Read Online The Poet by Michael Connelly - Free Book Online

changed.
    “I wanted to tell you that I’m going to write about Sean.”
    She was silent for a long time and she didn’t look at me. She got up and started emptying the dishwasher. I waited.
    “Do you have to?” she finally asked.
    “Yes … I think so.”
    She said nothing.
    “I’m going to call the psychologist, Dorschner. I don’t know if he’ll talk to me, but now that Sean’s gone I don’t see why not. But, uh, he might call you for permission …”
    “Don’t worry, Jack, I won’t try to stop you.”
    I nodded my thanks but I noted the edge to her words.
    “I was with the cops today and I went up to the lake.”
    “I don’t want to hear about it, Jack. If you have to write about it that’s your choice. Do what you have to do. But my choice is that I don’t want to hear about it. And if you do write about Sean, I won’t read that, either. I have to do what I have to do.”
    I nodded and said, “I understand. There is one thing I need to ask, though. Then I’ll leave you out of it.”
    “What do you mean, leave me out of it?” she asked angrily. “I wish I could be left out of it. But I’m in it. For the rest of my life I’m in it. You want to write about it? You think that’s a way to get rid of it? What do I do, Jack?”
    I looked down at the floor. I wanted to go but didn’t know how to exit. Her pain and anger radiated toward me like heat from a closed oven.
    “You want to know about that girl,” she said in a low, calmer voice. “That’s what all the detectives asked about.”
    “Yes. Why did this one … ?”
    I didn’t know how to phrase the question.
    “Why did it make him forget about everything good in his life? The answer is I don’t know. I don’t goddamn know.”
    I could see anger and tears welling in her eyes again. It was as if her husband had deserted her for another woman.
    And here I was, as close a flesh and blood approximation of Sean as she would ever see now. No wonder she was venting her anger and pain at me.
    “Did he talk about the case at home?” I asked.
    “Not especially. He told me about cases from time to time. This one didn’t seem that different except for what happened to her. He told me what the killer did to her. He told me how he had to look at her. After, I mean. I know it bothered him but a lot of things bothered him. A lot of cases. He didn’t want anybody to get away. He always said that.”
    “But this time he went to see that doctor.”
    “He’d had dreams and I told him he should go. I made him go.”
    “What were the dreams?”
    “That he was there. You know, when it happened to her. He dreamed he saw it but couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
    Her comment made me think of another death a long time ago. Sarah. Falling through the ice. I remembered the helpless feeling of watching and being unable to do anything. I looked at Riley.
    “You know why Sean went up there?”
    “No.”
    “Was it because of Sarah?”
    “I said I don’t know.”
    “That was before we knew you. But that was where she died. An accident …”
    “I know, Jack. But I don’t know what it had to do with anything. Not now.”
    I didn’t, either. It was one of many confusing thoughts but I couldn’t let it go.
    Before heading back to Denver I drove over to the cemetery. I don’t know what I was doing. It was dark and there had been two snows since the funeral. It took me fifteen minutes just to find the spot where Sean was in the ground. There was no stone yet. I found it by finding the one next to it. My sister’s.
    On Sean’s there were a couple of pots of frozen flowers and a plastic sign sticking out of the snow with his name on it. There were no flowers on Sarah’s. I looked at Sean’s spot for a while. It was a clear night and the moonlight was enough for me to see. My breath came out in clouds.
    “How come, Sean?” I asked out loud. “How come?” I realized what I was doing and looked around. I was the only one in the cemetery. The only