Eden's Eyes (25 page)

But it wasn't the woman's violent reanimation which had so deeply appalled the detective. It had been something the father had said.

He told Jim about going to the house at seven-thirty that morning to pick up his daughter. At the custody hearings, he explained disjointedly, it had been mutually decided that Sunday would be the best day for Bob to take Shirley out. It was his regular day off from his barbering job, and Shirley didn't need dialysis again until the following day. He had driven over with his latest girlfriend, Sara, who had waited in the car. When there was no answer at the front, he had gone around back to find the door kicked open.

"Mary was. . . just sitting there against the doorjamb, half in and half out of Shirley's room. There was blood on her forehead, and a big goose egg. I could see she was breathing okay, but when I called her name she didn't ever budge. At first I thought the house had been robbed, you know, and whoever it was had popped her one. But then I went into the bedroom. . ."

Jim had nursed him gently through the rest of it, switching as quickly as feasible to topics less painful: the details of the separation and divorce, both of which had been accomplished peaceably and with minimal resentment; what, if anything, he knew of his ex-wife's current social life; what her relationship with the daughter had been; his own thoughts on who might have murdered the child, although predictably this yielded nothing.

As a matter of routine, Jim would have to verify Bleeker's story. The man's alibi seemed iron-clad—he had been away from his girlfriend less than five minutes, and besides the coroner's estimate placed the time of death a full four hours prior to Bleeker's urgent call. But even without the alibi Jim was confident of the man's innocence. If there was any single emotion he could read without fault it was the shocky, stunned, desperate agony of sudden loss. There was just no faking it. Even the psychos, with all their ranting and raving, could not get it right. It was in the eyes. . . and this man's eyes had been swelling with it.

Jim had been about to leave the Bleekers to their separate miseries when something the pathologist had said popped into his mind.

"Your daughter was on dialysis?"
      

Bleeker glanced again at his wife, the pain mooring more deeply inside of him. "Yes. Has been since she was three. Poor kid. . . God, she had courage. Did you see her arm? That poor little arm with the shunt underneath?"

Jim nodded, the memory of it making him shiver.

"The shunt bothered her most, more than all the hours tied to that machine. More even than the dietary restrictions she lived with day in and day out." Bleeker's face pinched grotesquely, as if in reaction to a bad smell. "You could feel her pulse in the skin over that shunt—only it wasn't a pulse; it was more of a. . . buzz. Touching it was like getting a small electrical shock. Mary kept telling me how anxious Shirley was to get the damned thing out after the transplant—"

"Transplant?" Jim had cut in with unintentional rudeness. "What transplant?"

Bleeker looked surprised, as if he'd expected the police to have this information already. "Shirley had a donor kidney implanted two months ago. . . and she was doing so well, too." He sobbed miserably, then began to weep into his hands. "Dear Jesus, who could have done such a thing?"

That had been when Mary Bleeker found her voice.

Now, at the desk down the hall, Jim grabbed the telephone receiver from a nurse's hand. "Sorry," he, said, already dialing.

It rang twice.

A female voice said: "Ottawa Civic Hospital."

"Give one Dr. Preston," Jim demanded brusquely. "Tell him it's urgent."

A moment later the pathologist came on the line. "Who is this?"

"Jim Hall. Listen—"

"I know," Preston interrupted. "I just got her files." "Where's that kidney, Doctor?" "I don't know," Preston said hoarsely. "But it's not in her body."

Chapter 28

Karen opened her eyes.

She was in bed. Her head ached miserably; when she tried to lift it up off the pillow, pain lanced through it like a spear tip. But she had slept, and there had been no dreams.

It took her a foggy moment to realize that Cass was there with her, seated on the edge of the bed. A dinner tray rested on the shelf of her knees: soup and a grilled-cheese sandwich. The sight of food made Karen's tummy rumble.

"Hi, sleepy-head," Cass said cheerily. "Want some grub?"

Karen wiggled up against the headboard. What time is it?" The west-facing window was dusky with twilight.

"Half-past seven. You've been down nearly twelve hours."

Karen yawned hugely. "Only feels like a few minutes."

She accepted the tray and balanced it on her lap. The soup smelled good.

