evening rounds at the hospital. Even when he dresses casually, his clothes are either Ralph Lauren or something sent UPS from New England.
But tonight he looks like a ghost of himself. He is wearing a Polo shirt, but it looks like he pulled it out of a dirty clothes hamper. His hair is longer than usual, and his eyes don’t seem able to focus. He faces forward when I roll down my window, studiously ignoring me. I tap on the glass.
At last he rolls down his window.
“What’s going on?” I ask in the calmest voice I can muster.
Patrick says nothing.
I tighten my hand around the wooden grip of the.38. “You waiting for somebody?”
“Erin’s in there.”
“Where? My house?”
He nods.
I say nothing, hoping he’ll volunteer information, but he doesn’t. “Holly too?”
He nods again. This is like talking to Gary Cooper. “I guess things aren’t going so good, huh?”
He keeps staring at the dashboard.
“What’s the deal, Pat?”
“I married a slut, that’s what.”
I blink in disbelief. Hearing these words from Patrick is tantamount to hearing a priest shout “God is dead!” from the pulpit. “That doesn’t sound like you. Did something happen? You think she’s sleeping around or something?”
He’s nodding steadily now, his eyes full of sullen anger. “She’s making a goddamn fool of me. She has been from the start.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s between her and me.”
“I am worried about it. Does she know you’re out here?”
He shrugs. I consider asking him to come into the house and sleep in my office, but I have no idea what’s transpired in the past few hours. “Well… is there anything you want me to tell Erin?”
Suddenly he turns, and his eyes lock onto mine. “Where the fuck have you been all night?”
“Trying to keep the FBI off my ass. This EROS thing is out of control. There’s a guy killing people out there. Cutting women’s heads off, blowing up FBI agents. You believe that shit?”
He just stares. As I sit clenching the.38, a thought rises unbidden. “You know anything about the pineal gland?”
“The pineal gland?”
“It has something to do with these murders.”
Patrick straightens in his seat. “It’s a pretty uncommon tumor site. Not long ago pineal tumors were real problems, because they were often inaccessible to neurosurgeons. But with the new microsurgical techniques, that’s changed completely.”
Typical Patrick. His personal life is going to hell, but one medical question puts him into android-M.D. mode.
“There’s a craze right now over one of the hormones it makes,” he adds. “Melatonin. Crackpots all over the country are taking it for a dozen different reasons, but it hasn’t been approved by the FDA.”
“What do you think about it?”
“Homeopathic bullshit.”
“That’s what I figured. You sure you’re okay out here?”
He faces forward again and nods.
I start to pull away, then stop. If Patrick is going to blow a gasket, I’d rather he do it out here while I’m holding a pistol than after I’m asleep inside. “Listen, you’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? I mean, Erin loves you. I know she does. You’re the best thing that ever happened to her.”
His laugh is hollow and cold. “I’m just making sure of something. Don’t worry, I’m good at repressing anger. Go inside.”
“Okay. Take it easy.”
After staring into his eyes a moment longer, I execute a three-point turn and idle back down to the house. I park in the gravel turnaround and get out with my briefcase and my gun. I’m on the second step when I spy the rear end of Erin’s Toyota Land Cruiser jutting from behind the right side of the house.
My watch reads five a.m. Drewe and Erin are almost certainly asleep. I slip through the front door and turn left into my office without turning on any lights. As I undress, I realize that Erin and Holly are probably sleeping in the guest room on the other side of my office wall. A hundred thoughts and images flood my brain, but I am too tired to analyze them. I slide the.38 under my mattress, then fall facedown onto my pillow and inhale the welcome scent of home.
But sleep eludes me.
Why is Erin in our house? What is fraying the bonds of her marriage? Not the normal frustration that accretes like rust and eats at every relationship. If it were, Patrick would not be parked outside. So what remains? Other than our secret?
A faint creak causes me to turn over in bed and open my eyes. I sometimes hear this sound when the air conditioner kicks on, but I don’t hear the compressor running. Then I realize my door is standing open. And silhouetted in it is a female form too slender and dark to belong to my wife. The white-gowned apparition glides across my floor and stops beside my bed.
Erin.
Without hesitation my wife’s sister sits beside me on the twin bed and looks down into my eyes. This is the ruthless directness of woman, to observe no artificial boundaries, to behave as though no time has passed between our coupling three years ago in Chicago and now. I am supremely conscious of my wife, who lies sleeping less than thirty feet away. Yet Erin seems oblivious. She scrunches her left flank into my side, making more room for herself. Her face slowly coalesces in the darkness, oval planes of sculpted bone and tanned skin, eyes a shade darker than her long fine hair. She smells just as she always did, irresistibly feminine.
Then I see tears glinting in the dark. She lowers her head into her hands, stifling a sob. I want to wrap my arms around her and comfort her, but I do not trust myself. After three years of self-inflicted guilt, I should feel no impulse to anything crazy, but the drive that pushed me into Erin’s arms the first time had nothing to do with reason, and it remains true to itself.
“What?” I ask softly. “What is it?”
“Everything’s coming apart,” she says much too loudly.
“What do you mean?”
“It was a mistake, Harper. It was all a mistake.”
“You mean you and me? Keeping Holly? What?”
No answer.
“Have you left Patrick?”
She doesn’t speak. I take her hand away from her eyes.
“I’ve tried,” she whispers. “To be a good wife, a good mother. To leave everything I was behind.”
I squeeze her wrist and force her to look into my eyes. “That’s the problem, Erin. You can’t leave your past behind. That’s
Her eyes widen, boring into my soul. “Like
I look away. “I know. Look… does Patrick know anything specific?”
She covers her eyes and sobs again.
“Erin… I’ve got to tell you. He’s outside. Patrick. He’s sitting out there in his Jeep.”
Her hand grips my wrist like a claw. “
I nod. “He looks pretty bad too.”
“Oh, God. Oh…
I raise myself enough to put my arms around her and pull her shuddering body to mine. Her arms close
