Dear Irene

“Maybe it was because I didn’t understand enough about death to feel sorry for Robbie. I thought, well, he’s gone. But Jimmy – I remember people talking about how Jimmy would never see his mother again. She killed kids, they said, so they wouldn’t ever let her near Jimmy again. I don’t think anyone ever heard what happened to him.” He sighed. “As I said, who couldn’t understand what that must have been like for an eight-year-old boy?”

“Is your mother still living?” Mark asked.

He was quiet again. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “Is my mother still living. Good question.”

“You don’t know?” I asked, surprised.

He gave me another one of those faint smiles.

“Sorry, that’s a philosophical question at this point. Peggy Davis, the body, is alive. Peggy Davis, the mind, is dead. She suffers from a severe memory-loss disorder. She’s in Fielding’s Nursing Home – a very good one, but still a nursing home.

“Putting her there was a difficult decision to make. I guess in her own way, she made it for me in October. Mother was being taken care of by a private nurse in her own home. This was about the tenth nurse I had hired within the past year. I paid top dollar, but unfortunately, my mother’s condition is one that causes her to be violent and verbally abusive at times.

“Her memory loss has become much, much worse this past year as well, so she’s harder to care for. Anyway, she wandered out of the house when the nurse got a phone call. Managed to catch a bus. I didn’t find her for another five hours – downtown, in Sheffield Park. She had a scrape on her head, never knew how or where she got it. She didn’t know me. She didn’t even know who she was. That was about all I could take.”

We talked a little longer, as much to take his mind off his problems with his mother as to gather any information. When we were leaving, he thanked me again, bestowing one last, rare smile on me.

It didn’t endure any longer than the other smiles. When I looked from the car to his doorway, where he stood watching us, I thought he looked sad. For a moment, I was certain that sad look meant that he had more to tell us, but dismissed this as the product of an imagination still suffering from lack of visual stimuli.

“WHAT’S ON YOUR mind, Irene?” Mark asked.

I realized that I had been brooding as we made the long drive from Justin Davis’s house toward Don Edgerton’s place.

“Not very good company, am I, Mark? Sorry. I was just thinking about Peggy Davis.”

THE ANCIENT GREEKS believed that the dead drank from the River Lethe and were transformed from beings with remembered lives into shades, existing in a state of oblivion.

Now, it seems, some of us come to that river long before we die.

22

THE TWO DOBERMANS behind the chain-link fence were barking at us as if it were something personal – loud and unrelenting, their lips curled and bodies bristling with focused tension. It was clear that they wanted to release that tension by ripping our throats open.

Show no fear, the old wisdom says.

You have to have a lot of faith in fence-builders to trust the old wisdom.

Across the street, three young men leaned against a car parked on a lawn, huddling in their jackets and smoking cigarettes. We were the best show on the block. They weren’t the only ones with front row tickets. Two detectives sitting in an unmarked car were clearly amused by this spectacle of the intimidation of the press. Mark recognized them, but didn’t know them by name.

“Shit,” Mark said. “I hate this.”

I could tell it was more than an expression of irritation or embarrassment. No one else could hear what we said to each other over the racket the Dobermans were making, so I ventured to ask him if he was afraid of dogs.

He gave me a tense shrug. “I was attacked by one when I was ten. I’m a married man, or I’d moon those two jerks in the car so you could see my scars.”

A porch light came on, and a man opened the front door. The dogs became even more determined, jumping against the fence and causing the metal to sing. “Are you from the Express?” the man yelled out to us.

“Yes!” we shouted in unison.

He whistled once and the dogs immediately stopped barking.

“Are you Mr. Edgerton?” Mark asked.

The man nodded. He said something to the dogs in a low voice, some words I couldn’t make out, and they ran over to his side. “You can come on in now,” he called to us.

I glanced at Mark. “Mr. Edgerton,” I called, “I wonder if you could pen the dogs for me.”

“They’re very well-trained,” he answered. “They won’t hurt you.”

“It’s okay, Irene,” Mark said, but I wasn’t convinced.

“Mr. Edgerton, I’m sure those dogs are very well-trained, but I’ve got a real fear of dogs. If you can’t pen the dogs, maybe we could meet you somewhere else.”

There was snickering from the trio behind us.

Edgerton looked thoroughly disgusted with me. “If you’re going to be a baby about it, I guess I’ll put them out back.” He walked into the house, dogs in tow.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Mark said. “We’re off to a bad start with him now.”

I put my fists on my hips. “He knew we’d be here about this time, we called him a few minutes ago from a pay phone to let him know that we’re nearby, and he lets us sit out here for ten full minutes while his Doberman pinschers bark their asses off. We were off to a bad start before we got here.”

Mark started laughing.

“What’s so fu

“Remind me never to piss you off, Kelly.”

DON EDGERTON WAS about 6’ 2”, lanky and lean. He was as fit as Justin Davis had been, but his face had a kind of rugged handsomeness. A cowboy without hat or horse or rope. Or cows. His skin was leathery, as if he worked in the sun, or had done so before we all got the bad news on ta

No, James Dean would have slouched a little by now. Don Edgerton’s nearly perfect posture made me wonder if he had been in the military.

The house was small, one of the wood-framed bungalows that populated this part of town. The only part of it we saw much of was the first room we walked into. A table and four chairs sat at the far end of the room, a worn sofa and a television at the other. A cheap stereo and a record collection sat on a set of shelves made from four cinderblock bricks and two unpainted pieces of particle board. Don Edgerton was apparently unworried about the advent of compact-disc players.

Except for a cheap battery-operated clock and one framed black and white photograph, the walls were bare, but in this house, the effect was not the same as in Justin Davis’s. It was as if Don Edgerton hadn’t really decided that he wanted to stay here.

The framed photo was of a baseball team. From where we sat at the table, I couldn’t make out the team insignia, but it was obviously one of those posed team photos. Not exactly gorgeous, but at least it gave me the idea that he might have interests beyond training his dogs.

Edgerton picked up the beer that had been sitting half-empty on the table and drank from it, not saying anything. I was tired and didn’t like ending an otherwise productive day with this apparently hostile source.

Mark didn’t let Edgerton faze him. He began by gently reminding Edgerton that we were there in part because he had contacted us. He went on to make it sound like Edgerton had done a major public service to Las Piernas, that receiving Edgerton’s call had been this terrific turning point in the investigation. Edgerton started looking a little less sullen, more interested. Mark commended him for his courage and said that the Express shared many of his concerns about Thanatos.