The Other Side of Death Page 5

  “I see better in shades,” I replied, hooking the glasses over my ears. The pads no longer pinched my nose and the Ray-Bans felt a lot better, I’ll admit it. I looked out the window behind him at the MERVYN’S sign and the traffic going by on Cerrillos while Railback consulted his file. “So you were the last person to see Lonnie Darmer alive Saturday night.”

  “I saw her Saturday night. I wouldn’t say I was the last person who did.”

  “Since we haven’t found anyone else. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  With the exception of the “ugly” on the wall episode I told him. When I’d finished, I asked what had killed her.

  “According to the medical director’s report, a combination of drugs and alcohol. We’re leaning toward suicide.” He began picking up paper clips on his desk with the tweezers and dropping them again.

  “It wasn’t a suicide.”

  “How do you know?” The paper clips pinged when they hit the desk.

  “She wasn’t suicidal when I saw her.” People who have dreams don’t commit suicide, I thought, and her dream was to stop the Ugly Building. But I didn’t tell him that.

  “You did say she was crying over her ex-husband.”

  “She’s been crying about him for years. It wasn’t anything to commit suicide over. Believe me.”

  “You never know what will set someone off. Sometimes it only takes one little thing.”

  “Did you find a suicide note?”

  “Nope, but that doesn’t mean anything; lots of times we don’t.” He put the tweezers down, looked at a sheet of paper on his desk. “Well, I guess that does it, you’re the last person on my list.”

  “You’re telling me that this is the end of your investigation?”

  “We haven’t got anything to investigate. A thirty-three-year-old woman commits suicide, that’s no crime.”

  “How will you know if you don’t investigate?” I said.

  “The body showed nothing a policeman could take to the bank: no defense wounds, no trauma, no scratches, no needle marks, nothing but some bruises on her thighs that were probably caused by rough consensual sex.”

  “Rough consensual sex?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What’s the difference between bruises caused by rough consensual sex and bruises caused by rape?”

  “There’s no way of telling for sure. But she was neatly dressed and covered up, there were no other marks on her, no evidence of resistance, no evidence of rape. Having sex isn’t a crime. Our theory is that she had it earlier in the evening, was depressed—you’ve confirmed that—went to the ruins by herself, took Valium, drank wine, died.” He began picking up paper clips and prepared to dismiss me. “Anything else?”

  “You haven’t told me about the crime scene. What did that show?” I certainly wouldn’t be the first to accuse the Santa Fe Police Department of a cavalier attitude about certain crimes. For a city of fifty-five thousand people it’s had more than its share of unsolved murders of women. It’s been said that the police are overworked and badly trained, that there is no incentive to excel, that the pay sucks. Whatever the cause, police have been known to screw up crime scenes. The night a woman named Teri Mulvaney was murdered twenty-eight of them entered her bedroom and somehow both the body and the phone ended up in different positions than they had started out in. When the time came to prosecute there was no evidence to do it with.

  “The scene showed that a woman crawled into a cave alone, lay down and died,” said Railback. “Period. Amen. There was an empty container of Valium in her pocket. No evidence that anyone went there with her.”

  “Someone came into her house that night.”

  “You mean because of the … toilet seat?” He smiled. “It couldn’t be that it was up before you got there or that you did it yourself accidentally?”

  “No, it couldn’t.”

  “Maybe someone was visiting you. “

  “No, they weren’t.”

  “Maybe someone she knew stopped by. It’s not a crime to urinate indoors either, and you said yourself there was no sign of breaking and entering. We’ll be in touch if we do investigate because you were the last person known to have seen Lonnie Darmer alive. But right now we’ve got no evidence, no crime.” The meeting was over, even though Railback remained stuck to his chair. Was it arrogance, ignorance or laziness that kept him from getting up? I wondered. His way of treating me like a modern woman or was it just because he was short?

