Rapture

by Thomas Tessier

  "You are like me," he repeated, "and you'd better kill me while you have the chance."

  "Listen to me," Bonnie ordered, painfully aware of the cramps developing in her hands. "With that hand, reach into your pocket and take out the car keys. Very slowly, and make no other moves. Then put the keys on your stomach and your hand back under you."

  When he did that, Bonnie intended to release his hair, put the keys between her teeth, and then pour some sand in his open eyes so that he couldn't race right after her when she broke for the car. It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best she could devise. She didn't want to hurt him, she just wanted to get away. Filling his eyes with sand would slow him down enough ... but Jeff refused to cooperate.

  "No," he was saying, "no. You listen to me for a second. I'm not going through that rigmarole with you, Bonnie. You can kill me if you want, but I'm going to stand up. And you should think what you'll say if you do kill me. Are you going to tell the police that I killed your father? What proof will you show them? You don't have a weapon, you don't have a confession, you don't have anything to tie me to your father's death. And what'll you say when the police come up with witnesses who'll testify that I was at home in California when your father actually died? Kill me if you think you have to, but you'll destroy your mother and ruin your own life in the process."

  "Don't move," Bonnie demanded, but it came out more as a plea than a command. Her eyes were wide with terror. Her resolve had crumbled away in the few moments it had taken Jeff to speak, and she no longer knew what to do. As long as he had been willing, eager to die, she'd had no doubt that she was right about him. But now everything he'd just said rang true, and she realized how flimsy her case was. Regardless of what had transpired between them, she didn't have a single concrete piece of evidence against him.

  "I am moving," Jeff said, and he started to take his hands out from beneath his body. "I'm getting up right now."

  Bonnie twisted his head away sharply and shoved him. Then she jumped up and bolted for the car. Annoyed but smiling, Jeff caught up with her before she'd gone twenty yards. He knocked her to the ground, and when she started to roll over, he stepped on her hand and pulled the knife from her grip. Then he positioned himself so that Bonnie would have to pass him to get to the car and, beyond it, the road. He glanced around, but they were the only two people in sight. Bonnie got to her feet slowly, rubbing her wrist and looking confused. She looked at Jeff, and it all came back into focus. A fine mist, so light it was nearly invisible, floated on the air.

  .You can understand, can't you?" she asked anxiously. "You can see why I might have thought-"

  "Bonnie."

  "If you had nothing to do with what happened to my father, what you'd do now is drive me back to Boston."

  "And?" It was Jeffs turn to smirk.

  "And we'd say good-bye, and that would be the end of it."

  "Oh, really? You'd decide you had been wrong about me and that I was really all right, is that it? And you'd never say a word about me to your mother, you'd never tell her anything about-this?"

  Bonnie couldn't answer. She kept thinking she should have stabbed him, cut him somehow, not fatally but enough to slow him down. But how could she do that to someone who hadn't raised a hand to her and who might not have had anything to do with her father's killing? Jeff had toyed with her, he had let her appear to get the upper hand, and then, when he was ready, he'd pulled the rug out from under her as if it was the easiest thing in the world. And the worst part of it-what had rendered her helpless-was that he was right: she had no proof, no evidence, not a single hard fact to justify her suspicions.

  "You have to understand what it's been like for my mother and me," she said, because she knew she had to talk to him. "I'm sorry, very sorry, I acted like that, but ... I didn't want to think you were involved, but so many crazy things have been going through my mind since Dad died. It really fucked me up. You can understand that, Jeff, can't you? I'm sorry I put you through that whole scene. I was wrong, and I'm sorry. I was scared, and-"

  "Yeah, well."

  Jeff pursed his lips and looked up and down the chilly gray beach with its lumpy dunes and thickening mist. The whitecaps were like razor cuts in the slate sea. The air was quiet and damp but charged with risks and chances, impossible choices.

  "You're very bright and very brave," he told Bonnie, "but you fall short in your knowledge of human nature."

