Читать книгу The Astral, or, Till the Day I Die - V. J. Banis - Страница 6

CHAPTER THREE

Summer became autumn. The house stifled her. Everywhere she looked she found memories of Becky. She tried to watch television, and instead of Oprah, she found herself watching Becky’s one time favorite show, Daffy Danny’s Alley. It was a passion that Becky had shared with a great many pre-teens and one that (thankfully so far as Catherine was concerned) she had quickly outgrown. Catherine had come into the den one day to discover Becky watching cartoons instead.

“No Daffy Danny?” she had asked.

Becky’s answer was brief and to the point: “He’s smarmy.”

An opinion Catherine shared. Danny was Danny O’Dell, host and hand-puppeteer, an altogether too fey young man—or, probably not really so young, but who worked hard at that illusion—who wore too-short trousers and a too-tight checked jacket and a tam with a red pom-pom and who mugged a little too outrageously for the benefit of the squealing girls in the studio audience.

In the past she had gritted her teeth while Becky sat enrapt, from “Kids, what time is it? It’s Daffy Danny time,” through every “daffy laffy,” to the last “daffy bye-bye,” delivered with a big kiss thrown at the television screen.

Now, of course, she would have kissed Danny O’Dell herself if it could have brought her daughter back to her.

She clicked off the television with an angry gesture.

* * * *

She went back to work finally at Dean and Summers, Publishers, half days to start, both glad to have her time occupied, and sorry to have to face the well-meant expressions of sympathy, the worried glances that she pretended not to see when she went past people. As if the jungle drums had alerted them, everyone seemed to know when she was coming, were waiting for her appearance in the drama of their lives.

Alden Summers had passed away years back, but the firm still carried his name on the masthead. She went first thing to Fermin Dean’s office. Fermin’s secretary waved her in with a friendly but guarded smile.

“Catherine,” Fermin greeted her with evident delight. He was tall and gaunt, silver haired, one of those people who seem to be in motion even when sitting still. He bounded up from his chair and came round his desk to clasp her hands. “It’s good to have you back. Though when you see the load on your desk, you’ll know just how much I’ve missed you.”

“I’ll be glad for the work. I can use the occupation,” she said.

“Don’t overdo it. And, I mean this, Catherine, make your own hours, please, come and go as you want.”

Even with his warning, she was not quite prepared for the workload waiting for her despite everyone’s obvious efforts to keep things moving along. As chief editor for their art books divisions, one of Dean and Summer’s major divisions, her input was nearly indispensable. Books that ought to have been in production by now had been held up for months and newer projects waited for her green light. A mountain of correspondence, most of it submissions for book proposals, filled up one half of her desk and overflowed onto a chair.

She threw herself into her work. It was the best antidote she had found yet for the pain. Not, of course, that the pain ever quite went away, it merely curled itself up into a little knot in a far corner of her mind, where it ever waited to come back out into the light.

She saw that her coworkers eyed her cautiously, and knew that many of them wanted to talk. She understood that they were saddened for her, and horrified by what had happened; but there was a certain thrill there, too. Murder, ghastly murder, tainted everyone with its evil glamour, even those at a distance, those whose involvement was only vicarious, the more so the more gruesome it was.

She had no desire to satisfy their grisly curiosity and avoided the hesitant glances. Fortunately, most of them kept their distance. Her assistant, Bill—black and gay—worked closely with her each day, but she had learned early on that he was a very model of discretion, a fact for which she could be grateful now.

Only Mrs. Pendergrast from their young adult division ventured beyond her door with personal condolences. “Catherine, you poor, poor thing,” she cooed and leaned over Catherine’s desk so far that Catherine felt she meant to embrace her, and cringed inwardly. “I just can’t tell you how awful I feel for you. If there is anything I can do, anything at all.”

“As a matter of fact.” Catherine held up a pile of sketches, needing to divert all that dripping sympathy, “These need to go back to art, if you wouldn’t mind dropping them on your way.”

