Blood of Cain

74

I checked into the first motel I found off an Interstate exit near Augusta. All rooms were ground level, most overlooking the parking lot in the front or the highway out back. The room smelled of bleach, cigarette smoke, and cheap perfume. The burgundy carpet was worn, a framed print of the Augusta National Golf Course hanging unevenly on the wall.

I turned on the television and found a cable news channel. The images were of police cruisers at a crime scene, blue lights flashing, paramedics, and emergency personnel converging on a wetland dotted with swamps and cypress trees.

The video cut to a twenty-something blonde reporter standing next to an airboat. She looked into the camera and said, “Police are still out here searching for the murder weapon in this grisly killing of the young woman. Investigators say the body had no identification near it, no purse or any personal effects. The body was discovered by a guide who operates a narrated boat tour of the Barataria Swamp. He said he saw what he first thought was trash near a cypress tree, but upon closer examination he found the young woman’s partially clothed body. Police don’t know if she had been raped. As to the rampant speculation that this could be the body of Courtney Burke, spotted in New Orleans just days ago … no one knows until DNA testing is complete. The victim, shot more than a dozen times in the head, was believed to have been about the same age and height as Burke. Detectives say the ends of her fingers were hacked off. Senator Logan was quoted as saying his prayers go out for the victim’s family, whomever they may be. His democratic challenger, Governor Les Connors, had no comment pending the completion of the police investigation. Reporting from Jefferson Parrish, this is Lisa Fisher, News Channel Four.”

I shut off the TV and left the stale room to get some fresh air. I had to run. To sweat. Had to clear my mind. Excess adrenaline floated like an oil slick over my heart. I needed to pound the earth with my feet, to sweat, to focus only on the potential of clear vision at the horizon and run to the edge of the world. I sprinted across the hotel parking lot, down a street, across a field and followed a path that led to a slow-moving river. I ran hard along the riverbank.

I ran by two teenage boys who were skipping stones off the surface. Bolted around an old black man fishing with a cane pole. He sat on a milk crate, threading a fat, wriggling worm onto a hook. I jogged deeper into the woods, causing a flock of wild turkeys to take flight, the beat of their wings like thunder rising from the ground.

The temperature dropped and a light rain began falling. I ran through the rain, the drops getting larger and hitting my face. Within a minute I had arrived at an old cemetery, many of the headstones partially covered in moss. Some of the grave-markers chipped and broken, a wrought iron fence worn-out, stooping, the gate sagging from age and rust. I stopped running and stood at the perimeter of the cemetery to catch my breath. I don’t know why, but I opened the unlocked gate, the hinges moaning, and I stepped inside. I walked around the graves, trying to read the inscriptions. I stood there, rain pouring, thinking about my mother, thinking about her love for art, for people — for the earth and the birds and creatures that lived among us.

There was a movement, color in a forgotten acre of aged headstones and crumbling stone captions to lives once lived. A bright red cardinal darted through the cemetery, alighting on a low-hanging limb of a pine tree. I watched the bird, its feathers damp and slightly disheveled in the rain. The bird dropped to another limb and then flew to the top of an old grave-marker. The cardinal raised its head and warbled a note. I lowered my eye and saw a lone, red fresh-cut rose resting against the headstone. I stepped over and read the inscription.

The cardinal tilted its head at me, silent, the sound of raindrops plopping against leaves. I stood there a few minutes, listening to the rain fall, the sky a deep pewter gray, and yet there was a live rose on a very old grave. I had no idea who’d placed it there. But between the cardinal and the rose, the bookends of color framed an inscription that had meaning in a too often deceitful world.

I looked up to the heavens and let the rain fall against my face and chest, the water cool and somehow a healing tonic, a gentle spring flowing from an unseen source.

An hour later, after a change of clothes, I lay flat on the hard mattress in the motel room, the two pillows were spongy, like two loaves of bread. I closed my eyes, thinking about what I’d seen today, and what I saw on the news. Was Courtney dead? If so, I knew my would-be assassin, the guy I reeled in from the river, either didn’t deliver my message to his troop leaders, or he did and they ignored it. And I now knew that Courtney was my niece, my murdered sister’s daughter … my mother’s granddaughter.

