Blood Memory

Chapter 53

I’m running.

Harder and faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Tree trunks flash past the way they used to when I rode horses on the island, but it’s only my legs hurling me forward, my feet flying from something too terrible to face.

You want to know who killed your father?

No! I want to turn back time. Push back the days to the point before I began asking questions-questions to which I thought I wanted answers.

Now I know better.

Some things it’s better not know. Pearlie’s voice.

Michael Wells’s house appears between the distant trees. The sight of it brings a strange feeling of hope, the way a thief might feel sighting a church, his sole chance at sanctuary. I sprint harder, and soon the shining blue rectangle of the Hemmeters’ swimming pool appears. But the Hemmeters’ are gone now. The pool, like the house, belongs to Michael. Too many changes.

I stumble down to the concrete patio that surrounds the pool, my eyes plumbing its blue depths. Part of me wants only to slip beneath the surface, to lie on the bottom and hold my breath while my heartbeats get further and further apart, stretching into ever increasing increments of time, eventually reaching infinity. But that’s not the way it happens. Deprived of oxygen, the heart will eventually beat harder and faster, struggling to feed the starving tissues until at last it squirms frantically and uselessly in the chest. I would kick to the surface then. Not even a death wish can suppress instinct honed over millions of years. That takes coercion. Or a suicide method from which there is no turning back. Like intravenous morphine. That probably plunged Ann into blissful sleep so fast that any second thoughts quickly faded into oblivion. But I doubt she’d have turned back, even if she could.

In some people, the pain of living minute to minute simply grows so acute that they can finally stand to look into the face of death without blinking-even look at death as a friend-and cross that river Dr. Malik talked about without a backward glance. For me, even though I’ve crawled right up to the black rim of suicide, pain has always been preferable to the void.

Until now

There’s a light on in Michael’s house. That alone draws me past the pool and up to the French doors at the back of the house. Suddenly I’m banging on the glass, banging hard, and the pain shooting up to my elbow doesn’t stop me, but only reminds me that I’m alive. I see movement inside, and then Michael is hurrying to the door, his face all concern. Before he can speak, I throw my arms around his neck, stand on tiptoe, and hug him as tightly as I can.

“Hey, hey, what’s the matter?” he asks. “What happened? Did you and your mother have an argument?”

I want to answer, but my chest is heaving against him in great racking sobs that make my whole body shudder. I killed my father! I scream, but nothing comes from my throat.

“Calm down,” Michael says, stroking my hair. “Whatever it is, we can deal with it.”

I shake my head violently, staring at him through a screen of tears.

“You’ve got to tell me what happened, Cat.”

This time my mouth forms the words, but again no sound emerges. Then, like a distraught child, I manage to stammer out the truth. Michael’s eyes go wide for an instant, but then he pulls me tight against him. “Your grandfather told you that?”

I nod into his chest.

“Did he give you any proof?”

I shake my head. “But I feel itthe minute he said it, I felt I’d finally heard the truth. Only”

“What?” asks Michael.

“I was eight years old. Could I really have shot my father?”

Michael sighs with deep sadness. “When I moved back to Natchez, it was autumn. And one of the first things that struck me was all the pictures in the newspaper of seven- and eight-year-olds who’d shot their first deer.”

I close my eyes in desolation.

“I thought about the possibility yesterday,” he says. “I told you that if it was your father who had molested you, it could have been Pearlie or your mother who shot him. But, yesit could have been you. Patricide is certainly the most convincing scenario for your retreat into silence.”

What am I doing here? I wonder. Standing in the house of a man I barely know, shaking like an epileptic?

“If that is what happened,” Michael says, “if you did shoot your father, it was a clear act of self-preservation. If an eight-year-old girl was driven to the point where she had to shoot her father, no one in the world would question the rightness of her actions.”

I hear Michael’s words but they have no effect. Words cannot penetrate the wounded region of my soul. He seems to sense this. Keeping one arm tight around me, he leads me to the master bedroom, pulls back the covers, and sits me on the edge of the bed. He kneels and removes my shoes, then stretches me out on the bed and pulls the covers up to my neck.

“Don’t move from this spot. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He vanishes, leaving me in the cool, dry darkness of his airconditioned bedroom. I feel strangely at home here. Mr. and Mrs. Hemmeter slept in this room for more than thirty years. They loved me like a daughter, and something of their spirits must remain.

Michael reappears beside the bed, a glass of water in his hand.

“This is a Lorcet Plus. It’ll take the edge off.”

I take the white pill from his hand and pop it into my mouth, but as the glass touches my lips, I realize I’m making a terrible mistake. I spit out the pill and put it on the bedside table.

“What’s the matter?” Michael asks.

“I can’t take this.”

“Are you allergic to hydrocodone?”

