Full Dark, No Stars

From another drawer, she took a dishwiper from the top of the pile. She was still crying. Nose like a firehose, they'd said when they were kids. Crying was good. She needed to cry, and not just because it would look better for her later on. He was her husband, he was hurt, she needed to cry. She remembered when he still had a full head of hair. She remembered his flashy breakaway move when they danced to "Footloose." He brought her roses every year on her birthday. He never forgot. They had gone to Bermuda, where they rode bikes in the morning and made love in the afternoon. They had built a life together and now that life was over and she needed to cry. She wrapped the dishwiper around her hand and then stuffed her hand into the plastic bag.

"I need an ambulance, my husband fell down the stairs. I think his neck might be broken. Yes! Yes! Right away!"

She walked back into the hall with her right hand behind her back. She saw he had pulled himself away from the foot of the stairs a little, and it looked like he'd tried to turn over on his back, but at that he hadn't been successful. She knelt down beside him.

"I didn't fall," he said. "You pushed me. Why did you push me?"

"I guess for the Shaverstone boy," she said, and brought her hand out from behind her back. She was crying harder than ever. He saw the plastic bag. He saw the hand inside clutching the wad of toweling. He understood what she meant to do. Perhaps he had done something like it himself. Probably he had.

He began screaming... only the screams weren't really screams at all. His mouth was filled with blood, something had broken inside of his throat, and the sounds he produced were more guttural growls than screams. She jammed the plastic bag between his lips and deep inside his mouth. He had broken a number of teeth in the fall, and she could feel the jagged stumps. If they tore into her skin, she might have some serious explaining to do.

She yanked her hand free before he could bite, leaving the plastic bag and the dishwiper behind. She grabbed his jaw and chin. The other hand she put on top of his balding head. The flesh there was very warm. She could feel it throbbing with blood. She jammed his mouth shut on the wad of plastic and cloth. He tried to beat her off, but he only had one arm free, and that was the one that had been broken in the fall. The other was twisted beneath him. His feet paddled jerkily back and forth on the hardwood floor. One of his shoes came off. He was gurgling. She yanked her dress up to her waist, freeing her legs, then lunged forward, trying to straddle him. If she could do that, maybe she could pinch his nostrils shut.

But before she could try, his chest began to heave beneath her, and the gurgles became a deep grunting in his throat. It reminded her of how, when she was learning to drive, she would sometimes grind the transmission trying to find second gear, which was elusive on her father's old Chevrolet standard. Bob jerked, the one eye she could see bulging and cowlike in its socket. His face, which had been a bright crimson, now began to turn purple. He settled back onto the floor. She waited, gasping for breath, her face lathered with snot and tears. The eye was no longer rolling, and no longer bright with panic. She thought he was d--

Bob gave one final, titanic jerk and flung her off. He sat up, and she saw his top half no longer exactly matched his bottom half; he had broken his back as well as his neck, it seemed. His plastic-lined mouth yawned. His eyes met hers in a stare she knew she would never forget... but one she could live with, should she get through this.

"Dar! Arrrrrr!"

He fell backward. His head made an egglike cracking sound on the floor. Darcy crawled closer to him, but not close enough to be in the mess. She had his blood on her, of course, and that was all right--she had tried to help him, it was only natural--but that didn't mean she wanted to bathe in it. She sat up, propped on one hand, and watched him while she waited for her breath to come back. She watched to see if he would move. He didn't. When five minutes had gone by according to the little jeweled Michele on her wrist--the one she always wore when they went out--she reached a hand to the side of his neck and felt for a pulse there. She kept her fingers against his skin until she had counted all the way to thirty, and there was nothing. She lowered her ear to his chest, knowing this was the moment where he would come back to life and grab her. He didn't come back to life because there was no life left in him: no beating heart, no breathing lungs. It was over. She felt no satisfaction (let alone triumph) but only a focused determination to finish this and do it right. Partly for herself, but mostly for Donnie and Pets.

She went into the kitchen, moving fast. They had to know she'd called as soon as she could; if they could tell there had been a delay (if his blood had a chance to coagulate too much, for instance), there might be awkward questions. I'll tell them I fainted, if I have to, she thought. They'll believe that, and even if they don't, they can't disprove it. At least, I don't think they can.

