Identical Page 7

  “I’m sure,” Tim answered. Beside Georgia on the sofa, Evon had relegated herself to the role of taking notes. Most of the city homicide dicks she knew weren’t much on interviewing technique. They’d come in and ask a few questions with their faces turned to one side, waiting for the moment when they could say, ‘Don’t bullshit me, if you don’t tell the truth you’re going to jail.’ But Tim was earnest and kind. It was like talking to somebody’s grandfather who was in a rocking chair on his front porch.

  “I’ll tell you something else I remember,” she said. “You may not care to hear it, but when I saw that commercial, saying Paul lied to the police, it pretty much came back to me. That was exactly what Paul told me that night. That he was going to meet Cass at Overlook? I can’t tell you if he did or he didn’t, but I remember his plans.”

  Evon felt jolted.

  “Any reason that stands out in your memory?” she asked.

  Georgia turned to her, plainly feeling challenged. “Yeah, because I was really surprised. It was a Sunday night, and my dad always went off with the men’s club and that meant we had the run of the house. Guys being the way they are, Paul always liked to take advantage of that.” She nodded decisively, like she’d put Evon in her place, which she had.

  Behind Georgia, leaning forward in an easy chair, Tim let his fair eyes rise to Evon. He didn’t want her breaking his rhythm, and eased back in.

  “Did Paul say why he wanted to go out there?”

  “I could guess. He needed to talk to Cass about Dita, I think. The two of them had an argument about her once a week. He was afraid Cass was going to marry her and tear his family apart.”

  Evon rolled over the details. It wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. Maybe Paul had met Cass at Overlook and hatched some kind of plan. But one of them, perhaps both, had left there soon and killed Dita.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m taking Paul’s side,” Georgia said. “I’m not. He was a louse to me. You know, women say, ‘He took the best years of my life’? He really did. I was the girl from the neighborhood he was too good for as soon as he finished law school. And I could have had a ton of boys in those days. The way I looked? It still aggravates me. But I’ll tell you the truth. I vote for him. I probably will this time, too.” Georgia looked at her plump hands for a second, trying to discern the meaning of what she had just revealed.

  People could get stuck in love, Evon realized, and then never recover. The best love of Evon’s life had come almost a decade ago, with Doreen. They’d had six good months before Doreen was diagnosed, and another year and a half with Evon helping her die. She’d been devastated afterward, in part because the normal times hadn’t lasted long enough to find out what the relationship might have been. She wondered now, if, like Georgia, she had never found her way back from mourning that lost possibility. People didn’t generally think that love could ruin a life. But perhaps. Evon felt her entire body pressed down by the sheer unhappy magnitude of the idea.

  “So let’s go back to the day of that picnic,” Tim said to Georgia. “Anything stand out in your memory about Paul that day?”

  She snorted. “Well, I remember he bumped into Sofia Michalis. I could just see by the way he was talking to her something was going on. When he broke up with me, he blamed it on this whole thing with Cass being a suspect. He said he was too mixed up with all that happening. But he was married to Sofia within six months. He wasn’t so confused then.”

  “Do you recall anything about him and Dita?” Tim asked.

  She shook her full face. It wasn’t clear, though, if that was a lack of memory or if she was distracted by the thought of Paul and Sofia.

  “One of the officers who talked to you,” Tim told her, “he said that you recalled that Paul seemed to have had words with Dita.”

  “Did I?”

  Tim reached into his tweed jacket and pulled out the report casually, as if it were just another piece of paper an old fellow would have in his pockets, like a grocery list, or a note about calling his daughter. Georgia spidered her hands on her forehead as she read the highlighted part. Eventually, she started to nod.

  “I just saw them talking. Dita went stalking off and I remember the look on his face. But that was nothing new. Paul hated Dita.”

  “Is that what he said that day? That he hated her?”

