by Greg Iles
“But why should he kill your sister-in-law? Just because she was here? I don’t buy it. Not with that weird abdominal wound. He took something out of her, man. But it sure wasn’t her pineal gland.” Mayeux looked uncomfortably at me, then at the floor. “I think maybe it was her ovaries.”
Jesus Christ. God help me.
“What kind of shit did you talk about with this nut, anyway?”
“He did most of the talking,” I said, trying to recall whether I said anything that could have led Brahma to this house. But I can’t. And even if he somehow traced the photo of Erin, that wouldn’t have led him here. Could he have been watching Erin’s house while I was there? Did he follow her from Jackson to here? Why the hell did she come out here anyway?
“You okay, Cole?”
“No. I want Erin’s body covered up. I want all these bastards out of my house. Right now!”
“Calm down, man. That sheriff wants to arrest you. I told him you were with me when the murder went down, but he could still bust you. Material witness, whatever. He’s pretty steamed, this happening on his watch. That juice you used in Jackson cuts two ways, remember. Bob Anderson’s a big man around here, and his daughter just got butchered, pardon my French. Buckner’s cranking up a manhunt that’ll make the John Wilkes Booth posse look like cub scouts, and if you make the wrong kind of noise, he’ll stomp on you with hobnail boots.”
I bent over, put my head beneath my knees, and breathed the way you’re supposed to when you take a kick in the groin. “An hour ago you wanted to arrest me, Mike. Why the change?”
Mayeux laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “You didn’t have nothing to do with this. Other than being stupid. I seen a lot of killing. And this is some real weirdness we got here.” He looked around the office again. “I think maybe this bad boy’s started coming apart. Decompensating, or whatever they call it. And I think maybe you’re the reason. Some way.”
I straightened up and wiped the damp hair out of my eyes. “What are you going to do?”
“Tell Buckner to put some security on your house. Call Baxter at Quantico and tell him he better get his federal shit together before this freak single-handedly cuts Investigative Support from the national budget. After that, I’m not sure.”
“Thanks, Mike. Thanks a lot.”
Mayeux pulled me up from the bed, led me to the window, helped me climb out of it, then followed. The last thing I remember him saying was, “Smells like a goddamned slaughterhouse in there, Troop. Somebody get those bodies into a wagon.”
With Drewe breathing deeply beside me, I sat listening to the bumps and curses and slamming doors and groaning engines of the uniformed battalion’s slow retreat. After the last vehicle pulled away, I realized I was avoiding looking at something. The telephone by the bed. Then I remembered it might not be working. As I reached out to check for a dial tone, it rang.
It was Bob Anderson, calling from the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. I didn’t hesitate or even try to soften the blow. With a guy like Bob, a man who’s been in combat, you give him the truth and let him deal with it his own way. After a stunned silence, he asked a couple of questions in a voice that sounded colder than Brahma’s digital facsimile. One was “Did she suffer?” I lied and told him Erin had not. After that, his only concern was for the living.
Satisfied that Drewe was all right for the time being, he focused on his wife and Patrick and Holly. He wanted to tell Margaret in person, but he was almost three hours from home. Most men would have given up there, but Bob decided to send a friend over to his house-not to console his wife but to cut the telephone line and head off any busybody neighbors who might take it into their heads to drive over and tell her the bad news. Before the wire could be cut, I was to call Margaret and tell her that Drewe and Erin had gone to Jackson on an errand. The prospect of telling this lie made me uneasy, but Bob didn’t give me time to equivocate.
I felt like an infantryman being given orders by a veteran sergeant. When I reminded Bob that a crime like this might make the late news in Jackson, he said he’d take care of that too. To my embarrassed relief, he did not question me in detail about who might have killed Erin. Either he suspected Patrick and did not want to voice those suspicions, or he suspected the truth and did not want to flay me long-distance. After he signed off, I realized that Erin’s death was a tragedy Bob had probably rehearsed many times over the years.
