The Dreaming Tree

by Matthew Mather

  “Let’s get some fresh air,” Chief Alonzo said as he left the room.

  Del waited for Coleman to place the mason jar back and explained again to the junior officers that they were not to disturb anything or let anyone in. She caught up with the chief at the elevator.

  “Tell me again how you found this,” he said.

  The elevator door slid open. Del kept both hands on the jar with the ear in it. An image flashed in her mind, of her dropping it, splashing bits of flesh on Alonzo’s perfectly shined black shoes. Coleman entered the elevator behind her and shot her a conspiratorial look.

  “Just by luck, sir,” Del replied, concentrating her focus on her boss’s slick black hair. Anything but his eyes.

  The elevator dropped.

  “Luck?”

  “The locker is registered to Jake Hawkins, sir,” Coleman said. “He lives just around the corner—or did before he blew his brains out two years ago.”

  “So our main suspect is dead?”

  “Seems that way,” Del said.

  Almost two years ago. The coincidence wasn’t lost on her. Just before Roy’s operation. Gunshot wound to the head.

  She didn’t have access to the confidential files of the organ transplant network. She had called the OPTN right after she looked up Jake Hawkins on her phone. The network was protected by a web of impenetrable data security and privacy laws set up by Congress, but she was sure somebody would have a way in.

  So was the main suspect dead? Maybe.

  Del said, “Somebody still alive had to know about it.”

  “How so?”

  “Someone came here a few days ago and paid up the rent in full. It was about to go to auction.”

  “Family member, maybe?”

  “Maybe, but the cameras aren’t working. They’re all just fakes for show. The kid said some weirdo did come in, but the kid’s so stoned, I’m not sure he’d be a very reliable witness.”

  “Do we have prints?”

  The elevator shuddered to a stop. Why was it these places always smelled like mothballs? Or was it rat poison?

  When the door remained shut, Del pushed the “open” button, being extra careful with her gruesome prize.

  “No fingerprints for Jake Hawkins, nothing on file. He had no record, not even a parking ticket.”

  “Sounds just like a psychopath, right?” Coleman said. “Hiding under the radar? No arrests? No record?”

  Del ignored him. “The lab team is on the way here to dust for prints and collect all the bio samples.”

  Finding this place really had been luck. Of a sort.

  They had looked through all the papers and receipts in that apartment this morning, but Del could see that one set of papers was different from the rest. They had the oily smudges of having been handled over and over again. They were storage-locker receipts.

  On a hunch, she had driven back up here with Coleman, and anyway, she was feeling uncomfortable being in the NYPD’s jurisdiction. Better to chase leads in Suffolk County. They had just asked the kid at the front—stoned and playing video games on his phone—and showed him their badges. They said they had reason to believe that someone was hiding drugs in Hawkins’s locker.

  He used bolt cutters to open it, and it took only a second for Del to see the smudges from fingers that had pried open the back sheet of drywall.

  They exited from the building into the razor-wire-encircled parking lot. The frigid air smelled of the evergreens bordering the lot. Already, a dozen Suffolk County police cruisers were jammed into the gravel parking lot, their flashing strobes lighting up the bushes and the building as twilight descended.

  “Do we have a body? I mean, Jake Hawkins?”

  Now, that was an interesting question. “Officially, he was cremated, sir,” Del replied.

  “Officially?” Deputy Chief Alonzo’s brows furrowed together. He stopped to pull the lapels of his long wool coat.

  “That’s what’s listed on the death certificate. We have someone going over to talk to the widow, Hope Hawkins.”

  “So we have no DNA, either? Can we get some from his house?”

  “No need. The guy was an up-and-coming star in the mixed-martial-arts rankings. His day job was landscaping—cutting grass and blowing leaves—but by night he fought on the circuit.”

  “An MMA fighter?”

  “That’s right. They require that all fighters get regular blood tests. The labs have to keep them.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Del held up the jar with the ear in it. Whoever cut it off had been in a hurry.

  She caught some motion from the corner of her eye. Two dark cars pulled off from the road to stop behind the Suffolk County cruisers. Behind the cars was a New York City Yellow Cab. What was it doing all the way out here?

  * * *

  “You want me to stop, sir? You get out now?”

  The red-turbaned cabbie turned in his seat but kept the security latch closed. It was clear he didn’t care for Roy as a passenger and wanted him out of his car as soon as possible.

  “No, uh, just … uh …” Roy was transfixed by the scene.

  There was Detective Delta Devlin, holding up the jar with Primrose’s ear in it. He had almost cracked her and her partner’s skulls a few hours ago. Judging by all the police cars, they’d been here a while.

  So they weren’t scouring New York for him. There wasn’t an all-points bulletin up for a mass murderer on the streets on Manhattan. Otherwise, he would never have made it out so easily.

  He doubted they had even seen his face at the apartment, but somehow they’d found him. It had to be Danesti’s sensors. But more important and to the point, the jars with the body parts were real, not a figment of his imagination.

  Del had one of the grisly mementos in her hand, inspecting it. Then she looked straight at Roy. Or maybe just at the taxi. He shrank away from the window. The cops’ lights gave the scene a kaleidoscopic air. Should he just stop and get out?

