Mortal Fear

CHAPTER 23

The jet I boarded at Quantico touched down in Jackson, Mississippi, at 3:00A.M. Central Standard Time. Jan Krislov would have broken into a nervous sweat had she seen her precious Gulfstream filled to its porthole windows with angry FBI Hostage Rescue commandos. I sweated a little myself. Three hours cooped up with those guys was like riding a bus full of Southern Baptist ministers on their way to picket a Bourbon Street strip club. Most were trying so hard to be professional that their grim frowns seemed on the verge of splitting into fierce grins of anticipation. I still don’t know whether anyone had told them of my status as a suspect, but I didn’t volunteer the information. Two agents watched me throughout the flight, their hostile eyes tracking me like those of snipers, which is exactly what they were. I was never told their destination, but by the time the pilot set me down I was damned glad it wasn’t my farmhouse.

Two minutes after the jet taxied to a stop, I was standing at a pay phone calling Miles at EROS headquarters to warn him that he might soon be arrested. I feared that he might have been taken while I was airborne, but nighthawk Miles-awakened from a cat nap at his monitor-finally picked up the phone and began joking as if nothing more were happening than the usual bitflow of nocturnal erotica.

He didn’t sound surprised by my warning, but he did thank me for it. He thinks he’s safe until EROS’s time-locked file vault opens at one p.m. tomorrow. Daniel Baxter apparently believes that Brahma might be a legitimate EROS client. If that’s true, the master client list now locked in the vault would allow the FBI to put “brute force” methods into the hunt, making the resolution of the case only a matter of time and manpower. Miles told me at least two agents have been guarding the vault since it slammed shut two days ago, but he seems to think they’re in for a big surprise.

After we hung up, I tried again to warn Eleanor Rigby, but all I got was her answering machine. Knowing that her clingy paraplegic sister is the reason she keeps a blind-draft account, I felt I couldn’t leave a detailed message without screwing up her personal life. I resigned myself to warning her by snail mail and jogged for my truck.

All that happened an hour ago, but I am still twenty minutes from home, driving a steady sixty-five miles per hour. It feels better than good to be rolling through the dark Delta cotton fields with at least the illusion that I am free from the clutches of Arthur Lenz and Daniel Baxter. Though it’s dead hot outside, I roll down the Explorer’s windows and let the air whip through the truck. Four-thirty in the morning is about as cool as it ever gets in August in Mississippi. The windshield fogs from the sudden temperature change, but the road is straight as a plumb line here, and I don’t even wipe the glass.

There is enough moonlight to turn the cotton into a pale purple sea stretching away from the highway in all directions. I’m glad I won’t be picking that cotton. Glad no one will be, except a handful of people on the poorest farms. Twelve hours in the burning sun with bleeding hands and a hundred pounds of itchy sack dragging behind you isn’t fit work for man or beast. In the cotton field, if nowhere else, the machine has fulfilled its nineteenth-century billing as the savior of mankind.

At last my headlights illuminate the battered green road sign that announces “RAIN, MS, Home of the 1963 State Basketball Champions” to an indifferent world. Dinged by flung beer bottles, pierced by bullets fired in boredom, drunkenness, or anger, rusted by the heaven-sent water the town was named for, the old double-sided sign still stirs a strange soup of emotions in my chest when I roar past it in either direction. It takes less than a minute to sight the first hints of human habitation, blow past the tiny post office and tinier Laundromat, and sweep back into the long, still fields on the other side of Rain. Somewhere out there children are sleeping. But the men and women are not. They are waking to fry eggs and boil grits and pull on overalls and boots to face the hottest sun in the United States with no more protection than a faded John Deere cap.

I look out to my left and try to sight the crumbling superstructure of the old Edinburgh plantation. At one time this antebellum monolith dominated the land like a feudal castle. All activity for miles around was subordinate to its workings, its long shadow falling across slave and master, mammy and overseer, then sharecropper and bossman, and finally the not-so-slow decay of the gene line. In a burning dry year in the 1890s-a year not unlike this one-a sober gambler won the entire plantation from a dissolute heir in a midnight poker game. The way the story’s most often told, the gambler raised the stakes beyond the heir’s liquid resources, the heir used the plantation deed to call the bet, and signed a marker in front of a dozen witnesses. When the gambler laid down a flush, the heir fainted. By the time he staggered out of the old slave quarters, the divine deliverance of rain was beating dust devils on the drive, and the tin roof roared as though a hail of Yankee grapeshot had been loosed against the building. The heir went home, tried twice to shoot himself in the head, missed both times, and passed out. He woke up in time to see the gambler nail a board sign to a horse post out front. Painted on the sign was the word “RAIN,” which from that day forward became the new name of the plantation and of the indolent crossroads of commerce that passed for a town.

