Shallow Graves

partner.
    That was Keith Torrens’s greatest regret.
    Castles, medieval alchemists.
    Alchemy, turning gold into brighter gold.
    Rings of gold. Wedding rings. Meg.
    He remembered a line from some country-western station—one that she listened to all the time.
    If we tell a lie while we’re lying together, then that’s nothing more than a port in bad weather. . . .
    He wondered again whether she was seeing anyone. He didn’t think so. But Keith Torrens (who’d never cheated on his wife) believed that while men and women both had an equal capacity for deception, women were better equipped to cover their tracks. Keith (empirical, rational Cartesian—a scientist ) had decided this was because as mothers, with broods to attend to, and possessing less physical strength than men they had honed their skills in guile for protection.
    A tertiary basic nitrogen . . .
    So, he’d found no circumstantial evidence. Nothing in her eyes. No Amex receipts (he could imagine what bastards those little blue tissue clues must be). Couldn’t recall any times she was supposed to be at home when she wasn’t (though how would he know? He was at the plant twelve hours a day). Sam had never referred to an uncle who’d come to help mommy with the yard, the gutters, the shopping.
    . . . a quaternary carbon . . .
    Who could be more devoted than he was? A better father? He never took long business trips, like some of the men who worked for the big companies by the Hudson. He didn’t uproot Meg and Sam and drag them around the country. He wasn’t like the fellow he’d met at the golf course one Sunday, a friend of a friend, who worked for IBM (I’ve Been Moved) down in Westchester. Four houses in six years.
    . . . an ethylene chain and a ketone . . . Put them in the oven, and let them bake. Bang, a Magic Moment, and out comes something new.
    No, she was faithful. Though questions of fidelity were the type you ask yourself in a certain way—fast, distracted—so as to avoid the possibility of a real answer. A scientist is not equipped to ask questions like that. Scientists aren’t happy until they find the truth and he wasn’t sure he wanted the truth.
    Keith Torrens drove toward his home. He’d make it up to her. Make up for what?
    He wasn’t sure.
    How?
    He didn’t know that either.
    PELLAM PULLED THE camper into the driveway.
    He saw the beige car parked in the road just past the drive and thought: Oh, hell. No . . . He recognized the car. Knew who the visitors were.
    Thinking about Big Mountain Studio’s promise to put mobile phones in all the campers. None of Lefkowitz’s minions had ever gotten around to it. And here the nearest house was several miles up the road. No time to get there.
    No time for anything.
    He doused the lights, parked on the grass, opened the camper door and climbed out.
    No one inside seemed to have noticed him.
    Everything seemed slowed up, the way they shoot karate fights in those charmingly bad Hong Kong karate flicks, or the way Sam Peckinpah shot his violent scenes. Pellam stepped out of the camper, breathing deeply. He started toward the house, avoiding the gravel.
    At least he had surprise on his side.
    As he walked steadily forward he thought, Man, no question it was fall. That smell of the air’s dry coldness, the sweet scent of oak or cherry fires.
    Pellam was thinking how seasonless the big cities are. New York, L.A. And it was odd how coming to the country during a blatant time of year—the first deep snow, the week of the most colorful leaves—is more than anything a return to youth. Painful nostalgia, a rearrangement of priorities and possibilities.
    Blatant seasons.
    Pellam figured that was a pretty good observation and he wondered if he’d live long enough to use it in a film.
    The sky was almost completely clear now, swept clean by the cold front. He glanced up, seeing the stars in the black vacuum that domed over him from one horizon of trees to another.
    A perfect fall night in Cleary, New York. Home of the perfect cemetery.
    That’s how they’d ended up in Cleary in the first place, he reflected, looking for the ideal, A-number-one cemetery.
    A perfect fall night.
    As he moved over the lawn. He saw shadows inside. The flicker of a TV screen. Keith’s car was gone. So the twins were in there alone with Meg and Sam.
    He hurried toward the house. He slipped the gun in his waistband. There was a window to the right of the door, opening into a dark room. He