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"My mom's getting married to some guy, and we're moving to the other side of the Turnpike." Gideon coughs once, as if something had stuck in his throat. "I've got to switch schools. Lucky me. I get to matriculate with an entire building full of shit-eating imbeciles."
"School doesn't matter." Kylie scares herself when she gets so sure of things. Right now, for instance, she is absolutely certain Gideon won't find a better friend than the one he's found in her. She'd bet her savings on it, and still be willing to add her clock radio and the bracelet Gillian gave her for her birthday into the bargain.
They've begun to walk down the street, in the direction of the YMCA field.
"Where I go to school doesn't matter?" Gideon is pleased and he doesn't know quite why. Maybe it's just that Kylie doesn't seem to think they'll see each other any less—that's what he hopes she believes. "You're sure about that?"
"Positive," Kylie tells him. "One hundred percent."
When they get to the field they'll find shade and green grass and they'll have time to think things over. For a moment, as they turn the corner, Kylie has the feeling that she should stay in her own yard. She looks back at the house. By morning they'll be gone, on their way to the aunts'. They've tried to talk Gillian into coming along, but she simply refuses.
"You couldn't pay me to go. Well, I'd agree to do it for a million bucks, but nothing less." That's what she's told them. "And even then you'd have to break both my kneecaps so I couldn't leap out of the car and run away. You'd have to anesthetize me, maybe perform a lobotomy, and I'd still recognize the street and jump out the window before you pulled up to the house."
Although the aunts have no idea that Gillian is east of the Rockies, Kylie and Antonia both insist they'll be devastated when they discover how near Gillian is and that she chose not to visit.
"Believe me," Gillian tells the girls, "the aunts won't care if I'm there or not. They didn't then and they certainly wouldn't now. They'll say, 'Gillian who?' if you mention my name. I'll bet they don't remember what I look like. We could probably pass on the street and be nothing more than strangers. Do not worry about the aunts and me. Our relationship is just what we want it to be—absolute and utter zero, and we like it that way."
And so tomorrow they'll be leaving for vacation without Gillian. They'll fix a picnic lunch of cream cheese and olive sandwiches, pita pockets stuffed with salad, Thermoses filled with lemonade and iced tea. They'll pack up the car the way they do every August, and get on the highway before seven, to avoid traffic. Only this year Antonia has vowed she will cry all the way to Massachusetts. She's already confided to Kylie that she doesn't know what she'll do when Scott goes back to Cambridge. She'll probably spend most of her time studying, since she needs to get into a school somewhere in the Boston area, Boston College, maybe, or, if she can get her grades up, Brandeis. On the trip to the aunts' she'll insist on stopping at rest areas to buy postcards, and after they've settled into the aunts' house she plans to spend every morning lying on a scratchy wool blanket set out in the garden. She'll rub sunscreen on her shoulders and legs, then she'll get to work, and when Kylie looks over at the message her sister is writing to Scott she'll see I love you scrawled a dozen different times.
This year, Gillian will wave good-bye to them from the front porch, if she isn't already moved in to Ben Frye's house by then. She's been moving in slowly, afraid that Ben will go into shock when he realizes she has a zillion and one bad habits; it won't take long before he notices that she never rinses out her cereal bowls or bothers to make the bed. Sooner or later he'll discover that the ice cream is always disappearing from the freezer because Gillian is feeding it to Buddy as a special treat. He'll see that Gillian's sweaters often are crumpled into balls of wool and chenille on the floor of a closet or under the bed. And if Ben grows disgusted, if he should decide to kick her out, say good-bye, rethink his options, well, then let him. There's no marriage license and no commitment, and Gillian wants to keep it like that. Options, that's what she's always wanted. A way out.
"I want you to understand one thing," she's told Kylie. "You're still my favorite kid. In fact, if I'd had a daughter I would have wanted her to be you."
Kylie was so stricken by love and admiration that she almost felt guilty enough to admit that she'd been the one who'd had all those anchovy pizzas delivered to Ben's house, back when she'd felt so betrayed; she'd been the one who'd put ashes in Gillian's shoes. But some secrets are best kept to oneself, particularly when they cover up a silly act of childish pique. So Kylie said nothing, not even about how much she would miss Gillian. She hugged her aunt and then helped load up another box of clothes to haul over to Ben's place.
"More clothes!" Ben held a hand to his forehead as though his closets couldn't stand any more additions, but Kylie could see how delighted he was. He reached into the box and pulled out some black lace panty hose, and with three quick knots he turned them into a dachshund. Kylie was so surprised that she applauded.
Gillian had arrived with another box—this one filled with shoes—which she balanced on her hip so she could applaud as well. "You see why I fell for him," she whispered to Kylie. "How many men can do that?"
When they leave in the morning, Gillian will wave until they turn the corner, and then, Kylie is sure, she'll drive over to Ben's. By then they'll be headed for Massachusetts; they'll start to sing along with the radio, just as they always do. There's never any question about how they will spend their summer vacation, so why is it that Kylie suddenly has the notion that they may not even carry their suitcases out to the car?
Walking to the field with Gideon on this clear hot day, Kylie tries to imagine leaving for the aunts', and she can't. Usually she can picture every part of vacation, from packing up to watching rainstorms from the safety of the aunts' porch, but today when she tries to envision their week in Massachusetts, it all comes up blank. And then, when Kylie looks back at her house, she has the strangest feeling. The house seems lost to her in some way, as though she were looking at a memory, a place she used to live in and will never forget but one she can't go back to, not anymore.
Kylie stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk, and Gideon automatically reaches out, in case she falls.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
Kylie thinks about her mother, cooking in the kitchen, her black hair tied back, so that no one would ever guess how thick and beautiful it is. She thinks about the nights when she was feverish and her mother sat beside her in the dark, with cool hands and cups of water. She thinks of those times when she locked herself in the bathroom because she was too tall, and her mother calmly spoke to her from the other side of the door without once calling her foolish or silly or vain. Most of all, she remembers that day when Antonia was pushed down in the park and the white swans, spooked by the commotion, spread their wings and flew right toward Kylie. She can remember the look on her mother's face as Sally ran across the grass, waving her arms and shouting so fiercely the swans didn't dare to come closer. Instead, they rose into the air, flying so low to the pond that their wings broke the water into ripples, and they never returned, not ever, not once.
If Kylie continues to walk along this leafy street, things will never be the same. She feels this as deeply as she's ever felt anything. She's stepping over a crack in the concrete into her own future, and there won't be any going back. The sky is cloudless and white with heat. Most people are inside, with fans or air conditioners turned to high. Kylie knows that it's hot in the kitchen where her mother is fixing a special dinner for tonight. Vegetarian lasagna and green bean salad with almonds, and cherry cheesecake for dessert, all homemade. Antonia has invited her sweetie pie, Scott, to a farewell meal, since she'll be gone for a whole week, and Ben Frye will be there, and Kylie just may ask Gideon as well. These thoughts make Kylie feel sad—not the dinner, but the image of her mother at the stove. Her mom always purses her lips when she's reading a recipe; she reads it twice, out loud, to ensure that she won't make any mistakes. The sadder Kylie feels, the more convinced she is that she shouldn't turn back. She's been waiting all summer to feel like this, she's been waiting to encounter her future, and she's not going to wait a second longer, no matter whom she has to leave behind.
"Race you," Kylie says, and she takes off running; she's down the block before Gideon comes to his senses and charges after her. Kylie is amazingly fast, she always has been, although now she doesn't seem even to be touching the ground. Following her, Gideon wonders if he'll ever catch up, but of course he will, if only because Kylie wilt throw herself onto the grass at the far end of the field, where the tall, leafy maples cast deep pools of shade.
To Kylie these trees are comforting and familiar, but to anyone accustomed to the desert, to a man who's used to seeing for miles, past the saguaro and the purple dusk, these maples can seem like a mirage, rising above the green field from out of the heat waves and the rich, dark soil. Natives say that more lightning occurs in Tucson, Arizona, than anywhere else on earth; if you've grown up close to the desert you can easily chart a storm by the location of the lightning; you know how long you have before you'd better call in your dog, and see to your horse, and get yourself under a safe, grounded roof.
Lightning, like love, is never ruled by logic. Accidents happen, and they always will. Gary Hallet is personally acquainted with two men who've been hit by lightning and have lived to tell the tale, and that's who he's been thinking about as he navigates the Long Island Expressway at rush hour, then tries to find his way through a maze of suburban streets, passing the Y field when he makes a wrong turn off the Turnpike. Gary went to school with one of these survivors, a boy who was only seventeen at the time he was hit, and it messed up his life from that day on. He walked out of his house, and the next thing he knew, he was sprawled out in the driveway, staring up at the indigo sky. The fireball had passed right through him, and his hands were as charred as a grilled steak. He heard a clattering, like keys being jangled or somebody drumming, and it took a while for him to realize that he was shaking so hard the sound he was hearing was being made by his bones as they hit against the asphalt.