My tin mailbox glints at the left margin of my high beams, which suddenly fluoresce the legend COLE. I slow the Explorer and sigh in exhaustion, knowing I could probably cover the last fifty yards and make the turn with my eyes shut.

The farmhouse stands about forty yards back from the road, shaded by oaks, pines, and a single weeping willow that hovers near the porch like a giant green mushroom. Just as I start to turn, my headlights flash on something farther up the road. Something that shouldn’t be there. It’s on the left shoulder, where there should be only cotton. I start to ignore it, but the landowner’s imperative steels my nerves. I brake, back out of the drive, and accelerate slowly toward the silver reflection.

It’s a sport utility vehicle. A Jeep Grand Cherokee. I recognize the distinctive slope of the hood. It’s parked about sixty yards from the house. As I move closer, I realize something that chills me more deeply than the idea of poachers. The Jeep has a Hinds County license plate on its front bumper. That plate, and the Jeep, belong to my brother-in-law, Patrick Graham.

Without hesitation I reach under the seat, take out my Smith and Wesson.38, and lay it on my lap. This act would have been unthinkable three months ago, but I know enough about human nature to know that in a domestic dispute, anyone can become a target of deranged fury.

I pull the Explorer across the left lane and stop alongside Patrick’s Jeep. Our faces are less than three feet apart, separated only by two sheets of glass. Patrick is handsome, in the fraternity president mold. Short sandy hair parted on the side, scrubbed skin, great teeth. He’s one of the few doctors I know who always wears a suit to make evening rounds at the hospital. Even when he dresses casually, his clothes are either Ralph Lauren or something sent UPS from New England.

But tonight he looks like a ghost of himself. He is wearing a Polo shirt, but it looks like he pulled it out of a dirty clothes hamper. His hair is longer than usual, and his eyes don’t seem able to focus. He faces forward when I roll down my window, studiously ignoring me. I tap on the glass.

At last he rolls down his window.

“What’s going on?” I ask in the calmest voice I can muster.

Patrick says nothing.

I tighten my hand around the wooden grip of the.38. “You waiting for somebody?”

“Erin’s in there.”

“Where? My house?”

He nods.

I say nothing, hoping he’ll volunteer information, but he doesn’t. “Holly too?”

He nods again. This is like talking to Gary Cooper. “I guess things aren’t going so good, huh?”

He keeps staring at the dashboard.

“What’s the deal, Pat?”

“I married a slut, that’s what.”

I blink in disbelief. Hearing these words from Patrick is tantamount to hearing a priest shout “God is dead!” from the pulpit. “That doesn’t sound like you. Did something happen? You think she’s sleeping around or something?”

He’s nodding steadily now, his eyes full of sullen anger. “She’s making a goddamn fool of me. She has been from the start.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s between her and me.”

“I am worried about it. Does she know you’re out here?”

He shrugs. I consider asking him to come into the house and sleep in my office, but I have no idea what’s transpired in the past few hours. “Well… is there anything you want me to tell Erin?”

Suddenly he turns, and his eyes lock onto mine. “Where the fuck have you been all night?”

“Trying to keep the FBI off my ass. This EROS thing is out of control. There’s a guy killing people out there. Cutting women’s heads off, blowing up FBI agents. You believe that shit?”

He just stares. As I sit clenching the.38, a thought rises unbidden. “You know anything about the pineal gland?”

“The pineal gland?”

“It has something to do with these murders.”

Patrick straightens in his seat. “It’s a pretty uncommon tumor site. Not long ago pineal tumors were real problems, because they were often inaccessible to neurosurgeons. But with the new microsurgical techniques, that’s changed completely.”

Typical Patrick. His personal life is going to hell, but one medical question puts him into android-M.D. mode.

“There’s a craze right now over one of the hormones it makes,” he adds. “Melatonin. Crackpots all over the country are taking it for a dozen different reasons, but it hasn’t been approved by the FDA.”

“What do you think about it?”

“Homeopathic bullshit.”

“That’s what I figured. You sure you’re okay out here?”

He faces forward again and nods.

I start to pull away, then stop. If Patrick is going to blow a gasket, I’d rather he do it out here while I’m holding a pistol than after I’m asleep inside. “Listen, you’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? I mean, Erin loves you. I know she does. You’re the best thing that ever happened to her.”

