Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.
—Macbeth


CHAPTER 1


1992

WHEN DEATH CAME, she was at her bedroom window, standing in the moonlight and looking out as she brushed her crow-black hair that fell to the small of her back, shimmering faintly as does the quicksilver drizzle of winter rain at midnight. She must have seen something in the window because she stopped her brushing in mid-stroke and peered out into the darkness. But she never saw anything more. Before she died her killer had seared her eyes shut, charring their sockets as waxy black as extinguished votive candles. Burned and coagulated blood tear-dropped down her cheeks, and her porcelain-white throat lay open, wide and agape, as though she wore a new smile to greet an old lover.
* * *
Calvin Samuels eased open the door and slipped inside, letting the door swing shut behind him, its swish as quiet as death’s whisper on the night of his wife’s murder. He stood listening with his back to the door, his lost, stray-dog eyes graying the darkness. Save for the flame in the fireplace, the only light in the judge’s chambers fell through a tall Moorish window opposite him. Beside the window in a corner stood a three-foot, spindly Christmas tree, decorated with colored-paper ornaments like those made by a child in art class. A clock ticked somewhere. Outside the chamber’s door, a white-haired Negro and his wife made their way up the hall as they swept and polished the courthouse, office by office.
After a long minute, Calvin crossed the parquet floor, feeling his way with scarred fingertips, until he came to a desk of English walnut, behind which slept a snoring, openmouthed judge still dressed in his robes. Calvin sat in one of two visitor’s chairs, its leather upholstery so old and parched it crackled like ripping silk as he lowered himself. He leaned back and assumed a posture akin to a poker player who has drawn his last card and now awaits the showing of hands. The judge yawned and opened his eyes, unaware.
“Judge Benjamin Thompson,” Calvin said, his voice sharp, pugnacious.
Thompson’s mouth snapped shut in mid yawn.
“You still sleeping on the job?”
Thompson’s eyes flicked to the chamber’s door and slowly came back to the man in silhouette seated across his desk. He fumbled for the steel-rimmed glasses resting on his forehead and leaned forward.
“Calvin? Calvin Samuels? Is that you?”
“You better hope it is.”
“Well, I’ll just be goddamned.”
“No doubt we both are.”
“Well, then, I’ll just be doubly goddamned.”
“Must’ve been a real hard day of judging if you’re napping in the middle of the afternoon.”
Thompson shook his head and chuckled. “No, not really. But I’ve promised a ruling before I leave for the day, and my clerk’s girlfriend dropped by and kidnapped him for the afternoon. Probably the evening and night, too. I think she’s in a hurry to get herself in a family way so the dumb sonnuvabitch will think he has to marry her.”
He reached down and lifted the spine-broken reporter straddling his lap and dropped it on top of the pleadings and motions scattered across his desktop. “Never could stay awake while reading these old cases. Not even in law school.”
The two sat there and just looked at one another, Thompson still shaking his head, but grinning, and after a minute, he stood and walked to the front corner of his desk.
“Well, God damn it, Calvin. How the hell are you? When did you get back into Hanna?”
Calvin looked toward the window, giving his chin a slight sideways turn, as might a man considering his possible answers, the possible consequences that could come of them.
“Calvin?”
Calvin turned back, thinning his lips in what would not quite pass for a smile. “Renate’s office was closed downstairs when I walked by. It’s still hers, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. She just left early to pick up supplies for tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“You know, New Year’s Eve and all.
Calvin leaned forward and squinted at the calendar behind Thompson’s desk. “Is it?”
“And we were engaged on New Year’s, so this is sort of an anniversary for us.”
Calvin looked down into the glass well of his hands.
“Doesn’t stop with just your wedding anniversary, old boy,” Thompson said. “It’s your engagement anniversary and your first-date anniversary and all that goes with it. More anniversaries than Catholic saint days.”
He walked back behind his desk and across to the window where he looked up and down the snow drifted street, his hands clasped behind him. “But you know how sentimental the ladies are.”
When Calvin didn’t answer, Thompson turned back around. Calvin was staring into the fireplace, as though buried in the gray ash was some long-forgotten work the two of them had left there to anneal, and he had begun to shiver in an odd quiver, like an old dog brought in from a freezing rain.
“What in the world are you doing out in this weather without a coat?” Thompson said. “You look half frozen. Pull that chair up closer to the fire, why don’t you?”
Calvin again didn’t answer.
“Calvin?”