She got the flashlight from the pantry, just as she had on the night when she had literally stumbled over his secret. She went back to where Bob lay, staring up at the ceiling with his glazed eyes. She pulled the plastic bag out of his mouth and examined it anxiously. If it was torn, there could be problems... and it was, in two places. She shone the flashlight into his mouth and spotted one tiny scrap of GLAD bag on his tongue. She picked it out with the tips of her fingers and put it in the bag.

Enough, that's enough, Darcellen.

But it wasn't. She pushed his cheeks back with her fingers, first the right, then the left. And on the left side she found another tiny scrap of plastic, stuck to his gum. She picked that out and put it in the bag with the other one. Were there more pieces? Had he swallowed them? If so, they were beyond her reach and all she could do was pray they wouldn't be discovered if someone--she didn't know who--had enough questions to order an autopsy.

Meanwhile, time was passing.

She hurried through the breezeway and into the garage, not quite running. She crawled under the worktable, opened his special hiding place, and stowed away the blood-streaked plastic bag with the dishwiper inside. She closed the hidey-hole, put the carton of old catalogues in front of it, then went back into the house. She put the flashlight where it belonged. She picked up the phone, realized she had stopped crying, and put it back into its cradle. She went through the living room and looked at him. She thought about the roses, but that didn't work. It's roses, not patriotism, that are the last resort of a scoundrel, she thought, and was shocked to hear herself laugh. Then she thought of Donnie and Petra, who had both idolized their father, and that did the trick. Weeping, she went back to the kitchen phone and punched in 911. "Hello, my name is Darcellen Anderson, and I need an ambulance at--"

"Slow down a little, ma'am," the dispatcher said. "I'm having trouble understanding you."

Good, Darcy thought.

She cleared her throat. "Is this better? Can you understand me?"

"Yes, ma'am, I can now. Just take it easy. You said you needed an ambulance?"

"Yes, at 24 Sugar Mill Lane."

"Are you hurt, Mrs. Anderson?"

"Not me, my husband. He fell down the stairs. He might only be unconscious, but I think he's dead."

The dispatcher said she would send an ambulance immediately. Darcy surmised she'd also send a Yarmouth police car. A state police car as well, if one were currently in the area. She hoped there wasn't. She went back into the front hall and sat on the bench there, but not for long. It was his eyes, looking at her. Accusing her.

She took his sport coat, wrapped it around herself, and went out on the front walk to wait for the ambulance.

- 17 -

The policeman who took her statement was Harold Shrewsbury, a local. Darcy didn't know him, but did know his wife, as it happened; Arlene Shrewsbury was a Knitting Knut. He talked to her in the kitchen while the EMTs first examined Bob's body and then took it away, not knowing there was another corpse inside him. A fellow who had been much more dangerous than Robert Anderson, CPA.

"Would you like coffee, Officer Shrewsbury? It's no trouble."

He looked at her trembl

ing hands and said he would be very happy to make it for both of them. "I'm very handy in the kitchen."

"Arlene has never mentioned that," she said as he got up. He left his notebook open on the kitchen table. So far he had written nothing in it but her name, Bob's name, their address, and their telephone number. She took that as a good sign.

"No, she likes to hide my light under a bushel," he said. "Mrs. Anderson--Darcy--I'm very sorry for your loss, and I'm sure Arlene would say the same."

Darcy began to cry again. Officer Shrewsbury tore a handful of paper towels off the roll and gave them to her. "Sturdier than Kleenex."

"You have experience with this," she said.

He checked the Bunn, saw it was loaded, and flipped it on. "More than I'd like." He came back and sat down. "Can you tell me what happened? Do you feel up to that?"

She told him about Bob finding the double-date penny in his change from Subway, and how excited he'd been. About their celebratory dinner at Pearl of the Shore, and how he'd drunk too much. How he'd been clowning around (she mentioned the comic British salute he'd given when she asked for a glass of Perrier and lime). How he'd come up the stairs holding the glass high, like a waiter. How he was almost to the landing when he slipped. She even told about how she'd almost slipped herself, on one of the spilled ice cubes, while rushing down to him.

