All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 6
The two cases were not especially alike, but it is understandable that Tom Glover connected them. There was the bit about the women’s cars, both abandoned in public parking lots, and the similarity of their names, Janice and Jane. And of course they had Dan Larkin in common. Glover drew a perfectly logical inference, or at least an inference that might have seemed obvious to a cop: after a smart lawyer like Dan Larkin had watched enough of his own clients go free despite committing all sorts of crimes including murder, it must have been natural for Dan to think, You can get away with anything if you’re smart enough.
But from the cops’ point of view, the Jane Larkin case had two enormous problems that the Janice Tancredo murder did not. First, there was no body. Understand, the prosecution is not required to produce a corpse in order to prove that a killing has occurred. The corpse is simply the best and commonest evidence. So if, in the early days of the investigation, you were inclined to suspect Dan Larkin of murder, you had to assume—had to guess, really—that Jane was in fact dead. Most people had no problem making this leap. With each passing day, it seemed less and less likely that Jane was lost, injured, unable to get to a phone, unaware of the panic her disappearance had caused, etc. Jane was dead—everybody knew it. If nothing else, the thinking went, a mother would not just up and leave her children. Within a week or so of the disappearance, a tentative consensus was reached that Dan was probably guilty of something. The only remaining drama was what that something might be. The lack of real proof did not help Dan in the “court of public opinion” or with the professional investigators. You see, suspicion does not need proof; it feeds just as well on the absence of it.
The second problem with the case against Dan was that he had no obvious motive to kill his wife. That was about to change.
* * *
—
Now I must tell you something out of chronological order again, because it was not until late in the process of writing this book that Alex consented to an interview, and it was Alex whose view I most wanted on this question of motive, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. By the time we spoke, I had a nearly completed draft, so I was able to squeeze him with the usual reporter’s blackmail: The book is going to be written with or without your cooperation, so if you want your side to be heard…
The interview took place at the law firm in downtown Boston where Alex is now a partner. The firm is a very old and prestigious one. I will not name it; suffice it to say the name would be familiar to any Boston lawyer. Coincidentally, I worked at this same firm briefly, as a wildly overpaid and underworked summer associate during law school. In those days—it was the summer of 1989—the firm was transforming from a gentlemanly old Yankee firm into the national “Big Law” colossus that it is now. But the future of the firm was clear, and I knew damn well I would never make it there. As a lawyer, I was headed in a different direction.
But as ill-suited as I was to life in a big law firm, Alex Larkin was fairly made for it. I remember him sauntering in the hallways that summer, in his tailored suits and silk suspenders, tall and handsome with his athlete’s strut. He was in his early thirties then. His hairline had begun to recede, so the gulf in years between us felt wider than ever. He had a young man’s arrogance—there is no kind word for it—a quality I detest, but I could not dislike Alex or even blame him for being full of himself. He had been a star for so long. I still thought of him as a star too. The idols we choose in childhood, we keep.
One other memory sticks out from that summer of 1989: no one at the firm ever mentioned the business about Alex Larkin’s mother. It was as if they had all agreed it would be impolite to gossip about it. Or maybe they just never connected Alex to the case, which by then had been out of the news for many years. Alex acted as if he had forgotten it too. In fact, he never showed any sign that he was troubled by anything at all.
When we finally met to discuss this book, almost thirty years later, in early spring 2017, it was this young, princely version of Alex that I was expecting to find. And indeed, though he was fifty-seven now, that is exactly the Alex I found. Unlike Jeff, who had struck me as so worn and weary in middle age, Alex wore his years beautifully, like his tailored suit and his Rolex watch and his delicate reading glasses. This was the final, consummated version of Alex Larkin, the fulfillment of all his earlier promise.
We met in Alex’s corner office, which had a sweeping view of the Seaport District and Boston Harbor. After a grave handshake, he went behind his desk, a monolith of dark wood, the sort of power desk that makes you wonder how such an enormous object could be moved to an upper floor like this. My manuscript pages stood in a shaggy pile in front of him. (Alex had insisted on a printed manuscript, not a digital file.) He leaned in his chair, as big and supple as a leopard.
“Well,” he said, “honestly I’m not much of a reader, Phil, but for what it’s worth I thought it was good. I can’t say I enjoyed reading it, of course, but it’s well done.”
“Thank you. I know it’s an uncomfortable subject for you.”
“But not for you.”
“Of course for me too. It’s not the kind of thing I’m comfortable writing about. I’ve said as much to Jeff and Miranda. Hell, I say it in the book. I don’t like writing about friends.”
“Is that what we are, friends?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re going to publish it anyway.”
“I hope so, yes. I mean, I have qualms. I don’t feel great about it.”
“So why publish it? Why not listen to your conscience?”
“Because that’s what I do.”
