Jude Devine Mystery Series
Page 77
As they stumbled toward the bedroom, they knocked over the file box she’d brought home from headquarters, spilling Fabian Maulle’s secrets all over the floor. Jude kicked the papers aside and carried Mercy the rest of the way. When she banged into the side of the bed, she dropped Mercy down onto the mattress and fumbled messily with her clothes, pushing her hands away when she tried to help. It wasn’t right to destroy a perfectly good shirt, but Jude ripped it open and pulled it away. The bra came with it. Jude dropped them on the floor.
“Leave her,” she said as she unzipped Mercy’s trousers and dragged them off, along with her panties. “She can’t touch you ever again.”
Mercy caught Jude’s face between her hands. Sweetly, she insisted, “No rules.”
A fiery thrill ran from Jude’s mouth to her groin. She knew that tone. “You don’t make the rules anymore,” she said, stepping back to remove her T-shirt.
With shaking hands, she unfastened her belt and jeans. The room was very dark.
When she reached for the light, Mercy said, “No. I don’t want to see anything. I just want to feel you.”
Which was perfect, Jude thought, because she wanted Mercy to feel her as she never had. She wanted to cradle Mercy’s heart and soul, not just her body. A tiny doubt gnawed at her, and she cupped Mercy between the thighs and squeezed.
“Are you with me now?” she asked. “Only me.”
“Yes.” Mercy gasped.
“Tell me again.”
“I’m with you. Only you.”
Mercy opened to her, and Jude sank her fingers deep inside. They rolled onto their sides, facing each other, legs scissored. For a long while, they lay still, lost in a kiss. Then Mercy whispered in Jude’s ear, “Make me come.”
“I will,” Jude promised.
“I love you,” Mercy told her again.
“Okay, now I’ll make you come.”
*
Hours later, as Mercy slept, Jude got tired of staring up at the ceiling wondering if she’d done the right thing. Mercy was married and Jude had steadfastly resisted her overtures for months. Now, in a moment of weakness, she’d broken the rule she made to protect her own heart. She desperately wanted to believe that Mercy meant what she said and her marriage was over, but she would believe it when she saw it.
Jude slipped out of bed, pausing for a moment to stare at the woman she’d made love with all night. Her heart quaked in her chest. What if Mercy left her again? She couldn’t stand to think about that possiblity.
Silently, she closed the door behind her and started along the hallway. She promptly fell over the file box. She shuddered as her bare feet connected with the contents. The thought of these photos and notebooks in her house, especially now, made her flesh crawl. The sooner she dispatched the evidence to the FBI, the better. Distracted, she hadn’t done her job. In the half-light of dawn, she gathered up every item and created stacks on the dining table. As she arranged the photographs according to size, something puzzled her and she turned on the light in her dining area so she could see more clearly.
In successive photographs one boy after the next sat on the same bed, in the same pose, in the same room, with the same vapid yellow décor. The back of each photograph bore a year and a classification number that linked the set together.
Jude lifted a different set from another envelope and found photographs once again taken in the same setting, this time a room with different features from the yellow one. Once more, boys of similar appearance were grouped together. Each envelope had an index of the contents on its front. The name Yitzhak Eshkol jumped out from one envelope.
Jude hastily tipped its contents onto the table and found several photographs of boys with dark hair. Among these was Yitzhak. His wrists were bound in front of him and he sat on a bed wearing only his briefs. Jude thought about the inscription he’d written to Fabian in Pippa Passes. “For saving my life.” Were those the words of a grown man to a pedophile who’d abused him as a boy?
She turned Yitzhak’s photo over and stared at the date. 1982. A cold fist gripped her gut and her body was instantly clammy. She sat down at the table, her breathing shallow. Frantically, she worked her way though the envelopes, fishing out the photos for 1982. Four bundles, around forty pictures. It was crazy to think she would find anything, but she looked anyway, at one face after the next. She felt physically ill as she struck a sequence of blond boys.
Her heart pounded. Yitzhak was in Maulle’s files and he was still alive. She put the photos down, afraid of what she wouldn’t find. She’d been down so many dead ends she expected nothing else, yet she still hoped.
Her mind was playing tricks on her, she thought, as one photo called her attention from the rest. Jude turned on extra lights and held the image up to the glare, doubting everything. Her eyes. Her memory. Her sanity. A fair, slightly built boy gazed out at her through time, beckoning her from the darkness and silence at the edges of her nightmares. For twenty-five years she had waited for this moment.
Jude burst into tears.
Ben.
Author’s Note
Like any work of fiction set against a backdrop of real political events, Place of Exile names real people and mixes fictional events with real ones. To serve the timeline of the novel, I’ve occasionally taken license with the timing of a real event, such as the anti-war protest at Jackson Hole. That event takes place in my text a week later than it did in real life. A real Marilyn Musgrave fund-raiser in which Dick Cheney’s motorcade was disrupted by protestors occurred in 2004; the similar event depicted in the novel is entirely fictional.
We live in a time when fear and paranoia play an increasing role in the national psyche, and moral dilemmas abound over where lines should be drawn between individual liberties and privacy versus the collective interests of society. To a small extent this terrain is explored in Place of Exile. Moral ambiguities offer authors interesting opportunities for plot and character, while simplistic black-and-white portrayals of heroes and villains can be less intriguing to write (and, possibly, to read). I hope readers will indulge my forays into the gray areas.
A subplot in this novel involves a fictional assassination attempt on the vice president. This subplot forms part of a broader theme of the work, that of the threat faced when extreme views give rise to acts of violence. This theme also finds reflection in a fictional bio-attack plot against the Telluride Film Festival. It should go without saying that the inclusion of such content per se is not an endorsement of the actions of the fictional characters depicted; neither should the opinions of these characters be mistaken for the author’s personal views.
As always, I write to entertain and I make the assumption that I’m writing for intelligent readers who know they are reading a work of fiction. I hope you enjoy my latest effort.
About the Author
New Zealand born, Jennifer Fulton resides out West with her partner and daughter and a menagerie of animals. Her vice of choice is writing; however, she is also devoted to her wonderful daughter, Sophie, and her hobbies fly fishing, cinema, and fine cooking.
Jennifer started writing stories almost as soon as she could read them, and never stopped. Under pen names Grace Lennox, Jennifer Fulton, and Rose Beecham, she has published seventeen novels and a handful of short stories. She received a 2006 Alice B. award for her body of work and is a multiple GCLS “Goldie” Award recipient and Lambda Literary Award Finalist.
When she is not writing or reading, she loves to explore the mountains and prairies near her home, a landscape eternally and wonderfully foreign to her.
Rose can be contacted at: jennifer@jenniferfulton.com
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