Mortal Fear

inner pages of the magazines. Another hiatus, then mostly they used her hands, feet, breasts, and hair.

No tragic accident had disfigured her face. If looks alone were the criterion, Erin would still be gazing out from the racks at the supermarket checkout instead of gathering up her child from the shallow end of her parents’ swimming pool. Erin’s problems were inside her head, not outside.

But first the exterior. Where Drewe is fair, Erin is dark. I lay that at the feet of genetics. Bob Anderson came from Scots-English blood, Margaret Cajun French. Drewe got her father’s genes, Erin her mother’s. And the differences hold true right down the line. Drewe’s hair is thick, auburn, and slightly curly. Erin’s is fine and straight and so brown it is almost black. Drewe’s eyes are green and bright with quick intelligence; Erin’s are almond- shaped, as black and deep as smoldering Louisiana bottomland. Drew has a pert nose, while Erin’s is long and straight with catlike flared nostrils. And where Drewe’s lips are pink, like brush strokes on a Royal Doulton figurine, Erin’s are full and brown, her upper lip dusted with fine tawny down. Both girls are somewhere around five foot nine, but Erin is long.

I don’t mean to shortchange my wife. Any man with functioning retinas would call Drewe a beauty. She is also demure-except while working-and her strength and smarts give an edge to her elegance. She is a doctor, after all. Erin is a former model turned jet-set girlfriend turned housewife. But as I watch Erin leading her child by the hand to the wrought-iron table, the physical difference comes clear: Drewe is feminine; Erin is feline.

This is a difficult art, watching another woman without your wife noticing. You look with unrestricted freedom for the early part of your life, then suddenly you have to learn to conceal your interest. The battle is hopeless, like a physicist trying to train iron filings not to follow a magnet. But with Erin, I have had lots of practice.

Since I dated Drewe in high school, Erin and I were almost natural enemies. We constantly razzed each other, behaving as if related ourselves. I grew adept at ignoring her stunning legs as we hung around the pool in the summers. But sometimes ignoring her was impossible.

Once, at a high school lake party, some of the seniors got drunk enough to start skinny-dipping. Dusk was falling, and a few of the girls felt safe enough or bold enough to slip off their suits in the growing shadows and dive off the pier into the silver water.

When Drewe saw this, she silently stood up, threw her “wild” act to the winds, and started walking back toward the car. She obviously had no intention of stripping nude in front of strangers, no matter how drunk they might be. Besides, her coolness quotient was secure. She didn’t look back at me, but I knew she expected me to follow. And I meant to. But as I stood up, I heard a voice say softly: “Harper.”

I turned around to see Erin standing behind me. She wore the bottom half of a bikini, but her brown-nippled breasts were exposed. With her eyes locked on mine, she hooked a finger in the side of her suit and stepped lazily out of it.

She was glorious. And she knew it. I stood blinking in the dusk, trying to take in what I was seeing. Looking back now, I realize that trying to see-truly see — a naked woman in her entirety is like trying to take in the carnage at a traffic accident. Your brain simply cannot process all the input being channeled like floodwater through your eyes. I saw bits of her: collarbones like sculpted braces inside a guitar, her flat brown oiled belly, beaded with pearls of lake water descending to a stark tan line where a lighter brownness descended again to the rough black triangle blurring the wide cleft between her thighs. And always her eyes. How long did I stare? Five seconds? Ten? I heard a long, reverent whistle from the water below the pier. Then Erin’s gaze floated above my shoulder and she simply stepped off the pier and dropped into the lake. When I turned around and looked up to the house, I saw no one. But after I reached the car, Drewe remained silent all the way back to Rain.

“Uncle Harrrrp — ”

Startled, I look away from Erin and into the face of Holly, her daughter. “What is it, punkin?”

“Where’s your git — tar?”

Bob chuckles.

“I didn’t bring it today.”

“Play me a sawng,” commands the three-year-old.

“I can’t. I guess I could sing one a cappella. What do you want to hear?”

“Blackbirdie!” she squeals, laughing. She means “Blackbird,” by Paul McCartney. Sometimes Patrick whistles birdcalls while I play the song, which drives Holly into fits of laughter.

“Sorry, Scooter,” I say. “I need the git — tar for that one. What’s your second choice?”

“BARNEY!” she screeches.

“Christ,” whispers Patrick. “I thought she got over Barney last year.”

“Uh, Marg?” Bob says softly. “Didn’t you tell me ol’ Barney got killed in a car wreck yesterday?”

“What?” Holly asks, her eyes round.

“Daddy!” Drewe snaps.

To prevent bloodshed, I begin the anthem adored by most humans under three and reviled by most above that age. Holly sits entranced. She actually resembles Drewe more than Erin. The Scots-English genes apparently overpowered the Cajun. I give the Barney theme a soul-gospel ending; Holly claps and giggles, and even Margaret lifts the brim of her hat and applauds.

“Did you hear about Karin Wheat?” my mother-in-law asks me softly.

While I consider my answer, she takes a sip of half-melted Bloody Mary, shivers, and says, “Gruesome.”

“I did hear about that,” I say noncommittally, feeling Drewe’s gaze on the back of my neck.

“I was just reading Isis, ” Margaret goes on. “I’ll bet one of her crazy fans killed her. That book was chock full of perversion.”

“Didn’t stop you from reading, though, did it?” Bob snickers. “What’s happening on the porno box, Harper?”

“Porno box” is Bob’s nickname for the EROS computer. “Same old seven and six,” I say, though I would give a lot to know whether the Strobekker account has gone active in the last few hours and, if so, whether the FBI was able to trace the connection.

Bob shakes his head. “I still don’t get why anybody-even sex maniacs-would pay that much money for a box that won’t even transmit pictures.”

“Actually, it will now,” I tell him. “There was so much demand for it, Jan Krislov decided to give in.”

“I’ll be damned.”

Erin slips on a terry cloth robe and leads Holly away from this conversation onto the perfectly manicured lawn. Bob keeps all eight acres as immaculate as a golf green and does all the work himself.

“I heard on A Current Affair that the killer cut off her head, ” Margaret adds.

I force myself to look disinterested.

“This is one time I’m gonna surprise you pinko-liberals,” Bob says with good humor. “I’ll guarantee you it was a white man killed that writer woman.”

Drewe raises her eyebrows. “Why do you say that?”

“ ’Cause a nigger don’t kill that way,” Bob replies seriously. “Oh, they’ll cut you, or shoot you. But it’s an impulse thing. A nigger gets mad quick, kills quick, gets over it quick. He’s likely to be feeling sorry about it five minutes after he did it. White man’s different. A white man can nurse a hate a long time. A white man likes to hate. Gives him a mission, a reason to live. And a murder like that thing in New Orleans-mutilation, I mean-it takes a long time to build up an anger like that.”

We are all staring intently at Bob Anderson.

“’Course, it was New Orleans,” he adds philosophically. “God knows anything can happen there.”

After a thoughtful silence, Margaret asks Drewe about some policy change at one of the Jackson hospitals. Drewe and Patrick both have staff privileges there, and strong opinions about the issue. Every now and then Bob chimes in with an unsolicited expert opinion. While they banter back and forth, my eyes wander back to Erin and Holly. They move like exotic animals over the dappled lawn, Erin graceful as a gazelle, Holly like a sprite risen from the grass. As I watch, I let my eyes take on the thoughtful cast I have practiced so often at this gathering. Everyone assumes I am thinking about bond trades or commodities. Before long, Bob will ask me if I made any killings this week.

But for now I am granted a dispensation.

I try to keep my mind clear, but the effort is vain. As always, my secret rises unbidden. It is always there,