My Soul to Keep

by Melanie Wells

  I took a breath. “What about Molly Larken?”

  “Who’s that?”

  I reached for my purse and started digging around for my keys.

  “Stop that. What about her?”

  “Why are you picking on her?”

  “You two meet at a prom-queen convention or something?”

  “I called her up after I found out I was being blamed for running the blog. Did you think I was just going to let that go?” I tsked. “Brigid. You know me better than that.”

  She dropped her cigarette into the can and reached for the pack, plucking a fresh one out and lighting it delicately with her Bic. She looked up at me without answering.

  “Where did the copy come from?” I asked. “The words about Molly and me? You didn’t write it, did you?”

  She thought about the question, then stood up and walked into the other room. I waited at the table while she rooted around for something, shoving boxes around and cursing. I resisted the urge to go to the sink and wash up, knowing that the sink was even filthier than the table.

  She came back with a school yearbook. She opened it up and shoved it across the table at me.

  I squinted at the adolescent scrawl and flipped the page to find the signature. John had signed her ninth-grade yearbook, calling her his muse, his precious angel, his liaison to the rest of the world. The prose was drippy and overwritten, like something out of a book of bad Victorian poetry.

  “Why use the words he wrote about you to describe someone else?”

  She poked the book. “I can’t write like that. I just don’t have the gift. It’s so beautiful.”

  I nodded vaguely and managed to refrain from throwing up.

  “He’s a genius, you know.” She closed the book and held it to her chest.

  I couldn’t think of a polite response to that one. “Molly and I look a lot alike.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “Is that why you’re picking on her? Because you’re jealous of John’s obsession with me?”

  “He is not obsessed.” She spat the word out. “He took a few pictures. That’s all.”

  “He took hundreds of pictures, Brigid.”

  “You don’t know that for a fact.”

  “I saw them.”

  She leaned back. “So you say.”

  I leaned my elbows gingerly on the table, drawing my face closer to hers. “Now you listen to me.”

  She glared at me and waited.

  “You listening?”

  A nod.

  “John has never had true feelings for me. What he had was an obsession. A sick obsession. It’s a psychological condition. A sickness. That’s all it is. It has a diagnostic code and everything. It doesn’t mean anything at all about me personally or about him. Or about you, for that matter.” I leaned back, removing my elbows from the sticky table and making a mental note to purchase a bottle of Phisoderm on my way home. “I’m sure, in fact, that he would have quite genuine feelings for you if he knew how much you cared for him.”

  Her face lit up. “Did he mention me?”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t that kind of visit.”

  She pointed at me with her cigarette. “Your move, prom queen. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “John tried to kill himself a couple of days ago.”

  Her chin dropped. “He what?”

  “He’s on the psych unit at Parkland Hospital. They’ve got him on suicide watch.”

  The color drained rapidly from her face, leaving her white skin almost blue against her jewel-toned turban. I could see gray roots poking out from underneath the indigo fabric.

  “He’s very depressed,” I added. “I’m sure you can imagine. I don’t think he’s doing very well in jail.”

  Brigid put her head in her hands. I watched with fascination as she pulled off her turban and ran her hands through her wiry hair, writhing with the pain she felt for a man she hadn’t seen since she was in junior high school. A man who had done her more harm than she could possibly admit to herself.

  She got up, snatched a paper towel off the roll, and blew her nose, then sat back down opposite me and lit another cigarette with shaky fingers, still sniveling. “Do you think he’s going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know, Brigid.” I shook my head. “I doubt it. He’s not exactly cut out for prison life.”

  She began to cry. Big, wet, blubbery tears. Mascara ran in two black streams down her face.

  I let her cry, staring at her as though she were a science project or something. She was one sad case. For the life of me, I could not imagine what she was thinking, pining away for a mess like John Mulvaney. The two of them were quite a pair.

  When she settled down, I decided the best approach was the direct one.

  “Brigid, look at me.”

  She blew her nose again and dabbed ineffectually at her ruined makeup.

  “Why do you care about him so much? Why all this affection for someone you barely know? Why the loyalty? I really don’t understand it.” I shrugged.

  “Peter Terry’s the criminal. Not my John,” she spat. “He and that Gordon Pryne killed my baby girl. You of all people oughta know that.”

  33

  I SAT BACK IN my chair. The words hit me like a truckload of scrap concrete.

  “I’d forgotten you knew Peter Terry.”

  Another cigarette, another flick of the Bic with shaky fingers, a long drag, a tap into the Coors can.

  “I forgot you knew him too.” She blew the smoke at me. “Until just now this minute.”

  “What do you mean Peter Terry’s a criminal?”

  “I mean he killed my daughter. He ruined her life and turned her into a nothin’, and then she went and got herself killed by that no-good loser druggie Gordon Pryne.”

  “Gordon Pryne didn’t do it, Brigid.”

  “Well, I tell you one thing, little girl. Dr. John Mulvaney had nothing to do with it. I know that for a fact.” Tap, tap.

  “How? How do you know that?”