  "It's been such a great weekend, until now," she said, trying to find a positive note. "Think about how I made love to you, Jeff. I wasn't just going through the motions. You know I made love to you like I cared about you and wanted you, like it meant something to me. Because that's the truth-I did care about you, I did want you, and it did mean something to me. Do you really think I could have done that if I thought you were the one who shot my father?"

  She was good, she was making an effort, but she was out of her depth, Jeff thought. She was a precocious child, nothing more.

  "So you don't think I killed him?"

  "Well, no. I think you would have said so before, when I had the ..." She couldn't bring herself to mention the knife. Then, a final inspiration. "You love my mother. You wouldn't ever hurt her like that."

  Jeff put his arm around Bonnie's shoulders and walked her into the shelter of the dunes. They sat down together. He stuck the knife into the sand beside him and held her close, embraced and kissed her. He stroked her hair and face. Bonnie responded eagerly, like a person reaching for a life line. It took him a minute or two to find the carotid artery in her neck. The security chief at Lisker-Benedictus had taught him this maneuver a few years ago. He gently increased the pressure until she sagged against him and passed out. He held her for a few more moments, thinking how beautiful she looked. What a waste! But it seemed to be the only way.

  He took the knife, tested the blade, and found it very sharp. She hadn't lied about that. He pulled his shirttail out and used it to wipe the knife clean of fingerprints and transfer it to Bonnie's right hand, carefully wrapping her fingers around the handle. Then he opened her left wrist and watched the warm blood jet out of her onto the cold sand. A thin vapor rose from the growing pool. The red was almost too bright, but it quickly dulled and blackened as it spread and soaked into the sand.

  Bonnie stirred two or three times, but Jeff applied his fingers to her neck and put her under again. After a while she became too weak to resist. She didn't seem to know what was happening, which pleased him. Such a strong young heart, mightily pumping the life out of her. He was awed and fascinated by the sight of it, and a little sad. But then he reminded himself that Bonnie had never been more than a diversion. Close but not the real thing. She had nearly won his heart, he thought, but in the final analysis that was impossible.

  When the flow of blood was no more than a bare trickle and Jeff couldn't detect a heartbeat, he left, taking the Scotch bottle with him. He didn't try to cover his tracks completely, but obscured them enough so that no particular shoe print remained. They would know someone had been with her-a friendly accomplice, he hoped they would think. After he pulled the car out onto the road, he ran back to blur the tire tracks in the sand. It was the best he could do in an unfortunate situation. Let them make of it what they could.

  He was thinking of Georgianne. She didn't know it yet, but she was alone now. She was about to endure another terrible shock. Jeff thought of it as somehow purifying. She'd come out of it eventually, and in a way she'd be back to where she was twenty-one years ago, alone, on her own. That was what he had achieved for her, and for himself. This time he wouldn't falter. Georgianne would need him, more than ever. And he would be there.

  PART V

  The Land of

  Lost Content

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Jeff couldn't sleep that night at the Cambridge Hyatt. Not guilt, but attention to detail kept him awake. He could have checked out immediately and caught a late flight to the West Coast, but he didn't want to draw attention to himse
lf by leaving in a rush. You make mistakes that way. Besides, he didn't think Bonnie would be found that quickly.

  He reserved a seat on a Monday-morning plane and asked the front desk for an early wake-up call. Then he very carefully packed his luggage. It wasn't easy, because he had to take with him everything Bonnie had left in the hotel room, including the several items of clothing she'd bought at Filene's, as well as the notebooks, texts, and magazines she'd been carrying on Friday. They were dangerous, incriminating things to have, but he could think of no sure, safe way to dispose of them there. In California, it would be a cinch-drop the clothes in a trash barrel somewhere and burn all the paper. The only things he felt comfortable about leaving in the hotel room wastebasket were the whiskey bottle, empty and wiped, and the crumpled shopping bags.

