The door opened just as she slipped beneath the covers.
Two nurses scrambled in.
“What’s goin’ on in here?” one of the nurses said, looking around the room, appearing surprised that it wasn’t in shambles. “And just how, mind you tellin’ me, did you disconnect yourself from your IV and cardiac monitor without Houston gettin’ wind of the problem?”
Amy pulled the sheets up to her chin, swallowing hard. “I don’t know. Guess I was just having a nightmare.”
“Nightmare?” said the other nurse. “Mercy! It sounded like King Kong was throwing a tantrum in here!”
17.
As Deacon Samuel Flannery walked down the central aisle of St. Patrick’s Church, ready to call it a day, he paid his usual reverence to the nine swirling angels gracing its domed ceiling. He paused, then slowly began turning in a tight circle as he gazed upward, entwined with the angels’ spiraling, heavenly ascension. Then he stopped, his thick, black eyebrows dipping prominently between his puzzled eyes.
Father Kagan emerged from the sacristy. No longer draped in the silky vestments he’d worn at mass, he was now down to his black Rabat, black slacks, and clerical shirt with its white Roman collar.
He was whistling.
Samuel turned as Eli approached him. “Ah, Father Kagan. You seem to be feeling much better,” he said, referring to Eli’s earlier, weary state at mass.
“Yes, much so, thank you,” Eli said. “Admiring my work, I see.”
“God has truly gifted you, Father,” Samuel agreed. “An inspirational masterpiece. By far the most adored this side of Pompey. But, I must say, I’m a bit stumped.”
“Oh?” Eli said. “And why is that?”
“Well,” Flannery said, again gazing upward, “you see the largest angel there? The, um...”
“Seraph,” Eli said, not bothering to look up.
“Seraph, yes. Well, I’ve studied your exquisite mural many times, Father, have indulged in its holy meaning, but I must say…I don’t recall that particular angel wielding a sword.”
This time Eli looked up.
In the seraph’s right hand was, indeed, a great sword, poised as if ready to deliver a lashing blow.
After an uncomfortable moment, Eli smiled. “Your faculties are failing you, Samuel. The sword has always been there. And a nice touch, if you ask me.”
Samuel leered at Eli. “Are you sure, Father?”
“I painted it, didn’t I?”
“Of course, of course, but I...”
“Perhaps you partook of too much wine at sacrament this evening?” Eli winked, chuckling.
“Never,” Samuel vowed with a wave of his hand.
Eli slapped him on the back, laughed. “Go get a good night’s rest. It’s good for the soul. And the eyes.”
Samuel sighed, reluctant to give in. “Maybe you’re right. I’m not a young man anymore, Father.”
“Neither of us are,” Eli agreed.
“By the way,” Samuel said, “how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Not at all,” Eli smiled. “I’m fifty-two, and feel better than I ever have,” he said, punctuating the declaration with two hard slaps to his flat stomach.
“Yes, yes, you’re a fit man, Father, and hide your age well,” Samuel agreed. “But—and also something I’ve apparently overlooked—the gray at your temples,” he observed. “It seems to me that just this previous Sunday your hair was free of such maturity.”
Eli said nothing. Though maintaining his smile, his scrutiny seemed reproachful to Samuel.
Nervously, Samuel chuckled. “Perhaps you’re right, Father. My faculties are not as loyal as they used to be.”
Eli’s smile widened. “A good night’s rest,” he assured.
“Thank you, Father,” Samuel said, glancing one more time at the angels above. He slowly shook his head, then started for the front doors. “Oh, one more thing, Father. The Broncos are coming to town Monday night,” he offered, “and I just happen to have two tickets. They’re not the best seats, mind you—you might say we’d be way up there rooting with God—but if you’re as big a Seahawks fan as I am—”
“That’s thoughtful of you, Samuel,” Eli said, “but I’ve plans for that evening.”
“If you change your mind—”
“I’ll let you know.”
Flannery walked through the doors and into the mist-enshrouded Seattle night. “Goodnight, Father.”
