Easing away from him, I reached for his black fisherman’s sweater and slipped it over my head. The garment was huge on me, reaching almost to my knees, the sleeves extending far past my hands. I shoved the sleeves up and rose on bare feet, tiptoeing toward the staircase.
Okay, so sleeping with Bruce may not have been the smartest thing I’d ever done, but it was the most satisfying thing I’d done in years. Like the snow on my walk earlier in the evening, I knew I wanted to enjoy this moment while I could…because I had no idea if any of what had happened between us tonight would actually last.
I wanted it, too, of course, but I couldn’t control it any more than the early snow…and, in the end, I had to accept that it was all right.
Twenty years ago, when I’d first met Matteo, I’d needed things to last. Security was paramount, and I was desperate for permanence. Maybe it was because of my crazy, unpredictable, lawless father, or maybe it doesn’t matter who your father is. Maybe every young person feels insecure to some degree because nothing is decided yet, and the future is such a long, untraveled road.
I felt less frightened of the future now than those years when I was Joy’s age, more resigned to the notion that the one thing to be counted on was that nothing could. The only unchanging idea was that everything changes, everything is fluid, and nothing can be possessed.
Over time, the various occupants of this very house had flowed in and out, changing from rich to poor then rich again, and they would continue to change and flow through for decades to come.
Certainly nothing living and breathing could be possessed, either. Not friends, not spouses, not aging parents, not even children.
Sometimes I would look into my little girl’s green eyes and see that wary child, clinging so tightly to my hand in front of her elementary school. Then instantly she’d be grown again, transformed like a magician’s dove. And, laughing with relish, she’d fly away from me, a beautiful young thing with her brand new life.
Maybe it would be good for me to finally let go of the notion of permanence…or at least loosen my grip. Maybe in the end all I really needed to do was let go of holding on so tightly.
It certainly felt good earlier to let go of my inhibitions, to trust myself with someone new. I wondered what Matt would think if he could see his ex-wife now, with another man’s sweater over her naked form, sneaking up to his bedroom to snoop for evidence that he was not in fact a serial murderer.
Yeah. Sure.
I certainly didn’t believe it. Not for a minute. Not for a second.
No man who made love like that, so tenderly, so considerately…No man who opened himself so completely could be as cold blooded a killer as Quinn claimed. I just had to find the evidence to make that clear to my detective friend. Starting with that printer.
I crept up the old unfinished staircase, the wooden steps rough against my bare feet. An icy draft flowed down the long hallway from the front door, sweeping up the stairs and up through the bottom edge of Bruce’s heavy cableknit, chilling my thighs, and making me shiver as I hit the fifth step. On the sixth came a noisy creak.
I froze and listened intensely, but the house remained completely still. With a quiet exhale, I resumed my climb.
At the top of the stairs, the darkness was thick. I felt my way along the wall and stepped through the master bedroom’s doorway. The large room was in shadow, front windows giving enough light from the street to make my way around the great four-poster bed, which sat on one end of the room like a hulking giant. I reached for the small, bedside lamp and turned it on.
The antique roll-top sat by the window. I began to push back its cover. When it stuck midway, I cursed and pushed harder, but the damn thing was more intractable than my ex-husband.
Bending over and peering under, I could make out Bruce’s sleek little laptop computer. It sat open, the screen black. I could see the edge of what looked like a small printer, sitting at the back of the desk’s large surface.
For a few more minutes, I struggled with the cover. Finally, I smacked and shoved, and suddenly, with a loud rattle, the cover gave, rolling all the way up with a bang.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and listened.
The desk had made a terrible racket, and I stood in dread, my mind racing to concoct some story. I was certain Bruce was already up, about to furiously bound up the stairs and demand I explain why I was snooping around his bedroom in the wee hours.
For a solid minute, I stood, hearing no sign of movement downstairs, so I swallowed, and resolutely turned back to the desk to quickly examine the printer at the back.
“Hewlett Packard DeskJet,” I whispered. “Model 840C.”
It was the same brand, the same model as the printer Quinn was trying to link to Inga Berg’s murder. I closed my eyes. Dammit. Quinn would take this to the bank. But I knew it was just a coincidence. It had to be.
I wrestled for a moment with telling Bruce everything, suggesting he get rid of the printer. But I knew I couldn’t. Not yet.
A part of me, a very thin slice of my being, couldn’t help asking the question: Was there a chance Bruce Bowman could be a murderer? Was there a chance?
I knew I needed more to go on — one or more threads to follow, something more to pursue myself or give to Quinn.
On a little prayer, I smacked the laptop’s spacebar. The screen jumped to life. Bingo. It had been in sleep mode. I searched the computer’s desktop for anything that might look like a lead.
It appeared he was hooked into a DSL line for the Internet, and he’d set his password to automatic. I quickly logged on and checked the “New Mail” box. It was empty. He must have been answering e-mails just before I arrived. The box was completely cleaned out.
I flipped over to the “Old Mail” box, looking for correspondence from any of the victims. I was fishing blindly, not sure what, if anything, I’d find, but praying I’d know it when I saw it.
The “Old Mail” box screen was set up to scroll mail from oldest to newest. The first date was thirty days ago, and I assumed this box, like my own, expired mail at that time, dumping it into a back-up folder. I didn’t have time to search for that folder, so I just began to scroll down.
There were a number of e-mails from people in his company — the URL address was tagged with “@Bowman-Restoration.com.” I ignored those. There were also dozens of e-mails from someone named “Vintage86.”
Bruce had grown up in California wine country, so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to have a correspondence with a person who also liked wine.
At random, I opened one, my eyes scanning the long, rambling text.
“Nobody thought you were very smart. They used to say I was slumming. I was. You were just a sex toy. Nothing of any consequence….”
The words were ugly. Harsh. And they went on and on.
I shuddered. If this were his ex-wife, Maxine, then I could see why Bruce considered this new life, this new house, an escape.
I hated myself for doing this, but I clicked on the “Sent” box to see how he was answering. This was a terrible invasion of privacy. I knew that. But I had to know. Was he just as cruel? Was this a sick back-and-forth, a pattern he was maintaining? Was he really the man Quinn painted him to be — someone who could snap, give into rage and hate, someone who had the ability to kill, maybe at the moment one of these women started belittling him like his ex-wife?
The “Sent” box was set up like the “Old Mail” box. There were thirty days worth of correspondence here. Not one was addressed to “Vintage86.”
The realization stunned me. Not even I could have read those attacks and not fired off a few choice words. But Bruce hadn’t written one e-mail to Vintage86, at least not in the last thirty days. It appeared he was reading her e-mails, reading all that ugliness, all that terrible stuff, but giving none of it back.