Without Prejudice (7 page)

‘Well, she got it wrong. The witch.’ She had met the woman once, at a party at the president’s house, given to welcome Robert to the new job. Anna hadn’t liked her at all. He remembered the two of them, eyeing each other with equal coolness. ‘Can you undo the damage?’

‘I’ll have to try. But I think it’s too late. Balthazar wouldn’t have brought it up if he weren’t determined to move Carlson to a New York house.’

‘Maybe he just wants more money.’

‘No, he said money wasn’t the issue.’ He had always thought publishing was more about experience than IQ, but the way Anna inevitably got the point right away sometimes made him wonder. But then she was unusually incisive. With Anna he always felt he was half a step behind; she was that quick, which even his vanity wouldn’t let him deny.

‘Then I doubt there’s much you
can
do. Except take the blame.’

‘Yep.’

‘So let the witch sort it out. She made the mess. Let her unmake it.’

He thought about this as she reached out and draped an arm over his chest, which was how she usually signalled she wanted to make love before they went to sleep. But then she said in a voice that was daylight clear, ‘I thought I’d have a look at the transcript of Duval’s trial.’

‘Why do you want to do that?’ he asked. He didn’t like the idea at all. Once started on something, Anna never let go.

‘Your account of the trial bothered me.’

‘Why?’

‘You said it was a “done deal”.’

He turned sideways and struggled to see her face turned towards him in the dark, but he could not make out her expression. Outside the night wind had picked up. He felt a slight chill that normally would have led him to snuggle up to her. But he kept his distance. ‘And?’

‘I asked Maggie Trumbull how to do it. Maggie never practised, but her husband does, so she knows the ropes. She told me to call the Cook County Courts at 26th and California – that’s where the archives are.’

‘And what did you discover?’ he asked, keeping his voice neutral, wishing she’d saved this news for the next day, when it would not disturb the intimacy of their time beneath the covers.

‘There isn’t a transcript. There wasn’t an appeal; I guess the lawyer must have felt there weren’t any grounds for one.’

He wondered why he felt so relieved. ‘End of that story then.’

Anna sighed and stretched, turning onto her back. He could see her profile clearly now, and wished she would turn back towards him. ‘Not quite. I’ve had the file pulled. I’m going down Monday morning to see what’s in it.’ She paused. ‘I just want to have a look.’

He turned over, his back to her now. ‘That’s what Pandora said. Happy anniversary.’

3

It was warm by breakfast time – already in the low 70s – and he thought Sophie and he should have their ritual Sunday morning time early, before the sun got hot and high enough to burn them. He decided not to swim, and waited with a beach towel while Sophie put on her suit and hunted for her flip-flops. Anna said she’d stay behind and make lunch, tacit recognition that this was his time with his daughter.

The tarmac drive curved towards the Poindexter house and they cut across it for the beach. A banked ridge of dune on the landward side was stable enough to support a few trees – mainly aspens and poplars – but once they reached the crest there were only clumps of marram grass between them and the thin flat beach. The sun slanted in from behind, and a steady breeze gave a light running chop to the waves, which surged and broke in the brightening light.

He stopped for a minute to catch his breath, and Sophie waited impatiently.

‘I bet you’re sad school’s out,’ he said.

‘
Dad
,’ she said in her complaining voice.

‘Anything special you want to do over the summer? I mean, other than day camp and maths.’

‘Math,’ she said like a little Midwesterner and he laughed. ‘Can we go to another baseball game?’

‘We’ll see,’ he said. He’d taken her once that spring, on opening day, sending a note to her school saying she had a dentist’s appointment. They’d gone to Wrigley Field on the north side to see the Cubs in their old-fashioned ivy-lined stadium, rather than his own boyhood team, the White Sox, who played in a hideous, modern concrete shell just off the Ryan Expressway in an especially rough part of town. Sophie had loved it – the lush green of the playing field, the caramel corn and oversized cups of Coke, the way the crowd went wild when Aramis Ramirez had hit a home run. But as they boarded a bus to go home, they’d been spotted by Miss Every, Sophie’s math teacher, who spent the rest of the term sourly asking Sophie how her teeth were.