I know now that I’ve rehearsed for it too, the way we do with any friend whose life is ruled by chance or driven by demons. Yet for her to die this way leaves me feeling ambushed by fate, as though a relative had survived cancer only to be run over by a truck. Steadying my shaking hands, I pick up the phone and dial the Anderson house.
“Hello?” Margaret says. “Erin?”
I feel like I’ve connected to a parallel universe where physical events register only after a confusing time delay. Pulling the phone into the bathroom, I shut the door and say, “This is Harper, Mrs. Anderson.”
“Oh. Is Erin there? She told me not to call, but it’s getting late. I’m worrying myself into a migraine, Harper. She was acting so strangely.”
Keep your voice steady,says my instinct. A mother can sense danger to her children like a shark smells blood. “Erin’s not here, Mrs. Anderson. Drewe either. They went to Jackson on some kind of shopping errand. They left a note, but they didn’t say what they were after.” I pause. “What time did you see Erin?”
“She called around three-thirty and asked if I could keep Holly while she talked to Drewe about something.”
My heartbeat skips, then starts to race.
“You know me,” Margaret goes on, “I didn’t want to butt in, so I didn’t ask any questions.”
“You’ve got Holly?”
“Lord, yes. She got so hungry I finally fed her supper. I know Erin’s finicky about what this girl eats, but I didn’t have anything healthy so I gave her frozen pizza. Erin will just have to get over it.”
For the first time tonight, tears well in my eyes. “I’m sure it’s okay, Mrs. Anderson.”
This time Margaret says nothing. Just as I am about to speak, she blurts, “Harper, is Erin going to leave Patrick?”
She’s already left him, says a manic voice in my head. “I don’t know, Mrs. Anderson. They’ve been having some problems, I think.”
“She can’t leave him, Harper. She can’t. That boy worships the ground she walks on. I want you to talk to her. She might listen to you.”
I’m squeezing the phone so hard that the skin on the back of my hand feels like it might split. “I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Anderson. I think you’re doing the best thing you can just by keeping Holly. In fact, if she gets sleepy, why don’t you just put her to bed over there?”
Another silence. “I hear you. All right, I’ll do that. And you do what you can to straighten this mess out.”
“Yes, ma’am. Bye.”
“Bye-bye.”
My heart is still racing, but my hands are steadier. Holly is safe. At least there’s that. As silently as possible, I slip back into the bedroom. Drewe’s chest rises and falls with comforting regularity beneath the coverlet. Not wanting to wake her, I sit in a hard wooden rocker in one corner and resume my vigil.
Why in God’s name did Erin come to our house? If she called her mother at three-thirty, she did it right after I left her house. She told Margaret she had to talk to Drewe about something. What? Did she decide I didn’t have the guts to tell Drewe the truth about Holly after all? Maybe. But even if she did, she would have given me a chance to do it. Maybe she decided that telling the truth would be a mistake after all. Did she rush after me to stop me? Unlikely. Her resolve to finally be rid of the lie was ironclad. So why did she come?
Then I see it. She must have decided that telling Drewe the truth was not my obligation, but hers. Drewe and I are husband and wife now; we weren’t at the time of the affair. But Drewe and Erin were sisters. And by that logic, Erin’s was the greater betrayal. Of all the
alternatives, this is the noblest, and nobility was Erin’s predominant state of mind when I last saw her. Alive, I mean.
Rocking quietly in the dark, I recall the unalloyed panic that jolted me when I believed Holly unaccounted for. If she really had been missing, I would have been the one that required sedation. Children are stolen from parents every day in this country, by monsters as brutal as Brahma. I met two such parents in Chicago. And though Erin is lost to me now, to us all, I thank whatever god or fate exists that I am not now thrashing through the fields in search of my daughter, that Holly is safe and warm in the loving arms of her grandmother.
Is she? whispers a voice in my head. Are you sure?
The squeak of the rocker stops. Rising quickly, I go to the kitchen and look up the number of the Yazoo County sheriff’s department, which I memorize.
