“Please. I just wanted to speak to you for a moment about Mr. Parker.”
Michael
The voice came again, only this time it was closer. He thought that he could feel breath on his neck, or maybe it was just the wind coming in from the sea, except there was no wind. He spun around, breathing heavily. He felt the mist enter his lungs. It made him cough, and he tasted snow and saltwater in his mouth. He hadn’t liked the way the voice had spoken his name. He hadn’t liked it one little bit. There was a hint of mockery to it, and an implicit threat. He felt like a recalcitrant child being spoken to by a nanny, except—
Except it was a child’s voice that had spoken.
“Who’s out there?” he said. “Show yourself.”
But there was no movement, and no response, not from before him. Instead, he became aware of movement at his back. Slowly, he craned his neck, not wishing to turn away from whatever had spoken to him fr J
The woman was now standing in the kitchen once again, midway between the back door and the entrance to the living room, but there was a lack of substance to her. She cast no shadow, distorting instead of blocking what little light was filtering through the glass, like a piece of gauze in the shape of a human being.
go away
please
It was the use of the word “please” that finally got to him. He had heard the word used in that way before, usually before a cop wrestled someone to the ground, or a doorman at a nightclub applied brute force to a drunk. It was a final warning, couched in a version of politeness. He shifted position so that he could see both the door and the mist, then began to retreat, moving toward the corner of the house.
Because the shadow that was troubling him had just assumed a recognizable form, even as he tried to deny the reality of it.
A woman and a child. A little girl’s voice. A woman in a summer dress. Mickey had seen that dress before, or one very like it. It was the dress that Parker’s wife had been wearing in the pictures that were circulated to the press after her death.
As soon as he was out of sight of the door, Mickey began to run. He slipped once and landed heavily, soaking his trousers and plunging his arms into the icy snow up to his elbows. He whimpered as he got to his feet and brushed himself off. As he did so, he heard a sound from behind him. It was muffled slightly by the mist, but it was still clearly identifiable.
It was the back door opening.
He ran again. His car came in sight. He found the keys in his pocket and pushed the Unlock button once to turn on the lights. As he did so, he stopped short and felt his stomach lurch.
There was a child, a little girl, on the far side of the car, staring at him through the passenger window. Her left hand was splayed against the glass, while the index finger of her right traced patterns in the moisture. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he knew instinctively that it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been inches away from her instead of feet. She was as insubstantial as the mist that surrounded her.
“No,” said Mickey. “No, no.” He shook his head. From behind him came the sound of hard snow crunching underfoot, of an unseen figure drawing nearer. Even as he heard it, he sensed that if he were to retrace his steps to the back door he would find the imprint of his own footsteps, and nobody else’s. “Oh Jesus,” whispered Mickey. “Jesus, Jesus…”
But already the little girl was moving away, receding into the mist and the trees, her right hand raised in a mocking gesture of farewell. Mickey took his chance and made a final dash for the car. He wrenched the door open, slammed it behind him, and hit the internal locking button hard. His fingers didn’t fumble, despite his fear, as he started the car and pulled onto the driveway, looking neither right nor left but staring only ahead. He hit the road at speed and hung a sharp right, back over the bridge toward Scarborough, the headlight beams assuming a definition of their own as they tried to slice through the mist. Houses appeared, and then, in time, the reassuring lights of the businesses on Route 1. Only when he reached the gas station on his right did he slow down. He pulled into t J seoughe lot, and hit the brakes, then leaned back against his seat and tried to get his breathing under control.
The traffic signal at the intersection began to change color. The action drew his attention to the passenger window, and what had seemed at first to be random patterns in the moisture now assumed a definite shape.
They were words. On his window, someone had written:
STAY AWAY FROM MY DADDY
Mickey stared at the words for a few moments longer, then hit the button to wind down the window, destroying the message. When he was sure that it was gone, he drove back to his motel and went straight to the bar. It was only after a double vodka that he found it within himself to begin updating his notes, and it took another double to stop his hand from shaking.
That night, Mickey Wallace did not sleep well.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I DIDN’T FIND WALLACE’S card until I opened the back door on the afternoon of the next day to put out the trash. It lay on the step, frozen to the cement. I looked at it, then went back inside and dialed his cell phone number from my office.
He answered on the second ring. “Mickey Wallace.”
“This is Charlie Parker.”
He didn’t reply for a moment or two, and when he did he sounded initially uneasy, although, like a true professional, he quickly rallied. “Mr. Parker, I was just about to call you. I was wondering if you’d considered my offer.”
“I’ve given it some thought,” I said. “I’d like to meet.”
“Great.” His voice rose an octave in surprise, then resumed its usual timbre. “Where and when?”
“Why don’t you come out to my place in, say, an hour. Do you know where it is?”
There was a pause. “No, I don’t. Can you give me directions?”
My directions were intricate and detailed. I wondered if he was even bothering to take them down.
“Got that?” I said when I was done.
“Yeah, I think so.” I heard him take a sip of liquid.
“You want to read them back to me?”
Wallace almost choked. When he had finished coughing, he said: “That won’t be necessary.”
“Well, if you’re sure.”
“Thank you, Mr. Parker. I’ll be with you shortly.”
I hung up. I put on a jacket, then went down the drive and found the tire tracks beneath the trees. If it was Wallace who had parked there, Kpar¤ithhe’d left in a real hurry. He’d managed to churn up ice and snow to reveal the dirt beneath. I walked back to the house, sat in a chair, and read the Press-Herald and The New York Times until I heard the sound of a car pulling into the drive, and Wallace’s blue Taurus came into view. He didn’t park in the same spot as the night before, but drove right up to the house. I watched him get out, take his satchel from the passenger seat, and check his pockets for a spare pen. When he was satisfied that all was in order, he locked the car.
In my drive. In Maine. In winter.
I didn’t wait for him to knock. Instead, I opened the door, and hit him once in the stomach. He buckled and dropped to his knees, then doubled over and retched.
“Get up,” I said.
He stayed down. He was struggling for breath, and I thought that he might vomit on my porch.
“Don’t hit me again,” he said. It was a plea, not a warning, and I felt like a piece of grit in a dog’s eye.
“I won’t.”
I helped him to his feet. He sat against the porch rail, his hands on his knees, and recovered himself. I stood opposite him, regretting what I had done. I had allowed my anger to simmer, and then I had taken it out on a man who was no match for me.
“You okay?”
He nodded, but he looked gray. “What was that for?”
“I think you know. For sneaking around my property. For being dumb enough to drop your card while you were here.”
He leaned against the rail to support himself. “I didn’t drop it,” he said.
“You’re telling me you left it for me in the dirt on my back porch? That doesn’t sound likely.”
“I’m telling you that I didn’t drop it. I slipped it under the door for the woman who was in your house last night, but she just pushed it back.”
I looked away. I saw skeletal trees amid the evergreens, and the channels in the salt marshes shining coldly amid the frozen snow. I saw a single black crow lost against the gray sky.
“What woman?”
“A woman in a summer dress. I tried to speak to her, but she wouldn’t say anything.”
I glanced at him. His eyes couldn’t meet mine. He was telling a version of the truth, but he had hidden away some crucial element. He was trying to protect himself, but not from me. Mickey Wallace was scared to death. I could see it in the way his eyes kept returning to something behind the window of my living room. I don’t know what he expected to see but, whatever it was, he was glad that it hadn’t appeared.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I came out to the house. I thought you might be more amenable to a discussion away from the bar.”