grandfather at the wheel. He points out cows grazing by a fence, others standing with dumb satisfaction in a waterhole. The acrid scent of tobacco burns my nostrils. The truck’s round hood is rusted orange and dented from a hundred impacts. The engine groans as Grandpapa forces the truck up the long slope toward the crest of the hill.
There’s a pond on the other side of the hill. I’ve played in it many times, but today I’m afraid. Something terrible is waiting over there. Something I can’t bear to see. I know it’s there, but my grandfather doesn’t. I can’t warn him. My mouth is glued shut. I can only sit on the torn vinyl seat, eyes shut tight, praying God will spare us from the horror that awaits….
Suddenly there’s a crash of thunder, and then I wake to violence in the dark, battle erupting above and around me, thick arms flailing, fists cracking bone. I want to run, but I’m rooted to the bed. The combatants struggle over me in silent rage, their sole intent to kill. I’ve seen this battle before, but this time-unlike the other nights-I see the whites of two eyes flickering in the black mask of one face. As the face whips toward the bedroom window, I recognize my father.
And I scream.
Chapter
20
My eyes open in the dark. I know the nightmares are over, because the little teeth are gnawing at my veins again.
I need a drink.
My bedside clock reads 5:53 A.M. I’ve slept over twelve hours. Sean must be long gone. He promised to wake me if he had to leave, but it’s morning, and here I lie alone. It doesn’t surprise me much. Sean has broken promises before. I’ve broken a couple myself. Adultery isn’t a fairy tale.
Sean is probably lying in bed with his wife right now. Soon he’ll wake and drive to the FBI field office to work with Kaiser and the rest of them. Picking apart the tapes of my conversation with Malik, reexamining every scrap of evidence from the murders, waiting for me to decide I’m capable of handling “debriefing” by the FBI.
That’s not going to happen today.
Lying in the dark, I know one thing with absolute certainty. I must return to Malmaison. Today. I may believe that one of the bloody tracks on my bedroom floor was put there by my foot twenty-three years ago, but until that’s a proven fact, I can go no further with the information. I have the tools and the knowledge to prove it, and I won’t feel any peace until I do. Because I keep my forensic equipment packed and ready at all times-even the stuff for tests that fall outside my discipline-I can be on the road in twenty minutes. I don’t plan to take much longer than that. It’s Monday, and I want to beat the traffic.
Walking down the hall to make coffee, I smell cigarette smoke. Then I hear a cough from the den. Sean quit smoking a year ago.
I creep to the end of the hall. The den is dark. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see a man sitting on the sofa.
I reach out and flip on the hall light.
Sean is wearing boxer shorts and his oxford shirt, unbuttoned all the way down. His face is as haggard as I’ve ever seen it. He looks like a man who has witnessed a terrible accident. An accident involving his own family.
“Sean? What are you doing?”
He doesn’t look in my direction. “Thinking.”
I pad over to the sofa and look down at him. A bottle of Bushmills stands on the coffee table, a saucer piled with crushed cigarette butts beside it. The bottle was new, but it’s one-third empty now. An opened newspaper lies on the table as well, and the face of Nathan Malik stares up from it. Beside the close-up of the psychiatrist is a shot of Malik waving to the camera as he’s led along Gravier Street by police-the so-called Hollywood Walk that leads from NOPD headquarters to the Central Lockup Unit.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“No.”
“Have you been here all night? In the house, I mean?”
“No.” He still hasn’t looked up at me.
“You told me you’d wake me if you had to leave.”
“I tried. You wouldn’t budge.”
“Where did you go?”
At last he looks up. His eyes are glazed. “They know, Cat.”
“Know what? Who knows?”
“Everybody.”
“What’s happened, Sean? What are you talking about?”
“Us. Everybody knows about us.”
I take a step backward. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody talked.” He shrugs as if he doesn’t give a damn. “I doubt it was Kaiser. Maybe it was his driver, I don’t know. But word got back to the task force. By suppertime rumors were flying through the department.”
“You wouldn’t be acting like this over rumors in the department.”
He shakes his head. “Somebody called Karen. The wife of this detective I pissed off about a year ago. She called Karen and made it sound about as bad as she could.”
I’ve been expecting something like this for months. Now that it’s finally happened, I feel a strange numbness in my chest. “And?”
“Karen called my cell phone about eight last night. She told me not to come home.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to talk to her.”
“In person? You went home?”
He nods. “She wouldn’t let me in.”
“You have a key.”
Sean chuckles softly, the sound eerily devoid of humor. “She changed the locks.”
“She got a locksmith out there after hours and changed every damn lock on the house.”
I look over at the picture window. A faint blue glow lightens the blackness on the left side of the lake. The sun is coming. I need to move.
“Look, I know this is a bad time…but I have to go.”
He blinks in confusion. “Go?”
“Yes.”
“You’re ready to talk to the FBI?”
“No. I’m going back to Natchez.”
He rubs his eyes like a man coming awake after a long sleep. “What are you talking about? You just came from there. Why would you want to go back?”
Trying to explain my reasons to Sean while he’s drunk is more than I want to deal with. “Look, I don’t need to be here right now. I need to go home.”
He waves his arm broadly. “I thought this was home.”
“I have to know what happened in that room. What happened the night my father died.”
“Well, you can’t just
An image of the psychiatrist comes to me, a black-clad figure looking down a corridor like a concerned father. “Where’s Malik now? What’s that newspaper story about?”
“He’s in the Orleans Parish Prison. He refused to obey the court order. The
