Act of Darkness(56)

Sometimes, Stephen Whistler Fox felt like a black hole. What he was sucking into himself was Dan Chester, but Dan Chester wasn’t big enough to fill him up.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re the one who’s always telling me we have to face reality.”

“I’m facing reality. Trust me, I’m facing reality like crazy. Were you with Patchen Rawls when Kevin was supposed to have died?”

Stephen shrugged. The police had asked him the same question the night before, and he’d given them a true answer. Dan had asked, too. “I wasn’t with Patchen at all yesterday,” Stephen said now. “I told you that. I was either up here or down at lunch.”

“Patchen says you were with her.”

“Patchen is trying to drive Janet crazy.”

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s trying to give herself an alibi. Although why she’d want to kill Kevin, I don’t know.”

“She wouldn’t want to kill Kevin,” Stephen said. “Only one person would want to do that. You know who.”

“No. I don’t know who. And neither do you. You’ve got to stop this right now.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s dangerous if it’s not true. And it’s even more dangerous if it is true.”

“I don’t think that’s real, Dan. I don’t think people go around killing other people just because the other people know too much. That’s in the movies.”

“Right.”

“I think—”

Dan got off the bed and went to the window and looked out. Stephen had pulled the curtains back and tidied up, so everything was clean, but it still made him uncomfortable to see Dan there. Maybe it would have made him uncomfortable to see Dan anywhere. Stephen wished he could think. His mind was full of maybes and as-ifs and seems-to-bes. It was always like that, but usually it didn’t bother him. Now it did.

“Dan,” he said, “yesterday afternoon, I don’t remember what time it was, I told Kevin—”

“I know what you told Kevin, Stephen. I hope you didn’t tell anybody else.”

“I haven’t yet. But I was on my way out to see Janet when you knocked, and I want to—”

“Stop. You don’t want to do anything. You just think you do. You’re panicking.”

“No, I’m not. This makes sense.”

“It doesn’t make any sense at all. Especially now. I don’t know that Kevin was murdered. Even the police don’t know that yet. I heard Berman talking to Gregor Demarkian, and as far as I was able to make out, they can’t figure out what Kevin died from. But suppose it was murder. Then what?”

“Then, that’s what my point is. You see—”

Dan was still standing by the window. He came away and knelt down by Stephen’s chair, put his hand on Stephen’s arm, looked directly into Stephen’s eyes. Stephen didn’t like it. It made him feel clammy.

“Listen,” Dan said, “the object here is to get you through this without any mud sticking to you, any mud at all. Not even inferential mud, like with Chappaquiddick. Right?”

Inferential. Stephen grimaced. “Right,” he said.

“Fine,” Dan said. “Now, listen to me very carefully, because I’ve been thinking about this for hours. I’ve got a plan.”





[3]


The clock just off the foyer downstairs was striking seven when Patchen Rawls decided to make her move, and even then she didn’t feel right about it. She had been up since five, sitting on her bed and meditating, but that hadn’t made her feel right about anything either. The rain was coming down over her head, sounding so loud she imagined she could feel it on her skin. It was beginning to occur to her that she hated this house as much as she’d ever hated anything. It was malign.

Patchen Rawls had no idea how her life could be ruined when it was controlled completely by karma—if it were going to be ruined, it would have to have been ruined in advance, so to speak—but that wasn’t the kind of thing she worried about and that wasn’t the kind of thing she had time to unravel now. Just after she’d woken up, she’d taken Janet’s dirty underwear and ripped it to shreds with her razor. The police had searched her room the night before, and they’d found it, but thankfully they hadn’t known it wasn’t hers. They’d found her perfume vials, too, but they hadn’t realized there was anything in them but perfume. She’d been worrying ever since that Janet would notice the underwear was missing and tell somebody she shouldn’t. Now she was going to have to take out the shreds and bury them where they couldn’t be found, or throw them in the sea. It wasn’t as good as what she’d meant to do with them, but at least it would get them out of her life.