Darkness peering (41 page)

His eyes were kind. "Just get ahold of yourself."

"How?"

He shrugged. "Stop tormenting yourself. It's not like you'll ever get
used to it." McKissack tilted his head to drink, then looked at her,
jaw muscles bunching. "I'm just glad you're okay. The guy was six
two, one-ninety. That's some fierce struggle. I'm proud of you,
Rachel." He stroked her bruised cheek. "You okay?"

"It only hurts when I cry."

He smiled but his eyes were sad. "You had my heart going."

"Serves you right for all the times you've had mine going."

They both fell silent. It was difficult, letting go. Her ribs were
tender, the back of her head was still sore, and every aching joint in
her body reminded her of Vaughn Kellum. She couldn't get away from
him.

"He won, McKissack," she said softly. "Even in death, he won."

He gave her a skeptical look. "What?"

"I was his last victim."

"Bullshit. You're no victim."

"Maybe not, but somehow he managed to destroy my career, not to mention
my peace of mind."

"It was suicide by cop. Nothing more. Nothing less." He stroked her
hair, but she drew back slightly, and he rested his hands on the
tabletop, one over the other. "We're looking more closely at Melissa
D'Agostino. It might've been a crime of opportunity, his first,
perhaps. One of his wanderings through the woods. There's a couple
Unsolveds we're checking out."

"According to his social worker, his father once held a pillow over his
face and only stopped when Vaughn pretended to be dead."

"Lots of people have miserable childhoods, that doesn't mean they all
turn into psychopaths. The guy was sadistic and monumentally
self-indulgent. It makes you want to handcuff your kids to your wrist
and never let them out of your sight." Leaning forward, he kissed her.
"I love you, Rachel. I always will."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he rested his finger against her
lips. "Shhh. I know. Just keep this on the back burner. I'll always
be there for you."

She slid out of the booth and stood on unsteady legs, drunker than she
expected. "Me, too, McKissack," she said. "I'll always love you,
too."

THE D.A. "S OFFICE LIKED TO CLAIM A HIGH CONVICTION RATE.

As aggressive as he was, however, District Attorney Hubert Blum failed
to make the charges against Detective Third Grade Rachel Storrow stick
after her counsel proved, through a legal defense

called justification, that she was allowed to use deadly force.
Subsequently exonerated, she was reinstated to her post.

On the Saturday following the verdict, Rachel drove to her brother's
house to say good-bye. Billy's U-Haul was packed. They stood on the
front lawn in the crisp February air, assessing one another's feelings.
She gazed into his frost-colored eyes, reminded of all the good things
from her childhood.

"Well," he said, "I left you some stuff in the front hall. Microwave.
Blender. It's all packed. Mom's good silverware. Dad's old army
blanket. Remember that?"

"Yeah." She smiled. "He made us tuck in the corners so tight you
could bounce a quarter off the bed."

Billy laughed, the sound of it lifting her spirits.

"I love you, Billy," she said, wrapping her arms around him, and they
held each other for a while. She would miss his laugh, his smile, his
voice, the reassuring length of him. She could hear his heartbeat
through layers of wool. With great reluctance, she let him go.

"I'm glad you got your job back," he said.

"I'm not so sure I want it back."

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. "What'll you do?"

She glanced around, uncertain. Blackbirds circled the power lines that
ran down behind the house. A neighbor's dog barked at its own shadow.
"I majored in psychology," she said. "The world could use a little
therapy, don't you think?"

He smiled at her. His hair was clean and shiny and their childhood
seemed a million miles away.

She couldn't keep the sadness from creeping into her voice. "Billy,
I'm sorry about what happened."

"Forget it." He shrugged as if it were nothing, then tweaked her nose.
"Who's my little pipsqueak?"

"I am." The corners of her mouth curled up. "I'm going to miss you,
big brother."

"I'll call when I get to Seattle." He'd found a new job working

with blind adults. He couldn't stay at Winfield, he told her. It
reminded him too much of Claire. "Don't worry about the rest of the
junk inside. Landlord's gonna take care of it."

"Okay." She didn't want him to leave. Regret boiled up around her.
She needed more time. Needed to prove how much she loved him. How
much she trusted him.

"Well ..." He had a winning smile. "Guess this is it."

She clung to him, not wanting to let go. His grip was muscular from
lifting weights. He'd always protected her. He'd always been there
for her. Now what was she going to do? Her family was gone. There
was nothing left but memories.

He kissed her good-bye and got in his car. He waved as he pulled out
onto the road, gravel crunching under his tires. She stood for a long
while on the ice-slick driveway and followed the U-Haul's progress into
the dazzling landscape. Then the milky woods absorbed him and he was
gone.

Inside, four large cardboard boxes waited by the front door. The
cavernous rooms were empty except for a carpet rolled into a corner of
the living room, a broken broom, rejected paperbacks, a few moldering
pieces of furniture.

Rachel took the boxes home and unpacked them in the living room as the
setting sun streaked the sky pink through the windows. Besides the
silverware and army blanket, he'd left his old baby clothes, a teething
ring, a lock of golden hair. He'd left the family photographs, letters
and birthday cards she and her mother had written to him at various
addresses--Albuquerque, New Orleans, Nebraska ... Tucked inside the
microwave was a book of poems by William Blake, a yellow Post-it stuck
to the front cover. The note, in Billy's scrawling handwriting, read:
"Rachel, Remember what Dad used to say about keeping a light heart?
There's also a line from Blake: "A truth that's told with bad intent
beats all the lies you can invent." Don't ever forget me, Billy."

