by Alan Russell
That’s how Cheever found her, huddled over the wheel of her car, the engine running, her entire body uncontrollably shaking. He reached inside the car and turned the ignition off.
“Hold me,” she tried to say, “hold me,” but she couldn’t manage the words. Everything was gibberish. She could only make sounds. And the harder she tried the more insensible were her words.
But Cheever didn’t need to hear words. He lifted her from the car, then draped his arms around her and wouldn’t let go, not for anything. He held her all the while Rachel made her mewling sounds and shook, held her until at last she stopped shaking and her words were finally intelligible, but still she kept saying, “Hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me...”
And he kept repeating, “I’ll never let go, I’ll never let go, I’ll never let go, I’ll never let go...”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
A cop’s world usually allows room for a policeman to distance himself from a victim. Sometimes, though, a case gets personal and the lines get blurred, but Cheever did his best to not let that occur, tried to remain a cop and only a cop while he interviewed Rachel. She wasn’t sure she liked that side of him, much preferring the man who had held her and said he wouldn’t let go.
Cheever acted even more dispassionately than the young uniformed officer who sat with them in the den taking notes. The officer looked and performed like a marine, had short hair, and was full of “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’ams.” His chest was broad even without the extra bulk of his Kevlar vest. Though he was ostensibly in charge, it was clear it was Cheever’s show.
From her easy chair Rachel sipped a cup of tea that Cheever had made. Tea-making was apparently not one of his talents. He had used a strainer, but must have secured it improperly. The tea had steeped only long enough for some of the tea leaves to escape, but not long enough to release much flavor. Rachel looked at the floating leaves and momentarily wondered if she should try and read them.
“Let’s start at the beginning again,” he said. “At the intercom.”
She didn’t let her impatience show; instead, she took another sip of his brew. Though she did her best to leave any sediment in the cup, a few dregs found their way into her mouth. She picked at them with her thumb and forefinger.
“He asked for me by name.”
“He said, ‘Dr. Stern?’”
“Yes. And then he said, ‘It’s Cheever.’”
“He didn’t say, ‘Detective Cheever’ or ‘Orson Cheever’?”
Rachel was feeling well enough to smile. She never thought of him as having a first name. He was a one-name sort of person. “No, Orson,” she said. “He identified himself by saying, ‘It’s Cheever.’”
He didn’t respond to her teasing. “You’d still gauge him at six foot and two hundred pounds?”
“More or less.”
“Blue eyes?”
“Cold blue eyes. Pale.”
“No facial hair?”
“None that I could see.”
“How old do you think he was?”
She shrugged. “Maybe forty.”
“Any general impressions of the man?”
“People in my field are trained not to say this, but I will anyway: he’s evil.”
“What else?”
She started to take another sip of her tea, reconsidered, and put the cup aside. “He’s smart and good at planning. He enjoys being in control. And he’s sure he is smarter than everyone else.”
“He used the name ‘Holly.’”
“Yes.”
“And he knew about her breakdown.”
His was more of a muse than a question, so she didn’t answer. “You said she was at the Torrey Pines Center. Does such an establishment really exist?”
“No. I gave him a fictitious name.”
Cheever digested her answers. The uniformed officer used the lull in the conversation to ask, “Will you be needing me for anything else, sir?”
Preoccupied, Cheever shook his head. It was Rachel who walked the officer to the door. When she returned to the den, Cheever was still in a contemplative state. Still the cop, she thought.
“Anyone home?” she asked.
“He was there,” Cheever said, “when Helen had her breakdown. She was wearing her medical alert bracelet. That’s where your name was announced. And mine. I think Helen saw the killer and recognized him. It probably put her on overload.”
Cheever pulled at his chin, still thinking. “But that still doesn’t explain how he knew to identify me as ‘Cheever.’”
“He obviously did some research on both of us.”
Cheever nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “He called her ‘Holly.’”
“That’s what most people call her.”
“Does that mean he knows her?”
“At the least,” she said, “it presumes some current knowledge of her.”
Saying Holly’s name aloud made Cheever only too aware that he hadn’t yet told Rachel about her newfound voice. Rather trepidatiously, he said, “She’s—better now, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
Rachel looked at him closely. There was something furtive in the way he had broached the subject. Even now he wasn’t meeting her eyes.
“Tell me what happened,” Rachel said.
Cheever found himself reluctant to say too much about Helen’s recuperation. He didn’t want to tell her about Diane. “She just sort of awakened,” he said.
He wasn’t acting like the cop now, she thought. He was acting more like the criminal. “Sort of?”
“Did. She talked. We ate. I put her to bed.”
There had been too many other things going on, Cheever thought, were too many other things going on, to tell her about Diane. When things weren’t so hectic they could deal with Diane. It was possible that Rachel wouldn’t encounter her in the next few days. It was even possible that Diane would only come out for him.