"Any dreams?"

Karen, shook her head, then spooned up some of the soup. In these first foggy moments of wakefulness, the whole thing seemed oddly separate, as if in sleep her mind had performed surgery on itself, excising the dream and the damning newscast like a segment of gangrenous bowel. It was still there, the memory of it, but capped and jarred in a kind of mental formalin, to be picked up later and dispassionately observed, a withering specimen of madness. In its place Cass's sensible words had been grafted, much as Karen's new eyes had been sewn into her sockets. It was behind her now, remote, as if the intervening hours had been weeks, or even months.

But the fear remained, raw and faceless, and it drenched Karen now like a dash of cold water. The safety of her home, her own bedroom, seemed suddenly false, and she could feel her stomach clamping uncomfortably around her first nibbles of food. She reached out and touched Cass's hand. The dark was coming down fast now.

"I know it sounds silly," Karen said shyly. "But would you mind. . . staying with me tonight? Sleeping with me?

Cass clucked like a mother hen. "Do you hog the covers?"

Karen grinned back. "I don't think so."

"Then you're on. "

In some sly, unbalancing way, fantasy and reality had merged. Sight itself obscured the demarcations. To those born blind, vision was the ultimate dream, as unfathomable and elusive as the face of God. Her dreams seemed real, as if sleep had become not a nightly rejuvenation but a portal onto a new realm of being, one as solid and tangible as the chair which now supported her. And yet, as she dialed her dad's number and the line commenced its repetitive burring, the room around her seemed suddenly unreal, its edges gone murky, its substance as fickle as woodsmoke. The accustomed references of her world had muddied. She felt like a soldier in a hostile jungle, where a step in any direction might be her last.

Karen tightened her grip on the handset and closed her eyes. Through the floor beneath her she could hear Cass in the shower. Music reached her ears in muted fragments—Skeeter Davis, "I Can't Stay Mad at You." She had been alone in her room only a matter of minutes, but it had been long enough to rouse up the fear again. A moment earlier she had glanced at her bed and seen the moonlit face of that child. . .

Come on, Dad. Pick up the phone.

And just when it seemed she must flee her room, her father's gentle voice said “H'lo?"

"Hi, Dad," Karen answered, her trepidation drawing back a little. His voice was an immediate comfort. "Cass told me you stopped by today."

"Sure did. Hadn't seen you in a bit, and I guess I was startin' to miss you."

There was a pause, and in its dark waters Karen's mind cried out to him. Daddy, please help me. I'm deeply afraid. There are ghosts and they're angry and I feel them closing in. They inhabit my dreams and I'm losing my bearings—

But she said, "I miss you, too."

And she knew in that breath that she couldn't involve him, for all that her heart implored her to. He was her father, a simple man whose love would make him betray her. He would listen to her fears with grim attentiveness and stroke her stormy brow—and the instant he was away from her he would be on the phone to the doctors. He would see it as his duty. And ascendant above all other terrors, immune to the illuminations of logic and more paralyzing than the most ghastly image her psyche could conjure, was her abject dread of returning to blindness. Now, in the chancy light of deepening nightfall, the reassurances that Cass and Heather Smith had so confidently delivered seemed much less real than the savagery of last night's dream.

"Cass said you were pooped. Is everything okay?"

"Fine," Karen told him, the lie tasting like oil in her mouth. "I've been running on all eight cylinders for so long that I guess I finally ran out of juice. Poor Cass. I must be driving her crazy."

Another pause. In its grasp, Karen felt the same emotional nakedness she had experienced in Dr. Smith's office. Please, Dad. Let it go. Don't make me lie anymore.

"You sure?"

"Never better."

The old farmer sighed. "Okay, kid."

"See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah. That'd be nice. Hon?"

"Yes?"

He took a deep drag of air, a man about to cram a lot of words into the small space of a single breath. Karen heard it whistle in his nostrils. "I know you want to grow up,'' he said hoarsely. "God knows, you already have, don't get me wrong. I'm so proud of you I could bust. What I mean is, I understand that you want to. . . get away. Be on your own. It's only natural." The breath was almost gone now, but the sentiment, perceived by Karen before her father had spoken it, hung sweetly between them. "But I'm here for you, kid. Nothing's too much."