“It would be a pleasure.” Mrs. Pendergrast’s voice was a shade less cordial. One did want one’s sympathy to be appreciated.

Later, in the ladies room, Mrs. Pendergrast shared her insights with Mrs. White from accounting. “Such a tragedy,” she said, repairing her lipstick. “Of course, let it be said, I would never, ever leave my Samantha unattended. You just can’t be too careful these days.”

Mrs. White patted her hair and frowned. “But, that isn’t quite the way it happened, is it?”

Mrs. Pendergrast ignored the question. “I keep her practically glued to my side every minute when we’re out. People may call me over-cautious if they like, but no one will steal my little girl.”

After two years of marriage, Mrs. White was still childless, and afraid to question her doctor because she was sure he would share her husband’s opinion that the fault was hers. She could not help thinking, however, that if God ever granted her the little baby girl she prayed for, she would be ever so vigilant as well.

Of course, she did understand that it had been the husband looking after the Desmond girl, but, really, you just couldn’t leave something like that up to a man. Certainly not a man as easily distracted as her Robert.

* * * *

At first, Catherine went every day after work to Forest Lawn Memorial Park, to bring flowers to Becky’s grave. Becky had so loved flowers. “Red and orange and yellow and white and blue....”

“I don’t think there are any blue flowers, darling.”

“Purple?”

“Yes, definitely purple. And pink. You forgot pink.”

“And pink. And purple and blue....”

She said nothing to Walter about her visits. She had no desire to share this pilgrimage with him, with anybody.

She and Becky had used to come here in the past, not as morbid a destination as one might have supposed. There were fountains and gardens, and an uncanny look-alike of Michelangelo’s David.

The winter rains came. They did not in any way deter her, though by now she went only once or twice a week. The gravesite was on a knoll from which bright green lawns, salt and peppered with gravesites, spilled down to the Golden State Freeway with its endless rush of cars, their sound a murmur at this distance. She stood without umbrella and let the cool droplets fall upon her, in hope that they would wash away her grief, or at least the numbness.

Both remained. Her soul was condemned to hold on to every memory, until surely it must break from overloading. She knew that she must one day come back to herself. She had to return to the world of the living. She could not continue as she was. If you were condemned to be alive, you ought at least to live.

At home, she and Walter shared the house, they moved about in the same finite space and yet they remained light years apart. Sometimes she could hear him in his office, crying. Most of the time he watched her warily with red-rimmed eyes and sniffled until she thought she must scream, but how could she, eyes tearless, rail at him for his grief? She wished that she had solace to offer him, but of that her heart was empty.

He spent more and more time at the restaurant, pleading increasing numbers of diners. She had no doubt that he found it more comfortable away from her, just as she was relieved to see him go. It was not that she hated him, nor that she even consciously blamed him for what had happened. They could hardly share their home day by day, however, without reminding one another of what was missing from it. And you could only say, “it’s all right,” so many times before that began to sound silly.

He had lost ten pounds and gained ten years. He looked faded, like a shirt too often washed. It wasn’t only Becky those two men had killed, she thought grimly. They were killing Catherine and Walter Desmond day by day, inexorably and she felt helpless to prevent it.

A casual question one day—“Will your mother be coming for Christmas?”—made her aware of the time she hadn’t noticed passing.

The question caught her by surprise. “Is it December?”

“The second.” The gravity of his tone made it sound the most important thing in the world.

Which meant, she realized, that Thanksgiving had come and gone without her noticing. They had always made such a big deal of it in the past. Becky had been quite set in her preferences. The turkey’s wings were hers, both of them, and woe betide the foolish mortal who thought to claim one. The pie must be pumpkin.

“Punkin pie, punkin pie, punkin pie.” She used to chant it while her mother cleared the table, brought in the pie, took the ice cream—pumpkin ice cream it must be—from the freezer. “Punkin pie.”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she told Walter. She got up and began to clear the table, but she did manage to rest a hand, briefly, on his shoulder. She really did wish she could comfort him.

