Every Dead Thing

But instead I will climb back in my car and return to Portland in the waning autumn light. I have a room at the Inn at St. John, with big bay windows and clean white sheets and a separate bathroom two doors down the hall. I will lie on my bed as the traffic passes beneath my window, as the Greyhound buses arrive and depart from the terminal across the street, as the street people push their shopping carts filled with bottles and cans down the sidewalk and the taxi drivers wait silently in their cabs.

And in the gathering darkness I will call Rachel’s number in Manhattan. The phone will ring-once, twice-and then her machine will kick in: “Hi, no one can come to the phone right now, but…” I have heard the same message again and again since she left the hospital. Her receptionist says that she cannot tell me where Rachel is. She has canceled her college lectures. And from my hotel room, I will talk to the machine.

I could find her, if I chose. I found the others, but they were dead when I found them. I do not want to chase her down.

It is not supposed to end this way. She should be beside me now, her skin perfect and white, not scarred by Woolrich’s knife; her eyes bright and inviting, not wary and haunted by the visions that torment her in the night; her hands reaching for me in the darkness, not raised to ward me off, as if even my touch might cause her pain. We will both reach an accommodation with the past, with all that has taken place, but, for now, we will each do so alone.

In the morning, Edgar will have the radio playing and there will be orange juice and coffee on the table in the lobby, and muffins wrapped in plastic. From there, I will drive out to my grandfather’s house and start working. A local man has agreed to help me fix my roof and mend my walls, so that the house can be made habitable for the winter.

And I will sit on my porch as the wind takes the evergreens in hand, pressing and molding their branches into new shapes, creating a song from their leaves. And I will listen for the sound of a dog barking, its paws scraping on the worn boards, its tail moving lazily in the cool evening air; or the tap-tap-tap on the rail as my grandfather prepares to tamp the tobacco into his pipe, a glass of whiskey beside him warm and tender as a familiar kiss; or the rustle of my mother’s dress against the kitchen table as she lays out plates for the evening meal, blue on white, older than she is, old as the house.

Or the sound of plastic-soled shoes fading into the distance, disappearing into the darkness, embracing the peace that comes at last to every dead thing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A number of books proved particularly valuable in the course of researching this novel. Chief among them was The Body Emblazoned (Routledge, 1995), Jonathan Sawday’s brilliant study of dissection and the human body in Renaissance culture. Other works to which I returned included F. Gonzalez-Crussi’s Suspended Animation (Harcourt Brace amp; Co., 1995); Denis C. Rousey’s Policing the Southern City (Louisiana State University Press, 1996); Luther Link’s The Devil (Reaktion Books, 1995); Lyall Watson’s Dark Nature (Hodder amp; Stoughton, 1995); and the Crime Classification Manual (Simon amp; Schuster, 1993) by Ressler, Douglas, Burgess, and Burgess.

On a more personal note, I wish to thank my agent, Darley Anderson, without whom Every Dead Thing would not have seen the light of day. I also wish to acknowledge the faith, advice, and encouragement of my editor at Hodder amp; Stoughton, Sue Fletcher, and Bob Mecoy, my editor at Simon amp; Schuster in New York.

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