This fellow graduated from high school the same year Gary did, but only because the teachers let him pass through his courses out of kindness. He'd been a terrific shortstop and was hoping for a try at the minors, but now he was too nervous for that. He would no longer play baseball out on the field. Too much open space. Too much of a chance he'd be the tallest thing around if lightning should decide to strike twice. That was the end for him; he wound up working in a movie theater, selling tickets and sweeping up popcorn and refusing to give any patrons their money back if they didn't like the film they'd paid to see.
The other guy who was hit was even more affected; lightning changed his life and every single thing about it. It lifted him up, right off his feet, and spun him around, and by the time it set him back on the ground, he was ready for just about anything. This man was Gary's grandfather, Sonny, and he spoke about being struck by what he called "the white snake" every single day until the day he died, two years ago, at the age of ninety-three. Long before Gary had ever come to live with him, Sonny had been out in the yard where the cottonwoods grew, and he'd been so drunk he didn't notice the oncoming storm. Being drunk was his natural state at that point. He couldn't recall what it felt like to be sober, and that alone was enough of a reason for him to figure he'd better go on avoiding it, at least until they put him in his grave. Maybe then he'd consider abstinence; but only if a good foot of dirt had been shoveled on top of him, to keep him in the ground and out of the package store over on Speedway.
"There I was," he told Gary, "minding my own business, when the sky came down and slapped me."
It slapped him and tossed him into the clouds, and for a second he felt he might never come back to earth. He got hit with enough voltage for his clothes to be burned to ashes as he wore them, and if he hadn't had the presence of mind to jump into the scummy green pond where he kept two pet ducks, he'd have burned up alive. His eyebrows never grew back, and he never again had to shave, but after that day he never had a drink again. Not a single shot of whiskey. Not one short, cold beer. Sonny Hallet stuck to coffee, never less than two pots of thick, black stuff a day, and because of this he was ready, willing, and able to take Gary in when his parents couldn't care for him any longer.
Gary's parents were well intentioned, but young and addicted to trouble and alcohol; they both ended up dead long before they should have. Gary's mother had been gone for a year when the news came through about his father, and that very day Sonny walked into the courthouse downtown and announced to the county clerk that his son and daughter-in-law had killed themselves—which was more or less the truth, if you consider a drinking-related death a suicide—and that he wished to become Gary's legal guardian.
As Gary drives through this suburban neighborhood, he's thinking that his grandfather wouldn't have liked this area of New York much. Lightning could come up and surprise you here. There are too many buildings, they're endless, they block out what you ought to see which, in Sonny's opinion, and in Gary's as well, should always be the sky.
Gary is working on a preliminary inquiry begun by the attorney general's office, where he's been an investigator for seven years. Before that he had a background of wrong choices. He was tall and lanky and could have considered basketball as a possibility, but although he was dogged enough, he didn't have the raw aggression needed for professional sports. In the end, he went back to college, thought about law school, then decided against spending all those years studying in closed rooms. The result is that he's doing what he's best at anyway, which is figuring things out. What sets him apart from most of his colleagues is that he likes murder. He likes it so well that his friends rib him and call him the Mexican Turkey Vulture, a carrion creature that hunts by scent. Gary doesn't mind the kidding and he doesn't mind that most people have an easy answer that allows them to believe they've gotten a fix on the reason why he's so interested in homicide. They point straight to his family history—his mother died of liver failure, and his father probably would have done so as well, if he hadn't been murdered first, over in New Mexico. The fellow who did it never was found, and, frankly, nobody seemed to look very hard for him. But the circumstances of Gary's past aren't what drives him, no matter what his friends think. It's figuring out the why of things; the final factor that makes a person act can be so damn elusive, but you can always find some motivation, if you look hard enough. The wrong word said at the wrong time, a gun in the wrong hand, the wrong woman who kisses you just right. Money, love, or fury—those are the causes for most everything. You can usually uncover the truth, or a version of it at any rate, if you ask enough questions; if you close your eyes and imagine the way it might have been, how you might have reacted if you'd had enough, if you just couldn't find it in you to care anymore.
The why in the case he's working on is clearly money. Three kids from the university are dead because someone wanted bucks badly enough to sell them rattlesnake seeds and jimsonweed without once giving a good goddamn about the consequences. Kids will buy anything, especially East Coast kids who haven't been warned their whole life long about what grows in the desert. One seed of rattlesnake weed makes you euphoric, it's like LSD growing free. The problem is, two can cause your death. Unless, of course, the first has already done that job nicely, which was the case with one of the kids, a history major from Philadelphia who had just turned nineteen. Gary was called in early by his friend Jack Carillo in homicide, and he saw the history major, on the floor of his dorm room. The boy had had awful convulsions before he died; the whole left side of his face was black and blue, and Gary suggested that no one would consider it tampering with the evidence if they put some makeup on the kid before his parents arrived.
Gary has read the file on James Hawkins, who's been selling drugs in Tucson for twenty years. Gary is thirty-two, and he vaguely remembers Hawkins, an older guy the girls used to whisper about. After dropping out of high school, Hawkins got into trouble in various states, Oklahoma for a while, then Tennessee, before returning to his hometown and getting sent to the lockup on charges of criminal assault, which, along with drugs, seems to be his forte. When he couldn't bullshit his way out of a bad situation, Hawkins was known to go for his opponent's eyes, using the heavy silver ring he wore to gouge and dig. He acted as though no one could stop him, but it's pretty much the end of Mr. Hawkins's criminal career now. The history major's roommate positively identified him—from his snakeskin boots to the silver ring decorated with a cactus and a rattlesnake and the cowboy he may have imagined himself to be—and they're not the only ones to have picked out his photo. Seven other students, who were lucky enough not to take the bogus drugs they bought from him, have identified this loser as well—and that should be that, except no one can find Hawkins. They can't find his live-in girlfriend, either, from all accounts a good-looking woman who seems to have been a hostess at every half-decent restaurant in town. They've checked the bars Hawkins frequented and questioned all three of his alleged friends, and no one's seen him since late June, when the university let out.
Gary has been getting into Hawkins's life, trying to figure him. He's been frequenting the Pink Pony, which was Hawkins's favorite place to get drunk, and sitting on the front patio of the last house Hawkins rented, which is why Gary happened to be there when the letter arrived. He was sitting in a metal chair, his long legs stretched out so he could prop his feet up on the patio's white metal railing, when the mailman walked right over and dropped the letter on his lap and demanded the postage due, since the stamp had fallen off somewhere along the way.
The letter was crumpled and torn in one corner, and if the flap hadn't already been open, Gary would have just taken it over to the office. But an opened letter is hard to resist, even for someone like Gary, who's resisted a lot in his life. His friends know enough not to offer him a beer, just as they know not to ask him about the girl he was married to, briefly, right after high school. They're willing to do this because his friendship is worth it. They know that Gary will never deceive them or disappoint them—that's the way he's built; that's the way his grandfather raised him. But this letter was something else; it tempted him, and he gave in to it, and, if he's going to be honest, he still doesn't regret it.
Summer in Tucson is seriously hot, and it was a hundred and seven degrees as Gary sat out on the patio of the house Hawkins used to rent and read that letter addressed to Gillian Owens. The creosote plant that grew beside the patio was all but popping with the heat, yet Gary just sat there and read the letter Sally had written to her sister, and when he was done he read it again. As the afternoon heat finally began to ease up, Gary took off his hat and dropped his boots down from the metal railing. He's a man who's willing to take chances, but he has the courage to walk away from impossible odds. He knows when to back off and when to keep trying, but he'd never felt like this before. Sitting out on that patio in the purple dusk, he was long past considering the odds.
Until Sonny died, Gary had always shared a house with his grandfather, except for his brief marriage and the first eight years with his parents, which he doesn't remember out of sheer willpower. But he remembers everything about his grandfather. He knew what time Sonny would get out of bed in the morning, and when he'd go to sleep, and what he'd eat for breakfast, which was invariably shredded wheat on weekdays, and on Sundays pancakes, spread with molasses and jam. Gary has been close to people and has a whole town full of friends, but he'd never once felt he'd known anyone the way he felt he knew the woman who wrote this letter. It was as if someone had ripped off the top of his head and hooked a piece of his soul. He was so involved with the words she'd written that anyone passing by could have pushed him off his chair with one finger. A turkey vulture could have landed on the back rung of the chair he was sitting in, screamed right in his ear, and Gary wouldn't have heard a sound.
He went home then and packed his bag. He called to tell his buddy Arno at the AG's office that he had found a great lead and was going after Hawkins's girlfriend, but of course that wasn't the whole truth. Hawkins's girlfriend wasn't the one he was thinking about when he asked his closest neighbor's twelve-year-old boy to hike by each morning and set out some food and water for the dogs, then took his horses over to the Mitchells' ranch, where they'd be turned out with a bunch of Arabians much prettier than themselves, and maybe learn a lesson or two.