  Roy fished another amphetamine tab out of his shirt pocket and swallowed it dry.

  No.

  He banged on the plastic divider. “Just keep moving. Keep driving.”

  “To where?” The driver slowed almost to a stop.

  “Past Calverton a few miles. Just keep going.”

  * * *

  Del watched the yellow taxi accelerate and pull away. She was about to give the glass jar to Coleman, jump in one of the cruisers, and follow the cab, when someone called out her name.

  “Detective Delta Devlin?” said a woman who had just stepped out from one of the dark cars.

  Del nodded.

  “I’m Special Agent Conroy, and this is my partner, Special Agent Fitzgerald. We’re with the FBI.”

  “Of course,” Deputy Alonzo said, striding over with his hand out.

  “We’re going to be taking over the crime scene,” Conroy said.

  Del said, “I was just going to take this to get analyzed.” She held up her glass jar.

  “We’ll take that,” Conroy said. “And, Detective Devlin, we do have one question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Exactly how did you come upon this?”

  42

  “You want a cookie, mister?”

  The boy, who looked to be about six years old, held out a white-chocolate-macadamia-nut cookie. He had lips like a rose, and milk-white skin that was almost translucent. His face radiated the benevolent innocence of a cherub.

  “Don’t bother the nice man,” his mother said. She wore yoga pants and a tight-lipped smile.

  What she really means, my little friend, is don’t talk to strangers. Especially strangers like me. Roy smiled and shook his head, thanking the boy, but no. She does have a point. You never know what monsters are lurking, what hungry beasts are roaring silently, fangs out,
hidden right in front of you.

  “But it’s Christmas,” the kid protested, resisting his mother’s tug. “You said to give to those less for-shoo-nate than us.”

  Take your mom’s advice, kid, because if she turns around, you might disappear. Roy closed his eyes and tried to stop the voices.

  Stop it. Stop talking.

  When he opened his eyes, the kid and his mom were gone.

  Was the boy even real? It was hard to tell. It wasn’t even that important.

  It was a quiet Tuesday morning at the Starbucks on Main Street in East Hampton. The pumpkin-spice latte displays had been replaced with glittering toffee nut, the aroma of coffee fighting with cloying peppermint for dominance. Two students were studying, their books spread out on a wooden table. A man in a rope-patterned wool sweater sat in a copper-rivet-studded green leather chair beside the cheery gas fireplace.

  Roy hunched in a corner, a cold coffee in his hands, his heavy coat pulled high, hat pulled low, bloodstained scarf tight around his neck despite the heat inside the shop.

  Just two days before Christmas, and the weekenders were back. The rich and aimless making their pilgrimage out of Manhattan to their palaces in the countryside. He had been one of these people just weeks ago, but he couldn’t risk anyone recognizing him now.

  He was so ripe, he could smell himself.

  The joggers and the mothers with nannies in tow lined up to get their lattes, averting their eyes from him. Maybe they didn’t even see this vagrant in their midst. That was how well trained they had become.

  But the little boy had seen him. The cherub.

  He thought of Elsa, his little girl. His baby. Jake’s little girl, he reminded himself. What was she doing? What had happened? Last night, he had the taxi take him past the Hawkinses’ place. He had wanted to see Hope and … what? Warn her? Tell her how he felt, that he wished she had stayed with him that day? But it was too late. Dark sedans had been parked in front of the house. Lights on inside. People inside. Police people.

  He told the cabbie to keep going, but the guy had started insisting that he needed to get out. Driving him around aimlessly, the guy had finally cracked, said he would call the police. Lucky for him there was that plastic divider. Bulletproof. Knifeproof.

  Roy had paid him the full fare plus a generous tip—better to leave the man happy. Then he got out in the dark and cold, somewhere between East Hampton and Sag Harbor, and just started walking. He looked up at the stars and the skeletons of the trees and popped another amphetamine.

  When dawn colored the eastern horizon, a police cruiser had eased to a stop beside him, crunching on the gravel shoulder. The officer had wound down his window, hand resting on the butt of his service revolver, and asked what he was doing.

  Roy said he was just going for a walk, Officer. He had no fear, no worries.

  The guy had said he needed to see some ID. The voices inside Roy debated whether to just kill the kid, but it seemed too messy, so he produced his wallet. Said he lived just down the street on Ocean Drive.

  The officer had looked at the ID and then back at Roy, shined a light on his face, and said to have a good night, Mr. Lowell-Vandeweghe. He said that he shouldn’t be out here all by himself so late at night. It could be dangerous.

  Dangerous? Roy had almost laughed. Do you know who you’re talking to? There was no danger if you were the apex predator.

  * * *

  Roy finished his cold cup of coffee. The servers behind the counter kept looking at him. They would call the police eventually, or at least a security guard. He was free now. Nobody knew where he was. So why was he back in the Hamptons? Roy tossed his paper coffee cup into the garbage. Because he was home.

  Time to see the family.

