Filth. He wanted to remove his brain, dip it in acid.
The strawberry blonde had gotten up, was walking toward him.
Leaning low. Giving him a tease-glimpse of nipple before tugging up her top.
Really a gorgeous one.
She posed, smiled, tapped a foot, and made her chest shake.
He felt a warm stirring in his jeans. But vague, removed, as if it were happening to someone else’s body.
He said nothing, did nothing.
She looked confused. “Hey. Do you want to dance?”
Avi looked up at her, trying to collect his thoughts.
“Hey,” said the girl, smiling again, but hurt. “I didn’t know it was a life-or-death decision.”
She turned to leave.
Avi stood, took hold of her.
“It’s not,” he said, twirling her around and putting on a smile of his own, the one the South African girl had called devilish, the one they all went for.
Keeping the smile plastered on his face, he squired her onto the dance floor.
CHAPTER
74
On the fourth day, Daniel went home and slept until evening. When he awoke, Shoshi was in the room, sitting in a chair by the window, big-eyed, silent, picking at her cuticles.
Far away . . .
He remembered Ben David’s visit, yesterday. The disquieting feeling of waiting for a comparative stranger to tell him about his own child.
I won’t tell you she’s perfect. She’s shaken up—traumatized. Expect some sleep problems, maybe nightmares, appetite loss, fearfulness, clinginess. It’s normal, will take time to work through.
What about addiction?
No chance. Don’t worry about that. In fact, the heroin turned out to be a blessing. She was spared the gory details. All she remembers is his grabbing her suddenly, holding her down for the injection, then waking up in the ambulance.
Hearing the psychologist talk about the abduction had made him want to cringe. He’d suppressed it, thought he’d done a good job of hiding his feelings. But Ben David’s look was penetrating. Appraising.
What, Eli?
Actually, what worries her the most is you—that you’ll never be the same, that it was all her fault, you’ll never forgive her.
There’s nothing to forgive, Eli.
Of course not. I’ve told her that. It would help if she heard it from you.
“Motek?”
“Yes, Abba?”
“Come here, on the bed.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. I’m a tough guy. Come on.”
She got up from the chair, settled near his right shoulder.
“How’s the dog, Shosh?”
“Good. The first night he cried until morning. I put him in my bed. But last night he slept well. This morning he ate everything I gave him.”
“And how about you—how are you sleeping?”
“Fine.”
“No bad dreams?”
“No.”
“And what did you eat for breakfast?”
“Nothing.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“Dieting?”
A tiny smile formed on her lips. She covered her mouth with her hand. When she removed it, the smile had vanished.
“No.”
“What then, Yom Kippur? Have I been here so long that I’ve lost track of time?”
“Oh, Abba.”
“Not Yom Kippur. Let me see—a boy. You want to look skinny for a boy.”
“Abba!”
“Don’t worry about what the boys think, what anyone thinks. You’re beautiful just the way you are. Perfect.” He lifted her hand to his lips, touched the palm to his unshaven cheek. Feeling the warmth, capillaries brimming with life-blood. Exulting in it.
“Smooth or scratchy?” Old game.
“Scratchy. Abba—”
“Perfect,” he repeated. Pause. “Except, of course, for the way you treat your brothers.”
The smile again, but sad. Fingers twisting her hair, then touching the wings of the silver butterfly.
“Have you done your homework today?”
“There is no homework. School’s out in two days. The teachers let us have parties. And they’re wild animals.”
“Your teachers are wild animals?”
“Mikey and Benny!”
“Oh. What species?”
She stiffened, pulled her hand away. “Abba, you’re being silly, treating me like a baby and trying to avoid the subject.”
“And what subject is that?”
“That I was stupid to go with a stranger—all those times you and Eema told me about strangers, and I went. I thought he was a rabbi—”
“You cared about Dayan—”
“It was stupid! Retarded! And because of it I hurt you, hurt you badly—your shoulder, your hand. It was all my fault!”
She tore at her hair, her little face crumpled. Daniel pulled her down to him, tucked her head under his neck, felt her fragile body convulse with sobs.
“I won’t lie to you, Shosh, it was a mistake. But even mistakes turn out well—because of you, an evil man was caught before he could hurt anyone else. All part of God’s plan.”
Silence. “You killed him, didn’t you, Abba?”
“Yes.”
She sat up, stared out the window for a long time. Daniel followed her gaze, over the domes and spires of the Old City. The sun was setting, casting rosy shadows across the wilderness of Judea. Rose dappled with soft blue. He wished he had an artist’s memory. . . .
“I’m glad you killed him. But it was still stupid and now your hand is ruined.”
“It’s injured, not ruined. It’ll get better. I’ll be fine.”
“No!” Shoshi shook her head furiously. “In the hospital—I heard a doctor talking in the hospital. He said it was ruined—you’d be lucky to get any use out of it.”
She began to cry again. Daniel clasped her to him, started crying too.
He held her, tried to absorb her grief. Waited until she’d calmed and took her chin in his hand, stared into her huge wet eyes. Smoothed back her hair, kissed tear-streaked cheeks, and forgot the pain.