Gary was at the airport that evening. He caught the 7:17 to Chicago, and he spent the night with his long legs folded up on a bench at O'Hare, where he had to change planes. He read Sally's letter twice more in midair, and then again while he ate eggs and sausage for lunch in a diner in Elmhurst, Queens. Even when he folds it back into its envelope and places it deep inside the pocket of his jacket, the letter keeps coming back to him. Whole sentences Sally has written form inside his head, and for some reason he's filled with the strangest sense of acceptance, not for anything he's done but for what he might be about to do.
Gary picked up directions and a cold can of Coke at a gas station on the Turnpike. In spite of his wrong turn near the Y field, he manages to find the correct address. Sally Owens is in the kitchen when he's parking his rented car. She's stirring a pot of tomato sauce on the back burner when Gary circles the Honda in the driveway, gets a good look at the Oldsmobile parked in front, and matches its Arizona license plate number to the one in his files. She's pouring hot water and noodles into a colander when he knocks at the door.
"Hold on," Sally calls in her matter-of-fact, no-nonsense way, and the sound of her voice knocks Gary for a loop. He could be in trouble here, that much is certain. He could be walking into something he cannot control.
When Sally swings the door open, Gary looks into her eyes and sees himself upside down. He finds himself in a pool of gray light, drowning, going down for the third time, and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. His grandfather told him once that witches caught you in this way—they knew how much most men love themselves and how deeply they'll let themselves be drawn in, just for a glimpse of their own image. If you ever come face to face with a woman like this, his grandfather told him, turn and run, and don't judge yourself a coward. If she comes after you, if she has a weapon or screams your name like bloody murder, quickly grab her by the throat and shake her. But of course, Gary has no intention of doing anything like that. He intends to go on drowning for a very long time.
Sally's hair has slipped out of its rubber band. She's wearing a pair of Kylie's shorts and a black sleeveless T-shirt of Antonia's and she smells like tomato sauce and onions. She's out of sorts and impatient, as she is every summer when she has to pack for the trip to the aunts'. She's beautiful, all right, at least in Gary Hallet's estimation; she's exactly the way she is written down in her letter, only better and right here in front of him. Gary's got a lump in his throat just looking at her. He's already thinking about the things they could do if the two of them were alone in a room. He could forget the reason he's come here in the first place if he's not careful. He could make a very stupid mistake.
"Can I help you?" This man who's arrived at her door wearing cowboy boots coated with dust is lean and tall, like a scarecrow come to life. She has to tilt her head to get a glimpse of his face. Once she sees how he's looking at her, she takes two steps back. "What do you want?" Sally says.
"I'm from the attorney general's office. Out in Arizona. I just flew in. I had to transfer in Chicago." Gary knows this all sounds awfully stupid, but most things he'd say at this moment probably would.
Gary hasn't had an easy life, and it shows in his face. There are deep lines he's too young to have; there's a good deal of loneliness, in full view, for anyone to see. He's not the kind of man who hides things, and he's not hiding his interest in Sally right now. In fact, Sally can't believe the way he's staring at her. Would somebody really have the nerve to stand in her doorway and look at her like this?
"I think you must be at the wrong address," she tells him. She's sounding flustered, even to herself. It's how dark his eyes are, that's the problem. It's the way he can make someone feel she's being seen from the inside out.
"Your letter arrived yesterday," Gary says, as if he were the one she'd actually written to rather than her sister, who, as far as Gary can tell from the advice Sally gave her, doesn't have a brain in her head, or—if she does—it's not one she pays much attention to.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Sally says. "I never wrote to you. I don't even know who you are."
"Gary Hallet," he introduces himself. He reaches into his pocket for her letter, although he hates to give it up. If they examined this letter in Forensics they'd find his fingerprints all over it; he's folded and unfolded it more times than he can count.
"I mailed that to my sister ages ago." Sally looks at the letter, then at him. She has the funny feeling that she may be in for more than she can handle. "You opened it."
"It was opened already. It must have gotten lost at the post office."
While Sally is deciding whether or not to judge him a liar, Gary can feel his heart flopping around like a fish inside his chest. He's heard about this happening to other men. They're going about their business one minute, and suddenly there's no hope for them. They fall in love so hard they never again get up off their knees.
Gary shakes his head, but that doesn't clear up the matter. All it does is make him see double. Momentarily there are two Sallys before him, and each one makes him wish he weren't here in an official capacity. He forces himself to think about the kid at the university. He thinks about the bruises up and down the kid's face and the way his head must have hit against the metal bed frame and the wooden floor as he thrashed about in convulsions. If there's one thing in this world Gary knows for a fact, it's that men like Jimmy Hawkins never pick fair fights.
"Would you know where your sister might be?"
"My sister?" Sally narrows her eyes; maybe this is just one more heart Gillian broke, arriving to plead for mercy. She wouldn't have taken this fellow for such a fool. She wouldn't have figured him to be her sister's type. "You're looking for Gillian?"
"Like I said, I'm doing some work for the attorney general's office. It's an investigation that concerns one of your sister's friends."
Sally feels something wrong in her fingers and toes that is a whole lot like the edge of panic. "Where did you say you were from?"
"Well, originally, Bisbee," Gary says, "but I've been in Tucson for nearly twenty-five years."
It is panic that Sally is feeling, that much is certain, and it's creeping along her spine, spreading into her veins, moving toward her vital organs.
"I pretty much grew up in Tucson," Gary is saying. "I guess you could say I'm chauvinistic, because I'm convinced it's the greatest place on earth."
"What's your investigation about?" Sally interrupts before Gary can say more about his beloved Arizona.
"Well, there's a suspect we're looking for." Gary hates to do this. The joy he gets out of a murder investigation isn't happening for him this time around. "I'm sorry to inform you of this, but his car is parked out there in your driveway."
The blood drains out of Sally's head all at once, leaving her faint. She leans against the doorway and tries to breathe. She's seeing spots before her eyes, and every spot is red, hot as a cinder. That goddamn Jimmy just doesn't let go. He keeps coming back and coming back, trying to rum someone's life.
Gary Hallet stoops down toward Sally. "Are you okay?" he asks, although he knows from her letter that Sally's the kind of woman who wouldn't tell you right away if something was wrong. It took her nearly eighteen years before she gave her sister a piece of her mind, after all.
"I'm going to sit down," Sally says, casually, as if she weren't about to collapse.
Gary follows her into the kitchen, and watches as she drinks a glass of cool tap water. He's so tall he has to duck in order to pass through the kitchen doorway, and when he sits down he has to stretch his legs straight out so his knees will fit under the table. His grandfather always said he had the makings of a worrywart, and this pronouncement has turned out to be true.
"I didn't mean to upset you," he tells Sally.
"You didn't upset me." Sally fans herself with her hand, and still she's flushed. Thank goodness the girls are out of the house; she has that to be grateful for at least. If they get dragged into this, she'll never forgive Gillian, and she'll never forgive herself. How did they ever think they could get away with it? What idiots, what morons, what self-destructive fools. "You didn't upset me a bit."
It takes everything she has to keep her nerve and look at Gary. He looks right back at her, so she quickly lowers her gaze to the floor. You have to be extremely careful when you look into eyes like his. Sally drinks more water; she goes on fanning herself. In a predicament such as this, it's best to appear normal. Sally knows that from her childhood. Don't give anything away. Don't let them know what you feel deep inside.
"Coffee?" Sally says. "I've got some that's hot."
"Sure," Gary says. "Great." He has to talk to the sister, and he knows it, but he doesn't have to rush. Maybe the sister just took off with the car, but it's just as likely she knows where Hawkins is, and Gary can wait to deal with that.
"You're looking for one of Gillian's friends?" Sally says. "Is that what you said?"
She has such a sweet voice; it's the New England vowels she's never quite lost, it's the way she purses her lips after each word, as though tasting the very last syllable.
"James Hawkins." Gary nods.
"Ah," Sally says thoughtfully, because if she says any more she'll scream, she'll curse Jimmy and her sister and everyone who ever lived in or traveled through the state of Arizona.
She serves the coffee, then sits down and starts to think about how the hell she's going to get them out of this. She's already done the laundry for their trip to Massachusetts; she's gassed up the car and had the oil checked. She has to get her girls out of here; she has to figure out a really good story. Something about how they bought the Oldsmobile at auction, or how they found it abandoned in a rest area, or maybe it was just left sitting in the driveway in the middle of the night.
Sally looks up, ready to start lying, and that's when she sees that this man at her table is crying. Gary is too tall to be anything but awkward in most situations, but he's got a graceful way of crying. He just lets it happen.
"What's wrong?" Sally says. "What's the matter?"
Gary shakes his head; it always takes a while before he can talk. His grandfather used to say that holding tears back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more. Gary has cried more than most men ever will. He's done it at rodeos and in courts of law; he's stood by the side of the road and wept at the sight of a hawk someone has shot out of the sky, before going to get a shovel from the back of his truck so he can bury the carcass. Crying in a woman's kitchen doesn't embarrass him; he's seen his grandfather's eyes fill with tears nearly every time he looked at a beautiful horse or a woman with dark hair.