  “I don’t remember what he said. Did I tell that to the cop?” She took the report back from Tim’s hand without asking and swung her head laterally as she read. “I really don’t recall even talking about her with Paul that day. Except maybe when he said he was going to the Overlook, and I’m not clear on that.”

  “But you say he hated her?”

  “There was a lot not to like. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead”—she made the sign of the cross over her chest with impressive speed—“but I have to tell you the truth. Dita was just a very spoiled girl with a very sharp tongue. She was like, ‘My dad is one of those guys, emperor of the universe, so I can say damn well what I please.’ She was gorgeous, so there were always boys after her, the whole damned cavalry, but except for Cass, she managed to drive every one of them away after a while.”

  “Is that what Paul didn’t like about her? Her attitude?”

  “You know. He said she was wild, leading his brother astray, said his mom hated her, too, and Dita knew it and just liked egging all of them on. I don’t know. You ask me?”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” Tim said.

  “I think he was jealous. That’s a hard row to hoe. With twins? Identical twins? He loved his brother. There isn’t even a word for it really. Lidia always told the same stories about when they were little, how they couldn’t stand being different. She sewed their names into their clothes and they tore off the tags. They ate off each other’s plates. At night they ended up in the same bed, sleeping in each other’s arms. The neighbors’ collie bit Cass, and everybody swore Paul cried first, before either of them knew the dog had drawn blood. It was like they were joined at the heart. And that never quite stopped. I mean, Paul wouldn’t really accept that Cass was guilty.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, even after Cass pled, Paul was saying he was innocent.”

  “Did he?” said Tim, who allowed none of the surprise Evon felt rippling through her thorax to reach his expression. He maintained a purely conversational tone. “When was that?”

  “That day. The day Cass was in court pleading guilty. I was there actually. Paul and I had been broken up for months by then, but I don’t know, I wanted to support the family or something. I don’t know,” she repeated. “Probably I was looking for an excuse to see Paul.” She winced, pained by the memory and the futility of her longing. With her eyes closed, Tim noticed that her face was turning blotchy with age. “Anyway, he thanked me for coming. We went over to Bishop’s, and had a beer, and he was just blown away. I mean, you can imagine, somebody’s been like another part of your body all your life and they’re about to lock him up for twenty-five years. He was really blue and he just said to me, ‘He’s innocent, you know.’”

  Evon intervened. “And did you ask how he knew that?” She tried to evoke Tim’s mild tone, but again, Georgia’s response to her was sharp.

  “Well, he was his twin brother for God’s sake,” she answered. Evon had Georgia’s number by now. She was one of those women who didn’t really like other females, while the men she’d loved—Paul who’d thrown her over, and Jimmy Cleon with his drugs, and her dad who’d kept her from college—had all done her wrong. Life had put her in quite a bind. “I suppose I figured Cass told him that. But I was trying to console him, not play detective. Paul was miserable and I was listening to him. I thought we could be friends. Does that ever work?” She kept touching the front of her short stiff hairdo to keep it in place, after every shake of her head. “And of course, right before I got up to leave, he told me he was going to marry Sofia in a couple of weeks, so Cass could be his best man before he went inside.”
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  Tim was quiet for a second while she dwelled with that memory, which, like much of what she’d said about Paul, struck her hard.

  He asked a few more questions about what had happened on the day of the murder, whether anyone else had had a visible conflict with Dita. Finally, he looked to Evon to see if she had something else to cover, which she did. She flipped back to some notes she’d made that morning.

  “Thinking back, do you remember Paul having any serious cuts around that time?”

  Georgia considered the question for only a second before saying no.

  “Would you have been aware of any deep cuts?” Tim asked. He was as easy as if he were asking the time, but Georgia fixed him with a knowing brown eye.

  “I’d have known. We dated for nine years and I was sure I was going to marry the guy. I mean, the truth is I saw him less once Dita was murdered. He was finally going to move out of his parents’ after he started working, so he was looking for apartments, and then when Cass became a suspect he was completely focused on that, and we broke up.”

