by Greg Iles
“All right, now,” Grandpapa says.
He reaches across the seat, takes hold of my knees, and turns me sideways like a man shifting a sack of seeds. When he moves toward me, I beseech him with my eyes. He hesitates like a man who has forgotten his car keys. Then he reaches under the seat, pulls out Lena the Leopardess, and shoves her into my hands. As I shut my eyes and press her soft fur against my cheek, a feeling like warm water spreads through my body. The rain sweeps over the truck as Grandpapa pushes me back on the seat, and the hard, percussive patter of raindrops on a tin roof fills my ears. When his big hands unsnap my jeans, I don’t feel them. When his leather belt creaks and jingles, I don’t hear it. Lena and I are a million miles away, padding through the jungle, listening to the endless music of the rain.
And it begins.
When I wake to sunlight streaming through Michael’s bedroom, I know.
Like Saul on the road to Damascus, the scales have been stripped from my eyes. My recurring dream was no dream at all, but a memory. A memory trying to come back to me any way it could. The business of my father walking on water was something grafted onto it, a different message from my subconscious, pointing me toward something I’ve yet to learn.
And today I will learn it.
Where Michael lay beside me in the bed, I find a note on the pillow with a house key lying on top of it. The note reads, Gone to work. Tried to wake you, but you wouldn’t budge. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to. Call me at the office when you wake up. Michael.
I take Michael’s phone off the bedside table and dial Sean’s cell number.
“Detective Sergeant Regan.”
“Tell me you got the autopsy report.”
“Cat, I moved heaven and earth to get that fucking thing, but it’s not to be had. John Kaiser’s sitting on it like national security depends on it. If you want that report, you’re going to have to ask Kaiser for it. I’m sorry, babe. I tried my best.”
I hesitate only a moment. “Give me Kaiser’s cell number.”
“Shit. Are you sure? The Bureau’s still looking for you.”
“If Kaiser really wanted to find me, I’d be in jail now.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
Sean reads out the number. I commit it to memory, then hang up and dial it.
Kaiser catches his breath when he hears my voice. “Do you have something for me?” he asks.
“No. I need something from you.”
“That’s not the answer I was looking for, Cat. The only reason you’re not in jail is because I thought you could help me solve this case.”
“I can. But it’s a quid pro quo situation. You help me with my problem, I’ll help you with yours.”
“Christ. What do you want now?”
If I seem too anxious to get the autopsy report, Kaiser might not give it to me. “Tell me where you are with the murders first. What about the saliva cultures? Any Streptococcus mutans growth yet?”
“Not yet. The pathologist thinks it’s still early, though, that we’ll see it by the thirty-six-hour point.”
“No, twenty-four hours is enough, if it’s there. The saliva in those wounds is either coming from someone without teeth, or someone taking penicillin with gentamicin. You haven’t found any victims’ relatives who fit that description?”
“We’ve got a couple of male relatives with dentures. I’m going at them hard, but they look clean to me.”
“Talk to their families. If they wear their dentures at all, they’re not the source. What about the antibiotic angle?”
“That’s tough to nail down,” Kaiser complains. “Anybody could lie about that. We can’t take blood levels on every male relative of six murder victims.”
“Why not? The DNA evidence proves the source is male, and this is your only real lead. The British police did blood tests on thousands of people in one town to solve a murder case.”
“This is America, Cat, not England.”
“Okay, okay. Any sign of anaerobic spirochetes in the cultures? Bacteroides melaninogenicus? Anaerobic vibrios? Those are specific for teeth, and we could rule out edentulous people.”
“Shit. I’m looking…I don’t see anything like that.”
“It’s still early for those to show up, and they’re difficult to culture anyway. I’ll keep thinking about this angle. What about the skull in Malik’s lap?”
“Nothing. The only fingerprints on it were Malik’s.”
“Naturally. What else?”
Kaiser blows out a stream of air in frustration. “We’re checking all film-processing labs, in the hope that someone’s done work for Malik. It was video equipment we found in his apartment, but I’m hoping for a break.”
“What else?”
“I’ve got the technical services guys trying to resurrect data off the drives we took from Malik’s office computers, but they’ve got nothing so far. I think his film really is our only chance. But if the killer got that when he killed Malik…we’re fucked.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been more help to you. I’ve had my hands full here.”
“You just get me the names of the women in Group X. Do that, and I’ll keep your ass out of jail.”
“I’m trying, John. But I need your help, too.”
“What do you need?” His voice is wary.
“The same thing I asked you for yesterday. The autopsy report on my aunt.”
“What are you looking for? Cause of death, what?”
“You know what I’m looking for. Her reproductive organs. Anything out of the ordinary?”
Kaiser takes his time to answer. “I shouldn’t give you this.”
My throat tightens.
“Didn’t you tell me that Ann was obsessed with having children?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that makes no sense at all, Cat.”
“Why not?”
“Because your aunt was sterile. She had been for decades. Probably from the time she was a teenager.”
“What do you mean? Sterile how?”
“Her tubes were tied.”
