But she was alive. She turned and pushed herself into the soundproofing padding that lined the coffinlike box. It was as if she were trying to get away. I realized then that she thought the opening of the door had been him coming back to her. Seguin.
“It’s okay,” McCaleb said. “We’re here to help.”
McCaleb reached down into the box and gently touched her shoulder. She startled like an animal but then calmed.
McCaleb then lay down flat on the floor and reached into the box to start removing the blindfold and gag.
“Harry, get an ambulance.”
I stood up and stepped back from the scene. I felt my chest growing tight, a clarity of thought coming over me. In all my years I had spoken for the dead many times. I had avenged the dead. I was at home with the dead. But I had never so clearly had a part of pulling someone away from the outstretched hands of death. And in that moment I knew we had just done that. And I knew that whatever happened afterward and wherever my life took me, I would always have this moment, that it would be a light that could lead me out of the darkest of tunnels.
“Harry, what are you doing? Get an ambulance.”
I looked at him.
“Yeah, right away.”
The woodworker’s cell was all concrete and steel. It had been a decade since he had run his fingers over the grain of wood. I stepped closer to the bars and looked in at him.
“You’re running out of time. You’ve exhausted your appeals, you’ve got a governor who needs to show he’s tough on crime. This is it, Victor. A week from today you take the needle.”
I waited for a reaction but there was nothing. He just looked at me and waited for what he knew I would ask.
“Time to come clean. Tell me who she was. Tell me where you took her from.”
He moved closer to the bars, close enough for me to smell the decay in his breath. I didn’t back away.
“All these years, Bosch. All these years and you still need to know. Why is that?”
“I just need to.”
“You and McCaleb.”
“What about him?”
“Oh, he came to see me, too.”
I knew McCaleb was out of the life. The job had taken his heart. He got a transplant and moved to Catalina. He was running a fishing charter.
“When did he come?”
“Oh, let me see. Time is so hard to track here. A few months ago. Dropped by for a chat with his new heart, Terry did. Said he was in the neighborhood. He didn’t like my review of the film. What did you think of it?”
He was talking about the film in which Clint Eastwood portrayed McCaleb.
“I didn’t see it. What did he want when he came here?”
“He wanted to know the same thing. Who was the girl, where did she come from? He told me you gave her a name back then, during the trial. Cielo Azul. That’s really very pretty, Detective Bosch. Blue Sky. Why did you choose that?”
“He told you that?”
“Yes, standing right where you are standing. That’s unprofessional, isn’t it, Detective Bosch? To get close like that. That could be dangerous to let a woman in like that. Dead or alive.”
I wanted to go, to get away from him.
“Look, Seguin, are you going to tell me or not? Or are you just going to take it with you?”
He smiled and stepped back from the bars. He walked over to the chessboard and seemed to look down at it to consider a move.
“You know, they used to let me keep a cat in here. I miss that cat.”
He picked up one of the plastic game pieces but then hesitated and returned it to the same spot. He turned and looked at me.
“You know what I think? I think that you two can’t stand the thought of that girl not having a name, not coming from a home with a mommy and a daddy and a little baby brother. The idea of no one caring and no one missing her, it leaves you hollow, doesn’t it?”
“I just want to close the case.”
“Oh, but it is closed. You’re not here because of any case. You are here on your own. Admit it, Detective. Just as McCaleb came on his own. The idea of that pretty little thing-and by the way, if you thought she was beautiful in death then you should have seen her before-the idea of her lying unclaimed in an unmarked grave all this time undercuts everything you do, doesn’t it?”
“It’s a loose end. I don’t like loose ends.”
“It’s more than that, Detective. I know.”
I said nothing, hoping that if he kept on talking he would make a mistake.
“Her face was like an angel’s,” he said. “And that long brown hair… I was always a sucker for that kind of hair. I can still remember its smell. She told me she used a strawberry and cream shampoo. I didn’t even know they put that stuff in shampoo, man.”
He was taunting me. The whole idea I had of getting him to tell me her name seemed absurd now.
