Daphne leapt from the chair and bumped the table in the process, and although the psychic reached out a steadying hand, the tarot deck separated and spilled across the surface, and a single card fell to the floor. The psychic stared at the card-which was face down-and a growing menace filled the room. “I’m sorry,” Daphne apologized. But Emily Richland waved off her apology and, stooping, reached for the card and turned it face up.
“Death,” she announced, her eyes finding Daphne’s. “It can be a good card,” she said, “but not always.”
Death had occupied a place in Daphne’s life since she was a child. Through her years of study and soul-searching, and some time on the therapist’s couch, she had come to understand that death is an integral part of life, but as a child she was far from that knowledge, that understanding. For years she had identified with the character of Scout in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird (she had not read the book until a young adult): the young tomboy, raised in Kentucky bluegrass country, surrounded by wealth, privilege, and death. Her father, like Atticus, a defense attorney, had won and lost cases where men’s lives were at stake. Her first close look at death was when her pony, Dell, got colic and died on a Saturday night in August. Daphne had spent that night in Dell’s stall; despite everything done for her, the old girl cried out in pain and died, Daphne’s arms clenched around her sweet-smelling neck, tears pouring out.
Death had followed her closely from that day forward. Her dearest friend on earth, her neighbor Jon Crispell, had been hit head on, killed on his twelfth birthday, coming home from a fishing trip with his sixth-grade teacher, a close friend of the family. In college, a sorority sister, made drunk by an oversexed football player, fell backward out of an open window and broke her neck in the front lawn of the Phi Gam house. Janie Whimfiemer, Daphne’s roommate during graduate school, had traveled to Africa and died there in her sleep, the cause of her death never discussed, as if the reasons for death did not matter, only the event itself. Janie was flown home to Indiana in a metal casket. Daphne had met the plane along with the family, and this had been her first sight of an actual coffin. She could remember the horror of that day still. When she drew close to people, they died. So for years she had avoided that opportunity.
She looked down at the card and shuddered. “Death and I are old friends,” she said, the room noticeably colder.
Emily picked the card off the floor and restored the deck on the table. “Tell me about the dream,” she repeated.
“I never see his face, just that hand. There’s fire, a woman screaming.”
Emily nodded gravely. She’d witnessed that hand.
“I thought about going to the police,” Daphne said, “after reading about the fires. But what’s to tell?”
“They won’t believe you,” Emily said. Her voice sounded far off, and there was weariness in her tone.
Daphne hesitated and said, “You can see the connection, can’t you? The possible connection? A man with a badly burned hand, the newspaper articles. I’m sorry. I’ve never believed in this kind of thing-psychic phenomena-but now it has happened to me, now I’ve experienced it…. What I was thinking: Maybe you could make the call to the police for me.”
Emily swallowed dryly, her throat bobbing, eyes glassy. “I can’t help you. I wish I could, but-”
“But you can,” Daphne emphasized. “Of course you can. You’ve seen him, met him; he’s been here. You could call the police and tell them that.”
“I think we’re all done here. If that’s why you’ve come, there’s really nothing I can do.”
Daphne allowed a long silence to settle over them. Still maintaining eye contact, she said, “Maybe they would pay you for such information.”
Her lips trembling, Emily gasped hoarsely, “What?”
“It’s the car, isn’t it? My car? You see, I remembered that I had left mail in the front seat. That’s how you knew I belonged to the Northwest Medical Society, which is why you were guessing doctor.” The words hit Emily as small bombs. “You know I’m neat, that I keep things clean, because that’s the way I keep my car. That’s what gave you away. I thought it might be my appearance at first, orderly and all. But the comments about my fiance-the ring, of course-and mention of Corky-the young girl-threw me off. Kept me off balance for a moment. But Corky’s notebook is in the back of the car, and her name is on it. Whoever you’re working with told you the name, didn’t she-he? — but you elected not to use it.” Daphne stood from the chair.
“Sit down!”
She took two quick steps toward the door behind Emily and pushed it open in time to see the kitchen screen door thump shut. She heard Emily right behind her. Daphne reached the back door and pulled it open, but whoever had been there was long gone. Fast, she thought.
“Stop it!” Emily cried out.
Spinning on her heels, Daphne said loudly to the woman, “You have nothing to say about this!” She took a step forward, driving Emily back. “I make one phone call, and we bring you in on a handful of fraud charges. You’re out of business.”
“You’re a cop?” It was a question, but also a statement-a realization-at the same time.
They stood only inches apart, Daphne a full head taller. She searched the other woman’s eyes and asked pointedly, “Are you part of the arsons? Straight answer: yes or no?” Their eyes locked, darted back and forth in unison.
“No,” Emily gasped, eyes averted for the first time, head lowered in submission. Exactly where Daphne wanted her.
Daphne believed her, but she waited just the same, for the woman’s next movements and words would be the final test of her guilt or innocence, whether to take her downtown or leave her here and work with her.