“When did this awakening occur?”
“Not too long after I took over for the nurse. Maybe six o’clock.”
“And Helen just started talking then?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “I talked to her for a while, kind of like you did last night.”
“When she...”
“That’s not important now,” he said, interrupting her. “What is important is how the murder of Bonnie Gill ties in with the assaults on both Helen and you. That’s what we should be concentrating on.”
“Is it your usual habit to decide what’s important for everyone and what’s not?”
He tried to be self-righteous, but wasn’t sure if he pulled it off, wondered if his voice sounded as false to her as it did to him: “It is when I’m on a case.”
“You’re not the only one working a case.”
“This is a murder investigation, Rachel. This is what I do.”
“And treating Helen is what I do.”
Ferreting out avoidance was also a part of her job, but she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t have to.
“I’m sorry,” he said, backing down. “For the moment, though, I think it makes sense for this investigation to take precedence over Helen’s treatment.”
Rachel didn’t answer, just continued to look at him with unconvinced eyes.
“We’ll talk about Helen a little later,” he said.
“All right,” she said, not completely reassured, wondering what was going on.
Cheever picked up his cell phone and called Falconi. The sergeant was supervising the crime scene at Rachel’s medical building, and Cheever asked him, “What do you got?”
“Not a hell of a lot. No mask, no gloves, no witnesses. There are some signs of a struggle in the doctor’s office, and we’ve got a tech going through there for trace evidence, but don’t hold your breath. We picked up the doctor’s purse in the garage. Her wallet was there, and so was her checkbook. They don’t appear to have been touched, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have taken
down her address.”
Or already know where she lives, Cheever thought. “I have that end covered for tonight,” he said.
“Oh?”
Cheever didn’t elaborate, and Falconi didn’t press for details. “You sure you don’t want me to come down to the scene? I’m up for a while.”
“No need. We’re just waiting on the tech, and I don’t think she’ll be much longer.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Disappointed, Cheever finished the conversation. He had wanted to get out of the house, had wanted to run away, even if not very far.
“They have your purse, wallet, and checkbook,” he told Rachel. “It doesn’t look like they’ve been touched.”
“I suppose I should be grateful for that.”
“There’s still the possibility that he knows where you live,” Cheever said. “Even with your alarm system you’re going to have to be cautious. The more lights and vigilance the better.”
She kept rubbing her hands. “Times like these make me reconsider my stand on handgun control,” she said.
“Being attacked brings out the Nemesis in all of us. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay here tonight.”
“I thought that was the plan anyway.”
Her remark flustered him. “It was. It is. I just wasn’t sure with everything that happened whether you were up for company.”
“I understand.”
The tone of her voice was softer, less confrontational. It made him want to talk, or, if not that, at least make things better between them.
“A little girl came out tonight,” he said. “I’m not good when that happens. She stayed the evening.”
“It’s all right,” Rachel said.
For telling a half-truth, he didn’t feel half-better, felt worse, if anything. He hadn’t defined which little girl, had implied it was Caitlin. But the rest of what he said was true. Rachel reached for him, and Cheever gratefully went to her arms. This time he was the one who needed the holding. For a minute they held one another, saying nothing. He finally broke the silence.
“Earlier, I put a bottle of wine in the refrigerator,” he said, “and I cut up some cheese and carrots and apples and celery. Combine all that with one of your boxes of no-salt no-fat crackers and you almost have something edible. How about I bring everything out here?”
“Let me do it.”
“No. Lie down on the sofa and relax.”
Rachel didn’t want to argue, so she didn’t. He was back in less than two minutes, filled tray in hand.
“For dinner I made spaghetti,” he said. “There’s some extra...”
“No. This is dinner.”
“This?” he asked, not hiding his doubts.
“It’s how I usually eat.”
He poured the wine, helped her pick at some of the food. Cheever looked especially suspicious of the cheese.
“It’s a French cheese,” she said.
“Does that explain its smell?”
“It hasn’t been processed and isn’t full of preservatives like the cheese you’re used to. This is much more nutritious and, I daresay, healthy.”
“Healthy is having a cellophane wrapper attached to every piece.”
“You are kidding, aren’t you?”
He was—mostly, but didn’t admit it. Being reminded about Rachel’s special diet suddenly jarred his memory. “Your biopsy,” he said. “I thought about it on and off all day. I...”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It was negative.”
“I feel bad that—”
“Don’t.”
She said the word with an adamancy that stopped the conversation. Both of them sipped at their wine and avoided each other’s eyes. They each excelled at retreating.
“It’s just that I feel like I’ve dwelt on it for too long already,” she finally said. “For too many years.”