“She was one of those women, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Well, she had that thing, that power. That was why I chose her.”
“What power?”
“You know, she could wound you with just a look. Face like an angel but a body like… Have you ever noticed how red cars look like they’re going fast even if they’re just sitting still? She was like that. She was dangerous. She had to go. If I didn’t do it, she would’ve done it to us. A lot of us.”
He smiled at me and I knew he was still pulling the strings. He was giving me nothing, just trying to get a rise out of me.
“Hey, Bosch?”
“What?”
“If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?”
His smile opened even broader.
“If a woman is murdered in the city and nobody cares, does it matter?”
“I care.”
“Exactly.”
He came back to the bars.
“And you need me to relieve you of that burden by giving you a name, a mommy and daddy who care.”
He was a foot away from me. I could reach through the bars and grab his throat if I wanted to. But that would be what he’d want me to do.
“Well, I won’t release you, Detective. You put me in this cage. I put you in that one.”
He stepped back and pointed at me. I looked down and realized both my hands were tightly gripped on the steel bars of the cage. My cage.
I looked back up at him and his smile was back, as guiltless as a baby’s.
“Funny isn’t it? I remember that day-twelve years ago today. Sitting in the back of the car while you cops played hero. So full of yourselves for saving her. Bet you never thought it would come to this, did you? You saved one but you lost the other.”
I lowered my head to the bars.
“Seguin, you’re going to burn. You are going to hell.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I hear it’s a dry heat.”
He laughed loudly and I looked at him.
“Don’t you know, Detective? You have to believe in heaven to believe in hell.”
I abruptly turned from the bars and headed back toward the steel door. Above it I saw the mounted camera. I made an open up gesture with my hand and picked up my speed as I got closer. I needed to get out of there.
I heard Seguin’s voice echoing off the walls behind me.
“I’ll keep her close, Bosch! I’ll keep her right here with me! Eternally together! Eternally mine!”
When I got to the steel door I hit it with both fists until I heard the electronic lock snap and the guard began to slide it open.
“All right, man, all right. What’s the hurry?”
“Just get me out of here,” I said as I pushed past him.
I could still hear Seguin’s voice echoing from the death house as I crossed back across the open field.
Dangerous Women - Penzler, Otto Ed v1.rtf
GIVE ME YOUR HEART
JOYCE CAROL OATES
D
ear Dr. K——,
&n
bsp; It’s been a long time, hasn’t it! Twenty-three years, nine months and eleven days.
Since we last saw each other. Since you last saw, “nude” on your naked knees, me.
Dr. K——! The formal salutation isn’t meant as flattery, still less as mockery-please understand. I am not writing after so many years to beg an unreasonable favor of you (I hope), or to make demands, merely to inquire if, in your judgment, I should go through the formality, and the trouble, of applying to be the lucky recipient of your most precious organ, your heart. If I may expect to collect what is due to me, after so many years.
I’ve learned that you, the renowned Dr. K——, are one who has generously signed a “living will” donating his organs to those in need. Not for Dr. K——an old-fashioned, selfish funeral and burial in a cemetery, nor even cremation. Good for you, Dr. K——! But I want only your heart, not your kidneys, liver or eyes. These, I will waive, that others more needy will benefit.
Of course, I mean to make my application as others do, in medical situations similar to my own. I would not expect favoritism. The actual application would be made through my cardiologist. Caucasian female of youthful middle age, attractive, intelligent, optimistic though with a malfunctioning heart, otherwise in perfect health. No acknowledgment would be made of our old relationship, on my part at least. Though you, dear Dr. K——, as the potential heart donor, could indicate your own preference, surely?
All this would transpire when you die, Dr. K——, I mean.
Of course! Not a moment before.
(I guess you might not be aware that you’re destined to die soon? Within the year? In a “tragic”-”freak”-accident as it will be called? In an “ironic”-”unspeakably ugly” end to a “brilliant career”? I’m sorry that I can’t be more specific about time, place, means; even whether you’ll die alone, or with a family member or two. But that’s the nature of accident, Dr. K——. It’s a surprise.)