  “It’s not in his nature. I know people. I’m a trained professional. Don’t you forget that.” She thumped the table with her finger for emphasis. “He’s a sweet, sweet man.” She teared up again and dabbed her eyes with her paper towel. “He’d a made me a great husband. I always knew it. Not like that rattrap loser I married.”

  I could see this was a losing battle. And one that, frankly, I did not care to fight. Let her hang on to her little fantasy about what a great couple she and John Mulvaney would have made. Maybe she could be one of those women who marries a prisoner. She’d throw herself at his feet in a second if she had half an opportunity. And he’d be a fool not to take her up on it. She was his one fan in the entire universe. The one human being standing between him and complete, invisible obscurity.

  “Talk to me about Peter Terry,” I said. “When did you see him last?”

  “I can’t get rid of that monster. Talk about a psycho. Try that one on for size, why don’t you?”

  “What do you mean, you can’t get rid of him?”

  She leaned forward, balancing on her cigarette hand, the smoke still burning between her fingertips.

  “I mean,” she said slowly, “he … will … not … go … away. I channeled him, and I can’t get rid of him. What do you think I mean?”

  “You channeled him. I’d forgotten you told me that. That was … when?”

  “January 10, 1986.”

  “Right. The day you met your ex-husband. I can’t remember his name.”

  She snorted out another cloud of smoke. “King Sturdivant. King of nothing. No good rattrap loser …”

  “We really don’t have time for that, Brigid. Stay with me here.”

  She quit ranting about King Sturdivant and took another drag. The air in the kitchen was becoming alarmingly blue. I looked around for a smoke detector and began to have panicky, obsessive thoughts about lung cancer and secondhand smoke.

  “Why are you doing the blog?” I asked. />
  She paused, her lip quivering. “He deserves that from me.”

  “Who, John? Why would you say that? Do you owe him a favor or something?”

  She got up, reached into the kitchen cabinet, pulled out a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and two glasses that looked sort of clean. I checked my watch. It wasn’t even noon yet. She set the glasses down and poured us both some whiskey.

  I ignored mine while she threw hers back like an Irish barfly.

  She looked at me with bleary, mascara-smeared eyes. “Even if my John did do somethin’, it wasn’t his fault. It was that Peter Terry. And I’m the one that brought him here.”

  “When?”

  “When what? I told you, January 10—”

  “No. When did Peter Terry start bothering John?”

  “A while ago. I don’t know. A long time.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  “Who told you? John?”

  “Peter Terry. Who do you think?” She poured herself another glass. “You want some more?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a little early for me.”

  “Suit yourself.” She sipped this one, taking a small drink and setting the glass back down.

  “It’s that Gordon Pryne who’s a criminal. Not my John.”

  “Peter Terry is a liar, Brigid. Surely you—”

  “I know that! Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Then why are you listening to him?”

  “He said he could fix it.”

  “Fix what?”

  “Get John Mulvaney out of jail. Set him free.”

  “Brigid, Peter Terry does not set people free.”

  She stopped with her glass halfway to her lips, a look of shock on her face. Clearly this obvious notion had not occurred to her.

  “You know that, don’t you?” I said, my voice rising. Her willful ignorance was infuriating. “He imprisons people and confuses them. He does not set them free. He does not help them in any way. If he told you he’d do that for John, he’s lying.”

  She lifted the glass to her lips. A longer drink this time.

  I sighed. “Why a blog, Brigid? I mean, no offense, but you don’t really seem like the blog type.”

  “All the prisoners have ’em now. It’s the only way they can tell the world what’s going on. Imagine you’re locked up like an animal like that. A dog chained in a yard has more freedom than my poor John.”

  “But how did you think of a blog? It really doesn’t seem like your style.”

  She waited a long minute before she answered me. “I got the idea from that Gordon Pryne. He has one.” She stubbed her cigarette out on the table and dropped it in the Coors can. “Peter Terry told me all about it.”

  I froze in place. “Gordon Pryne has a blog?”

  “That monster. Killed my baby girl. My poor, sweet baby girl.”

  She started to bawl again. The whiskey was getting to her. “If that murderer has one—out there saying he’s all innocent and”—she made little quotation signs with her fingers—” ‘clean as the driven snow’—my John should have one too.”

  “He used that phrase? ‘Clean as the driven snow’?” I asked.

  “Clean. As. The. Driven. Snow.” She drew out the words, emphasizing each word with a thump of her forefinger on the table. “Am I stuttering? That’s what it says.”

  “Are we talking about the same Gordon Pryne? The one I know can’t put three words together.”

  “He’s not as smart as my John.”

  “So it’s the usual stuff? ‘I’m innocent and the world is unfair’? He doesn’t mention the murder, does he?”

  “Of course he does not mention any such thing. He’s not going to just tell the whole world what he done.”

  The timer on the stove chimed.

  She looked at me smugly. “Time’s up.”

  “This isn’t a reading, Brigid. We’re not doing thirty-minute segments here.”

  She got up, picked some potholders out of a squeaky drawer, and pulled a sheet cake out of the oven. She set it on the stove, pulled off the potholders, and sat back down.

