Prayers For Rain

19

Three days after Miles Lovell was admitted to ICU, Dr. Diane Bourne walked into her Admiral Hill town house and found Angie, Bubba, and me cooking a very early Thanksgiving dinner in her kitchen.

I was in charge of the thirteen-pound turkey because I was the only one of us who liked to cook. Angie lived in restaurants and Bubba was strictly takeout, but I’d been cooking since I was twelve. Nothing spectacular, mind you-after all, there’s a reason you rarely hear “Irish” and “cuisine” mentioned in the same sentence-but I can handle most fowl, beef, and pasta dishes, and I can blacken hell out of any fish known to man.

So I cleaned and roasted and basted and spiced the turkey, then prepared the mashed potatoes with diced onions, while Angie assigned herself to the preparation of the Stove Top stuffing and this green-beans-and-garlic recipe she’d found on the inside of a soup can label. Bubba had no official duties, but he’d brought plenty of beer and several bags of chips for us and a bottle of vodka for himself, and when he came upon Diane Bourne’s blue Persian cat, he was nice enough not to kill it.

Roasting a turkey takes a while, with very little to do during the downtime, so Angie and I availed ourselves of the upstairs quarters and ransacked Diane Bourne’s house until we found one thing of particular interest.

Miles Lovell had gone into shock not long after we called the ambulance. He’d been rushed to Jordan Hospital in Plymouth, where he was stabilized and airlifted to Mass General. After they’d worked on him there for nine hours, he’d been placed in ICU. They’d been unable to reattach his hands, but they would have had a shot at reattaching his tongue if the blond man hadn’t either taken it with him or tossed it into the bog.

My gut feeling was that the blond man had taken it with him. I didn’t know much about him-not his name or even what he looked like-but I was getting a sense for him. He was, I was sure, the man Warren Martens had seen at the motel and described as the man in charge. He had destroyed Karen Nichols, and now he’d destroyed Miles Lovell. Merely killing his victims seemed to bore him-instead, he preferred to leave them wishing they were dead.

Angie and I returned downstairs with the treat we’d found in Dr. Bourne’s bedroom, and the plastic thermometer popped up from the turkey just as Diane Bourne let herself into the town house.

“Talk about your timing,” I said.

“Sure,” Angie said, “we do all the work, she reaps the rewards.”

Diane Bourne turned into the dining room, separated from the kitchen by nothing but an open portico, and Bubba gave her a big three-finger wave with the same hand that held his bottle of Absolut.

Bubba said, “What’s shaking, sister?”

Diane Bourne dropped her leather bag and opened her mouth as if about to scream.

Angie said, “Now, now. There, there.” She crouched on the kitchen floor and slid the videocassette we’d found in the master bedroom into the dining room, where it came to rest at Diane Bourne’s feet.

She looked down at the videocassette and closed her mouth.

Angie hoisted herself up onto the counter and lit a cigarette. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but isn’t it unethical to have sex with a client?”

I would have raised my eyebrows at Dr. Bourne, but I was busy pulling the roasting pan from the oven.

“Damn,” Bubba said. “Smells good.”

“Shit,” I said.

“What?”

“Anyone remember cranberry sauce?”

Angie snapped her fingers and shook her head.

“Not that I particularly care for the stuff. Ange?”

“Never liked the cranberry sauce,” she said, her eyes on Diane Bourne.

“Bubba?”

He belched. “Gets in the way of the booze.”

I turned my head. Diane Bourne was frozen in the dining room over her dropped bag and the videocassette.

“Dr. Bourne?” I said and her eyes snapped my way. “You a fan of the cranberry?”

She took a long, deep breath and closed her eyes as she let it back out. “What are you people doing here?”

I held up the roasting pan. “Cooking.”

“Stirring,” Angie said.

“Drinking,” Bubba said, and pointed the bottle in Dr. Bourne’s direction. “Taste?”

Diane Bourne gave us all a tight shake of the head and closed her eyes again as if we’d disappear by the time she reopened them.

“You,” she said, “are breaking and entering. That’s a felony.”

“Actually,” I said, “the breaking on its own is just misdemeanor vandalism.”

“But, yeah,” Angie said, “the entering part is definitely wrong.”

“Bad,” Bubba agreed, and swiped one index finger off the other several times. “Bad, bad, bad.”

I placed the bird on top of the stove. “We brought food, though.”

