Fic: Blue Alibi, Part IX
The Pool
At first the sound was faint, like the echo of a high-pitched song.
Then as it went on, the tones resolved themselves into a howl. Shep was crying in a one-note tune that penetrated the distraught minds of the two men. The dog and his master were somewhere in the woods.
They threw the half-full mugs on the grass and took off running toward the source of the mournful sound.
As they skirted the circle of Adirondacks, Fusco saw a stained blue work shirt and jeans hanging on the slatted back of one of the chairs. Anthony Nix had stripped off his clothes here. A white pottery jug lay shattered on the ground next to the chair.
From the height of the wooded cliff where they had sat the previous afternoon, Reese and Fusco saw the broken body sprawled in the shallows of the little stream.
At this turn in its course the rushing water slowed through a widened bed forming the pool where the Nix sisters had leaped and played the day before.
The water’s dappled surface was now disrupted by Anthony Nix’s naked figure. The black-and-white dog was standing near his master, forelegs in the water, rear paws on the grass.
Looking down at the scene, the two men knew instantly what Shep’s howling meant.
Scrambling down the irregular flight of stone steps, they raced to the body. They took the stairs quickly despite the certainty that there was nothing more they could do.
Struggling behind him, Fusco marveled at Reese’s movements, his sure-footed descent suggested that rock-climbing was yet another of his many skills.
The exposed roots of ancient trees offered hand-holds which Fusco took advantage of. But Reese flew by them with careless grace.
When they reached the body, out of habit Fusco bent to press a finger to the pulse point behind the left ear. The skin was cold, still pliant, but lifeless.
A large dent marred the back of Anthony’s skull, just above the hairline. Blood embroidered the fracture, congealing in the stringy hair which fell over his bare shoulders.
Reese touched the head of the mourning dog, stroking the animal’s ears until he quit his wretched howling.
Fusco’s investigative instincts took over. He wanted to piece together the details of the incident as best they could before they had to explain it to the Nix sisters or the police.
“I figure sometime last night he must have decided to cool off, go for a swim”
Reese began talking then, his voice hoarse, the words low.
“When I went upstairs to bed, Anthony was still on the front porch. He wasn’t singing, but I could see his head over the top of the chair through the window.”
“How much do you figure he had to drink?” Fusco started calculating body weight and ounces of alcohol. “I mean, I saw Ondine carry him at least two jugs of wine during dinner.”
“I don’t know. But yes, he was drinking heavily. He never came into the parlor the whole night. I think she must have taken him three or four more of those pitchers after you and Allison left.”
Both men sighed and the dog looked up at Reese, like he was waiting for a signal of some kind.
Fusco continued the reconstruction of events.
“Then at some point, Anthony musta took off for the stream. Shed his clothes near the chairs. And two of the women musta followed him.”
“Or led him.” Reese’s eyes were on the woods above the pool.
“Yeah, maybe. So, they follow him to the edge of the cliff. And then they see him fall.”
“Or they pushed him.”
Fusco gave into the gruesome alternate scenario Reese was proposing.
“Yeah. Two of ‘em.”
Reese closed his eyes, reaching out to touch the dog again. Fusco thought he sounded like he wanted to skip the next part, but he couldn’t stop it from coming out.
“And the third one was with me.”
After a pause, Fusco continued.
“So when the two of ‘em get to the bottom of the cliff, maybe they see he’s already dead. Maybe not.”
Reese turned in a complete circle, his bare ankles making little waves in the water. When he found what he was looking for, he pointed toward the grassy bank.
“Alive or dead, I don’t know. But one of them used that. To make sure.”
The stone he indicated was lying in a shallow indentation in the grass. Mud was caked on it, but Fusco was positive some of the black streaks would turn out to be Anthony Nix’s blood.
Reese repeated his grim assertion.
“And the third one was with me. It took two of them to drag his body to the stream.
“But the third one was with me.”
Fusco nodded, resigned now to hearing him out.
“I’m their alibi for last night, Lionel. I can’t say for certain which of the three women didn’t do it. So I can’t know for sure which ones did.”
Reese ran his hand over his face, pressing fingers into his eye sockets, maybe trying to erase images, maybe hoping to capture lost visions.
After he did that twice, Fusco spoke to interrupt the punishing action.
“So I figure they’re all guilty. Each in a different way, I guess.”
He didn’t want to say it right then, but he knew Allison was implicated too.
How much did she know? How much did she plan? How much did she hide? He couldn’t tell for sure, couldn’t even ask the questions right away.
He just didn’t want to think about it now.
Whether it was a bird’s cry or the crack of a broken twig, something drew the attention of the two men toward the cliff again.
They looked up to see the four Nix sisters lined in a row at the edge, gazing down at them. The women were standing at the spot where Fusco and Reese had watched them dance in the pool the previous afternoon.
Fusco couldn’t make out their expressions; their faces were hidden in blue shadows.
But he could tell that their mouths were closed and they clasped their hands in front of them. They stood at attention, sunlight playing through the lace of their white skirts, a vagrant breeze lifting the hems around their white ankles.
Fusco faced his friend, whose searching eyes were focused on the women above.
“Look, you know we gotta call the police soon. They have to investigate, close the case.”
When Reese looked down at the stream again, Fusco could see his eyelashes were spiky and wet. He reached out to gently squeeze Reese’s shoulder.
Then he walked over to the grassy bank and picked up the bloodied stone.
He examined the gore on its smooth surface, weighed it in his palm, and felt confident Reese had found the right one. With a grunt, Fusco cast the stone into the deep center of the pool.
As he watched it sink below the concentric circles, he noticed a movement on his right.
