Kiss of the Sun (6 page)

This thought was followed instantly by another, even more embarrassing one: the young lady must have looked inside the bag, must have seen the prescription vial of clozapine.
Oh, by the way, you've been partying tonight with a basket case.
Just a friendly reminder that being “normal” was an illusion, a flimsy mask, always poised to slip.

“I'm sorry, you're right, I grabbed the wrong bag,” Martha said.

“It's okay,” Consuela said, not smiling. “They look so much alike.”

Back at the Best Western, Jarrell walked with her toward the plateglass doorway, and the bright fluorescent lights of the foyer seemed to be an appropriate signal: Shore leave was over. It was time for her to return to reality.

“That was fun,” Jarrell said. “I'm really glad you came and looked me up. It was the right thing to do.”

“Me too,” Martha said. They paused for a moment, and then she took a step toward him, stood up on her tiptoes, and planted a soft kiss on his lips. She was careful to linger for a second, making it long enough to be more than just a peck, but not overly long. Just enough to get the taste of him. It was the flavor of the island.

She lowered back onto her heels and looked up at his face. His expression was open, yet a little surprised.

“I just never got a chance to say thanks properly,” Martha said.

“Thanks? It was you who did me a favor tonight.”

“I mean, thank you for saving my life.”

Jarrell shrugged and smiled. “You're welcome.”

“Good night,” Martha said. A warmth bloomed inside as she turned toward the glass door. Jarrell put his hand on the aluminum handle, preventing it from opening.

“Listen, what time are you planning to go down there tomorrow?” he asked.

“Lineville? I was going to drive over there in the morning. Safest time of day.”

“You shouldn't go there alone. It's a sketchy part of town. I'll go with you.”

“You don't need to,” Martha said. “I'm sure you must have other things to do.”

“I'm just working on a paper for my econ class, but it can wait. I'll meet you here at nine
A.M.
and we can go over together. I've never gotten to watch a psychic in action before.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Jarrell said. “You don't need to go there alone. I'll see you at nine.”

Martha watched from the foyer as Jarrell backed out his Monte Carlo, gave her a quick wave, and then drove off. As the rumble of the powerful engine faded into the night, Martha felt a swelling warmth in the knowledge that she would get to see him again once more before she left.

This was followed immediately by a darker thought, one that rustled through her mind like a swirl of dead leaves, blown by an early gust of winter wind:
Don't pull him into this.

A United Airlines jet whooshed above their windshield, seeming close enough to touch, as they took I-85 past the vast concrete expanse of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, then exited onto Riverdale Road.

“Was it just me, or did you notice something when the police lieutenant looked at the drawing last night?” Martha asked.

“Yeah, I saw it, too.” Jarrell drove with a languorous confidence, elbow propped on the door panel, exposing the impressive curve of his biceps. “Maybe he does remember the case. Maybe he just didn't want to admit how few resources Atlanta's finest allocated toward finding an underprivileged black boy from the south of town.”

Outside the Monte Carlo, suburban blight was encroaching rapidly: abandoned strip malls and gas stations, boarded-up houses. The few functional establishments they passed were fortified with enough iron bars across the windows and doors to hold back an invading army. Mostly, though, everything was deserted.

“Maybe we can get Erringer interested in the case,” Jarrell mused. “He could bring some resources to bear.”

“Do you think he would care about a missing-person case from six years ago?”

“No guarantee, but he does have a soft spot for the underprivileged of a certain race. He seems to carry a lot of inherited guilt because of his family history.”

“The diamond business?”

“Yeah. The Erringer empire was built on the blood and sweat of native South Africans who were forced to work in the mines under inhumane conditions. It went on for generations until apartheid ended in the 1990s. Conrad is apparently the first in his lineage with a conscience. He's done a lot to improve working conditions in the mines. He's also invested some of the company's profits into good causes, like education programs, environmental causes, and the fellowship program. Of course, none of that changes the fact that he inherited one of the biggest blood-money fortunes on the planet.”

The scene outside had become even more desolate as they turned onto the road marked with a rusted green sign:
LINEVILLE.

“Here we are,” Jarrell said, turning left. They followed cracked tarmac and passed one vacant lot after another, each overgrown with weeds and unkempt shrubs.

“I can't believe families once lived here,” Martha said. “Where did everyone go?”