The book fell open in her hands, and pressed between two

pages like a flower was Melissa D'Agostino's friendship bracelet.
Yellow and red yarn woven together in a diamond pattern.

Rachel's feet turned to stone. How could she have been so stupid? A
shriveling wind whistled through the rafters, but the blood rushing in
her head drowned out all sound. Yellow and red flashed before her
eyes. Her brain felt broken. Her eyes scanned down the page, pausing
on a single highlighted passage:

"Father! father! where are you going?

do not walk so fast. Speak, father, speak to your little boy. Or else
I shall be lost."

She could feel him in her arms, her big brother, tall and strong, could
smell his warm breath against her cheek, and she wanted him back.
Bring him back. She wanted her brother back, but it was too late.

The truth was curled like a caterpillar in her palm.

BY MID-MARCH, RACHEL WAS READY TO GO. EVERYTHING WAS

packed. She was leaving Flowering Dogwood for good, driving down the
coast to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a friend needed a third
roommate. McKissack had expressed shock and disappointment at her
decision to leave the department, but it was too late. She'd made up
her mind.

Billy had evaporated into thin air. There were no phone calls. There
was no forwarding address. No job with blind adults. Alone in the
house, she took her gold shield out of her pocket and hefted it in her
hand. McKissack knew nothing about her

real reasons for leaving. He hadn't a clue what rested in the
balance. The price she'd have to pay in order to stay.

The floorboards creaked as she walked through the empty rooms, memories
reaching out at every turn. There, she broke one of her front baby
teeth running. There, she and Billy had played monster that time, and
he'd scared her so much she couldn't stop hiccuping. There was where
they set up the Christmas tree every year. She inhaled deeply, the
house filling momentarily with laughter. Birthdays, Easter egg hunts,
family reunions, her parents' anniversaries ... that was enough. She
could block out the rest. She wasn't going to drag all the bitterness
and grief out the door with her.

At the front door, she turned to take one last look at the kitchen
where they'd shared their meals. She wouldn't be back.

Outside she picked up her pace, striding briskly past the For Sale sign
on the front lawn. Ice and snow glittered like crushed glass in the
moonlight. She walked past the barbecue pit, the ici cled hammock, the
woodshed ... down to the back field. In the spring, the wild turkey
would mate when the redbud trees bloomed, and the buck moth would
hatch, and she'd miss them all. Green ash, spruce, fir, white birch.
She scaled the barbed wire fence, then stood in the crusted snow and
faced the swamp.

This valley was called Wuchowsem after the spirit of the benign night
winds. She gazed at the bog with its stunted, spindly trees, its sheep
laurel and dwarf huckleberry--a web of branches and brittle dead leaves
coated with a fur of snow, now twinkling in the moonlight. The seasons
changed swiftly here, dramatically, from soft to tempestuous.
Northerly winds blew needlepoint frost across this great land, and the
winter snows soon followed, burying everything beneath a thick icy
crust.

Rachel held her shield to the moonlight. Breath clouds crackled from
her lungs and the yarn bracelet danced in the biting wind. It wasn't
too late to turn her brother in. Either way, she knew she'd be haunted
for the rest of her life.

Her eyes blurred with tears. Her head beat with the sound of a
thousand drums. The immensity of the sky floored her. She could
almost feel ice crystals forming in the black air high above her head,
and the cold stung her nostrils. She had never felt so all alone. She
was alone on the planet.

Father! father! where are you going?

Fingers raw and numb, she tied the friendship bracelet around the
shield, making several stiff knots. It was up to fate, she decided.
If some stranger happened to stumble across this definitive proof of
her family's guilt, so be it.

Her heart roared. The ground was made of paper. The fields were blue
in the moonlight. The swamp was salt-dusted, foam flecked, its pools
covered with a skin of ice. With the passage of time, the elements
would rinse the earth of evil.

Frozen weeds crunched underfoot as she shifted her weight. With a
grunt, she pitched the shield as far as she could into the swamp. It
hurtled through the cold night like a final thought and landed in the
thickets where, unknown to her, it fell through wrinkles of snow and
came to rest upon a clump of huckleberry roots embedded in fissures,
roots like congealed veins growing in and around the decades-old cat
bell. Rust had crept like frost around the circumference of the tiny
silver bell, rust blossomed on metal, and the sleeping roots whispered
of long-ago glaciers.

Heartfelt thanks to my agent, Wendy Weil, and my editor, Beverly
Lewis, for their great wisdom and support; to Irwyn Applebaum for his
enthusiasm and generosity; to my teachers Chris Leland, Peter LaSalle
and Mameve Medwed for their love of writing; to Doris Jackson, whose
dedication to the truth once turned my life around; to The Group (Lori,
Helen, Jane, Nancy and All) for its irreplaceable fellowship; to Mamie
Mueller for her writer's eye; to Elon Dershowitz, Kevin Brodbin and my
talented brother, Carter Blanchard, for their invaluable input; to all
my friends for their encouragement when times were tough; to the good
people of CRC; and last but not least, to my husband, Doug Dowling, for
his brilliance, his inspiration and unshakable faith.

Alice Blanchard won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction for
her book of stories. The Stuntman's Daughter. She has received a PEN
Syndicated Fiction Award, a New Letters Literary Award and a Centrum
Artists in Residence Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in such
quarterlies as Turnstile, The Alaska Quarterly and The William & Mary
RevieW, among others, and has been broadcast on National Public Radio's
"The Sound of Writing." She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.