Bloodline (36 page)

At first we were frantic, and then deliberate and intense and unrelenting. Our hands swept over each other with disbelief. Roxanne's skin was so soft and white, her body so smooth and sleek, but strong. We didn't talk at all, not one word as we searched in each other's eyes for some clue, some reason for this feeling, but then gave up.

There was no reason. It just was.

So there in the dim light of the hotel room, with clatters from the hall and sirens from the street, we made love. Crouching over me, Roxanne ran her fingers through my hair, caressed my scrapes and cuts and continued on, never asking how or why. As her hips rocked slowly, she explored me with her hands like a blind person, and I did the same with her, taking her in, drinking her down, watching the miraculous way she responded to my touch.

It was a miracle, really, like nothing I'd ever experienced before her. Compared to making love with Roxanne, all the others had been players, stiffly reciting lines from bad movies, trying to feel like somebody had said they should feel. Some had been beautiful, some had been admirable. None of them had been like this.

After it ended, in an arching, convulsing, trembling embrace, we lay still for a long time. The sirens came creeping back. The walls of the room reappeared. I ran my hand over Roxanne's thigh and hip and side, brushing her nipple and causing her to jump.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, you're not.”

“You're right,” I said. “I'm not.”

We were quiet for a minute. Roxanne suddenly leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips, then lay back down.

“Why did we leave each other?” she said.

“I don't know. Maybe we didn't want to give in.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was just a bad time.”

“A bad time to fall in love?”

“I don't know. I think maybe I didn't want to always associate you with people dying.”

“Why not?” I said. “You look great in black. You have lovely white skin.”

She smiled.

“Speaking of lovely, what did you do to your face?”

“Why? What's wrong with it?”

“It's pretty beat-up. Even for you.”

“Would you believe I wasn't wearing my seat belt?”

“I didn't believe it the last time.”

“What was it the last time?”

“Some bad guys knocked you around.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, they got theirs, didn't they?”

“And this time?” Roxanne asked.

“There were six of them,” I said. “They didn't have a chance.”

“My tough guy.”

“Did I ever tell you you're beautiful when you swoon?”

I took her hand, intertwined my fingers with hers. She'd grown her fingernails longer since we'd been apart.

“So what am I signing up for, Jack?”

Her voice carried a faint note of sadness. “I don't know,” I said.

“More of the same?”

I shrugged.

“I'm just a mild-mannered reporter,” I said.

“Mild-mannered reporters don't get beat up.”

“Sure they do. They just don't hit back.”

“Oh, Jack.”

“Oh, Jack, what?”

“Oh, Jack, what am I going to do with you?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But what we just did was a heck of a start.”

We talked into the night. Roxanne told me about the poor little rich kids she was working with in Colorado Springs—how their parents were every bit as screwed up, sometimes more, as any of the poor she'd worked with in Maine; how the work was harder, really, because families with money could put up better defenses.

“I used to call and get an irate daddy who'd threaten to kill me,” Roxanne said. “Now I get an irate daddy who calls his two-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer.”

“Same problems. More sophisticated means of denying them.”

“You got it.”

She said she'd made some good friends, that there were a couple that I'd like. One was an ornithologist who studied hawks and their migration. I said I'd made some good friends, too, including a couple she'd like. One was a retired Marine who had a big garden and could recite poetry.

“And his wife's a peach,” I said.

It went that way for a while, nice and easy, our hips and thighs resting together under the blankets, Roxanne's head in the crook of
my arm. And then she asked how things were going for me. The baby story.
New England Look.

“So these teen mothers beat you up?”

“Postpartum repression.”

“God, your humor hasn't changed.”

“You were hoping?”

“I knew better. Besides, it's your way of evading difficult questions.”

“Drop back and pun.”

“Not bad, but that doesn't answer the question either.”

“You want to know what's going on, huh.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Pushy, aren't you.”

“Because I love you.”

“Good reason.”

“I think so.”

So in the dark, in the hotel bed, I told Roxanne the latest about Missy and Janice Genest and the girls from the high school. I told her about Kenny and my new truck.

“A gun rack?” she said.

“Try to hold yourself back.”

I told her about Poole and my new role as murder suspect. I threw in Putnam and his daughter, the Flanagans and their baby. For good measure.

“So right now I'm just poking and prodding. All I can do. Go around trying to hit a nerve. Shake somebody up so something will happen.”

“And you'll be cleared.”

“And the truth will come out,” I said. “But you know what's funny?”

“No,” Roxanne said.

“The people at the magazine want to send a photographer up.”

“Tell 'em to make it a forensic photographer,” she said.

“Hey, that's not bad.”

“But it's not funny.”

“Maybe not uproarious, but I liked it.”

“You know what I mean. Jack.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

We were quiet for a while. Roxanne shifted in my arm, which was going to sleep. I ran my hand over her belly. Outside, there was faint shouting, but you couldn't tell if it was shouting in anger or in joy. This being a city, I'd take anger and give odds.

“I'm worried about you, Jack,” Roxanne said.

“I'm a little worried myself.”

“How do you get into these things?”

“Just have the knack, I guess.”

“Could you really go to jail?”

“I doubt it.”

“But it's possible.”

“Hey, this is America. Anything's possible.”

She thought for a moment.