  “You want a reading? I’ll do one for you. No charge.”

  “No thanks. I think I can see plenty of my future from here without any help from you.”

  She drew back and studied me. “You and my baby girl and that Molly Larken have the same aura. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Well, no, Brigid. Since you’re the only person on the face of the earth who knows the three of us, no one but you has mentioned it. What does that mean, we have the same aura?”

  “It’s a real nice color too. A nice, pretty orange. Means you have a creative mind underneath that bad dye job. Drew was real creative too. She was a lot like you. Stubborn as the day is long. Couldn’t never take no for an answer. Rest her soul.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  She stood to usher me out. I turned and looked back at the kitchen as I left. Smoke hung thick and gray in the air, swirling lazily in the light filtering through dirty windows.

  “Y’all share an angel too,” she said.

  “What do you mean—like a guardian angel? I thought everyone had their own.”

  “They divide ’em up by aura,” she said, as though she were making perfect sense.

  She stepped into the reading room, rummaged loudly through a drawer, and came back out into the hallway with a small box. “You ought to take one of these. Might do you some good. Keep you safe.”

  I reached for it, but she snatched it back at the last second.

  “Can you get me in to see my John?” she asked.

  “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try. I promise.”

  She handed me the box. Inside was a little ankh on a silver chain.

  “Anael, right?” I asked. “Wasn’t that his name?”

  “That’s his angel name. Not the one he works under.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Angels are like pro wrestlers, honey. They all have a stage name.”

  I knew the answer before I asked the question: “What’s Anael’s stage name?”

  “Joe Riley,” she said as she opened the door for me. A fresh breeze blew through the open doorway. “Keep an eye out for him. He might do you some good someday.”

  34

  IT DOESN’T TAKE A genius to know to not bank on information from a crackpot like Brigid. But at this point, I wasn’t about to bet against her, either. I fastened the necklace around my neck before I started the truck to head home.

  If I hadn’t met Joe Riley in radiology that day, I wouldn’t have believed her. But when the answers don’t come, I’ve learned, I’m almost always asking the wrong questions. And every last one of my questions about Joe Riley had led me to a dead end.

  As I thought back on it, the new questions began to emerge. How did Joe Riley know what test Christine was having? He never asked. But he described the chest x-ray in detail. And how did he know my little easy-peasy-I-have-to-sneezy thing? It’s not like it’s caught on in the national lexicon or anything. I made it up. About three minutes before I met him.

  Why wasn’t he registered for tests at Parkland Hospital? Did his records disappear? Dogged as I am, I’d have run around that tree forever, busting a lung tracking down someone who might not even exist. At least, not in the flesh.

  Last but not least, how on earth could Brigid have picked that name out of the blue? It wasn’t possible.

  And then there was the ankh on a chain around his neck.

  I fingered the ankh Brigid had given me and stared at the road, my truck rumbling toward home on the hot, black, asphalt highway, my thoughts tumbling around like lottery balls in my head. If only the numbers would settle into place. I felt certain they would eventually. But it had been a full week since Nicholas had disappeared. Seven long, excruciating days. I couldn’t stand thinking what might be happening to him.

  I picked up the phone and started dialing, unable to tolerate the s
ilence in the cab. I called Maria first, then Liz, then Martinez, on down the line. No one picked up. I dialed the main number for the DPD and asked for Ybarra. He was out too. It rattled me that they were all unavailable at the same time. Something was going on.

  I was just crossing the Texas state line when my phone rang at last. It was Liz.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked. “I’ve been calling and calling.”

  “Christine and I are back in the emergency room. I can’t speak for anyone else.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Christine passed out again. Out cold.”

  “Was it the same thing?”

  “More or less. We were at the pool at the hotel. She was just sitting in her pool chair doing nothing—not swimming or anything—and down she went. I called 911, and now we’re back at Children’s.”

  “Are they admitting her? Is she okay?”

  “We’re waiting to hear. I think they’re just going to change her asthma meds.”

  “Did it happen suddenly? Or was there some sort of buildup?”

  “She talked all morning about having a stomachache. She said it was like something was flying around in her tummy. Then she just started getting clammy and cold, and before I knew it, she was hyperventilating and gasping for breath.”

  “Did her heart rate go up?”

  “I didn’t check, but I’d bet on it. I know mine did.”

  “That’s a panic attack. Same progression of symptoms Nicholas has.”

  “I wondered,” she said. “I’ve never seen a panic attack before.”

  My stomach turned, a flood of nausea washing over me.

  “Something’s happening to Nicholas,” I said. The stripes zipping by on the asphalt seemed to speed up as my vision blurred. The cab felt cold suddenly. “Has Christine said anything about him today, Liz?”

  “She dreamed last night he was back in the sandy space—the trunk, I guess. Maybe they’re moving him.”

  “Could mean the cops are getting close.” I fought to clear my head. “Maybe they’re scaring the guy. Have you talked to Martinez or Maria?”

  “Nope.”

  “I called Enrique, but he didn’t pick up. What about Maria? Have you seen her? Did she come to the ER when you guys got there?”