Blackbird (7 page)

But nothing about Jana was simple. She’d been an accounting major but cared more about natural fibres than bottom lines. She had killer instincts at poker, but kids lost in stores ran to her on sight. She called herself a ‘pretty good potter’, the real-world meaning of which was that she was an at least moderately famous artist, a ceramicist exhibiting in galleries from one end of the country to the other.

Maybe it was being an artist that made her so contradictory. But whatever gifts she had, she wanted to share. One of the most vivid memories I had of her went back to a Saturday morning years ago, our daughter Casey still in her yellow footie pyjamas, an icy rain falling steadily beyond the windows of the breakfast nook where she sat at the table with her colouring book, Jana standing beside her, watching in silence, her face soft and radiant with undisguised pride.

My eyes stinging as the already-dead house somehow found a way to die a little more, I was suddenly filled with a pure, brilliant hatred of the echoing emptiness banging against my eardrums and sucking the oxygen from the air.

Mutt, my personal cat, came pacing silently in from the hallway. He was mostly black, with two barely visible tan markings above his eyes that gave him a permanently surprised expression, and he stopped and stared at me now as if I were the last thing he’d expected to find in here. Jana had taken him along when she and the girls moved out, thinking he was more attached to them than to me, but he’d run away the first day. Then three days after that I’d found him sitting on the front doormat, licking a curled paw and ignoring me. He’d somehow made it almost six miles across town to come home, probably using up several of his spare lives on the way.

As cats go, he wasn’t a bad roommate – no clawing the furniture, keeping me awake at night or spraying in the house – but he reminded me so much of Jana and the girls that I sometimes had to work at not resenting him for it. On the other hand, right now I was glad to have the company of another conscious being.

‘Ahoy,’ I said.

He gave no sign that he heard me.

The thought of other conscious beings brought to mind the only Dallas phone number I didn’t need to look up. I grabbed the phone and punched it in.

‘Dr Lee Ann Rowe’s office,’ said LaKeisha.

‘This still group night?’

‘That you, Lieutenant Bonham?’

I said what I always did: ‘Call me Jim.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘It is, and she should be out any second. I’ll put you on hold. Enjoy the music.’

The next thing I heard was a slow instrumental version of ‘Satisfaction’, strings and light brass, which I enjoyed as much as I could.

Thinking about LA as I waited – as always trying to edit out the memories that underlined my own failures and selfishness, my inability to prevent what had happened to her – I argued myself around to the position that this call was justifiable, that I wasn’t going to kick up any dust from the past that she couldn’t deal with, that she was probably tougher than me anyway, and certainly no longer had any need for my protection. If she ever really had.

Then, thinking some more about families, I looked up at the pictures on the wall: Jana in front of the fieldstone fireplace at the Flying S; Gram, my grandmother Miriam Hunnicutt Vickers, who’d raised LA and me after everyone else ahead of her on the depth chart had defaulted – a wise and beautiful woman, battered but never broken by a world that didn’t deserve her, looking sadly into the lens from among the tomato plants in her garden; and my own daughters, Casey and Jordan, on horseback, the November sun backlighting their hair against a background of red and gold leaves.

But images of Deborah Gold’s dead flesh began shouldering their way back in, her half-shut eyes gazing emptily down at me through the icy rain, her viciously violated body already gone cold on its way to rejoining the soil.

Then the soundtrack transitioned to ‘Circle of Life’, taking me smoothly back through time to an evening with the girls not long after the separation, the three of us sharing a tub of popcorn and watching a movie about
cartoon animals having conversations and singing songs, Jordan saying, ‘That’s pretty dumb,’ not carping, just thinking out loud. ‘They’d be eating each other.’

A huge sigh from her sister Casey. ‘It’s a
meta
phor, you dink.’

‘I think you mean fable, Miss Hairball.’

All her life Casey had been what Jana called an ‘easy upchuck’, like a cat, throwing up for any reason, or no reason. When there was a purpose it was usually evil – to duck chores, an exam, or some adverse social situation – and it had earned her the nickname Hairball. She was a little sensitive about it. ‘Well, just up yours, Little Susie Einstein,’ she said, giving her hair a sulky toss.