He sniffled and said nothing.

When he had gone, she went into the garage and got down a box of Christmas ornaments and carried it into the living room. The first one she unwrapped turned out to be Becky’s favorite, the little Christmas angel they had bought the year she was born. She set that aside and found another one: the papier-mâché camel with one leg missing. Becky had insisted they hang it anyway each year, legs or no legs.

“Jesus will love him anyway, won’t he, Mommy?”

There were, it seemed, memories attached to every ornament. She put them back in the box and taped it closed again, and carried it out to its shelf in the garage.

A car, a fire engine red Bronco, pulled into the driveway just as she came back into the kitchen. It was unfamiliar to her and at first she didn’t recognize the woman who got out and walked briskly to the door. Not until she had rung the bell and Catherine had studied her long and hard through the glass in the front door, stared at the red hair that clearly refused to obey any bidding of brush or comb, did she realize that it was the FBI agent who had interviewed her in the hospital. What was her name, she wondered as she opened the door?

“Mrs. Desmond.” The visitor stepped inside.

She remembered then. “Officer Chang.”

“Agent Chang.” She smiled to show that no offense had been taken. “Just Chang. Or you can call me Roby, if you like, there’s no need to be formal.” When Catherine still looked blankly at her, she added, “Roby. As in Roberta.” She saw the familiar puzzlement and waited for the customary question. Catherine Desmond’s glance took in her decidedly Asian face, heart-shaped, sloe-eyed, and went up to the frizzy hair. At least she put the question a bit differently from most.

“You must get told a lot, that doesn’t sound Chinese.”

“Not as much as I hear, ‘funny, you don’t look Jewish’.”

Catherine laughed briefly. She must have done that often, before, Roby Chang thought, and felt her throat tighten with anger at what had been done to this woman. Watching her, she was surprised to discover how beautiful Catherine Desmond was. When she had seen her earlier, in the hospital, her face had been purpled with bruises, her head swathed in bandages. The gold hair, glinting with its own copper highlights, had mostly grown back out, the bruises had faded from a face that just missed classically beautiful and was the better for it. She was taller, too, than Chang had realized. Five nine, she guessed, maybe five ten, and full-figured. She was no fashion model, but rather what the boys described as “a babe.”

“Daddy’s the Chinese part,” she said aloud, “Momma was a Jewish princess. Still is, to tell the truth, but she would have a fit if she heard me say it. That explains this, too.” She put a hand up to her spiky orange hair. “I’m afraid I’m the classic American mongrel.”

Who looked not at all like an F.B.I. agent, Catherine thought. It wasn’t just that she was little, nor that her heart shaped face and the frizzy red hair gave her a comic-cute look entirely at odds with any kind of police work. Her costume, too, was something less than authoritative: jeans, a gore-tex jacket, some kind of boots that Catherine couldn’t put a name to.

“Maybe hybrid is the better word,” she said aloud. Really, she chided herself, how was she to know what an F.B.I. agent should look like? “Come in, please. Can I get you something? Coffee? A drink?”

“Nothing, thanks, I won’t stay long.” She looked around, avoiding Catherine’s eyes.

“Have you come with news? Have you found them?” Catherine asked, hope flaring for a moment.

Chang looked directly at her then and Catherine knew the answer before the agent shook her head. “Nothing, unfortunately. Actually, I was hoping you might have something for me. I thought maybe you had remembered something after all this time, some detail that you forgot earlier.” Her look was so earnest, so pleading, that Catherine hated having to disappoint her.

“Nothing that I didn’t tell you before.”

Chang hesitated a moment. “There’s been another one. Several, actually, over the last few months, but a couple of them look awfully similar to your...your case. Yesterday a girl got snatched from a shopping mall. The mother got just a glimpse, but the description she gave us sounded like the same two men.”