  I found my own way out, got the rental car and drove to Lonnie’s for the wake. The interview made me late and I had to park way down Miranda Street. I pulled up onto the sidewalk to get out of the way and walked to 7½ alongside one of those adobe-colored walls that Santa Fe loves. Between the cars on the sidewalk and the wall, there was barely enough room for me. With all the cars here and in the driveway and the yellow Nissan parked at the head of the line, you could almost convince yourself that Lonnie was throwing a party, a wedding instead of a wake. The house was jammed full and at times the place had an excited party noise, maybe because the cast from Tim’s party was there, or maybe that’s just the way people act when they get together around food and drink. The social instincts are pretty strong, and so is the urge to consume when faced with the unexplainable and the grim. It was lunchtime and people had brought food, which was spread out all over the kitchen along with a number of bottles, a coffee urn and a fair amount of beer. Some people waited until afternoon to start drinking, some didn’t. Old habits resurface quickly at times like this.

  Tim was standing in the kitchen holding a glass of something I could see right through. “Perrier?” I asked.

  “A martini,” said Tim. “A silver bullet. I feel like shit, Neil.”

  “I know, darlin’.” I hugged him.

  His eyelids were red and crusty and appeared to be walking away from his eyes. “Why? Can you just tell me that?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  Jamie, who was seldom at Tim’s side in a crowd, happened to be standing nearby talking to Ci. Ci had the Santa Fe look, a gauzy white dress, a silver concho belt and long turquoise earrings. I didn’t often notice what Jamie wore, just her expressions, which were usually serene like she was listening to some inner music. Today she looked as if the music had stopped and she was wearing an UGLY button pinned to a dark blue dress.

  “Have you got another one of those?” I asked her.

  She pulled one out of her purse and handed it to me. I pinned it to my waist.

  “Neil, right?” asked Ci.

  “Ci,” I replied.

  “The death experience is a very powerful time. Lonnie has made the transition, gone to be with the being of light.”

  “Why did it have to happen now?” Jamie sighed. It was Ci’s cue to say that we all choose the moment of our death, but Jamie didn’t give her a chance. “The Darmers are in the living room. I’m sure they’d like to see you, Neil.”

  “Good idea,” I said and went into the living room to pay my respects. Someone had vacuumed and straightened the place up. The gray cats, one each, had taken possession of the armchairs before any mourners could. The Darmers, who were sitting on the sofa under the melancholy R. C. Gorman print, held hands. Lonnie’s father was weathered, thin with the tensile strength of a man who’d worked outdoors, a carpenter, maybe, or a lineman. The mother was Lonnie thirty years down the road, if her daughter had gone down that road. She was the father’s opposite and complement, round and soft—in her case voluptuousness had become fat—with thin, bleached hair and too much makeup. It wasn’t clear yet where her strength would come from. What could you say to people who had just lost their daughter? Up close I could see how devastated they were. There was a glaze over their eyes but behind it a hungry beast waited. “Mr. and Mrs. Darmer, I’m so…so sorry…”

  “Bunny and Arthur, please,” said Bunny, taking my hand.

  “Neil Hamel,” I replied.

  “Aren’t you Lonnie’s friend who’s
a lawyer in Albuquerque?” she said.

  “Yes.” I searched for something to say and came up with “That was such a nice picture in the paper,” but it sounded stupid, even to me.

  “My beautiful, beautiful girl.” Bunny gripped my hand tight, looking all the way into the back of my eyes and then she released me. “Thanks for coming.”

  Others were waiting to see them, so I excused myself and went into the bedroom. The bed had been made and I sat down on top of the pink comforter. There were a bunch of people in the room, talking softly; nobody was paying any attention to me. The bottle of Valium was gone from the bedside table, I noticed. The petunias had climbed back into their pot—apparently they’d found some water. I opened the drawer in the bedside table. It was empty. The journal that had been here before was gone.

  I got up and went into the studio, where Tim stood staring at the card table and a couple was sitting on the hammock. It was large enough, a matrimonial, as it is called in Guatemala, a swinging bed for two. “I slept there Saturday,” I said to Tim, indicating the hammock, “and spent a rotten night with strange dreams and weird sounds. I thought the problem was your coffee at first, but…” Not having decided whether to tell him about the toilet seat or not, I was letting the conversation wander to see where it ended up, but it made no difference to Tim. He wasn’t listening anyway.