He nodded. They continued to eat and drink in silence. It was easier that way. They could avoid all the subjects they didn’t want to talk about. Rachel noticed Cheever’s expression gradually changing, taking on the cop look again. Murder, she decided, was their safest subject. She purposely didn’t analyze what that said about them.
“Let’s talk about the case,” she said.
He didn’t need to be convinced. “Bonnie Gill didn’t die a random death,” he said. “To make her murder look random, Willie Lamont was killed. The murderer wanted the public to think there was a mad slasher out there. You remember how Helen warned me about that. She told me not to stop for the body parts.
“I just wish she’d given me more advice. What she’s done most is to muddy the water, not purposely, but because her demons past and her demons present were so hard for her to sort out. When Bonnie died in front of her, Katie died a second time.”
Rachel nodded. “Pandora’s box was already full when Helen saw the second murder,” she said. “She tried to stuff in all the additional horror, but couldn’t. There was just too much pain to tuck away. Helen knows she’ll never heal, never integrate, with so many memories suppressed.”
“All the evils bottled up,” said Cheever.
“And hope too.”
Cheever looked troubled. “Would it be so terrible for her if total integration was never achieved?” he whispered.
She could hear he wanted to say more. Rachel also knew he wasn’t really asking a question. Cheever knew the answer, but for some reason he edged around the issue as if it was some hurtful truth. “Understanding myths is one thing,” she said. “Living them is quite another.”
“But the personalities serve purposes. They help her cope. They do things she can’t. They protect. They predict. They feel.”
“Helen will be able to do all of those things. Helen. Not the Greek chorus.”
“Have there been cases where a full integration hasn’t taken place? Where one or two personalities have remained while the rest have integrated?”
“Yes. But that’s not the treatment we’re working toward.”
“Show me the face you had before your parents were born,” Cheever said.
“Yes.”
Cheever thought about Helen’s masks. And maybe he considered a few of his own. Then he thought about the mask of the killer.
“When you sprayed your assailant in the face with the pepper spray, where’d you get him?”
“All over his ski mask.”
“But he never took it off?”
“No.”
The hoot of a nearby owl made Rachel jump. It also made her move that much closer to Cheever. He put an arm around her. She sighed, let herself nestle into his chest.
“I must be edgy,” she said.
The owl hooted again.
“He comes around every so often,” she said, “and seems to like the pine tree out back, probably because of its high vantage point.”
“Regular aviary around here,” Cheever said. “The nurse said some ‘really big parrots’ were bothering Helen and drove her inside.”
“Must have been the macaws.”
“What?”
“There’s a big flock that lives around here. They’re quite colorful. And loud.”
Disbelieving, Cheever said, “Macaws?”
“Two came from the OB Pet Store fire years ago. They were released from their cages and flew to safety. One or two others are escapees from homes, and the rest are offspring. The macaws haven’t had any problems adapting to San Diego. They’re regulars in my backyard. They like the citrus and nut trees.”
“Macaws,” said Cheever again. He had discounted the nurse’s story, because he was sure parrots and their ilk weren’t the kind of birds seen freely flying around San Diego. When you don’t expect something to be in the picture, he considered, it’s that much harder to see it when it’s actually there.
Rachel’s closeness gave him a chance to kiss her on the head and run his hand through her hair. All day that had been what he wanted to do. To hold her. But there had been so man
y obstacles in the way of their coming together. And there were still all the unsaid things that needed discussing. But not now, he told himself. Not now.
“Let’s go to bed,” she whispered.
In each other’s arms, they walked to Rachel’s bedroom. Neither of them noticed the huddled figure sitting just outside the guest room.
Holly had been close enough to hear everything that they had said. She watched them enter the bedroom, saw the door close behind them. It was as if the wall had been erected especially for her.
She got to her feet, then silently opened the door to her bedroom. Why was she being quiet? They were the ones who had ignored her, who hadn’t even checked on her. She could be dead as far as they were concerned. They pretended they were all interested in her, but what they had done was betray her. She started to slam the door, wanted to make enough noise to bother them, to stop their lovey-dovey ways, but another personality popped out and stayed her hand.
Gently she shut the door.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Rachel had put a night-light in Helen’s room, a “glowworm” so she wouldn’t be scared of the dark. A shrouded female figure sat in the shadows of the room just outside the illumination of the small light. Her movements and sounds made it appear as if she were working at a spinning wheel. Or at a web.
In the darkness Clotho’s mouth moved, announcing, “Some spin designs, others spin stories, some cast lines, others seek glories.”
A second voice, that of Lachesis, answered, “What are we making for Helen Troy? What are we spinning, what kind of toy?”
With a raven’s voice, Atropos answered them. “While the two of you prattle, I brandish death’s rattle.”
Softly Clotho taunted: “You have competition.”
The head turned and offered a rebuking stare. “I have many subordinatesss,” Atropos hissed.
Clotho’s chin set: “I am not one of them.”
