After a moment, I found my way back from the edge and a place that threatened to land me in jail for beating an old man to a pulp. I looked away and said, “I need to think about this for a while.”
“To what purpose, Mr. Morgan?” he protested. “You can see everything is there!”
“Everything?” I snorted. “I see an angry man trying to find a reason for his friend’s death.”
Renard looked away. The moment remained intense and I watched him closely, not at all sure he wouldn’t pull out a gun or try something stupid, but he only stared at me.
“Has she told you why they kept her in that hospital?” he asked.
“What difference does it make?”
He showed me a suddenly satisfied smile and said, “You don’t know, do you?”
“No, and I don’t give a damn.”
He put his hands in his pockets for the purpose of demonstrating he had no intention of attacking me, perhaps, but determined that I would hear him clearly.
“Keep reading the papers, Mr. Morgan. The doctors and psychiatrists in Glasgow, she told them everything went black. Miss Lloyd insisted she couldn’t remember but the police reminded her what happened to those two men. Injuries so severe and unexplained but she remembered nothing? They diagnosed her with a mental disorder, Mr. Morgan, and they kept her locked up for treatment.”
Renard moved closer.
“But Scottish detectives don’t agree. No, they hear a convenient excuse, maybe; a clever lie hiding inside her mind where the police can’t go!”
Renard’s voice was climbing and it was clear he didn’t give a damn what I thought about it.
“Is this criminal insanity?” he continued. “Who will ever know because she walks free after only a few months and nothing more is done!”
The question was never asked but I heard Aline’s voice from my thoughts warn me that someday the answer would be revealed. She had said they would tell me to keep away; that I was a fool to trust her. I presumed she had only meant to test our relationship and lay out those pieces of a puzzle made by her past, knowing the stigma of mental illness hung over her like a cloud. Was it only to prepare me? Had she done so to provide an escape before we went too far and the emotional bonds had been made fast? I couldn’t know but Renard’s words still stabbed at me. A breakdown is one thing but traumatic amnesia as a false and contrived excuse for avoiding arrest and imprisonment is another.
I fought back silently against the dreadful possibility she had been something much worse than I imagined, and I needed time to think things through.
“I’ll read through the notes again,” I said at last, “but no promises; I can’t make her talk to you, Inspector.”
“I leave for Belgium this evening, but you can reach me by mobile phone,” Renard replied. “It would be better talking to me before Welsh authorities are the next ones to her door.” He leveled his eyes at me and said, “It would be better for you, too.”
Again, Renard’s implied threat slipped through and I’m sure it was no accident. I moved toward him quickly.
“You think I’m going to roll on Aline because your private sleuthing adventure didn’t pan out? She’s more important to me than you or any other assholes you bring into it but be my guest; call them now, if you like. Let’s see what the local cops think of your pet theory, shall we?”
“Maybe they will take a different view when I give them copies of my documentation, Mr. Morgan. I wonder if you will be so arrogant then, hmm?”
“Time for you to leave, Inspector—the show is over.”
Renard smirked and I can still hear his voice today.
“Oh, the show is just beginning, my friend. Tell that bitch her time has run out!”
As Renard turned onto the road toward town, I stood alone on the tiny, smooth stones of my driveway with trembling hands and a sticky-dry mouth. A breeze came up and it felt good where it brushed past my temples to cool them as I struggled to make sense of all he said. My head swirled with images made by the words in his paperwork and justifications I offered myself no longer mattered. When I turned slowly toward my door, she was already moving to meet me. Again, Aline appeared out of nowhere and it was clear she had listened to my heated exchange with Renard.
“You heard?”
“Yes,” she replied softly. “I called, but when you didn’t answer I walked over. There were loud voices and I stopped beside your house when I heard his.”
“How much did you get?”
“All of it.”
When we settled on the couch Aline’s face was one of near indifference, at first, but she must have seen the torment in mine. I gave her the pile of Renard’s documents and sat quietly while she thumbed through them without a word. She took her time, reading and nodding silently like a schoolteacher grading essays, but there was no doubt it all made sense to her. At last, she set them aside and looked at me.
“I’m sorry you were dragged into this.”
“He thinks you’re some kind of lunatic serial killer.”
“Of course he does.”
“This is serious, Aline. He can’t explain how but he’s sure of it; Renard believes you killed Claude Dumont deliberately and attacked those assholes in Glasgow. Everyone involved over in Belgium said the same thing: that Dumont died of natural causes. The Scottish cops couldn’t figure out what happened at that bus stop but they’ve left the case open until they do.”
“That’s not what’s bothering you, is it?” she asked.
She knew it wasn’t but still she felt compelled to ask. Was it simply to test me and what I thought I knew? I didn’t want to bring it up, but since she went straight to the problem of amnesia and convenient blackouts, I moved close and continued.
“They held you in that place after diagnosing you with selective amnesia caused by a traumatic event, but Renard isn’t buying it. He thinks you lied to them just to avoid arrest, and he’s threatening to show this stuff to the police if you don’t talk to him.”