His laugh is hollow and cold. “I’m just making sure of something. Don’t worry, I’m good at repressing anger. Go inside.”

“Okay. Take it easy.”

After staring into his eyes a moment longer, I execute a three-point turn and idle back down to the house. I park in the gravel turnaround and get out with my briefcase and my gun. I’m on the second step when I spy the rear end of Erin’s Toyota Land Cruiser jutting from behind the right side of the house.

My watch reads five a.m. Drewe and Erin are almost certainly asleep. I slip through the front door and turn left into my office without turning on any lights. As I undress, I realize that Erin and Holly are probably sleeping in the guest room on the other side of my office wall. A hundred thoughts and images flood my brain, but I am too tired to analyze them. I slide the.38 under my mattress, then fall facedown onto my pillow and inhale the welcome scent of home.

But sleep eludes me.

Why is Erin in our house? What is fraying the bonds of her marriage? Not the normal frustration that accretes like rust and eats at every relationship. If it were, Patrick would not be parked outside. So what remains? Other than our secret?

A faint creak causes me to turn over in bed and open my eyes. I sometimes hear this sound when the air conditioner kicks on, but I don’t hear the compressor running. Then I realize my door is standing open. And silhouetted in it is a female form too slender and dark to belong to my wife. The white-gowned apparition glides across my floor and stops beside my bed.

Erin.

Without hesitation my wife’s sister sits beside me on the twin bed and looks down into my eyes. This is the ruthless directness of woman, to observe no artificial boundaries, to behave as though no time has passed between our coupling three years ago in Chicago and now. I am supremely conscious of my wife, who lies sleeping less than thirty feet away. Yet Erin seems oblivious. She scrunches her left flank into my side, making more room for herself. Her face slowly coalesces in the darkness, oval planes of sculpted bone and tanned skin, eyes a shade darker than her long fine hair. She smells just as she always did, irresistibly feminine.

Then I see tears glinting in the dark. She lowers her head into her hands, stifling a sob. I want to wrap my arms around her and comfort her, but I do not trust myself. After three years of self-inflicted guilt, I should feel no impulse to anything crazy, but the drive that pushed me into Erin’s arms the first time had nothing to do with reason, and it remains true to itself.

“What?” I ask softly. “What is it?”

“Everything’s coming apart,” she says much too loudly.

“What do you mean?”

“It was a mistake, Harper. It was all a mistake.”

“You mean you and me? Keeping Holly? What?”

No answer.

“Have you left Patrick?”

She doesn’t speak. I take her hand away from her eyes.

“I’ve tried,” she whispers. “To be a good wife, a good mother. To leave everything I was behind.”

I squeeze her wrist and force her to look into my eyes. “That’s the problem, Erin. You can’t leave your past behind. That’s Oprah bullshit. I’ve tried it. You have to come to terms with whatever you did, and then move forward.”

Her eyes widen, boring into my soul. “Like you’ve come to terms with it? You’re living the same lie I am.”

I look away. “I know. Look… does Patrick know anything specific?”

She covers her eyes and sobs again.

“Erin… I’ve got to tell you. He’s outside. Patrick. He’s sitting out there in his Jeep.”

Her hand grips my wrist like a claw. “Now?He’s out there?”

I nod. “He looks pretty bad too.”

“Oh, God. Oh… God.”

I raise myself enough to put my arms around her and pull her shuddering body to mine. Her arms close around my back as her wet face burrows into my neck. I have a sensation very like falling, but falling through time rather than space, and even as I hold her I feel her kick her way under the covers and mold herself to me. Fear and guilt and arousal surge through me in a flood.

“Erin,” I whisper. “Erin-”

“Shhh,” she says, her weight pressing down on me, against me, the heat of her long legs electrifying my skin. “I just want it all to go away. Make him go away.”

“Erin-”

“I hate it!”

I take a deep breath and try to stay calm. I haven’t held her like this since Chicago, not even hugs at family dinners. Now, only hours after I tried in vain to describe her unique sensuality to Lenz, the elusive has become all too tangible. Erin is crying softly, her face still buried in the hollow of my neck. With a shaking hand I stroke the silky hair above her ear, as I would a child’s. “It’s going to be okay,” I murmur, even as a taut wire of fear sets to thrumming in my chest.

She sobs, her breast heaving with irregular breaths. It’s already hot enough under the covers that I’m sweating. I’m about to try to pull back the bedspread when she lifts her head and looks down into my eyes.

“I’m not going back,” she whispers, her mouth inches from mine. “I can’t.”

