Chaos

CHAPTER 47

A MINUTE PLEASE TO WASH my face and grab my robe.” I walk away from the bed, heading to the bathroom. “Then we’ll get Tesla and Sock downstairs and you can help me in the kitchen. What’s Desi doing? Is he up yet?” I call out to Dorothy.

“He slept with Janet,” I hear her say. “I think they’re getting started on brunch. They wanted to surprise you by helping.”

I smell sausage cooking. And Desi’s quite the meat-eater in our midst, he and Marino.

“Why did she want him, Kay? Why would anyone go to such lengths to kidnap a nine-year-old child?”

I stop outside the bathroom door and look at her, wondering if she’s serious, and sadly she is. “People have gone to much more extreme lengths than Carrie did,” I reply, and my sister doesn’t want to know some of the horrors I’ve seen.

“Well I honestly don’t get it.” Dorothy wouldn’t get it because she couldn’t be bothered with Lucy, and that’s another thing I need to let go of.

We head downstairs, a rambunctious puppy bulldog and slow old greyhound at our heels, and in the kitchen Janet has the window open over the sink. The sound and smell of the rain is carried in on warm steamy air, and my thoughts are pulled away, outside into the storm. Desi is setting the table in the dining room while Dorothy makes more coffee but I’m not in here in my head.

I’m back in my Miami neighborhood, and I see the child I once was, small and slight with white-blond hair, light blue eyes and cheap clothes. I see my yellow shoe box of a house and the scraps of overgrown yard with sagging chain-link fencing on three sides that kept nothing out including local cats and dogs and an occasional escaped parrot. I see all of it as if I’m watching a movie or back in time, and then thunder splits the air and lightning illuminates the windows.

“Uh-oh,” Desi says as he walks back into the kitchen, and the power has gone out. “The lights in the dining room don’t work all of a sudden.”

The backup generator has kicked in. But only certain areas of the house will have power. Fortunately the kitchen does, and then someone is pounding on the back door.

“It’s Marino,” Janet is looking at her phone. “I’m just seeing his text. He was at the front door, now he’s in back and needs to see you, Kay.”

“I didn’t hear him pull up.”

“The rain’s too loud to hear much of anything,” Janet says as I follow the hallway past the pantry, to the back of the house.

When I open the door Marino is standing hunched over in a yellow slicker with the hood up, and he says, “We need someplace private to talk. The doorbell in front is broke. I rang it trying to be polite for once.”

“The doorbell you pressed is original to the house and not connected to anything. Didn’t you see the modern little box with the lighted button that’s been there as long as we’ve lived here?”

“It’s dark as shit. What about you grab an umbrella or something and we’ll talk out here.”

“In the pouring rain with thunder and lightning? How about you come inside and I’ll pour you a coffee?”

“Nope. Right here.” He points next to him. “Really, Doc? I’m not kidding,” and I can tell he’s not as I grab a waterproof jacket off the coatrack.

I put it on, pulling up the hood, tightening the drawstring. Stepping outside, I close the door and face him in the splashing downpour.

“What is it, Marino? Are you afraid there might be surveillance devices in the house? Is that what the problem is?” I ask because there could be for all I know. “I’m going to have to talk to Page and make sure she’s not let someone in, perhaps someone masquerading as a service person.”

It’s the sort of thing Carrie would do, I explain as the rain coolly taps the top of my covered head. But Marino’s hardly listening, and I’m beginning to sense bigger trouble.

“I’m not taking any damn chances, Doc.”

“Why are you here? What is it?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he says, and I feel instantly sick.

“Are Benton and Lucy all right?” I can barely speak as I think of them flying and driving in this weather.

“Huh? I don’t know. I guess.” Marino’s eyes are wild, and he couldn’t be more distracted.

“What’s the matter with you?” I raise my voice above water spattering pavers and the sound of the wind-rocked canopies of old trees.

Beaten-down flower petals litter the back lawn like tatters of pastel tissue paper, and puddles sizzle as rain splashes the grass and mulch.

“That blue paisley bandanna Desi had on?” Marino says loudly, water streaming down from the peak of his hood. “The DNA’s a problem. It’s worse than a problem.”

Carrie came to my door like anybody else would, standing there smiling, I can only imagine, and Dorothy led her through the house. Then Carrie and the drone appeared in the backyard at precisely the same time, robbing Janet of any opportunity to defend herself or anyone. I realize this probably is why Marino is insisting we talk outside in the middle of a rainstorm.

Carrie Grethen has been inside my house. It’s possible she may have planted a device or two as she walked through. Dorothy would have been none the wiser. Apparently she didn’t begin to think anything was off until Carrie gave Desi the blue paisley-printed neckerchief, ordering him to put it on and stand by her side as she operated the flight control before turning it over to him so he could destroy his own adopted family.

