In his room on Potsdam Street. Where they hadn't a warrant.
Or maybe he was mixing them up with-wasn't sure . . .
One of them, he'd wakened the corporal in his Jeep, where he'd passed out. Scared the shit out of him he'd thought he was back in Iraq he'd fallen asleep on patrol.
No idea where he was except it wasn't Iraq. Taste of vomit in his mouth making him want to puke again.
Vomit and bloodstains on the front of his shirt that was pulled out of his pants. Every joint and muscle in his God-damn body aching and that dull pulsing ache behind his eyes-as soon as he awakened, it returned.
An officer in a gray-blue uniform was asking to see his driver's license, car registration. He was trying to wake up but didn't move fast enough for the officer and so somehow it happened, the officer had drawn his billy club and was prodding the corporal with it, then restraining him with it, laid against the corporal's straining left forearm.
Don't want to do that, son. Don't want to force me to cuff you.
Here was a surprise: the Jeep was at an acute angle partly off the road. Right front wheel in a ditch. And it appeared to be morning-in some wilderness place, the corporal didn't recognize.
Didn't know the name of the road though later he would learn it was the Sandhill Road. And he was in the Nautauga Preserve not far from the front entrance.
The Jeep's front doors were open as if they'd been flung wide. The door on the passenger's side had opened downward into a tangle of briars.
In the other vehicle, the sheriff's deputy's cruiser, a two-way radio was emitting a crackling noise you might confuse with the fierce cries of jays.
The river was about twenty feet from the Jeep, on the passenger's side. The water level was high, the river was rushing splashing and glittering in the early-morning sun.
The deputy commanded the corporal to step away from the vehicle. Step away from the vehicle and kneel on the ground, hands on his head and elbows pointing out.
The deputy glanced into the vehicle, front and back.
Anything here he should know about? Guns, drugs, needles?
Somebody with you in this vehicle? Was there?
Looks like-what's this-blood? Blood on the windshield?
Who scratched your face and why are your clothes torn?
The deputy called for backup. The Jeep was secured and the corporal silent, dazed and unresponsive was taken into custody like one of the enemy not understanding the words shouted at him, something in his eyes gone out.
FINISH HER! FINISH the job.
No. He'd tried to resuscitate her. He knew CPR: in basic training he'd learned.
Then, he tried to bury her in a grave but could only dig with his hands. There was no shovel or any other implement in the Jeep. Tried to use flat moderately sharp rocks but these were awkward. He could not dig a grave deep enough. The land here was marshy, yet pebbly as you approached the river. The water level was not predictable. In early spring as snow melted in the mountains there could be flooding, in late summer it could be only a few inches deep. But now after last week's thunderstorms the depth was ten, twelve feet close to shore.
Finish! Asshole did you finish her.
The grave was too shallow with stones and pebbles he'd placed on top of her. He did not want to cover her face with dirt (for possibly she was breathing, she would inhale the dirt) so he placed a rag over her face he'd found in the Jeep. There was the fear too that birds would come at daybreak and peck out her eyes-hawks, crows. Or in the nighttime, owls. But as soon as the filthy rag was in place, he felt better.
Then, he wasn't sure who the girl was. The girl who'd come to the Preserve with him against his wishes.
Laying a hand on his arm, rousing him to desire.
The angry desire of the cripple, whose potency is fury charged hotly in the throat.
In any case the grave was too shallow. A poorly dug grave, a fuckup of a grave. He hadn't been so stupid, so clumsy and such a general asshole in Iraq. He'd been one of the reliable guys, look an officer in the eye when he responded, always a reliable soldier but now, he'd been fucked up bad, wasn't thinking logically he knew. But-anyway-this was good: he'd found a broken tree limb, that could be broken again to fashion a crude sort of cross.
Christian burial. It was the decent thing to do.
The Mayfields would appreciate this. The mother, and Juliet. They would know what the cross meant.
He didn't believe any longer. Tried to explain to the chaplain who'd seemed bored. Or maybe he believed there was God, and there was Jesus Christ, but not for him.
Not for the girl, either: God had not "succored" her.
Why God did for some, and not for others, you could not know.
The girl was so still now. She had infuriated him with her heedless words and she had dared to touch him, who could not bear to be touched any longer. Her eyes were beautiful eyes but the life had drained from them. He lifted the greasy rag to see-yes, the life had drained from them.
So ashamed! He could not ever face the Mayfields again, who had loved him.
It was good, he would not see any of them again. Their love for him was a burden. Their love for him choked and suffocated him. Made him nauseated. In civilian eyes you see the fear, there is no remedy for this fear except to kill them.
If one civilian is killed, why not all.
Why would you stop with one. And why with two.
Why with three, four, five . . . Why the fuck would you stop.
HOPED HE MIGHT DIE by firing squad. In the interstices of his seven-hour confession to Beechum County detectives he spoke of this wish.
Only in Nevada, son. This is New York State not Nevada.
