“Why?”
“Because, like it or not, the past is coming back.”
He blinks a few times and looks away. “Get out.”
“No.”
“I said—”
Then another voice says, “Ross?”
I turn. Her hair is short and white. She wears denim pants, an oversized brown work shirt rolled to the elbows, tired-gray sneakers. Her gloves are latex and she’s carrying a bucket. Her eyes find me, perhaps hoping for mercy or understanding. When I don’t give her any, I can see the resignation slowly cross her face. She turns her gaze back to her husband.
“You don’t have to,” Ross begins, but Jane-Lake shakes him off.
“We always knew this day would come.”
Now he too has the look of surrender.
“What’s your name?” she asks me.
“Call me Win.”
“Let’s take a walk out back, Win.”
CHAPTER 8
How did you find me?”
We are in the backyard now. The dogs run free in two large pens—one apparently for smaller dogs, one for larger. A bearded collie is being groomed on a table. A bullmastiff is taking a bath. The sun is bright.
She waits for my answer, so I simply say, “I have my ways.”
“It was a long time ago. I don’t say this as an excuse. And my role was small. I don’t say that as an excuse either. But not a day goes by that I don’t think about that night.”
I feign a yawn. She gives me a little laugh.
“Okay, yeah, maybe I deserve that. Maybe that was a bit sanctimonious.”
“Oh, just a bit,” I reply.
She strips off the gloves, washes her hands thoroughly, dries them with a towel. She beckons me with her head to follow her toward a path in the woods.
“Why are you here, Win?”
I ignore the question by saying, “Tell me about the day Ry Strauss drowned in Michigan.”
Her head is down as she walks. She sticks her hands in her back pockets—I’m not sure why, but I find this gesture endearing.
“Ry didn’t drown,” she says.
“Yet you told the police that?”
“I did.”
“So you lied.”
“I did.”
We walk deeper into the woods.
“I’m guessing,” she says, “that Ry has surfaced.”
I do not reply.
“Is he dead or alive?”
Again I ignore her question. “When was the last time you saw Ry Strauss?”
“You’re not an FBI agent, are you?”
“No.”
“But you have a big interest in this?”
I stop. “Mrs. Dorchester?”
“Call me Lake.” She has, I admit, a rather potent smile. I like it. There is a quiet strength to this woman. “Why not, right?”
“Why not,” I repeat. “My interests are irrelevant, Lake. I need you to focus. Answer my questions and then I’ll be out of your life. Is that clear?”
“You’re something.”
“I am, yes. When was the last time you saw Ry Strauss?”
“More than forty years ago.”
“So that would be…?”
“Three weeks before I turned myself in.”
“You’ve had no contact with him since?”
“None.”
“Any idea where he’s been?”
Her voice is softer this time. “None.” Then she adds, “Is Ry alive?”
Yet again I ignore her query. “Where were you the last time you saw him?”
“I can’t see how it matters now.”
I smile at her. My smile says, Just answer.
“We were in New York City. There’s a pub called Malachy’s on Seventy-Second Street near Columbus Avenue.”
I know Malachy’s. It’s a legit dive bar, with harried hay-straw-haired barmaids who call you hon and laminated bar menus that make you reach for a hand sanitizer. Malachy’s is not an artificially created “dive,” not some Disney reproduction of what a dive bar is supposed to look like so that hipsters can feel authentic whilst remaining safe and comfy. I go to Malachy’s sometimes—it is only a block from my abode—but when I do, I don’t pretend I belong.
“Back in the seventies,” Lake continues, “there was an underground network of supporters taking care of us. Ry and me, we moved around a lot. These people helped keep us hidden.” She snags my gaze. Her eyes are an inviting gray that goes well with the hair. “I’m not going to tell you any of their names.”
“I have no interest in busting old hippies,” I say.
“Then what do you have an interest in?”
I wait. She sighs.
“Right, right, anyway, we moved around—communes, basements, abandoned buildings, camping grounds, no-name motels. This went on for more than two years. You have to remember, I was only nineteen years old when this started. We’d planned to blow up an empty building. That’s all. No one was supposed to get hurt. And I didn’t even throw one of the Molotov cocktails that night.”
She is getting off track. “So you’re at Malachy’s in New York,” I prompt.
“Yes. Stuck in a storage room in the basement. The smell was awful. Stale beer and vomit. It still haunts me, I swear. But the big thing is, Ry, he isn’t stable. He never was, I guess. I can see that now. I don’t know what part of me was so broken I thought only he could fix it. My upbringing was troubled, but you don’t want to hear about that.”
She is correct. I don’t.
“But locked in that foul, tiny basement, Ry was really starting to unravel. I couldn’t stay with him anymore. It was just too abusive a relationship. No, he never hit me. That’s not what I mean. The woman who got us the room under Malachy’s? She saw it too. That kind woman—I’ll call her Sheila but that’s not her real name—Sheila could see I needed help. She became a sympathetic ear. I had to leave him. No choice. But where would I go? I thought about staying underground. Sheila knew someone who could sneak me into Canada and then to Europe. But I’d been on the run for two years now. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life this way. The stress, the dirt, the exhaustion, but mostly the boredom. You either travel or you hide all day. More than anything, I think wanted people turn themselves in to escape the monotony. I just craved normalcy, you know what I mean?”
“Normalcy,” I repeat to keep her talking.
“So Sheila introduced me to this sympathetic lawyer who taught up at Columbia. He thought that if I turned myself in, maybe I wouldn’t get that much time, you know, being so young and under Ry’s influence and all that. So we came up with a plan. I made my way to Detroit. I hid out there for a few weeks. When enough time had passed, I turned myself in.”
“Did you tell Ry Strauss what you were doing?”
She slowly shook her head, her face tilted toward the sky. “This was all done behind Ry’s back. I left a note with Sheila trying to explain.”
“How did he react to your departure?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Once a plan like that goes into effect, you can’t look back. It’s too dangerous for anyone.”