Chapter 7
"Why do you think that?" I said.
And Martha told me her story, how a few days earlier she'd discovered a bloodstain on the back of one of his shirts after he'd returned from a trip to Denver, and how she'd studied recent news stories and found a report about an unsolved assault that had happened during his trip. And then she talked for a time about spying on him from her bedroom window one night when he'd returned from a trip, and how she felt as though he were practicing his smile, transforming himself into a different person for his return home. She seemed embarrassed about that particular incident, as though she were imagining things, and I told her that it did seem at least a little suspicious. And finally she told me how she'd gone back and discovered a total of five unsolved homicides, all women, all youngish, and all occurring in cities that Alan had been in for work. "Am I crazy to think this?" Martha said.
"You're definitely not crazy to think this," I said, wondering if maybe she'd been crazy to marry this particular man. "But you're thinking it doesn't make it true. Why did you come to me?"
"I don't know. At first I figured I had two choices. I could go directly to Alan and tell him what I'd found out and see what he had to say. But if he actually is this kind of... monster or whatever... then it would probably be a stupid thing to do. And if it's all just a strange coincidence, then how would he feel about my accusing him? I mean, how could he ever trust me again, knowing what I suspected him of? I think it would ruin our marriage. And that's not what I want to do."
"Uh-huh," I said.
"The other option, I suppose," Martha said, "was going directly to the police. But it's the same problem. If they took me seriously, and if they questioned Alan, then he would know it was me that had brought it to them. Either way, it would be over. Our marriage, I mean."
"And you don't want to hurt your marriage?"
"Not if Alan's innocent, no. I know that I said all those things about him being a stranger, but it's not as though I don't love him. I do. And I think my life is better with him in it. Honestly, I think I'm here with you just hoping you'll say I'm being silly and that I should just forget the whole thing." She had finished her Guinness, and there was a little bit of beer foam at the corner of her mouth. "I've thought of you a lot over the years, Lily. That thing with Ethan Saltz was so horrible and I feel like you saved me. I sometimes wonder what would have happened to me if I'd stayed with him. I thought of you as someone who had helped me before in a bad situation, and then I also thought of you because one of the conferences that Alan attended was at Shepaug University. That's near where you live, right?"
"Same town. It's where my mother met my father."
"So, then you became my third option. I could tell you what I thought and get your opinion. And at this point whatever you tell me to do, I'll do. I don't feel like I can make this decision on my own right now."
"I get it," I said. "You did the right thing."
I watched her take the first real deep breath she'd taken since we'd sat across from each other.
"Tell me more about the conference at Shepaug," I said. "Was there a death there?"
Martha had a large tote bag next to her and she pulled a notebook from it and said, "I've catalogued what I found like a good librarian. I almost didn't include what happened at Shepaug because it was a little bit of an outlier."
"How come?" I said.
She was flipping through the notebook and came to the right place. "Out of the five incidents, and I'll tell you about all of them, this was the only one where the death was someone who was an actual attendee at the conference."
"What was the event?"
"It was a K-through-twelve art teachers' weekend conference, and Josie Nixon was a middle school art teacher from upstate New York. She jumped from one of the dormitory balconies."
"Oh, I remember that," I said. "It was just last summer." I'd heard about it from my mother, who tells me about every tragic event that happens locally. She often begins the story by saying something along the lines of, "Can you believe it?" while looking at her phone, possibly assuming that I'm looking at her phone as well.
"Right, and it was ruled a suicide, so, technically, it's not an unsolved homicide."
"But it could have been a homicide," I said.
"All I know is that it happened when my husband was there. Also, that was the conference he was coming from when I watched him from the window, when he..."
"Right," I said. "I can definitely check it out, if you want? Just don't get your hopes up. I know a few people at Shepaug, but I doubt they know anything that wasn't in the newspapers. But maybe I'll find out something. Is that what you want me to do? To help you?"
"I guess so. I don't know. One part of me just thought that I could tell you what I found out and that you could tell me what you thought I should do."
"I'm happy to do that, I guess, but I also think that you don't have enough information yet. Like you said, if you accuse your husband of this and he has nothing to do with it, then it'll probably wreck your marriage. And you said that's not something you want to do..."
Martha was nodding.
"Where is your husband now?"
"He's in North Carolina. Another math conference."
"Are you worried he might—"
"Of course I'm worried. I'm petrified. If he comes back and I discover that some woman has been assaulted or killed there, then this is on me. I could have done something about it."
"Well, there's nothing you can do about it now. He's already there. It's not like you can call the FBI and they'll arrest him because you found blood on his shirt."
"Okay," she said, nodding.
"When does he come back?"
"Tomorrow night, and then he's home for the whole week and the next weekend. Monday he's off to somewhere else, for a whole week, I think. Somewhere in New York State."
"Okay. This is what I think we should do. First of all, keep an eye on any news stories from North Carolina—where is he exactly?"
"Chapel Hill."
"If something happens there, then I think you need to go immediately to the police."
"You're right," Martha said, her eyes fixed on me. I could tell that she just wanted to be told what to do, and now that I was doing that, she was staring at me the way a drowning person stares at a life raft.
"If nothing comes up, then I'll do some of my own research, not just at Shepaug, but at the other places. And we'll make a decision together. We're not there yet, but maybe the accusation can come from me, or be anonymous."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"Your job is to note anything suspicious when he comes back and let me know right away if you find anything. Does that work for you?"
She wiped at an eye and said, "Yes. So, you don't think I'm crazy?"
