"Could be hers?"
"Could be. There are points of comparison, but it looks like somebody else touched it, too, which may make DNA hard, distinguishing the alleles and getting enough to test."
"That would be a tough argument for a defense lawyer," said Brand, "saying she got anywhere near the phenelzine, if her prints show up on every other bottle and not this one."
Brand and Molto headed back to the same rear exit through which they'd come in. Tommy still didn't want to encounter the dozens of cops he knew who would be coursing around upstairs and would ask why the PA was down here off Mt. Olympus. At the door, Brand took a moment to thank Dickerman again and discuss the next round of examinations, while Tommy went out into the slashing wind to think over what he'd just heard. The steely sky that would prevail in Kindle County for the next six months, as if the Tri-Cities had fallen under a cast-iron pot lid, was closing around them.
He did it again. The words, the idea, stretched out through Tommy like a piano key with the damper pedal compressed. Rusty did it again. The son of a bitch did it again. No "once burned, twice wise" for him. Standing here, Tommy felt so many things that he was having difficulty sorting them out. He was enraged, of course. Rage had always come easily to Tommy, although less so as the years passed. Yet it remained a familiar, even essential, place to him, like a firefighter who was most himself as he entered a burning house. But he also lingered with the thought of vindication. He had waited. And Rusty had shown his true colors. When it was all proved in court, what would people say to Tommy, the people who for decades had looked down on him as some law enforcement rogue who'd gotten off easy the way bad cops so often do?
But the strangest part, amid all these predictable responses, was that as Tommy stamped his feet in the cold, he suddenly understood. If he could not have been with Dominga, what would he have done? Would he have murdered? There was nothing people wanted more in life than love. The wind came up and went through Tommy with the icy directness of a pitchfork. But he understood: Rusty must have loved that girl.
CHAPTER 19
Anna, September 24-25, 2008
I love Nat. I Am Really in Love. Finally. Fully. So often before I thought I was on the brink, but now every morning I get up amazed by the unearthly wonder of it. We have been Velcroed to each other since the day he appeared in the supreme court, and we have spent every night together, except for a single trip I had to make to Houston. The New Depression, which has pushed the law biz off a cliff and in sober moments makes me worry about my job, has been a blessing for now, because I can depart work most nights at five. We cook. We love. And we talk for hours and hours. Everything Nat says pleases me. Or touches me. Or makes me laugh. We do not fall asleep until two or three a.m., and in the morning we can barely drag ourselves out of bed to get to work. Before he leaves, I look at him sternly and say, 'We can't keep doing this, we have to sleep tonight.' 'Right,' he says. I ache all day until I can return to him, when the whole blissful sleepless cycle starts again.
Nat moved in the first week, and there really was no discussion about where he will live at the end of the month. He will be with me. It's like everybody always told me: When it happens, you will know.
Dennis has asked, because that is his job, if the pure impossibility of the situation is part of it, if I've been able to give myself over only because I know I shouldn't and that disaster somehow lurks. I can't answer that. It doesn't matter. I am happy. And so is Nat.
My plan, as far as Rusty is concerned, has been no plan at all, except to allow him a warning. As he sat on that banquette in the Dulcimer, he grew lethally angry. I was unsurprised, not because I was hoping for that result, as he claimed, but because I always sensed there is a molten core behind that taciturn exterior. But in time, we will both get accustomed to the bizarre way this has turned out. We have one essential thing in common. We love Nat.
In the meanwhile, I have resolved to stay away from Rusty, which is not as easy as I might have hoped. Barbara calls Nat every day. He generally picks up and then tells her as little as possible. The conversations are brief and often practical-specials he might be interested in at a local grocery chain, news of family and the campaign, questions about his job search or his expected living arrangements at the end of the month. The last of those inquiries has meant that sooner or later he had to tell her about me. He warned me there was no choice because his mother seemed to be nurturing a hope he might move back home. Even so, I begged him to hold off.
'Why?'
'God, Nat. Doesn't that seem like a lot to tell her in one breath, we're dating and then that we're living together? It will sound crazy. Can't you just tell her you're going to share space with a friend?'
'You don't know my mother. "Who's the friend? What's he do? Where was he raised? Where did he go to school? What kind of music does he listen to? Does he have a girlfriend?" I mean, I wouldn't get away with that for a minute.'
So we agreed that he would tell her. I insisted on standing by so I could hear his end of the conversation, but I buried my head in one of my sofa pillows when he described himself as 'a love zombie.'
'She's thrilled,' he said when he hung up. 'Completely thrilled. She wants us to come for dinner.'
'God, Nat. Please no.'
I could tell from the way his brows narrowed that he was beginning to find my vehemence about his parents odd.
'It's not like you don't know them.'
'It would be weird, Nat. Now. With us so new. Don't you think we should socialize with some normal people first? I'm not ready for that.'
'I think we should get it over with. She'll ask me every day. You watch.'
She did. He begged off, using standard excuses, his work or mine. But day by day I am beginning to understand more about the weird symbiosis between Nat and his mom. Barbara hovers over his life like some demanding ghost without an earthly presence of her own. And he feels a need to satisfy her. She wants to see us together, but finds it trying to leave her home. So we must come to her.
'You could just say no to her,' I told him last week.
He smiled. 'You try it,' he answered, and indeed the next night, he lifted his cell in my direction. 'She wants to talk to you.'
Fuck, I mouthed. It was a quick conversation. Barbara gushed about how exciting this was, how pleased Rusty and she were that Nat and I seemed to mean so much to each other. Wouldn't we come and let the two of them share our happiness for just an evening? Like a lot of brilliant people with problems, Barbara is great at putting you in the corner. The easiest thing was to agree to a week from Sunday.
I held my head in my hands afterward.
'I don't understand this,' he said. 'You're one of the cool kids. Little Miss Social Skills. My mom has been telling me for a year and a half to ask you out. You're the first girlfriend I've had she approves of. She thought Kat was weird and that Paloma was a bad influence.'
'But how's your dad with this, Nat? Don't you think this will be strange for him?'
'My mom says he's completely cool and totally thrilled.'
'Have you actually talked to him?'
'He'll be fine. Take it from me. He'll be fine.'
But I cannot imagine that Barbara's enthusiasm about Nat and me, or the prospect of seeing us together, can do anything but set Rusty spinning. And as I fear, today at work, when I slip in to check my personal e-mail, my heart jumps to see two in my in-box from Rusty's account. When I open the messages, they weirdly turn out to be read receipts on e-mails I sent in May 2007, sixteen months ago.
It takes me a while to piece things together. During my time with Rusty, I was the one who booked the hotel rooms, since he couldn't use his credit card. I would forward the online confirmation to him, receipt requested so I knew he'd gotten word and did not have to bother to reply. I often dispatched these messages in a series-the initial confirmation, a reminder that morning, and then a last e-mail giving the room number once I had checked in. Because I was getting the acknowledgments, I realized that often the only message he was opening was the last one, which he looked at on his handheld on the way over, without having to chance reviewing the other e-mails with somebody around.