  “What’s he doing here?” he asked, looking out the window at someone who was coming up the driveway. Rick First.

  “I assume because he was involved with Lonnie for most of her adult life and was once married to her.”

  “Well, he’s not anymore,” said Tim, “and he’s got no right to be here.”

  It was inevitable in a house as small and crowded as this that we’d all run into each other. It didn’t bother me to see Rick. What had gone down between us wasn’t much to begin with and took place so long ago that it seemed like it had happened to someone else in another lifetime. Reincarnation without the responsibility.

  I went to the living-room doorway and watched Rick’s back while he waited to talk to the Darmers. His jeans had neat dry cleaner creases, I noticed. Maybe he’d kept the pressing habit from San Miguel, where the maids put creases in everything, even your underwear. Rick’s shirt was blue and white stripes of expensive cotton. His hair was shorter and neater and had gotten gray. Lonnie hadn’t told me that. I watched him take a comb from his hip pocket while he waited and run it through his hair. When he finished, he looked at the comb, pulled out the gray hairs that had gotten caught in the fine teeth and dropped them to the floor. I saw the Darmers stiffen when they noticed he was next. It was a moment that even I didn’t want to eavesdrop on, so I went into the kitchen and waited, certain that Rick’s next stop would be the bar.

  “Neil, boy do I ever need a drink,” he said when he showed up in a few minutes. He had what Lonnie called robin’s-egg-blue eyes, flecked with brown like the eggshells. They had always been strange and striking, and were even more so now that his hair had turned gray, pale hair, pale eyes. It was enough to make you wonder if he’d dyed it—if anybody makes gray dye. His face hadn’t changed much, it was smooth as ever. Some people thought Rick was handsome and maybe he was, but his mouth was small and closed and rarely had any expression, except when he laughed and revealed a pair of oversized canines. He hadn’t gotten flabby, however, I’d give him credit for that. He poured himself some vodka, drank it down. “Lonnie’s dead. It sucks, doesn’t it?” He poured another shot, held up the bottle. “One for you?”

  “Got one, thanks.”

  “The Cuervo Gold Kid.” He smiled a slight, closed-lip smile. “You haven’t changed much.”

  “Only on the inside,” I said. “You’ve changed quite a bit.”

  “Success,” he said earnestly. “It does a lot for a person.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m involved in a terrific project, one that will make my career. The First Building. And I’m getting married again.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “To a wonderful woman. Marci Coyle.”

  “So I’ve been told. Tell me, what do you think happened to Lonnie?”

  “She was drinking heavily, took too much Valium, a lethal combination.” He shrugged. “Wasn’t that what the police said?”

  “That’s what they said. Why was she at the ruins?”

  “She liked to go out there and meditate. Sometimes I went with her when we were together, but usually she went by herself. You know the cave that has the water bearer carved in it? She thought it was a power spot.”

  “She went there alone at night?” New Age meditation music had been playing quietly in the background, but someone turned the volume up and Aretha Franklin began to sing—loud—about some no-good heartbreaker.

  Rick raised his voice to get it over the music. “Yeah. Lonnie wasn’t the most careful person in the world. You know that, Neil. She just never got her act together and that’s what finally ruined it for us. We’d still be married today if she had quit the substance abuse. Well, I’ve got to get going. It was good to see you.” He looked at his watch and as his eyes traveled downward toward the numbers on his wrist he happened to notice the UGLY button pinned on me. “Jesus Christ, you, too? Why do people have to wear those? I don’t understand why everyone is so opposed to the building.”

  “It is going to be rather large.”

  “It’s a meaningful balancing and articulation of mass, it has the classic look of puddled adobe, it interfaces well with the neighborhood. It pisses me off that no one is willing to give us a chance. You haven’t even seen the model, have you?”

  Only the wall, but I didn’t tell him that.

  “You really ought to look at something before you go around campaigning against it. We’re having a party at the office Thursday to show the model to prospective tenants. Why don’t you come?”