*****
“Yes, yes, goodnight, Samuel,” Eli said, then under his breath: “You nosey cocksucker.”
Eli stared up at the seraph, regarding its facial changes with a hatred and loathing so intense that he thought he might explode. The seraph now wore a kind of deprecating yet challenging expression, as if its eyes were inviting him to dance—him, the ugliest girl at the ball!—and were not willing to take no for an answer.
He shook a fist at the soaring image, furious at its newfound arrogance. “You don’t scare me!” he shouted. “I’m nearly finished, and when the last one flies, we’ll meet on mutual ground. Then we’ll see whose sword is mightier!”
Raging in his bolstered belief in the Almighty, he was looking far beyond the seraph now and defying God Himself. “When the last one flies!” he roared.
“When the last one flies!”
18.
The photograph lay in her lap; a crushing, immovable stone.
Rachel gazed through the window, watching a storm not nearly as tempestuous as the one gathering within her. Thunder rumbled through her heart, gales howled around the eaves of her mind, lightning coiled in her fingertips. If she could muster the fury, she’d have this house and its resident adulterer well on their way to the Land of Oz. There, her husband could get a heart, a brain, and some courage. The rotten bastard.
And while he was waiting, she thought coldly, he could retain himself an attorney. The line was guaranteed to be full of them.
Staring down at the photograph—way down now, beyond the baffling coincidences and into a new opening savagely rent by Duncan’s admitted infidelity—she considered the darkness awaiting her at its threshold. To venture in, she would need light. But she wasn’t sure just yet if she could handle Duncan igniting those torches.
The fact that it happened over a decade ago might have softened the blow for someone else, but it did nothing for her.
“So, you called it off while you were in the hospital?” she finally said, her voice low, reticent.
Duncan, face in his hands, said, “I called off a lot of things after I got shot. Sprawled out like that for three weeks…I had a lot of time to…consider my options.”
“Saw the errors of your ways, huh?”
“I’m not that man, anymore, Rachel. Haven’t been for over ten years.”
She turned away from the window; faced him. Nearly a whisper, she said, “If you were any kind of a man, you wouldn’t have waited all this time to tell me.”
Duncan nodded.
Rachel sighed. “And you’re sure her daughter’s name was Katherine?”
“Positive.”
“She would be, what, twenty, twenty-one-years old by now?”
“Yeah, somewhere around there.”
Rachel stared at the picture, focusing on the little girl. “You’d have had one hell of a time denying paternity,” she said. “Did it ever come up?”
Something occurred then at the corners of his mouth; something that might have passed unnoticed by an untrained eye. But Rachel instantly and unmistakably recognized it for what it was: fond reminiscence.
She could have killed him right then and there.
“Earlier,” he said, “when all the memories came flooding back, I remembered how we joked about it one night at Giacomo’s. The resemblance, I mean. We sort of just…laughed it away as a funny coincidence.”
“Oh, it’s a real hoot,” she agreed. “And if I remember correctly, isn’t Giacomo’s the same goddamn restaurant where you proposed to me?”
&nb
sp; Nostalgia eased itself from his face, then tipped-toed out the room just as mortification came rushing in. “Oh…oh, shit.”
“Christ, Duncan,” she said, more surprised than disgusted, “that’s just plain tacky.”
“I’m not that man anymore,” he restated, his voice fast approaching desperation. “I swear, it was the only time I was unfaithful to you.”
“Uh-huh. And what else have you remembered that you might want to tell me?”
“Donut,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Katherine used to call me ‘Donut,’” he explained. “A play on my name. You know, ‘Dunkin Donut.’”
“Oh? Well, isn’t that sweet,” she said, her voice slurred with melodic sarcasm. “And does Dunky Donut remember being called by any other nicky-names? Perhaps while he was in the middle of humping Kathy’s Mommy?”