The soundtrack clicked off. ‘Speak, troop,’ LA’s telephone voice said. ‘Start by telling me you’re not relapsing.’ I imagined her leaning back in her desk chair, sporting one of her two main looks – denim and boots that would look spot-on in a boardroom, or a serious suit in toned-down colours that she could wear to a dogfight without raising an eyebrow. Not much jewellery or makeup, probably no high heels – you don’t paint extra stripes on a tiger. Of course with her the concept of a hairstyle had never had any actual meaning because no matter what she or anybody else tried to do with it, she still ended up with the same dark, unconquerable mop that our grandmother had said always looked freshly dynamited.

‘Hi, girl,’ I said. ‘I’m fine, but I need your wisdom.’

‘Some things never change,’ she said. ‘How’s your appetite?’

‘Not too bad,’ I said. ‘But junk food has kinda lost its taste.’

A brief pause. ‘How long since you’ve been fishing?’

‘I don’t know – quite a while.’

‘But you’ve still got the boat?’

I said, ‘Yeah. And tackle. And a fishing licence. I just don’t go.’

‘What’s your weight?’

‘One-seventy-five.’

‘Still a light heavyweight. How well are you sleeping?’

‘No way to know,’ I said. ‘I’m always asleep at the time.’

‘Give.’

‘Okay, I’ve waked up too early a few times since the last time we talked.’

‘What are you calling a few?’

‘Four.’

‘Talked to Max about it?’

‘Yeah, some. He gave me a couple things to think about.’

‘But you haven’t talked to Jana and the girls about the farm.’ Not a question.

‘Would you believe it if I said I was working on it?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’d believe you think you are.’

‘Maybe the problem’s not really knowing where I belong.’

‘I saw how you were when you were working the place that last year, troop. Nobody could belong there more than you. Except maybe Casey and Jordie.’

I looked again at the pictures of the two of them on the wall. She was right; both were natural riders, as much at home on horseback and in the open country as birds in the air. If anybody belonged out there it was them.

‘Yeah, they’d be great with it,’ I said. ‘What worries me is how they’re handling the separation. I’m taking them out for lunch tomorrow, probably to the marina. I know it won’t fix anything, but I really need to spend some time with them.’

‘The main thing they need is for you to keep being who you are – the guy they can count on, who loves ’em like a rock. So who’re you sleeping with and how long has it been?’

With therapists there are certain constants, one of them being that you’ve got to account for your sex life.

‘It’s still Jana when it’s anybody,’ I said. ‘It’s been three weeks. Why?’

‘Because I hear skin hunger in your voice,’ she said, awakening new images of Gold’s violated skin in my mind. ‘You need more human contact.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But first, question number one: what’s the difference between a hallucination and a vision?’

‘Sometimes nothing, but generally you call it a hallucination – meaning it’s a symptom – when you’re nuts,’ she said. ‘A vision is just an experience. Why?’

I described what I’d seen on my computer monitor, and the memories that went with it.

‘Sounds like flashbacks,’ she said. ‘Anything happen lately that took you back to the farm or football or anything like that?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, I see Johnny now and then, but that’s about it. Losing Jana and the girls might have triggered something, but I can’t really think of anything else.’

‘You haven’t lost Jana yet,’ LA said. ‘And you’ll never lose the girls. But your brain’s working on something. Give it a little time – things like that come when they’re ready.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thing number two is a murdered psychologist I want to talk to you about.’

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s hittin’ a little close to home,
troop. But I don’t know how much I can help with something like that. I’m no criminalist.’

‘But you’re kind of smart,’ I said. ‘And you know a bunch of psychology words.’

‘Okay, Bis, let’s hear it.’

I said, ‘This woman used to do our employment screenings. She was hung up in a tree.’ Hearing myself, I realised how weak and obtuse this sounded. If I wanted to keep my communication skills anywhere above rock bottom I needed more interaction with people who had the kind of mind LA did, though I wasn’t exactly sure where to find anybody like that.

‘Hung up how?’

‘She was crucified.’

There was a short silence as LA processed this. She said, ‘Any religious connection?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like she was about to blow the whistle on some monsignor for embezzlement, a child-abusing cult, anything like that?’