“Sheriff Buckner, please,” I tell the dispatcher. “This is Harper Cole, from Rain. About the double homicide.”
After about a minute, Buckner comes on the line. “What is it, Cole?”
“I talked to Dr. Anderson.”
“So did I. Just got off the phone with him.”
“I think you should get some men over to his house and watch until he gets home. Maybe all night.”
Buckner spits, probably into a cup, and takes his time about answering. “Doc told me he was going to have a friend of his take care of things.”
“We’re not talking about the same thing, Sheriff. Erin’s three-year-old daughter is over there. I think she might be in danger. Especially if Bob’s friend cuts off communication with the house. You hear what I’m saying?”
I can almost see Buckner snapping to attention in his chair. “You telling me this serial killer might go after Bob Anderson’s grandchild?”
“I’m saying there’s no telling what he might do.”
“Christ! You’ve stirred up some kind of shitstorm around here!”
“Will you do it?”
“Hell yes I’ll do it! I’m tempted to cordon off the place with a SWAT team.”
“Don’t do that! If Mrs. Anderson sees cops, she’ll know something’s up. She’ll start trying to call her neighbors. Can you keep your men out of sight?”
“You ain’t got to tell me my job, boy. I’ll take care of it. By the way, Doc’s already got a plane lined up. He was talking to me from a car phone on the way to the Memphis airport.”
I calculate quickly. “How soon will he be here? Hour and a half?”
“More like thirty minutes. Bob Anderson don’t fool around. He called whatever high roller he was meeting up there and got hold of a King Air. One of my deputies’ll be waiting at the new airport for him.”
God Almighty. I look around the empty kitchen in a daze.
“You there, Cole?”
“Yes.”
“Gotta go. I got a manhunt to run.”
After hanging up the phone, I look in on Drewe again. She’s still out. But for how long? With Vistaril she could sleep eight more hours or wake up any minute. What am I going to do when she does? What can I tell her? Sooner or later the tough questions will be asked. Should we even stay here in the house? No. Drewe will want to stay at her parents’ house. But she’s still going to wake up here. Bob could show up too. In fact, I should probably expect him. He’ll take care of his wife first, but then he’ll want to see Erin’s body, wherever it is. After that, he’ll come here. To see where it happened. To convince himself that it did happen. And to find out who in holy hell is responsible.
One thing I do know: I don’t want Drewe or Bob to have to face the abattoir that is my office. Drewe saw it once, and that was too much. I may not be able to wipe out the acts that led to Erin’s death, but I can damn sure scrub every last drop of blood out of that office. If I can’t, I can repaint the goddamn thing by morning. Buckner and the FBI will probably crucify me for destroying evidence, but evidence hasn’t led anyone to Brahma yet. From a cabinet in the laundry room I remove a gallon of Clorox, a bucket, some rubber gloves that are too small for my hands, and a mop, and carry them to my office door.
The smell hits me with more intensity than it did the first time. This is the coppery stench of death, the rotten fruit of violence. Pouring the Clorox into the bucket, I step into the bathroom and dilute it just enough to be able to breathe, then slosh the pungent mixture across the drying slick by the door. The bleach barely cuts the coagulated blood.
I bear down hard with the mop in the relatively clear place where Kali lay dead an hour ago. As the black-red mess swirls into scarlet spirals, the anesthetizing torrent of chemicals that must have insulated me up to now begins to slow, and the dark siblings of grief and guilt stir to wakefulness in my soul.
The mother of my only child is dead.
My complicity in her death grinds in my belly like slivers of glass. I probably know more about the man who killed her than anyone alive, now that Kali is dead. But I don’t know how he found his way here. I do know he could not and would not have done so had Miles and I not played at catching him. We were fools. Or worse. Somewhere, perhaps not far from here, Brahma is fleeing for his life. He might even be wounded, trying to stanch a river of blood that contains no natural clotting factor. But his fate seems strangely irrelevant now.
The mother of my only child is dead.
