Blood Memory

“Possibly,” Hannah says. “That depends on what kind of mistake was made. After forty years, scarring from infection would be difficult to attribute to therapeutic abortion based on pathological findings alone. There’s also the complication of possible later abortions. But this is an academic question. If Ann was ten years old, she wasn’t pregnant.”

“You need to talk to my mother,” I say softly. “When it comes to Ann, she’s the only one who knows the private details.”

Hannah looks puzzled by something. “Why,” she says deliberately, “was there enough morphine to kill someone in a one-room clinic on a rural island?”

“I asked the same thing,” says Kaiser.

“You ever see a chain saw accident?” I ask. “They’re as bad as war wounds sometimes. A chain saw can take off an arm or a leg in two seconds.”

This seems to satisfy Kaiser, who served in combat in Vietnam.

“What’s your next move?” I ask him, wondering how I can get out of here.

“Rush your aunt’s autopsy, if I can. Her body is already at the morgue in Jackson, Mississippi. I need to rule out murder. She was too close to Malik to discount that possibility.”

“I want to see her autopsy report.”

“I’m sure you’ll be here when I get it. Carmen Piazza still wants you locked in a cell downtown.”

This probably isn’t the best time to ask if I can leave.

“I’ll tell you what I want,” Kaiser intones. “I want that film Malik was making. If we find that, we’ll find our killer.”

“Film?” Hannah asks. “Nathan Malik was making a film?”

“A documentary about sexual abuse and repressed memory,” I answer. “It shows a group of female patients reliving sexual abuse, and some other things he wouldn’t tell me about. He said it would galvanize the nation on the issue of sexual abuse.”

“That’s one film I’d like to see.”

“Cat thinks the killer is a member of that group of women,” says Kaiser. “Malik called them Group X. I think Ann Hilgard may have been part of it.”

“Group X?” echoes Hannah. “Strange.”

“With Ann and Dr. Malik dead, only that film or surviving members of Group X can tell us who the members are.”

Hannah looks oddly at Kaiser. “I sense you have something to ask me.”

“I do. Is there any possibility that Cat could have been a member of that group without being aware of it? Dr. Malik suggested that she might suffer from multiple personality disorder.”

Hannah looks briefly at me, then back at Kaiser. “Ridiculous. Cat has certainly experienced dissociated states. But the idea that she suffers from full-blown dissociative identity disorder is preposterous. Put that nonsense out of your mind, Agent Kaiser. Nathan Malik had flashes of genius, but he was also a flake.”

That’s a fucking relief, I say silently.

Kaiser and Hannah are lost in their own musings, but something won’t let me focus. It’s not grief over Ann. I’m too numb to feel anything about that now. It’s a sense of something missing.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, John.”

He looks up and shakes his head. “Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know. Have you told me everything about Ann’s death? The scene? Did you leave anything out?”

His brows wrinkle. He looks like he’s making an honest effort. “She injected the morphine into veins in both arms. That tell you anything?”

“Only that she was serious. What else? Do you have photos from the scene?”

He nods cautiously. “I had the West Feliciana Parish sheriff’s department e-mail me their crime-scene stuff. That’s how I knew the building had a tin roof. Are you sure you want to see them?”

“Yes.”

He glances at Dr. Goldman again. Hannah studies me for a few moments, then says, “Cat’s already in shock. If it will help solve the murders, I don’t see any point in keeping them from her.”

Kaiser promises to be right back with the photos, then leaves the room.

Hannah looks up at me from the cot where she’s sitting. “I’m worried about your affect, Cat. You do know you’re in shock?”

“I suppose so. I feel numb.”

“And you’re not drinking?”

“Not for days now.”

Her eyes probe me like a metal instrument. “You’re not taking your medication, are you?”

I hate to answer this. “No.”

“How long?”

“I’m not sure. A week, maybe.”

She shakes her head. “I dislike mechanical analogies, but today that’s the only thing I can use. Watching you now is exactly like watching a machine. All the biology is working, but you’re not present. You’ve described yourself as being that way when you have sex.”

“I know, but this isn’t that. I’m like this when I work.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

Hannah looks over at the door, as though she hears Kaiser returning. “I was that way at times during medical school. But something about you seems different. And this isn’t a normal case, no matter what you tell yourself. You can’t pretend you weren’t related to Ann. You were. You are. In the Faulknerian sense of the past never really being past. Faulkner said that if the past were truly past, there would be no grief or sorrow. Ann was your blood relation, Cat, and she took her own life. Something you’ve thought of doing yourself many times.”

“I have to find the truth, Hannah. That’s the only thing that will keep me sane now.”

Her gaze doesn’t waver. “Will it?”

“It’s my only hope.”

The door opens, and Kaiser walks in carrying some eight-by-ten photos. Before second thoughts can stop me, I take them from him and shuffle through the stack as I would photos from any crime scene.

Hannah was right. This is not just another case.

The mere sight of the clinic brings on a wave of nausea. A small, tin-roofed building sitting in a sun-scorched field of weeds. A lone fig tree beside it. I can feel splinters being pulled from my hands, tetanus shots being stuck into my shoulder.

The next photo makes me thankful I haven’t eaten. It’s not gross-no blood and brain matter covering a dinner table, no ejected shell casing lying in the blasted wreck of a human face. It’s just my aunt, my once glamorous aunt lying naked on a bare wooden floor, her breasts and thighs sagging like pools of melted wax. Her mouth yaws open in the gape of sleep, eternal sleep this time, and-

“Cat?” Hannah says softly. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

It’s a downward-angled shot. It shows the legs of the examining table, a pair of brown feet in sandals- probably Louise’s-and the molding at the bottom of a cabinet. Just behind Ann’s head, there’s something rounded and dark, but I can’t make out what it is. I slide the photo over and move it to the bottom of the pile.

And my heart stops.

In the next photo-shot from a different angle-a stuffed animal lies on the floor about three feet behind Ann’s head. It’s not just any animal. It’s a turtle. And his name is Thomas. Thomas the Timid Turtle.

“Thomas,” I breathe.

“What?” says Kaiser.

I point at the turtle.

Kaiser walks up to see. “Is that turtle important?”

“Thomas was Ann’s favorite toy, ever since she was a child.”

“I had no idea. Apparently there were several stuffed animals in the room. We figured they were there to let