Munsonville’s boxy one-story library is drafty and ill lit, smells of floor wax, and has a meager array of current titles displayed on a folding table. It’s staffed by one distracted middle-aged male librarian. Charles sits in a far corner staring at the screen of a microfilm viewer, scrolling through front pages of the Munsonville Daily Press. Hyperalert, focused like radar, he scans past stories of storms and car crashes-and then he stops:
MUNSONVILLE WOMAN BLUDGEONED TO DEATH DAUGHTER CONFESSES TO CRIME
Helen Bowles, 36, of 12 West Bridge Street, was murdered early Tuesday morning, according to Sergeant Rupert Markum of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. At 3:14 A.M., a 911 operator received a call from the victim’s daughter, Emma Bowles, who stated, “I hurt my mother.” Officers Ellen Grady and Karl Werner responded to the call, and when they arrived at the scene they discovered Mrs. Bowles’s body lying on the floor of her daughter’s bedroom. The victim had received multiple blows to the skull from a blunt instrument. A small metal lamp found beside the body was covered with blood. According to Officer Grady, Emma Bowles was sitting on the floor near her mother’s body and said, “I did it.” Officer Grady described Miss Bowles, 15, as “weirdly calm.” She was taken to Juvenile Hall at the Washington County Jail, where she is being held on $100,000 bail.
Accompanying the story is a photograph of Emma’s bedroom. Helen Bowles’s body is covered with a blood-soaked sheet. There’s an old iron bed, a cardboard dresser with a goldfish bowl on top, unruly piles of books everywhere, and a poster of Edward Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom on the wall. The walls are splattered with blood, sperm-shaped streaks, as if someone holding a sopping paintbrush had whirled around and around in the middle of the room.
Charles feels a sense of disbelief, as if the story and picture aren’t real, exist only on the screen. He sits stock-still, suspended, his breathing shallow, the library silent. Finally he resumes scrolling.
DAUGHTER CLEARED OF MURDER CHARGE
Jury Rules Teen Not Guilty in Killing of Mother
A Washington County jury has found Emma Bowles, 15, not guilty by reason of insanity in the March 12 murder of her mother, Helen Bowles. The deciding factor, according to one member of the jury, was the testimony of a psychiatrist who examined Miss Bowles and reported that she was the victim of chronic abuse. A medical examination offered in evidence documented broken bones, contusions, and sexual trauma suffered by Miss Bowles at her mother’s hands.
Accompanying this article is a photo of Emma, wearing a jail-issue smock, being led out of the county courthouse. She looks passive, tranquilized, her hair tangled, her eyes vacant.
“Closing time,” the librarian calls to Charles.
“Five minutes,” Charles says, his eyes avid on the screen as he scrolls forward, pulse pounding. The librarian lets out a weary theatrical sigh, which Charles ignores.
EMMA BOWLES ATTEMPTS SUICIDE
Officials at Keystone State Psychiatric Hospital in Randall reported that Emma Bowles attempted suicide last night. She was discovered hanging from a ceiling pipe in the women’s lavatory. Rushed to the infirmary, Miss Bowles was resuscitated and is now listed in fair condition. Miss Bowles has been at Keystone State for seven months, since being found not guilty by reason of insanity in the murder of her mother. She was committed to the hospital by Judge Leo Holder-man when found to be a danger to herself. Dr. Alton Waters, the head of the hospital’s juvenile ward, stated, “The staff at Keystone is saddened by Emma’s setback. She seemed to be making progress. However, she is consumed by guilt and recently complained of aural hallucinations. We may be seeing incipient schizophrenia.”
As dusk descends, Charles walks down Main Street. The neon glow from the bars and pizza parlors softens the forlorn street. A little girl appears at the open door of one of the bars, looking around for someone to play with; a melancholy Country Western song drifts out from the jukebox.
Charles turns onto West Bridge Street, which has no comforting lights, just a row of vacant brick buildings that give way to scruffy fields and the sky beyond. He comes to number 12. Under the For Sale sign over the doorway, he can make out faded lettering: Oversby Hardware. The windows of the apartment above are blocked by yellow shades. Charles tries the door that leads up to the apartment-locked. He walks down the narrow alley that runs alongside the building. At the far end is a wooden staircase leading to the second floor.
Charles looks around: no one. He climbs the stairs. At the top is a door with a square of small windows in it. Again, locked. He tries to force it; it rattles but holds. He jabs his elbow through one of the windows; the glass shatters. Charles freezes, waiting. The faint wail of the jukebox is all he hears. He reaches in through the window and releases the lock.
Charles finds himself in a dark, dusty hallway. The building is too quiet, as if someone is hiding in it. At the end of the hallway is a door. He gives it a little push and it swings open.
Charles moves slowly into the apartment. Dim light struggles in through the cracked shades. He stands still while his eyes adjust. He takes out the pocket flashlight he keeps in his car and runs its beam over the scene. The living room is piled with crates, window screens, rakes-remnants of the dead hardware store. Water stains bloom on the floral wallpaper. He walks into the bathroom; the sink, tub, and toilet are dry and rust-stained. The linoleum is curled up at the corners, the air dense with dust motes.
Charles looks at himself in the medicine chest mirror. His face looks gray, sunken, cadaverous. He opens the medicine chest, its rusty insides hold the shriveled carcass of a bar of soap, one curled and crumbling Band-Aid, a rusted lilac powder tin-Lady Lovely. Charles twists the top, lines up the tiny holes, and shakes a little of the pallid powder into his hand. It smells stale and sickly floral, like something you’d put on an ancient stroke victim on her birthday.
Somewhere in the distance an ambulance speeds down a country road, its siren shrieking into the deaf, descending night. Charles walks down a short hallway and into Emma’s bedroom. The old iron bed is still there, the faint bloodstains are still on the walls, the sadness is still in the air, the thick air, in the last gasp of twilight. Sitting in a corner is the empty goldfish bowl, thick with dust. Charles imagines Emma in this room, abused and alone.
“She killed her here.”
Charles swings around and the flashlight’s beam lands on a woman standing in the doorway. For a second he thinks he’s hallucinating. She’s somewhere just this side of old, bone-skinny, in tight jeans pegged at the ankles and a sweatshirt pushed up at the elbows. Her face is bloated and shiny-is it bruised?
“You got a cigarette?” Her voice is cagey, conspiratorial.
Charles stares at her for a long moment before handing her his pack of Marlboros.
“Keep it,” he says.
She shakes out a cigarette and searches for a match. Charles hands her his book. She lights up and inhales deeply. “You’re not going to tell them I’m up here?”
“No,” Charles says softly.
“No one’ll rent it anyway. Bunch of superstitious yokels.” She gives Charles a wily, assessing head-to-toe, opens her mouth and runs the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. Then she throws him a pitying, dismissive look, turns, and walks out of the room. Charles listens as her footfalls fade, swallowed up by the silence, by the building, by the town.
Charles stops at the diner by the turnpike entrance and gets a cup of coffee to go and a pack of cigarettes. He heads for the pay phone back by the rest rooms and dials Emma’s number. She answers on the second ring.
“Emma? What are you doing?”
“Just going over your notes.”
He imagines her in her nightgown, sitting up in bed, a pad propped up on her knees.
“Good girl. Listen, I’m trapped in an incredibly dull dinner meeting with some legal types. I’m not going to get down there tonight. But I’ll see you in the morning. And, Emma?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
He hears her breath catch.
“I love you, Charles.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
Charles hangs up the phone and walks out into the night.