The Prettiest Feathers by John Philpin Read Free Book Online

that involved with someone—an infant who’s hardly even a person yet,” she said. “But it happens. Her birthday’s on the eleventh, so she’s really on my mind. I’m thinking about going to visit her. I haven’t done that yet. Ever.”
    “Maybe you should,” I said, as if I cared.
    “I want to. But I also
don’t
want to.”
    I managed to move the conversation forward by offering to accompany Sarah to the cemetery.
    “I don’t want to intrude,” I said, “but if it would help, I’d be happy to go with you.”
    “I would like that,” she said.
    “What about Robert?”
    “He usually goes in the morning. If you don’t want to run into him, we can wait until afternoon to go. It’ll work out.”
    “I didn’t mean that,” I told her. “I was wondering how he handles it—the loss of your daughter, I mean.”
    “He’s angry. Sometimes I think that’s the only feeling he knows. But I suppose he’s just protecting himself.”
    “You’re probably right,” I agreed. “I don’t know much about police work, but it must be hard on a person—especially if you’re investigating murders. I can’t imagine having to look at a dead body. You couldn’t pay me enough.”
    “He thinks he’s stumbled onto a serial killer,” Sarah said. Then she laughed, but stopped, quickly, to apologize.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not funny—but, to understand why it tickles me, you’d have to know Robert. There’s nothing he loves more than a good conspiracy. He’s collected all the books about the Kennedy assassination—quotes from them like they’re biblical. And now he thinks there’s a serial killer slinking in the shadows.”
    “You mean he’s looking for a—I can’t think of his name, the guy they executed in Florida—that type of person?”
    “Bundy.”
    “That’s it,” I said.
    “All it is, really, is a lot of unresolved missing person cases and one murder victim. The rest is in Robert’s head, except…”
    Sarah stopped. She was looking at my eyes.
    “Except?” I prompted.
    “Maxine.”
    I smiled. “I’m afraid I’m not following.”
    “Last night I found a book with her name in it. Maxine Harris. She’s the one who was murdered. She was a customer of ours.”
    “I still don’t get it.”
    “I’ve never known anyone who was murdered. I mean, besides Maxine, and I didn’t really know her either. She came into the shop Once, and I bought the book from her—Rimbaud, in fact.”
    Chaos theory—a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, a volcano erupts in the American Northwest—suggests infinitevariety, but also an essential pattern, a connectedness, that is found upon microscopic and macroscopic examination. I could say that my selection of victims has been random, and that would be true to an extent. But such a statement ignores what roils beneath the level of the conscious mind.
    When I was in Maxine’s apartment, I walked around, looked at things, absorbed what the environment had to offer. She subscribed to
Harpers Magazine
and
Utne Reader.
She drank tea—English breakfast—not coffee. A half-written letter to “Ron” told me that marriage was in the cards for next summer in Minneapolis. In the yellow pages of her phone book she had circled “Emily and Others, Used Books Bought and Sold.”
    A butterfly had flapped its wings.
    “She was quiet,” Sarah said. “I think she said she’d moved out here from Wisconsin or Minnesota, some place like that. I should say something to Robert about the book, but it probably doesn’t mean anything, and I don’t think I can talk to him right now anyway.”
    “I think you should tell him,” I said. “It might be a clue.”
    She laughed. “A clue? What a quaint word. You must read a lot of mysteries.”
    “I watch the British ones,” I said. “On PBS, detectives still find clues.”
    “It’s like a feather blowing in the wind,” Sarah said. “They never catch killers anymore.”
    The next evening was