by Greg Iles
“Looks like you’re half right. There are some sketches of a black woman here…some poetry. A wildflower pressed between two pages. Wait…look at this.”
“What?”
“It’s a typed note. Oh yes, listen to this. ‘Private Ferry, It’s come to our attention that you’ve been talking about the time you spent west of the Mekong River. We thought you’d learned your lesson in sixty-nine. Since you didn’t, here’s a little reminder from your old friends who wore the tiger stripes. Keep talking and your ears will wind up on one of these. We might even have to run a night op on that little girl of yours. Remember those? You took an oath, soldier. Never forget it.’”
Dr. Cage sets the sketchbook on his desk. “Well, there’s one answer for you. How Luke came by the necklace.”
“They threatened his life,” I say softly. “They really did.”
“Luke was a stubborn boy,” Dr. Cage says softly. “He tried a couple of times after the war to get an investigation started. He made some headway, but it never came to anything. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the intruder who killed him at Malmaison was sent by the men who wrote this letter.”
I wish he had been, I say silently.
Dr. Cage is watching me closely. “I can see there’s more to this than what you’ve told me. Maybe a lot more. I just hope I’ve helped you a little.”
Though there’s really nothing else he can do to help, I want to tell him more. His opinion has become important to me. “If I asked you whether you think Luke could have sexually abused me or not, what would you say?”
A deep sadness fills Tom Cage’s eyes. “I’d like to say no. I really would. But I’m too old a dog to be offering certainty on a subject like that. The human sex drive is a powerful thing. It dictates to us more than the other way around, often without our realizing it. Freud spent his life trying to understand it and fell far short. Luke was a good boy, but what he did in the dark of the night—or why he did it—I won’t pretend to know. Whatever he did probably had more to do with what was done to him as a child than anything else. And that I don’t know about.”
“You said you treated his parents.”
Dr. Cage turns up his hands. “They were good people, but they died young. I didn’t much care for the uncle who took Luke in. He was a redneck loudmouth who spent most of his time trying to get Social Security disability benefits he didn’t deserve. Of course, that doesn’t make him a child molester. He’s dead now. Lung cancer.”
As I pack my father’s things back into the bag, I say, “If I asked you the same question about my grandfather—whether you think he could have molested me—what would you say?”
Dr. Cage’s eyes lock onto mine with a curious intensity. “I’d have to give you the same answer I gave you about Luke. None of us really knows anybody, and when it comes to sex, anything is possible.”
When I don’t speak, Dr. Cage adds, “You’re looking down a deep, dark hole, Catherine. A lot darker hole than I thought when I walked in that door.” He glances at Michael. “At least you’ve got a good man helping you do it.”
He’s about to speak again when the door beside the couch opens, and a nurse walks in. The doctor’s face darkens. “I said I wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“I’m sorry,” says the nurse. “But Dale Thompson just slid his motorcycle down a hundred yards of pavement. He’s bleeding all over the waiting room.”
“Why didn’t he go to the emergency room?”
“He said you patched him up after his last wreck, and he wants you for this one. Looks like he needs about a hundred stitches, all told.”
Dr. Cage shakes his head. “He needs some sense knocked into him. Put him in the surgery. I’ll be right there.”
The doctor comes around his desk and takes me by the hand. “I’m going to be honest with you, Cat. I never liked your grandfather. I respected his skill, and his work for the city, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about Bill Kirkland. As for what you asked about, I can tell you this: the man’s nearly eighty years old, and he takes as much Viagra as any patient I treat. I know that because he gets it free from one of the drug reps. And so far as I know, he doesn’t see any women in town. But then I don’t know half of what goes on anymore. So, that’s not evidence of anything.”
As I get to my feet, Dr. Cage says, “How’s your aunt Ann? I used to treat her on and off for depression when she was mad at her shrinks.”
“She’s dead.”
Dr. Cage is visibly shaken. “Dead how?”
“Suicide. Last night.”