“It was some kind of business deal. Drugs, maybe.” Emily glanced away, then directly back into Daphne’s eyes. She drummed her thigh absent-mindedly with her peach-glitter nails. “A decent amount of scratch involved-he was willing to pay the sixty for the chart. It was the date he was worried about, why he came to see me. People consult you for dates, you know: weddings mostly. One woman, I think it was because she was having an affair … or wanted to.” Emily appeared nervous and scared. Daphne fought off a grin of satisfaction. She lived for these moments. “Because of the astrology,” she said, pointing toward the neon window. “I do charts, you know. And I do have the Power.”
“The sixty bucks. Cash or check?”
“Honey, do I look like I’d take a check? Gimme a little credit here.”
Daphne’s hope for a quick and easy solution slipped away. So did her hope that this woman would soften for very long. Then a second thought occurred to her. “The car. His car.”
“A truck.”
“His truck,” Daphne corrected. “Description?”
“Light blue. Old model. Maybe ten years old. White camper shell, not in good condition.”
“The dates?”
“October second the first time. I checked the papers on the third. Nothing much had happened. No fire,” she emphasized.
The Enwright fire had occurred September tenth; Heifitz, October fourth. “The second? You’re sure?” He might have set the accelerant for a future fire, she thought.
“Positive. And then again just-” She caught herself.
“When?” Daphne shouted.
“This last weekend,” Emily answered. “Saturday.”
Daphne’s pounding heart occupied her chest painfully. The timing seemed off-too rushed-unless October second had accounted for Heifitz. In which case, what was the significance of the weekend just past, another victim yet to come?
Daphne said, “We need to talk to this man with the burned hand. We need your help.”
“You could have just offered me the scratch. We’d been jake. I’d have told you what I knew. But now … this. I don’t like this. I don’t like the way you do business.”
“You helped us before,” Daphne reminded. “Was that the Power, or was that smoke and mirrors?”
“You remembe
r that?”
“We credit you on the case report.”
“People talk when they’re in that chair. What can I tell you? They open up. And you know why?” she asked, shoving Daphne back and away to create some space between them. “Because they want to believe. They don’t believe in much anymore, but they’ll believe in me because they want to. They open up to me.”
Daphne understood. The detectives she saw as clients were no different. Solid at first, tight, unwilling to share. And then little by little she convinced them to believe in her, and suddenly the dam unleashed and they were spewing intimacies about impotency, suicide wishes, abusing their children, stealing from their day job. An endless laundry list of failures, both personal and private, and all because they discovered a sanctuary, a person willing to listen without judgment-they believed. Daphne realized that she and this woman before her were not so very different. The thought troubled her. “I need everything you have on the man with the burned hand.”
“Why should I?”
“Two hundred dollars in your pocket, and I walk away.”
“You-people like you-never just walk away. You’ll be back. That’s the thing about you.”
“Will he?” Daphne asked hurriedly, hopeful. “The man with the hand? Be back, that is?” Her heart pounded strongly in her chest-the possibility had not occurred to her-but people who believed in such things returned for more.
Emily met her eyes and nodded slowly. “Probably,” she said reluctantly. She nodded more strongly. “Yes, I’d say he will be back.” And then she added caustically, “But, honey, that one’s going to cost you people. That one’s gonna cost big.”
19
Living in Seattle had taught Ben about rain, the way living in Alaska teaches one about snow. There was mist and spray and teardrops and pearls, curtains, sheets, and waterfalls. On that day it began as a mist, light and delicate like the soft spritz at the end of a spray bottle. It changed the way the air smelled, from metallic and oily to fresh and clean. Exciting. It evolved quickly through wind-driven spray to teardrops, a pelting and unforgiving rain that drummed loudly on fall’s colorful leaves. The sidewalk before him became peppered with black teardrops, then consumed by them, transformed into a dark mirror reflecting Ben’s footfalls.
He suddenly felt as if someone were watching him, and he wondered if it was guilt or reality. But then the sensation sharpened into the same invasive feeling as when Jack stared at him from the chair in front of the television, stared as if looking right through him.
Ben didn’t want to look, didn’t want to know the truth. His ears remained alert, his heart pounding, his palms suddenly damp, a lump growing in his throat. His scalp itched. He was afraid.
The urge to look back, to assess his situation, pulled at him like a kind of gravity. He wanted out of this feeling.
He ran. He couldn’t simply walk. He looked forward, not back-never look back is what Emily had told him. He tore through the veil of pouring rain like a bat through the darkness of night.
Guilt soaked through him like the rain on his shoulders. Payment for his crime. He picked up his speed. Seen by others, he would be thought to be attempting to outrun the rain, though it was impossible, just as it was impossible to outrun that guilt from which he wished so desperately to distance himself. He crossed at a red pedestrian light, unaware; unable to face the reality of his theft. His legs grew leaden, his heart heavy. He could not live with himself. He wanted to be good; he wanted Emily to like him, to want him. He didn’t want to tell her, and yet he felt driven to do so.