“Dammit, Rachel!” he yelled. “Aren’t you going to throw something at me? Spit in my face and call me a filthy rotten pig?” He pulled open the top desk drawer, grabbed a letter opener that could have passed for a decent steak knife, offered it to her, and said, “Here! Stab me in the heart! Cut off my wang and throw it out the car window! Slit my throat! Hell, do something! But don’t just sit there and gloat like some self-righteous bitch!”
She remained stoic, undaunted, as if he’d told her that unleaded had just gone up two cents a gallon.
He stood up so forcefully that his chair went spinning across the floor. “It happened a long, long time ago, Rachel! So kill me, forgive me—something! But do it now, because I would like to try to get to the deeper meaning of the whole crazy fucking thing!”
She turned back to the window and folded her arms, as if to ponder between the two choices.
“Well?”
“Death,” she finally said, “by Bongo!” Then she started laughing; then crying; then laughing again.
Duncan walked over and embraced her, held her tight. She did not resist, but neither did she respond.
“It happened a lifetime ago,” he whispered in her ear. “And right now I desperately need you to forgive me. We need to forgive me if we’re to sort out this…bizarre mess.”
“Oh, I’ll work with you on this,” she said irrefutably. “But forgive you? I don’t know, Duncan. I just don’t know.”
Then she finally asked him: “Did you love her?”
He waited, then sighed: “I think I might have.”
Rachel shook her head. “Goddamn you.”
19.
After having reattached Amy’s leads and saline IV, fluffed her pillows, inspected her and the room for damage, poured her a glass of water, all the while admonishing her for creating all that racket (though she’d fervently denied causing the noise, having blamed it on the storm outside), both nurses finally left, scratching their heads.
Lightning blanched the cartoon characters on the wall, eerily animating them in a millisecond of silver-white light. She flinched at the sudden toll of thunder, sounding as if it had been vented in the very next room.
Amy held the piece of glass up to her face, and saw only her distorted reflection. The item fit awkwardly into the palm of her hand, portions of its uneven circumference extending farther outward than others. It looked like a blotch of resinous silver that had been thickly and arbitrarily applied to a bird’s wing, then carefully peeled away after hardening, except that the large, replicated feathers were raised, not indented.
She curled her fingers around what she could and discovered that it had a pliable quality. She could actually bend it, though she was very careful not to exert too much pressure. She did not want to break her newfound toy, one that sang to her insides.
The music was like warm water, and finally lulled her to sleep.
She did not dream this time of cliffs and glass oceans and shiny winged behemoths in the sky. Instead, she dreamed again of a place called Rock Bay. There was a man who looked just like her daddy, but he wasn’t her daddy in the dream. There was a woman, too, a woman she called Mommy; a pretty woman, but a different kind of pretty than her waking mom, Rachel McNeil, possessed.
She ran through the tide, chasing after the man, erroneously shouting “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” There was another name she called him, too, when she was being silly: “Donut.”
It was the same recurring dream; the same dream that left her feeling empty when she woke from it; left her feeling…abandoned.
Suddenly then, a kind of merging occurred. She was now the ten-year-old girl named Katherine Bently, now deceased, whose step-father was also dead, whose real father—dead or otherwise—remained anonymous, and whose mother still ached for her, still lived and breathed in a cloud of grief and despair. And the only thing sustaining her mother’s empty life was the hope that she would one day meet face-to-face the person responsible for abducting her daughter, and with her closely gnawed fingernails have the great pleasure of stripping him to the bone with an eternity of slow, agonizing strokes.
That she actually knew these things to be true, or was simply inserting probabilities where such facts were missing, she did not know.
Strange. She was experiencing both roles simultaneously—then suddenly realized she always had. It was weird, as if Amy and Katherine were Siamese twins, nocturnally tethered; intangibly fused by a shared mind. It was confusing, and yet it wasn’t.
In some fantastical way, Amy McNeil and Katherine Bently were one, yet separate.
All this came to her so swiftly and fluidly that it felt as if a great void had been filled within her soul.