“That poor woman. I wish...I wish I could do something to help her.” Catherine swallowed a lump that rose in her throat and looked away. “There’s something that I’ve...I’ve struggled for hours at a time to understand: how anyone could do what these men do? Can you help me to understand that, Agent Chang?”

Roby Chang sighed deeply. She had struggled with that same question many times and every answer she came up with ultimately seemed inadequate.

“I think it’s the innocence of their victims,” she said. “These animals—I won’t call them men, they aren’t that—they see that innocence, what we perceive of as something beautiful and precious, and to them it appears as a stain, as a flaw in their scheme of things, and they feel compelled to remove that stain.” Like all the others, this answer too sounded inadequate when she tried to put it into words.

“So this comes down to a philosophical question?”

Chang shrugged helplessly. “It’s difficult for people like us to understand these creatures. There’s more to it than that, of course. Money.”

“But, they never asked for ransom. They didn’t even...there wasn’t time for that.”

Crapola, Chang thought silently. She took a deep breath. She wished she didn’t have to say this, but she knew that it had to be said. “Often, they take pictures, films. There is a big market for that sick sort of thing. Kiddie porn, it’s called.”

Catherine turned away from her and leaned against the window frame, head bent. After a moment, she asked in a breaking voice, “Are you telling me that somewhere there are pictures, movies, floating around that show—that show my Becky being violated?”

“There may well be. What I don’t get is, why did they...?” For a moment she had gone into agent-mode, thinking aloud. She caught herself and gave Catherine an apologetic look. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Go on, please. What is it that you don’t get?”

“Well, I...are you all right with this?”

“No, but go on anyway. I want to hear.”

“Well, like I said, there’s movies and pictures, they’re worth a lot of money. And then, after that, usually, they, you know, they pass them on.”

“For sex, you mean?”

“Yes.” Chang was clearly embarrassed with the information she was imparting to Catherine’s back. Should she go on? Or try to soft pedal it? Yet her instinct was that this woman truly wanted—needed—to know. “The point is, these children are worth far more to them alive than dead.”

“Then why...?”

“If I knew that....” Chang shrugged again.

Catherine was quiet for so long that Chang wondered if perhaps she should simply leave. When Catherine finally did speak, it was to say, her voice cracking, “I tried to protect her. I tried to shield her from the evil of the world.”

“Yes, of course you did. Who could dream that such evil would come down upon you?” She had seen this same bewildered grief in other parents who had lost a child to murder. You wanted to protect, and when you failed, when something of this magnitude happened, you felt as if it were you who was at fault. She had seen marriages, families torn apart by such guilt. Even when justice was served, even when memory faded, no one ever really recovered, no parent of a murdered child ever afterward swam blissfully in the river of forgetfulness.

She pulled her shoulders back and thrust her chin forward. “Mrs. Desmond, I want you to know, I mean to get these monsters. And I will, I promise you. However long it takes, I’m going to see them burn in the chair before I’m finished.”

Catherine suddenly turned toward her, fists clenched, and said, with a fervor long missing from her voice, “I want to see it. I want to be there to watch them burn, to see them writhe in agony. Promise me that, Roby Chang. Promise me I will be there when they die.”

Chang blinked, surprised by her vehemence, and heartened too. When she had interviewed her before, in the hospital, Catherine Desmond had been like a zombie, all her feelings locked away somewhere inside. Anger was good, in Chang’s opinion. It was often a first step in recovery.

“It’s a date. I promise you, you’ll see them die,” she said with a grim smile. She took a card from her wallet and handed it to Catherine. “Meantime, if you think of anything...sometimes memory does funny things, you know, you’re reading a book or walking down a street, and the most trivial thing will trigger something in your mind. If you think of anything, anything at all, call me. Day or night.”

* * * *

Catherine had planned to go into the office for the afternoon, but now she changed her mind. Roby Chang’s visit had unnerved her. She called in and made her apologies, was embarrassed by how quickly, how understandingly they were received.