  “So are you saying you might not have known?” Evon asked.

  Georgia wheeled back, remaining cranky with her. “I’m saying I saw him less. But I saw him. And I would have noticed. Everybody knew there was blood all over that bedroom. Like I said. He hated Dita. I don’t think I’d have been that dense.”

  Evon absorbed her answer without quarreling, but these kinds of retrospective would-haves were always baloney. If the man she loved had told her he’d cut himself fixing a fence in his parents’ yard, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But Georgia was touchy enough that Evon wasn’t going to argue. She looked down to her notepad.

  “Is Paul right-handed?” Evon asked.

  “Mostly.”

  “‘Mostly’?”

  “Cass is left-handed. Writes lefty, eats lefty. Paul is the opposite. I always wondered when I noticed that, years ago, if that meant they weren’t really identical, but apparently that happens a lot with identical twins. When Paul and Cass were little, though, like I said, they hated to do anything different from one another. So sometimes they’d both eat lefty and sometimes they’d both eat righty. They each ended up pretty much whatever the word is, both-handed.”

  “Ambidextrous?” Evon said.

  “Right. So, for example, when they started playing tennis in high school, they used to shift the racquet, hitting forehands from both sides, but the coach put a stop to that. Paul played righty and Cass played lefty. They were both strong singles players, but at doubles no one could beat them, because basically they knew exactly what the other one was thinking on the court. They were state champions two years running. That was a big deal around here. Guys from a city school winning against all these suburban kids from country clubs? There were articles about them in the Tribune. And there was this one great story.” Georgia fell back, smiling at the recollection.

  “They were once in one of these home-and-home tournaments, Friday and Saturday, against a high school from Greenwood County, and when Cass finished his singles match the second day, the kid came after him with his racket. He was screaming, ‘I didn’t mind losing to you yesterday, but coming back and beating me left-handed today, that’s just being an asshole.’”

  The three of them all laughed hard. But even amid the levity, Evon could see Tim had reabsorbed some of his anxious aspect.

  “But Cass, he did wear a big ring on his right hand, didn’t he?” Tim asked.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “It was one of those Easton College class rings that Paul and him both bought when they graduated.”

  Tim nodded, but his lips kept folding into his mouth. Evon realized he was wondering how they’d pinned a right-handed murder on a lefty.

  Evon drank down some of her water, preparing to leave. They both thanked Georgia heartily for her time.

  “The lawyers may want to talk to you,” Evon said. As had happened before, Georgia’s mood shifted sharply in reaction to her.

  “The hell they will,” she answered. “This isn’t going to become my new profession. Tim called. I agreed to speak to him out of respect, and he said you were his boss and had to come, so I said fine to that, too. But I’m not repeating everything forty times to a bunch of lawyers so they can pick it apart. And I’m certainly not talking to any reporters. They just write what they want you to have said. This here, today, that’s the end of this for me.”

  Tim took over again, smoothing her feathers.

  “Well, no one knows anything for sure right now,” Tim said. “This could all blow over in a couple of weeks. But if they go to court, it’s hard to imagine you’re not gonna get dragged in a little. You were Paul’s girlfriend. There wasn’t anybody else who’d know more about him then. You have to realize you’re important.”

  Tim was good, Evon thought. She had never really laid aside her native awkwardness with strangers. But Tim knew intuitively what would soothe Georgia. ‘You’re important.’

  She was not fully convinced. “Still,” she said.

  They were all silent a second.

  “Can I suggest something?” Tim said. “Why don’t I just get out my camera? It’s in my overcoat and it takes video, too. And I’ll record you responding to a few questions. And that will be that. At least on our side. If somebody else sends you a subpoena, then you can deal with that, but you won’t have to answer about the same things for now. Just tell the lawyers or reporters, whoever it is, you aren’t saying anything else.”

  Georgia considered this. “Can I say this how I want?”

