A Question of Ghosts (25 page)

They passed three staff in the corridor, young attendants who smiled pleasant greetings. The unit was mostly silent. Jo heard no moans of pain, no demented cries. A hospice provided palliative care. It existed solely to make the dying process as painless as possible, and if that meant heavy medication, so be it. But they tried to help patients find meaning in the journey as well—closure with family, legal arrangements, spiritual consolation. Jo wondered which of these services Rachel Perry would choose to access.

They stopped before Room 16. Without pause or ceremony, Becca lifted her hand and knocked on the door.

“Come in, Becca.”

Rachel wore a soft velour robe the color of dawn, closed high around her neck. She stood with her back to them, looking out a large oblong window, a patchwork of colorful stained glass. The room was large and well furnished. There were few personal belongings among the tasteful décor. Rachel traveled light.

She turned and smiled at Becca. In the brief time since the nurse placed the call, Rachel had brushed her hair and applied lipstick, but her posture was bowed and she looked ancient. All Jo could read on her worn face was fierce relief and genuine love.

“I knew you’d be all right. I
knew
it.”

“No, Rachel, you didn’t.” Becca closed the door behind them and stood close beside Jo.

Jo waited, and so did Rachel, but Becca seemed incapable of further speech. The look of loss and betrayal in her eyes was unbearable.

“She means your son could have killed us both last night.” Jo spoke to Rachel with great restraint. “And he could have killed us two days ago when he cut the brakes of my car.”

“Becca
wasn’t supposed to be with you.
” Rachel’s voice emerged as a sudden hiss and Jo almost recoiled. A wild denial crossed her withered face. “You were supposed to have breakfast with me that morning, Becca! You promised me you would!”

“Stop shouting at us. And sit down.” Jo took three steps and touched Rachel’s elbow with pragmatic detachment. She guided her to the side of the wide, raised bed and helped her sit. Becca stood frozen near the doorway.

Rachel brushed her finger across her lower lip, wiping away spittle with a wince of repugnance. Her face cleared, and she looked up at Jo calmly. “None of this had to come out, Joanne. We have you to thank for raising these old ghosts. And I don’t know whether to hate you for it or thank you. Both, perhaps.”

“I believe that.” Jo stepped back from the bed and crouched on her heels slowly, making herself as unthreatening as possible.

She did believe Rachel, and that amazed her. Rachel’s facial expressions had convinced Jo she wanted this study to succeed, for the truth to be known. Some part of her psyche had badly wanted confession, this very confrontation. And another part of her had arranged to have Becca burn to death last night. Both were Rachel’s absolute truths, and Jo found this amoral dichotomy incomprehensible.

“You were afraid Becca and I would learn the truth about what happened to her parents. So you asked your son to come back to Seattle.”

“I paid my son very well.” Rachel folded her veined hands in her lap, and Becca stared at them. “Loren has been in and out of prison these past years. I’ve had to cut him out of my heart. I’ve learned he’ll do anything to finance his habit. Anything at all.” She wouldn’t look at Becca.

“You paid him to break into my office,” Jo continued. “And into the Bentley. To put that doll on the front porch. And to set fire to the house last night.”

“Yes,” Rachel said.

“And to plant a bottle of Scotch in my bedroom.” Becca’s voice was soft, and Rachel looked at her at last. “Rachel?”

“Do you have any idea how much I loved her?” Rachel’s tone was equally tender. “Try to remember that, if you can. All of this tragedy was born in the purest love I’ve ever known. I would have given my life for her.”

Rachel looked back at the window, and the stained glass threw a lattice of distorted color across her features. “If it matters, and I doubt it matters, I was out of my mind on prescription pills at the time. I had been for years.” She smiled mirthlessly. “Like mother, like son, I suppose. Loren’s addictions consumed him, but I conquered mine, finally. Well enough to help you tackle yours, Becca, when you needed me. But I was crazy that night. I wanted Maddie to leave Scott and run away with me, immediately. I would have left my son, my practice, everything. She refused, of course. I had hidden my feelings for her well until then, and I believe she was shocked by my proposal. Even repelled.”

Rachel glanced at Becca. “Does any of this surprise you? It shouldn’t. I fell in love with your mother, but she rejected me entirely. She wouldn’t leave your father, wouldn’t even discuss it. Maddie was devoted to Scott, despite all his faults. Not to Mitch. Not to me. She never loved me.” She fell silent.