The free time left her restless, however. She sat at the piano, picked listlessly at a Chopin prelude. Jack McKenzie’s yellow roses, a new bouquet of them, sat in their usual place atop the piano. Walter never failed to glower at them when he saw them, but he kept his objections to himself.

Her out-of-practice fingers hit a wrong note. She slammed her hand down on the keyboard, creating a discordant cacophony, and got up, banging the lid down on the piano and making the roses tremble nervously.

She went to the window and glanced out, and saw again the sorry state of the back yard. Despite the cold and a gentle rain, she donned a parka, pulled the hood over her head, and went out to do some gardening.

A blue jay scolded her as she pulled up dead pansies and primroses with violent yanks. She imagined herself ripping out the hearts of the men who had murdered Becky.

Later, muddy and exhausted, she took a shower and thought about Walter. She had been cold, unyielding with him, though he too had grief to bear and, worse yet, a burden of guilt as well.

She had ignored her mother, too. The sorry truth was, she had been so wrapped up in her own suffering she had given not a thought to the suffering of others. She lashed herself with the recognition of her self-absorption.

Since her return from the hospital, she had been sleeping in Becky’s room. That night she returned to her own bed, to Walter.

He welcomed her into his arms, and after several long moments of silent embrace, he tried dutifully to make love to her. It was a failure on both their parts. After what seemed an eternity of writhing and rubbing, he heaved a deep sigh and rolled off of her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

For a reply, she took his hand and gave it a forgiving squeeze. Later, when he began to snore gently in his sleep, she went back to Becky’s room.

Lying there in the darkness, the futility of their attempt at sex stayed with her. Yet now that she was in another bed, another room, now that she considered it at a safe distance, she realized that nothing sexual had happened between them for a long while, even before. She had not minded, had welcomed the absence, she supposed, and so had been willing to overlook it, had scarcely even been conscious of it. If she had been able to see the future, she might well have considered another child...but who could possibly have foreseen what happened.

She did not find it flattering to face the truth of what she had done: it hadn’t been only out of consideration for Walter, for their marriage, that she had returned to his bed. Far back in a corner of her mind, she had thought of replacing what had been lost. In a way, she was glad the attempt had been unsuccessful. That wasn’t the right motivation to bring a child into the world. Becky had been precious to her, and another child might well be too, without being a “replacement.” Anyway, if she were going to be truly honest with herself, Walter was no longer the man she would have chosen for a father.

She got up and went into the bathroom—not the master bath, which was too close to where he slept, but the one across the hall from Becky’s room. The door closed, all the lights on, she shed her robe and took a long, hard look at herself in the mirror.

She had never been beautiful, not even as a young woman, but she had known without conceit (and with a probably too immodest pleasure) that she was attractive to the opposite sex. That, however, had been years ago. Was she still? She honestly didn’t know. Walter didn’t count. She had not for many years thought of him in terms of sex, opposite or otherwise. And, it seemed, the same with him.

She had a good complexion, what they used to call “peaches and cream,” and eyes the color of old cognac, with gold flecks that glinted when she was angry or excited. She was thirty-two. Well preserved, she thought with all due modesty. Until this last year, she had been careful of diet and exercise, and though no doubt some softening had set in during that time, she could not yet detect any evidence of it.

Or not much evidence. When she got on the scales, she saw that she had gained a full five pounds. Too much time abed, not enough exercise.

Even so, she didn’t exactly look chubby. Would a man still find her attractive? Would—the time for pretense in your life is past, my girl, she told herself—would Jack McKenzie still find her attractive?

Memories crowded in upon her, sweet, stinging. She had been seventeen when they had met. Eighteen when they first made love—the night of her eighteenth birthday, to be exact. His scruples, not hers. Certainly not hers. Despite her most ardent efforts to convince him otherwise, he had stubbornly insisted that he wanted her to be an adult when it happened. “I’m not robbing any cradles, my love,” he insisted. He was eight years older than she. Eight years wiser, she could see now, though at the time she had seen it only as sheer pigheadedness.