Dr. K——, don’t frown so! You’re a handsome man still, and still vain, despite your thinning gray hair which, like other vain men with hair loss, you’ve taken to combing slantwise over the shiny dome of your head; imagining that, since you can’t see this ploy in the mirror, it can’t be seen by others. But I can see.
Fumbling, you turn to the last page of this letter to see my signature-”Angel”-and you’re forced to remember, suddenly… With a pang of guilt.
Her! She’s still… alive?
That’s right, Dr. K——! More alive now than ever.
Naturally you’d come to imagine I had vanished. I had ceased to exist. Since you’d long ago ceased to think of me.
You’re frightened. Your heart, that guilty organ, has begun to pound. At a second-floor window of your house on Richmond Street (expensively restored Victorian, pale gray shingles with dark blue trim, “quaint”-”dignified”-among others of its type in the exclusive old residential neighborhood east of the Theological Seminary) you stare out anxiously at-what?
Not me, obviously. I’m not there.
At any rate, I’m not in sight.
Yet, how the pale-glowering sky seems to throb with a sinister intensity! Like a great eye staring.
Dr. K——, I mean you no harm! Truly. This letter is in no way a demand for your (posthumous) heart, nor even a “verbal threat.” If you decide, foolishly, to show it to police, they will assure you it’s harmless, it isn’t illegal, it’s only a request for information: should I, the “love-of-your-life” you have not seen in twenty-three years, apply to be the recipient of your heart? What are Angel’s chances?
I only wish to collect what’s mine. What was promised to me, so long ago. I’ve been faithful to our love, Dr. K——!
You laugh, harshly. Incredulously. How can you reply to “Angel,” when “Angel” has included no last name, and no address? You will have to seek me. To save yourself, seek me.
You crumple this letter in your fist, throw it onto the floor.
You walk away, stumble away, you mean to forget, obviously you can’t forget, the crumpled pages of my handwritten letter on the floor of-is it your study?-on the second floor of the dignified old Victorian house at 119 Richmond Street?- where someone might discover them, and pick them up to read what you wouldn’t wish another living person to read, especially not someone “close” to you. (As if our families, especially our blood-kin, are “close” to us in the true intimacy of erotic love.) So naturally you return, with badly shaking fingers you pick up the scattered pages, smooth them out and continue to read.
Dear Dr. K——! Please understand: I am not bitter, I don’t harbor obsessions. That is not my nature. I have my own life, and I have even had a (moderately successful) career. I am a normal woman of my time and place. I am like the exquisite black-and-silver diamond-headed spider, the so-called “happy” spider; the sole sub-species of Araneida that is said to be free to spin part-improvised webs, both oval and funnel, and to roam the world at will, equally at home in damp grasses and the dry, dark, protected interiors of man-made places; rejoicing in (relative) free will within the inevitable restrictions of Araneida behavior; with a sharp venomous sting, sometimes lethal to human beings, and especially to children.
Like the diamond-head, I have many eyes. Like the diamond-head, I may be perceived as “happy”-”joyous”- “exulting”- in the eyes of others. For such is my role, my performance.
It’s true, for years I was stoically reconciled to my loss, in fact to my losses. (Not that I blame you for these losses, Dr. K——. Though a neutral observer might conclude that my immune system has been damaged as a result of my physical and mental collapse following your abrupt dismissal of me from your life.) Then, last March, seeing your photograph in the paper-DISTINGUISHED THEOLOGIAN K——TO HEAD SEMINARY-and, a few weeks later, when you were named to the President’s Commission on Religion and Bioethics, I reconsidered. The time of anonymity and silence is over, I thought. Why not try, why not try to collect what he owes you.
Do you remember Angel’s name, now? That name that, for twenty-three years, nine months and eleven days you have not wished to utter.