"Thanks, Dad,” Karen said softly. And this time the lie surfaced like a bloated carcass. "But everything's fine."

By midnight, Karen appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

Cass, exhausted herself, switched off the lamp and nestled in under the covers. For the past hour or so she'd been half reading a paperback novel, one of Karen's she'd snitched off a shelf downstairs. But the story was disturbing, full of horrific images of hell and damnation, and each time Karen even twitched Cass nearly jumped out of bed, fearful that her friend might wake up shrieking again.

Earlier, she’d considered trying to discuss things with Karen, perhaps even coax her into seeing her psychiatrist again. Following a quick assessment of Karen's capacity for further stress, however, she decided to table the discussion for another time. She did not tell her about the freaky crank call that had come for her earlier that day.

Cass tossed fitfully for awhile, her mind slipping into a swift-moving stream of grisly images. Visions of Karen folding back from the kitchen table with blood fountaining through the top of her skull were superimposed on blurred transparencies of Derek, roaring his Harley full-throttle toward a power pole, intent on crushing himself in the angst of lost love. And she saw herself, bent over his broken body, kissing his bloodied lips, barely flinching when one dead hand came up to her throat, tightened, and a gravel-laced voice accused, You should never have left me. Now look what you’ve done.

Then there was nothing, only darkness, the soft thick mud that was the bed of that stream. Into its depths she sank willingly, her body scarcely responding when Karen's began to quiver and jerk beside her.

Chapter 29

”Come to bed, honey."

Wearing only a nightshirt, Wendy Hall stood behind her husband’s easy chair, where the detective sat sipping scotch and listening to the late-night chatter of his CB radio. She massaged his temples in small gentle circles.

"I'll be along soon" he said, resting his head against her chest.

She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "You want to talk about it?"

"No."
      

Which of course meant yes.

"It was horrible, babe." He took another stiff belt of scotch. "Maybe the worst I've seen yet, when you consider—" Jim stopped himself short, having almost told his wife how the murder had been done. He flicked off the CB and guided Wendy onto his lap, a plain, petite girl just over half his height.

"Any leads?"

"Not a one. Unless there's a tribe of cannibals around that I haven't heard about.” Wendy regarded his questioningly. "The dirty bastard took her kidney, Wendy. A transplanted kidney. It's just vanished. The M.E. couldn't find it in the body, and it wasn't in the kid's room, or anywhere around the house."

Wendy shuddered, her eyes turning momentarily upward, as if to confirm that Billy was safely asleep in his bed. "What are you going to do?"

He shrugged. "I wish I knew."

"Billy really missed you tonight," Wendy said, trying to lead him away from the brink she had found him dangling over ten years before. Why should Jim Hall hold himself personally responsible for all of the sickos in the world when apparently even God had given them up? "You’ve hardly missed a night on that CB since you brought it home."

Jim grinned. It was true.

"He had a new friend over from school," Wendy told him. "A girl, if you're ready for that."

He slipped a hand under Wendy's nightshirt. "A looker?"

"Cute as a button. Name's Candace. She even spelled it out for me." Wendy laughed. "And while Billy was down here warming up the radio, she confided her plans to marry him."

Jim hugged her. "Guess I'll have to let him in on the old and peerless Jim Hall Formula—"

"Put it out of your mind," Wendy said with mock sternness. "That's our little secret." She stood, bending enticingly forward. "Come on. Let's go put that formula to work."

"Soon," Jim promised, reaching for his scotch. "I'll be up soon."

Wendy kissed him and then padded back upstairs, knowing that in all probability she would not see him again until morning. When he got like this over a case, he kept pretty much to himself.

Behind her Jim switched on the radio again, keeping the volume down to a low murmur. The cheerful, almost chanting voices of the deep-night CBers never failed to relax him. They were faceless, these couriers, truckers, and basement hobbyists, and seemed to have not a care in the world—beyond probing the spectral static in search of yet another soulmate. Their upbeat chatter, a language in itself, made good company for the troubled mind. And tonight, Jim's mind was troubled. Deeply so.