Something goes hollow inside me. “That’s impossible. The pathologist must have made a mistake.”
“You know better,” Kaiser says wearily. “And the sterilization wasn’t done by any normal procedure, either. That’s how the pathologist knew it was done a long time ago.”
“How was it done?”
“Apparently, in a tubal ligation the procedure is done fairly low down the fallopian tube. Your aunt’s tubes were cut just below something called the fimbria, a flowerlike opening of the tube just below the ovary. They were tied off with silk sutures, and the silk was still inside the scarred tissue at autopsy. The pathologist said OBs haven’t used silk for that procedure in decades.”
A cloud of fog has descended in my mind.
“I know this is giving you some ideas about your personal situation, Cat. Please try to stay calm, okay? Maybe you should call Dr. Goldman.”
“Did the pathologist say anything else?”
“He said that an OB wouldn’t cut off the fimbria. That was something a general surgeon might do as a quick method of sterilizing somebody. He thought it was damned odd.”
My hands are shaking, but not from fear this time. It’s outrage. “I have to go, John.”
“No!” he says quickly. “You can’t just go. I’ve given you a lot of rope to play with, and I’m afraid you’re going to hang us both. I’ve got superiors to answer to, like it or not. And every hour you’re on the street comes out of my credibility. I’m looking for some help here.”
Michael’s clock reads 7:05 A.M. “Give me eight hours, John. In that time I’ll have something to give you, or I’ll come back to New Orleans and let you throw me to the wolves.”
The silence seems interminable.
“What can you possibly learn in Natchez that can help me?” he asks.
Probably nothing, but I don’t really give a shit. I just need you off my back.
“Eight hours,” he says softly. “Cat, if I haven’t heard from you by five o’clock today, I’ll have the Natchez police pick you up on suspicion of murder.”
If they can find me…“Thanks, John. Hey, could you fax me the autopsy report?”
Another pause.
“I’m a member of her family, for God’s sake. Please.”
“You’re a pain in the ass is what you are. Do you want it sent to the same number where we sent you those files on Malik?”
“Perfect. I’ll talk to you before five.”
“Cat—”
I hang up, then get up and run for the bathroom. My father’s body is coming out of the ground today, and nothing is going to stop that. If the judge needs an affidavit from my mother to issue a court order for exhumation, he’ll get one. There will be no more denial for the women of the DeSalle family.
Denial is death.
Chapter
54
Mom is sitting at her kitchen table in a sweat-soaked housecoat, staring blankly into a mug of coffee. She doesn’t even look up at the sound of the door. Only when I sit down opposite her do her eyes rise to take me in.
“Has Grandpapa been here?” I ask.
She shrugs.
I’ve already slipped into my grandfather’s office and retrieved the autopsy report that Kaiser faxed there. I was lucky Grandpapa wasn’t in his office when it arrived—though part of me wished he had been—but my luck ended when I tried to borrow another pistol from his gun safe. The combination had been changed.
“I have some things to tell you, Mom. They won’t be easy to hear, but you don’t have a choice anymore. You owe it to Ann.”
Her eyes are shot with blood, and the skin of the orbits gleams blue-black. But her mind seems alert. Whatever drug she was on yesterday has been flushed from her system.
In a soft but deliberate voice, I tell her what the pathologist discovered during Ann’s autopsy: that she was sterilized many years ago by an unorthodox procedure, probably during her “emergency appendectomy” on the island. Mom listens like someone being told that her child has been tortured to death. I have the sense that if I pricked her face with a needle, she wouldn’t flinch.
“There’s something else,” I add. “I had a dream last night. It’s the recurring one, about riding in the old pickup truck with Grandpapa. Last night I saw the end of it. He parked by the pond, and then…Mom, he started touching me.”
Her eyes remain focused on the table.
“And right before he took my pants down, he pulled Lena from under the seat and stuck her in my arms.”
A trembling has begun in my mother’s hands.
“That’s how they found Ann,” I remind her. “With Timid Thomas beside her naked body.”
“I had a dream last night, too,” Mom says softly.
“You…you did?”
She lifts her coffee cup to her lips, takes a sip, then sets it rattling on the saucer. “Something happened on the island when I was young,” she says in a voice I’ve never heard from her. There is no affect, no illusion, nothing added for the benefit of the listener. “I was fourteen. It was summer, and I’d gotten to be friends with a boy there. A Negro boy. He was a year older than I. It was innocent, mostly. But toward the end of the summer, we did some touching. He touched me, anyway.”
She takes another sip of coffee, the tremor in her hand so pronounced that I fear she’ll drop the cup. “We’d meet by an old shack near the river. Nobody ever went there. But one day a cousin of mine followed us. And he saw Jesse touching me.”
“The boy’s name was Jesse?” I flash back to a black man speaking through burn-scarred lips: I knew your mama pretty well.
“Yes.”
“Jesse Billups?”
At last her eyes focus on mine. “Yes. He was in love with me.”
“My God…Mom, I talked to him the other day.”
“How did he look?”
“All right, I guess. He seemed to have a lot of anger in him.”
