Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

Dashiell pulled to go that way. He’s fearless and he likes to prove it, doesn’t he?” The question addressed to Madison, as if she’d answer him, nod and react in some way. Then back to me. “We’ll be sad to see him go.”
    Madison went to her room and came back with a rawhide bone, one knot chewed off. She put it into my open bag and then leaned back against the table.
    “How did your trip go?” Leon finally asked, as if it were a vacation he was asking about, a trip to Disney World, a week in Paris, a cruise to the Galapagos.
    I caught his eye and shook my head. I wanted to check my watch, to say I had an appointment, or just to break and run. I needed time to think without Madison staring at me, without Leon’s unspoken hopes.
    Leon didn’t ask anything further. He must have understood that if he wanted to know more, it wasn’t going to happen with Madison in the room. That conversation, the one I was dreading, would have to wait until later because I didn’t want to tell him what had happened and just leave it at that. I wanted to offer him something more, something hopeful. And in order to do that, I had to get out of there.
    Fifteen minutes earlier, sitting on someone’s stoop after I’d left Charles’s apartment, I’d gone over what he’d told me, that Celia wouldn’t have written the note that way, which meant she’d been murdered, and that it had happened late on the day Leon had asked for Madison’s records. I didn’t think that could be a coincidence. I’d taken out the records again, and this time what seemed to jump off the pages were those white spaces, spaces not indicating the passage of time as I’d previously thought, but showing that information had been removed, whited out on the first Xerox and then copied once more, information that Leon and I were not supposed to see. It had to be something Celia could explain, that Celia knew about, everything now pointing in the same direction. Even the locked door could be explained. After all, Bechman had the keys to Celia’s apartment, and he wouldn’t have kept them on his key ring. He would have kept them at his office.
    The keys wouldn’t be there anymore. Not now. But I still needed to get into Bechman’s office again. I needed to see the originals of Madison’s records, to see what was written where the copy I had only showed blank space.
    But not before I tried to clarify something urgent. For that I needed Madison, Madison who was now standing a foot away from me with her arms folded across her chest, her lips a tight little line. Who did I think I was fooling with my research trip? Not Madison. That much was clear.
    “I need to talk to Madison for a minute, if that’s okay,” I said to Leon, not the way I usually did things, but the way I thought I might get what I needed this time. Without asking Madison, without waiting for anyone’s approval, I grabbed my tote bag and headed for Madison’s room. I put the tote on the end of her bed and pulled out the copy of the drawing that had been found on Eric Bechman’s desk the day he was killed.
    When I turned around, Madison and Dashiell were standing in front of me, the door closed.
    “I need your help again,” I said.
    Madison looked down at Dashiell.
    “No, not with Dashiell this time. It’s about what happened to Dr. Bechman. It’s about what people think you did.”
    There was a little flicker in one cheek, the one under the droopy eyelid, the same kind her father had when he got tense.
    “There was a drawing found on his desk. The police were told you did it and that it was a threat, that the meaning of the drawing was that you wanted to stab Dr. Bechman in the heart for what he did to you.”
    She seemed to notice the folded piece of paper now. She looked back at me and waited.
    “I need to know two things. I need to know if you drew this picture. I need to know what you meant to say when you drew it. And I need to know if you left this drawing on Dr. Bechman’s desk the day he was killed.”
    For what seemed like forever, Madison stood staring up at me. Then she took the drawing from my hand, unfolded it and studied it for another eon. Finally she held up one hand, the thumb, pointer and middle fingers pointing toward the ceiling, the ring finger and pinkie folded against her palm.
    “You’re right,” I said. “Three things. My mistake.”
    While some stars died and new ones were born, Madison Spector stood in front of me just staring. Then she