  Using one of his T-shirts, he cleaned every surface Bonnie might have touched while she had been in the room. It was a long and tedious chore, but he didn't mind at all, and when it was finally done, he felt a measure of pride. The chances were incredibly slight that anyone would ever search this room with the idea of connecting it with Bonnie Corcoran, but you have to do these things right, and he had.

  Jonathan Tate checked out of the Hyatt the next morning and drove to Logan Airport. He caught the news on the radio twice, in the hotel room and again in the car, and neither time was there any mention of a body being discovered on the south shore. He turned in the rental car and boarded a flight to San Francisco, where he retrieved his own car and cruised down 101 at a leisurely speed to L.A.

  Was it just another case of overkill, these ridiculous and perhaps unnecessary precautions he took to cover his tracks? Probably, Jeff admitted to himself. But he liked it. There was, he thought, something almost sacramental about it.

  Back in Santa Susana, he read the Boston Globe for a week. There were only two news items about Bonnie. The first reported the discovery of her body, stating that she was an "apparent suicide" and that the police were questioning her friends and classmates at Harvard about her recent activities and state of mind. The second article mentioned that the girl's father had been a murder victim the previous year in an "apparent drug-related case" in Connecticut that remained unsolved. Police interviews in Cambridge had turned up no new information or leads of any significance. An unnamed police source speculated that, although she had appeared to be in generally good spirits and was regarded as an outstanding student, the girl might never have recovered psychologically from the loss of her father and, unable to cope any longer with a persistent and growing depression, had taken her own life with the assistance of a sympathetic friend, as yet unidentified. The investigation continued, but no new developments were expected.

  It was true: Bonnie's death, however unfortunate, however necessary, didn't change the fact that Jeff thought of himself as her friend.

  Georgianne was shocked by her own lack of surprise. When the words came, they were words she had feared but half-expected many times previously, words from a bad dream that had never stopped playing in the depths of her mind. The last of her borrowed time had run out. Life had condemned her in its absurd, arbitrary, undeniable way, and Bonnie's death was the completion of the sentence. Georgianne tried briefly to resist the fact, but it was like scratching at granite. Suicide? Bonnie? Never. But what did Georgianne know? She knew nothing any more, nothing about anything.

  Had Bonnie been on drugs? Could they test the blood or find out somehow without resorting to a complete autopsy? Georgianne couldn't bear the thought of her daughter's body being dissected and then cobbled together again for the funeral.

  When she told them the details of Sean's death, as she had to, the two polite officers who interviewed her looked at each other as if to say, There you are.

  Georgianne went ahead with the sale of the house. It seemed inevitable, so why turn down a good offer? She had less reason than ever to stay on at Indian Hill Road. Her husband and daughter were buried in Foxrock, and Georgianne wasn't sure she wanted to leave, but the house was like a tomb, and she could no longer live in it. There were no apartments in the village, but if she decided to remain in the area, she would probably be able to find a place in Danbury.

  She packed up everything she wanted to keep and had the load put in storage. It didn't amount to much, because she found she was becoming ruthless about sentiment and possessions. She had lost the strength and courage to attach emotional value to anything. She went through the days like some minimally functional creature, semihuman, semirobot. Everything else, the furniture, the tools, the unneeded clothes and miscellaneous household items, she left behind, and Burt Maddox kindly agreed to sell them for her.

  Then she flew down to Tampa to spend time with her mother and brother while the horrible business was concluded.

  "Of course I remember you! How are you?"

  "Fine, thanks. I-"

  "Looking good, yes, looking very good. But I can tell you haven't used your mousse today, have you? Tsk tsk tsk.*

  "Well, that's the thing. I-"

  'The thing? What thing, dear boy?"

  "I'd like it back the way it was," Jeff said.

  "What!"

  "The color and the style."

  "Not the way it was."

  "Yes. Please."

  "Color and style?"

  "That's right."

  "Are you sure you wouldn't like to think it over? Have a nice glass of iced Red Zinger and give it another little think. Hmm?"