‘Not that I know of,’ I said. I outlined what we had so far, including the anatomical switch the killers had performed. I’d been worried about this part, but the non-negotiable standing price of a conversation with LA had always been the naked truth or nothing.

‘Jesus, Bis, that’s some pretty incredible rage – but at least I’d say it eliminates most of your likely suspects.’

Seeing no way around having to admit I didn’t get it, I said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Not trying to play junior detective here, but this sounds too complicated for plain sexual sadism. And I’d bet your killer wasn’t her husband, or her lover. The killing was
some kind of punishment, no doubt about that, but this isn’t the kind of anger you get when a guy’s wife or girlfriend cheats on him at the Christmas party or runs off with the tennis pro. When a man is mad enough to murder his woman, if he doesn’t shoot her it’s usually either spur of the moment, where he goes for the face or neck, or else it’s a premeditated thing like an insurance killing and he’ll try to make it look accidental. Or hire a guy to fake a burglary.’

‘Doc Stiff,’ I said.

‘Explain that.’

‘A homicide detective I knew. Used to be a biology teacher. His thinking was, the hotter the blood, the sooner and simpler the killing. He called it the Index of Passion. Not saying these doers kept a cool head exactly, but this took thinking and planning and patience.’

‘Doc sounds like a pretty smart guy,’ she said. ‘Anyway, your bad guys went to all that trouble for
some
reason. Any messages around the body, or on it?’

‘No note, no anonymous calls, no hieroglyphics carved on her chest,’ I said, watching Mutt groom himself. ‘Wayne found a Roman coin, but there’s no telling how it got there or if it had anything to do with the killing.’

‘A
Roman coin
?’

Suddenly Mutt came to attention. He looked first toward the back door, then the garage entrance, the fur along his back standing up, his eyes huge. Hearing nothing myself. but catching his mood like an instantaneous virus, I said, ‘Hold on a minute, LA. I’ll be right back.’ I grabbed the Glock and a flashlight, checked to be sure there was a round in the pistol’s chamber, and slipped out the front door. As I waited for my eyes to adjust I listened carefully to the
night. I hadn’t expected to hear crickets or cicadas at this time of year, but even taking that into account it seemed unnaturally quiet out here. I started working my way slowly around the house, staying as deep in the shadows as possible. Nothing in front, nothing in the driveway, nothing anywhere around the house that I could see. I stood motionless again, listening, hearing only the menacing rumble of a Harley somewhere in the middle distance, and behind that the faint hum of the interstate that could only be heard from here on a quiet night. I switched the flashlight on and made a non-stealth circuit of the house. Still nothing.

Back inside, I picked up the phone, saying, ‘I’m here.’

‘What happened?’

‘The cat spooked,’ I said.

‘Only you would have a watchcat. What spooked him?’

‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe some colleague of his dropping by. Coyotes come through sometimes, but usually not before three, four in the morning.’

After a short silence LA said, ‘I don’t like the sound of that, Bis.’

‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘Where were we?’

‘The coin.’

‘Right – the mystery coin. Wayne says it hadn’t been in the ground.’

‘So it got dropped there recently,’ LA said. ‘Meaning you can’t rule out that it was your bad guys who dropped it. And if they did – ’

‘If they did, it was probably on purpose – ’

‘ – so why? What’s the message? And who’s it for?’

‘If I could figure out that last one it’d probably tell me who did it.’ I told her we’d found out Gold got a call from a pre-paid phone around eight the night she was taken.
The conversation had ended at 8.19 p.m. after eight minutes and a couple of seconds. Gold had then left the house and gone to her office, checking with the call centre from there at 8.44, no messages. Her purse, snapped shut and apparently unrobbed, had been left on a corner of the receptionist’s desk, the front office lights still on and Gold’s green BMW parked unlocked in front of the office door.

‘All they wanted was her,’ LA said. ‘Better bet they showed up in something like a utility van.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Nothing unusual in or close to her car. No fingerprint results yet, but I doubt they even touched it – no reason to unless they were going to steal it. All the back rooms, Dr Gold’s office included, were locked and dark when the secretary came in the next morning.’