“Jesus Christ. I hate to hear that.”
“Did Ann ever mention anything to you about sexual abuse?”
He shakes his head. “She was obsessed with having a child, that’s what I remember most. And she had a real love-hate relationship with your grandfather. She depended on him for everything and hated herself for her dependence.”
“Do you know anything about the appendectomy she had on the island?”
Dr. Cage laughs. “Hell, I’ve heard Bill tell that story a dozen times. He acts like he did a heart transplant with nothing but a pocketknife and some rubbing alcohol.”
“Ann was ten when that happened. Do you think she could have been pregnant?”
Dr. Cage’s eyes narrow, but after a while he shakes his head. “No. In over forty years of practicing medicine, I’ve seen one pregnant eleven-year-old. Maybe two. God almighty, you are walking through the abyss, aren’t you?”
I nod. “It feels like it.”
He looks at Michael. “You take care of this girl. She’s tough, but she’s not as tough as she thinks she is.”
“I will.”
Dr. Cage shakes Michael’s hand, and then he’s gone.
“You still want to exhume your father’s body?” Michael asks.
“More than ever.”
He sighs and leads me toward the waiting room. There’s a trail of blood on the white tiles of the corridor, and a bloody footprint near the waiting room door. In an instant, I flash back to the bloody prints on my bedroom floor. The door ahead wavers in my vision, and my knees go weak. Michael braces my arm and leads me past the staring faces in the waiting room.
“I’m taking you to my office and running some tests,” he says.
I blink against the bright sunlight, crazy images flashing in the glare. My father’s tombstone…myself as a little girl putting Lena the Leopardess into his coffin…
“No. If I stop, I won’t be able to start again. We keep going.”
Chapter
51
The Natchez City Cemetery is one of the most beautiful in the world, but today it brings me no peace. I’m driving my mother’s car down one of its narrow asphalt lanes, Mom in the seat beside me, looking as anxious as I’ve ever seen her. She has aged visibly since Ann’s death. Her skin is drawn and pale, and her eyes look cloudy.
“I don’t know why you want to come here,” she says quietly. “We’ll be here soon enough to bury Ann.”
“I want to see Daddy’s grave. I want our family to be together when I talk to you. The three of us.”
“What has gotten into you?” Her eyes stare through the windshield. “You’ve got the FBI searching for you. You’ve got Daddy and Pearlie in an uproar. Daddy’s got a very sensitive deal cooking to try and save the city, and he’s terrified you’re going to ruin it by causing all this trouble.”
I continue down the lane through a tunnel of oaks, rolling between long wrought-iron fences and mausoleums hidden among the trees. Our family plot lies in the old section of the cemetery, where the gnarled limbs of giant oaks reach to the ground and Spanish moss drapes everything in shadow.
“Do you visit Daddy’s grave very often?” I ask.
Mom doesn’t answer.
If Michael hadn’t stranded me at Mom’s shop—as I requested—I would never have gotten her to the cemetery. But by offering to drive her home, I got control of the car and—for now at least—her.
; “Mom, have you taken a sedative?”
She cuts her eyes at me. “You’ve got a lot of nerve. You’ve been drinking your sedative every day of your life.”
“Yes, but I’m clean today. I have been for a week, believe it or not.”
Mom says nothing.
“I only ask because I’m curious. Did you take it on your own, or did Grandpapa give it to you?”
A huff of anger. “Where else would I get it?”
I pull her Maxima onto the grass beside a low brick wall. The DeSalle family plot lies just beyond it. No mausoleums for us, just fine Alabama marble behind wrought iron that dates to 1840. You can’t see the river from here—that view is reserved for the relatives of those buried on Jewish Hill—but the air smells of cedar and sweet olive, and the shade more than makes up for the panoramic view from the bluff.