“And chips,” Bubba said.

“Yeah.” I nodded at him. “The chips alone should balance out the B and E thing.”

Diane Bourne looked at the videocassette between her feet and held up a silencing hand. “What do we do now?”

I looked at Bubba. He shot a confused look at Angie. Angie passed it on to Diane Bourne. Diane Bourne looked at me.

“We eat,” I said.

Diane Bourne actually helped carve the turkey with me and showed us the locations of all the ceramic bowls and serving dishes we’d have probably busted the place up looking for.

By the time we all sat down at her hammered-copper dining room table, the color had returned to her face and she’d helped herself to a glass of white wine and brought the bottle to the table with her.

Bubba had called dibs on both legs and a wing, so the rest of us ate white meat, politely passed around the bowls of green beans and spuds, and buttered our rolls with pinkies extended.

“So,” I said over the volume of Bubba’s teeth tearing a Hyundai’s worth of meat off the bone, “I hear you’re short a part-time secretary, Doctor.”

She took a sip of wine. “Unfortunate, yes.” She took a miserly bite of turkey and then another sip of wine.

“Police talk to you?” Angie asked.

She nodded. “I understand they got my name from you.”

“Did you tell them anything?”

“I told them Miles was a valued employee, but I knew little of his private life.”

“Uh-huh,” Angie said, and drank some of the beer she’d poured into one of Diane Bourne’s wine goblets. “Did you mention the phone call Lovell placed to you about an hour before he was attacked?”

Diane Bourne didn’t miss a beat. She smiled around her wineglass, took a delicate sip. “No, I’m afraid that slipped my mind.”

Bubba poured a gallon of gravy over his plate, added half a shaker of salt, and said, “You’re a drunk.”

Diane Bourne’s pale face turned the color of a cue ball. “What did you just say?”

Bubba used his fork to point at her wine bottle. “You’re a drunk. Sister, you’re taking tiny sips, but you’re taking a lot of them.”

“I’m nervous.”

Bubba gave her the grin of one shark to another. “Right, sister. Right. You’re a drunk. I can see it in you.” He took a pull from his Absolut bottle, looked at me. “Lock her in a room, buddy. Thirty-six hours tops, she’ll be screaming for it. She’d blow an orangutan, he’d give her a drink.”

I watched Diane Bourne while Bubba spoke. The videocassette hadn’t rattled her. Our knowledge of the phone call hadn’t rattled her. Even our being here, in her home, hadn’t shocked her too much. But Bubba’s words sent tremors up her fine throat, tiny spasms through her fingers.

“Don’t worry,” Bubba said, his eyes on his food, fork and knife hovering above the mess like hawks about to descend, “I respect a woman likes to drink. Kinda respect that nympho-lesbian action you got going on the tape, too.”

Bubba dove back into his food, and for a few moments the only sounds in that room came from his shoveling and snarfing.

“About the videotape,” I said.

Diane Bourne tore her eyes away from Bubba and gulped the rest of her wine. She poured another half goblet, looked at me as a brazen pride swept over the unsettlement Bubba had placed there.

“Are you angry with me, Patrick?”

“No.”

She took another meager bite of turkey. “But I thought Karen Nichols’s death was a personal crusade for you, Patrick.”

I smiled. “Classic interrogation technique, Diane. Kudos.”

“Which?” All wide-eyed innocence.

“Using the subject’s first name as much as possible. Unnerves him, supposedly, forces intimacy.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Ah, well, maybe not, but-”

“Doctor,” Angie said, “you’re fucking both Karen Nichols and Miles Lovell on that tape. Care to explain?”

She turned her head, locked Angie in her calm gaze. “Did it turn you on, Angie?”

“Not particularly, Diane.”

“Did it repulse you?”

“Not particularly, Diane.”

Bubba looked up from his second turkey leg. “I got major wood, though, sister. Keep it in mind.”

She ignored him, though another of those tremors found her throat for a moment. “Come, Angie, no latent desires to experiment sexually with another woman?”

Angie drank some beer. “If I did, Doctor, I’d pick a woman with a better body. Call me shallow.”

“Yeah,” Bubba said, “you need to get some meat on those bones, Doc.”

Diane Bourne turned her eyes on me again, but they were less calm, less certain. “You, Patrick, did you enjoy watching?”

“Two girls and a guy?”

She nodded.

