Far as I can tell, he hates her. Man, really fucking hates her.’
‘I wonder why’ I say, but I already know.
‘Yeah,’ he says, trying to sound as if he knows too, but he has no idea. Nobody could.
‘When did he go?’
‘I told you, man, a few days ago.’
‘When exactly? Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday?’
‘I don’t know’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Man, I don’t even know what today is.’
I push past him again and start going through the rest of the house.
‘Hey, man, you can’t go through everything.’
“Then tell me where he is.’
“I don’t know’
‘He’s your friend, right?’
‘He owes me rent.’
Then you owe him nothing. Take a guess. Where do you think he’s going?’
‘I remember him saying something about meeting a woman.
He had a date. But it was a weird date. I remember that.’
‘Jesus, if it was weird enough to stick out, why the hell can’t you remember the details?’
“I was, man, you know … I was kind of, well, in a different state.’
‘You were stoned.’
‘Best as I remember, yeah.’
‘You get her name?’
‘Nah. Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Could it have been Deborah?’
‘Sure, it easily could have. But it just as easily could have been Susan. Or Nicola.’
‘That’s real helpful.’
Studly shrugs. ‘That’s all I know, man. Hey, you find him you tell me he owes me rent, okay?’
‘Look, this is important,’ I say, and I hand him one of my business cards. ‘You remember something, you give me a call.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ he says, and he screws the card into his pocket.
I figure in five minutes he’ll forget it’s even there.
‘Okay let’s do this your way’ I say. ‘Got some scissors?’
‘Fuck you, man.’
‘Jesus, I’m not going to fucking cut you. If I wanted to do something fun I’d just shoot you. Now, scissors? Come on, dude, hurry up.’
He heads into the kitchen and shows back up a few seconds later. I reach into my pocket and pull out the money my mother gave me. I count out two one-hundred-dollar notes. I cut the scissors across them, separating the notes into halves. I hand him two halves, along with the scissors, and I pocket the other two.
‘What the hell am I supposed to do with these?’
‘They’ll help you think. You gotta come up with something useful to earn the rest.’
chapter fifty-six
I sit in my car but don’t drive anywhere. I think about Rachel Tyler, and I think about David Harding, and I wonder who felt the most revulsion when they found out the truth. For the years they were dating, there is no way David or Rachel could have known they were brother and sister. As they shared the same bed, as they held each other in the night, as they spoke of dreams and fears, there was no way they could have known.
Rachel & David for ever.
Thafs what was inscribed on the ring.
Then somehow David found out. The truth made him sick. It would make anybody sick, and it would make anybody angry too.
I wonder if he ever knew that type of reaction was within him, that depth of anger. Did he blame her? Did he blame himself?
Or just Father Julian? David has his own abyss, and maybe he didn’t even know it, not until that day. He killed Rachel because he could not handle the fact his sister was his lover. Most men would have felt the anger, the embarrassment, the pain, but what is the normal reaction? To move on, to try and forget about it?
To never talk about it, to bury those memories and emotions as deep as they can be buried, and then never mention them again?
Or find a shrink, to admit it wasn’t their fault, to process it and process it to the point where it becomes just one of those things, like missing the deadline on your tax return or spilling red wine on the carpet.
David’s rage took him beyond Rachel Tyler and to other girls he had never met, then it led him to kill Father Julian and to planting the murder weapon in my house. He chose me because he saw me on the news, but the thing about David was he was caught in the student world — a world where he slept in every day and missed the news report the morning following my car accident. He didn’t know to move the murder weapon back out of my garage.
I start driving away from the house. Other possibilities start to filter their way through my thoughts.
‘I never told him who his father was,’ Fiona Chandler tells me while I stand on her doorstep.
‘So your maiden name is …’
‘Harding,’ she says. ‘Then it became Martins, and now it’s Chandler. Some good names and bad memories.’
She invites me in out of the rain and we stand in her hallway with the door open. She sucks in a deep lungful of cigarette smoke, then blows it into the air, aiming for outside. It forms a small cloud as it hugs the cold air and slowly moves towards me.
‘How did David react when you told him about his father?’
“I never told him, not the complete truth. He thinks Henry Martins is his father. He doesn’t know about Father Julian.’