"I don't know yet," I said, saying it in a way that I thought made it clear it was a joke. Her face fell, and I quickly added, "Just joking. No, I don't think you're crazy at all."
"Do you think my husband's a serial killer?"
Our waitress had returned, hovering around three feet from the table, and we both noticed her at the same time. I asked for the check.
"Oh my God," Martha said. "You think she heard me?"
"She probably thought we were talking about some TV show. So You Think Your Husband's a Serial Killer."
Martha laughed. "Probably. So, do you?"
I weighed what I was going to say and finally decided to say the truth. "It's a lot of evidence, Martha, that many unsolved deaths. The bloodstain, I think, can be explained away, but all the similar assaults in cities he was in... I don't know, it seems like a lot of smoke."
"For there not to be a fire," Martha said.
"Right," I said. "Although, as you pointed out, these are major cities he travels to. It would be more suspicious if a weekend passed without there being some kind of unsolved killing."
"Shepaug's not a big city."
"It's not," I said. "Look, all I'm saying is stranger things have probably happened. The world is full of coincidences."
The check came, and Martha insisted on paying it. I let her. After putting down cash, she said, "Oh no. We were supposed to have dinner, weren't we? We can stay."
"That's okay," I said. "I'm not even hungry yet, and we talked about what you wanted to talk about. And now we have a plan."
Outside of Tipsy McStaggers I walked Martha back to her car. The sun was low in the sky, but it was still bright enough outside that my eyes were adjusting from the dim interior of the faux–Irish pub we'd just exited. At the car she said, "We didn't even talk about the other suspicious deaths I found."
"You have them written down in your notebook?"
"I do. I could send you a copy."
"Why don't I take a picture?"
That's what I did. She flipped through the notes she'd taken, not just the names and dates and places of potential victims, but also a list of every business trip Alan Peralta had gone on since they'd been together. I took pictures with my smartphone, the recent acquisition spurred on by my mother. Then we hugged, and I walked back to my own car, humming to myself. It took me a moment to realize what the song was, and then it came to me. "Martha My Dear" by the Beatles. The brain is a strange machine.
That night I sat with my father in the living room at Monk's House while he played records and sipped whiskey and water. I had just come down from my room, where I'd spent most of the evening looking into the death of Josie Nixon on the Shepaug campus. I'd also done some research into the other deaths that Martha had found. All young women, all unsolved crimes. When my eyes began to ache, I came downstairs to have a drink with my father.
"Oh, I have something for you," he said, after I sat down across from him. He got up and wandered off, returning a few minutes later with a full drink and a used copy of The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton.
"For you," he said.
"Yes, I know. I ordered it."
"And I opened it."
"Do you often open mail that's addressed to other people?"
"Well, it was book-shaped, and I'll admit I didn't look at the name on the label. My old friend Ian Peck has been threatening to send me his new book and I thought it might be that."
I picked the book up, smelling it. "I'll forgive you your trespass," I said.
"Thank you. Are you an Anne Sexton fan?"
"I don't know yet," I said. "It was a recommendation."
"Henry Kimball?"
"Good guess," I said. My father was right. It had been a year since I'd last seen Henry, a year since he'd asked for my opinion on a case he'd been working on, convinced that he'd been set up as a witness to a crime. He had been, and it nearly got him killed. The last time I'd seen him was when he'd come down to visit after being released from the hospital, lucky to be alive, and slightly brain-damaged. In the year since I'd seen him, we'd been writing letters back and forth, the ancient kind done with pen and paper. It was partly an affectation but mostly a necessity. Henry and I had a history together. Shortly after I'd first met him, I'd stabbed him in the stomach, worried that he was on the verge of discovering some of my secrets. That was back when he'd been a police officer and he'd suspected me of murder. Since then, he'd become a private investigator. No one besides my parents knew that we were friends.
"He's the Sexton fan, then?"
"In his last letter he said how much he'd been enjoying rereading her poems, and so I ordered this book."
I watched my father's face, the varying responses he might make flickering across it, until he landed on, "Back in my day, we just fucked the people we were in love with."
That night, I lay in bed and thought about Martha and her love curse, and a little bit about Anne Sexton, since her book of poems was open on my chest.
Before coming up to bed I'd read a random poem from the book aloud to my father. The first lines of the poem were, "It is half winter, half spring, and Barbara and I are standing confronting the ocean."
When I finished the poem, my father said, "It's kind of half winter, half spring right now."
"It is."
"Not my favorite time of year."
"No?"
"When I was younger I didn't mind things ending, and I liked the beginnings of things, but these days I prefer the middle of things. Maybe I'm just old."
"You liked the poem, then?"
"It kept my attention," he said.
The next morning I decided that I would spend the day finding out what I could about Josie Nixon and her suicide. Alan's next conference was about a week away. It gave us some time, but not much. As Martha had pointed out, if Alan attacked another woman on one of his trips while we were taking our time trying to figure out what to do, then we would be partly responsible. I had a sudden vision of the dead women that we were now responsible for—Josie Nixon, the sex worker from Atlanta, the bartender from Fort Myers, the receptionist in Chicago, the masseuse in San Diego. I could picture them standing in a line, watching me from some other place, no expressions on their faces, but with eyes that were telling me, telling Martha and me, not to let it happen again. I read their names from the photographs on my phone. Josie Nixon, Kelli Baldwin, Bianca Muranos, Nora Johnson, Mikaela Sager. They stared at me some more through eyes I was only imagining, asking the questions I suspect that the dead always ask: Why me? Why now?