“I’m not ruined. Shosheleh. I’m very, very whole. Please believe that. Abba doesn’t lie to you, does he?”
A shake of the head.
“Then believe me, please, sweetie. I’m whole, complete. No man could be more complete. Do you believe me?”
Nod.
He cradled her in his arms, remembering baby days, changing diapers, spoon-feeding mush, the first clumsy steps, inevitable pratfalls. The privilege of watching it—watching all of them.
The room grew dark. Daniel said, “Get me my siddur, motek. It’s time to pray ma’ariv.”
While she fetched the prayerbook, he recited a silent modeh ani—thanking the Almighty for restoring his soul. A morning prayer, twelve hours too late.
But it felt like morning.
BOOKS BY JONATHAN KELLERMAN
FICTION
ALEX DELAWARE NOVELS
Guilt (2013)
Victims (2012)
Mystery (2011)
Deception (2010)
Evidence (2009)
Bones (2008)
Compulsion (2008)
Obsession (2007)
Gone (2006)
Rage (2005)
Therapy (2004)
A Cold Heart (2003)
The Murder Book (2002)
Flesh and Blood (2001)
Dr. Death (2000)
Monster (1999)
Survival of the Fittest (1997)
The Clinic (1997)
The Web (1996)
Self-Defense (1995)
Bad Love (1994)
Devil’s Waltz (1993)
Private Eyes (1992)
Time Bomb (1990)
Silent Partner (1989)
Over the Edge (1987)
Blood Test (1986)
; When the Bough Breaks (1985)
OTHER NOVELS
True Detectives (2009)
Capital Crimes (with Faye Kellerman, 2006)
Twisted (2004)
Double Homicide (with Faye Kellerman, 2004)
The Conspiracy Club (2003)
Billy Straight (1998)
The Butcher’s Theater (1988)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
The Web (2013)
Silent Partner (2012)
NONFICTION
With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars (2008)
Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children (1999)
Helping the Fearful Child (1981)
Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer (1980)
FOR CHILDREN, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED
Jonathan Kellerman’s ABC of Weird Creatures (1995)
Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994)
Read on for an excerpt from
GUILT
by Jonathan Kellerman
Published by Ballantine Books
CHAPTER
1
All mine!
The house, the life growing inside her. The husband.
Holly finished her fifth circuit of the back room that looked out to the yard. She paused for breath. The baby—Aimee—had started pushing against her diaphragm.
Since escrow had closed, Holly had done a hundred circuits, imagining. Loving every inch of the place despite the odors imbedded in ninety-year-old plaster: cat pee, mildew, overripe vegetable soup. Old person.
In a few days the painting would begin and the aroma of fresh latex would bury all that, and cheerful colors would mask the discouraging gray-beige of Holly’s ten-room dream. Not counting bathrooms.
The house was a brick-faced Tudor on a quarter-acre lot at the southern edge of Cheviot Hills, built when construction was meant to last and adorned by moldings, wainscoting, arched mahogany doors, quartersawn oak floors. Parquet in the cute little study that would be Matt’s home office when he needed to bring work home.
Holly could close the door and not have to hear Matt’s grumbling about moron clients incapable of keeping decent records. Meanwhile she’d be on a comfy couch, snuggling with Aimee.
She’d learned the sex of the baby at the four-month anatomical ultrasound, decided on the name right then and there. Matt didn’t know yet. He was still adjusting to the whole fatherhood thing.
Sometimes she wondered if Matt dreamed in numbers.
Resting her hands on a mahogany sill, Holly squinted to blank out the weeds and dead grass, struggling to conjure a green, flower-laden Eden.
Hard to visualize, with a mountain of tree-trunk taking up all that space.
The five-story sycamore had been one of the house’s selling points, with its trunk as thick as an oil drum and dense foliage that created a moody, almost spooky ambience. Holly’s creative powers had immediately kicked into gear, visualizing a swing attached to that swooping lower branch.
Aimee giggling as she swooped up and shouted that Holly was the best mommy.
Two weeks into escrow, during a massive, unseasonal rainstorm, the sycamore’s roots had given way. Thank God the monster had teetered but hadn’t fallen. The trajectory would’ve landed it right on the house.
An agreement was drawn up: The sellers—the old woman’s son and daughter—would pay to have the monstrous thing chopped down and hauled away, the stumps ground to dust, the soil leveled. Instead, they’d cheaped out, paying a tree company only to cut down the sycamore, leaving behind a massive horror of deadwood that took up the entire rear half of the yard.
Matt had gone bananas, threatened to kill the deal.
Abrogate. What an ugly word.
Holly had cooled him off by promising to handle the situation, she’d make sure they got duly compensated, he wouldn’t have to deal with it.
Fine. As long as you actually do it.
Now Holly stared at the mountain of wood, feeling discouraged and a bit helpless. Some of the sycamore, she supposed, could be reduced to firewood. Fragments and leaves and loose pieces of bark she could rake up herself, maybe create a compost pile. But those massive columns …
Whatever; she’d figure it out. Meanwhile, there was cat pee–overripe soup–mildew–old lady stink to deal with.
