LITMIR.BIZ

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away from the everyday dross. They might as well have been part of the sky-line. The moon. The stratosphere. That Wedgwood locket he’d given to her, a simple bauble, a dumb surprise, more precious than a ship of gold.

      It was, then, like the paintings, a dreamscape, those eight months. She knew it to the date, never forgot it. December 20 to August 13. The bliss-time of her life. Years later she would look back at that whirling, staggering time. The nights of laughter, running through thunderstorms half-drunk, him on her, next to her, in her, in the alley, laughing, crazy, they were crazy, mad with lust or love or what was it, a longing when the other wasn’t there worse than a junkie. She pined for him, a bottomless thirst.

      A weekend up at Cape Cod. Seared in her memory. July 3, 1949. The happiest day of her life. Floating around in the water, she on top of him, only three feet of water and floating on his back, pretending to be . . . what? Laughing and splashing—the whole thing—ridiculous! Back then, in her white-and-blue polka-dot bikini, the most stunning girl on the beach, in Cape Cod, on the Eastern shore for God’s sake. And he’s proud, just fucking proud to be with her.

      Edward.

      Tall and too thin and from a good family. Edward from Boston who’d seen it all. Edward who was mad about his stop-traffic girl from Odessa. His half-yokel, half—movie star he couldn’t stop thinking about, fucking too much, aching for. Oh Lord, let me just spend the rest of my days fucking this girl I love more than I love myself. Which is not much, now that I think about it.

      He blindsided her.

      When he broke it off. He took his hand and reached into her chest and pulled out everything a girl from Odessa, Texas, can hold.

      Why did he do it? How could he have done it? Was it his family? Was it him? Was it someone else? Was it simply being too much in love? Or was he not . . . actually, too much in love? Was he not in love at all? Was she just a fucking fool?

      These were the questions that ran through her head, maddening, over and over and over again, kicking her arm out to the nearest glass, throwing her feet out, one in front of the other, to the nearest bar. You see, I’m pretty. You see, I can still stop a room.

      And she could, whether at the Downbeat Club or the Onyx or the Three Deuces. She was not less, no, no even more fetching now. There was a sort of melancholy you wanted to shake out of her. A name you wanted to kiss off her lips. And she would go, every night, just as she’d gone before. She didn’t give herself one night to mourn he-who-she-would-not-speak-of. Not one night. Dress. Check. Heels. Check. Stockings. Check. Lipstick. Check. Like an army routine. This list, this habit. This was the only thing holding her up. If she hadn’t had the checklist, and the bar, and the eight million suitors . . . she would not have made it through.

      Still, at the end of the night, alone, having flirted and smiled or even kissed, she would stare in the mirror, those sweetheart lips frozen, that alabaster arm shaking shaking shaking, and watch as that mascara came down in little pieces, droplets, streams. And she would stay frozen, watching her real self, her alone self, what she’d become. After Edward.

      And what she’d become was becoming something different, fast. The admirers were still there, yes. Thank God. But inside, the flasks, the shaking. Hidden bottles under the cupboard. Night panics. Her thoughts racing. How easy it would be to break this bottle and take that sharp edge and put it in my neck, my wrists, my gut.

      Oh fuck! Fuck this body, fuck this heart. Why?! Why did he do it?

      And so, as the nights were getting longer and slurrier and more careless, dangerous, slapdash nights with seedier mornings, it wasn’t a difficult decision to make when Lt. Colonel Charles Krause came waltzing through the door of Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, went up to the drop-dead girl at the bar, a girl with pitch-black hair and ghost skin, and said, “I’m going to marry you and take you back with me to Michigan.”

      She laughed at the arrogance. They all did. But looking into his sky-blue eyes and blond crewcut hair, weighing the odds of her ending up with her throat slit on the street against those ice-blue eyes and a place called home with a front porch swing and a man who loved her, she knew. She said to herself, under her lips.

      Yes.

FOUR

      Danek wasn’t about to let anyone leave without realizing he was the smartest kid in the room. The most talented. The one who was going places.

      He hadn’t thought, driving up to this humble little home, classmates in tow, over the gravel and through the pines, that he would give a flying fuck what these old geezers thought.

      Er, he meant, the parents of the victim. Lt. Colonel and Dorothy Krause. I mean, they were ancient. They would probably just blather on the whole time. They would probably smell like soup.

      He was prepared. He had a notepad. Different pens. Black with felt tips, for writing faster. He would get what Lars, Brad, and, oh . . . even Katy . . . missed. He, alone, would figure it out. He, alone, would be the hero.

      He was not prepared. When the door opened and he saw that face. Jesus. You would not have guessed that Dorothy Krause was in her seventies. I mean, he knew they had children earlier back then, but holy smokes. He thought . . . not thought exactly, maybe felt, when that door opened and that face appeared . . . he felt drawn to walk up the stairs behind her, into the study and stay there, in this house, this home, for the winter.

      They were good people.

      Yes, it’s a simple phrase. One he could hear himself saying in the documentary. He would pause, then, for effect.

      Danek Mitchell, what a dreamer!

      She had made tea and an assortment of cookies, which they first refused, then picked at, then devoured. Everything placed gracefully on a silver serving tray, a silver service, wasn’t that what it was called? You just didn’t see it anymore. Tea in a silver serving kettle, on a silver tray, with teacups, tiny dishes beneath, and precious little flowers, daintily flaunting their tricks. Sugar, milk, lemon, if you need it. They just didn’t do it like this anymore.

      Dorothy Krause. Dotsy. With sable hair, ivory skin, that perfect, damned-near-perfect-placement face and those green, almost emerald eyes.

      Simple really, there in a vanilla blouse, gray wool pants. Nothing showy. There were lace embellishments of some sort on the blouse, he couldn’t remember, something small and sweet. But her way, her soft, gentle, unassuming way. Her sheer grace. It was disconcerting. Had Beth Krause, yes, Beth Krause, the one they were here about, the one they were gonna win an award with, the one found crumpled by the side of the road, had Beth Krause inherited this grace? These willow eyes? This unassuming, intoxicating nature?

      If so, you could see why she was dead.

FIVE

      And that could be something, too. The taste of a shell, or the dodge of a hand . . . something always, not infuriatingly, but rivetingly . . . just out of reach.

      Danek tried not to think about Dorothy Krause in this way. It was inappropriate. It was ridiculous. And yet.

      A sentence never uttered.

      A something never had.

      He wondered what she carried around underneath that ebony, ink-like crown.

      She was a raven.

      Odd, wasn’t it, that he should feel this, feel anything really, this . . . grappling. And yet, there it was, right in front of him. He wanted to laugh. Wished he could laugh.

      He found himself thinking of her, drawn to her name.

      Dorothy Krause. What had it been before? Maybe he could ask her. But how could he ask her?

      Matter of fact.

      Put it with a lot of other questions.

      And the name Dorothy. Wasn’t that simple? Was she named, after

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