“Then I'll tell you what I think,” Roxanne said. “I think you're underestimating the power of having kids. Of parenthood.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. Some people will kill for money, I guess. Some people will kill over a relationship. You know, a jealous lover and all that. But anybody, and I mean anybody, will kill to protect their child.”

“You would?”

“Of course. Wouldn't you?”

I considered it for a second.

“In a heartbeat,” I said.

“So what do you have here? You have a mother who gave up her baby and wanted it back. Another mother who got that baby and somebody wanted to take it away.”

“You think this Courtney Flanagan would kill Missy Hewett?”

“Without blinking. Or she'd have it done.”

“This rich woman with the Ivy League husband?”

“Jack, rich people aren't any less capable of evil. In fact, they have more means of doing it.”

“So I just look for the biggest Mercedes?”

“Wrong,” Roxanne said. “
We
look for the biggest Mercedes.”

“What do you mean, we?”

“I told you I was signing on.”

“Not to this.”

“To you. I'm not leaving you again. I decided that when I saw you downstairs. I just did. I've got two weeks' vacation, and I'm going to Prosperity, Maine.”

“It ain't the Ritz.”

“Wherever we are is the Ritz, Jack.”

“You know, I think you're right,” I said, and I turned to her and kissed her lips and ran my hand over her breast.

This time she didn't jump.

31

O
ur bags went in the back, my brown duffel and her Gucci leather. “I got a deal on it,” she apologized, and hung her matching pocketbook on the gun rack. “So did you get a gun to go with this thing?”

“Well, it's kind of a long story.”

Roxanne looked at me. I smiled.

“I can't believe it,” she said. “No, I guess I can.”

It was morning, a beautiful one, and the sky was dense blue, even over Boston. We pulled out of the hotel lot, immediately got lost, and wandered for several blocks before Roxanne spotted the Storrow Drive sign. I cut across three lanes of traffic, daring a woman in a Porsche to hit me. She wimped out and we were off, just like we knew what we were doing.

Crossing the Tobin Bridge on the expressway north, Roxanne reached over and took my hand. We looked out over the harbor, which was busy with traffic, and then sped up and left Boston behind. I shifted with my left hand, squeezed Roxanne's with my right, and didn't let go until we hit I-95 at Danvers. And then I reached over, pulled her close, and gave her a kiss.

“Maybe we should go parking,” I said.

“It's eight-thirty.”

“Three hours to check out. Maybe we should go back to the hotel.”

It was two hours to Portland, maybe a little more. Roxanne fell asleep near Hampton, New Hampshire, and I drove and watched her. Her legs were crossed, feminine even in jeans, and her sweater was the color of heather. She was beautiful and lovely and her expression, as she slept, was that of a trusting child. I wondered if I deserved that trust, but it had been placed in me and now there was no going back. I hoped this wasn't a mistake, that I could keep her safe, that nothing would happen, that the Kennys of the world would leave her alone.

I watched her face, listened to the sound of her breath, and for the first time in a very long time, I prayed. Almost.

Ordinarily, I found the interstate from the Maine border to Portland to be straight as a ruler and dull as an assembly line, with tollbooths set up not just to collect money, but to rouse drivers from their stupor. I was as wide awake as Roxanne was soundly asleep, going over the players in my mind, trying to decide what to do next, if anything. Would Kenny and Putnam make that decision for me? Or would it be Poole?

Roxanne awoke as I pulled up to the South Portland toll. I handed the guy in the booth a dollar and change and we swung off toward Portland. As we approached the downtown, Roxanne spoke for the first time in two hours.

“Get off here,” she said.

“You have to go to the bathroom?”

“No,” she said. “I want to see it.”

She didn't have to say any more.

I took the Forest Avenue exit and drove west past the fast food and pizza. At the muffler shop, I took a left and drove up the block. I pulled up in front of Missy's house. Even the crisp fall day couldn't make the house any less dreary.

“The poor girl,” Roxanne said quietly. “Let's get out.”

I didn't know if that was kosher, being a suspect, but Roxanne was out of the truck and headed for the sidewalk, so I followed. She stopped and asked me which apartment was Missy's, and I pointed upstairs. She asked me where the entrance was. I pointed to the left side and she started up the walk.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You sure you want to—”

“Jack, I spent two years investigating the living. I'm sure as hell not afraid of the dead.”

She went in the door first. The bicycle was still chained to the railing inside the door and the place still smelled of cats. Roxanne went up the stairs to Missy's door but there was police barricade tape stretched across it, stapled to the molding. It said
CRIME SCENE. DO NOT CROSS.

We didn't.

At the bottom of the stairs, Roxanne stopped. Dishes clattered inside the first-floor apartment.

“Take the truck and drive down the street,” Roxanne said.

“You're sure,” I said.

“I'm sure.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

I left her and went out to the truck and drove up the block. I started to park but saw that there were kids kicking a soccer ball
around in the yard directly across from the parking space. Like a good murder suspect, I kept going.

Fifteen minutes is a long time. I circled the campus five times, drove back out on to Forest Avenue, and took a right on to Missy's street. Roxanne was walking ahead of me, a couple of houses past Missy's. I slowed and watched her rear end for a minute, deciding she was gorgeous from all angles. When she was halfway up the block, I pulled over and she got in.

“Well,” I said, driving away.

“I was from the university. I wanted to know if anybody had attempted to collect Missy Hewett's belongings.”