He paused, watching her, but she had nothing to say, and after a moment he said, “Ed Moran by all accounts has been a fine sheriff. And I’ll say further that I sympathize with the man’s frustration in your own case down there. Under the circumstances.”
She watched him, and seeing that he’d finished she nodded and thanked him and began to stand.
“Now hold on there a second.”
She sat again.
“You said you’d think on things once we got there, and now we’ve got there.”
“Yes, sir. Well. I guess I can’t think what good it would do to tell you anything more right now myself. I guess we need to go some other route.”
“Some other route?”
“Yes, sir.”
He watched her. “Young lady, I sure hope you’re not getting mixed up in something here.”
She stood and he watched her stand. He didn’t get up. Then he got up and came around the desk and reached in front of her for the doorknob.
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
“You take care,” Halsey said. He watched her pass through the outer office toward the glass doors and he was standing there yet, holding the edge of the door to his own office after she’d gone.
GLORIA STOOD AT the bottom of the steps in her overcoat, and when Audrey came down the steps the older woman smiled and held up a cigarette and said, “Nasty old habit.” The cigarette was just-lit, and there was a whiff of butane in the air.
“Not so nasty,” Audrey said.
“Oh, did you want one?”
“No, thank you.”
“Good for you. Ginny, my daughter, started nagging me to quit when she was nine and has never stopped.” She looked at Audrey, standing there in the canvas jacket. “Your dad,” she said, “he’d say, ‘You need to quit those things, Gloria,’ and I’d say, ‘I will if you will, Sheriff,’ and he’d say, ‘That’s a deal.’ And then we’d both finish our smokes and get back to work.” Her eyes shone behind the lenses, and Audrey looked down at the concrete.
When she raised her head again Gloria was still looking at her.
“Well,” said Audrey, “it was nice to see you, Gloria.” But before she could turn away, the woman reached with her free hand and took hold of Audrey’s sleeve. She glanced back up at the glass doors, then leaned in so close that Audrey could smell her cigarette breath.
“I don’t want you to think I was eavesdropping, but sweetie I hear every word that man says in there, since day one. Sometimes I have to remind him to lower his voice but he just doesn’t seem capable of it.”
Audrey didn’t know what to say to that.
Gloria said, “Well, I heard enough and I’m sorry I heard and I don’t want to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong but I’m gonna tell you one thing, so long as you promise me you never heard it from me, all right?”
Audrey nodded. “I promise.”
The woman took a fast drag on her cigarette and glanced once more at the glass doors and blew the smoke from the side of her mouth and said, “Katie Goss.”
“Katie Goss.” Audrey knew that name but didn’t know how. Then she did: Katie Goss had been Danny Young’s girlfriend, all those years ago.
“Katie Goss,” said Gloria. “She’s up in Rochester now. She works at the nursing home up there, Green Fields or green something.”
Audrey looked at the woman. The eyes behind the big lenses watery but bright.
“All right?” Gloria said.
“All right.”
“Good.” She dropped her cigarette on the concrete and mashed it under her tennis shoe and left it lying there. “Tell you one more thing,” she said.
Audrey waited, looking into those eyes.
“She wasn’t the only one,” Gloria said.
45
IT WAS CALLED Green Meadows, not Green Fields, and the woman who answered the phone put her on hold and she sat in the sedan with the phone to her ear listening to recorded music. The sun was going down, and from where she was parked she could see a stoplight turning green, yellow, red… green, yellow, red. At last the music ended and another woman said, “Hello?”
“Katie Goss?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Audrey Sutter. I’m so sorry to call you at work but—”
“Audrey Sutter?”
“Yes. I couldn’t find any other number for you, I’m sorry…”
There was a silence that went on. Audrey could hear the other woman breathing. She could hear people talking in the background. From a distance someone yelled as if he’d just been stabbed.
“Hello—?” she said, and Katie Goss said, “Yes. I’m here.”
THE APARTMENT BUILDING was not three blocks from the hospital where she’d woken up with men in the room and a purple cast on her arm. The front entrance would not be locked, Katie Goss had said, and it wasn’t. A small dog yapping behind a door somewhere. TVs going. Smell of grilled onions in the air. She went up the stairs, her boots thumping dully on thin brown carpeting, and at the top of the stairs the door with the number 4 on it was not quite shut all the way. She rapped on the door, trying not to open it any farther, and a voice called out, “Audrey—?”
“Yes.”
“We’re back here in the bathroom.”
She stepped in and shut the door behind her and waited to see if Katie Goss would poke her head from the lighted doorway down the hallway but she didn’t. There was splashing, a child’s voice. The living and kitchen area were all one space, separated only by a short length of half wall. A TV played to an empty loveseat and a herd of toy horses on a coffee table, the horses all on their feet and of all different colors and sizes. Food-smeared plates and milk glasses had been left on the little dinner table.
She moved down the hall and as she neared the open door there was the smell of bathwater and steam and baby shampoo. She eased her head around the jamb and it was the child who saw her first—great brown eyes looking up, then looking down again at the bathwater, at the colorful things bobbing before her in the suds. Kneeling beside the tub in her nurse’s uniform, purple top and pants, was Katie Goss, her hair gathered up in clips and a few blond tails fallen loose. She saw Audrey and she smiled the tired smile of a mother and said, “Ah, there she is, sweetie, there’s Audrey. Can you say hello?”
The little girl didn’t look up but continued playing with her toys, her lips moving as she talked to them.
“Shy tonight,” said Katie Goss.
“What’s her name?”
“Melanie. We call her Mel.”
“Hello, Mel. Is that a mermaid?”
The mermaid dove underwater, where Audrey couldn’t see her anymore.
Katie Goss lifted a sudsy hand from the child’s head. “I’m Katie. I’d shake your hand, but…”
“I’m Audrey. Maybe I should come back later?”
“Why?”
“You have your hands full.”
“My hands are always full. I’ll tell you what you can do, though.”
“What?”
“You can go out to the kitchen and find that bottle of wine I set out and open it and pour yourself a glass. Do you drink wine? Otherwise there’s juice in the fridge, or water.”
“I drink wine. Should I wait for you there?”
“God, no. It’s Friday. Bring me back a glass of that wine. And take off your jacket.”
In the kitchen she hung the jacket on a chairback and found the bottle of wine. The opener was beside it and she twisted the skewer into the cork as Caroline had taught her and drew down the arms and pulled the cork free with a deep pop. You were supposed to let it sit for a while, breathe, so she carried the dirty plates and the glasses and the silverware from the table and set them on the counter. Ominous music was playing from the TV as a man spoke of a fresh twist in the case; a woman had murdered her husband with a pair of scissors—or had she?