Two Days Gone Read online

He sat with both legs stretched over the stream now, bare feet braced against the other side, knees bent just enough to keep them from locking up with stiffness. He kept his wet shoes and socks cradled in his lap. The smell of wet leather and sodden, sweaty cotton was somehow comforting—the end of a morning run, just another part of his daily routine. He would rest for a few minutes and then head for the shower, get dressed for his eleven o’clock class. What day is this? he wondered. If it’s Monday, I teach Contemporary Lit. If it’s Tuesday, the Craft of Fiction.

  But he could not hold the truth at bay for long. It came back with the speed and suddenness of a bullet, it roared through the pipe and slammed into him, left him sitting there shivering and sobbing, convulsing with grief. “My babies,” he moaned. “My sweet, darling babies…” But the pain was too much and it took him under; it made him sink into sleep, doubled over with his arms hooked around his knees.

  After a while, his arms slipped apart and he awoke with a start, gasping for breath. The air was dim now, gray and damp, and the first image to flash through his brain was of the knife going into Davy’s chest. He shrieked with pain then, had no power to contain it. His cry bounced off the concrete, split in half, and shot down both sides of the pipe, echoed and echoed and pounded like a hammer at his brain.

  For a while, he could only sob and gasp for breath. Eventually, the part of him that stood apart, detached, said that he was useless like this. He could accomplish nothing as long as the pain controlled him. He would have to get back to thinking of himself as a character in one of his stories and not as Thomas Huston, not as the man whose family had been butchered, the man whose life no longer existed, a mere body shot full of poison now, a corpse deprived of death. He knew this and was even able to marvel at this apparent division in his psyche, this dissociative split that allowed him to experience his pain while also regarding it from a distance.

  He was both a fiction and the truth. The stronger of the two was truth, however, and the truth sickened him and hollowed him out. He felt hollowed out by hunger too and knew he would have to eat soon, even though the thought of food was nauseating. Water, on the other hand, was not a problem. The area was as wet as Alaskan taiga, soaked by hundreds of small ponds and swamps and streams. Before leaving the last stream, Huston had cupped its waters to his mouth. He remembered doing that. The water was so cold that it burned his throat and made him dizzy. Even so, he had gulped one mouthful after another, had filled his stomach with it. But he would have to find food of some kind soon. And now that his body temperature had been compromised, he would have to find a better place to gather his strength and make his plans.

  He thought about trying to work his way to Oniontown and the O’Patchens, but Oniontown was at least twenty miles away, and Ed O’Patchen would be likely to shoot him on sight. Huston still had his wallet, his debit and credit cards and probably a little cash, but all of that belonged to another life, a life eradicated, an eviscerated life.

  He could not go on living, he knew that much. But he had one thing to do before he could stop. He thought of the men and women he worked with and the students he taught, and he did not believe he could trust any of them to help him. They claimed to love and admire him, but that was yesterday or the day before, that was part of an expired dream.

  Was there no one he could trust?

  There was Nathan, yes, but no, Huston would not involve him in this. Let him have his own life. He had struggles of his own.

  So there was only Annabel. Only Annabel who would understand. Only Annabel who would know. She might not want to help him, but maybe she would. She owed him that much. He had helped her when she’d needed it, and not lightly but with sadness in both their hearts, and he believed she would help him too. It was all sad business now. No business but the saddest. He had to try Annabel.

  He did not know how to contact her except at work, and she did not work except on weekends, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. How many days until Thursday?

  Some things remained quite clear to him. Other things he saw as if viewed in the pieces of a shattered mirror. This jacket, for example, seemed to have no beginning. Where had it come from?

  What day is it? he wondered again. He went back in his mind to late Saturday night, worked hard to find his way back to it and harder still to stop short of the house. He did not want to go back inside the house in his memory. He was outside of it now, a man wandering the streets with a knife in his hand. A heavy, ugly knife, something to cut through the darkness and then the fog, something to give him weight. He remembered the way the knife had sliced through the water, how it fell straight down, stabbed through the water with hardly a splash, disappeared into the murk.

  No, wait, he told himself. That was the next day, wasn’t it? Didn’t I have the knife when I found the cave? Yes. Yes! Sunday night I found the cave. How did I get there? I don’t know. I walked, I guess. I walked all day. Then I found the cave and I broke off some branches and I crawled inside. I had the knife. What about the jacket? I don’t know, but I had the knife. I wanted to use it on myself, I remember that. I wanted to open up my wrists and fill the cave with blood. And I almost did it, didn’t I? Or did I dream that? No, I almost did it. I put the blade against my wrist. I wanted to do it. God how I wanted to do it.

  Then the next morning… Monday. It was Monday; today is Monday. I went back to the road. I was going to flag down a car, get a ride back home. I wanted to go home. I wanted everything back. But nobody would have picked me up if they saw that knife. So I dropped it in the water. I watched it going down. I hated it but I hated to let it go. Why was it so hard to let that damned thing go?

  That was Monday, wasn’t it? Or was that Sunday?