Gary wipes at his eyes with one of his big hands. "It's the coffee," he explains.
"Is it that bad?" Sally takes a sip. It's just her same old regular coffee that hasn't killed anyone yet.
"Oh, no," Gary says. "The coffee's great." His eyes are as dark as a crow's feathers. He has the ability to catch someone by the way he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking. "It's coffee in general that does this to me. I get reminded of my grandfather, who died two years ago. He sure was addicted to coffee. He had three cups before he opened his eyes in the morning."
Something is truly wrong with Sally. She can feel a tightness inside her throat and her belly and her chest. This could well be what a heart attack feels like; for all she knows she could end up unconscious on the floor in seconds flat, her blood boiling, her brain fried.
"Will you excuse me for a minute?" Sally says. "I'll be right back."
She runs upstairs to Kylie's room and switches on the light. It was nearly dawn when Gillian got home from Ben's, where half of her belongings are now taking up most of his closet space. Since she has today off, her plan was to sleep as long as possible, go shopping for shoes, then swing by the library for a book on cell structure. Instead, the shades are being cast open and sunlight is spilling across the room in thick yellow stripes. Gillian squirms beneath the quilt; if she's quiet enough, maybe this will all go away.
"Wake up," Sally tells Gillian and she gives her a good shake. "Someone's here looking for Jimmy."
Gillian sits up so fast that she hits her head on the bedpost. "Does he have a lot of tattoos?" she asks, thinking of the last person from whom Jimmy borrowed too much money, a guy named Alex Devine, who was said to be the singular human life form able to exist without a heart.
"I wish," Sally says.
The sisters stare at each other.
"Oh, god." Gillian is whispering now. "It's the police, isn't it? Oh, my god." She reaches to the floor to grab for the nearest pile of clothes.
"He's an investigator from the attorney general's office. He found the last letter I sent you and traced you here."
"That's what happens when you write letters." Gillian is out of bed now, pulling on jeans and a soft beige blouse. "You want to communicate? Use the damn phone."
"I gave him some coffee," Sally says. "He's in the kitchen."
"I don't care what room he's in." Gillian looks at her sister. Sometimes Sally really doesn't get it. She certainly doesn't seem to understand what it means to bury a body in your backyard. "What are we going to tell him?"
Sally clutches at her chest and goes white. "I may be having a heart attack," she announces.
"Oh, terrific. That's all we need." Gillian slips on a pair of flip-flops, then stops to consider her sister. Sally can have a fever of a hundred and three before she thinks to complain. She can spend the whole night in the bathroom, brought to her knees by a stomach virus, and be cheery by the first light of morning, down in the kitchen, already fixing a fruit salad or some blueberry waffles. "You're having a panic attack," Gillian decides. "Get over it. We have to go convince that damn investigator we don't know anything."
Gillian runs a comb through her hair, then starts for the door. She turns when she senses that Sally isn't following her.
"Well?" Gillian says.
"Here's the thing," Sally says. "I don't think I can lie to him."
Gillian walks right up to her sister. "Yes, you can."
"I don't know. I may not be able to sit there and just lie. It's the way he looks at you…"
"Listen to me." Gillian's voice is thin and high. "We will go to jail unless you lie, so I think you'll be able to do it. When he talks to you, don't look at him." She takes Sally's hands in her own. "He'll ask a few questions, then he'll go back to Arizona and everyone will be happy."
"Right," Sally says.
"Remember. Don't look at him."
"Okay." Sally nods. She thinks she can do this, or at the very least she can try.
"Just follow my lead," Gillian tells her.
The sisters cross their hearts and hope to die, then swear they're in this together, forever, till the absolute very end. They'll give Gary Hallet simple facts; they won't say too much or too little. By the time they have their story worked out and go downstairs, Gary has finished his third cup of coffee and has memorized every item on the kitchen shelves. When he hears the women on the stairs, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and pushes his coffee cup away.
"Hey there," Gillian says.
She's good at this, that's for sure. When Gary stands to greet her she sticks her hand out for him to shake just like this was a regular old social event. But when she really looks at him, when she feels his grip on her hand, Gillian gets nervous. This guy won't be easy to fool. He's seen a lot of things, and heard a lot of stories, and he's smart. She can tell that just by looking at him. He may be too smart.
"I hear you want to talk to me about Jimmy," Gillian says. Her heart feels too big for her chest.
"I'm afraid I do." Gary sizes Gillian up fast—the tattoo on her wrist, the way she takes one step back when he addresses her, as if she expects to be hit. "Have you seen him recently?"
"I ran away in June. I took his car and hit the road and haven't heard from him since."
Gary nods and makes some notes, but the notes are just scribbles, nothing but nonsense words. Ivory Snow , he's written at the top of the page. Wolverine. Apple pie. Two plus two equals four. Darling . He's jotting down anything in order to appear concentrated on official business. This way, Sally and her sister won't be able to look into his eyes and sense that he doesn't believe Gillian. She wouldn't have had the nerve to take off with her boyfriend's car, and Hawkins wouldn't have let it go so easy. No way. He would have caught up with her before she reached the state line.
"Probably a smart move," Gary says. He's done this before, smoothed out the doubt so it doesn't seep through his voice. He reaches into his jacket pocket, takes out Hawkins's legal record and spreads it across the table for Gillian to see.
Gillian sits down to get a better look. "Wow," she says.
Jimmy's first arrest for drugs was so many years back he couldn't have been more than fifteen years old. Gillian runs her finger down a list of crimes that goes on and on; the misdemeanors becoming more violent with every year, until they veer into felonies. It looks as if they were living together when he was picked up for his last aggravated assault, and he never bothered to mention it. Unless Gillian is mistaken, Jimmy told her he'd gone to Phoenix to help his cousin move some furniture on the day of his court date.
She cannot believe what an idiot she was for all those years. She knew more about Ben Frye after two hours than she knew about Jimmy after four years. Jimmy seemed mysterious back then, with deep secrets he had to keep. Now the facts are apparent; he was a thief and a liar, and she went and sat still for it for longer than would seem humanly possible.
"I had no idea," Gillian says. "I swear to you. All that time, I never asked him any questions about where he went and what he did." Her eyes feel hot, and when she blinks it doesn't do any good. "Not that that's any excuse."
"You don't have to make any excuses for who you love," Gary says. "Don't apologize."
Gillian will have to pay even more attention to this investigator. He's got a particular way of observing things that catches you up short. Why, before he introduced the idea that love was blameless, Gillian never once stopped to consider she might not be responsible for everything that went wrong. She glances over to gauge Sally's reaction, but Sally is staring at Gary and she has a funny look on her face. It's a look that worries Gillian, because it's totally unlike Sally. Standing there, with her back against the refrigerator, Sally seems much too vulnerable. Where is her armor, where is her guard, where is the logic that can put it all back together again?
"The reason I'm looking for Mr. Hawkins," Gary explains to Gillian, "is that it appears he sold some poisonous plant matter to several college students which has been the cause of three deaths. He offered them LSD, then went and supplied them with the seeds of some highly hallucinogenic, highly toxic weeds."
"Three deaths." Gillian shakes her head. Jimmy told her there'd been two. He told her it wasn't his fault; the kids were greedy and stupid and tried to trick him out of the money he was rightfully due. "Fucking spoiled brats," that's what he'd called them. "College-boy babies." He could lie about anything, as though it were a sport. Gillian feels ill thinking how she automatically believed Jimmy and took his side. Those kids must have been looking for trouble . She remembers thinking that. "This is awful," she tells Gary Hallet about the deaths at the university. "It's horrible."
"Your friend has been identified by several witnesses, but he's disappeared."
Gillian is listening to Gary, but she's also thinking about the way things used to be. August in Tucson can bring the desert floor up to 125 degrees. One broiling week, soon after they'd first met, she and Jimmy didn't even leave the house—they just switched on the air conditioner and drank beer and fucked each other every way Jimmy could think of, which mostly had to do with his immediate gratification.
"Let's not call him my friend," Gillian says.
"Fine," Gary agrees. "But we'd like to catch up to him before he sells any more of this garbage. We don't want this to happen again."
Gary stares at Gillian with his dark eyes, which makes it difficult to look away or manage a half-decent fabrication. Maybe this gal knew about the college kids dying, and maybe she didn't, but she certainly knew something. Gary sees that inside her—he can tell by the way she stares at the floor. There is culpability in her expression, but that could be only because she was the one James Hawkins came home to on the night the history major went into convulsions. Maybe it's because she's just realized who it was she was fucking and calling sweetheart all that time.
Gary is waiting for Gillian to declare herself in some way, but Sally is the one who can't keep her mouth shut. She's been trying, she's been telling herself not to talk, to go on following Gillian's lead, but she can't do it. Could it be she's compelled to speak out only because she wants Gary Hallet's attention? Could it be she wants to feel exactly the way she does when he turns to her?
"It won't happen again," Sally tells him.
