Turning Angel

by Greg Iles

  “How? You can’t bring Chris back to life.”

  “No. All I can do is try to keep what happened to Chris from happening to anybody else.”

  She lays her head on my chest again. I let her alone for a bit, trying not to feel too awkward with her body pressing against mine. Then I separate us.

  “Where’s Annie?”

  “In bed.”

  “Good. Do you feel like telling me what you know now?”

  She wipes her eyes and nose. “My eyes are swollen. That always happens when I cry. I know I look like shit.”

  “It’s okay. Just tell me what happened.”

  She disengages from me, sits on the top step, and hugs her knees. “About seven tonight, Chris bet Jimmy Wingate he could beat him across the lake. Swimming, right? As cold as it is at night, and that’s the wide part of the lake, too. Jimmy didn’t want to do it, but Chris was wasted and kept calling Jimmy a pussy. I can just see it. Chris is such a redneck sometimes. So they tried it. No life jackets, pitch black. They were about halfway across when Chris got into trouble. He just stopped swimming and tried to float. He told Jimmy he was watching the moon, that the moon was changing colors every second.”

  They’d done three tabs of acid in the past twelve hours, Sonny said.

  “Jimmy tried to get him to keep swimming,” Mia continues, “but it was like Chris couldn’t hear him. Jimmy was treading water, and he knew he couldn’t last long. When he finally got Chris to start swimming again, Chris started puking. After that, Chris couldn’t keep himself afloat. Jimmy wasn’t sure which bank they were closer to, so he tried to pull Chris back to the pier where they’d started. He barely made it forty yards before he was exhausted.” Mia is rocking steadily now. “He had to let Chris go, and he barely made it back himself. He was crying like a baby when he told me this.”

  “Things have gone crazy,” I murmur.

  “Did I help any?” Mia asks.

  “What?”

  “About Shad Johnson. Did I help Dr. Elliott by seeing Shad with the judge and the sheriff?”

  I reach down and squeeze her shoulder. “You helped a lot. I really appreciate it.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “I wish I could, but—”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just…”

  She looks up, her eyes hurt. “If you really trusted me, you’d tell me.”

  I sit beside her on the steps. “Drew’s situation is about more than a crime, okay? It’s political. The D.A. wants to convict Drew to prove that a rich white man won’t be treated any better than a poor black one in this town.”

  “That sounds like a good thing.”

  “If that were the real reason he was doing it, it would be. But it’s not. Shad wants to be elected mayor. And if what he really wanted was to bring this city back to life, I’d support him. But that’s not what he wants. He wants a stepping-stone to bigger things. He wants personal power. And he’s willing to railroad Drew to get it.”

  Mia turns to me and smiles through her tears. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “No.”

  She raises a forefinger and pretends to zip her lips. “It’s in the vault.”

  “Seinfeld?”

  She laughs. Then she begins to cry again.

  “Did you know Chris well?” I ask.

  “Since nursery school.”

  This doesn’t surprise me. I started at St. Stephen’s when I was four years old. Fourteen years later, most of the people I graduated with were children I’d played with in nursery school. I knew them as well as I knew my own family, and many of them I still do. That’s one of the things that makes this shrinking town worth saving. Some of the best parts of American life that have vanished elsewhere still thrive here.

  “I still want to help,” Mia says. “I mean it. Even if you think it’s dangerous. School’s boring me to death. I’m just counting the days until graduation. I want to do something that matters. Especially now.”

  I stand and pull her to her feet, then look hard into her eyes. “Who brought the LSD to the party?”

  She goes still, her eyes locked on mine.

  “Was it Marko?”

  “I don’t know. Not for sure.”

  “Would you tell me if you knew?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What would keep you from it? Loyalty to your friends? To Marko? Or is it fear of Marko?”

  She closes her eyes, then opens them again. “I’ll think about that, okay? I’m not sure myself.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I’d better go now.”

  I try to give her a smile of encouragement, but it fails.

  “Will you hug me once more?” she asks in a small voice.

  I start to, but something stops me.

  “Never mind,” she says, her mercurial eyes quick to recognize my hesitation. She walks down the steps and to her car, not once looking back.

  “Be careful, Mia.”

