Burning Time (18 page)

Jason looked over at him, on the leather sofa with his copies of the letters, his notes. What was going on with him? Charles had the frown of concentration between his eyes. Jason felt another pang. He didn’t have much doubt about the salmon and champagne. Charles, married to Brenda for less than the five years he was to Emma, seemed to be playing the same old games and getting away with it. While he, who had been so responsible and faithful, was losing everything he cared about because the woman he loved didn’t scream at him when she wanted something. The sounds Emma made when she talked were not loud or insistent enough to make him listen. He felt the knife in his gut again. Whatever made him think he could escape the most basic and non-negotiable biological need a woman has? No matter whether she was quiet or loud about it. Really stupid.

The coffee burned his tongue. He sat down again and went over his chart of what they knew. The guy was obsessed
with things not turning out Right. Emma was bitten by a snake and poisoned. He was going to make things Right again.
There
was the threat. But where was he, and what was he likely to do? He was into motorcycles and air power. He himself was off the path of Right. The guy was furious about being left-handed in a world of right-handed people.

He talked about her—about Emma—being branded. By appearing in the film? By having herself tattooed? By having sex, or showing her body? Or was it the whole thing? And branded as what? Somehow Jason thought the guy writing was the one who was branded. But in the film they were both branded, if the brand was the tattoo. Jason shivered. Great. Really great. There was just too much he didn’t know. He looked at his watch and then gathered his notes together. It was time to go.

At exactly eight o’clock in the morning, Sanchez dropped the envelope with the five letters April had given him the night before on her desk. He smiled. “Guess where they come from?”

“New York,” April said promptly. She bet it was the husband. He looked just like a Kennedy. She didn’t like the way he came in by himself, talking about his wife’s problem. Maybe it was his problem.

Sanchez shook his head. “Guess again.”

“What is this, a guessing game?”

Sanchez raised a shoulder slightly. He was wearing a gray shirt, a darker gray jacket, and a black tie. April couldn’t decide whether she liked the combination or not. Wednesday and Thursday she worked the eight-to-four shift. So did Sanchez. They were on the same schedule. She was forced to think about that half the night because her mother had a lot of questions about the red Camaro.

“Why don’t Jimmy drive you home in white Baron?” Sai asked.

“LeBaron,” April said. Her mother knew very well he
was at work in Brooklyn and couldn’t possibly get to Astoria at that hour. But she was wondering about a lot of things herself. Why didn’t Jimmy care about her enough to give her her car back? If Jimmy had returned her car, she could have driven to the range herself. No, wait a minute. Why did he have to take her car in the first place? She loved that car, really loved it. She frowned. Apparently he loved it, too.

“You want to know or not?” Sanchez asked, noting the frown.

“Sure I do.” She forced herself to look at him square in the face. What was it about that face that was so compelling? The man was
nice, gentle?
How could a man be nice? That just didn’t make any sense.

“Well, they’ve been handled too much to get even any partials, but they come from San Diego,” Sanchez said with a note of triumph.

“What?” She must have been distracted by the thought of her mother or the subway ride or something.

“I said San Diego,” Sanchez enunciated elaborately.

“No!” April’s breath caught. In six years on the force that name had never crossed her lips. Now she had two cases with a link there.

Sanchez stood beside her desk, a hand on his hip and a smile under his mustache. “Oh, yeah, why not?”

“That’s where that girl dead-ended. Ellen Roane. That’s where they’re trying to make a match with her on a girl’s body that turned up yesterday. I’m waiting for her medical data right now.”

“No kidding.”

April shook her head. The letters couldn’t be from there. It was too weird.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Of course I’m sure. I took it to this buddy of mine in
the lab at Jay. He popped it under the microscope, and a few minutes later he had a reconstruction. High resolution microscopy. Most of the letters were there. You just can’t see them with the naked eye. Canceling without enough ink,” he added. “The post office out there must be going broke like everybody else.”

