? If God is love, why is there so much hate? You had so many questions that Mrs. Lehner got red in the face and called you impossible. If you are going to keep interrupting me, Thomas Huston, you can just stop coming to Sunday school altogether, how would you like that?
I liked it fine, he said. That was when I really started looking for the meaning. And I saw one good Christian after another sniffing at another man’s wife, another woman’s husband. I saw a deacon accused of pedophilia, then disappear and leave his wife and children behind. I heard my father’s friends laughing about payoffs to building inspectors, bribes to the zoning commission. I saw who was selling drugs and who was buying them. I saw who was keeping a woman on the side and who was being kept. I saw who cheated on their taxes and who liked to steal lipstick from Woolworth’s and who was collecting social security checks for dead spouses.