“Yeah,” Calvin said, and stood and picked up his chair and carried it closer. “I will, thank you.”
Thompson looked out his window once more, and then he too walked to the fireplace. “Actually, Renate should’ve been back by now.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It looks ugly out there. How’s the driving?”
Calvin shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because I walked in.”
“You walked in?”
“Yeah.”
Thompson frowned. “In this weather?”
Calvin nodded.
“You walked in from where?”
Calvin closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips against them. “I hitched a ride partway in from Route 154.”
“You hitched?”
“Yeah, but they dropped me off a couple of miles out.” He let his hands drop into his lap. “But that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“New Year’s Eve. The driver was all over the road.”
Thompson looked back to the window. He looked down at Calvin.
“Have a seat, why don’t you?” Calvin said.
Thompson went to pull up the other chair, but he stopped short. He raised his palm to his mouth, as a man about to gag, and swallowed it back down. It had been more than just a few days since Calvin had bathed. He stepped back out of the firelight so that it fell on Calvin and studied him for the first time. It had been even longer than a few days since Calvin had shaved. His straggled greasy hair had not been cut in months. His rag of a shirt was coming apart at the stitches down the yoke of its back, and food stains ran down the front in dried trickles of red and brown and yellow. His leaden, red-rimmed eyes looked into the fire, sullen. Depthless.
Thompson lowered his hand. “You want some coffee to warm you up? I made it this morning and it’ll most likely eat the lining out of your stomach, but it’s still hot, I think.”
“No, but I’ll take a drink if you have it.”
Thompson nodded. “I think I could use one too.”
He walked to the bookcase opposite the fireplace and removed several Ohio State Reporters and reached in and came out holding a spider-webbed bottle of Jameson. In the back of a bottom desk drawer, he found two yellowed tumblers. He held them up to the window light and eyed them and blew out brown clouds of acrid dust and cleaned them with the hem of his robes.
“I keep the hooch back behind to keep it away from the cleaning crew.”
“I don’t recall Clarence being much of a drinker.”
“No, but with an election coming up again next November, I don’t need any rumors floating around about the judge drinking in chambers.”
He glanced at Calvin as he poured. “Normally I don’t before six, but it’s the season, after all.”
“I guess.”
“And with your visit, now we’ve good cause if not just cause, hey?”
He filled both glasses two fingers full and held one out. A car passed beneath the chamber’s window as Calvin reached up, and Thompson turned to look, not seeing Calvin slosh half the whiskey out of his glass.
“Not Renate,” Thompson said. He turned back and raised his drink. “To your health. And a happy New Year.”
But even before Thompson finished his toast, Calvin had already drained what whiskey he hadn’t spilled. He held his glass back up, his hand still trembling. Thompson at first grinned, as if Calvin was only showing off as if it were the old days, but when he looked into Calvin’s eyes, he set down his own glass and poured again, this time filling Calvin’s to the rim. He corked the bottle and held the drink out. When Calvin reached up, Thompson saw his hands and grimaced. “What happened to your fingers?”
“Roofing accident.”
“Where?”
“At work.”
“Since when did lawyers begin roofing?”
Calvin drank the glass half empty and sat back. “So you’re now the Common Pleas Court judge for Creek County, Ohio.”
Thompson, still staring at Calvin’s fingers, nodded.
Calvin’s eyes swept over the three walls lined floor to ceiling with shelves of codes and reporters. “Damnation. And the Commissioners even gave you Judge Biltmore’s old chambers to boot.”
“Yeah, they did. Ran the year Bilty decided not to stand again.”
“How do you like it? Being judge and all.”
“Not nearly as exciting as prosecuting, I’ll tell you that straight out.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Oh, once, maybe twice a year we’ll fill up the gallery.”
“Yeah?”
“But most days it’s guilty pleas and settlements. Uncontested divorces. Most days nothing much memorable happens. You remember how it used to be.”
Calvin nodded. He looked down at what remained of his whiskey and swirled it around the bottom, regarding his own dark self in the amber ring of his glass.
“But it gives me more time with my kids.”
Calvin looked up. “Kids?”
“Yeah. Kids. Rumor has it you were one yourself once.”
“You and Renate?”
“Me and Renate.”
“How many?”
“We’ve a son, Donald, and a daughter, Sara, now.”
“Congratulations.”
“Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Me,” Thompson said, and half-turned toward the Christmas tree. “It’s time to take it down now. Getting to be a firetrap. But ever since she’s been four or so, Sara’s insisted I have one in chambers. Says otherwise Daddy comes home all grumpy and ruins Christmas for everyone else.”
