sixteen he had been seduced and gone on to seduce others, a participant (comparatively early in his life) in this secret waltz of illicit lovers going on in St. Andrew, a hidden world if you did not know to look for it. But these were secrets he couldn’t bring himself to share with me.
All I know is that my hunger for Jonathan grew, and it felt, at times, that it was nearly beyond my control. That there was something about his smoldering eye or half smile, or the way he knowingly caressed a young woman’s silk sleeve when he thought no one was watching, that made me want him to look at and caress me in the same way. Or when I thought of the rough things I’d overheard him say, I wanted him to be rough with me, too. I understand now that I was a lonely and confused young girl who yearned for intimacy and craved physical passion (even though it was a mystery to me) and-I know this now-my ignorance would be the means of my ruin. I was in a mad rush to be loved. I cannot blame Jonathan alone. So often we bring about our own downfall.
FOUR
Smoke swirls in two down spots of light in the examination room. By now, the wrist restraints are undone and the prisoner sits with the gurney adjusted upright, like a chair, a cigarette smoldering between her fingers. Two butts, burned down to the filters, sit squashed at the bottom of a bedpan on the gurney between them. Luke leans back in his chair and coughs, his throat rough from the smoke, and his head cottony, as though he’s been partaking of a narcotic all night.
A one-knuckle rap sounds at the door and Luke is on his feet quicker than a squirrel can run up a tree, because he knows that’s the mandatory, perfunctory knock a hospital worker gives before stepping into an examination room. He blocks the door with his body, allowing it to open only about an inch.
Judy’s cold eye, distorted by the lens of her glasses, sizes him up. “Morgue called. The body just came in. Joe wants you to call the medical examiner.”
“It’s late. Tell Joe there’s no reason to call the medical examiner now. It can certainly wait until morning.”
The nurse folds her arms. “He also wanted me to ask about his prisoner. Is she ready to go or isn’t she?”
This is a test, he realizes. He’s always thought of himself as an honest person, and yet he can’t bring himself to let her go just yet. “No, he can’t take her yet.”
Judy stares so hard that it feels like it could go right through him. “Why not? There isn’t a scratch on her.”
A lie springs nimbly to mind. “She became agitated. I had to sedate her. I need to make sure she doesn’t have an adverse reaction to the sedative.” The nurse sighs audibly, as though she knows-doesn’t suspect but
Lanny pushes ash around the bedpan with her burning cigarette, deliberately not making eye contact with him. “Jonathan’s here. Now you don’t have to take my word for it,” she says, tapping ash into the bedpan and motioning to the door with her head. “Go down to the morgue. Take a look for yourself.”
Luke shifts uncomfortably on the stool. “So there’s a dead man in the morgue-all that proves is that you really
“No, there’s something else. Let me show you,” she says, pushing aside the cap sleeve of the hospital gown to reveal a small line drawing on the white underside of her upper arm. He leans in to look more closely and sees that it’s a crude tattoo done in black ink, the outline of a heraldic shield with a reptilian figure inside. “You’ll see on Jonathan’s arm, in this spot-”
“The same tattoo?”
“No,” she says, giving the tattoo a swipe with her thumb. “But it’s the same size and it was done by the same person, so it will look similar, like it was done with pins dipped in ink, because it was. His looks like two comets circling each other, with the tails extended.”
“What does it mean? The comets?” Luke asks.
“Damned if I know,” she replies, rearranging the gown and bedding. “Just go look at Jonathan, and then tell me if you don’t believe me.”
After he ties her up again-inefficiently, with rarely used straps kept on hand for unruly patients-Luke Findley rises from the stool. He slips through the swinging doors, checking first to make sure no one sees him leave. The hospital is still dark and quiet, with only faint movement in the distant pools of light illuminating the nurses’ station down the hall. His shoes squeak against the clean linoleum floor as he hurries down the staircase, heading north through a basement corridor that leads to the morgue.
The whole way his nerves jangle. If someone stops him and asks what he’s doing out of the ER, why he’s going to the morgue, he’ll just tell them… His mind goes blank. Luke has never been a good liar. He sees himself as a fundamentally honest person, for whatever good that has done him. Despite his honesty and his fear of getting caught, though, he has agreed to the prisoner’s outlandish suggestion because he is curious as to whether this dead person is the most beautiful man ever put on the planet and what the most beautiful man would look like.
He pushes open the heavy swinging door to the morgue. Luke hears music-the evening morgue attendant, a young man named Marcus, likes to have the radio playing at all times-but sees no one. His desk shows signs of occupation (the lamp glows brightly, papers are strewn about, a gum wrapper, an uncapped pen), but no Marcus.
The morgue is small, in keeping with the town’s modest needs. There is a refrigerated examination room farther back, but the bodies are stored in four cold vaults in the wall just past the entryway. Luke takes a deep breath and reaches for one of the latches, big and heavy like the latches on old-fashioned frozen food trucks.
In the first vault he finds the body of an elderly woman, unknown to him, which means she probably came from one of the towns farther out in the county. The woman’s short, thick body and white hair make him think of his mother, and for a moment he’s brought back to the last lucid conversation they had. He’d sat at her bedside in the intensive care unit while her unfocused eyes searched in his direction and her hand sought his out for comfort. “I’m sorry you had to come home to take care of us,” she’d said to him, his mother who never apologized because she never allowed herself to do anything that needed excusing. “Maybe we stayed on the farm a little too long. But your father, he wouldn’t give it up…” She stopped herself, unable to be disloyal to the old man so stubborn that he had hobbled out to the barn to milk the cows the morning of the day he died. “I’m sorry for what it did to your family…” Luke recalls trying to explain that his marriage was already coming apart long before he moved his family back to St. Andrew, but his mother wouldn’t hear any of it. “You never wanted to stay in St. Andrew, from when you were little. You can’t be happy here now. Once I’m gone, don’t let yourself get stuck here. You go and find a new life.” She started crying and kept trying to squeeze his hand, slipping into unconsciousness a few hours later.
It takes Luke a minute to realize the vault is still open and that he’s been standing there so long a chill has settled in his chest. It’s as if he can hear his mother’s voice in his head. He shivers and slides the tray back into the locker, then stands another minute until he remembers why he came to the morgue in the first place.
He finds a black body bag in the second vault and, with a grunt of exertion, pulls the tray out. The zipper slides down with a satisfying tearing sound, like the unpeeling of Velcro.
Luke opens the bag and stares. He’s seen many dead people over the years, and death does nothing to enhance appearance. Depending on how they died, the deceased may be bloated. There may be bruising or discoloration or they may be pale and bluing. There is always the unmistakable lack of animation to the features. This man’s face is nearly white and spotted with flecks of dark, wet leaves. His black hair is plastered to his forehead, his eyes closed. It doesn’t matter. Luke could stare at him all night. He is exquisite, even in death. He is breathtakingly, achingly beautiful.
Luke is about to push the tray back into the wall when he remembers the tattoo. He looks over his shoulder