Seek my name in any telephone directory, you won’t find it. For possibly my number is unlisted, possibly I don’t have a telephone. Possibly my name has been changed. (Legally.) Possibly I live in a distant city in a distant region of the continent; or possibly, like the diamond-head spider (adult size, approximately that of your right thumbnail, Dr. K——), I dwell quietly within your roof, spinning my exquisite webs amid the shadowy rafters of your basement, or in a niche between your handsome old mahogany desk and the wall, or, a delicious thought, in the airless cave beneath the four-poster brass antique bed you and the second Mrs. K——share in the doldrums of late middle age.
So close am I, yet invisible!
Dear Dr. K——! Once you marveled at my “flawless Vermeer” skin and “spun gold” hair rippling down my back, which you stroked, and closed in your fist. Once I was your “Angel”-your “beloved.” I basked in your love, for I did not question it. I was young, I was virginal in spirit as well as body, and would not have questioned the word of a distinguished elder. And in the paroxysm of lovemaking, when you gave yourself up utterly to me, or so it seemed, how could you have… deceived?
Dr. K—— of the Theological Seminary, biblical scholar and authority, protégé of Reinhold Niebuhr and author of “brilliant”-”revolutionary”-exegeses of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among other esoteric subjects.
But I had no idea, you are protesting. I’d given her no reason to believe, to expect…
(That I would believe your declarations of love? That I would “take you at your word”?)
My darling, you have my heart. Always, forever. Your promise!
These days, Dr. K——, my skin is no longer “flawless.” It has become the frank, flawed skin of a middle-aged woman who makes no effort to disguise her age. My hair, once shimmering strawberry-blond, is now faded, dry and brittle as broom sage; I keep it trimmed short, like a ma
n’s, with a scissors, scarcely glancing into a mirror as I snip! snip-snip! away. My face, though reasonably attractive, I suppose, is, in fact, a blur to most observers, including especially middle-aged American men; you’ve glanced at me, and through me, dear Dr. K——, upon more than one recent occasion, no more recognizing your “Angel” than you would have recognized a plate heaped with food you’d devoured twenty-three years ago with a zestful appetite or an old, long-exhausted and dismissed sexual fantasy of adolescence.
For the record: I was the woman in a plain, khaki-colored trench coat and matching hat who waited patiently at the university bookstore as a line of admirers of yours moved slowly forward, for Dr. K——to sign copies of The Ethical Life: 21st Century Challenges. (A slender theological treatise, not a mega-bestseller of course but a quite respectable bestseller, most popular in university and upscale suburban communities.) I knew your “brilliant” book would disappoint yet I purchased it and eagerly read to discover (yet another time) the puzzling fact: you, Dr. K——, the man, are not the individual who appears in your books; the books are clever pretenses, artificial structures you’ve created to inhabit temporarily, as a crippled, deformed individual might inhabit a structure of surpassing beauty, gazing out its windows, taking pride in posing as its owner, but only temporarily.
Yes? Isn’t this the clue to the renowned “Dr. K——”?
For the record: several Sundays ago, you and I passed closely by each other in the State Museum of Natural History; you were gripping the hand of your five-year-old granddaughter (“Lisle,” I believe?-lovely name) and took no more notice of me than you’d have taken of any stranger passing you on the steep marble steps, descending from the Hall of Dinosaurs on the gloomy fourth floor as you were ascending; you’d stooped to smilingly speak to Lisle, and it was at that moment I noted the silly, touching ploy of you hair-combing (over the spreading bald spot), I saw Lisle’s sweet, startled face (for the child, unlike her myopic granddaddy, had seen me and “knew” me in a flash); I felt a thrill of triumph: for how easily I might have killed you then, I might have pushed you down those hard marble steps, my hands firm on your now rather rounded shoulders, the force of my rage overcoming any resistance you, a puffy, slack-bellied two-hundred-pound man of late middle age, might have mustered; immediately you’d have been thrown off balance, falling backward, with an expression of incredulous terror, and still gripping your granddaughter’s hand you’d have dragged the innocent child backward with you, toppling down the marble steps with a scream: concussion, skull fracture, brain hemorrhage, death!
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