eighteen years ago. I feel like I’ve worked my ass off for nothing, Anna.’
‘That’s not how it is.’
‘Yes, it is! I feel paralysed here! This baby feels like an excuse for something.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Like an excuse for you not to have to face what has happened to us. An excuse for you not to have to go out there-’ He pointed to the window.
‘Out where?’ said Anna.
‘Anywhere,’ Joe shouted. ‘Anywhere! Look at how you’ve been living. You’ve hardly gone outside the door, you fall apart when you do, you’re here all day, in the evenings-’
‘I’m depressed!’ she shouted.
‘Exactly,’ shouted Joe. ‘Which is why we should not be having this baby. Who wants to bring a kid into this home?’ It hung there in the silence.
‘We have a wonderful home,’ said Anna. She started to cry.
Joe sat down on the bed. ‘Doesn’t feel that way,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I’ve forgotten. I don’t know any more. I don’t think about it. I never think about us any more.’
‘I know,’ said Anna, pressing her sleeve against her eyes.
He looked up at her. ‘I… love you so much, you and Shaun. You’re everything to me. But we’re not the same. I mean, things have changed.’
‘Maybe the baby will…’
Joe shook his head sadly. ‘That’s one hell of a scary job for a newborn.’
TWENTY-THREE
The sun beamed down through a slice in the grey sky over Denison, Texas. Wanda Rawlins held her hand up to the television set, the bones in her fingers rigid and spread.
‘I have been clean and sober for-’ The telegenic preacher, his grey hair smooth and waxy, paused for his audience to fill in their ‘time spent walking with Jesus’.
‘Sixteen years, three days and seven hours,’ said Wanda.
‘Before I walked with Jesus I-’
‘Danced with the devil.’ Wanda’s voice was as fiery as the man with the headset microphone striding the stage in the crowded white marquee.
‘My salvation was-’
‘Vincent Farraday.’ Wanda shouted. She was talking about her husband, the singer who plucked her off a strippers’ stage in Stinger’s Creek, cleaned her up and welcomed her into this loving home in Denison, forty miles south. The studio audience had already answered ‘The Lord’.
‘Oh yeah, the Lord,’ said Wanda. ‘Duh. My salvation was The Lord and Vincent Farraday.’
The preacher stood with his arms outspread, his hips thrust forward. ‘My power is in-’
‘My sobriety,’ said Wanda.
‘My love,’ said Wanda.
‘My destiny,’ said Wanda.
‘My denial. My detachment. My ice cold soul.’ Duke Rawlins stood in the doorway, gripping the frame above his head, his long, lean body rocking gently back and forth. The audience cheered.
‘Dukey,’ said Wanda, struggling to get up from the floor.
Duke looked at the television. ‘You won’t recall this, Mama,’ he said, ‘but it was soap operas you used to watch. All day sometimes. I would run all over the house, all over the yard. I would come in to you, lying there and I would have scratches and bruises and dirt on me, just, you know, to see…’ He shrugged. ‘And you would lean your head around me, use all your weakness to push me aside and you would say, “Mama’s got some other people’s lives to watch.”’ He smiled. ‘Well I see now that Mama’s got her some Jesus to watch.’ His face twisted into an expression of the hate down deep and rising.
Wanda’s eyes were love and fear and sixteen years, three days and seven hours of veneer.
‘You’ve done some very bad things, Dukey. A lot of people want to talk to you. That detective in New York…’ Duke’s expression stopped her. She raised calming hands. ‘But I understand why now,’ she said, ‘why you did those things.’
Duke tilted his head.
Wanda nodded. ‘I understand. The devil entered my body with the sin of my ways. I opened my lifeblood to him and he flowed right in. He rested alongside you in the womb. And he grew alongside you. And when you came out of inside me, he was gone. And the only place he could…’
Duke had a new laugh for this, one he had never used before, high and staccato and minutes long. ‘You crazy motherfucking bitch,’ he said at the end. ‘Damn, you’re crazy. Maybe the crazy fairy fucked you up the ass. He went in one way, the devil went in another. Maybe they met in the middle, had themselves a little party. Hell, maybe I joined in.’ He laughed again and started walking towards her.
‘I want to help you, Dukey. I want to redeem-’
‘Yourself, Mama. As per usual. You want to redeem yourself.’
‘No, no!’ said Wanda. ‘I’ll do whatever you want. You need money? I got money.’ She pointed at her pocket book. ‘I won’t tell anyone you were here. You can even stay here! I won’t tell a soul.’
Duke let her panic run its course.
‘I’ll… what do you need, Duke? I’ll do it. I’ll… whatever it is.’ She saw how he was looking at her. She stumbled back, grabbing for the cell phone on the arm of the pretty pink sofa. She held it in her trembling hand. Duke’s right leg shot out and kicked it away.
Wanda screamed. ‘You broke something.’
‘So did you,’ said Duke.
Wanda sat with her back to her son’s chest. He sat behind her, taking the full weight of her body, his legs wrapped around her, pinning hers to the ground. With skills honed throughout his childhood, he quickly wrapped the tourniquet around her left arm, pulled out a syringe and shot the purest heroin to ever course through Wanda Rawlins’ veins. Her stricken face was quickly replaced by one he knew better: the slack one; the face that danced on shiny poles, the face that stood outside the school gate, the face that baked burned cookies, the face that opened his bedroom door to johns whose needs no woman could ever meet.
One hour later, Vincent Farraday arrived back from the grocery store and walked in on the wife he thought he’d saved – her body limp, her eyes dark and glassy. She gave a half smile and turned back to the TV.
Vincent turned to the twin teenage girls standing beside him.
‘Your mama is not feeling well,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking, let’s go on that vacation a day early. Go pack your bags.’
Vincent Farraday took off his hat and rubbed his head over and over. He pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to the corner of his eyes.
The preacher’s voice rose from the television through the quiet. ‘And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.’
The audience cheered.
‘And whoever rewards evil for good, evil will not depart from their house.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Joe sat at his laptop with the VICS file opened. The last time he used it, he had added the photo of David Burig. Now he added Dean Valtry. The faces of five murdered men looked out at him from the screen. And underneath was a photo of Mary Burig. He shifted the boxes around and made two sections that he separated with a thick red line. To the left were Gary Ortis, William Aneto, Preston Blake, Ethan Lowry. To the right were Mary
