Strangled - Brian McGrory [131]
“How are you?”
That was me, with one of the more unoriginal questions I’d ever asked. She didn’t take it that way. She looked up from the dog to me and replied, “How am I? I’m horrified. I’m depressed. I’m ashamed. I’m unspeakably sad. And I’m really, really sorry.”
She kept her eyes on mine, studying me for a reaction, some hint of emotion that I’m sure she couldn’t find. She was sitting up on the bed now, her arms wrapped around her knees. The dog was sitting on the floor beside her, looking up with something that approached awe.
For a passing, fleeting moment, I allowed myself some awe of my own over the situation. We were supposed to be in some five-star resort on the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii, getting pampered nonstop by a solicitous staff, having sex often and urgently, dining under the stars, looking forward to a life well lived, together.
Instead, I had the smack and acrid taste of death all around every single thing I did, to the point that it felt like it would never be any different than what it was then. And this woman, this fundamentally happy, confident, well-balanced woman, was confessing shame, humiliation, and depression.
I don’t know how else to put it: Life really sucks sometimes.
But I was too tired to carry this out any further, to explore some of the not-so-subtle nuances of it all.
She asked, “How are you?” as I knew she would.
I yawned, long and hard, and replied, “I haven’t slept in two days. I’ve never been more exhausted in my life. I’ve got a story that’s killing everyone around me. I’ve more suspicions than proof. I’ve got little faith in anything that anyone does around me. I have no hope that anything is about to change for the better.”
I paused and added, “Otherwise, I’m great.”
She continued to stare at me. I snuck a glance, then looked down at the floor in silence, my arms folded across my chest. The Harvard Medical School’s psychology department could do a case study in our body language here.
I quietly added, “None of this is your fault, by the way.”
I snuck another glance and saw a tear rolling down her cheek. This was not what I wanted.
So I said, “I’m desperate for some sleep. Is there any possible way I can get in my own bed and go to sleep for the night, and we’ll talk about this some other time?”
She asked, “Do you want me to stay or leave?”
Let’s not put too fine a point on it: I wanted her to leave. It was three-thirty in the morning. She skipped town on our wedding. She used her own keys to come unannounced into my apartment. I wanted to sprawl across my own bed for the next four hours unencumbered and unconcerned. But I didn’t have the energy for the scene that her departure would inevitably require.
“Why don’t you stay,” I said.
Ends up, those would be just about the last words we’d ever speak to each other. Maybe communication isn’t my strong suit, as Mongillo likes to remind me every time I write a story. When I got up the next day, Maggie was still asleep; when I got back to my apartment that night, she was long gone.
I climbed into bed. Two minutes later, I was already drifting off toward an unsteady slumber when I felt two paws beside me, then some tension, lifting, struggling, and then two more paws. Huck stepped methodically over my back and set himself down in the shallow valley between us, wrapping a paw over my head and resting his snout about two millimeters away from my ear.
At least something in this life was going right.
36
The sprawling lobby of Boston Police headquarters was oddly quiet when I walked through the double doors at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning for my meeting with Commissioner Hal Harrison — maybe due to the fact that Vinny Mongillo and his big mouth had been bailed out by the Record’s attorney about three hours before.
The silver-haired desk sergeant looked at me in silence. I said, “Jack Flynn of the Record here to see the commissioner.” He made a little clucking sound that seemed to emanate from the roof of his mouth, snapped up the phone, and in a moment a young cadet with neither a gun nor an attitude arrived to escort