I strode down the corridor, taking the stairs two at a time, and plunged through the doors out into the crisp, cold air. For a moment, the chill cooled my burning skin, but only briefly, because in the distance, at the end of the lot, in the space between her car and a sleek BMW, I saw Meredith standing with a tall slender man.
Rodenberry.
I darted behind a nearby tree and watched them with the skulking silence of a Peeping Tom. They stood very close to each other, talking intimately. From time to time Rodenberry nodded, and from time to time, Meredith reached out and touched his arm.
I waited for them to draw together into each other's arms, waited like a man in a darkened theater, waited for the kiss that would seal both their fates.
It didn't matter that it never came. It didn't matter that after a final word, Meredith simply turned and walked to her car, and that Rodenberry, with the same casualness, got into the gleaming BMW. It only mattered that as each of them drove away, I heard the click of the police hotline, then the whisper that came through the line, and knew absolutely who had spoken and what had been said.
When, in the throes of crisis, you have nowhere to go but to a lawyer, you should realize just how depleted you have become. But I was far from realizing anything that night, and so I went to Leo Brock.
His office was modest, simply a small brick building tucked between a gourmet deli and a hardware store. His far more impressive Mercedes was parked in a space reserved for it behind the office.
His secretary had already gone home for the evening, but the door to his office was open, and I found Leo in the leather chair behind his desk, feet up, idly thumbing a magazine.
"Eric," he said with a big smile. "How's it going?"
He must have known that it could not have been going very well if I were here, standing before his desk, looking shaken, like a man who'd stared into the pit and seen the dreadful face of things.
"You had another run in with Vincent?" he asked immediately.
"No."
He drew his feet from the top of the desk, and in that gesture I read just how dire I appeared to him. "What is it, Eric?" he asked.
"That thing on the hotline," I said. "What was it?"
He unnecessarily slid the magazine to the corner of his desk. "It was nothing," he said.
"What do you mean nothing?"
"Eric, why don't you sit down."
"What do you mean, nothing, Leo?"
"I mean it had nothing to do with the case."
"Keith's case."
"The Amy Giordano case," Leo corrected.
"But you know what it was?"
"I have an idea."
"What was it?"
"As I said, Eric, it had nothing to do with the case."
"And as I said, Leo, what the fuck was it?"
He looked at me as if sparks were flying off my body, gathering in glowing clusters on his oriental carpet.
"Eric, please, have a seat."
I recalled how he and Meredith had stood together in the driveway of the house, speaking in what now seemed secretive tones, how Leo had nodded to her reassuringly, how my wife's hands had then dropped limply to her sides as if she'd just shuffled off a heavy weight.
"I knew from the beginning," I said.
"Knew what?"
"Knew that Meredith told you."
Leo looked at me with what was clearly a fake expression of bafflement.
"That first day," I said, "when you came over to talk with Keith. Meredith walked you to your car. That's when she told you."
"Told me what?"
"Told you that there were things in the family," I said. "Things that were ... wrong. I even know why she did it. She was afraid that in the end it would come out anyway. "What she didn't know is that other people knew. At least one person."
Leo leaned back in his chair and opened his arms. "Eric, I don't have a clue what you're talking about."
"At the car, the two of you," I explained.
"Yes, she walked me out to my car, so what?"
"That's when she told you."
Leo looked both worried and exasperated, like a man before a cobra, wary, but also growing tired of its dance. "You're going to have to be a tad more specific as to exactly what it is you think she said to me on that occasion."
I recalled Meredith's voice as I'd come home that afternoon, taking her by surprise, the quick way she'd blurted, "Gotta go," then sunk the phone into her pocket. A series of memories followed that initial recollection: Meredith working late at the college; the wistful tone in which she'd said, "It will be the last time"; how it hadn't been Dr. Mays who'd told her the Lenny Bruce story; the fact that Mays had described Stuart Rodenberry as "very funny." Last, I saw Meredith once again in the parking lot with Rodenberry, pressed closely together, as I saw it, but duly cautious not to touch.
"That she was having an affair," I said quietly, like a man finally accepting a terrible, terrible truth. "That's what the police heard on the hotline. That Meredith is having an affair."
Leo stared at me mutely, a pose I had no doubt was part of a deception. He was almost as much in league with Meredith as Rodenberry, all three of them arrayed against me, determined to keep me in the dark,
"Here's another guess," I said sharply. "The person who called the hotline was a woman, wasn't it?"
Leo leaned forward and peered at me closely. "Eric, you need to calm down."
I rebuked him with a harsh cackle. "The wife of the man Meredith is supposed to be having an affair with, that's who called."
Leo now looked as if deep in thought, unable to decide between two equally difficult choices.
"A pale little wisp of a thing named Judith Rodenberry," I added.
Leo shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about, Eric," he said.
He was lying, and I knew it. Again, I recalled that first day, when Meredith had walked him to his black Mercedes, the two of them standing there in the driveway, half concealed by the spreading limbs of the Japanese maple, but not concealed so much that I hadn't seen the way Meredith's hands fluttered about like panicked birds until a few no-doubt well-chosen words from Leo stopped them in their frenzied flight. "What had he said?, I wondered now, then instantly put the words into his mouth: Don't worry, Meredith, no one will find out.
"Did you hear me, Eric?" Leo said firmly. "I have no idea what you're talking about. The hotline matter, it had nothing to do with Meredith."
"What then?" I challenged. "What did this person say? What was this something wrong'?" I felt like a vial filled to the brim with combustible materials, everything poised at the volcanic edge. "Tell me the fucking truth!"
Leo slumped back in his chair and seemed almost to grow older before my eyes, more grave in his demeanor than I had ever seen him. "Warren," he said. "The 'something wrong' is Warren."
TWENTY-THREE
In all the years I'd gone there, the scores and scores of times, I'd never noticed anything. But now as I turned onto Warren's street, I noticed everything. I noticed how close his house was to the elementary school, how his upstairs window looked out over the school's playground, how, from that small, square window, he could easily watch the girls on the swings, see their skirts lift and fold back as they glided forward. He could stand behind the translucent white curtains and observe them clamoring over the monkey bars and riding up and down on the seesaw. Or, if he wished, he could stare down at the entire playground, take in small gatherings of little girls at a single glimpse, keep track of them as they played, pick and choose among them, find the one that most interested him and follow her like a hunter tracking a deer caught in the crosshairs of his scope.