  * * *

  Roy knocked on Sam’s door, then just opened it. His friend never locked things.

  A wide staircase off the expansive entryway wound up to the second floor, but the place seemed empty. Were some of the pictures gone from the walls? Was that the same couch in front of the attending table? It seemed different. An open metal pot was in the middle of the floor, which seemed curious until a drop of water plopped into it, and then another. A leak in the ceiling thirty feet overhead had made a dark spot on the white-painted woodwork.

  For a seventy-five-million-dollar home featured in County Living magazine, it seemed to have gone a step below shabby-chic. Then again, Sam was a bachelor. He really lived in only two rooms of the forty-room complex, and he didn’t care a hoot what anyone thought, as he always reminded Roy.

  “Sam, hey, you home?” Roy called out.

  The dining room’s twenty-place cherrywood table was set as if for dinner tonight, but everything was covered in a fine layer of dust.

  He heard banging—someone outside?—then a thudding and the squeak of metal. Through the latticed windows toward the ocean, Sam’s bushy-bearded face and wild gray hair appeared.

  Roy grinned.

  Sam had a shovel over one shoulder. He’d been out doing yard work.

  He motioned for Roy to join him on the deck. Outside, the slate-gray Atlantic rolled on, impervious to the concerns of man. The grass-topped dunes were still frosted on the shady side as the sun fought its way through the low clouds. The inshore salt breeze, clean and strong, blew frothy white tops over the sea.

  “Jesus, Mary, and bloody Joseph!” his friend exclaimed. “What happened to you? Are you hurt? You’ve got blood down the side of your face.”

  “Did you know?” Roy said quietly.

  “We’ve been worried absolutely sick about you, my friend.”

  “Did you know about my mother?” Roy didn’t have the picture Angel had sent him. He’d thrown that phone away. He had nothing, no papers, just a memory he didn’t trust.

  “Know what?”

  “That she didn’t give birth to me.”

  The edges of Sam’s mustache quivered in the wind, his wild-man bush of gray hair blowing with his beard. Despite the cold, he was dressed in an open-necked linen shirt. He had on heavy boots, though, and gloves. His shoulders sagged inward. “Ah, jeez, come on inside and we’ll get some coffee.”

  * * *

  “Yeah, I had an affair with your mother,” Sam admitted. “I wouldn’t even call it that, though.”

  They sat on stools at the pink granite island in the kitchen. Their voices echoed. His friend looked worn down, exhausted. For the first time, Roy considered the effect all this was having on everyone else in his life.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Roy said. Not angry, just curious.

  Two mugs of coffee steamed on the counter between them. Roy was so wired, just the thought of drinking another cup made him jittery.

  “Tell you what? That I had sex with your mother?” Sam put his face in his palms. “I was twenty-two; she was forty-seven. She was this glamorous socialite, the wife of a friend. She knew everyone. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  The problem was easy enough to solve: Just dig a hole in the dunes and roll Sam into it. Roy smiled, wondering what his friend would think if he knew his thoughts.

  “And yet, you and my father remained friends?”

  “He knew how she was. I apologized. It was a mistake.”

  “So you told my dad?”

  “He saw that picture.”

  And then another thought. “Wait, are you my father?” Roy asked without warning.

  Sam’s mouth literally fell open. “Are you insane?”

  Roy replied, “Have you taken a look at me? You’re really asking that?” Somehow, being with Sam pulled a veneer of normality over the weirdness, allowing him to joke about it.

  “I heard your mother and father had trouble getting pregnant. I wasn’t around then. I mean, how can she be a Hampton matriarch without a family to domineer?”

  Sam tried to laugh, but it sounded fo
rced.

  He added, “Your dad was into all kinds of stuff back then—real pioneering. So maybe he found a doctor in India. I bet half your mother’s friends have done it.”

  “So why all the secrecy?”

  “You think your mother wants all her friends to know her kid was born to a poor brown woman?”

  “They do it all the time now.”

  “Now is not back then.”

  He was about to ask whether that was the reason his father hadn’t written his mother into the will, when the front door opened. Speak of the devil.

  Roy’s mother appeared, followed by his wife and two very large men in white. Two more men appeared through the patio doors from the ocean side of the house.

  “Sorry,” Sam mumbled.

  “Baby, just stay calm,” Penny said. She lifted her hand. It shook.

  The four men tightened their circle around Roy.

  “We knew about the apartment,” his wife said. “The one on Eleventh and Avenue C? Nicolae was just letting you have some space. To work things out for yourself.”

  “Please,” his mother said. “Don’t make this worse.”

  “Worse? I know what you did.”

  “I’m sorry you found out like this.”

  Found out they had used a surrogate? Or about her affair with Sam?

  Roy eyed the big man to his left. The men had approached from all sides. Big mistake. He just had to dart out, disable one, and he’d be outside their circle. Back up a step, and they would have to come to him. He could take them out one by one. The plan evolved in his mind.

  Penny said, “Shelby Sheffield was found dead in the basement of his house.”

  Roy’s fists relaxed. “When?”

  “Two nights ago. He cut his throat. He went insane. We won’t let it happen to you.”