  “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.” She slams her door and pulls away, leaving me feeling like a complete asshole.

  Chapter

  15

  Closeted in my downstairs bedroom with Kate’s shoe box, I remove her journal again and prop myself up in bed. I already tried without success to view the contents of the three Lexar flash drives from the box. Each flash drive is protected by a security program that requires a password even to view file names and types. I’ll have to ask Drew tomorrow if he knows any of Kate’s passwords. If Kate stored intimate photos on the drives, maybe he was privy to that information, so that he could borrow the drives sometimes and view them. If not, I’ll have to hire a professional hacker to open the files.

  After adjusting my reading light, I reread the opening passage of Kate’s journal, then wade into the body of the work. Her voice seems mature for her age, which I would expect from a senior bound for Harvard. But there’s something else here, an unguarded honesty I didn’t expect. I’ve been sent many manuscripts by published and unpublished writers over the years, and one thing I’ve learned is that people who write unflinchingly from the heart have the capacity to move us, where more polished craftsmen often fall short.

  Kate’s journal begins in the early summer of last year. As I read the early entries, my hunger to know more about her more recent months causes me to skip ahead. What quickly emerges from the pages is a picture of a girl maturing very fast, changing from a bored overachiever concerned with the social politics of high school to a fully engaged young woman ready to ditch the standard plan in order to be with the man she loved. By the time I’ve skimmed to the halfway point, I find myself mourning Kate Townsend more deeply than I would have thought possible.

  Realizing that I might have missed important information in my haste, I go back and start again, this time folding down the corners of pages that seem representative of the arc of her final year, and also of those that hold information that might be helpful in defending Drew.

  There’s the early stuff, where Kate was still a part of the high school as most adults imagine it. Drew was recuperating from a knee injury, and thus home all day with Kate and Timmy.

  6/3

  Mia got voted head cheerleader today. Makes me wish I never even tried out. Well, she deserves it. She actually seems to give a damn about the stupid games, or at least about cheering. I’m not sure why I tried out except that it’s what you’re supposed to do. I’m such a retard. It’s too late to quit now though. Damn, damn, damn.

  6/18

  Steve and I went to the lake today. He was really moody. He keeps asking me what I’ll do if I get into Harvard or Princeton. As if I would turn one of them down! It’s so obvious that we’re going to split up when that time comes. I don’t know how I can keep playing this role until then. I already can’t remember what made me date him in the first place. I mean the physical element is still there, but aside from that, it’s hell. He can’t carry on a conversation that�
��s not about baseball or deer hunting or what so-and-so looks like. And he’s so VAIN. I don’t think he’s ever passed a mirror without looking into it. He’s always fixing his hair and asking me how it looks. He’s such a girl. Nobody would believe it, but he is. God, I want a guy I can talk to. I hope like hell the guys at college are different. The ones at colleges around here sure aren’t, though; they’re the Steves that left high school two or three years ago. Please let me get in early decision.

  6/29

  Played tennis with Ellen Elliott after work today (6–2, 6–1). She was so pissed. I wonder if they still make love. I really doubt it. Mom told me she heard that Ellen cheated on him a couple of years ago. Why would she do that? She’s got a guy most women would give their left ovary for and she’s cheating with some stupid tennis pro? Is there something I don’t know about Drew? Is he terrible in bed? Brilliant and interesting but incompetent between the sheets? No way. That can’t be it. They sleep in different rooms now. He says it’s because of his knee, but I’ll bet that dates back to the tennis pro. I bet I know why she did it, too. I’ve seen the insecurity in her, that need for constant reassurance. Like the breast implants. Way too big. Don’t ever let me be that pathetic.

  7/1

  Drew talks to me like an equal. None of the condescending crap I get from most adults around here. That drives me bat-shit. Most of them haven’t read a book in twenty years other than John Grisham or Nora fucking Roberts. The other day I made an allusion to John Updike and Mrs. Andersen thought I was talking about an actor. Hello?!!! Sometimes when his knee is really hurting, Drew asks me to read to him. I love it! He lies there on the sofa just looking at the ceiling. He lets me pick what I want to read, too. I read him a play by Paddy Chayefsky, one of Kesey’s books. Part of Goat. An essay by Ayn Rand. He asks me where I come up with this stuff. Nabokov would be too obvious, but once I tried to embarrass him by reading an incestuous sex scene from Anaïs Nin. He kept a straight face for about five minutes, then closed his eyes. When I got to the really explicit part, he started to snore. I really thought he’d fallen asleep! Bastard!