April’s eyes widened with amazement. Sanchez went back into the city for her last night? Why did he do that? She shook her head again. San Diego. What did that mean?

“Piece of cake to trace the machine,” Sanchez said helpfully.

“Thank you.” She knew very well how to trace the machine, but who was going to send her to San Diego to do it?

He didn’t move away from the corner of her desk. She could smell the soap and the after-shave he used. Okay, so he got a piece of information for her. Why didn’t he go and do something of his own?

Her temper flared, but it didn’t show because she lowered her eyes demurely. “I can take it from here,” she said.

“Sure.” He sat down at his desk, swiveled away from her, and played with his stack of case folders. Then he swiveled back.

“That drawing he’s got on the bottom. It looks Chinese, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not Chinese,” April said flatly.

“I know. It’s a Harley symbol,” he said.

April took one out and studied it. “It doesn’t look like it.” A biker? Couldn’t be. Bikers didn’t sit around writing weird, menacing letters to women three thousand miles away. It didn’t make sense.

“Yeah, inside the fire part is a wing and a wheel. See it?” Sanchez said.

April nodded doubtfully. “Sort of.”

“The eagle is the Harley-Davidson symbol, and there’s its wing.”

“Maybe,” April said noncommittally.

“I’d bet anything on it,” Sanchez said.

“Well, you don’t have to. It’s my case.”

“True,” he said. He swiveled around so he was facing his desk again. “Just thought it might help.”

It did help. It helped a lot, but she didn’t want him in her head so much. It was hard enough as it was. She switched her attention to the two cases, both from the same place far away but with no connection to each other. She probably wouldn’t have another one that connected with California for the next six years. She checked her watch. It would be hours before she could start trying to reach Sergeant Grove in San Diego to ask if anyone out there was getting letters with a Chinese-looking Harley-Davidson symbol on them. Then he would tell her he was in Missing Persons and didn’t do letters. He’d tell her to check the post office; he’d ask her about the weather again and laugh.

Jason was right next door. Emma knew it because she heard the door open and close on a patient at five-thirty. Then at six-fifteen there were two sets of openings and closings, one immediately following the other. She wanted to look through the keyhole to see who it was, but was too far away to make it there in time. Finally she could restrain herself no longer. She moved swiftly into the bedroom and started going through Jason’s drawers.

“What are you looking for?”

“Aaah.” Emma jumped.

It wasn’t a patient going in. It was Jason coming out. He was standing in the doorway watching her.

“Jesus, you scared me,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?” He had his suit jacket on, and looked like he was on his way out. Why had she waited all day to start looking?

He frowned, peering past her at the open drawers. “I wanted to tell you I have to go out of town unexpectedly.”

“Why?” She rammed a drawer shut guiltily.

“I have to speak at the medical school in San Diego day after tomorrow.” He colored as he said it.

She stared at him, stunned. “Why?” she said again.

“What are you doing with my things?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She rammed the drawers closed one after another. “Just putting your clothes away.”

He didn’t move. He was able to stay absolutely still for long periods of time, as if in suspension while his patients talked. Emma hated it when he did it with her. She shook her head impatiently. His lecture arrangements were made months in advance. She studied his face.

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on with you and get it over with?” she said. “I know you’re not going out to San Diego to speak.”

“Yes,” he said testily, “I am. I was going to go later in the summer, but now is a better time. I’ll go see your parents. Would you like that?”

Emma closed the last drawer and headed out of the bedroom. No, she wouldn’t like that. She didn’t think for a minute he was going to San Diego. Why would he go there?

“Why don’t I come with you?” she said lightly. “I haven’t been home in ages.”

He followed her down the hall. “What were you doing in my things?” he asked again.

She turned, trying to catch him off guard. “Looking for those letters. What did you do with them?”

“I told you, I gave them to Charles.” His face didn’t say a thing. He had spent years learning how to appear invulnerable. He looked hard as nails now.

“Why?” Emma shook her head at him and moved into the living room.