Gary meets her gaze. "You sound pretty certain of that." But of course, he knows from her letter how sure of herself she can be. Something's not right there , she wrote to Gillian. Leave him. Get your own place, a house that's yours alone. Or just come home. Come home right now .
"School doesn't matter." Kylie scares herself when she gets so sure of things. Right now, for instance, she is absolutely certain Gideon won't find a better friend than the one he's found in her. She'd bet her savings on it, and still be willing to add her clock radio and the bracelet Gillian gave her for her birthday into the bargain.
They've begun to walk down the street, in the direction of the YMCA field.
"Where I go to school doesn't matter?" Gideon is pleased and he doesn't know quite why. Maybe it's just that Kylie doesn't seem to think they'll see each other any less—that's what he hopes she believes. "You're sure about that?"
"Positive," Kylie tells him. "One hundred percent."
When they get to the field they'll find shade and green grass and they'll have time to think things over. For a moment, as they turn the corner, Kylie has the feeling that she should stay in her own yard. She looks back at the house. By morning they'll be gone, on their way to the aunts'. They've tried to talk Gillian into coming along, but she simply refuses.
"You couldn't pay me to go. Well, I'd agree to do it for a million bucks, but nothing less." That's what she's told them. "And even then you'd have to break both my kneecaps so I couldn't leap out of the car and run away. You'd have to anesthetize me, maybe perform a lobotomy, and I'd still recognize the street and jump out the window before you pulled up to the house."
Although the aunts have no idea that Gillian is east of the Rockies, Kylie and Antonia both insist they'll be devastated when they discover how near Gillian is and that she chose not to visit.
"Believe me," Gillian tells the girls, "the aunts won't care if I'm there or not. They didn't then and they certainly wouldn't now. They'll say, 'Gillian who?' if you mention my name. I'll bet they don't remember what I look like. We could probably pass on the street and be nothing more than strangers. Do not worry about the aunts and me. Our relationship is just what we want it to be—absolute and utter zero, and we like it that way."
And so tomorrow they'll be leaving for vacation without Gillian. They'll fix a picnic lunch of cream cheese and olive sandwiches, pita pockets stuffed with salad, Thermoses filled with lemonade and iced tea. They'll pack up the car the way they do every August, and get on the highway before seven, to avoid traffic. Only this year Antonia has vowed she will cry all the way to Massachusetts. She's already confided to Kylie that she doesn't know what she'll do when Scott goes back to Cambridge. She'll probably spend most of her time studying, since she needs to get into a school somewhere in the Boston area, Boston College, maybe, or, if she can get her grades up, Brandeis. On the trip to the aunts' she'll insist on stopping at rest areas to buy postcards, and after they've settled into the aunts' house she plans to spend every morning lying on a scratchy wool blanket set out in the garden. She'll rub sunscreen on her shoulders and legs, then she'll get to work, and when Kylie looks over at the message her sister is writing to Scott she'll see I love you scrawled a dozen different times.
This year, Gillian will wave good-bye to them from the front porch, if she isn't already moved in to Ben Frye's house by then. She's been moving in slowly, afraid that Ben will go into shock when he realizes she has a zillion and one bad habits; it won't take long before he notices that she never rinses out her cereal bowls or bothers to make the bed. Sooner or later he'll discover that the ice cream is always disappearing from the freezer because Gillian is feeding it to Buddy as a special treat. He'll see that Gillian's sweaters often are crumpled into balls of wool and chenille on the floor of a closet or under the bed. And if Ben grows disgusted, if he should decide to kick her out, say good-bye, rethink his options, well, then let him. There's no marriage license and no commitment, and Gillian wants to keep it like that. Options, that's what she's always wanted. A way out.
"I want you to understand one thing," she's told Kylie. "You're still my favorite kid. In fact, if I'd had a daughter I would have wanted her to be you."
Kylie was so stricken by love and admiration that she almost felt guilty enough to admit that she'd been the one who'd had all those anchovy pizzas delivered to Ben's house, back when she'd felt so betrayed; she'd been the one who'd put ashes in Gillian's shoes. But some secrets are best kept to oneself, particularly when they cover up a silly act of childish pique. So Kylie said nothing, not even about how much she would miss Gillian. She hugged her aunt and then helped load up another box of clothes to haul over to Ben's place.
"More clothes!" Ben held a hand to his forehead as though his closets couldn't stand any more additions, but Kylie could see how delighted he was. He reached into the box and pulled out some black lace panty hose, and with three quick knots he turned them into a dachshund. Kylie was so surprised that she applauded.
Gillian had arrived with another box—this one filled with shoes—which she balanced on her hip so she could applaud as well. "You see why I fell for him," she whispered to Kylie. "How many men can do that?"
When they leave in the morning, Gillian will wave until they turn the corner, and then, Kylie is sure, she'll drive over to Ben's. By then they'll be headed for Massachusetts; they'll start to sing along with the radio, just as they always do. There's never any question about how they will spend their summer vacation, so why is it that Kylie suddenly has the notion that they may not even carry their suitcases out to the car?
Walking to the field with Gideon on this clear hot day, Kylie tries to imagine leaving for the aunts', and she can't. Usually she can picture every part of vacation, from packing up to watching rainstorms from the safety of the aunts' porch, but today when she tries to envision their week in Massachusetts, it all comes up blank. And then, when Kylie looks back at her house, she has the strangest feeling. The house seems lost to her in some way, as though she were looking at a memory, a place she used to live in and will never forget but one she can't go back to, not anymore.
Kylie stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk, and Gideon automatically reaches out, in case she falls.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
Kylie thinks about her mother, cooking in the kitchen, her black hair tied back, so that no one would ever guess how thick and beautiful it is. She thinks about the nights when she was feverish and her mother sat beside her in the dark, with cool hands and cups of water. She thinks of those times when she locked herself in the bathroom because she was too tall, and her mother calmly spoke to her from the other side of the door without once calling her foolish or silly or vain. Most of all, she remembers that day when Antonia was pushed down in the park and the white swans, spooked by the commotion, spread their wings and flew right toward Kylie. She can remember the look on her mother's face as Sally ran across the grass, waving her arms and shouting so fiercely the swans didn't dare to come closer. Instead, they rose into the air, flying so low to the pond that their wings broke the water into ripples, and they never returned, not ever, not once.
If Kylie continues to walk along this leafy street, things will never be the same. She feels this as deeply as she's ever felt anything. She's stepping over a crack in the concrete into her own future, and there won't be any going back. The sky is cloudless and white with heat. Most people are inside, with fans or air conditioners turned to high. Kylie knows that it's hot in the kitchen where her mother is fixing a special dinner for tonight. Vegetarian lasagna and green bean salad with almonds, and cherry cheesecake for dessert, all homemade. Antonia has invited her sweetie pie, Scott, to a farewell meal, since she'll be gone for a whole week, and Ben Frye will be there, and Kylie just may ask Gideon as well. These thoughts make Kylie feel sad—not the dinner, but the image of her mother at the stove. Her mom always purses her lips when she's reading a recipe; she reads it twice, out loud, to ensure that she won't make any mistakes. The sadder Kylie feels, the more convinced she is that she shouldn't turn back. She's been waiting all summer to feel like this, she's been waiting to encounter her future, and she's not going to wait a second longer, no matter whom she has to leave behind.
"Race you," Kylie says, and she takes off running; she's down the block before Gideon comes to his senses and charges after her. Kylie is amazingly fast, she always has been, although now she doesn't seem even to be touching the ground. Following her, Gideon wonders if he'll ever catch up, but of course he will, if only because Kylie wilt throw herself onto the grass at the far end of the field, where the tall, leafy maples cast deep pools of shade.
To Kylie these trees are comforting and familiar, but to anyone accustomed to the desert, to a man who's used to seeing for miles, past the saguaro and the purple dusk, these maples can seem like a mirage, rising above the green field from out of the heat waves and the rich, dark soil. Natives say that more lightning occurs in Tucson, Arizona, than anywhere else on earth; if you've grown up close to the desert you can easily chart a storm by the location of the lightning; you know how long you have before you'd better call in your dog, and see to your horse, and get yourself under a safe, grounded roof.
Lightning, like love, is never ruled by logic. Accidents happen, and they always will. Gary Hallet is personally acquainted with two men who've been hit by lightning and have lived to tell the tale, and that's who he's been thinking about as he navigates the Long Island Expressway at rush hour, then tries to find his way through a maze of suburban streets, passing the Y field when he makes a wrong turn off the Turnpike. Gary went to school with one of these survivors, a boy who was only seventeen at the time he was hit, and it messed up his life from that day on. He walked out of his house, and the next thing he knew, he was sprawled out in the driveway, staring up at the indigo sky. The fireball had passed right through him, and his hands were as charred as a grilled steak. He heard a clattering, like keys being jangled or somebody drumming, and it took a while for him to realize that he was shaking so hard the sound he was hearing was being made by his bones as they hit against the asphalt.