Officer Shrewsbury jotted something in his notebook, snapped it closed, then looked at her levelly. "Okay. I want you to come with me. Get your coat."

"What? Where?"

To jail, of course. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to jail. Bob had gotten away with almost a dozen murders, and she hadn't even been able to get away with one (of course he had planned his, and with an accountant's attention to detail). She didn't know where she'd slipped up, but it would undoubtedly turn out to be something obvious. Officer Shrewsbury would tell her on the way to the police station. It would be like the last chapter of an Elizabeth George.

"My house," he said. "You're staying with me and Arlene tonight."

She gaped at him. "I don't... I can't..."

"You can," he said, in a voice that brooked no argument. "She'd kill me if I left you here by yourself. Do you want to be responsible for my murder?"

She wiped tears from her face and smiled wanly. "No, I guess not. But... Officer Shrewsbury..."

"Harry."

"I have to make phone calls. My children... they don't know yet." The thought of this brought on fresh tears, and she put the last of the paper towels to work on them. Who knew a person could have so many tears inside them? She hadn't touched her coffee and now drank half of it in three long swallows, although it was still hot.

"I think we can stand the expense of a few long-distance calls," Harry Shrewsbury said. "And listen. Do you have something you can take? Anything of a, you know, calming nature?"

"Nothing like that," she whispered. "Only Ambien."

"Then Arlene will loan you one of her Valiums," he said. "You should take one at least half an hour before you start making any stressful calls. Meantime, I'll just let her know we're coming."

"You're very kind."

He opened first one of her kitchen drawers, then another, then a third. Darcy felt her heart slip into her throat as he opened the fourth. He took a dishwiper from it and handed it to her. "Sturdier than paper towels."

"Thank you," she said. "So much."

"How long were you married, Mrs. Anderson?"

"Twenty-seven years," she said.

"Twenty-seven," he marveled. "God. I am so sorry."

"So am I," she said, and lowered her face into the dishtowel.

- 18 -

Robert Emory Anderson was laid to rest in Yarmouth's Peace Cemetery two days later. Donnie and Petra flanked their mother as the minister talked about how a man's life was but a season. The weather had turned cold and overcast; a chilly wind rattled the leafless branches. B, B & A had closed for the day, and everyone had turned out. The accountants in their black overcoats clustered together like crows. There were no women among them. Darcy had never noticed this before.

Her eyes brimmed and she wiped at them periodically with the handkerchief she held in one black-gloved hand; Petra cried steadily and without letup; Donnie was red-eyed and grim. He was a good-looking young man, but his hair was already thinning, as his father's had at his age. As long as he doesn't put on weight like Bob did, she thought. And doesn't kill women, of course. But surely that kind of thing wasn't hereditary. Was it?

Soon this would be over. Donnie would stay only a couple of days--it was all the time he could afford to take away from the business at this point, he said. He hoped she could understand that and she said of course she did. Petra would be with her for a week, and said she could stay longer if Darcy needed her. Darcy told her how kind that was, privately hoping it would be no more than five days. She needed to be alone. She needed... not to think, exactly, but to find herself again. To re-establish herself on the right side of the mirror.

Not that anything had gone wrong; far from it. She didn't think things could have gone better if she had planned her husband's murder for months. If she had done that, she probably would have screwed it up by complicating things too much. Unlike for Bob, planning was not her forte.

There had been no hard questions. Her story was simple, believable, and almost true. The most important part was the solid bedrock beneath it: they had a marriage stretching back almost three decades, a good marriage, and there had been no recent arguments to mar it. Really, what was there to question?

The minister invited the family to step forward. They did so.

"Rest in peace, Pop," Donnie said, and tossed a clod of earth into the grave. It landed on the shiny surface of the coffin. Darcy thought it looked like a dog turd.

"Daddy, I miss you so much," Petra said, and threw her own handful of earth.

Darcy came last. She bent, took up a loose handful in her black glove, and let it fall. She said nothing.

The minister invoked a moment of silent prayer. The mourners bowed their heads. The wind rattled the branches. Not too far distant, traffic rushed by on I-295. Darcy thought: God, if You're there, let this be the end.

- 19 -

It wasn't.