  Then what did you do? he asked himself. Then you remembered. How could you go home? There was nothing there, nobody there, everything gone. So you started walking again. You walked to the bog. You walked down the stream. You came to the road and the drainage ditch, and you couldn’t go any farther so you climbed into the culvert. And then you did what?

  You found the jacket. You were wearing it. You found it when you saw that you were wearing it.

  Then you slept all night.

  No, he remembered, first my feet were blue. I held them, and they felt like packages of frozen meat. So I rubbed them awhile, and then I didn’t care anymore and I fell asleep. I woke up and it was dark. It was dark everywhere, and I was shivering. I thought I was underwater, and I tried to swim to the top but I banged my head on the pipe, and I went to sleep again. I passed out; some more time passed.

  And now it’s daylight again. Another morning. So this must be Tuesday.

  Huston looked down at his stockinged feet. He put a hand over each foot. The socks were no longer wet, his feet no longer icy to the touch. Somewhere, he had lost most of a day. That day was in the drainage ditch somewhere, had maybe leaked away from him in the trickle of water beneath his feet. Where did it go? he wondered, and he watched the water awhile—he watched himself trickling away with it.

  Then he brought himself back.

  This is Tuesday, he told himself. Craft of Fiction. But there would be no class today. He wasn’t there. No class unless Denton took over his classes. Who else could they ask? Not Conescu, for Chrissakes. A janitor would be better than Conescu.

  Never mind, the other part of him said. Find Annabel. You have to talk to Annabel.

  But Annabel is only for Thursdays. I know where to find her on a Thursday. And today is only Tuesday.

  Then you have to wait, he told himself. You have to stay alive and wait.

  Two more ugly, impossible days. He doubled over again; he hugged his knees. He wept and trembled and muttered aloud, “Two more fuck fuck fucking fucking days.”

  Twelve

  Under the fluorescent light bar in the middle of the evidence room, DeMarco examined the knife in its clear plastic bag. The tapered blade was eight inches
long, the full tang triple-riveted in a handle made of a shiny, black composite material. He said, “It’s an attractive piece of craftsmanship.”

  Morgan told him, “It’s called a chef’s knife.”

  “And it’s the one?”

  “Lab says it matches the wounds on all four victims.”

  DeMarco squinted at the inscription on the blade, but he could not make it out. “Fucking fluorescent lights,” he said.

  “Wüsthof. Made in Solingen, Germany.”

  “And we’re sure it’s Huston’s?”

  “There’s one empty slot in the knife block. This one fits.”

  “All the others are Wüsthofs?”

  “All twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-six in the set? Somebody has a serious knife fetish.”

  “It’s a professional quality set. Retails for around a thousand.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “We found the receipt in a drawer with all the warranty stuff. Charged to Claire’s Visa last December 12. So apparently the set belonged to her.”

  “Unless she bought it for him as a Christmas gift.”

  Morgan pointed to the scalloped edge. “These indentations are supposed to keep food from sticking. The style is called Santoku.”

  “And I suppose you know what that means.”

  “The three virtues. Slicing, dicing, and mincing.”

  “Christ,” DeMarco said.

  “There were descriptions with the warranty papers.”

  “Anything in the descriptions about why he did it?”

  DeMarco turned the knife back and forth in the light. In the two indentations closest to the bolster were tiny rust-like stains. The rest of the blade was clean. DeMarco said, “I’m betting this isn’t rust here.”

  “It’s the baby’s.”

  “Nobody else’s?”

  “None that can be identified.”

  “I’m surprised there’s any left at all. It was in the water how long?”

  “Approximately thirty-eight hours.”

  “Long enough to wash any prints off the handle.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “So we can’t place it in the hands of any particular individual.”

  “But we do know it’s the murder weapon.”

  “Yippee,” DeMarco said. He handed the bag back to Trooper Morgan. “Anything else?”

  “Lab reports on the bed linens. I left a copy on your desk.”

  “Summarize them for me.”

  “The blood smear on the cover in the master bedroom is Claire’s blood only.”

  “So he slit her throat, then wiped the blade clean.”

  “Not completely clean. The smear on the boy’s cover is mostly his blood but with a bit of Claire’s mixed in.”

  “And on the girl’s?”

  “He took a little more time here. Actually wrapped a corner of the sheet around the blade to clean it instead of just wiping the blade across the sheet. And the blood this time is mostly the girl’s, trace amounts of the boy’s.”

  “None of Claire’s or the baby’s?”

  “A trace amount that might be Claire’s. The lab can’t say conclusively.”

  “None of the baby’s?”

  “None.”

  “But only the baby’s is on the blade currently?”

  “Correct.”

  “So…first he killed Claire. Then the boy. Then the girl. He slit each of their throats, wiped the blade clean each time afterward, did an especially good job after the girl. Maybe even washed the blade clean. Can that be right?”

  “It’s how it looks.”

  “Why would he clean the blade so thoroughly before stabbing the baby? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “The rest does?”

  “Also, the baby was stabbed.”

  “Yes, sir. Twice.”

  “Why?”