“So you returned to the house that night, after the birthday party.” Jo was seeing it unfold, hearing Madelyn Healy whisper in her mind, telling her what happened. “You confronted Becca’s mother in the kitchen. Scott Healy joined you there. You’d brought a gun with you?”

“In my delirium, I thought I would have to subdue Scott. When he interrupted Maddie and me in the kitchen, I raised the gun at him, and I fired. I didn’t see Maddie lunge in front of him before I pressed the trigger. I didn’t see her, Becca.” Rachel swallowed, and Jo heard the dry crackling in her throat. “I caught your mother as she fell, and I cradled her on the floor in my arms as she died.”

But then Rachel’s face changed, and Jo realized she was looking at something much more atavistic, more alien even than her own strange distance from the world. Rachel looked serene; cruel and content. “I had to shoot Scott to keep him away from us. He had no business with us in those last moments. That was my time with Maddie. Finally, Mitch’s infernal little brother was out of the picture. It was right, at last. I carry those moments in my heart, Becca.”

Becca resembled a chained prisoner who had just inhaled poison gas. She knelt beside Jo and looked up at Rachel like a child hearing a particularly dreadful bedtime story. “My parents died on my fifth birthday. They gave me a birthday party that day, in our backyard. I remember the grass, music, other kids around, my uncle and aunt. You were there, Rachel. You gave me a present.”

“Yes, I did. I gave you a doll.”

“The doll was bloody that night, as I held it in the living room. And it wasn’t my mother who handed it to me. Not at the party, and not that night. It was you.”

Rachel nodded. “I wanted so badly to comfort you, Becca. You were so little. You were weeping, afraid, you looked so bereft and alone. I have always loved you, so much. I picked up your doll and gave it to you on my way out.”

“There was blood on your hands,” Becca said. “And on one of the doll’s hands.”

“Yes.” Air seemed to leak out of Rachel slowly, and she sat slumped on the bed. Her eyes closed with a relief that struck Jo as entirely genuine.

“I can’t ask for your forgiveness, Becca. But in honor of our many long years of friendship—in honor of the healing I’ve given you—can you find it in your heart, please, to leave me in peace? Let the horrors of my conscience be punishment enough, for the little time I have left. I promise you, they are horror indeed.”

And again, Rachel was telling the absolute truth.

Becca sat motionless. “You paid Loren to kill me. To kill the woman I love.”

“Yes,” Rachel whispered.

Becca’s fingers were ice-cold as they closed around Jo’s, but her voice was low and steady. “You allowed the world to believe, for thirty years, that a woman you say you cherished was a murderer. You let her daughter believe it. I won’t save you from paying the price, Rachel.”

Becca rose to her feet, and rested her lips against the top of Rachel’s bent head. She turned and went to the door, and Jo followed her. Becca didn’t look back, but Jo did. Rachel was sitting quietly on the bed, watching a red flashing light turn through the colored panes.

Jo had no scathing last words for this particular murderer, but she found no pity in her heart. Rachel met her eyes one last time, and Jo left the room.

*

Pam Emerson was leaning against her cruiser, her uniform smartly crisp in spite of her long night. Another cruiser sat next to hers, and Becca could see the silhouettes of two officers inside. Pam spoke into the mic clipped to her shoulder as they emerged through the doors of the hospice. The revolving red lights on the cruiser shut off. Pam took one look at them and cut straight to business.

“Mr. Perry is coming down off his high, and he’s suddenly very talkative about his mama. He’s got a long rap sheet and he’ll face multiple charges, but we’ll need your help making them stick.”

“You’ll have it.” Becca felt the warmth of Jo’s arm in hers and figured she could find strength for this on some future day.

“But Rachel Perry.” Pam stepped closer to them, eyeing the doors of the hospice. “No promises, Becca. We’ll charge her if she confesses today, but we won’t take her in, given her illness. She’s not exactly a flight risk. There’s no statute of limitations on homicide, but I doubt she’ll be prosecuted. If anything, they’ll set it on the docket a year ahead. She’ll be long gone, then.”

“I know.” Becca shivered, but Jo pressed her arm and that pleasant, detached peace descended on her again. “I don’t need a bloodbath, Pam. I just want this investigation added to the official record.”

“That’ll be done,” Pam promised her. “A damn thorough one. I take it I can get ahold of you guys by cell?”