Erin’s blood yields slowly to the corrosive bleach. My throat works in vain against what feels like a lozenge of acid I cannot swallow, and glutinous tears burn my eyes. They are not healing tears, but tears of self-disgust. My part in drawing Brahma here is nothing beside my true offense. Somewhere in the dark chambers of my brain, the small and fearful animal that rules my subconscious has already computed times and distances, already realized that Erin did not have time to tell Patrick the truth about Holly before she died. If she had, he would have shown up here long before now. One day soon, Patrick and Drewe and Bob and Margaret-someday even Holly herself-will know that through stupidity I invited a depraved killer into our insular world. That knowledge will forever change their opinion of me, as it has my own. But they will never untie the final knot in the twisted skein of desire and consequence that led Erin to this house on this fateful night. The chilling thought that possessed me for an instant this afternoon-that only death could stop her from revealing our secret-has been fulfilled. And as I scrub fiercely at her blood, fighting to feel only honest grief at her passing, the pathetic rat voice of human instinct whispers in my heart:
Thank God they’ll never know.
CHAPTER 39
The high ring announcing a video link from EROS headquarters is more than enough to get me off my knees after two hours of scrubbing up blood with steel wool and Clorox. Hunched and aching, I shuffle from the far wall of the office toward the EROS computer.
First there is only Nefertiti, revolving slowly on her black background. Then a window pops up on-screen, its top left corner flashing status numbers that precede the link. Pulling off the cramp-inducing dish gloves, I watch for Jan Krislov’s face to appear. Instead, like a human version of the Cheshire cat, Miles’s grinning visage materializes from the black void.
“You there, Harper?”
I sit down, look into the dime-size camera lens mounted atop my monitor, and pull on the headset. “No.”
“The Trojan Horse worked!”
“Miles-”
“I’m sitting here with a stack of stuff you wouldn’t believe!”
“Miles.”
“What’s wrong? You look like your dog just got hit by a truck. Where’s my congratulations?”
“Erin’s dead.”
His smile does not disappear instantly. It seems to peel away, like old paint in a hard wind. He is too intelligent to ask for pointless repetition or to express disbelief. I know that behind his dazed eyes, his brain is already modeling all possible sequences of events that could have produced the result I so baldly stated.
“Tell me it was a car accident.”
“No.”
“Suicide.”
“Brahma got her, Miles.”
He touches his forehead with one hand. “Where?”
“Right here. My office.”
Both his hands cover his eyes in an almost childish parody of grief. Then one hand comes away, toward the camera, like the pleading hand of a heretic about to be burnt at the stake.
“Harper-”
“How did he know to come here, Miles?”
The millisecond he looks into his lap tells me the answer is very bad. “How?” I repeat.
“Oh my god.”
“Miles!”
“It’s my fault.”
“It’s our fault, okay?”
“No, it’s my fucking fault!”
The agony on his face stops me. “What do you mean?”
“The switching station.”
“The telephone company switching station? What are you talking about?”
He slowly shakes his head, the slow-speed video making his movements appear spastic. “When I hacked the false identity for ‘Erin,’ I did it just like I told you I would. DMV, Social Security, a few credit records. I made her name Cynthia Griffin.”
“And?”
“Before I could do any of that, I had to have a physical address. That meant hacking into the phone company’s switching station to match a fake address with your phone number. Everything had to work off of that. See?”
“Yes.”
“But I was wrong about the security level at the phone company. It was taking hours to break in. I needed a code or a password from someone inside. I tried to social-engineer it, but I couldn’t snow anybody. Then I got to thinking. Even if I succeeded in breaking in, Brahma might be able to cross-reference enough databases to figure out that the address was fake. You were ready to start up as ‘Erin’-”
“You used my real address?”
“It was the only way to make the character bulletproof!”
“Bulletproof? You goddamn idiot!”
“I know, okay!” Miles’s voice is high and shaking. “Damn it, I thought we’d know if he made any kind of move! From the typos. That’s why I kept asking you if he was making any.”
