Son of the Endless Night, page 24
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Late Wednesday night, the first Wednesday in February, Lindsay Potter drove in from New Haven and parked her chocolate-colored Mazda, streaked with salt from the winterized roads, beside Adam's Cadillac in a roofed, radiantly heated alcove that adjoined the converted barn they shared five miles from the hub of Braxton, Vermont. The Connecticut River lay a quarter of a mile downhill in scalding moonlight, past rock walls and orchards that took up the bulk of the fifteen-acre property. She pulled from the back seat her luggage and a big attache case that contained her Brother typewriter, two cassette recorders, and nearly a gross of miniature cassettes, and went up a flight of steps in the scintillating cold to a large cleared deck. She let herself into the shadow-filled barn, twenty-six feet from hardwood floor to stained roofbeams, all open area except for sleeping pallets on galleries that could be enclosed by means of sliding walnut panels on tracks. The lighting was very subdued, half of the living quarters and the office in darkness. It was a showplace but chilly inside: a bitch to heat, never mind the expense. They kept the thermostat low in winter and relied on amenities for warmth; hot tub, fireplace, electric blankets at night.
A phone rang, twice; an answering machine gobbled up the incoming call. A single high spotlight isolated a portion of the hot tub deck to one side of the native-stone fireplace wall; she could hear water bubbling minerally, and through the rise of steam saw Adam immersed to his chest, head cradled on a waterproof pillow. There was music, dialed low; Crystal Gayle, heartrending, her voice a shade too glamorous and expert for the country material.
"Hey, I'm home," Lindsay called, and he started, looking around puzzledly. "Linds?" "Yeah, expecting your mother?" "C'mere." "In a minute, I need a drink." She dropped her baggage on a section of sofa and pulled off her lowtop boots, hopskipping but not pausing in her beeline progress to the island kitchen. "You dead?" "I'm dead, lover." Her exhausted eyes scanning across the rack of bottles above the bar, "Ginginnygin, what did you do with the goddam gin?" "Refrigerator." "Oh, yeah, sure," padding with straight narrow feet to the restaurant-size stainless steel refrigerator. She pulled out the bottle of cool Tanqueray's and rummaged for a Bitter Lemon, put both on a maple block and selected a tall glass, paused to take off her cardigan sweater, her blouse and bra, dropped them on the floor, shuddered and puckered, made her drink, added circles of clear ice from a dispenser, tasted, smacked her lips, unsnapped her skirt and dropped it, too, shuddered until her bones rattled, walked in her soot-colored panty hose to the mists of the hot tub, handed down her drink for him to hold and, still wearing the pantyhose, stepped down blissfully into roiling water and sat beside him, a hand dangling on his damp hot shoulder. They kissed. His hands slid slowly down her naked ribcage to the waistband of the panty hose and he "peeled them off her, tossed them sopping onto the stone ledge above them. She fished for his penis and held it and said, "You know something? I think I'm just too damned tired."
Adam smiled wisely and tilted the glass at her lips. "You'll recover."
Lindsay drank and scratched the tingle of his mustache against her cheek. She said sternly, "Listen, dollface. This is a bad habit you're getting into, falling asleep in the hot tub. One of these nights I'll come home really late and have to rake your bones off the bottom."
"Oh, I wasn't asleep. Just dozing. I haven't been in that long anyway, feel me."
"I am feeling you."
"The rest of me."
"If you get any softer I could make candles out of you. Just don't stay in much longer."
The phone rang again, a droplet of sound in the big space around them. The second ring was pinched off.
Adam said, "So what do we know about Richard Devon we didn't know a week ago?"
"He's never been hospitalized or treated on an outpatient basis for any kind of mental instability. He was a hotheaded kid, fought a lot. Sort of a runt. The usual feelings of inferiority because of his size. Some minor trouble with the law; two arrests, charges dismissed."
"One for the prosecution," Adam said, not sounding intimidated. "He's not mad, he's bad. She jilted him and he couldn't take it. Premeditation. Teach her a big lesson. If I can't have her, nobody can."