“Did anyone from the DNA lab call you?” Marino is asking, and I bolster myself for the rest of his bad news.

“Not yet.”

“Well I just found out. And maybe they don’t want to bother you right now after being in the hospital. But you need to know the truth, and that’s why I’m here standing outside in the damn rain with you,” as distant thunder cracks.

“Who found out what?” Water is splashing over my bedroom slippers, and the hem of my pajamas and robe is already soaked.

“Elisa Vandersteel’s DNA is on the neckerchief, which makes sense since it was hers. And we got Carrie’s DNA on it and also Temple Gault’s.”

I’m certain I didn’t hear that right. It’s so loud and volatile out here, and a part of my brain knows what’s coming even as I deny it.

“I’m sorry…” I start to say.

“I know what you’re thinking. But you heard me,” Marino says. “We got a hit on Gault’s DNA in the database because he’s never been purged due to open cases the Feds are still trying to tie to him. And of course we got a hit on Carrie because she sure as hell’s in there.”

“This is impossible. How would Temple Gault’s DNA get on the neckerchief unless Carrie has some source of it and deliberately contaminated-”

“No.” Marino is slowly shaking his head side to side, water dripping, his eyes wide. “No, no, you aren’t getting it, Doc.”

“What am I supposed to be getting, Marino?” I don’t want to believe what he’s about to say.

“At first we didn’t understand why Desi’s DNA wasn’t on the bandanna, the neckerchief, whatever you want to call what was tied around his neck. His DNA should be on it,” he begins to explain as I get an incredible feeling.

It’s like condensation clearing from a window and finally I see what’s on the other side. Little Desi with his angular face and mesmeric blue eyes.

“His DNA was on the bandanna after all…”

No one is a better fisherman than Carrie. She knows what to do. She knows how to wait and when to tug the line. Gotcha.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Marino asks, and the rain has turned into a roar as I remember what Lucy told me about Natalie’s pregnancy.

SHE USED A SPERM donor and a surrogate mother she’d carefully selected, but the fact is the process could have been tampered with.

That would be child’s play to Carrie, and there would be no reason for Natalie knowing the truth about Desi’s DNA. It would have to be run through a criminal database to get a hit on his biological parents, and that wasn’t likely to happen. But Carrie has forced the matter to a conclusion, and it’s one that I never anticipated.

“She must have saved Temple Gault’s sperm, frozen it or whatever.” Marino turns as the wind blows, keeping the rain off his face. “You know like these military wives do when their husbands go off to war…?”

“I know what she must have done, and I can see her doing it,” I reply. “Have we confirmed this with Desi’s DNA? He was swabbed for exclusionary purposes.”

“Yeah. It’s confirmed. Carrie is Desi’s mother. Temple’s the father.”

“Biologically only.”

“She was going to take him, Doc. Carrie was going to raise him to be the next monster. A hybrid of her and Gault. Holy shit. How lucky for her that Natalie died and Carrie could then kick her plan into gear,” Marino goes on.

He has it all figured out.

“She creates an incident in Maryland, and you, Lucy and Benton haul ass there,” he’s saying as a gust of wind sweeps a sheet of rain across the yard. “Or she assumed you’d hightail it out of town, leaving only Dorothy, Janet and Desi all by their lonesome. Only you threw a monkey wrench into things by staying here, and then the attack had to be changed to your house…”

“I have no idea what was planned or why,” I reply. “Only that it’s over and all of us are safe.”

“Except for Desi. What are we going to tell Lucy and Janet?”

“We’ll tell them the truth. Desi can’t help who his biological parents are. It’s no different than if he’d been adopted and we had no idea who or where he came from. There’s no guarantee what anyone gets, Marino. Not even when it’s your own biological child.”

“But what if he’s like them? I mean really. Think about it. He’s right here with us. What if he grows up to be like them? I mean as great as the kid is? What if…?”

“He won’t be raised by them,” I reply. “He’ll be raised by us. Now let’s go inside. Let’s get brunch going, and I was thinking of making a pitcher of my bloody marys.”

We walk back into the house, taking off our raincoats, and water drips on the mat and the hardwood floor. I kick off my drenched bedroom slippers, and step into a bathroom.

“I think I have what I need in the house to make peanut butter pie.” I toss him a towel.

“Since when do you make that?” Marino looks as if he’s seen a ghost, and in a way he has.