  “Course,” Tim answered.

  “And am I going to end up in another one of Hal’s commercials, all over the TV?”

  Evon had no idea how Tim could soften that. When she’d told Hal Tim might have dug up a witness against Paul, he’d danced around his office and immediately called the ad agency. But Tim didn’t try.

  “Probably,” he said. “That’s what I’d guess.”

  Georgia looked around the dim living room for a second, as if she were taking account of her life. Then she nodded. Tim had Georgia figured. Paul had left her behind and blasted into the firmament. But she’d been the woman with him then. It wasn’t wrong if the spotlight fell on her for a second.

  Georgia did two takes, the second less halting.

  My name is Yiorgia Lazopoulos Cleon. I’m making this statement voluntarily, and I understand it might be on TV. I was Paul Gianis’s girlfriend in September 1982 and had been for a long time. I was with him at our church’s annual picnic the day Dita Kronon was murdered, and I do remember that Paul had words with Dita that afternoon. Paul hated Dita because he felt like she was trying to tear his family apart. I also recall that even after Cass pled guilty, Paul told me Cass was innocent. I still talk to Paul every once in a while and I’ve voted for him. I’d have a hard time believing Paul did something this awful, but I guess you never know for sure with people.

  Georgia had added the last line on the second go-through. Evon, who was far from artsy, had learned enough from Heather that she could envision the way the director would present this, a tight shot, grainy, as Georgia spoke, all the worry and reluctance swimming through her face, even as the truth struggled to the surface. It was going to be strong.

  Tim and she had just started moving toward the door when Georgia’s father came thumping into the room. He appeared intent on the TV, to which he pointed with his cane in clear instruction. Georgia told him it would be a minute. The old priest looked a wreck. He wore sweatpants and a Chicago Bears T-shirt on which a long soup stain was visible. His hair was wild, and his full gray beard looked equally untamed. The frames on his heavy Harry Caray glasses might have been thirty years old. Behind them, his black eyes seemed quick and uncomprehending. Nonetheless, Tim greeted Father Nik with just the barest bow.

  “Father, bless,” he said, and the old man instinctively responded by raising his right hand with his thumb and first two fingers upward and making the sign of the cross, forehea
d to navel and then right shoulder to left. Tim reintroduced himself.

  “You might recall, Father, you buried our little Kate.” Standing behind her dad, Georgia tensed and shook her head sharply, indicating that those kinds of inquiries were unwise. But the old man had enough sense left to say something appropriate.

  “Oh yes,” he said, in his heavy accent. “Trejedy. Terr’ble trejedy.”

  “It was,” said Tim. “Maria was never the same. None of us were.”

  The old man turned back to his daughter, asking a question in Greek.

  “No, Dad, they know you’re retired.”

  Georgia looked at Evon and Tim with an impish smile. “He thinks you want him to perform your wedding. Dad, they just had some questions about Paul Gianis and Cass.”

  The old man responded once more in Greek.

  “No, Dad. It was Paul you saw on the TV. Cass is still in prison.” Her tone was patient but also exhausted. She recognized the pointlessness of explaining. She added another word or two in Greek, perhaps just repeating herself, but something about her answer inflamed him. The old man was instantly furious. He turned pink as a geranium, spit flying as he began to scream. His rage filled the house. He somehow was steadier on his feet in this state, and gestured widely with one hand. Every now and then Evon heard the word “Paulos” as Georgia tried to calm him.

  Tim and she had their coats on and were out the door quickly.

  7.

  Holes—January 17, 2008

  It was a gray day, with a low, woolly sky and little light. Evon and Tim stood out on the walk for a second, trying to regather themselves after Father Nik’s sudden fury.

  “That wasn’t pretty,” Evon said.

  “No. He’s got something missing, you can see that.”

  They reached the car. Tim got the door open and turned to put his backside down first. Until Evon saw him move so stiffly, she hadn’t really remembered Tim was as old as he was.