I look up into his concerned eyes, wishing I didn’t have to tell him the truth. Why has he done all this for me? He’s disrupted his entire life to help me. There’s got to be a reason for that. But I can’t lie to him anymore. Not even by omission.

“I’m pregnant,” I tell him, my eyes never leaving his.

He doesn’t flinch the way my mother did when I mentioned my father’s mistress, but something changes behind his eyes. The warmth slowly dissipates into a cool and wary look.

“Who’s the father? The married detective?”

“Yes.”

He stares silently at me for a few moments. “I’ll make you some tea instead,” he says awkwardly. “Decaf.” He turns and walks quickly to the door.

“Michael, wait!”

He turns and looks back, his face pale, his eyes confused.

“I didn’t want this,” I tell him. “It wasn’t planned or anything. But I’m not going to terminate it. I should have told you before now, I guess, but I was so embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think badly of me. But nowwith everything else you know, it’s absurd to hold anything back.” My next words take more courage than swimming into the middle of the Mississippi River. “If you want me to go, I’ll understand.”

He only stares at me, his eyes unreadable.

“I’ll get the tea,” he says finally.

I never got the tea. I never took the Lorcet either, but exhaustion gave me that most precious of gifts-dreamless sleep. When Michael woke me a few minutes ago, the clock beside the bed read 11:30 P.M. I felt neither rested nor tired.

I felt numb.

The room is all shadows now, cast by the spill from the bathroom light. Michael has pulled a chair up beside the bed. He’s watching me as he might a patient in the ICU. At least he hasn’t asked me how I feel.

“What do you want to do?” he says.

“I don’t know. What do you think I should do?”

“Go back to sleep. See how you feel in the morning. I’ll stay in one of the guest rooms upstairs. If you need me, you can call my cell phone.”

“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even blink.

“I’m not trying to make a pass or anything,” I tell him. “I just don’t think I should be by myself right now. You know?”

He cocks one eyebrow at me. “That’s the first time a woman ever threatened to kill herself if I didn’t sleep with her.”

I’d like to laugh, but I can’t. There’s nothing left in me. I slide across the bed and pull back the comforter. Michael stares at the blank space in the bed, then gets up and walks into his closet. When he returns, he’s wearing a pair of blue gym shorts and an Emory University T-shirt. He sits on the edge of the bed and sets the alarm clock, then slides under the covers and pulls them up to his chest.

It seems a weird parody of married life, both of us lying on our backs, staring at the ceiling as though we’ve been together twenty years and said all there was to say long ago. I expect him to talk, to probe me with questions. But he doesn’t. What does he think of me? Does he regret the moment that he walked into his backyard and picked up the net to rescue me from the bottom of his swimming pool?

Tentatively, I slide my hand over the cool sheet and take his hand in mine. There’s nothing sexual in the touch. I’m holding his hand the way I must have held my father’s long ago-before he twisted our relationship into a perverted shadow of parental love. It takes a while, but Michael squeezes my hand in return. I may be mistaken, but it feels as though he’s shaking. I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to notice, so I say nothing.

After a time, another realization hits me. Michael is hard. I know this without feeling his erection against me. It’s something about the way he’s lying, a tension in his body. This knowledge does something to me. It always has. I feel not only desire, but a sense of compulsion, even obligation. In the same way a match exists to be struck or a loaded gun to be fired, the erect penis is a potential waiting to be released. I’ve seen a loaded rifle instantly transform a roomful of men from ennui to alertness. The moment a bullet enters the chamber, the inanimate weapon takes on an almost living presence, dangerous and impossible to ignore. For me, in this moment, Michael’s penis is the same.

“I can help you with that,” I say softly.

“What?”

I nudge his hip with mine. “That.”

“How did you know?”

“I just do.”

He keeps staring at the ceiling. “Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know. Because you need it. You can kiss me if you want.”

He’s silent for a time. Then he says, “I don’t want to kiss you right now. Not like this. I can’t help the other. I’ve had a thing for you for a really long time, but I don’t want to be what other men have been to you.”

I squeeze his hand. “We don’t have to make love. I can just use my hand. Orwhatever.”

Michael pulls his hand out of mine, and I hear his breathing stop. Then he turns on his side and looks at me. I can barely make out his eyes in the dark. “I don’t want that,” he says. “Okay? That’s not the way this is supposed to happen. You may not know that, but you need to learn. Now, go to sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

I guess I know how he looks at me now. I suppose I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. I should probably feel regret. But I don’t. Here I lie, pregnant by a married man, sleeping next to the first nice guy I’ve come to know in a very long time.

And I feel nothing at all.

When you dream the same dream over and over, you begin to wonder whether, like a Hindu who has lived an immoral life, your punishment is to be reincarnated again and again in the same body, unable to rise up the chain of being until you learn the elusive lesson of your sin.