A good portion of five generations of DeSalles lies behind this fence. Grandpapa would have preferred that Luke Ferry be interred elsewhere, but my mother—to her credit—insisted that he be buried here. It may be the only time that she stood up to her father and won. If I try to drag Mom through the gate, she’ll resist me, so I simply walk through on my own and don’t stop until I’m standing before my father’s simple black headstone.
Before long, I hear the gate creak. Then a shadow falls across mine on the ground.
“Why are we really here?” my mother asks softly.
I reach out and find her hand with mine. “Mom…somehow I’ve reached the age of thirty-one without you and me sharing much more than small talk. I blame myself as much as you. I want us to do better in the future. But after today, you may never want to talk to me again.”
“You’re scaring me, honey.”
“I won’t say you shouldn’t be. I want to exhume Daddy’s body.”
Her indrawn breath might as well have been an explosion. I know the turmoil inside her is almost more than she can bear. How did I raise this crazy woman beside me? she’s wondering. Before she can scream or burst into tears, I push on.
“I need a sample of his DNA, but I also want another autopsy done. And I want Lena out of the coffin.”
“That raggedy old stuffed animal?”
“Yes.”
Her hand pulls out of mine. “Catherine? What’s happened to you? Are you out of your mind?”
“No. I think I’m close to not being out of my mind for the first time in my life. I need your help to do this, Mom. I’m asking you to help me.”
She’s looking at the gravestone, not at me. “But why? What are you trying to do?”
“I’m not sure you want to know.”
“If you’re talking about digging up your father, I’d better know what you think you’re up to.”
I step onto Daddy’s grave, then turn and face her. “Mom, I was sexually abused when I was a child.”
She blinks several times quickly.
“Ann may have been molested, too. I don’t know. And I won’t know until I see Daddy’s body and get Lena out of that coffin.”
Mom has begun to shake. From her head to her toes, she’s shivering as though stranded on an arctic glacier. Even her fitted linen suit is shivering, though the summer air is still as death. “Oh, dear Lord,” she says, her voice almost a whimper. “Who put this nonsense in your head? Was it that psychiatrist Ann was seeing? The one who was murdered?”
“How do you know about him?”
“I spoke to the FBI, dear. An Agent Kaiser called me. He was very personable, and very concerned about you, too.”
A sense of threat brings the hair on the back of my neck erect. “When was this?”
“Now, Cat, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Did you tell Kaiser I’m in town?”
“I didn’t tell anyone anything, baby. Daddy said our family business is none of their business.”
Jesus…“Did Grandpapa talk to Kaiser?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Mom, there’s so much to tell and not enough time to tell it. My whole life I’ve had problems with sex. With men, with alcohol…lots of things.”
She steps toward me, relief evident in her face. Now I understand the problem, she thinks. “That’s not your fault, honey. Anybody who lost their father the way you did was bound to have some problems.”
“No! It wasn’t that. I always thought it was, but it wasn’t.”
“Baby, of course that’s it. You suffered so much pain—”
“Mom, please! There’s so much you don’t know. Grandpapa tried to protect you the same way he tried to protect me. Only he didn’t protect either of us.”
The anxiety returns to her face. “What are you talking about?”
“I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you this, but there’s no other way. Mom, the night Daddy was shot, there was no intruder at Malmaison.”
“Of course there was. I told you—”
“No,” I say firmly. “You never saw one, and there never was one. Grandpapa told me that himself. He made up that prowler to keep from having to tell you what really happened.”
“What really happened?” she echoes, her eyes as wary as a timid dog’s.
“Yes. Grandpapa said he caught Daddy molesting me in my bed that night. They fought, and Grandpapa shot him.”
The blood has drained from my mother’s face. She’s so pale that I can’t believe she hasn’t fainted.
“I know that’s a shock, Mom. But that’s what he told me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I shrug. “I’m telling you the truth. Only I’m not sure anymore that Grandpapa was telling me the truth. There’s a chance it could have happened the other way around—that Daddy caught Grandpapa abusing me. Only Daddy still got killed. And that’s what I’m trying to find out. Not who killed whom, but who molested me. If it was Grandpapa, he probably did the same to Ann.”