“Pick at people’s bones?”
“No.”
“What about me? Don’t I get a vote?”
“Afraid not.”
“So if I ask you not to publish it? What then?”
“It would depend on the reason, I guess.”
“How about decency? Friendship? My father is a very sick man. You know that, don’t you? He’s dying. Do you think it’s right to go after him now, when he can’t fight back?”
“I’m not going after anyone. I’m just trying to tell the truth. My job is to be honest.”
“Oh, don’t make it sound so virtuous. Sometimes honesty is cruel. You don’t have to come out and say these things.”
“It’s what writers do.”
“It’s not what novelists do.”
“It’s precisely what novelists do.”
“Novelists tell stories, Phil. They write fiction.”
“That’s what I’ve done.”
“Barely.”
“It’s a novel, Alex. That’s what I’m calling it.”
“I thought you were honest. That’s what you just said.”
“I’m honest in my way. As honest as I can be.”
“Do you dislike my father, Phil?”
“I don’t have strong feelings about him either way.”
“What is your opinion of him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“Come on, you must have some opinion. You knew him. Did you like him? Did you think he was a likable man?”
“Those are two different questions. I don’t think he’s especially likable, no. That doesn’t mean I dislike him.”
“But Jeff does. You know that, don’t you? Jeff dislikes him intensely.”
“You’d have to ask Jeff about that.”
“Jeff’s not here. I’m asking you.”
“I think Jeff’s feelings about his dad are pretty tangled at this point.”
“But in these pages you parrot what Jeff tells you uncritically.”
“Not sure I’d use the word parrot. I report. And not uncritically.”
“Use whatever word you want. It’s very one-sided.”
“Well, I might parrot the other side, too, if you’d tell me anything. You’ve refused to talk to me. What can I do?”
“It’s too late now, isn’t it? The book’s already written.”
“There’s time. Anything you give me, I’ll use.”
He smiled but let the invitation pass. “And Glover. He’s obviously a major source. Obviously you consider him reliable.”
“I do. I think he’s honest.”
“He can be honest and unreliable, honest and wrong. The world is full of honest fools.”
“Glover’s no fool.”
“No. I take that back.” He frowned at the manuscript in front of him. “I assume you’ve cleared this with your publisher’s legal department.”
“Not yet.”
“Well, libel’s not my area of expertise, but it seems to me my father will have a terrific cause of action. I certainly know a few good attorneys who would leap to take the case.”
“Alex, if you think I’ve got anything wrong on the facts—”
“The facts? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Tell me. Tell me what mistakes you saw. I’m happy to make corrections.”
“No. Because what I tell you are not facts, it’s just testimony. You’re a lawyer, you know that. You can’t trust every witness, including me. Witnesses make mistakes even when they’re not lying. They misperceive, misremember, misstate. Come on, this is first-year law-school stuff. You seem to think that just repeating what people tell you, even Miranda or Jeff, is all you’re obligated to do. As if all the things they tell you are the gospel truth, as if a thing becomes a fact just because someone says it.”
“Look, I know you’re angry, Alex, but again if there’s anything you’d like me to correct, I’d be happy to do it.”
“But the onus is on me, isn’t that right? What if I don’t want to correct anything? What if I don’t want any part of this? What if I just want to be left alone?”
“You have that right. But Miranda and Jeff want something different. Are you going to sue your own brother and sister?”
“Of course not. I’ll sue you. And your publisher.”
“For reporting what Jeff tells me? A firsthand witness? No, you won’t.”
“Jeff. Jeff.” He closed his eyes and soothed his forehead with his fingers like a weary father.
Jeff would have winced. He had always described his ambivalent relationship with his older brother using words like arrogant, oblivious, narcissistic. He thought Alex escaped the worst of it. When their mother disappeared, Alex was already a young man. In less than a year, he would leave home for college. Alex was old enough to handle the blow—better than Jeff and Miranda, at any rate, who were still kids. Jeff was right to be angry with Alex, I think, but I “get” Alex a little better now. He was not oblivious or narcissistic, no more than a lot of young people anyway. He just did not grok how deeply his younger sibs had suffered. Why had Jeff and Miranda allowed themselves to be so wounded? Why stew over things you could not change, year after year? What was the point? And what could Alex do for them anyway? Babying Miranda and Jeff had always been their mother’s job; Alex was not equipped to stand in for her (which is forgivable) and he did not have any interest in trying (which probably is not).
“Alex, I think Jeff is just trying to make sense of what happened. To me, that seems perfectly natural. Don’t you feel any of that yourself?”
“No. It’s over.”
“How is that possible? How can you be so…serene?”
“I am not serene. You have no right to say that. You can’t possibly understand.”