I’m back inside the rusted pickup truck, my grandfather behind the wheel. We’re rolling up the sloping hill of the old pasture. I hate the stink inside the truck. Sometimes a river breeze blows it out of the cab, but today the air hangs dead and still over the island, as though trapped under the overturned bowl of steel-gray clouds. My grandfather grits his teeth as he drives. He hasn’t spoken since we left the house. I might as well not be here. But I am. And soon we will crest the hill-crest it and sight the pond on the other side.

I don’t want to see the pond. I don’t want to see my father walk across the water like Jesus and pull open the bullet hole in his chest. I already know what he’s trying to tell me. I already know that I killed him. Why won’t he let me rest? If I could apologize to him, there might be some reason for this dream. But I can’t. I can’t speak at all.

“Goddamn rain,” Grandpapa mutters.

He downshifts and steps on the gas, and we trundle over the hill. The cows are waiting for us as they always are, their eyes glassy with indifference. Beyond them lies the pond, a perfect silver mirror reflecting only sky. To my right, the prize bull mounts the cow and begins lunging forward.

Grandpapa smiles.

Dreading the sight of my father in the water, I cover my eyes with my hands. But sooner or later I will have to look. I peer between my fingers and brace myself against the horror I know is to come.

But it doesn’t come. Today the pond is empty. My father isn’t floating on its surface, his arms splayed out like those of a man on a cross.

The perfect mirror remains undisturbed.

Grandpapa brakes as we roll toward the pond, then stops twenty yards from the water’s edge. I smell decay, rotting plants and fish. Where is my father? What’s happened to my dream? Even something terrible is more comforting than the unknown. I turn to Grandpapa to ask a question, but I don’t know what the question is. I couldn’t ask it anyway. Fear is clawing around in my chest like a trapped animal trying to get out.

A new smell cuts through the decay of the pond. Something man-made. It’s the tonic Grandpapa uses on his hair. Lucky Tiger.

“Goddamn rain,” he says again.

As I stare through the windshield, a curtain of rain sweeps across my field of vision like a great gray shadow, all the leaves trembling under its weight. In seconds the glassy surface of the pond is sizzling like water thrown into a hot skillet. Pearlie told me once that a person is like a raindrop, sent from heaven alone but destined to rejoin all the other drops at journey’s end. I can’t remember heaven, so I must have left it a long time ago yet I still have such a long way to fall.

“All right, now,” Grandpapa says.

He reaches across the seat, takes hold of my knees, and turns me sideways like a man shifting a sack of seeds. When he moves toward me, I beseech him with my eyes. He hesitates like a man who has forgotten his car keys. Then he reaches under the seat, pulls out Lena the Leopardess, and shoves her into my hands. As I shut my eyes and press her soft fur against my cheek, a feeling like warm water spreads through my body. The rain sweeps over the truck as Grandpapa pushes me back on the seat, and the hard, percussive patter of raindrops on a tin roof fills my ears. When his big hands unsnap my jeans, I don’t feel them. When his leather belt creaks and jingles, I don’t hear it. Lena and I are a million miles away, padding through the jungle, listening to the endless music of the rain.

And it begins.

When I wake to sunlight streaming through Michael’s bedroom, I know.

Like Saul on the road to Damascus, the scales have been stripped from my eyes. My recurring dream was no dream at all, but a memory. A memory trying to come back to me any way it could. The business of my father walking on water was something grafted onto it, a different message from my subconscious, pointing me toward something I’ve yet to learn.

And today I will learn it.

Where Michael lay beside me in the bed, I find a note on the pillow with a house key lying on top of it. The note reads, Gone to work. Tried to wake you, but you wouldn’t budge. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to. Call me at the office when you wake up. Michael.

I take Michael’s phone off the bedside table and dial Sean’s cell number.

“Detective Sergeant Regan.”

“Tell me you got the autopsy report.”

“Cat, I moved heaven and earth to get that fucking thing, but it’s not to be had. John Kaiser’s sitting on it like national security depends on it. If you want that report, you’re going to have to ask Kaiser for it. I’m sorry, babe. I tried my best.”

I hesitate only a moment. “Give me Kaiser’s cell number.”

“Shit. Are you sure? The Bureau’s still looking for you.”

“If Kaiser really wanted to find me, I’d be in jail now.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

Sean reads out the number. I commit it to memory, then hang up and dial it.

Kaiser catches his breath when he hears my voice. “Do you have something for me?” he asks.

“No. I need something from you.”

“That’s not the answer I was looking for, Cat. The only reason you’re not in jail is because I thought you could help me solve this case.”

“I can. But it’s a quid pro quo situation. You help me with my problem, I’ll help you with yours.”

“Christ. What do you want now?”

If I seem too anxious to get the autopsy report, Kaiser might not give it to me. “Tell me where you are with the murders first. What about the saliva cultures? Any Streptococcus mutans growth yet?”