“Yes, I know.”
It was so quiet and I teetered as if perched on the tip of a needle, unsure of anything but wishing only that she would tell me it was all wrong and Renard contrived his incredible tale. She took my hands in hers.
“I need to ask you something,” she said softly. “It doesn’t matter how you respond but I can’t explain any of this unless I know you will tell me the truth. Can you promise me that?”
“Promise,” I answered.
She waited for a moment and I thought she was only collecting her thoughts. I know now the pause was for my benefit instead of hers but only to allow me time to consider and decide.
“I know this might seem a bit abrupt, and I wish we had more time to let things sort out on their own, but…”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you think we belong together, Evan; is it what you want?”
The question was sudden and out of place. I had thought about it since our first encounter in the snowy field beside her house, and there was no point in avoiding it any longer. I don’t deny it made me feel strange to speak the words, but the answer had always been there, waiting for its moment to be freed.
“Yeah—I do.”
“Do you trust me? If you don’t, or Renard’s papers have made you afraid, it’s all right and I’ll understand.”
“I trust you, Aline, just tell me what the hell is going on here.”
She smiled and touched my cheek very gently.
“You mean the world to me; I need to know you know that. I’ve never felt a love like this, and I won’t again, so I’m giving you the chance to walk away before it goes any further.”
“My escape hatch again?” I asked.
“It’s so painful when I say that but I could never do anything to hurt you, and when you understand, it will lead you to a decision; you will have to make up your mind because what you discover will change things between us forever; it can’t be any other way.”
We had been there before, walking o
n the fringes of a notion I mistakenly believed was only a part in the ridiculous drama we make for ourselves when we’ve met another. Confronting our desires and hopes becomes a sort of prod, I suppose, and one that is used to make things clear or wash away frivolity and carelessness in those first moments when simple attraction has shifted quietly into a deeper, more meaningful affection. We offer a way out but only because we hope it won’t be taken; we need to know the other wants to stay. Aline’s words reprised those earlier thoughts, and once more I was presented with the opportunity—a last chance—to stay clean and leave her behind before the mysterious conditions that brought Renard to the valley could cause me harm. Of course, I had no intention of leaving and it stung a bit that she would feel obliged to make the offer.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said at last. “Whatever this is, we’ll deal with it together.”
They stopped us here, of course, but I found it odd that Halliwell, and not Miss Persimmon, wondered carefully if my choice to stay with Aline was made from conviction, or if it was just bravado and an unwillingness to let go for no other reason than stubborn selfishness. The question was certainly understandable but it surprised me to hear it from him. Mo wondered too, but she only watched when I laughed and affirmed my commitment was honest. Halliwell knew the others held the obvious, subsequent question but I intercepted it and told them the choice had been made without Aline’s influence. They seemed to accept the decision was mine alone, but only after a long deliberation we weren’t privy to.
Berezan, meanwhile, needed more. He is a maneuvering, unprincipled weasel in my book but in fairness, he’s also a highly intelligent man who pays attention and he held up a hand as a signal to Halliwell. It’s still unclear to me if his involvement was authorized solely on Burke and Halliwell’s authority, or if Gregory Hurd’s people invited him as an easy way to placate their American allies. I guess it didn’t matter and he paused, tapping his trademark pencil like a drumstick on the desk with a screwed-up frown and narrowed eyes. Right on schedule, he wondered why I hadn’t thought to turn the tables on Renard and demand to know how he had scrounged up privileged and personal documentation, especially as a retired cop without access to the customary channels.
It was somewhat of an embarrassment but I’d never considered the idea in those tense, combative moments with the inspector, and I told them so. Surprisingly, Berezan closed the thought himself by reminding everyone Renard would not have been eager to answer anyway, and with that, we moved on. Mo smiled at him and I still wonder if the gesture was Berezan’s idea of an olive branch.
Aline paused and I know it was the torment of reaching her own portal and the finality waiting on the other side in those last, tense seconds. As I would cross over, she explained, so would she. The moment became electric—profound. She always knew the outcome long before it arrived, but there was no way of getting me there without showing those things I would need to know so that mystery and disbelief could be transformed into understanding.
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
“I’m not sure what to believe,” I replied, but her question seemed like a test with no correct answer.
“What if he was right?” she continued softly. “What would you think of me if Renard’s accusations turned out to be true?”
“Are they?” I asked with expectant, raised eyes in the way we do when we’re sure the answer will be “no.”
She didn’t draw back in stunned shock and disappointment that I would even consider such a thing. It was surprising but she simply nodded.
“Yes, they are.”
I’m sure there is a clinical description somewhere in a textbook that explains in medical terms what we call a “sinking feeling”; that sudden, unavoidable punch in the stomach catapulting us from the comfort of what we thought we knew into a minefield of things we didn’t want to know. In that breathless moment, I felt like a man left to die marooned in misery and shock with no hope of rescue. I expected her to tell me Renard was just a “loose cannon with a grudge.” I thought she would tell me his tale was absurd and without merit, made in desperation because nothing could bring his friend back from the grave and no one else seemed to care.