"We're left with five witnesses who will swear he was in a state of lunacy more compelling than hydrophobia when he murdered Karyn, plus there's the testimony of arresting officers and the noted police surgeon Dr. Arthur K. Harbison, all of which isn't worth a free pass to the Miss Nude Octogenarian Pageant at the old ladies' home, and— "
Lindsay paused for breath; Adam had gone down laughing in the tub; bubbles exploded above the dark wavering circle of his hair. She grinned, waited until he reappeared, choking, then concluded, "and we'll have the testimony of as many friendly clinicians as we can afford. Speaking of funds, I'm going around with two bucks in my wallet."
"It's reasonably definite the county will give us the same amount of money we had to defend DuBois."
"Seventy-seven thousand? That was a twelve-day trial! It'll take weeks just to select a jury this time, not to mention— "
"Okay, okay. I was in Montpelier all afternoon seeing what the state machinery can crank out for us. I should get a call from Spru Norfleet the first of next week. Spru has always liked me."
"Yes, she and your father"— a new light appeared in Lindsay's eyes: competitive, bitchy. "I hope you didn't give her the impression you were going to crawl in the sack with her, little lovey-dovey camping trip some weekend in August."
"She's already several years beyond my definition of middle age, and anyway it would be kind of incestuous."
There was an absence of guile, of studied frankness; Lindsay gazed complacently at him, then began delicately to comb his drenched mustache with a long fingernail.
"Speaking of greasy machinery," Adam said, "I had lunch with Gary Cleves yesterday."
"How is Crusader Rabbit?"
"Smug about something, other than what he refers to as his 'locked case.' Gary quoted Powell v. Texas to me and had one martini over his limit. He was that confident I was going to lose my nerve and try to plea-bargain even before the indictment comes down."
Lindsay licked the last tart drops from her glass and said with a pat, malicious smile, "Gary's so reactionary it's made him stupid. Doesn't he know some of the folk around here still believe in witches? Deep down inside, oh yes, they believe. And the more I think about it, the more I'm sure we can sell irresistible impulse and diminished capacity to any jury he cares to impanel."
Adam cautioned, "But the pretrial publicity will hurt us. That's Gary's ace."
Lindsay held out the glass and, catching her lower lip with her teeth, said coaxingly, "Fix me another?"
"Sure."
Adam lifted himself up out of the tub and reached for a long striped terrycloth robe. Lindsay's eyes flitted, like sunstruck hornets. She admired his ass, his trim ankles. On the way to the kitchen he stopped to turn up the gas log fire on the hearth: they both disliked wood smoke indoors, which eventually saturated all furniture and drapes with a sour ashy odor. He made the gin and bitter, then opened a cabinet and laid an orange exercise mat at an angle in front of the fire, broke out bottles of unguents and oils and mild balm, took off his robe, and waited, kneeling, for Lindsay to emerge from the tub and dry off.
They shared the fresh drink and then she lay down on her stomach, nude.
He massaged her, using the Shiatsu method of pressure on problem areas, beginning with the cold papery feet, so tense to probing fingers she twitched and yowled. Bones there like thinly buried arrowheads, knives of blue flint, balls of the toes in grapy bunches, the heels tough, each with a rind of flaking callus. He had been a gymnast and had taken up cross-country skiing. He loved the human body, musculature. He sang the names of the muscles to Lindsay like a romantic pushcart vendor, a wafted litany, latisssimussss, trapezzziussss, as he worked, steadily and ardently, toward her heart, his hands leaving her newly enlivened body only to pour another dollop of oil. Without interrupting his rhythm he reached down occasionally to strop himself, maintaining an iron hardness, drops of his own clarified essence mingling with the sweet sesame oil. By the time he had begun to loosen her shoulders, which were like a carapace beneath the skin, he was astride her spread radiant hips, with each firm, strenuous movement forward his penis nosing against the base of her spine.