  “I just might,” I said. The music had changed to Patsy Cline’s tear-jerking man-that-got-away songs: “I Fall to Pieces,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “She’s Got You” and finally “Sweet Dreams” with a broken-hearted catch in her voice. Patsy poured out her heart in that one. She could do it if anybody could; loving a shit was something she knew all about. If anybody ever sang or wrote a moving song about being happily married I’d yet to hear it. Patsy Cline was a country-and-western singer in the fifties and early sixties. Lonnie loved her sad songs, especially when she was in a funk about Rick. Like a lot of the greats, Patsy died young. We (Rick, me, Tim, Jamie and just about everybody else at the wake) belonged to a generation of dead heroes and prolonged adolescence—you have to wonder sometimes about the connection.

  Rick stopped talking about himself just long enough to let the music sink in. “Patsy Cline? Who would play that at a wake?”

  “Me,” said Tim, who had surfaced beside us.

  “It’s totally uncalled for,” Rick snapped.

  “Nope. It’s exactly what is called for.”

  While the two of them stood nose to nose like rams in rut glaring at each other and pawing the ground, I looked down at their feet. Both were shod in running shoes. Rick’s were a pair of brand-new black high-top Reeboks, Tim’s were Adidas retreads, mud brown, with holes where the fabric was supposed to connect with the leather.

  “You’re the reason we’re all here today. Lonnie died because of you,” said Tim, swaying slightly and staring at Rick accusingly with his wide open newborn’s eyes.

  “Lonnie died because she was a substance abuser,” Rick replied, stiff as a stick.

  Tim poked his finger into Rick’s chest, a few sips away from giving him a shove.

  Rick stepped back. “Don’t make me hit you, Tim.”

  “Nobody’s going to be hitting anybody,” said Jamie, whose antennae were ever alert to Tim in trouble. She took his arm. “We’re going home, darling.”

  “I’m not finished yet,” Tim said.

  “Yes, you are. Let’s go.”

  Tim looked into his drink as if he want
ed to throw it in Rick’s face, but he put it down and let Jamie lead him away. “I’ll settle with you later,” he said.

  “What got into him?” asked Rick, watching Tim and Jamie blend into the crowd.

  “He cared about Lonnie,” I replied.

  “We all did.”

  “Right.”

  “So what’s Tim doing these days? Still writing poetry?” Rick smiled a tight-lipped little smile.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Some people never grow up.”

  And some people grow up to be assholes, I thought, jerks mature into pricks, hippies become yuppies. It’s not often that anybody improves with age, and when they do it takes a long, long time. It’s easier to be good when you’re very young or very old than in all the sloppy, conflicted years between.

  Rick looked at his digital watch again. “Two o’clock. Jesus, I’ve got to get going. Good seeing you, Neil. I hope you’ll come on Thursday.”

  “Good-bye, Rick,” I replied. I hung around the kitchen a little longer, wondering what had possessed me to sleep with him and what had made Lonnie so obsessed with him. I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich for the road and put it in a plastic Baggie that I found under the sink. I put another plastic bag in my pocket, and then I took off, too.

  On my way out I stopped at Lonnie’s yellow Nissan heavy with bumper stickers: NEW MEXICO NATIVE, STOP THE UGLY BUILDING, DON’T BUY EXXON, WHIP WIPP, BETTER ACTIVE TODAY THAN RADIOACTIVE TOMORROW. I took a look inside. There was a blanket fuzzy with cat hair on the backseat, but no sleeping bag. The Darmers could have taken it out or put it in the trunk.

  “Hi.” The voice took me by surprise as I hadn’t heard anybody coming. A blond-haired, bright-eyed teenager stood at my left. He was a cute kid and women had probably gooed all over him in supermarkets and malls when he was little. Maybe they still did; he had that look of an eager stray that some women can’t resist. Like everybody else he was wearing running shoes. Sometimes it makes me long for the days when people wore Frye boots that weighed five pounds each; at least they let you know when they were coming. Neither a cholo nor a UNM student, the teenager was wearing a plain yellow T-shirt, shabby but neat.