Black House (Page 38)

"Having been of some assistance to the press," Henry says, "you might reasonably be thought in a position to do the same for our boys in blue. Forgive me, Jack, but you opened the door, and I’ll only say this once. Dale is my nephew, after all."

"I don’t believe you’re doing this to me," Jack says.

"Doing what, speaking my mind? Dale is my nephew, remember? He could use your expertise, and he is very much of the opinion that you owe him a favor. Hasn’t it occurred to you that you could help him stay in his job? Or that if you love French Landing and Norway Valley as much as you say, you owe these folks a little of your time and talent?"

"Hasn’t it occurred to you, Henry, that I’m retired?" Jack says through gritted teeth. "That investigating homicides is the last thing, I mean, the last thing in the world I want to do?"

"Of course it has," Henry says. "But — and again I hope you’ll forgive me, Jack — here you are, the person I know you are, with the skills you have, which are certainly far beyond Dale’s and probably well beyond all these other guys’, and I can’t help wondering what the hell your problem is."

"I don’t have a problem," Jack says. "I’m a civilian."

"You’re the boss. We might as well listen to the rest of the Baren-boim." Henry runs his fingers over the console and pushes the button for the tuner.

For the next fifteen minutes, the only voice to be heard in the pickup’s cab is that of a Steinway concert grand meditating upon The Goldberg Variations in the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires. A splendid voice it is, too, Jack thinks, and you’d have to be an ignoramus to mistake it for Glenn Gould. A person capable of making that mistake probably couldn’t hear the vibration-like inner sound produced by a General Motors door handle.

When they turn right off Highway 93 onto Norway Valley Road, Henry says, "Stop sulking. I shouldn’t have called you a schmuck. And I shouldn’t have accused you of having a problem, because I’m the one with the problem."

"You?" Jack looks at him, startled. Long experience has immediately suggested that Henry is about to ask for some kind of unofficial investigative help. Henry is facing the windshield, giving nothing away. "What kind of problem can you have? Did your socks get out of order? Oh — are you having trouble with one of the stations?"

"That, I could deal with." Henry pauses, and the pause stretches into a lengthy silence. "What I was going to say is, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I think I’m going sort of crazy."

"Come on." Jack eases up on the gas pedal and cuts his speed in half. Has Henry witnessed a feather explosion? Of course he hasn’t; Henry cannot see anything. And his own feather explosion was merely a waking dream.

Henry quivers like a tuning fork. He is still facing the windshield.

"Tell me what’s going on," Jack says. "I’m starting to worry about you." Henry opens his mouth to a crack that might accommodate a communion wafer, then closes it again. Another tremor runs through him.

"Hmm," he says. "This is harder than I thought." Astonishingly, his dry, measured voice, the true voice of Henry Leyden, wobbles with a wide, helpless vibrato.

Jack slows the pickup to a crawl, begins to say something, and decides to wait.

"I hear my wife," Henry says. "At night, when I’m lying in bed. Around three, four in the morning. Rhoda’s footsteps are moving around in the kitchen, they’re coming up the stairs. I must be losing my mind."

"How often does this happen?"

"How many times? I don’t know, exactly. Three or four."

"Do you get up and look for her? Call out her name?"

Henry’s voice again sails up and down on the vibrato trampoline. "I’ve done both those things. Because I was sure I heard her. Her footsteps, her way of walking, her tread. Rhoda’s been gone for six years now. Pretty funny, huh? I’d think it was funny, if I didn’t think I was going bats."

"You call out her name," Jack says. "And you get out of bed and go downstairs."

"Like a lunatic, like a madman. ‘Rhoda? Is that you, Rhoda?’ Last night, I went all around the house. ‘Rhoda? Rhoda?’ You’d think I was expecting her to answer." Henry pays no attention to the tears that leak from beneath his aviator glasses and slip down his cheeks. "And I was, that’s the problem."

"No one else was in the house," Jack says. "No signs of disturbance. Nothing misplaced or missing, or anything like that."

"Not as far as I saw. Everything was still where it should have been. Right where I left it." He raises a hand and wipes his face.

The entrance to Jack’s looping driveway slides past on the right side of the cab.

"I’ll tell you what I think," Jack says, picturing Henry wandering through his darkened house. "Six years ago, you went through all the grief business that happens when someone you love dies and leaves you, the denial, the bargaining, the anger, the pain, whatever, acceptance, that whole range of emotions, but afterward you still missed Rhoda. No one ever says you keep on missing the dead people you loved, but you do."

"Now, that’s profound," Henry says. "And comforting, too."

"Don’t interrupt. Weirdness happens. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Your mind rebels. It distorts the evidence, it gives false testimony. Who knows why? It just does."

"In other words, you go batshit," Henry says. "I believe that is where we came in."

"What I mean," Jack says, "is that people can have waking dreams. That’s what is happening to you. It’s nothing to worry about. All right, here’s your drive, you’re home."