Lindsay, head turned to one side on the orange mat, face stupefied like that of a vixen in poppies, groaned at his power, demanding more. He turned her neatly, positioning himself between her knees; her belly was sopping, clear perspiration, not much hair on her body, little shieldlike smudge barely containing the febrile pout of labia: the head of his cock dallied on the surface of all this briny sensuality, bobbing, teasing. And something tainted, fierce and whorish, rose swiftly through her familiar depths to lunge; her mouth was twisted. Fuck me, fuck me. I'll kill you if you don't give it to me now!
They recuperated, in matching velour wraps with hoods that made them look like mismatched sparring partners, side by side at the range. They made biscuits and omelets in small square frying pans, the omelets thinly crisped on the outside, stuffed with diced mushrooms and black olives, a teaspoon of chili sauce each. Hot black coffee and food and an earful of Stevie Nicks; they sat munching companionably on stools at the breakfast bar.
"Do you think that was Conor trying to get you earlier?" Lindsay said.
"I doubt it. He's cut down to half a dozen calls a day. The last time I heard from him was this afternoon; he traced me to Spru's office in the capital. He's coming up tomorrow for the day, to see Rich. He told me he was more than ever convinced that Rich isn't crazy. He's not ruling out a tumor, but he said, 'I know what to do. I know how to get to the bottom of this.' "
Lindsay spooned thick wild honey onto a biscuit half, licked a dribble of the honey from her slender thumb. "Bottom of what?"
"Rich's behavior, I suppose. I couldn't get him to elaborate, he was using an outdoor phone on the New England Thru way, big trucks zooming by, it was hard to make him out. I guess he was going someplace to wrestle. Did you dig up the reasons why he left the priesthood?"
"No. Why, was I supposed to?"
"I thought somebody might have mentioned it."
"I heard the usual gossip, passed off as inside stuff. I know Conor had what might be described as an ambulatory nervous breakdown after he separated from the Church; he was boozing too much but he never joined A.A. — marriage and the love of a good woman redeemed him. A trite story, but one I never get tired of."
"He sure was tossing down the Cutty Sark the night we took him to Morecambe's."
"He had six. So did I."
"You've got more peat bog in your stomach than the average Irishman. I just have this doubtful feeling about Conor. He's big and he can be fierce and he has worse body hair than the abominable snowman, but underneath he's a frail reed, and he'll break. Soon. Give him another week at the most."
"I'll put ten bucks on Conor. For the honor of my people, even though I'm only Irish by adoption."
"Done." They hooked little fingers together to seal the wager.
Lindsay, still rosy from her exertions, humid in the hollows of her face and throat, leaned to her left to give him a kiss. She said, "I found out Rich has no history of epilepsy. But you couldn't have used that anyway."
"Uh-uh. Still, I'm convinced it was an epileptic fit he had. I've seen them before. He jackknifed out of his chair, and he was rigid on the floor."
"For how long?"
"Six or seven minutes."
"You should have insisted on an EEG immediately."
"Insisted? I screamed myself hoarse. That fuckoff Harbison was hours getting around to Rich, and then all he did was flash a light in his eyes and give him aspirin." Adam shook his head in awe and displeasure at what he had to put up with. "Right away I petitioned Southern District to get Rich out of jail and into the hospital for at least a two-day stay, but Bracken turned me down on the grounds that there wasn't demonstrable need— like a collapsed lung— and security couldn't be guaranteed. Harbison said it was just a fainting spell. How do you like that? Harbison. I've seen more brains in birdcrap. He wasn't there. I was. I don't know who looked worse, Richard or Maggie Renquist. Her asthma, you know. And something had her really scared."
"I think," Lindsay said dryly, "I'd be a little shaky too if someone spat a tooth at me hard enough to put an eye out. She was lucky that didn't happen. How the hell do you suppose Rich managed it? Was it a pivot tooth? Could he have done it on purpose?"
"I have no explanation. It's one of those Fortean occurrences. Like little green toads raining down from a clear sky."
"Get serious."
"The facts are, Rich is minus a front tooth, which I have in a Tic-Tac box in my office, and it took three stitches to close the hole in Maggie's cheek. She'll be scarred. I've wasted far too much time thinking about it already, and I'm not going to think about his goddam tooth anymore. Rich is crazy as they come, and I know I can prove it in court."