I shrugged. “It was a lighting issue, really. I like my porn with higher production values, to tell the truth.”

“Plus the hairy ass factor,” Bubba reminded me.

“Good point, Ebert.” I smiled at Diane Bourne. “Lovell had a hairy ass. We don’t be digging hairy asses. Doctor, who shot that video?”

She drank some more wine. In the face of her probes into our psyches, we’d grown more glib. One of us she might have been able to make progress with, but all three of us together could outglib the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and Neil Simon combined.

“Doctor?” I said.

“The video was on a tripod. We shot it.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. Won’t wash. There’s four different angles on that tape, and I don’t think any of you three got up to move the tripod.”

“Maybe we-”

“There’s also a shadow,” Angie said. “A man’s shadow, Diane, against the east wall during foreplay.”

Diane Bourne closed her mouth, reached for her wineglass.

“We can burn you down, Diane,” I said. “And you know it. So don’t fuck around with us anymore. Who shot the tape? The blond guy?”

Her eyes snapped up and then dropped just as quickly.

“Who is he?” I said. “We know he maimed Lovell. We know he’s six-two, weighs about one-ninety, dresses well, and whistles when he walks. We’ve placed him with both Karen Nichols and Lovell at the Holly Martens Inn. We go back and ask questions, I’m sure we’ll get a description of you there as well. What we need is his name.”

She shook her head.

“You’re not in a position to negotiate, Diane.”

Another shake of the head, another draining of her goblet. “I won’t under any circumstances discuss this man.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Yes, I do, Patrick. Oh, yes, I do. It may not be an easy choice, but it’s a choice. And I will not cross this man. Ever. And should the police question me, I will deny he even exists.” She emptied the wine bottle into her goblet with a shaky hand. “You have no idea what this man is capable of.”

“Sure, we do,” I said. “We found Lovell.”

“That was spur-of-the-moment,” she said with a bitter grin. “You should see what he’s capable of when he has time to plan.”

“Karen Nichols?” Angie said. “Is that what he’s capable of?”

Diane Bourne gave her bitter grin a derisive turn downward as she looked at Angie. “Karen was weak. Next time, he’s choosing someone strong. Add to the challenge.” She gave Angie a flat, contemptuous smile, and Angie damn near knocked it off when she slapped her.

The wine goblet shattered against the serving dish and a red mark the shape of a salmon steak obscured Diane Bourne’s left cheekbone and ear.

“Damn,” I said, “no leftovers for this house.”

“Don’t get the wrong impression of us, bitch,” Angie said. “Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean things can’t get physical.”

“Very physical,” Bubba said.

Diane Bourne looked at the shards of her glass sticking out of the plate of carved white meat. She watched as her wine pooled in the divots of her hammered copper.

She jerked a thumb at Bubba. “He’d torture me, maybe even rape me. But you don’t have the stomach for it, Patrick.”

“Amazing how your stomach feels when you walk outside,” I said. “Come back after it’s all done.”

She sighed and settled back into her chair. “Well, you’re just going to have to do it. Because I won’t betray this man.”

“Out of fear or love?” I asked.

“Both. He engenders both, Patrick. As all worthy beings do.”

“You’re done as a psychiatrist,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”

She shook her head. “I think not. You release that tape to anyone, I’ll file breaking and entering charges against the three of you.”

Angie laughed.

Diane Bourne looked at her. “You are breaking and entering.”

“You should have fun explaining this,” Angie said and swept her hand over the table.

“Officer, they were cooking!” I said.

“Basting!” Angie said.

“And, madam, how did you respond?”

“I helped carve,” Angie said. “And, of course, I showed them to my china.”

“Did you go with the light meat or the dark?”

Diane Bourne lowered her head and shook it.

“Last chance,” I said.

She kept her head down, shook it again.

I pushed my chair back from the table, held up the videotape. “We’ll make copies and it’s going out, Doctor, to every psychiatrist and psychologist listed in the yellow pages.”

“And the media,” Angie said.

“Oh, God, yeah,” I said. “They’ll go nuts.”

She looked up and tears filled her eyes and her voice cracked when she spoke. “You’d take my career?”

“You took her life,” I said. “Have you watched this tape? Did you look in her eyes, Diane? There’s nothing there but self-hatred. You put that there. You and Miles and this blond guy.”