  7/28

  Ellen won’t look me in the eye when we’re in their house. On the tennis court we’re fine, but if she comes home while I’m keeping Tim, she won’t meet my gaze. It’s weird. It’s like she sees me as a threat. I go out of my way to speak to her, but she cuts every conversation short. Has she caught Drew looking at me when I’m not looking or something? Has he talked about me to her? Maybe she feels I’m usurping her position with Timmy. If it weren’t for Drew, I’d want out of there.

  8/9

  Drew’s knee has gotten a lot better. He’s talking about going on the mission trip to Honduras after all. Ellen told me I should go along, that it’s the kind of real-world experience that a lot of the kids going into the Ivy League may already have had. I mean, what? When I asked why she doesn’t go, she told me once was enough. She apparently got a case of dysentery in the Dominican Republic, and that killed her desire to help “the unfortunate” in any way except by writing a check. If he’s serious about letting me come, I’m going to do it! Why not? I’d love to see Honduras, and I’d really love to be with him somewhere without Ellen and Timmy. Just to see how we are.

  On August 18, Drew and Kate flew to Honduras along with a team sponsored by a local church.

  8/21

  This is a journey into the unbelievable. Never have I seen people so poor, so sick, so helpless. Yet never have I seen smiles so broad, eyes so bright, or heard laughter so pure. I’ve shot a hundred pics already. My admiration for Drew grows every day that I watch him work. There are five other doctors with us—some of them specialists—but somehow Drew is the de facto leader of the team. I’ve watched the other doctors gape in awe as he works. Yesterday he removed four cancerous masses from a miner’s neck. Two of the other doctors warned him not to do it. They said the patient needed a hospital and general anesthesia. Drew said the guy would never get either, and that the cancer would probably cut off his air supply within a month. The operation took place under a tarp stretched over a picnic table. Drew injected the man with lidocaine, told him to be still, then cut on him for about an hour. He had to inject more lidocaine throughout the procedure, but the miner just smiled and murmured encouragement all through the operation. He somehow knew Drew was his last, best hope. I know one thing now: that’s the kind of man I want. Not a doctor, necessarily, but a man who’ll take risks to do what he knows is right. Who won’t be paralyzed by anxiety or rules or anything else. I want someone who acts. When Drew walked out of that tent, I waited until no one was around and then hugged him as tight as I could and told him I thought he was wonderful. Corny, maybe, but I don’t care. Anybody with eyes to see would have said the same.

  8/22

  Today I asked Drew if he believed in God. I mean, this is a mission trip, right? But it doesn’t seem to me that he’s into all the praying and Bible stuff the others talk about every night. He told me he doesn’t believe in the conventional concept of God. He said the idea of a God that watches the sparrow fall, that intervenes in human affairs, that rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked is a wishful fantasy. I asked him about life after death, and he just shook his head. “Come on,” I said. “What happens after you die?” He looked at me like he was a thousand years old and said, “Kate, when you die, you’re dead.” I think he’s watched a lot of people die in pain. “So this is all there is?” I asked. He nodded and said, “All we’ll ever know as individuals, anyway.” “Then I guess we’d better do all we can to be happy,” I said (which I believe). He looked so sad then, but he said, “I think you’re right.” And then I made this colossal blunder and said, “Are you happy with your wife?” I NEVER meant to say that. I meant to say, “Are you happy with your LIFE,” but it just came out, and I let it stand. He looked at me for a really long time without saying anything, and then he turned away. And then I knew. I guess I’d always known. He wasn’t happy, and he hadn’t been for a long time. And I wanted to make him happy, wanted it in a way I never wanted anything before. I wondered what would make him happy, and whether maybe I could. I knew then that I’d do whatever it took to take away the pain and loneliness in that face.

  The mission team soon returned to Natchez, but too much had happened to go back to the way things were before.