“Not yet. The pathologist thinks it’s still early, though, that we’ll see it by the thirty-six-hour point.”

“No, twenty-four hours is enough, if it’s there. The saliva in those wounds is either coming from someone without teeth, or someone taking penicillin with gentamicin. You haven’t found any victims’ relatives who fit that description?”

“We’ve got a couple of male relatives with dentures. I’m going at them hard, but they look clean to me.”

“Talk to their families. If they wear their dentures at all, they’re not the source. What about the antibiotic angle?”

“That’s tough to nail down,” Kaiser complains. “Anybody could lie about that. We can’t take blood levels on every male relative of six murder victims.”

“Why not? The DNA evidence proves the source is male, and this is your only real lead. The British police did blood tests on thousands of people in one town to solve a murder case.”

“This is America, Cat, not England.”

“Okay, okay. Any sign of anaerobic spirochetes in the cultures? Bacteroides melaninogenicus? Anaerobic vibrios? Those are specific for teeth, and we could rule out edentulous people.”

“Shit. I’m lookingI don’t see anything like that.”

“It’s still early for those to show up, and they’re difficult to culture anyway. I’ll keep thinking about this angle. What about the skull in Malik’s lap?”

“Nothing. The only fingerprints on it were Malik’s.”

“Naturally. What else?”

Kaiser blows out a stream of air in frustration. “We’re checking all film-processing labs, in the hope that someone’s done work for Malik. It was video equipment we found in his apartment, but I’m hoping for a break.”

“What else?”

“I’ve got the technical services guys trying to resurrect data off the drives we took from Malik’s office computers, but they’ve got nothing so far. I think his film really is our only chance. But if the killer got that when he killed Malikwe’re fucked.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been more help to you. I’ve had my hands full here.”

“You just get me the names of the women in Group X. Do that, and I’ll keep your ass out of jail.”

“I’m trying, John. But I need your help, too.”

“What do you need?” His voice is wary.

“The same thing I asked you for yesterday. The autopsy report on my aunt.”

“What are you looking for? Cause of death, what?”

“You know what I’m looking for. Her reproductive organs. Anything out of the ordinary?”

Kaiser takes his time to answer. “I shouldn’t give you this.”

My throat tightens.

“Didn’t you tell me that Ann was obsessed with having children?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that makes no sense at all, Cat.”

“Why not?”

“Because your aunt was sterile. She had been for decades. Probably from the time she was a teenager.”

“What do you mean? Sterile how?”

“Her tubes were tied.”

Something goes hollow inside me. “That’s impossible. The pathologist must have made a mistake.”

“You know better,” Kaiser says wearily. “And the sterilization wasn’t done by any normal procedure, either. That’s how the pathologist knew it was done a long time ago.”

“How was it done?”

“Apparently, in a tubal ligation the procedure is done fairly low down the fallopian tube. Your aunt’s tubes were cut just below something called the fimbria, a flowerlike opening of the tube just below the ovary. They were tied off with silk sutures, and the silk was still inside the scarred tissue at autopsy. The pathologist said OBs haven’t used silk for that procedure in decades.”

A cloud of fog has descended in my mind.

“I know this is giving you some ideas about your personal situation, Cat. Please try to stay calm, okay? Maybe you should call Dr. Goldman.”

“Did the pathologist say anything else?”

“He said that an OB wouldn’t cut off the fimbria. That was something a general surgeon might do as a quick method of sterilizing somebody. He thought it was damned odd.”

My hands are shaking, but not from fear this time. It’s outrage. “I have to go, John.”

“No!” he says quickly. “You can’t just go. I’ve given you a lot of rope to play with, and I’m afraid you’re going to hang us both. I’ve got superiors to answer to, like it or not. And every hour you’re on the street comes out of my credibility. I’m looking for some help here.”

Michael’s clock reads 7:05 A.M. “Give me eight hours, John. In that time I’ll have something to give you, or I’ll come back to New Orleans and let you throw me to the wolves.”

The silence seems interminable.

“What can you possibly learn in Natchez that can help me?” he asks.

Probably nothing, but I don’t really give a shit. I just need you off my back.

“Eight hours,” he says softly. “Cat, if I haven’t heard from you by five o’clock today, I’ll have the Natchez police pick you up on suspicion of murder.”

If they can find me “Thanks, John. Hey, could you fax me the autopsy report?”

Another pause.

“I’m a member of her family, for God’s sake. Please.”

“You’re a pain in the ass is what you are. Do you want it sent to the same number where we sent you those files on Malik?”

“Perfect. I’ll talk to you before five.”

“Cat-”

I hang up, then get up and run for the bathroom. My father’s body is coming out of the ground today, and nothing is going to stop that. If the judge needs an affidavit from my mother to issue a court order for exhumation, he’ll get one. There will be no more denial for the women of the DeSalle family.

Denial is death.