“It was an experiment,” she said, and her voice was clogged. “It was just an idea. I never thought she’d kill herself.”

“He did, though,” I said. “The blond guy. Didn’t he?”

She nodded.

“Give me his name.”

A hard shake of the head that sent her tears to the table.

I held up the tape. “It’s his name or your reputation and career.”

She continued to shake her head, softer now but continuous.

We gathered our things from the kitchen, took what was left of our beer from the fridge. Bubba found a Ziploc storage bag and dumped the remainder of the stuffing and potatoes in there, then took another one and filled it with turkey.

“What are you doing?” I said. “There’s glass in there.”

He gave me a look like I was autistic. “I’ll pick it out.”

We walked back into the dining room. Diane Bourne stared at her reflection in the copper, elbows on the table, the heels of both hands pressed to her forehead.

As we reached the foyer, she said, “You don’t want him in your life.”

I turned back and looked in her hollow eyes. She suddenly looked twice her age, and I could see her in a nursing home forty years from now, alone, spending her days lost in the bitter smoke of her memories.

“Let me decide that,” I said.

“He’ll destroy you. Or someone you love. For fun.”

“His name, Doctor.”

She lit a cigarette, exhaled loudly. She shook her head, lips tight and pale.

I started to leave, but Angie stopped me. She raised a finger, her gaze locked on Diane Bourne, her body very still.

“You’re ice,” Angie said. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

Diane Bourne’s pale eyes followed the trail of her smoke.

“I mean, you have this cool, patrician thing down pat.” Angie placed her hands on the back of a chair, leaned into the table slightly. “You never lose your poise, and you never get emotional.”

Diane Bourne took another hit off her cigarette. It was like watching a statue smoke. She gave no indication that we were still in the room.

Angie said, “But you did once, didn’t you?”

Diane Bourne blinked.

Angie looked over at me. “In her office, remember? The first time we spoke to her.”

Diane Bourne flicked some ash and missed the ashtray.

“And it wasn’t when she spoke about Karen,” Angie said. “It wasn’t when she spoke about Miles. Do you remember, Diane?”

Diane Bourne raised her eyes and they were pink, angry.

“It was when you spoke about Wesley Dawe.”

Diane Bourne cleared her throat. “Get the fuck out of my home.”

Angie smiled. “Wesley Dawe, who killed his little sister. Who-”

“He didn’t kill her,” she said. “You get that. Wesley wasn’t anywhere near her. But he was blamed. He was-”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Angie’s smile broadened. “That’s who you’re protecting. That was the blond man on the bog. Wesley Dawe.”

She said nothing, just stared at the smoke as it flowed from her mouth.

“Why did he want to destroy Karen?”

She shook her head. “You’ve gotten the name, Mr. Kenzie. That’s all you get. And he already knows who you are.” She turned her head, gave me her pale, desolate eyes. “And he doesn’t like you, Patrick. He thinks you’re a meddler. He thinks you should have walked away from this when it was proven Karen’s death was by her own hand.” She held out her hand. “My tape, please.”

“No.”

She dropped her hand. “I gave you what you wanted.”

Angie shook her head. “I drew it out of you. Not the same thing.”

I said, “You’re the master of the psyche, Doctor, so turn your gaze inward for a moment. Which is more important to you-your reputation or your career?”

“I don’t see-”

“Pick,” I said sharply.

Her jaw set as if it were on steel pins, and she spoke through gritted teeth. “My reputation.”

I nodded. “You can keep it.”

Her jaw loosened and her eyes were bewildered behind her glowing cigarette coal as she took another long haul of smoke into her lungs. “What’s the catch?”

“Your career is over.”

“You can’t end my career.”

“I’m not going to. You’re going to.”

She laughed, but it was a nervous one. “Don’t overestimate yourself, Mr. Kenzie. I have no intention of-”

“You’ll close your office tomorrow,” I said. “You’ll refer all your clients to other doctors, and you’ll never practice in this state again.”

Her “Ha!” was louder, but sounded even less sure.

“You’ll do this, Doctor, and you’ll keep your reputation. Maybe you can write books, line up a talk show. But you’ll never work one-on-one with a patient again.”

“Or?” she said.

I held up the videocassette. “Or this thing starts playing cocktail parties.”

We left her there and as we opened the door, Angie said, “Tell Wesley we’re coming for him.”

“He already knows,” she said. “He already knows.”