This fellow graduated from high school the same year Gary did, but only because the teachers let him pass through his courses out of kindness. He'd been a terrific shortstop and was hoping for a try at the minors, but now he was too nervous for that. He would no longer play baseball out on the field. Too much open space. Too much of a chance he'd be the tallest thing around if lightning should decide to strike twice. That was the end for him; he wound up working in a movie theater, selling tickets and sweeping up popcorn and refusing to give any patrons their money back if they didn't like the film they'd paid to see.
The other guy who was hit was even more affected; lightning changed his life and every single thing about it. It lifted him up, right off his feet, and spun him around, and by the time it set him back on the ground, he was ready for just about anything. This man was Gary's grandfather, Sonny, and he spoke about being struck by what he called "the white snake" every single day until the day he died, two years ago, at the age of ninety-three. Long before Gary had ever come to live with him, Sonny had been out in the yard where the cottonwoods grew, and he'd been so drunk he didn't notice the oncoming storm. Being drunk was his natural state at that point. He couldn't recall what it felt like to be sober, and that alone was enough of a reason for him to figure he'd better go on avoiding it, at least until they put him in his grave. Maybe then he'd consider abstinence; but only if a good foot of dirt had been shoveled on top of him, to keep him in the ground and out of the package store over on Speedway.
"There I was," he told Gary, "minding my own business, when the sky came down and slapped me."
It slapped him and tossed him into the clouds, and for a second he felt he might never come back to earth. He got hit with enough voltage for his clothes to be burned to ashes as he wore them, and if he hadn't had the presence of mind to jump into the scummy green pond where he kept two pet ducks, he'd have burned up alive. His eyebrows never grew back, and he never again had to shave, but after that day he never had a drink again. Not a single shot of whiskey. Not one short, cold beer. Sonny Hallet stuck to coffee, never less than two pots of thick, black stuff a day, and because of this he was ready, willing, and able to take Gary in when his parents couldn't care for him any longer.
Gary's parents were well intentioned, but young and addicted to trouble and alcohol; they both ended up dead long before they should have. Gary's mother had been gone for a year when the news came through about his father, and that very day Sonny walked into the courthouse downtown and announced to the county clerk that his son and daughter-in-law had killed themselves—which was more or less the truth, if you consider a drinking-related death a suicide—and that he wished to become Gary's legal guardian.
As Gary drives through this suburban neighborhood, he's thinking that his grandfather wouldn't have liked this area of New York much. Lightning could come up and surprise you here. There are too many buildings, they're endless, they block out what you ought to see which, in Sonny's opinion, and in Gary's as well, should always be the sky.
Gary is working on a preliminary inquiry begun by the attorney general's office, where he's been an investigator for seven years. Before that he had a background of wrong choices. He was tall and lanky and could have considered basketball as a possibility, but although he was dogged enough, he didn't have the raw aggression needed for professional sports. In the end, he went back to college, thought about law school, then decided against spending all those years studying in closed rooms. The result is that he's doing what he's best at anyway, which is figuring things out. What sets him apart from most of his colleagues is that he likes murder. He likes it so well that his friends rib him and call him the Mexican Turkey Vulture, a carrion creature that hunts by scent. Gary doesn't mind the kidding and he doesn't mind that most people have an easy answer that allows them to believe they've gotten a fix on the reason why he's so interested in homicide. They point straight to his family history—his mother died of liver failure, and his father probably would have done so as well, if he hadn't been murdered first, over in New Mexico. The fellow who did it never was found, and, frankly, nobody seemed to look very hard for him. But the circumstances of Gary's past aren't what drives him, no matter what his friends think. It's figuring out the why of things; the final factor that makes a person act can be so damn elusive, but you can always find some motivation, if you look hard enough. The wrong word said at the wrong time, a gun in the wrong hand, the wrong woman who kisses you just right. Money, love, or fury—those are the causes for most everything. You can usually uncover the truth, or a version of it at any rate, if you ask enough questions; if you close your eyes and imagine the way it might have been, how you might have reacted if you'd had enough, if you just couldn't find it in you to care anymore.
The why in the case he's working on is clearly money. Three kids from the university are dead because someone wanted bucks badly enough to sell them rattlesnake seeds and jimsonweed without once giving a good goddamn about the consequences. Kids will buy anything, especially East Coast kids who haven't been warned their whole life long about what grows in the desert. One seed of rattlesnake weed makes you euphoric, it's like LSD growing free. The problem is, two can cause your death. Unless, of course, the first has already done that job nicely, which was the case with one of the kids, a history major from Philadelphia who had just turned nineteen. Gary was called in early by his friend Jack Carillo in homicide, and he saw the history major, on the floor of his dorm room. The boy had had awful convulsions before he died; the whole left side of his face was black and blue, and Gary suggested that no one would consider it tampering with the evidence if they put some makeup on the kid before his parents arrived.
Gary has read the file on James Hawkins, who's been selling drugs in Tucson for twenty years. Gary is thirty-two, and he vaguely remembers Hawkins, an older guy the girls used to whisper about. After dropping out of high school, Hawkins got into trouble in various states, Oklahoma for a while, then Tennessee, before returning to his hometown and getting sent to the lockup on charges of criminal assault, which, along with drugs, seems to be his forte. When he couldn't bullshit his way out of a bad situation, Hawkins was known to go for his opponent's eyes, using the heavy silver ring he wore to gouge and dig. He acted as though no one could stop him, but it's pretty much the end of Mr. Hawkins's criminal career now. The history major's roommate positively identified him—from his snakeskin boots to the silver ring decorated with a cactus and a rattlesnake and the cowboy he may have imagined himself to be—and they're not the only ones to have picked out his photo. Seven other students, who were lucky enough not to take the bogus drugs they bought from him, have identified this loser as well—and that should be that, except no one can find Hawkins. They can't find his live-in girlfriend, either, from all accounts a good-looking woman who seems to have been a hostess at every half-decent restaurant in town. They've checked the bars Hawkins frequented and questioned all three of his alleged friends, and no one's seen him since late June, when the university let out.
Gary has been getting into Hawkins's life, trying to figure him. He's been frequenting the Pink Pony, which was Hawkins's favorite place to get drunk, and sitting on the front patio of the last house Hawkins rented, which is why Gary happened to be there when the letter arrived. He was sitting in a metal chair, his long legs stretched out so he could prop his feet up on the patio's white metal railing, when the mailman walked right over and dropped the letter on his lap and demanded the postage due, since the stamp had fallen off somewhere along the way.
The letter was crumpled and torn in one corner, and if the flap hadn't already been open, Gary would have just taken it over to the office. But an opened letter is hard to resist, even for someone like Gary, who's resisted a lot in his life. His friends know enough not to offer him a beer, just as they know not to ask him about the girl he was married to, briefly, right after high school. They're willing to do this because his friendship is worth it. They know that Gary will never deceive them or disappoint them—that's the way he's built; that's the way his grandfather raised him. But this letter was something else; it tempted him, and he gave in to it, and, if he's going to be honest, he still doesn't regret it.
Summer in Tucson is seriously hot, and it was a hundred and seven degrees as Gary sat out on the patio of the house Hawkins used to rent and read that letter addressed to Gillian Owens. The creosote plant that grew beside the patio was all but popping with the heat, yet Gary just sat there and read the letter Sally had written to her sister, and when he was done he read it again. As the afternoon heat finally began to ease up, Gary took off his hat and dropped his boots down from the metal railing. He's a man who's willing to take chances, but he has the courage to walk away from impossible odds. He knows when to back off and when to keep trying, but he'd never felt like this before. Sitting out on that patio in the purple dusk, he was long past considering the odds.
Until Sonny died, Gary had always shared a house with his grandfather, except for his brief marriage and the first eight years with his parents, which he doesn't remember out of sheer willpower. But he remembers everything about his grandfather. He knew what time Sonny would get out of bed in the morning, and when he'd go to sleep, and what he'd eat for breakfast, which was invariably shredded wheat on weekdays, and on Sundays pancakes, spread with molasses and jam. Gary has been close to people and has a whole town full of friends, but he'd never once felt he'd known anyone the way he felt he knew the woman who wrote this letter. It was as if someone had ripped off the top of his head and hooked a piece of his soul. He was so involved with the words she'd written that anyone passing by could have pushed him off his chair with one finger. A turkey vulture could have landed on the back rung of the chair he was sitting in, screamed right in his ear, and Gary wouldn't have heard a sound.
He went home then and packed his bag. He called to tell his buddy Arno at the AG's office that he had found a great lead and was going after Hawkins's girlfriend, but of course that wasn't the whole truth. Hawkins's girlfriend wasn't the one he was thinking about when he asked his closest neighbor's twelve-year-old boy to hike by each morning and set out some food and water for the dogs, then took his horses over to the Mitchells' ranch, where they'd be turned out with a bunch of Arabians much prettier than themselves, and maybe learn a lesson or two.
Gary was at the airport that evening. He caught the 7:17 to Chicago, and he spent the night with his long legs folded up on a bench at O'Hare, where he had to change planes. He read Sally's letter twice more in midair, and then again while he ate eggs and sausage for lunch in a diner in Elmhurst, Queens. Even when he folds it back into its envelope and places it deep inside the pocket of his jacket, the letter keeps coming back to him. Whole sentences Sally has written form inside his head, and for some reason he's filled with the strangest sense of acceptance, not for anything he's done but for what he might be about to do.