I couldn’t speak, wandering in a lonely daze where once-intoxicating notions of our future life together were being torn apart and scattered on a powerful wind. It couldn’t be, I said at last; there was no way she could do such things because no one can. People don’t make others descend into a coma or collapse with near-fatal reaction to allergies they don’t have. Normal people certainly have no power to create hemorrhages or direct and focus the wind. She listened in silence and when I ran out of words she knelt on the floor in front of me.
“A few people can do those things, Evan. I can do them.”
Without warning the thoughts poured in and I couldn’t stop them. I am unable even now to describe the sensation of loss and desperate sadness swarming over me like a suffocating blanket when Renard’s words echoed through my mind. The doctors found symptoms of traumatic, selective amnesia, but the therapy and treatments they gave her were misplaced and ineffective because she hid a deeper and more serious condition behind the wall of a convenient “blackout.” I wasn’t angry in those seconds, and mostly I felt a growing sadness for Aline and what she endured. It seems obvious now, but I was not moved by a simple process of feeling sorry for myself. I hoped she wouldn’t notice it in my face and understand. Instead, she pulled it into the open—raw and stark—as if she could hear my thoughts.
“I know what it suggests; you hear a lost mind but that’s not what this is,” she said softly. “It never was.”
Aline’s bearing was astonishingly calm and her expression was the picture of knowing patience. There was no desperation in her voice or an impassioned need to explain what couldn’t be understood. In that quiet moment she simply waited for the bomb to complete its detonation before the cleanup could begin. I couldn’t see it then, but Aline always knew the time would arrive and when it did, she was prepared.
“Dumont died because I pushed inside his brain; I didn’t intend to go that far, but it happened. Those men in Glasgow would be dead but the paramedics kept them alive until I was far enough away that they could recover. Renard sorted it out because Dumont saw what happened in Brugge; he knew I was responsible for something no one could explain.”
“The fire.”
She nodded with a sad smile.
“I couldn’t let that woman and her child burn alive because I didn’t have to; I had the way to stop it and I did.”
“Are you telling me the sudden wind was…”
“I made it happen so the people standing nearby would have a chance to save them.”
I shook my head and looked at my feet.
“I want to believe you, I really do, but listen to what you’re saying, Aline. Nobody can summon up a giant blast of air and aim it at a car on fire!”
“Are you sure?” she asked softly.
I stared at her, blank and dumbfounded, but she just smiled and continued.
“Dumont saw it. I thought no one would notice, but he saw it and he knew.”
“You’re saying this is the reason he followed you?”
“In his experience, what he saw was impossible. The only explanation that made sense was divine intervention; in his eyes, it truly was a miracle.”
“But this wind…”
“It wasn’t God, Evan; it was just me.”
I felt lost. There was no chance the event she described was made by her hand and only a crazy person would ever think it could. I simply followed Aline to that dark place where her illness blurred the line between fantasy and reality. The doctors in Scotland were unable to break through the lapse in her memory and no one can blame them; by any competent psychiatric analysis, her trauma blotted out the entire experience. They tried, and I’m sure they believed the treatments would help her return, but something much worse hid inside Aline’s mind and it never found a way out. I hat
ed to think it in that moment, but I knew they should never have let her go.
I wanted to ask them; I needed guidance from mental health professionals because I had no idea how to respond. It no longer mattered that I was in love with Aline, and the torment from knowing we wouldn’t live and grow old together made clear it was simply a matter of time before they found and returned her to that place, or another just like it. I had to tread lightly so that my own inexperience and blundering stupidity wouldn’t make things worse. I wanted to run—to get away from her—but the thought made me feel ashamed and disgusted. How, I wondered, could a true friend even think of abandoning her when she needed me most? Still she waited and watched. It must’ve been difficult as she sat out the seconds, knowing what could only have been the storm of helplessness and indecision closing in on my thoughts. At last, I held up my hand to signal I heard, even if it was just a tactic to delay until I thought of something better.
“The next day,” I continued, “when Dumont cornered you at the hotel, I saw the stills from surveillance videos and it’s clear he assaulted you, but then he went down and…”
She looked away for a moment.
“I was just a scared kid, Evan; he hurt me and I overreacted. It was too much, and I’m sorry for what it did to him, but that was long ago and before I learned to control what I can do.”
“They found dozens of ruptured blood vessels in his brain, Aline. His injuries were horrible—fatal—but you never laid a hand on him.”
“I didn’t have to,” she said sadly.
“So how does this work, exactly? You just made those blood vessels hemorrhage?”
The question was childish and asked with clumsy, patronizing condescension. I wanted to see how she would react—to establish her borders. I thought I was clever enough to help her build a trap and let her fall into it on her own so that logic and common sense might find a way through. I believed in my ability to force reason into a cave where reason never goes. Maybe I could become a light to guide her out. I watched and waited for the signs of confusion, hoping to throw a lifeline for her to grab, but she wasn’t drowning and the effort was wasted.
The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd Page 16