It had been the dining room when the apartment was much larger. Although it was the living room now, it was
lined with books and looked like a study. The former living room had been made into a separate office and waiting room for Jason years before she met him, during his first marriage. The letters were probably in there, she thought. She wasn’t allowed to go into his office unless she was specifically invited. He was a doctor; everything there was confidential.

She looked out of the window. She had wanted to live somewhere else when they got married. Jason didn’t like hearing her voice lessons, or seeing her around during office hours. He said patients got distracted easily and asked intrusive questions about his life that didn’t help their therapy. He wanted anonymity. It made her feel like she was in hiding all the time. She shook her head at the old wound. Why did he marry an actress, then?

It was raining again. She shivered and glanced at a clock. In the living room alone there were nine of them, evidence of Jason’s passion for the keeping of time. Two skeleton clocks, a regulator, a grandfather clock, a mantel clock, a desk clock, and two carriage clocks. They were all at least a hundred years old. All chimed on the hour, and half-hour, though none exactly at the same time. Jason kept them in working order, but they were old and unpredictable and sometimes did what they wanted.

“Why?” she said again. It was almost six forty-five.

“Why what?” Jason asked. He was poised by the door.

“Why did you give Charles the letters?” Emma demanded. The typed words kept going through her head, even when she was sleeping.
Dear Emma: You were my white spirit. You were my purity. You make me think of poetry
. Funny drawing at the bottom. Not so very different from the tattoo in the movie. She didn’t know what to make of it.

The first letter was a list of weres.
You were all the good
things Faith Hope and Charity
. He called her “California Dreamin’,” like the song. The second letter was a list of whys.
Why did you do it? Why don’t you want me to love you? Why do you want to hurt me? It’s not Right what you did
.

The blood rushed to her cheeks. There was something about Jason in the suit, now studying her face. He was looking at her in a way that always made her feel she was some kind of inferior being for not having gone to medical school and knowing the meaning of everything as he did.

“I gave the letters to Charles because they worried me,” he said, with his shrink mask still firmly in place.

“Please don’t start trying to scare me again.” Emma looked away. Didn’t he have to go back to his office and tend to somebody? All these years he was too busy to stop for a minute and be with her, and now he was spending hours on those stupid letters. Why? Were they really so menacing?

He reached out to take her hand, his brow furrowed. “I don’t want to scare you, Emma, but I want you to be careful while I’m gone. Really careful.”

She looked down at his hand holding hers, and her eyes filled with tears. “Why don’t I go with you, Jason? We’re never together.” Her voice trailed off. “And I haven’t been home in a long time. I wouldn’t mind seeing my mother.”

He put his arms around her and frowned over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t that be stressful?”

“Not as stressful as this. What are you hiding?”

He stroked her hair. “It’s only for a couple of days.”

They moved to the sofa and sat in an uneasy silence. Emma thought of her mother.

“Did I ever tell you my mother used to shake her finger at me and say, ‘You’ve made your bed, you lie in it,’ every time we picked up and moved to another base? I thought
it was my fault she married him and chose to be a navy wife.”

“I know,” Jason murmured. “Did you ever go out with anyone in the navy?” he asked suddenly, as if the question just occurred to him. All day he had been trying to figure out where tattoos fit in the picture. Now he remembered they were a navy thing. Emma was a navy child. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“I was too young in Virginia and Hawaii. But I did in Alaska, when I was sixteen. Did I tell you I worked the night shift in a crab plant because I hated being called a spoiled officer’s kid?”

She put her head on his shoulder. “He was the lowest-ranking officer, and we had
no
money. None. How could someone be spoiled who never had more possessions than could fit in a knapsack?” She looked down at her wedding ring. She still didn’t have much jewelry, and no offspring. Jason’s family had been poor, too, and he couldn’t help saving for the future. It was true what the shrinks said about background being everything. Nobody ever got over where they came from, or what happened to them when they were kids.