“It seems like a good day for it with Dorothy here, and she loves peanut butter and chocolate, has quite the sweet tooth.” I reset the alarm. “But then you probably know that about her,” as we return to the kitchen, where Desi is on a footstool getting plates out of a cabinet.

I look at his thin broad-shouldered frame in the Celtics warm-up suit Marino gave him. Desi isn’t going to be very big or tall but already he’s graceful and lithe, and he’s getting strong. He fixes his wide blue eyes on me as he steps down from the stool with an armload of plates, and I’ve not really talked to him since it all happened. I take the plates from him.

“I think you know where the napkins are,” I say to him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“If you want to get them, please, and I’ll help you set the table.”

“I already did the mats. I hope the ones I picked out are okay.” He grabs my hand.

“As long as they match.”

We walk out of the kitchen hand in hand, and take the first left into the dining room.

“How did you learn to fish, Kay-Kay?”

That’s what Desi calls me.

“Why do you ask?” I turn on the alabaster chandelier.

“I wondered why you thought of my fishing pole when the bad lady was trying to hurt us with the drone.”

I open the side draperies to watch the rain pound the side yard in the early-morning billowing fog. Wind shakes the spruce trees and rhododendrons, and intermittently rain smacks the glass.

“I didn’t think of it,” Desi then says before I can answer him. “When she kept trying to make me do things, I didn’t think of doing what you did. I should have caught it with my fishing pole and stomped it to death.”

“It would have been much too dangerous to stomp on it.”

“I could have hit it with my baseball bat.”

“You wouldn’t want to get that close. Think of it as a huge Portuguese man-of-war you see on the beach with its long tentacles. What do you do?”

“Stay far away!”

“That’s right.”

He follows me around the table, setting down a napkin to the left of each plate I place on a mat.

“But what made you think of my fishing pole?” He’s not going to let me evade the question.

“Truthfully? Because I couldn’t think of anything else.” I open a drawer in the breakfront, and silverware clinks as we gather that next. “When I saw what she was doing I had to do something. I was lucky.”

“Why did that lady want to hurt us?”

“There are some people who aren’t happy unless they do bad things to others.”

“I know, I know. My moms are always telling me that,” Desi says, and of late he’s started calling Lucy and Janet his moms.

Specifically Mom and Moms. Lucy is the latter.

“But why did she come here and make me try to hurt someone?”

“What matters is that you didn’t.” I stop and look at him. “You told her no and you wouldn’t do what she said. And that makes you the good person, the strong person.”

“I guess so,” he says, and then he scampers out of the dining room.

I hear the door open that leads into the basement, and his quick feet on the stairs. When I return to the kitchen he’s standing near the breakfast table with a fishing pole. Not his because that’s been taken by the police as evidence, but he’s fetched mine from the basement, and he looks very serious. I recognize the old spinning reel with its graphite-black telescopic rod, and everything is coated in dust.

“Will you show me how you did it?” He offers me the pole.

“I’m not an expert and we can’t really do it inside the house.” I hold the rod with the reel foot between the middle and ring fingers of my left hand. “But I let out about six inches of line from the tip of the rod just like this. And I tighten it slowly under my index finger.”

I show him, and the reel click-clicks.

“Then I hold the line and open the bail, and do you know what the most important part is after that?” I ask.

“What?” he says.

“You aim, pointing the rod at where you want to cast. You point at your target. You’ve got to know what it is. Then bring up the rod and load it using your elbow and wrist. And let her rip,” I explain. “Like most things in life, it’s all about timing.”

“And it’s time to make drinks.” Marino walks in, and Benton and Lucy are right behind him.

“Tito’s, V8, fresh limes. Who’s going to help me?” I walk straight to Benton and hug and kiss him.

“I will!” Desi dashes to the pantry where we keep the liquor.

“I’ve got the V8 and limes.” Janet opens a refrigerator.

“Where do you keep your pitchers and glasses?” Dorothy opens cabinets as she asks.

“I’m so glad both of you are back safely in this awful weather.” I hug Lucy too, and I can’t tell if she knows about Desi.

But I don’t intend to get into the discussion now. It shouldn’t be important, and if we discover it is, then we’ll figure out something.

“Worcestershire, Tabasco, my special seasonings? Who’s helping?” I take the bottle of vodka from Desi and tell him he’s going to help me wash celery.

“I break off the stalks like this.” I show him in the sink as he stands next to me on his stool. “Now we rinse them under cold water, and we pull off the fibers because they’re tough and nobody wants to eat them.”

“They’re like dental floss.”

“And all of them come off. Very good. Right there in the garbage disposal.”

“Like this?” His hands are in mine as we rinse a stalk under the running water.

“Exactly like that,” and we wash celery together, getting every speck of dirt.