Sophie skipped down the dune and he watched the little pink figure head towards the waves, resisting the temptation to call her back until he had come down, too. She was a good swimmer, thanks to her mother’s insistence on weekly lessons, and he knew he was over-protective, with a tendency to restrain rather than release. If he let himself, he saw cause for alarm in any opportunity Sophie had for pleasure.

They had the immediate beach to themselves. Further down he could see the Poindexters lugging a Sailfish into the water, and to the right a tall man was walking a labrador, moving away from them. Robert squatted on the sand and watched as Sophie waded to the first sandbank, then lowered herself into the water with a squeal. It was early enough in the season for the lake to be cold.

When she came out she was shivering, and he handed her the towel.

‘Can we go to the boathouse?’ Sophie asked.

He looked at his watch. ‘If we’re quick.’

They moved double-time down the beach, with Sophie racing ahead as he sang
Run Sophie Sophie Sophie, Run Sophie Sophie Sophie
in an adaptation of his own father’s chant when he was a little boy in Michigan. They came to the dilapidated boathouse about half a mile down the shore, nestled far back from the shore in the lee of the dunes. It must once have been impressive, wide enough and deep enough by Robert’s reckoning to hold a trio of speedboats, yet it was now little more than a shell, its pine timbers rotting or missing altogether.

They went through a missing door into the one large cavernous room. A rusting frame of a boat cradle and a work bench in one corner were all that was left of the structure’s former maritime glory. The concrete floor was fractured and crumbling, the rear window frames covered with silky cobwebs the colour of spun sugar, like a tinselled Christmas tree.

‘Can I play for a while, Daddy?’

He looked around uncertainly. The sun was too high now to cast much light into the room. Stop it, he told himself; let her play. ‘Okay, but just for a little while. We should get back for lunch.’

He went out the doorway to the beach and heard her game begin, some concoction of imagined characters and different voices. Her propensity for imaginary play stayed strong, but perhaps that was because she was an only child. Two years earlier she would have wanted him to stay and play with her; now when he came into her room in Evanston and found her on her bed surrounded by animals, she would stop her game, and ask if he could please go away so she could be ‘private’. He remembered how even as a young teenager, miserable at boarding school, he had liked nothing better on returning home than to play with his marbles.

A jet ski shot along parallel to the shore, its rider in a black wetsuit. Robert watched it for a minute, wondering where the appeal of these aquatic equivalents of snowmobiles lay. They gave pleasure to a single rider, while making life a misery for anyone within earshot. The jet ski turned in a sharp arc, slowing down until the nose swung round and pointed out towards deep water again. Then the engine revved and the rider hunched forward, arms extended, his hands gripping the drumstick handles, his backside perched in the air.

‘Sophie.’ He turned and called towards the boathouse.

She didn’t call back. Patiently, he called again, but still she didn’t answer. He walked to the boathouse and peered inside, saying, ‘Come on, monkey, time to go.’

Sophie wasn’t there.

He felt his heart beat faster, an ominous growing thump that rose up into his throat and ears. Anxiety coated him like sweat. He tried to still his racing thoughts and took a last penetrating look inside – there was simply no place to hide in the vast empty space. Then he ran out, looking around him like a camera on a dolly. He realised she couldn’t possibly have come this way without his seeing her – her and the abductor he was starting to fear.

He could see what had happened: they’d been followed, unknowing as they blithely made their way along the beach, all the while watched by someone with the patience of a hunter. His ten minutes staring goon-like at some stupid jet-ski rider would have given plenty of time to move.

