And then she climbed on top of me and we made love again, and the midnight hour came and went.
“Hold me,” she said.
And I took her in my arms and I kissed her, and she smelled of booze and that perfume and her own sweat and the smell of me. She fell asleep. A drunk sleep. Exhausted.
This girl, this woman, here with me in the long, dark, lovely night. Beautiful. And I looked at her. This girl, whose husband was a hundred and fifty miles away in Aspen. This girl, whose husband maybe killed Maggie Prestwick or aided Maggie’s killer on a May morning twenty-two years ago. This man who almost certainly did kill his blackmailer and then committed another brutal slaying on the girl who found out about his slush fund. And it was neat now, tidy. Of course, we had helped, John and myself, killing the only person who could prove anything. We had wiped the traces. And now he could do anything. He could even run for Congress. And win. There would always be rumors, there would always be stories, but nothing that could be proven, nothing that would stick, and with his good works established, and his politics sensible, he would rise. And she would rise with him. From this foundation of blood and lies. Both of them bound by the black rite of this marriage. It would take place, it would happen. Unless I said something, unless I did something, unless I broke her away and let her know the truth about her husband, the truth about Victoria Patawasti. About Victoria, about Amber’s shadow, her mirror, her sister, the ghost that brought us together. Yes, and Maggie, too.
How much did Amber know? How much did she want to know? Is that why I’d slept with her? To find out the truth.
And she lay there snoring, and I knew what I was going to do.
A crime.
It could kill her.
It could fucking kill her.
I eased myself out of the bed. I went to the kitchen and got an ice cube.
I found my jacket. I took out the needle, the spoon, I got some water, my alcohol swab. I boiled the heroin, drew it up through the cotton wool. It would be her foot, she’d never notice and I’m the master, I always find a vein, every time.
But ketch and alcohol do not mix. Just ask any of a dozen dead rock stars. It can stop the heart. Can I take her across the line? What if she’s done nothing? Can I do that to her? Can I take her across and still have the right to save her, protect her?
I found a vein, put the ice cube on it, to numb it. She didn’t wake. I took off the ice cube, swabbed the spot with alcohol, injected the heroin above her heel.
She moaned for a second in her sleep.
I let her absorb it, I watched her chest move up and down.
Her breath became shallow, she began to sweat. Was her heart going to fib? I sat there, frightened for ten minutes, but then she came out of it. She was in the center of the high. There were things I had to know and this might be the way.
I woke her.
“Amber,” I whispered. “Amber.”
She looked at me, smiled.
“Amber, I want to ask you something.”
“Ask me anything,” she said drowsily, happily.
“I want to ask you about Charles.”
“Ask me anything,” she moaned.
Heroin isn’t a truth serum and the memory doesn’t blank afterward, so you have to be reasonably subtle, not shock them enough so they’ll remember.
“If Charles wanted to get into someone’s computer, could he do it?”
“Computer?” she asked, her eyelids heavy, her lips in a pout, quivering, under the opium paralysis.
“Yes, Amber, a computer. Could he get into someone else’s computer?” I asked quietly.
“Carrickfergus,” she said.
“What?”
“Carrickfergus,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
She groaned, started drifting off. I didn’t have much more time.
“Ok, forget that, what about Charles?”
“Charles.”
“Yes, look, if Charles was going to kill someone, how would he do it?” I asked gently.
“He wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“But if he had to, if he had to kill someone.”
“He wouldn’t,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes fluttered, closed. Damn. I looked at her. That was enough, I couldn’t risk anything more, she’d remember, I’d kiss and tell her she was beautiful and say something about, oh, I don’t know, Africa, lions. In the morning it would all be jumbled up. She wouldn’t recall. It hadn’t worked or maybe it had and she knew nothing, she was as innocent as the—
“Throw it,” she said lazily from her sleep, her eyes still closed.
“Throw what?”
“Throw the gun, get rid of it,” she insisted.
“Where would you get rid of the gun?”
“Have to get rid of it, Italian gun, throw it away, anywhere, Cherry Creek. Get rid of it.”
“Why there?”
“I don’t know, the nearest river, get rid of it, get rid of it….”
She began to snore again.
She knew, then, she knew Charles had killed Victoria. She had told him to throw away the gun.
I could imagine the scene. He’s just killed Victoria, he comes back. “Oh, Amber, something awful has happened, it was an accident”—and he’s still got the goddamn gun.
Congressman Wegener’s birthday announcement is coming up, they have too much to lose. Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her. Maybe he went to confront Victoria and things got out of hand. Amber keeps a cool head. She orders him back out into the snow to get rid of the gun. He throws it in the water and it’s washed away, like what else? Her conscience. Her humanity.
I stared at her sleeping form, at — what was it Yeats said? — “that terrible beauty,” and I thought, Am I better than you? Me, who took a chance on killing you, to get that?
Had a wee while left.
I looked her over. I examined her, as if she were a corpse. That scar on her shoulder had been a tattoo she had had removed. It was about the size of a silver dollar. I could tell from its shape that it had been a harp. Working-class girl, with a harp tattoo. Shanty Irish girl, bit of a klepto, marries old-money Charles? Then she reinvents herself as patrician fabulous? She didn’t give much away. Just that accent and the way she ate pizza. I admired that. Liked that even as I hated her for what Charles did to Victoria. Hated her and wanted her, too. My muscles ached. My body writhed. I wanted a hit.
I still had time.
I forced myself to have a scout around. The predictability of the decor. What did it show? What a good job the cleaning woman did? Charles’s shallowness, Amber’s impression that this was how the other half lived. No cultural cringes, no giveaways. I went to the garage and checked their car. An E-type Jag. Had Charles killed Alan Houghton on Lookout Mountain? That’s where they’d found Houghton’s car. Charles could have arranged a meeting up there, killed him, put the body in the trunk and dumped it somewhere, a lake, a canyon, the foundation of a construction project. I popped the trunk, checked it, but it had been long since cleaned. A spare tire, a tire iron, and a Leatherman multitool.
Back to the house. That photograph of Charles playing lacrosse. But screw the murder, I wanted more about her. I searched the drawers, I smelled her underwear, I went through her things. Lingerie, fishnet stockings, tasteful stuff from a high-class boutique. But then at the back, a leather panty with an attachment for strapping on a dildo. I rummaged around. Nothing else. Kinky little minx. I went up to the bed and touched her breasts, kissed her. I watched her. I could have killed her with that dose. Thank God, she was alive, breathing easily.
Got up, searched some more. Looking for back story, photographs, but there was precious little. The past was wiped. Something to be ashamed of, maybe. Finally, in Charles’s study I found a box of college stuff. I rummaged through and found a few pictures of an Amber Doonan in a Harvard production of Twelfth Night. Further down another yearbook. No Amber Doonan, but a photograph of Amber Abendsen, a talented actress in the drama society. She had changed her name. Why? Could she have married someone before Charles?