Kiss Her Goodbye

48

Rachel was in the shower when her doorbell rang.

It was just past 8 a.m. and she’d already been up for hours, unable to sleep. Ever since she’d left Jack yesterday afternoon she’d felt anxious and uneasy. And at the root of it was the story he’d told her.

His trip to the other side.

Rachel had never been deeply religious, but she was a believer. Growing up in a Chinese-American household with a grandmother who, as a little girl, had come straight from Tai Wo, Hong Kong, she’d heard her share of ancient stories. Tales of gods and goddesses, ghostly apparitions, the Ten Courts of Hell. Stories told with a quiet reverence and a conviction born of faith.

She remembered the fireworks and the colorful dancing dragons on the streets of Chinatown during the Chung Yuan Festival-Ghost Day-which celebrated the rising of souls from the bowels of hell to visit their earthly homes. Every year, Grandma Luke lit incense and set out plates full of mango, peaches, and roast duck on a card table in the living room, an offering to appease the restless spirits.

Against her family’s wishes, Rachel had made the mistake of marrying David in August, smack in the middle of Ghost Month. And while she didn’t exactly blame the denizens of hell for the disaster her marriage became, at times she had to wonder. Had they been cursed from the start?

Rachel wasn’t a strong believer in the stories Grandma Luke had told her-every religion had its share of tall tales-but she believed enough to feel just a tickle of anxiety whenever the subject arose. That anxiety had been reinforced the moment Jack had told her about his otherworld encounter with Alexander Gunderson.

The possibility that he might have imagined it all, that his mind had conjured up some bizarre death dream, was not a thought she even entertained. She knew that what he’d experienced was all too real.

And potentially dangerous.

Now, according to Sidney, Jack had been cut loose from the investigation, asked to step aside while the fools upstairs took over the case. She understood that they were simply following procedure, that the leeway they’d given Jack was a courtesy they weren’t obligated to extend. But she wondered how they could turn him away. Why deny a father access to the resources that might help him find his own daughter?

Now, with Jack at loose ends and still reeling from his encounter with death-and with time ticking at its ever relentless pace-the probability of disaster loomed large.

Jessie could die.

And a part of Jack would go with her.

Rachel was thinking about these things and rinsing the soap from her body when her doorbell rang. She quickly finished rinsing and shut the water off.

The bell rang twice more before she got to the front door, wrapped in a terry-cloth robe. Despite the perfunctory swipe of a towel, her hair was still tangled and dripping wet. She knew she looked a mess, but didn’t much care. She had been waiting for hours to hear from Jack-he hadn’t returned her calls-and the doorbell ringing at eight in the morning only compounded her anxiety.

Feeling like a military wife waiting for her husband to be shipped home, she pulled the door open, only to be overcome by a sudden surge of relief.

Jack was in the hallway.

Unfortunately, he looked (as David used to say on those many mornings after) as if he’d been pulled through a knothole.

“Jack, my God, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“It’s all gone to shit,” he said, then stumbled into her arms.

Donovan knew he had no right to do this to Rachel.

Sure, there was a bond between them, had been from the moment she’d first stepped into his office over two years ago. But she didn’t owe him anything. No reason she should. And throwing the weight of his troubles onto her shoulders was, to say the least, unfair.

Then again, Rachel was more than just an IA who had managed to catch his fancy. She was, Donovan had come to realize, the only one he could trust.

The only one he wanted to trust.

When she opened the door, he had practically collapsed in her arms, raving like a street-corner lunatic. But she didn’t falter. Not for a moment. She guided him to the sofa and sat him down and listened attentively as he sputtered on, telling her about the blistering headache, the night he couldn’t remember, and the untimely deaths of Luther Polanski, Charles Kruger and Bobby Nemo-two of whom he was certain he had executed.

That she didn’t immediately pick up the phone and call the boys with the butterfly nets was, to Donovan’s mind, a testament to her strength.

Instead, she brewed him a cup of tea and sat beside him on the sofa, a gentle hand on his shoulder, lightly stroking it as he opened up to her for the second time in the last twenty-four hours.

It felt good to be with her. To share his demons. His fears. His pain.

When he told her about the note and its cryptic message, she said, “Show me.”

He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her, watching her carefully as she unfolded it.

“Looks like your handwriting,” she said. “But… different.”

“Read it,” Donovan said.

She did as he asked, reading aloud. “ ‘Autogenous work that can get you arrested.’ ” She stared at the nine underlined spaces drawn beneath it. “A crossword puzzle clue?”

Donovan nodded. “Two words.”

Her brow furrowed as she thought it over. Then her expression changed and she looked at him. She’d gotten it much quicker than he had.

“Inside job,” she said.

Donovan nodded again.

“And you think this means you killed those men? That’s ridiculous, Jack. You’re not built that way. You don’t have it in you.”

“That’s just it,” Donovan said, trying to keep his desperation under control. “I do have it in me.” He pointed to the note. “You’re right about that being my handwriting, because I wrote it.” He paused. “Only I didn’t.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Inside job,” he said. “Get it? It’s a message. A joke. When I blacked out last night, I did things I wouldn’t normally do because I wasn’t in control of my own body.”

Rachel stared at him for a long moment. And in that moment he thought he’d lost her. She was willing to go only so far with this stuff and now he’d crossed a line. Her hand stiffened on his shoulder, a ripple of fear just beneath the surface of her fingertips.

Then she surprised him.

“Gunderson. He’s doing this.” And when she said it, he wanted to put his arms around her and hold her forever.

“He’s inside me, Rache. Last night he managed to take control and he wants me to know it. That’s why he played hide-and-seek with Nemo’s body. It’s just the kind of move Gunderson would make.”

It was a ridiculous notion, of course. Something you’d hear on the mental ward at Mercy Hospital. But was it any more ridiculous than what he’d been through these last couple days? Unlike Sidney Waxman, he’d already suspended any inkling of disbelief that may have plagued him.

Apparently Rachel had as well.

She stood up, heading toward an adjacent hallway. “Give me a minute to get dressed.”

“Why? Where are we going?”

She turned, looking at him with concern. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”