His panic rose, but the logic seemed clear enough, so he went around to the rear of the boathouse. A path led up through the dune and he looked at the seemingly endless moguls of sand. As if footprints would be visible. He began to run up the dune, his feet sliding with each step in the baseless bleached grains. Reaching the small summit, he could see a large ranch-style house in the distance, several acres of lawn and hardwood trees around it. A perimeter fence at the foot of the hill screened off the property, and the fence ran on either side for several hundred yards.

He shouted out, ‘Sophie, Sophie,’ but could hear only his wheezy breathing.

He sensed time was critical – isn’t that what the police always said? He turned and retraced his steps down the dune, accelerating downhill until he almost fell when he hit the flatness of the beach. He circled to the front of the boathouse and then out onto the beach. Scanning the stretch of sand on either side, he could just make out the Poindexter sailboat moving briskly away from shore. There was no sign of the labrador man.

‘Sophie, where are you?’ he cried. He found it hard to think clearly; it seemed unreal.

He started back to the boathouse, atavistically returning to the initial point of panic. He peered inside, his eyes adjusting to the light, baffled and terrified at the same time. He wondered where to look next – should he run back to the coach house and call the police? Or climb the fence over the dune and run to that house for help?

Then he made out a faint noise. A tinkling sound, gurgling like running water. He looked to his left, in the dust-enshrouded corner of the boathouse, just as he realised the noise was that of laughter – a child’s laugh. Sophie stood there, with one hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking in her deep amusement.

‘Jesus,’ he said in astonishment as she came scurrying out of the corner.

‘I fooled you,’ she said, and he felt a monumental anger replace his relief. Before he could even stop to think, he had grabbed her by the arm, and in one quick motion slapped her tiny rump. The smack echoed in the room.

Sophie clutched her bottom with both hands, a look of outrage on her face. Her mouth, gaping in astonishment, suddenly fell into the turned-down wobble of a crying jag, and she wailed in pain before running out of the boathouse.

He followed her, furious that she had let his fear grow into panic. He hadn’t expected her to come out right away – inevitably her games needed some terminating flourish beyond his time limit – but she had crossed a line she had never crossed before.

They walked like this all the way home, Sophie striding angrily ahead, the hurt transferring from her bottom to her pride, Robert grimly following, ashamed of himself for smacking her, but still angry that she had played this trick on him. Fifty yards short of the coach house she sprinted down the tarmac, and by the time he came into the kitchen she had her face flush in Anna’s stomach, arms around her waist, shaking with sobs.

Anna looked at him with bewilderment. ‘There,’ she said, as the crying slightly subsided. ‘Go upstairs now and change. Lunch is ready.’

Sophie released her hold and pushed past Robert, unwilling to look at him. When she’d gone upstairs and out of earshot, he said, ‘I was scared.’

‘So you had to spank her? You haven’t done that in years.’

He sighed, and went to the refrigerator, where he found the last of the white wine they’d had the night before. He poured himself half a tumbler, and drank it off in one big hit. He was still shaken by the terror he’d felt. Anna continued to look at him for an explanation. He put the glass down and said, ‘I couldn’t find her anywhere. And there wasn’t any place to hide.’

‘So did you think she’d run away? Why would she do a thing like that – for goodness’ sake, she’s only nine. Did you have a row or something?’

He shook his head, moving around the kitchen, aware of Anna’s reproving gaze. He fingered the coffee maker, then gathered up a pair of dirty spoons and put them in the sink. He barely noticed what he was doing, saying, ‘I assumed the worst.’ He shrugged, fatalistically, to acknowledge the weakness of his own fears. ‘I’m sorry. She’s getting older and more independent, and I guess I’m just not adjusting to that very well. I still think of her as four years old. And I still worry that somebody’s going to snatch her.’

Anna sighed. ‘That’s every parent’s fear. And she’s not four years old any more.’

Robert felt like a faltering athlete given a pep talk by a coach. ‘But she’s still so little – and so pretty.’