  “Apparently to make sure he hit the heart.”

  “Why didn’t he slit its throat too? Why did he change his method of killing for the baby?”

  “I guess only he knows that.”

  “I guess you’re right. You got anything else?”

  “The vaginal swabs on the girl came back negative.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “But the DNA profile of the sperm sample matches the DNA from the kids.”

  “So it was definitely her husband’s. Was the lab able to determine the age of the sperm?”

  “It was from that night.”

  “No sign of forcible rape?”

  “None.”

  “So he made love to his wife that very night.”

  Trooper Morgan said nothing.

  “He makes love to his wife. Then he gets dressed again and methodically murders his family one by one.”

  “Unless he murdered them first and then got dressed.”

  “I guess we won’t know that until we find him, see if there’s any blood on him.”

  “How could there not be?”

  “You ever see a murder scene as clean as that house was? Not a single bloody footprint. Not a blood splatter anywhere except in the beds. Nine drops of blood leading from the baby’s crib to the hallway. That’s it. Nine fucking drops.”

  He was angry and the fluorescent light hurt his eyes. “So you know what we’ve got here?” he asked.

  Morgan spoke softly. “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “We have a lot of fucking questions and not a single fucking answer.”

  Thirteen

  It is important to understand things. This was what Thomas Huston kept telling himself. You need to figure things out.

  He was walking through the woods now, picking his way between the hardwoods and birches, moving in what he hoped was a northeasterly line. He guessed the time at midafternoon; the light had softened and was slanting in behind him through the mostly leafless branches. There was a peculiar sensation of tunnel vision, of a blurry, black periphery wherever he looked, and when he tried to see into the distance, his gaze seemed too weak to travel more than forty yards or so. His head felt heavy, full of dark clouds, and though he ached in his neck and shoulders, knees and feet, the aches seemed somehow apart from him, as if he were experiencing another man’s pain.

  You are a writer and a teacher, he reminded himself. A writer first and then a teacher. As a writer, it is your job to make order out of disorder. To find the meaning in metaphor. And as a teacher, it is your job to explain that meaning to your students. And now you are the student. You are the writer and the teacher and the student.

  Find the meaning and explain it, he told himself. That is your job now.

  Annabel could help. His writer’s instincts told him that Annabel would understand more of this than he did. Annabel lived in the kind of world where these things happened. He did not live like this. His life was blessed.

  First things first, he thought, and paused for a moment, and looked around. Today is Tuesday. Thursday, you can see Annabel. So first things first: Find something to eat. Then find a place to stay. A warm place and dry.

  Maybe somebody would help him, take him in. Give him a place to wait until Thursday. Who could he go to for help?

  One by one, he considered his neighbors, his friends, his colleagues. Their faces seemed distant to him, people he had known a long time ago. Memories of memories. Only Annabel seemed clear and real, approachable. He had helped her and she would help him. But Annabel is Thursday, he told himself. Today is Tuesday.

  Maybe you should go to the police. They will feed you and give you a place to stay. Yes, but they will want answers in exchange, and I have none. They will say where is the knife and I will say I drowned it. They will ask why did you drown it. I will say it was either that or cut myself to pieces with it.

  And they will
keep me from my job. My job is to find the meaning. Find the meaning and explain it.

  Why can’t the police find the meaning?

  Because they don’t know where to look.

  You can tell them where to look.

  No, I want to find the meaning myself. This is what I do. I will find the meaning and explain it, and then I will find my family again.

  Do you really believe that is possible, Thomas?

  I have to believe it. I have no choice but to believe it.

  You stopped believing when you were fourteen, remember? Who was Cain’s wife? you asked. If God is the only God, why is he a jealous God? Who was God talking to when he said Let us create man in our own image? If God is love, why is there so much hate? You had so many questions that Mrs. Lehner got red in the face and called you impossible. If you are going to keep interrupting me, Thomas Huston, you can just stop coming to Sunday school altogether, how would you like that?

  I liked it fine, he said. That was when I really started looking for the meaning. And I saw one good Christian after another sniffing at another man’s wife, another woman’s husband. I saw a deacon accused of pedophilia, then disappear and leave his wife and children behind. I heard my father’s friends laughing about payoffs to building inspectors, bribes to the zoning commission. I saw who was selling drugs and who was buying them. I saw who was keeping a woman on the side and who was being kept. I saw who cheated on their taxes and who liked to steal lipstick from Woolworth’s and who was collecting social security checks for dead spouses.

  If God is love, you asked, why are we supposed to fear him?

  Turn to page 193 in your hymnal, Reverend Barrett said. “How Great Thou Art.”

  So if you remember all that, he told himself, what makes you think now that you can ever find your family again? If there is no God, there is no heaven. If there is no heaven, your family is gone.

  And with that realization, the pain in his stomach exploded like a gasoline fire, it dropped him to his knees, to the leaf-matted earth. The fire was black and it devoured the sunlight; it sucked all the oxygen from the woods. It laid him down flat with his face to the wet leaves where there was nothing but the chill and the damp stink of rot.