"Hey." What she could see of Adam's face, like the moon's last quarter contained by the cowl, looked sleepily saintlike about the brow; but his mouth was humanly troubled, unassured. He was trying to turn his fork into a pretzel. She nuzzled against him, seeking bones within all that velour, the hard definite shape of him. "Needless to say, Maggie wants no more to do with our client."
He put the fork down. "Not at all. She's tough. And fascinated with Rich. I don't think Maggie's ever seen one quite like him before. After this, uh, cooling-off period, she'll meet with Rich again in a couple of days and give him the prescribed tests."
Lindsay poured more decaffeinated coffee for them and was starting to clean up when the door chimes pealed. She glanced at Adam, who leaned across the counter and activated the watchdog TV camera focused on the area around the front door; a flaring black and white picture appeared on one of the four nine-inch monitors of their security system.
They saw, at a downward angle from a height of seven feet, a lone man, hatless, big, wearing a dark overcoat and flowing muffler, stamping his feet on the welcome mat. He had poetically untamed hair, pale blond or white, tumbled around his face, and a prominent nose. After a couple of moments he looked sideways at the lens of the camera, holding his face up confidently for a full inspection by the occupants, signaling amiability and good will with short bursts of condensed breath. His head at this distorted angle was huge, spheroid; his feet might have been on another planet.
"My God," Lindsay said over Adam's shoulder, clutching him, "do you know who that looks like? It looks like— couldn't be— my God!"
"It's him," Adam said, so startled his chin quivered, a childhood thing which, like hiccups and nervous rashes, is never quite outgrown. Adam pushed a button. "Hello?"
The familiar face creased, a lupine smile. "Do I have the honor," the radioed voice said, "of addressing Mr. Adam Kurland?"
"Yes, I'm Adam."
"Please excuse my intrusion at this hour; I telephoned several times and then took a chance I'd find you still awake, a night owl like myself. I'm Tommie Harkrider. May I come in?"
Adam had already given Lindsay a nudge and she was flying up a short flight of steps to the foyer landing and the door. Adam released the latch with a silent buzzer just as she got there and Harkrider, turning, nodding to her out of a luminous thin fog, stepped inside.
"You must be Lindsay Potter."
She shook her right hand free of the heavy sleeve and offered it, peering past him outdoors. "Is that your car? Is someone else with you? Wouldn't they like to come in?"
"No, no, it's my chauffeur. Bernie will be quite comfortable with the engine running, and he has movies on video disc for entertainment. I can't be long, I must be back in the city for a breakfast meeting, but I didn't want to miss this initial opportunity to meet Adam and yourself."
They walked side by side toward Adam, who had come halfway from the kitchen with a taut quizzical smile and just a hint of wariness. Harkrider struggled a little clumsily to unwrap the yards of muffler, which Lindsay took for him, as well as his shapeless alpaca coat with its dated velvet lapels.
"Mr. Kurland."
"A pleasure, sir."
Harkrider looked around him in admiration.
"Marvelous what one can do with these old barns. Is it your design?''
"I took it over from a friend who ran into trouble at the bank. May I offer you a drink?"
"Thank you, sir; two ounces of Drambuie, if I may presume."
"We have Drambuie," Lindsay said, pleased, and she hastened to the bar to pour it for him.
Adam, his coffee mug in one hand, escorted the bigger man, who walked nippingly, as if he had very bad feet, to a conversation area framed in blunt low-backed sofas upholstered in blazing blue sailcloth; he turned on a podshaped lamp suspended from a chromed fishpole that was anchored in a block of Carrera marble. Harkrider lowered himself by degrees until he was satisfied that his piece of the sectional sofa wasn't going to slide out from under him.
He smiled, a gentle interrogative smile that still had something of the cagey old wolf in it, and looked more closely at Adam.
"I have the impression we've met before."
"Yes, we have, at Virginia Beach three summers ago.
The National Institute for Trial Advocacy seminars. I thought your dissection of Arnold Sondheim on cross was, uh— " Adam hesitated, having almost said brilliant; not wanting to appear to fawn, he substituted: "very illuminating and helpful."
