“Sorry for her.”
“Crane, what are you doing here? Somebody called you about Annie, and you came, but there’s nothing for you to do here. She’s in a coma.”
“I noticed.”
“You saw her, then.”
“I saw her.”
Patrick swallowed. Suddenly his face looked white, long. “Poor Annie,” he said. Looking at the floor.
“Who did it?”
“Who did what?”
“Shoved those pills in her.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“It’s down. Who did it?”
“She did it.”
“She took those pills herself? Voluntarily?”
“She was irrational! Troubled.”
“She was almost murdered is what she was, and I want to know your part in it.”
“My part...? Get the fuck out of here.”
“You tell me first. Who did this? You don’t have the balls to do it yourself, Patrick. Who did it?”
Patrick spoke through his teeth. “She did it. You can’t stuff a bottle of barbiturates down somebody’s throat. They take it because they want to.”
“What was she doing with barbiturates? I know how she feels about drugs.”
“Didn’t you talk to the doctor? She had a prescription. They were to help her sleep.”
“Why would she be having trouble sleeping?”
“Maybe it was because she and her new boyfriend had a spat, and he ran out on her.”
“Fuck you, Patrick.”
“Get out of my house.”
“This isn’t your house. We both know whose house it is.”
“Get out!”
Billy called from the other room. “Daddy?”
“It’s okay, Billy,” Patrick said. Then to Crane, no sarcasm, no anger: “Please. Just go.”
“I’ll go. For now.”
Crane was halfway down the front walk when he heard Patrick’s voice behind him: “I hope to God Annie comes out of it. Then she can tell you herself what happened.”
Crane kept walking.
“Crane, I wouldn’t hurt my son’s mother. I wouldn’t do that.”
That stopped him: he felt himself believing Patrick again. Goddamnit.
“What really happened, Patrick?” he said, turning.
“I told you. I told you. I fucking told you! She was troubled. She wasn’t herself. You left town, and...”
He went to Patrick. “And what?”
“Well. In a way maybe I did contribute to it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I petitioned the court for custody of my son.”
“You what?”
“I wanted Billy and I thought I could get him. Annie wouldn’t have come off too good in court, a woman who’d made no effort to get a job, instead spending all her energies trying to destroy me and the company that employed me and, indirectly, fed her and my son. Also, she’d had a man living in the house with her — you — and that wouldn’t have looked good for her.”
“When was this?”
“Last week.”
“You’d just served the papers on her? You hadn’t gone to court yet?”
“That’s right.”
“And so she took a bottle of sleeping pills? Get serious.”
“That was just a small part of it.”
“Was it.”
“Yes.”
“What was the big part?”
“Well, the fire, of course.”
“What fire?”
“Didn’t you know? Four days ago, there was a fire here. Neither she nor Billy were in the house. Some rooms upstairs were pretty badly burned; her study was gutted. The fire department, such as it is, stopped it from spreading throughout the house. We were lucky.”
“Her study was gutted?”
“Yes. That’s what set her off, Crane, I’m sure.”
Crane looked up at the boarded-over window on the second floor.
“Her book,” Patrick was saying, “her research files. Everything. All of it. Burned up in the fire.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was hard to tell where the overcast day ended and the smoke from Kemco began. The buildings with their aqua plastic walls and intertwining pipes seemed to suit this bleak, cold afternoon. So did the snow-flecked empty field across the way, that immense balding dandruff-spotted scalp, farmland where no one dared grow anything.
He thanked Laurie for driving him out there. She said she could wait for him and drive him back when he was done, but he told her no, he was quite sure he could find a ride back.
They’d been to see Boone again. The doctor had let him sit in the room with Boone, for about an hour. She looked pale. A little thin. But still very pretty. She seemed to be asleep. He found himself thinking of Mary Beth. He remembered the conscious decision he’d made at the funeral not to look at her as she lay in her casket. If Boone died, he knew he would see her this way, forever: forever in a coma. He knew it and hated it. But he would be here. Even as she deteriorated physically, getting thinner, thinner. Intravenous feeding could keep her alive; but she’d still seem to waste away. But he would be here. Every day, as long as it took. Sitting in her room. Till she woke up. Or not.
Soon he’d have to deal with his parents. He hadn’t called them before he left; he wasn’t up to arguing about this. He’d written them a letter, telling them he was dropping out for the semester and going back to Greenwood. They knew nothing about him and Boone; they wouldn’t begin to understand what this was about. Eventually he would have to tell them. Eventually he would have to tell them he’d drawn out from his bank account all of the school money he worked for this summer, to live on here.
But that would have to wait.
Boone came first.
Boone, and Kemco.
He walked into the building that housed the executive offices; the receptionist looked at him from her window in her wall and asked him who he was there to see. He told her Mr. Boone was expecting him. Which was nonsense, but Patrick wasn’t likely to turn him away, either.
He sat down on one of the plaid-upholstered couches. He noticed that the quote from the founder (“Industry is people”) was hanging crooked in its frame, above the other couch. He got up and straightened it and sat down again.
Patrick was in his shirt-sleeves with a dark blue tie, and slacks and face about the same color gray. He stood on the other side of the turnstile that separated the reception area and hallway, keeping it between him and Crane.
“What do you want?” he said. His voice seemed strained. The eyes behind the wire frames blinked.
Crane stood. He put on a small smile. “Just want to talk, Patrick.”
“We talked last night.”
“Patrick. Please. I came to apologize, in a way. Could we go to your office?”
Patrick studied Crane for what seemed like a long time. The smile made Crane’s face hurt, but he kept it on.
Finally Patrick motioned at him to come on, nodding at the receptionist that it was okay. Crane went through the turnstile and followed Patrick down the long, rather wide hall.
Patrick told his secretary to hold all calls and closed the door behind Crane and himself. He sat behind his desk. Folded his hands. Crane took a chair and sat across from him, not bothering to smile anymore, but keeping a neutral expression.
“I’ll go to the police,” Patrick said.
“What are you talking about, Patrick?”
“I’m just someone trying to make a living, trying to raise a son. I can’t take this harassment. I won’t be harassed, Crane!”
“Patrick. I told you. I came to apologize.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. I’ve been out of line. Finding out what happened to Boone threw me out of whack. You can understand that.”
Patrick nodded, slowly, still not quite buying it.