He turned back to Calvin. “So? How long’s it been now? Eight years?”
“Ten. Ten last August.”
“Ten? Yeah, I guess that’s right. You left not long after the Alexander trial. You and . . .”
“Yeah, we did.”
Thompson pursed his lips. He looked toward his door. After a minute he said, “I’m sorry, Calvin. I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Forget it.”
“I can’t tell you how badly I felt when I heard. Renate, too.”
Calvin nodded.
“What happened?”
Calvin didn’t answer. The fire ticked.
“I apologize,” Thompson said. “I’ve no right.”
“No. You’ve every right. That’s why I’m back.”
“Back?”
Calvin emptied his glass. He pushed himself up from the chair and walked to the window, the snow now falling so thick the storefronts across the village square had all but disappeared.
“She’s nowhere now,” Calvin said. “Just a wandering voice that still calls to me.”
Thompson said nothing.
“Can’t even see Cemetery Hill any more.”
Calvin looked back from the window. “You know, I’ve never even been up to her grave.”
“She’s buried behind your granddad.”
“I see.”
“Next to John Rogers.”
Calvin looked back out the window.
“Never did find Rogers's killer, in case you’ve wondered. Renate still asks me every once in a while if anything has ever come up.”
“You might be surprised someday.”
“What do you mean?”
It was a long while before Calvin spoke again, his soft voice corrupted by a bottomless anger. “It was in Judge Biltmore’s courtroom. Just outside. You prosecuted Alexander, and I, I defended him. Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“Ten years ago last summer. You and I duked it out for over a week.”
Calvin again looked back from the window. “She was murdered just five months ago.”
“Yes.”
“Seems more like five years.”
Thompson pulled at his whiskey. He tapped the rim of his glass with the gold band on his finger.
A car passed by the chamber’s window, and Calvin followed it until its two glowing taillights disappeared into the falling snow.
“It was late morning,” he said. “Got a call at the house we were roofing. Said she still hadn’t shown up. Asked me if there was a problem because she’d never been late, you know, never even missed a day. After her supervisor hung up, I knew something was wrong. Bad wrong. Her job as a buyer was just too important to her to miss without calling in. Even on the day after she had her abortion, she still went in to work.”
“Abortion?”
“Wasn’t mine.”
“Wasn’t . . .”
“She all but collapsed inside the door when she got home from the clinic that night, blood loss I guess, but she still went in the next day just the same. The same as if nothing had happened. The same as if she’d done nothing. After I stopped being a lawyer, well, her job and her traveling that went with it seemed to be all she cared about.”
Thompson set his whiskey glass on the fireplace mantle, his own hands now unsteady. He sat down and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Calvin, how long’s it been since you were in to see your doctor?”
“Of course, I immediately called home, but no one answered. Figured her car most likely had broken down on the freeway. Probably hadn’t yet reached a payphone, but I was worried all the same. Worried because soon after we moved out there, a girl’s car was found not far from our exit. Her car was found, but she wasn’t. No one saw her. No witnesses. Nothing. Then for two years her face was up on the billboard, her eyes looking down at me whenever I drove by. After a while, I didn’t even notice her.”
Calvin walked back to Thompson’s desk. He picked up the Jamesons and drank the quarter-bottle remaining and dropped it into the wastebasket, wiping his lips with his shirtsleeve.
“Nothing I could do but begin at home and follow her usual route. When I pulled into our driveway, I found her car where it was when I left. Dew still wetting the windshield, except where someone had sliced his finger across the driver’s side, neck high.”
Calvin shook his head. “I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe she’d just forgotten to set her alarm the night before or maybe she was sick or had fallen in the bathtub and couldn’t make it to the phone. The front door was open, which seemed odd because I was certain I’d double locked it so her cats couldn’t escape. I went in and walked around downstairs, calling for her. When there was no answer, I went upstairs.”
Calvin walked back and sat next to Thompson. “It was Alexander,” he said in a whispery voice, like that of a ghost from another time. “I know it was him. It was Alexander who killed her.”
Thompson looked into the eyes of his friend, words harboring in his throat, but he could say nothing.
“I’ve been searching for him. For the last five months. That’s why I’m here. I need your help to find him.”
Thompson turned away and looked into the remains of the fire, its coals burning yellow. Like the incandescent eyes of something disturbed in the night it would be better to leave alone.
“Ben?”