Pigheadedness that somehow allowed her to convince herself that he didn’t love her when he said they would have to wait to get married.

“Why do you have to go away, to the Middle East?” she demanded. “You could make a writing career here, couldn’t you?”

“Because I plan to be a war correspondent.” He had been so calm, so reasonable, that it only enraged her all the more. “Iraq is where the war is going to be, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. That’s where I have to be.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

The tolerant smile he gave her infuriated her. “There’s no way I would take you there. The danger, the hardship—no, my darling, you will wait here until I come back. Assuming I do come back. There’s always that chance.”

“And if I won’t wait?”

“Kat, don’t be silly. If it will make you feel better, we’ll get married the first day I step on U.S. soil again, I promise.”

“Why don’t we get married now, and you go do your Mid-East thing, and I’ll wait here for you. We have a week for a honeymoon, surely, before you have to leave.”

There was that damned smile again. “Suppose I didn’t come back. Suppose I left you pregnant. What family do you have? Your mother, who is caring for a bed-ridden husband at the present? And I have a cousin in Oregon, who probably barely remembers me. Do you imagine I want the woman I love left with that sort of burden to bear alone? You’d be middle-aged by the time you worked through it all. No, you’re young, you’re single, I want you to enjoy your life, have fun. You’re still a kid. Go out with other guys if you feel like it. There’ll be plenty of time to work on marriage when I get back.”

He went, and she sent his ring to him without even a note, and before six months had passed, she married Walter.

She thought again of her husband and that futile effort at making love. Yes, now that she remembered, she could see that part of their marriage had begun to fade long ago. How many years could it have taken him to realize how much spite there had been in the hasty “yes” she gave him when, the field rid of his rival, he had once again pressed his suit?

What a fool she had been. Now Jack McKenzie was back in the city. Somehow, knowing he was here, close by, made it all the worse.

The shooting had left an ugly scar at her left temple. She tugged her hair down over it, pulling and fluffing until she had managed to hide it from sight. After a moment, she made a grimace of regret at herself and gathering her robe from the floor, tossed it about her shoulders. Before she turned the light out, she gave the image in the mirror one last glance.

She could not help wondering: how would Jack McKenzie see her now?

In the master bedroom, Walter heard the bathroom door open. He tensed, his hand paused in its ministrations. The door to Becky’s bedroom closed a moment later, and he let out the breath he had been holding. His hand began to move again. He closed his eyes and resumed the fantasies playing across the screen of his mind.

His hand moved faster.

* * * *

It seemed to Catherine that she had barely closed her eyes when a voice said, “Wake up.”

She opened her eyes but the white light that filled the room blinded her and she could see nothing.

“You must come,” the voice said, “Come see.”

The light faded, and she was standing in an unfamiliar room, a seedy room with faded wallpaper hanging loose from the ceiling and dust motes dancing in the pale light from a single overhead bulb. There were two men on a bed—and a little girl with them. They were...God in Heaven, what were they doing?

On cue, the girl cried out with a sob, “Don’t, don’t, please.”

A giant bear of a man, his back to Catherine, chuckled. The other one—long, skinny—said, “Shut up, or I’ll tape your mouth again.”

Catherine tried to scream, to call out to them to leave the girl alone, but no sound came. She took a step toward the bed. She must make them stop. This was too horrible to bear.

Despite her silence, perhaps because he sensed her presence, the skinny man raised his head and looked in her direction, looked directly at her. Her heart thudded. It was him: the man with the yellow beard. The beard was gone now, shaved off, making his face look different, but she would never forget those eyes; nothing could disguise that face from her.

“What the hell?” he said. He jumped up from the bed and took a step in her direction. The other man looked too, she had a quick glimpse of his face as he said, “Trash can?”

The next instant, she was back in bed in Becky’s room, lightning shards of pain crashing through her head.