In New York State at Dannemora, he would sit on Death Row forever.
Few Death Row prisoners were executed any longer in New York State.
Lethal injection. Not electric chair. Not firing squad.
THROUGH THE NIGHT he spoke with detectives. Sporadic, rambling, not-always-coherent confession to having killed the girl.
If they asked him are you speaking of Cressida Mayfield he would say yes. But he did not once utter the name Cressida Mayfield in his own words.
Had he forgotten the name? Could he not bring himself to speak the name?
The girl. Juliet's sister.
The one who came to the Roebuck Inn for me.
Like being infected-AIDS, HIV. You can't help but infect others you touch. That is the nature of evil.
The other one-his fiancee-had spoken of babies. Her he was badly frightened of hurting yet she continued to love him. Or to claim that she loved him.
Wanting to place a pillow over her face when she slept. (For instance.) So he would not harm her.
Her face was very beautiful. He could not harm her beautiful face.
She would help him, she'd said. They would have a baby: she would become pregnant. There were ways. There were "techniques." They would learn.
He'd come to realize, killing her might be more merciful than disappointing her.
You do not want to disappoint those who love you or whom you love. Always it is the easier thing to kill them as it is easier to kill a civilian who might fuck you up with a complaint, easier than to negotiate a deal, once a person is dead there are no longer two sides to a story.
This was Sergeant Shaver's advice. All the guys repeated it like you'd repeat a joke that gets funnier each time you tell it.
IN THE MORNING they drove him to the Preserve. Five police vehicles accompanying.
At Sandhill Point he walked unsteadily. He was cuffed in front-still, he walked unsteadily.
He paused to cough, a violent hacking cough. Tears started from his eyes running down the onionskin face in tiny drops.
Couldn't locate the grave. Wasn't sure in which direction it was.
Detectives were skeptical, there could be anything resembling a grave out here. The narrow spit of land had been examined many times. The search had been practically inch by inch.
After a while the corporal seemed to have located the grave-site. All you could see was marshy soil, a few rocks. No evidence of a body having been laid in this area but a photographer took pictures.
He'd had to place her in the river, he said.
The grave had been a mistake. Wild animals would have found her, devoured her. He could not bear the desecration of her body.
He'd carried her, he said. Led them along the bank of the Nautauga River in underbrush, stumbling over boulders, rocks. Where the river was approximately fifty feet across, where a stand of birch trees emerged startlingly white and beautiful out of the morning haze on the farther shore, there he thought he'd placed her in the river, making his way out into the boulders near shore.
He crouched, he demonstrated how he'd done it.
And where had the Jeep been, he was asked.
The Jeep! Must've been somewhere close by.
She was carried away by the river, he said.
What would happen to her then, how far downstream her body would be carried, all the way to Lake Ontario maybe-he would not know.
In the hands of God. I guess.
He'd stumbled back then to the Jeep and blacked out.
Sometime in the night he'd wakened, a terrible gut-cramp and he'd begun to vomit.
Like battery acid the vomit tasted in his mouth. He'd thought possibly the things in his brain, in his eye, possibly one in his heart to control the micro-valve, one or all of these might be malfunctioning as a result of the vomiting but had no way of knowing.
Next he knew, the deputy was shaking him.
Son! Son! Wake up.
MUCH OF THIS, the Mayfields witnessed.
Fascinated and scarcely daring to breathe, the Mayfields witnessed.
Like what you would never imagine-the way the world is without you in it.
In the interrogation room, through the camera we could watch.
We could hear, and we could watch.
Except Brett's head was so low, so bowed. All we could see was the baseball cap part-sideways on his head he'd pulled down in shame.
It would require some time to realize what they were seeing and hearing and it would require even more time to realize that those long weeks, months they'd been searching for their daughter, making telephone calls, on the Internet twelve hours a day, sending out ENDANGERED MISSING ADULT to thousands of households, their daughter had not been alive.
If Brett Kincaid's testimony was truthful their daughter had not been alive even at the time she had become, to them, missing.
Each of the Mayfields had been deceived: self-deceived.
Arlette had believed that she'd been prepared for this terrible news. How many times she'd instructed herself You must prepare Zeno. He will not be able to prepare himself.
Zeno had believed that, of the two of them, obviously he was the stronger, the more responsible. He would have to protect Lettie-and Juliet as well. They can't. They aren't strong enough. It will be me.
Yet, Zeno hadn't really believed that Cressida could be dead.
Arlette hadn't really believed that Cressida could be dead.
A missing person cannot be a dead person. For a dead person is not really a missing person even if the body has not been discovered.
FINALLY THEY WERE allowed to see him.
Twelve hours after the taped confession finally they were allowed to speak with the ravaged young man who had almost become their son-in-law.
Zeno asked Why?
Kincaid said Don't know, sir. I don't know.
How tired he was, suddenly!
His head fell onto his crossed arms on the table before him. In an instant like a lighted match snuffed out, he was asleep.
EIGHT.