For a while after that, Eileen had relied on the news. There were news reports every day about the “progress of the investigation,” and lots of speculation about what Arthur Heydreich had done and why. There was one terrible picture of Martha, made-up like a circus clown, that they played over and over again. Eileen wondered if they used that one because it was so extremely bizarre, or just because it was the only one they could find. The few other shots that appeared anywhere had been taken in groups at club events, with Martha as usual in the background, tall and thin, but the wrong kind of thin. Eileen had stared at all the pictures and wondered what Michael had found so fascinating in the woman. It didn’t matter if he was sleeping with her or not. It didn’t matter if he was gay. There must have been something that had drawn him there.
Eileen thought she might have gone on feeling like that forever, if it hadn’t been for yesterday. Yesterday there were other stories in the news, and suddenly nothing seemed to be settled at all. Arthur Heydreich was out of jail and not even charged with one of the murders anymore. The television stations said he would soon have the charges dropped on Michael’s murder. Now it was Martha herself everybody was asking about. There was a poster showed on television, and a “nationwide campaign” to discover her “whereabouts.” It sounded even less real than the rest of it had. It sounded like a movie.
When Stephen came home last night, Eileen had tried to put it to him again. There was something about this new circumstance, about Arthur Heydreich getting out of jail, that made it through the thick fog of defense around her and let her know that this was final. Michael would never be coming home. She could stay up night after night. She could get in the car and drive into Philadelphia and look through all his old neighborhoods until she was sure somebody was going to murder her for whatever she had in her purse. She could do all the things she had always done, but this time, at the end of them, there would be no Michael needing to be rushed to the emergency room and no Michael needing to be left to sleep it off and no Michael angry and mocking because she’d appeared out of nowhere to spoil his fun.
Eileen had sat down at the kitchen table one more time and tried to talk sense. She was aware that talking sense was not something Stephen thought her capable of doing. It was important, though. It was important to make things work out right.
“It will be different now,” she’d said, rubbing her palms together over and over and over again. This was not something she was doing just because this was the subject she was trying to talk about. This was the way she always was when she talked to Stephen. “It will be different now,” she said again. “There are going to be more questions. And they’ve hired this man, this Gregor Demarkian. I don’t think they hire somebody like Gregor Demarkian unless they mean to do a serious investigation.”
“I don’t care about Gregor Demarkian,” Stephen had said.
Eileen had tried again. It was, really, very difficult. The house felt like a huge prison rising up around her head. It was endless. It had too many rooms. All the rooms were full of people whispering.
“Don’t you see,” she said. “It might be important. It might be a clue. Or—or evidence. It might be something they need to convict whoever killed him. You have to know somebody killed him. It couldn’t have been drugs that bashed his head in.”
“She was a cunt, that woman,” Stephen said. “I don’t care what happens to her.”
“You don’t care if she goes free and is never punished for Michael’s murder?”
“What difference does it make if anybody is punished for Michael’s murder? For God’s sake, Eileen. The kid was a wreck. He’d have died sooner rather than later anyway. What’s a month or two ahead of time?”
“But it matters if it was a month or two ahead of time,” Eileen said. “Something might have happened. He might have turned himself around. He might have gone to rehab again and had it stick—”
“Rehab doesn’t stick,” Stephen had said. He’d used that voice she’d come to think of as “patience in the face of wanting to kill somebody.” “Rehab is a fraud. You know how many people get off drugs and stay off drugs when they go to rehab? Five percent of all the people who start. Five percent. You know how many people get off drugs and stay off drugs without rehab, just because they want to do it and do it on their own? Five percent. If Michael had ever wanted to get off drugs and to be off drugs, he’d have done it, with rehab or without. You just can’t accept the fact that he never wanted to get off drugs.”