Seven weeks or so after the funeral--it was the new year now, the weather blue and hard and cold--the doorbell of the house on Sugar Mill Lane rang. When Darcy opened it, she saw an elderly gentleman wearing a black topcoat and red muffler. Held before him in his gloved hands was an old-school Homburg hat. His face was deeply lined (with pain as well as age, Darcy thought) and what remained of his gray hair was buzzed to a fuzz.

"Yes?" she said.

He fumbled in his pocket and dropped his hat. Darcy bent and picked it up. When she straightened, she saw that the elderly gentleman was holding out a leather-cased identification folder. In it was a gold badge and a picture of her caller (looking quite a bit younger) on a plastic card.

"Holt Ramsey," he said, sounding apologetic about it. "State Attorney General's Office. I'm sorry as hell to disturb you, Mrs. Anderson. May I come in? You'll freeze standing out here in that dress."

"Please," she said, and stood aside.

She observed his hitching walk and the way his right hand went unconsciously to his right hip--as if to hold it together--and a clear memory rose in her mind: Bob sitting beside her on the bed, her cold fingers held prisoner by his warm ones. Bob talking. Gloating, actually. I want them to think Beadie's dumb, and they do. Because they're dumb. I've only been questioned a single time, and that was as a witness, about two weeks after BD killed the Moore woman. An old guy with a limp, semi-retired. And here that old guy was, standing not half a dozen steps from where Bob had died. From where she had killed him. Holt Ramsey looked both sick and in pain, but his eyes were sharp. They moved quickly to the left and right, taking in everything before returning to her face.

Be careful, she told herself. Be oh so careful of this one, Darcell

en.

"How can I help you, Mr. Ramsey?"

"Well, one thing--if it's not too much to ask--I could sure use a cup of coffee. I'm awfully cold. I've got a State car, and the heater doesn't work worth a darn. Of course if it's an imposition..."

"Not at all. But I wonder... could I see your identification again?"

He handed the folder over to her equably enough, and hung his hat on the coat tree while she studied it.

"This RET stamped below the seal... does that mean you're retired?"

"Yes and no." His lips parted in a smile that revealed teeth too perfect to be anything but dentures. "Had to go, at least officially, when I turned sixty-eight, but I've spent my whole life either in the State Police or working at SAG--State Attorney General's Office, you know--and now I'm like an old firehorse with an honorary place in the barn. Kind of a mascot, you know."

I think you're a lot more than that.

"Let me take your coat."

"No, nope, I think I'll wear it. Won't be staying that long. I'd hang it up if it was snowing outside--so I wouldn't drip on your floor--but it's not. It's just boogery cold, you know. Too cold to snow, my father would have said, and at my age I feel the cold a lot more than I did fifty years ago. Or even twenty-five."

Leading him into the kitchen, walking slowly so Ramsey could keep up, she asked him how old he was.

"Seventy-eight in May." He spoke with evident pride. "If I make it. I always add that for good luck. It's worked so far. What a nice kitchen you have, Mrs. Anderson--a place for everything and everything in its place. My wife would have approved. She died four years ago. It was a heart attack, very sudden. How I miss her. The way you must miss your husband, I imagine."

His twinkling eyes--young and alert in creased, pain-haunted sockets--searched her face.

He knows. I don't know how, but he does.

She checked the Bunn's basket and turned it on. As she got cups from the cabinet, she asked, "How may I help you today, Mr. Ramsey? Or is it Detective Ramsey?"

He laughed, and the laugh turned into a cough. "Oh, it's been donkey's years since anyone called me Detective. Never mind Ramsey, either, if you go straight to Holt, that'll work for me. And it was really your husband I wanted to talk to, you know, but of course he's passed on--again, my condolences--and so that's out of the question. Yep, entirely out of the question." He shook his head and settled himself on one of the stools that stood around the butcher-block table. His topcoat rustled. Somewhere inside his scant body, a bone creaked. "But I tell you what: an old man who lives in a rented room--which I do, although it's a nice one--sometimes gets bored with just the TV for company, and so I thought, what the hell, I'll drive on down to Yarmouth and ask my few little questions just the same. She won't be able to answer many of them, I said to myself, maybe not any of them, but why not go anyway? You need to get out before you get potbound, I said to myself."