“Erin, you-”

She puts a finger to my lips and shakes her head. I feel her other hand slip into the hair at the back of my neck.

“Mama?”

I freeze.

“Mama?”

It’s Holly. She’s awakened alone in a strange bed.

Erin jerks upright, her head alert and rigid like that of a doe sensing danger.

“Maaammaa!”

Erin slides off the bed with fluid swiftness, her sheer white nightgown flashing across the room. She stops at the door, hovering like a veil. Then she’s moving back toward me, quickly, but seemingly uncertain of direction. A bright scythe of light slices across my floor. The hall light.

Drewe.

“Daaadeee!”Holly wails.

Daddy? I grope under the mattress for my.38 while Erin stops in the middle of the floor, obviously torn between protecting her child and being caught in the dark with her sister’s husband. Has Patrick broken into the house? Or is Holly calling for him out of habit?

I hear footsteps in the hall.

As I stand with the pistol, Erin vanishes through the door. Seconds later, Holly stops crying. I press my ear to the wall and hear Drewe say, “Everything’s okay, punkin. Mama must be in the bathroom.” Then Holly’s higher voice, crusted with sleep: “Mama went to tee tee, Aunt Drewe?”

As though in answer, the commode flushes down the hall. I hear a quick beat of footsteps, then Erin’s voice through the wall: “I’m sorry she woke you up. I had to pee. I didn’t think she’d wake up. I guess it’s the strange house.”

“I didn’t see the bathroom light,” Drewe replies, ever logical. “I thought something was wrong.”

A pause. “I’m used to finding strange bathrooms in the dark.”

A longer pause, then, “That makes me sad, Erin.”

The shell of my ear aches from the pressure of the wall, but I’m not about to miss this exchange. After a long silence, Drewe says, “Are you okay? Is this all going to work out?”

“I hope so. Let’s don’t talk about it anymore.”

“Talk about what?” Holly asks in a bleary voice.

“Work stuff, honey.”

“Tell me a story, Mama.”

“We’re going back to sleep, punkin.”

“I want a story!”

“Lie down,” Drewe says. “I’ll tell you a story.”

And she makes one up on the spot. It is a tale of a king with two daughters, both beautiful and smart, but each of whom believes she lacks one of the two qualities. We all listen spellbound, recognizing the allegory of Drewe and Erin as they struggle through myriad trials, all of us knowing Drewe will ultimately weave the threads into one of the happy endings she so fervently believes in, and all of us glad for it. This is my wife’s transcendent gift, her optimism, and in the predawn shadows it is proof against despair. As she speaks, her voice like a lantern in the dark, I realize that Drewe is a living archetype of maternal love. Erin and I struggle in states of arrested growth, uncertain of our natures or fighting acceptance of them. But Drewe radiates heat and nurturing love like a warm spring flowing through bedrock, even without a natural object for her affections. I am the only obstacle to the fulfillment of her dreams, and at the deepest level, I know that if I have a duty to anything in this world, it is to bring those dreams to fruition.

After the two princesses have laid their parents to rest and agreed to jointly rule the “queendom”-a concept of which Hans Christian Andersen was apparently ignorant-Drewe says “night-night” to Holly. I expect her to go back to the master bedroom, but instead she appears at my door, a flannel-clad silhouette against the hall light.

“You back?” she asks softly.

“Yeah. Just got here. Everything’s okay. For you and me, anyway. But not Erin. Patrick’s outside.”

“What?”

“He’s parked on the road. I don’t think he’ll do anything crazy. But wake me up if you hear anything weird.”

“This has got to stop,” Drewe says with conviction. “I don’t think I can get back to sleep now. You want to come in and give me the play-by-play on your trip? I’m going to make coffee.”

I have no intention of letting my wife peer into my eyes after the events of the last ten minutes. “I’m pretty wiped out,” I tell her. “I should probably get some sleep.”

She remains at the door. “I’ll throw together some lunch for you,” she says finally. “I’m going to try to talk Erin into going home this morning.”

“Thanks. Good luck.”

“You forgot to close your blinds.”

“I’m so tired it doesn’t matter.”

“’Night,” she says. Then she reaches across the invisible border between our lives and pulls the door shut after her.

Lying motionless in the pale dawn, I am overcome by a terrible certainty that, barring divine intervention, we are all moving toward an explosive revelation of the true and tragic state of affairs. And I am not one to look for divine intervention, at least of the positive sort. Retribution is the only cosmic principle I have ever found the capacity to believe in.

I sleep with the gun under my pillow.