Gary picked up directions and a cold can of Coke at a gas station on the Turnpike. In spite of his wrong turn near the Y field, he manages to find the correct address. Sally Owens is in the kitchen when he's parking his rented car. She's stirring a pot of tomato sauce on the back burner when Gary circles the Honda in the driveway, gets a good look at the Oldsmobile parked in front, and matches its Arizona license plate number to the one in his files. She's pouring hot water and noodles into a colander when he knocks at the door.
"Hold on," Sally calls in her matter-of-fact, no-nonsense way, and the sound of her voice knocks Gary for a loop. He could be in trouble here, that much is certain. He could be walking into something he cannot control.
When Sally swings the door open, Gary looks into her eyes and sees himself upside down. He finds himself in a pool of gray light, drowning, going down for the third time, and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. His grandfather told him once that witches caught you in this way—they knew how much most men love themselves and how deeply they'll let themselves be drawn in, just for a glimpse of their own image. If you ever come face to face with a woman like this, his grandfather told him, turn and run, and don't judge yourself a coward. If she comes after you, if she has a weapon or screams your name like bloody murder, quickly grab her by the throat and shake her. But of course, Gary has no intention of doing anything like that. He intends to go on drowning for a very long time.
Sally's hair has slipped out of its rubber band. She's wearing a pair of Kylie's shorts and a black sleeveless T-shirt of Antonia's and she smells like tomato sauce and onions. She's out of sorts and impatient, as she is every summer when she has to pack for the trip to the aunts'. She's beautiful, all right, at least in Gary Hallet's estimation; she's exactly the way she is written down in her letter, only better and right here in front of him. Gary's got a lump in his throat just looking at her. He's already thinking about the things they could do if the two of them were alone in a room. He could forget the reason he's come here in the first place if he's not careful. He could make a very stupid mistake.
"Can I help you?" This man who's arrived at her door wearing cowboy boots coated with dust is lean and tall, like a scarecrow come to life. She has to tilt her head to get a glimpse of his face. Once she sees how he's looking at her, she takes two steps back. "What do you want?" Sally says.
"I'm from the attorney general's office. Out in Arizona. I just flew in. I had to transfer in Chicago." Gary knows this all sounds awfully stupid, but most things he'd say at this moment probably would.
Gary hasn't had an easy life, and it shows in his face. There are deep lines he's too young to have; there's a good deal of loneliness, in full view, for anyone to see. He's not the kind of man who hides things, and he's not hiding his interest in Sally right now. In fact, Sally can't believe the way he's staring at her. Would somebody really have the nerve to stand in her doorway and look at her like this?
"I think you must be at the wrong address," she tells him. She's sounding flustered, even to herself. It's how dark his eyes are, that's the problem. It's the way he can make someone feel she's being seen from the inside out.
"Your letter arrived yesterday," Gary says, as if he were the one she'd actually written to rather than her sister, who, as far as Gary can tell from the advice Sally gave her, doesn't have a brain in her head, or—if she does—it's not one she pays much attention to.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Sally says. "I never wrote to you. I don't even know who you are."
"Gary Hallet," he introduces himself. He reaches into his pocket for her letter, although he hates to give it up. If they examined this letter in Forensics they'd find his fingerprints all over it; he's folded and unfolded it more times than he can count.
"I mailed that to my sister ages ago." Sally looks at the letter, then at him. She has the funny feeling that she may be in for more than she can handle. "You opened it."
"It was opened already. It must have gotten lost at the post office."
While Sally is deciding whether or not to judge him a liar, Gary can feel his heart flopping around like a fish inside his chest. He's heard about this happening to other men. They're going about their business one minute, and suddenly there's no hope for them. They fall in love so hard they never again get up off their knees.
Gary shakes his head, but that doesn't clear up the matter. All it does is make him see double. Momentarily there are two Sallys before him, and each one makes him wish he weren't here in an official capacity. He forces himself to think about the kid at the university. He thinks about the bruises up and down the kid's face and the way his head must have hit against the metal bed frame and the wooden floor as he thrashed about in convulsions. If there's one thing in this world Gary knows for a fact, it's that men like Jimmy Hawkins never pick fair fights.
"Would you know where your sister might be?"
"My sister?" Sally narrows her eyes; maybe this is just one more heart Gillian broke, arriving to plead for mercy. She wouldn't have taken this fellow for such a fool. She wouldn't have figured him to be her sister's type. "You're looking for Gillian?"
"Like I said, I'm doing some work for the attorney general's office. It's an investigation that concerns one of your sister's friends."
Sally feels something wrong in her fingers and toes that is a whole lot like the edge of panic. "Where did you say you were from?"
"Well, originally, Bisbee," Gary says, "but I've been in Tucson for nearly twenty-five years."
It is panic that Sally is feeling, that much is certain, and it's creeping along her spine, spreading into her veins, moving toward her vital organs.
"I pretty much grew up in Tucson," Gary is saying. "I guess you could say I'm chauvinistic, because I'm convinced it's the greatest place on earth."
"What's your investigation about?" Sally interrupts before Gary can say more about his beloved Arizona.
"Well, there's a suspect we're looking for." Gary hates to do this. The joy he gets out of a murder investigation isn't happening for him this time around. "I'm sorry to inform you of this, but his car is parked out there in your driveway."
The blood drains out of Sally's head all at once, leaving her faint. She leans against the doorway and tries to breathe. She's seeing spots before her eyes, and every spot is red, hot as a cinder. That goddamn Jimmy just doesn't let go. He keeps coming back and coming back, trying to rum someone's life.
Gary Hallet stoops down toward Sally. "Are you okay?" he asks, although he knows from her letter that Sally's the kind of woman who wouldn't tell you right away if something was wrong. It took her nearly eighteen years before she gave her sister a piece of her mind, after all.
"I'm going to sit down," Sally says, casually, as if she weren't about to collapse.
Gary follows her into the kitchen, and watches as she drinks a glass of cool tap water. He's so tall he has to duck in order to pass through the kitchen doorway, and when he sits down he has to stretch his legs straight out so his knees will fit under the table. His grandfather always said he had the makings of a worrywart, and this pronouncement has turned out to be true.
"I didn't mean to upset you," he tells Sally.
"You didn't upset me." Sally fans herself with her hand, and still she's flushed. Thank goodness the girls are out of the house; she has that to be grateful for at least. If they get dragged into this, she'll never forgive Gillian, and she'll never forgive herself. How did they ever think they could get away with it? What idiots, what morons, what self-destructive fools. "You didn't upset me a bit."
It takes everything she has to keep her nerve and look at Gary. He looks right back at her, so she quickly lowers her gaze to the floor. You have to be extremely careful when you look into eyes like his. Sally drinks more water; she goes on fanning herself. In a predicament such as this, it's best to appear normal. Sally knows that from her childhood. Don't give anything away. Don't let them know what you feel deep inside.
"Coffee?" Sally says. "I've got some that's hot."
"Sure," Gary says. "Great." He has to talk to the sister, and he knows it, but he doesn't have to rush. Maybe the sister just took off with the car, but it's just as likely she knows where Hawkins is, and Gary can wait to deal with that.
"You're looking for one of Gillian's friends?" Sally says. "Is that what you said?"
She has such a sweet voice; it's the New England vowels she's never quite lost, it's the way she purses her lips after each word, as though tasting the very last syllable.
"James Hawkins." Gary nods.
"Ah," Sally says thoughtfully, because if she says any more she'll scream, she'll curse Jimmy and her sister and everyone who ever lived in or traveled through the state of Arizona.
She serves the coffee, then sits down and starts to think about how the hell she's going to get them out of this. She's already done the laundry for their trip to Massachusetts; she's gassed up the car and had the oil checked. She has to get her girls out of here; she has to figure out a really good story. Something about how they bought the Oldsmobile at auction, or how they found it abandoned in a rest area, or maybe it was just left sitting in the driveway in the middle of the night.
Sally looks up, ready to start lying, and that's when she sees that this man at her table is crying. Gary is too tall to be anything but awkward in most situations, but he's got a graceful way of crying. He just lets it happen.
"What's wrong?" Sally says. "What's the matter?"
Gary shakes his head; it always takes a while before he can talk. His grandfather used to say that holding tears back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more. Gary has cried more than most men ever will. He's done it at rodeos and in courts of law; he's stood by the side of the road and wept at the sight of a hawk someone has shot out of the sky, before going to get a shovel from the back of his truck so he can bury the carcass. Crying in a woman's kitchen doesn't embarrass him; he's seen his grandfather's eyes fill with tears nearly every time he looked at a beautiful horse or a woman with dark hair.
Gary wipes at his eyes with one of his big hands. "It's the coffee," he explains.
"Is it that bad?" Sally takes a sip. It's just her same old regular coffee that hasn't killed anyone yet.