  "No, thanks. My mind's made up."

  'You're sure you're sure?"

  "Positive."

  'All right, one Steve Garvey coming up."

  After four weeks, Georgianne was ready to leave Florida. It was summer, the wrong time of the year, and the heat was even worse than she had expected. It felt far more oppressive than any heat wave she had ever experienced in New England.

  Her mother lived in a "permanent mobile home" in a protected, self-contained community just outside Tampa. It looked like a real house, but smaller, and it was built with prefabricated sections on a concrete slab. Mrs. Slaton had her own little social set among the other older people who lived in similar houses on the "estate."

  Georgianne's brother Donnie lived about eight miles away with his wife and two children. A teacher, he had the summer free, and Georgianne spent more time at his house than with her mother. The company of her family was a great help, not just in comforting her, but in restoring some sense of equilibrium.

  After four weeks Georgianne wasn't ready to stop mourning, but she did want to take herself somewhere else. She thought of herself as morbid and depressed, and that was too much to continue to inflict on her family. They never complained, but she was sensitive to the likelihood that she was a disruption in the daily pattern of their lives. And they had done more than enough for her already.

  One question plagued her: could she really have failed to notice the warning signs? She still wasn't sure, however much she scoured her memory, that Bonnie had shown any warning signs, but perhaps she had. It was a bitter, demoralizing thought that Georgianne must not have paid attention to her daughter's every word, phrase, and gesture. When depression got the upper hand, as it so often did, Georgians could barely stand herself. She should have been perpetually vigilant; instead, she'd begun to relax just a little in the spring months. She couldn't have anticipated her husband's murder; nor could she have done anything to prevent it. But Bonnie was different, and now she had to live with the terrible thought that she had failed her daughter in the most important test of all.

  'I misunderstood you, all that time. I really underestimated you. I always liked you, but I never took you as seriously as I should have, and that was a mistake. We missed out on a lot-I can see that now, and it was my fault, not yours. You were always the quiet one, and I guess I thought that meant you weren't interested or that you were kind of dull. I should have seen it for what it really was--a sign of maturity and intelligence. It didn't mean you weren't capable of having fun. You did have fun, a
nd so did I, but we should have been together, sharing it. I always knew you were a solid guy, safe to be with and dependable. But there's more to you, and I'm sorry I missed it for so long. It was my fault, really. But thank God it's not too late. There's plenty of time left, we're still young, and we won't waste a minute of it. I'm yours now, only yours. Do anything you want to me, Jeff. I love you," Diane told him.

  "Why don't you stay on here for a while?" Jack asked. 'Mere are plenty of worse places in the world than Chicago. You don't like Florida enough to want to live there, and is there really anything for you back in Connecticut? You're going to carry a lot of memories around with you for the rest of your life-there's no need to live in a place that'll make it even harder to forget."

  "I know," Georgianne admitted quietly.

  'You can find work here. You can take courses here if you want. And there are a lot of beautiful old buildings in the city. Have you taken a look at the architec ture? Chicago is an interesting city, and if you started drawing it, I bet you'd never want to stop."

  "Maybe."

  "Winter's a bitch-I have to tell you that. But it's not much worse here than in Connecticut, and, like Connecticut, you do get four definite, real seasons."

  Georgianne smiled. "I get the idea, Mr. Weatherman."

  "You know you can stay here with us for as long as you want," he went on. "Take your time and find an apartment or a condo that you really like, in a good neighborhood. Anyhow, give it some thought, Sis, and don't be in any hurry to make up your mind. There's no need for that."

  No there isn't, Georgianne agreed silently. Just as well, too. She didn't want to stay in Chicago, or anywhere, but neither did she want to leave. She had nowhere to go, nowhere else to be. She didn't want to do anything but drift along with the days, bother no one, and sleep as much as possible. She would stay until she began to feel awkward and then, perhaps, she would move on or try to make some definite plan for herself.