  8/27

  It finally happened! We were talking in his workshop (fourth time I sneaked out) and it was really hot. His air conditioner was broken. I said we ought to go over to the Johnsons’ pool, since they’re out of town. Drew was worried at first, but then he said yes. We slipped through the trees and then across the open grass to the edge of their pool. He looked at me like he was unsure what to do, so I went first. I took off my top and my shorts, and then I walked into the water. I turned back and watched him strip to his underwear—boxer briefs. I couldn’t stop shivering. I’d seen him in just tennis shorts before, but this was different, because we were alone. We swam for a while, keeping our distance, talking from a few yards apart. But then finally we came together, and he held me while we talked. He moved out to where the water was about five feet deep, and I wrapped my legs around him and laid my head on his shoulder. We talked for a long time, and then we stopped talking. I asked if he wanted to kiss me. He didn’t say yes. He just raised my head, looked into my eyes, and did it. My whole body was quivering. I’d waited SO LONG for that moment. His kiss was so tender and knowing, not like Steve’s at all, not like anyone’s (except maybe Sarah Evans’s—which is weird because Drew is so masculine). And then he said, “I want to see you.” I knew what he meant, so I slipped my bra straps down and then my whole bra. He looked at my breasts as though appraising them, and then he covered my nipple with his mouth and I started to lose track of everything. I literally melted into the water. I felt him against me down there. After a while he made this shocked sound, and then he told me to put my hand down between us. That kind of scared me, but I let him pull my hand down. The pool
water was cold, but between us the water was very warm, like someone was peeing in it. I thought for a minute that maybe he was peeing, and that he was weird about that or something, but then he said, “It’s you, Kate. That’s you.” And I blushed so deeply, because I realized it was. Drew held me tight and pulled me against him—still with his shorts on—and started moving against me. Then he whispered in my ear, “Is it all right if I climax?” I literally could not speak. I just nodded into his shoulder. And then he did. There was this explosion of air from his lungs, not grunting or anything like Steve. And then he just shivered the length of his body. I was crying, but not from sadness. I was overwhelmed. I wanted to look in the water, but I didn’t. He walked to the shallows then, still holding me up, then he walked up out of the pool like I was a little girl. He carried me over to this big padded chair the Johnsons have on their patio and laid me down in it, and then we did it for real. God. When I think about it now, sitting here in the cold air-conditioning, all I can really remember is clinging to him and feeling things I’d never felt before. I kept thinking, “He’s married, stupid!” but I didn’t stop or tell him to. After he finally stopped moving, I tried to sound calm when he talked to me, but I wasn’t. I was freaking out. My heart was just pounding, but I didn’t want him to know. I’m still shaking. It’s 6:30 a.m and I don’t want to go to work! How can I look at Ellen now? If I go late, I won’t have to see her. She’ll be playing tennis or getting her hair done or something. And Timmy, God, this is going to be so hard. And so weird. I feel guilty, but that’s only part of me. The other part can’t think of anything but him. Last night…wanting it again, that ineffable closeness. I can’t believe that was our first time. Where do we go from here? I hope he’s okay with it, not freaking out because I’m so young. He looked SO HAPPY. I think he was crying at one point, but I didn’t want to say anything. He needed me so badly. Have to sleep some now.

  9/7

  Two lives. That’s what I’m leading. It’s the strangest experience ever. I have a day self and a night self, and the two never flow together. During the day, Drew is a vague feeling, always there yet indistinct, a heaviness in my stomach, a tingle in my forearms. Life goes on around me and with me, yet the Real Me is hibernating. I can’t eat—a new experience! I’ve always eaten ravenously, but now I can’t eat anything. The excitement and anticipation fill me in some way I’ve never been filled before, turning my heart into a huge balloon that presses down my stomach and rises into my throat. Is this what love is? When I first see him, that balloon rises so high into my throat that I can’t speak. But the sleep deprivation is starting to get to me. I feel like I’m hallucinating sometimes. If I don’t get some rest, Mia’s going to take valedictorian, and I can’t afford to lose that until I hear something from Harvard. Maybe I should quit the cheerleading squad. That wouldn’t affect my transcript, and I could take naps in the afternoon. Maybe…