I tried to make sense of life’s curveballs. I couldn’t. But I could keep my eye on the ball and swing hard, damn hard. I remembered what Courtney said that day on my boat. ‘I believe there was a reason we met on the road in that forest. I don’t know what it is, but I think the reason is might be bigger than you pulling those men off me.’

I opened and closed my fists, took a long deep breath and slowly released it. I hadn’t felt this protective toward someone since my wife, Sherri, died. Three years ago I was powerless to defeat her ovarian cancer. And, at the moment, I felt just as immobilized. If Courtney had been murdered, what could I do — charge Logan at one of his rallies and get shot through the head by the Secret Service?

If it wasn’t Courtney’s body, if she’d somehow managed to get out of New Orleans, dodging federal agents, police, and special op mercenaries, it demonstrates her uncanny ability for survival. And it would mean she’s moving closer to finding and confronting her uncle, my brother, who I now knew was a raging and deadly psychopath.

The room was very warm and dark. I walked over to a wall air-conditioning unit and punched the start button. Hot air blew out of the unit for more than a minute before beginning to cool, the air smelled like a damp and moldy basement. Even over the drone of the air conditioner, I could hear the storm building, thunder rolling, and a flash of lighting blooming beyond the thin, white curtains.

I opened the curtains and watched the rain fall through the shafts of light cast by the street lamps. The rain quickly filled potholes in the parking lot, the blue neon from the motel sign reflecting from the oily sheen across the asphalt like light off of black ice in winter. The VACANCY sign bleeding wavy white letters over the puddles speckled with raindrops.

I lay back in the bed, kicked my shoes off, and placed my Glock under a fold in the sheets. I watched the rain roll down the outside of the window, my eyes growing heavy.

There was a buzz and vibration from one of the disposable phones on the nightstand next to the bed. I recognized the number. I answered and Kim Davis said, “Sean, I’ve been thinking about you since I left the hospital. How are you?”

“I’m okay. How are you feeling?”

“Much better, thanks. My sister’s spending a couple of days with me. Did you hear about the girl’s body they found in a bayou near New Orleans?”

“Yes.”

“I hope and pray it’s not Courtney. It seems like every news station is trying to beat the others to be the first to come forth with an ID. I just wanted to call you to … to just see how you’re doing. You sound tired.”

“It’s been a tiring day.”

“Where are you?”

“In the Carolinas. In a motel that could double as the Bates Motel.”

She laughed. “It’s good to hear your voice. I wanted to thank you again for what you did for me.” She blew out a breath. “I’ll let you go. Wherever you are, I hope you get some rest tonight. Goodnight, Sean, I miss you.”

As I started to say goodnight, I heard the phone disconnect, its silence lingering in the room like the illusion of an imaginary whisper in the night. I closed my eyes, the sound of the rain against the window fading. I was in a dark room in Iraq, the red light on the video camera like a Cyclops eye, non-blinking, staring. I was slapped across the face by a wide, hard hand, blood and sweat falling against my bare chest, my teeth loose.

Then I was in a stone castle, or maybe an ancient church. I saw my mother’s face — the face in the photograph with my father. I saw my brother’s face as a baby morph into a man who turned his head away. He wore a dark robe, and he entered a small room and closed the door. From behind a privacy screen, I heard footsteps running, the sound coming from a stone floor. And then the long, agonizing scream of a frightened woman.

I sat up in bed, sweat dripping down my face, sheets damp. The odor of incense and candles burning. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. The bright red numbers flashing 3:07 a.m.

My head pounded, and I felt as if I was halfway through a marathon. I closed my eyes, waiting for my heart rate to slow, return to normal. Then I drifted away, like swimming in the ocean at night under a cloudless sky. The darkness returning. I had the sense of freefalling, moving through a pitch-black abyss with no internal compass, no physical perception of gravity or direction. But I knew I was moving quickly. I wanted to wake up again, to take a shower and hope for a new sunrise. But I couldn’t. My body felt trapped in quicksand, unable to do anything but be a passenger on a train bound for hell. I was strapped down, sweat rolling over my ribcage, the Cyclops red eye returned, the Iraqi butcher coming through the door with sharpened knives catching the light from a single lamp. Then the dream weaver made paper doll cutouts from black paper, leaning closer, his vinegary breath in my face, his dull scissors cutting through my frontal lobes. The final snap of the clippers, a rush of white noise, the lobotomy done and the red light fading into complete darkness.

And my eyes unable to close.