THE PEN CHANNEL was silver at this time of night, the sun set but some light still left in the sky. The treetops in the park had turned black, though, and the drive-in screen was just a hard shadow from over here. Celeste sat in her car on the Shawmut side, looking down at the channel and the park and then East Bucky rising like landfill behind it. The Flats was almost completely obscured by the park except for stray steeples and the taller rooftops. The homes in the Point, though, rose above the Flats and looked down on it all from paved and rolling hills.
Celeste couldn't even remember driving over here. She'd dropped off the dress with one of Bruce Reed's sons, the kid decked out in funereal black, but his cheeks so clean-shaven and his eyes so young that he looked more like he was heading out for the prom. She'd left the funeral home and the next thing she knew she was pulling into the back of the long-closed Isaak Ironworks, driving past the empty shells of hangar-sized buildings and pulling to the end of the lot, her bumper touching the rotted pilings and her eyes following the sluggish current of the Pen as it lapped toward the harbor locks.
Ever since she'd overheard the two policemen talking about Dave's car-their car, the one she sat in right now-she'd felt drunk. But not a good drunk, all loose and easy with a soft buzz. No, she felt like she'd been drinking the cheap stuff all night, had come home and passed out, then woken up, still fuzzy-brained and thick-tongued, but rancid with the poison now, dull and dense and incapable of concentration.
"You're scared," the cop had said, cutting to the core of her so completely that her only response was pure, belligerent denial. "No, I'm not." As if she were a child. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. I know you are, but what am I? Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.
She was scared. She was terrified. She felt turned to pudding by the fear.
She'd talk to him, she told herself. He was still Dave, after all. A good father. A man who'd never raised a hand to her or shown a propensity for violence in all the years she'd known him. Never so much as kicked a door or punched a wall. She was sure she could still talk to him.
She'd say, Dave, whose blood did I wash off your clothes?
Dave, she'd say, what really happened Saturday night?
You can tell me. I'm your wife. You can say anything.
That's what she'd do. She'd talk to him. She had no reason to fear him. He was Dave. She loved him and he loved her and all of this would somehow work out. She was sure of it.
And yet she stayed there, on the far side of the Pen, dwarfed by an abandoned ironworks that had recently been purchased by a developer who supposedly planned to turn it into a parking lot if the stadium deal went through on the other side of the river. She stared across at the park where Katie Marcus had been murdered. She waited for someone to tell her how to move again.