“I’m sure he does, after what happened to him in the war. He used to be handsome, believe it or not. I did what I could for him. He has the best job on the island now.”
Jesus. “That’s not saying much, is it?”
She shrugs as if it hardly matters now. “The day my cousin saw us, he told his father. And his father told my father.”
A chill goes through me. “What happened?”
“Daddy went down to Jesse’s parents’ house that night, dragged Jesse outside, and beat him within an inch of his life.”
Jesse Billups’s words come back to me with perfect clarity: Dr. Kirkland beat me once when I was a boy. Beat me bad. But I’d have done the same thing in his place, so we’re square enough on that…
Tears are running down my mother’s face. I grab a paper towel from the counter and hand it to her.
“Mom?”
She laughs strangely, a note of hysteria in her voice. “I thought Daddy did that because Jesse was black. You see? And I was miserable afterward. I was like you. I wouldn’t talk. And Daddy got madder and madder at me. Finally he demanded to know why I wouldn’t say anything.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That he’d beaten Jesse like the boy had raped me or something, but the truth was that I’d wanted Jesse to touch me.”
I try to imagine my grandfather hearing this from his daughter in 1966. “What happened?”
“Daddy’s face went white. We were staying in a suite at the Peabody in Memphis. He yanked me up from my chair and dragged me back to their bedroom. He took off his belt and whipped me till I bled, and then he kept on whipping me.”
“What was Grandmama doing?”
Mom shakes her head as if genuinely curious. “I don’t know. She disappeared.”
The way you disappeared when I was a girl and Grandpapa was angry.…
“The thing is,” Mom goes on, “the thing I forgot and didn’t remember until my dream last night was that he stripped me naked before he did it. He stripped me. My own father threw me on the bed and tore my clothes off. And while he hit me, he yelled things. Vile things. He called me a slut…a dirty whore. I didn’t even know what those words meant. But the worst part was his face. His eyes.”
“What about them?”
“It wasn’t just anger I saw in them, Cat.”
A rush of terrifying images flashes through my mind. Wild, unseeing eyes and a raging mouth. “What was it?”
Mom closes her eyes and shakes her head, like some primitive woman afraid to name a demon.
“Mama? What did you see in his eyes?”
Her answer is a fearful whisper. “Jealousy.”
A shudder passes through my body, leaving fear in its wake. But somewhere beneath the fear is a feeling of elation. She knows, I realize. More than that, she knows she knows.…
“Do you have any memories of Grandpapa touching you?”
She shakes her head. “But you were right about what you said about my problems. There are things I can’t do. I was such a disappointment to your father. He was very understanding. And I wanted to do the things he wanted…they were normal things. But I just couldn’t. If Luke got behind me, my throat would close up, and I’d feel like I had to go to the bathroom right that second.”
“Urinate, you mean?”
She blushes deep red. “No. And if he tried, I felt terrible pain. I don’t want to talk about that, all right? I can’t. I’m not sure what I’m actually remembering and what I might be making up. But one thing I do remember…” She crushes the paper towel into a wet ball and wipes her eyes, but it won’t stop the fresh tears. “The way Ann looked at me. In the evenings, especially, when Mom was gone to play bridge. Ann would go into Daddy’s study to keep him occupied. And I would stay in my room. I knew she hated going in there. I knew she was afraid of him. I was, too, down deep, though I wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone. Not even to myself. How could I be afraid of my daddy? He loved me and took care of me. But whe
never Ann left me to spend time with him, she looked at me the way you’d look at something you were trying to protect.”
Mom’s chin is quivering like a little girl’s. I’m not sure she can endure much more of this. “And now,” she says, “now I know that’s exactly what she was doing. Protecting me from him. She was only four years older, but…dear God, I can’t stand to think about it.”
She crumples over the table, sobbing uncontrollably. I lean down over her and hug her as tight as I can. “I love you, Mom. I love you so much.”
“I don’t know how…at least Ann tried to protect me. But I didn’t protect you…my own baby.”
“You couldn’t,” I whisper. “You couldn’t even protect yourself.”
She sits up and grits her teeth, obviously furious at herself.
“Mom, you didn’t even know what had happened to you. Not consciously. I don’t think you knew until last night.”
“But how is that possible?” Her eyes implore me for an answer. “Ann knew. Why didn’t I?”
“I think we all shut it out, because to admit what he did to us would have been admitting that he didn’t love us. That he wasn’t taking care of us for us…but for him. To use.”
Mom takes my hand in hers and squeezes it in a clawlike grip. “What are you going to do, Cat?”
“I’m going to make him admit what he did.”
She shakes her head, her eyes filled with terror. “He’ll never do that!”
“He’ll have no choice. I’m going to prove that he did it. And then I’m going to see him punished for it.”
“He’ll kill you, Cat. He will.”
I start to deny it, but Mom is right. Grandpapa sterilized his ten-year-old daughter so that he could continue to molest her after puberty without fear of pregnancy. He murdered her future children for a few brief years of pleasure. And in the end that drove her mad.