Mrs. Hannah had lived in the house for fifty-two years. Still, how did a person’s smell permeate lath and plaster? Not that Holly had anything against old people. Though she didn’t know too many.
There had to be something you could do to freshen yourself—a special deodorant—when you reached a certain age.
One way or the other, Matt would settle down. He’d come around, he always did.
Like with the house itself. He’d never expressed any interest in design, all of a sudden he was into contemporary. Holly had toured a ton of boring white boxes, knowing Matt would always find a reason to say no because that was Matt’s thing.
By the time Holly’s dream house materialized, he didn’t care about style, just a good price.
The deal had been one of those warp-speed magical things, like when the stars are all aligned and your karma’s perfectly positioned: Old lady dies, greedy kids want quick cash and contact Coldwell and randomly get hooked up with Vanessa and Vanessa calls Holly before the house goes on the market because she owes Holly big-time, all those nights talking Vanessa down from bad highs, listening to Vanessa’s nonstop litany of personal issues.
Toss in the biggest real-estate slump in decades and the fact that Holly had been a little Ms. Scroogette working twelve-hour days as a p.r. drone since graduating college eleven years ago and Matt was even tighter plus he’d gotten that raise plus that IPO they got to invest in from one of Matt’s tech buddies had paid off, and they had just enough for the down payment and to qualify for financing.
Mine!
Including the tree.
Holly struggled with a balky old brass handle—original hardware!—shoved a warped French door open and stepped out into the yard. Making her way through the obstacle course of felled branches, death-browned leaves, and ragged pieces of bark, she reached the fence that separated her property from the neighbors’.
This was her first serious look at the mess and it was even worse than she’d thought: The tree company had sawed away with abandon, allowing the chunks to fall on unprotected ground. The result was a whole bunch of holes—craters, a real disaster.
Maybe she could use that to threaten a big-time lawsuit unless they carted everything away and cleaned up properly.
She’d need a lawyer. One who’d take it on contingency … God, those holes were ugly, sprouting thick, wormy masses of roots and a nasty-looking giant splinter.
She kneeled at the rim of the grossest crater, tugged at the roots. No give. Moving to a smaller pit, she dislodged only dust.
At the third hole, as she managed to tug loose a thatch of smaller roots, her fingers brushed against something cold. Metallic.
Buried treasure, aye aye, pirate booty! Wouldn’t that be justice!
Laughing, Holly brushed away soil and rocks, revealed a patch of pale blue. Then a red cross. A few more strokes and the entire top of the metal thing came into view.
A box, like a safe-deposit box but larger. Blue except for a red cross at the center.
Something medical? Or just kids burying who-knew-what in an abandoned receptacle?
Holly tried to budge the box. It shimmied but held fast. She rocked it back and forth, made some progress but was unable to free the darn thing.
Then she remembered and went to the garage and retrieved the ancient spade from the stack of rusty tools left behind by the sellers. Another broken promise—they’d pledged to clean up completely, gave the excuse that the tools were still usable, they were just trying to be nice.
Like Matt would ever use hedge clippers or a rake or a hand-edger.
Returning to the hole, she wedged the spade’s flat mouth between metal and dirt and put a little wei
ght into the pry. A creak sounded but the box only budged a tiny bit, stubborn devil. Maybe she could pop the lid to see what was inside … nope, the clasp was held tight by soil. She worked the spade some more, same lack of progress.
Back in the old days she would’ve bore down hard. Back when she did Zumba twice a week and yoga once a week and ran 10Ks and didn’t have to avoid sushi or carpaccio or latte or Chardonnay.
All for you, Aimee.
Now every week brought increasing fatigue, everything she’d taken for granted was an ordeal. She stood there, catching her breath. Okay, time for an alternate plan: Inserting the spade along every inch of the box’s edges, she let loose a series of tiny, sharp tugs, working methodically, careful not to strain.
After two go-rounds, she began again, had barely pushed down on the spade when the box’s left side popped up and it flew out of the hole and Holly staggered back, caught off balance.
The spade fell from her hands as she used both arms to fight for stability.
She felt herself going down, willed herself not to, managed to stay on her feet.
Close call. She was wheezing like an asthmatic couch potato. Finally, she’d recovered enough to drag the blue box onto the dirt.
No lock on the latch, just a hasp and loop, rusted through. But the rest of the box had turned green from oxidation and a patch worn through the blue paint explained that: bronze. From the weight, solid. That had to be worth something by itself.
Sucking in a lungful of air, Holly jiggled with the hasp until she freed it.
“Presto-gizmo,” she said, lifting the lid.
The bottom and sides of the box were lined with browned newspaper. Resting in the nest of clippings was something wrapped in fuzzy cloth—a satin-edged blanket, once blue, now faded mostly to tan and pale green. Purplish splotches on the satin borders.
Something worth wrapping. Burying. Excited, Holly lifted the blanket out of the box.
Feeling disappointed immediately because whatever was inside had no serious weight to it, scratch doubloons or gold bars or rose-cut diamonds.
Laying the blanket on the ground, Holly took hold of a seam and unfurled.
The thing that had been inside the blanket grinned up at her.
The Butcher's Theater Page 72