Reese reached into his pocket, pulling out the platinum ring.
Without pausing to look at it, he whipped his arm to throw the ring toward the stone’s watery grave. Circles, smaller than before, smoothed over and then disappeared as the men stared at the dark pool.
Fusco felt waves of sorrow rippling through him then. If he could just go back, he would erase this whole filthy weekend; all the revelations, the easy deceit, the casual betrayals.
Somehow, he should have been able to prevent it. He should have protected his friend from the tangled hell of it all.
A sob bubbled up in his throat, but he swallowed it down.
When Fusco looked to the cliff top again, the women had vanished.
But there was still a job to be done.
“You gotta get away from here, John. You can’t be here.”
He could see hesitation in Reese’s open face. Fusco couldn’t remember a time Reese had seemed more vulnerable. So he laid out the case in the starkest terms he knew.
“Look, you can’t testify. And you got nothing material to say that advances the investigation. These women, they will use you as an alibi if they have to.”
He paused to let the truth sink in.
“But if that don’t work, then they’ll pin it on you. You know how it’ll look: Slick city stranger with a shady background, making time with the sisters, putting a beat down on the old man.
“With you gone, they won’t say nothing. About you. About this weekend. Nothing. I’ll make sure they don’t.”
Reese nodded, accepting the protection, if not the comfort.
He turned toward the steps, crossing the grassy slope in six long strides. At the base of the staircase, he paused with one foot on the landing.
“Lionel, there were ridges on both of her wrists.” He held up his right hand, rubbing the index finger against the thumb in a slow circle, remembering.
“I could feel them in the dark. Jagged scars all across.”
Reese looked resolute then, hesitation erased at last.
“It was Megan.”
The crooked pieces of the case fit together, even if the cracks remained. An ugly conclusion for sure. But it was the truth: clear, uncompromised and hard.
Then he lowered his head and climbed slowly up the stone steps. At the crest, he disappeared into the trees, the dog trotting at his heels.
Fusco sat for a while on the grass, chilled despite the sun beating down on his back.
He watched the stream bubble and dance around Anthony Nix’s body, little white caps breaking across the shoulders as his hair lifted and tangled in the waves.
There was plenty of blame to go around. Fusco thought he deserved a good portion, for his infatuation, his lust, his blindness. The sisters had done their share of course, as had their father.
The idea that John was least to blame but most injured coiled and festered in Fusco’s mind for the half hour he stayed by the pool.
By the time Fusco got back to the farm house, Reese had gone.
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Epilogue: The Gallery
Two months later Fusco read about the opening of Ionia, a new Soho gallery, in the Times Thursday Style section.
The celebration merited a spread of front page photos, showing a few of the hundreds of fancy people who turned out in support of the grieving Nix sisters as they launched an ambitious new space to promote the arts --- painting, photography, sculpture, even jewelry.
The article called the sisters “elfin, elegant, and mesmerizing.”
Gushing without shame, the critic wrote that their art was bold, brazen, edgy. “Exquisitely curated” was a phrase Fusco memorized although he didn’t know what it meant. He quit the article after this: “Gallery Ionia emerges from the pretentious murk of Soho as a space that reconfigures the terrain of the city’s cultural landscape.” What the hell.
He didn’t recognize anyone in the full-color pictures. Crowds were packed like sardines into the gallery’s bright rooms, whose walls were splashed with the distinctive aquamarine shade Anthony Nix had made famous.
Clenching their Champagne glasses and tight smiles, every patron looked rich, well-heeled quite literally, since many were wearing Nix shoes in honor of the fallen patriarch of the family.
After a brief investigation, the Ionia Corner police had ruled Anthony Nix’s death an unfortunate accident.
A tragedy to be sure, everyone had said, but wasn’t it wonderful how well his lovely daughters were coping under the circumstances? Such a fine tribute to their upbringing, everyone said.
Fusco had split from Allison a month after her father’s death. He tried and he knew she tried too. But the images of that murky stream ran through their relationship until it had to end.
After that he went on a two day bender which only ended when Carter dragged him out of the back booth at Swann’s Way. Retaliating against him or her father or something, Allison chopped off all her yellow curls, shearing her hair down to the nub.
But to Fusco’s relief, Reese and Carter were still solid.
Reese giving that old dog to Taylor as a belated birthday gift was a genius touch. And Shep was making the transition to city life pretty well, at least according to Carter’s regular updates.
Fusco felt he owed Reese a debt, even if the other man would never acknowledge it.
So Fusco made certain his friends were still safe in their risky relationship. He wanted to make sure that Reese’s distant picture could still shine bright out there for them on some hopeful horizon in spite of the twisted shadows of Ionia Plaisance.
Fusco’s campaign was simple. Maybe those secret flowers he sent to Carter’s desk were a corny gesture. And he really hoped Reese stayed confused about where those leather driving gloves had come from. Sure, he hated giving up the two freebie tickets to Kid Carrano’s title fight. But the contented smile on Carter’s face the next morning made that sacrifice well worth it.
Meddling, you could call it. Prying or snooping into their affair, maybe. But Fusco figured it was just looking out for his own self-interest when you got right down to it. After all, more than one person knew how to play at the spy game.
As he studied the newspaper photographs more closely, Fusco thought he recognized a single face in a small black-and-white picture on an inside page.
At the margin of the gallery crowd, clutching a tiny white vase, Harold Finch was squeezed against one wall. A giant canvas covered in dark vertical stripes loomed over his head.
He thought Finch was speaking with one of the Nix sisters.
But with her back to the camera, Fusco wasn’t exactly sure which murderer it was.