“Sorry. Maybe that’s the wrong word. It’s just that you seem to have the whole thing settled in your mind. How do you explain it to yourself? What’s the story you tell yourself about it, about what really happened?”
“You mean, do I think my father is a murderer?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s what you meant. The answer is no, I do not.”
“You’ve never had any doubt? Even for a moment?”
“No. I trust him. That’s never changed.”
“But there were things about him you didn’t know.”
“Of course.”
“Like Sarah.”
“Yes. Like Sarah.”
“Tell me about her.”
“What is it you want to know?”
“When did you find out about her? What was she like? Did you like her? Tell me anything at all. What was your first impression?”
He eyed me. “Are we on the record?”
“Yes. Always. I’m not a journalist, I don’t know how to go off the record.”
His hand hovered over the manuscript a moment, like a spider descending, then touched down on five fingertips.
“She came to the house.” He stopped there.
“When? When did she first appear?”
He sat a moment in silence, considering whether to speak to me about the case. Then:
“About a week after my mother went missing. Maybe two weeks, I’m not sure now.”
“How did you feel? What did you think when you saw her?”
Another pause. Alex still hesitant to share information.
I waited. Hoped.
“I thought she was beautiful. When she stepped in the door, it took my breath away. I’d never seen a woman that striking. She was luminous.”
I smiled. “Oh my.”
“She’d been a model when she was younger, did you know that? She was a Breck girl. When I met her, she was forty or forty-one—a couple years older than my mother, by the way. Make sure you include that, Phil.”
“All right.”
“It was late at night. There was a knock on the back door, very quiet. My dad was obviously nervous when he heard the knock. We’d been cooped up in the house a long time and we were jumpy. It might have been the cops or some crazy person who read about us in the newspaper. Whoever it was, they hadn’t rung the doorbell in front. They sneaked around to the back where it was dark. It was just odd. It even occurred to me that it might be my mother finally coming home because nobody outside our family used the back door at night.
“My dad opened the door, and Sarah stepped in and they kissed.”
“And then?”
“No, not ‘and then.’ This was—this was a real kiss. If you saw it, you knew. They kissed like lovers, like a young couple that had been separated a long time. My father was not a passionate man, but the way he kissed her—he put one hand behind her head, his left hand, with his wedding ring, and one hand around the small of her back, and he held her that way for a long time. I think he completely forgot I was there. Then again, just imagine the strain he was under, the pressure. Try to be a little compassionate here, Phil. Imagine how he felt. Alone, under siege. And then here she was, suddenly, the woman he loved. Imagine how he must have felt.”
“I’m trying to imagine how you must have felt. It must have been a shock.”
“A shock? I was blown away. Blown away.”
“You’d never seen her before?”
“Never.”
“Never heard of her?”
“Never.”
“Never had any idea your father was…?”
“God, no. We had no clue. My father is a very careful man, very meticulous. I had no idea who this woman was, no idea she even existed.”
“And your mother? Did she know?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“So, what were you thinking as you watched them kiss?”
“Honestly, I thought my dad suddenly looked twenty years younger. He was a different man. He wasn’t my father anymore, just some guy named Dan Larkin who I’d never met. He was alive, you know? That’s the only way I can think to describe it.”
“You sound jealous, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“Aren’t you a little? Imagine how it would feel to be suddenly fully awake.”
“In love, you mean. You’re saying he was in love.”
“In love—I don’t know. I can’t say exactly what he was feeling. That would be speculation. All I can say is I watched him kiss this woman with such desire. That was the surprise. This was my father. Young people always think their generation invented sex. They can’t imagine that their parents ever felt such passion.”
“And then?”
“Sarah said, ‘I had to see you. I’ve been so worried. I knew you couldn’t call and I shouldn’t come, but I had to.’ My dad told her, ‘It’s all right. It’s done. I’m glad you’re here.’
“He introduced me to Sarah. He did not make a big deal of it, he did not seem the least bit embarrassed or apologetic. He just said, ‘Alex, this is my friend Sarah,’ like he was introducing a golf buddy or a work friend or something, like that kiss hadn’t just happened. She, at least, seemed a little embarrassed. She shook my hand, then they went into his study.”
“Describe her. What was she wearing? Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember. Slacks and a cream-colored blouse. Her shoes were like little slippers—expensive looking. Her hair was in kind of a loose ponytail, some complicated thing, I don’t know what it’s called exactly.”
Alex gazed past me, wistful at the memory of Sarah. I imagine he was reexperiencing the intoxication he felt upon seeing her, the awe, in her vanilla blouse, the little cleavage of her toes winking out from her open-top shoes.
“Where were Jeff and Miranda?”
“Upstairs, I guess. I don’t remember. Miranda must have been asleep. She was little.”
“They didn’t see it? Didn’t hear it?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t tell them?”