“I’m afraid not.” Jo spoke with the unquestioned authority of a goddess. “Neither of us will be available for the next three days. We’re going to find the most beautiful vacation house on Cannon Beach, and we’re going to rent it. We don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Yes, sir.” Pam’s eyebrows rose, but she smirked. “Guess I’m going to have to live with that. Sounds like an important trip.”

“We’re going to sleep.” Becca spoke reverently. She appreciated Pam’s innuendo, but she wanted no greater excitement than three solid nights of sleep, for them both. She was dizzy with relief at the prospect.

“Three days,” Pam said sternly. “You call me when you get back. Travel safe.” She pointed at the doors, and two other officers stepped out of the cruiser. “If you two don’t want to be around for this, I’d make tracks now.”

“We don’t.” Becca closed her eyes. “We’re going.”

Pam gripped Becca’s arm, then moved past them with the other officers toward the hospice.

Becca turned to Jo and took her hands. “I love you,” she said. “Just in case I haven’t been clear on that until now.”

“I love you back.” Jo wet her lips, and Becca had to smile. Spontaneous displays of affection still made Jo a little nervous, but she was practicing, and their kiss was brief and sweet. “Now, let me take you away from here.”

Becca nodded. “You can take me away, to the ocean. But there’s a place I’d like to show you on the way.”

Chapter Twenty-two

“Joanne. Dearest? I’m honestly not hungry.”

“You will be. Any moment.” Jo was reasonably certain of this as she pulled the BMW away from Top Pot Doughnuts. They had already stopped at Ezell’s Chicken, and the lush interior of the car was filling with enticing fragrance.

She hoped Becca would be hungry soon; she craved that hint of returning normality, nature coming back into balance. The last twenty-four hours were a blur in Jo’s mind, and she wasn’t having to cope with the betrayal of a lifelong friend.

Becca had been silent since they left the hospice. She looked older in the harsh sunlight slanting through the window, but some animation was returning to her face at last. She still had tears to shed for Rachel Perry, and for old lies, old losses. Jo trusted she would be ready for them, whenever they came. “We’re not in any hurry. The ocean isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Mount Rainier.”

“Neither are we,” Becca pointed out.

“True.”

Perhaps the morning of Gay Pride was not the wisest time to try to navigate Seattle streets. Jo braked at another intersection thronging with a rowdy crowd heading downtown.

“If I were driving, we’d be halfway to the mountain by now.” Becca sighed. “I still can’t believe they moved the march from Capitol Hill to Fourth Avenue.”

Jo sighed too, in relief. Becca’s remote melancholy seemed to be lifting. “Becca, that happened six years ago.”

“It’s still a sacrilege. An injustice most dire. Don’t get Marty started on this subject.”

Jo shrugged. “I never went to the march when it was on Broadway, and I don’t go now. I’ve never felt it had anything to do with me.”

“Yeah?” Becca studied her with an odd smile. “Look again. Tell me what you see.”

Puzzled, Jo stared at the laughing men, women, and other genders passing in front of them. “Well. They all seem so young to me, these years. Still lots of white men. But…I like them. I like seeing all their children, their dogs. They look happy today.”

“They’re clan, Dr. Call.” Becca brushed Jo’s forearm with one finger. “Maybe distant kin, but still family, if you choose them. You’re starting to let people into your life. You’re seeing them with new eyes. Me, Marty, Khadijah, Pam. Mrs. Pam, when we meet her. You’re building that clan you’ve always wanted, Jo. I’m happy for you.”

Jo swallowed. “Thank you, Becca. I—”

“Now floor it,” Becca suggested.

“Oh.” Jo saw the cleared intersection and floored it.

Becca kept her hand on her arm as they drove out of the city.

*

Jo tried not to tramp wildflowers flat with her boots, but missing them was all but impossible. They grew so thick in this mountain meadow it was like wading through a carpet of snarled color. She shifted, balancing the boxes of food in her arms and trying to keep Becca in sight ahead.

“You seem to know where we’re going,” Jo called hopefully.

“I do.” Becca, carrying only a small satchel, gestured toward a copse of distant trees. “Just keep an eye out for the mountain Gestapo.”

Jo took this warning seriously. She kept glancing over her shoulder toward the paved road far behind and above them, leading to the Paradise Inn. The leased BMW was parked just off a side path, reasonably hidden by brush.