My mother has clapped her hands over her ears like a child, but I keep talking. “Ann killed herself in the clinic with Thomas the Turtle beside her. Did you know that? Did you know she had Thomas there?”
“She did that because of her infertility,” Mom says almost defiantly. “She blamed it on the appendectomy she had there. Daddy said as much several times, as I recall. That the infection might have made her sterile.”
“I’m not even sure that operation was an appendectomy, Mom. I’m afraid Ann might have been pregnant.”
My mother’s mouth is a cartoon O. “Ten-year-old girls don’t get pregnant! My God, that alone should tell you how crazy this is!”
“Maybe she wasn’t pregnant,” I concede, recalling the unanimous opinions of Michael Wells, Hannah Goldman, and Tom Cage. “But something very bad happened to Ann in that clinic. And somewhere deep inside, you know that.”
At last Mom realizes how foolish she must look, and she drops her hands to her sides. As she stares at me in silence, I cross the final, unspeakable line. “Mama…how could you not know? How could you not know that was happening to me? How could you let someone do that to me?”
Tears pool in the corners of her eyes, then slide down her face. “You need help, baby. We’ll find somebody, somebody really good this time.”
“No,” I say, my voice breaking. “You can’t pawn me off anymore. Nobody can help me through this except you. You, Mama. I know you’ve had problems with sex—just like I have—only they’re different problems. I know there are things you can’t do.”
Her mouth begins to quiver.
“I spoke to Louise, Mom.”
She flinches as though from a blow. “Take me home, Catherine. Don’t say another word.”
“I’m begging you, Mom. I’m standing here on Daddy’s grave begging you to help me find the truth. I’m afraid if I don’t, I may not live much longer.”
“Don’t do that to me,” she snaps, angrily raising a forefinger. “Don’t put that on me! Ann did it too many times already. Take me home, or I’m leaving you here.”
“I have the keys,” I whisper.
; “Then I’ll walk.”
Chapter
52
When I pull into the parking lot behind Malmaison, I see my grandfather seated in a foldout lawn chair by the entrance to the rose garden. Billy Neal stands beside him, a brown beer bottle in his hand. Grandpapa leans forward to peer through the windshield of the Maxima. When he sees both me and my mother inside, he dismisses Billy with a wave of his hand.
“Give me your cell phone, Mom.”
She refused to speak on the way home from the cemetery, but she passes me the phone. Then she gets out of the car, her purse over her shoulder, and waits for me. As I dial Sean’s number in New Orleans, Billy Neal walks through the arbor and disappears into the rose garden without looking back.
“Detective Sergeant Regan.”
“It’s me, Sean. Do you have my autopsy report?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Cat. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get it. The FBI has closed ranks on this thing. They’re not giving the task force crap. It’s like the old days when the Feds never shared anything.”
Grandpapa is saying something to Mom, but she hasn’t moved away from the car. I shut my eyes, trying to press down a sense of grim futility. “Sean, you get me that fucking report.”
I hang up. I’d like to back out of the parking lot and drive straight to Michael Wells’s house, but I can’t let Mom face Grandpapa alone. Not after what I told her at the cemetery. As soon as I get out of the car, Grandpapa is up out of his chair and screaming at me. His face is red, his eyes blazing.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Catherine?”
The sight of my grandfather angry still turns my insides to jelly, but today I stand my ground. “What are you talking about?”
“You want to dig up your father’s goddamn corpse?”
I can’t believe it. Either Michael lied to me when he said he didn’t mention my name to his attorney, or someone in the chancery judge’s office leaked word of my inquiries to my grandfather. That has to be it. I called the judge’s chambers during the ride from Dr. Cage’s office to my mother’s shop, so that I’d have some idea of a time frame on exhumation when I discussed it with my mother. But Mom and I never got that far. And now what I had planned as a discreet little operation has, like everything else, become known to my grandfather.