When Ben arrived at the purple house, Emily saw the worry in his eyes, or perhaps she read his mind, he thought, and she immediately led him around back to the small porch overlooking the equally small back garden, so carefully cared for. Ben needed that same kind of care and attention.
Rain splashed only inches from them, and the wind swirled, filled with its fragrance. Emily’s skirt danced against her calves, and she absentmindedly swatted at it, like a horse’s tail after flies.
“So, young man, you have something to tell me.”
He would never understand her completely, though he longed to be given the chance. “The world is such a huge place,” he began, avoiding any mention of what was really on his mind. “So many people going so many places, doing so many things. I don’t see how I’m supposed to fit in. Where I belong.”
She wrapped a warm arm around him. It was all he lived for. How would she react if he told her what he had done? “You know, you have an advantage in life, Ben,” she said, confusing him. “You’ve grown up quicker than most people. No, I mean it,” she said, answering his expression. “You think things that even some adults never get around to. But the point is, the world is a good place, despite the way it looks sometimes. Life is good, despite the way it feels sometimes. Where you are right now, your age, the best thing to do is enjoy it as much as you can. I know that’s not always easy. Don’t think about it too much. Just kinda let life happen around you, you know? Basically, I think what you’ll find is that things pretty much work out if you let them, if you don’t get in their way. If you think good thoughts. If you do good things.”
His throat tightened, his eyes stung, and he felt himself begin to shudder and then cry. She consoled him with another squeeze of her arm, but it made him feel even worse, and he struggled to be free of her, leaning away.
“Ben?”
“I’m not good.”
“Sure you are. Of course you are.”
“I’m not.”
“You mustn’t let Jack do this to you, Ben.”
He shook his head, the tears falling all the harder, tears like the rain falling only a few yards away. How easy it would have been to allow her to believe it all Jack Santori’s fault. How simple and convenient. “It’s not that,” he squeaked out.
“Your mother,” she whispered.
He shook his head again. His memory of his mother was only a face, a smell, a smooth hand rubbing his back or tousling his hair. His mother was something, someone, too long ago to remember. “If I lost my wallet in his truck, he’ll know where to find me. My address is in the wallet.” It just kind of tumbled out of him.
“Who, Ben? What truck?” He heard concern in her voice.
He looked up at her, his vision blurred by his tears. She looked back with sympathy and love, and he knew he was about to tell her everything. He was about to offer her the money-the whole $500-and ask if he could stay with her. He knew her answer long before he uttered his first stuttered sentence of explanation, but that didn’t stop him. Nothing stopped him. The truth fell hard, like the rain. It poured out of him.
Emily Richland, reaching out to comfort him, never stopped holding him. She drank up the truth like the garden with the rain. She listened to every word, nodding as he spoke; her own eyes filled with tears; and the two spent over an hour there on the back porch, right through the squall and into a patch of blue sky, welcoming the sun’s penetrating warmth that followed behind, flowed through it, like the intense love that Ben felt for this woman.
20
When his pager sounded, Lou Boldt cringed. The effort to pull its tiny LCD screen into view was as automatic as turning the ignition key of his car or pulling on a pair of socks. At that very moment he had been wondering what to do about his suspicions about Liz, because if he was right about her it started a series of unthinkable, problematic choices that questioned the survival of their family.
Liz was taking a bath. Taken in and of itself, this was no big deal, except that in this family it was Boldt who usually took the baths and Liz, ever in a hurry, who always took a shower. But three times this week she had come home from work and immediately drawn herself a bath. And it was only a few minutes earlier that Boldt realized she had taken baths on the same days the week before: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. All three days she had come home an hour and a half late. His imagination raced. As a detective he was trained to see patterns. He regretted this ability, this
talent; most of all he resented that his work should intrude into his private life to this degree. He was engaged in maintaining a thoughtful surveillance on his own wife, based on distrust and fear and driven by palpable memories of the past. He hated himself. Coincidence was not in Lou Boldt’s vocabulary. He heard Sarah crying and felt on the verge himself.
He scooped up his infant daughter from the crib, nuzzled her, and inhaled the sweet-milk fragrance of her skin that he treasured. She reached out, her tiny fingers locking onto his hair.
“Knock, knock,” he said, toeing open the bathroom door, trying to release the vise of her grip on his hair.
Liz’s face was bright red, her chest flushed, her body stretched in the tub and magnified by the water. She looked so incredibly appealing, the florid skin tones of a Rubens. He felt a pang of protective jealousy. There was no such thing as ownership; he knew this consciously, and yet …
“I think it’s dinnertime,” he said, his voice cracking, emotions and memories welling up from within him. She had betrayed his faith once before; was it so impossible again? Many of the same elements were in place: both of them working too hard, ignoring the other’s needs. The two kids placed impossible burdens on their attentions. There was little time left for their marriage. It was all about the family now. It was different.
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