"Oh, no," Gary says. "The coffee's great." His eyes are as dark as a crow's feathers. He has the ability to catch someone by the way he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking. "It's coffee in general that does this to me. I get reminded of my grandfather, who died two years ago. He sure was addicted to coffee. He had three cups before he opened his eyes in the morning."
Something is truly wrong with Sally. She can feel a tightness inside her throat and her belly and her chest. This could well be what a heart attack feels like; for all she knows she could end up unconscious on the floor in seconds flat, her blood boiling, her brain fried.
"Will you excuse me for a minute?" Sally says. "I'll be right back."
She runs upstairs to Kylie's room and switches on the light. It was nearly dawn when Gillian got home from Ben's, where half of her belongings are now taking up most of his closet space. Since she has today off, her plan was to sleep as long as possible, go shopping for shoes, then swing by the library for a book on cell structure. Instead, the shades are being cast open and sunlight is spilling across the room in thick yellow stripes. Gillian squirms beneath the quilt; if she's quiet enough, maybe this will all go away.
"Wake up," Sally tells Gillian and she gives her a good shake. "Someone's here looking for Jimmy."
Gillian sits up so fast that she hits her head on the bedpost. "Does he have a lot of tattoos?" she asks, thinking of the last person from whom Jimmy borrowed too much money, a guy named Alex Devine, who was said to be the singular human life form able to exist without a heart.
"I wish," Sally says.
The sisters stare at each other.
"Oh, god." Gillian is whispering now. "It's the police, isn't it? Oh, my god." She reaches to the floor to grab for the nearest pile of clothes.
"He's an investigator from the attorney general's office. He found the last letter I sent you and traced you here."
"That's what happens when you write letters." Gillian is out of bed now, pulling on jeans and a soft beige blouse. "You want to communicate? Use the damn phone."
"I gave him some coffee," Sally says. "He's in the kitchen."
"I don't care what room he's in." Gillian looks at her sister. Sometimes Sally really doesn't get it. She certainly doesn't seem to understand what it means to bury a body in your backyard. "What are we going to tell him?"
Sally clutches at her chest and goes white. "I may be having a heart attack," she announces.
"Oh, terrific. That's all we need." Gillian slips on a pair of flip-flops, then stops to consider her sister. Sally can have a fever of a hundred and three before she thinks to complain. She can spend the whole night in the bathroom, brought to her knees by a stomach virus, and be cheery by the first light of morning, down in the kitchen, already fixing a fruit salad or some blueberry waffles. "You're having a panic attack," Gillian decides. "Get over it. We have to go convince that damn investigator we don't know anything."
Gillian runs a comb through her hair, then starts for the door. She turns when she senses that Sally isn't following her.
"Well?" Gillian says.
"Here's the thing," Sally says. "I don't think I can lie to him."
Gillian walks right up to her sister. "Yes, you can."
"I don't know. I may not be able to sit there and just lie. It's the way he looks at you…"
"Listen to me." Gillian's voice is thin and high. "We will go to jail unless you lie, so I think you'll be able to do it. When he talks to you, don't look at him." She takes Sally's hands in her own. "He'll ask a few questions, then he'll go back to Arizona and everyone will be happy."
"Right," Sally says.
"Remember. Don't look at him."
"Okay." Sally nods. She thinks she can do this, or at the very least she can try.
"Just follow my lead," Gillian tells her.
The sisters cross their hearts and hope to die, then swear they're in this together, forever, till the absolute very end. They'll give Gary Hallet simple facts; they won't say too much or too little. By the time they have their story worked out and go downstairs, Gary has finished his third cup of coffee and has memorized every item on the kitchen shelves. When he hears the women on the stairs, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and pushes his coffee cup away.
"Hey there," Gillian says.
She's good at this, that's for sure. When Gary stands to greet her she sticks her hand out for him to shake just like this was a regular old social event. But when she really looks at him, when she feels his grip on her hand, Gillian gets nervous. This guy won't be easy to fool. He's seen a lot of things, and heard a lot of stories, and he's smart. She can tell that just by looking at him. He may be too smart.
"I hear you want to talk to me about Jimmy," Gillian says. Her heart feels too big for her chest.
"I'm afraid I do." Gary sizes Gillian up fast—the tattoo on her wrist, the way she takes one step back when he addresses her, as if she expects to be hit. "Have you seen him recently?"
"I ran away in June. I took his car and hit the road and haven't heard from him since."
Gary nods and makes some notes, but the notes are just scribbles, nothing but nonsense words. Ivory Snow , he's written at the top of the page. Wolverine. Apple pie. Two plus two equals four. Darling . He's jotting down anything in order to appear concentrated on official business. This way, Sally and her sister won't be able to look into his eyes and sense that he doesn't believe Gillian. She wouldn't have had the nerve to take off with her boyfriend's car, and Hawkins wouldn't have let it go so easy. No way. He would have caught up with her before she reached the state line.
"Probably a smart move," Gary says. He's done this before, smoothed out the doubt so it doesn't seep through his voice. He reaches into his jacket pocket, takes out Hawkins's legal record and spreads it across the table for Gillian to see.
Gillian sits down to get a better look. "Wow," she says.
Jimmy's first arrest for drugs was so many years back he couldn't have been more than fifteen years old. Gillian runs her finger down a list of crimes that goes on and on; the misdemeanors becoming more violent with every year, until they veer into felonies. It looks as if they were living together when he was picked up for his last aggravated assault, and he never bothered to mention it. Unless Gillian is mistaken, Jimmy told her he'd gone to Phoenix to help his cousin move some furniture on the day of his court date.
She cannot believe what an idiot she was for all those years. She knew more about Ben Frye after two hours than she knew about Jimmy after four years. Jimmy seemed mysterious back then, with deep secrets he had to keep. Now the facts are apparent; he was a thief and a liar, and she went and sat still for it for longer than would seem humanly possible.
"I had no idea," Gillian says. "I swear to you. All that time, I never asked him any questions about where he went and what he did." Her eyes feel hot, and when she blinks it doesn't do any good. "Not that that's any excuse."
"You don't have to make any excuses for who you love," Gary says. "Don't apologize."
Gillian will have to pay even more attention to this investigator. He's got a particular way of observing things that catches you up short. Why, before he introduced the idea that love was blameless, Gillian never once stopped to consider she might not be responsible for everything that went wrong. She glances over to gauge Sally's reaction, but Sally is staring at Gary and she has a funny look on her face. It's a look that worries Gillian, because it's totally unlike Sally. Standing there, with her back against the refrigerator, Sally seems much too vulnerable. Where is her armor, where is her guard, where is the logic that can put it all back together again?
"The reason I'm looking for Mr. Hawkins," Gary explains to Gillian, "is that it appears he sold some poisonous plant matter to several college students which has been the cause of three deaths. He offered them LSD, then went and supplied them with the seeds of some highly hallucinogenic, highly toxic weeds."
"Three deaths." Gillian shakes her head. Jimmy told her there'd been two. He told her it wasn't his fault; the kids were greedy and stupid and tried to trick him out of the money he was rightfully due. "Fucking spoiled brats," that's what he'd called them. "College-boy babies." He could lie about anything, as though it were a sport. Gillian feels ill thinking how she automatically believed Jimmy and took his side. Those kids must have been looking for trouble . She remembers thinking that. "This is awful," she tells Gary Hallet about the deaths at the university. "It's horrible."
"Your friend has been identified by several witnesses, but he's disappeared."
Gillian is listening to Gary, but she's also thinking about the way things used to be. August in Tucson can bring the desert floor up to 125 degrees. One broiling week, soon after they'd first met, she and Jimmy didn't even leave the house—they just switched on the air conditioner and drank beer and fucked each other every way Jimmy could think of, which mostly had to do with his immediate gratification.
"Let's not call him my friend," Gillian says.
"Fine," Gary agrees. "But we'd like to catch up to him before he sells any more of this garbage. We don't want this to happen again."
Gary stares at Gillian with his dark eyes, which makes it difficult to look away or manage a half-decent fabrication. Maybe this gal knew about the college kids dying, and maybe she didn't, but she certainly knew something. Gary sees that inside her—he can tell by the way she stares at the floor. There is culpability in her expression, but that could be only because she was the one James Hawkins came home to on the night the history major went into convulsions. Maybe it's because she's just realized who it was she was fucking and calling sweetheart all that time.
Gary is waiting for Gillian to declare herself in some way, but Sally is the one who can't keep her mouth shut. She's been trying, she's been telling herself not to talk, to go on following Gillian's lead, but she can't do it. Could it be she's compelled to speak out only because she wants Gary Hallet's attention? Could it be she wants to feel exactly the way she does when he turns to her?
"It won't happen again," Sally tells him.
Gary meets her gaze. "You sound pretty certain of that." But of course, he knows from her letter how sure of herself she can be. Something's not right there , she wrote to Gillian. Leave him. Get your own place, a house that's yours alone. Or just come home. Come home right now .