Upon this sudden realization an incredible peace and acceptance swallowed her, then swept her away in dream-speed from Rock Bay’s serene beaches and landed her upon the distant, craggy, beautifully turbulent shores of the Pacific Northwest.
A place where she—Katherine—had been cast upon the wind with improvised wings, and told to fly. And where she—Amy—had caught her soul, saving her from experiencing a cruel death.
Even in its mature form, she now recognized the voice of Katherine’s protector those many years ago as her own. It had been, in fact, both Amy and Katherine’s voice.
Confusing. Yet, on another level so perfectly, so harmoniously imagined.
20.
The wipers were chopping Elton John’s “Nakita” into little communist pieces.
Duncan thought he could sympathize, what with his manhood having just barely escaped a demonstration of his wife’s cutlery skills. He’d discovered that, just like murder, there was no statute of limitations for adultery.
Except for the porch light, the photographer’s one-level home was dark. Duncan eased the BMW to the edge of the road and parked. There were no concrete curbs or elevated sidewalks in this residential area, only shiny black asphalt merging into loose gravel shoulders skirted by long, neglected rows of lilac bushes, bisected every fifty feet or so by a cracked and oil-stained driveway.
He hadn’t tried calling the photographer again before leaving the house. He’d needed to get out, take a drive, sort his thoughts. So, he figured he’d just drop by on his way to nowhere and see if Mitch Dillard was home and, if so, up to talking shop with a Mick ex-cop.
And if the shutterbug wasn’t home, or was but wasn’t in the mood to have a man-to-man, then Duncan would just have to let himself in.
Just like the good ol’ days.
God, he was pissed at himself.
Ice granules had all but replaced the rain, sizzling like bacon atop the BMW’s roof. The lightning, having grown bored with golf courses and chimneys, seemed content for now to merely skitter across the belly of the storm, stitching seams in the nimbus with dazzling neon thread. Thunder prowled the sky, growling. All roared out, for now.
Eerily, it felt to him that the storm wasn’t abating, but bowing obsequiously beneath the passing of a larger, more abhorrent one.
In fact, it seemed like the whole night was cowering.
The neighborhood was old, its trees massive, looming like thunderheads ove
r the roofs of the peeling cracker boxes. The rain here, Duncan guessed, was going to have to fall a lot longer and a lot harder if its intentions were to wash away the sooty film of broken dreams.
As he pulled on a black pair of Isotoner gloves, Duncan understood that this wasn’t the worst part of town, but it was bad enough. Then again, crazy lived everywhere.
Luck of the Irish, don’t fail me now.
He exited the vehicle and dashed umbrella-less across the narrow street, making the porch in a dozen strides. He rang the bell, then gave the door three hard raps for good measure.
A voice cried out immediately: “Hey, in here! Help me, I’m trapped!”
Duncan froze, listened. The plea sounded like it came from right inside the house; yet…there was an airy, buoyant quality to the voice, an acoustical dichotomy, as if it had originated from a nearby amphitheater rather than from these insulated confines.
The voice echoed.
Duncan imagined the cries of a lost, desperate hiker, then snorted in disgust. He was growing perturbed with his recent cockeyed interpretations of things.
“Hey, if you’re Duncan McNeil, then I’ve got a message for you!” hollered the voice.
“Duncan McNeil?” Duncan mumbled, as if that name sounded familiar. Did someone know he was coming? Of course not. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he was coming until…wait a minute! Amy’s principal knew, and must have given the photographer the heads-up that her sue-happy father would likely be calling.
Duncan gritted his teeth.
Incensed, he tried the door, hopeful that he would have to bust it down with either of his shoulders (a feat, it now occurred to him, that he’d not once had to exercise while acting as a cop).
Sadly, the knob turned; the door opened effortlessly.
Duncan reached one arm in and felt around for a switch. He found the plate and flipped up the lever, instantly transforming the darkness into a tiny living room decorated in 20th-century sloven. The light was coming through the tasseled shade of a floor lamp, one so old and listing so badly that he was surprised it didn’t have an attending nurse.
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