“Bought out, or forced out when the airport expanded. There used to be thriving communities here, predominantly black, but they were right in the flight paths, where the jets dump excess fuel as they come in for a landing.” The slow roar of a jet momentarily overwhelmed the thrum of the Monte Carlo's engine.

Martha thumbed the map on Jarrell's iPhone. “It's coming up.”

Jarrell slowed at a corner so they could read the graffiti-covered street sign that said
ALLENDALE
. The eye of the
D
was punctured by a bullet hole.

He turned onto the street and they rolled by heavily overgrown slabs of pavement shaded by a suburban forest gone feral. Martha rolled down her window, watched, and tried to listen.

“Anyplace you want me to stop?” Jarrell asked.

“Not yet.” Martha had no address for the home's former location, so from here on she only had her intuition.

They passed a yard with an empty swimming pool, cordoned with chain-link fence and
DO NOT ENTER
signs. The cement walls of the pool were lined with graffiti.

“Drive slower here.” Through the open car window, Martha caught the faint odor of tincture of jet fuel. There was a shed left behind in one yard, shrouded with vines. Next to it, a cloud of yellow jackets swarmed around a hollow in a poplar tree.

“Anywhere you want me to stop, let me know,” Jarrell said.

They came to an intersection of two wooded, deteriorated lanes. “Let's try here,” Martha said.

Jarrell curbed the Monte Carlo and killed the engine. They both stepped out and looked around.

Martha took the softball from the shoebox and held it in her hand. She felt its weight against her palm as she listened to the ever-present static in the radio station of her mind, the lunatic babble she'd become so adept at tuning out. Like a ham radio operator, she scanned for any meaningful signal.

She walked a few steps up a driveway that led to an empty cement foundation and paused. She closed her eyes and rolled the ball from one hand to the other. The noises she heard were like eavesdropping on a party: children's voices, adult voices, conversations, laughter, shouts, a canvas of sound, eerily distant. She tried to picture the two boys playing here, hiding among the trees and bushes. But no individual utterance jumped out or asserted itself.

“Hey, look down there,” Jarrell said. Martha opened her eyes and turned in the direction he was pointing. There was an overgrown lot down the cracked and weedy lane, where the metal tubes of playground structures rose out of the brush. They walked toward it.

The sky had grown darker, and a low, slow peal of thunder added its bass undertone to the whine of the jets passing overhead. At the end of the playground, the A-frame spires of a swing set stood, chains hanging loose. The seats were gone. Jarrell pushed a steel merry-go-round on its rusted bearings, and it made a tortured, metallic squeal.

Martha clasped the ball between her palms, closed her eyes again. She pictured Peavy as he appeared in the photo and in the dream. The echoes of children playing, but which children? “Where are you?” she whispered. Was Peavy's voice somewhere inside that din?

Martha turned in a slow circle, scanning the desolate lot. The slide, covered in vines; the stained and graffiti-covered benches; a tree with yellow-brown, autumnal leaves; the swing set. Martha paused, turned back. Something had registered in her vision—a glimpse so fleeting, she'd almost missed it. She repeated her slow half turn, surveying the same area of the playground, and paused when she saw it again—a tiny gleam in the branches of a sweet gum tree at the edge of the playground.

She picked her way toward the trees, stepping over brambles and sticks. She stood under the canopy and looked up.

“Jarrell…”

He came over to where she stood and followed her gaze. It was hanging from the stub of a branch, a few feet above them—a medallion, or a locket perhaps. Jarrell grabbed a low-lying limb, braced one sneakered foot against the trunk, and hoisted himself up. He snatched the medallion and dropped back to the ground.

It hung from a simple black leather thong and was made of silver metal with a series of silver points, each slightly hooked, encircling a disk of shiny black glass or stone. On the face of the disk, inlaid, were a pair of silver triangles, pointing inward.

“That's it…it's the symbol from the frottage,” Martha said. “The drawing that Peavy made.”

“I'll be damned.” Jarrell held the amulet aloft, turning it slowly in the overcast light.

“How could this have never been found? After all these years?”

Jarrell looked around. “I don't know. I don't think it's been there forever. There's no tarnish. It looks like someone put it there recently.”

Martha met his eyes. “For us to find?”

The sky rumbled and dots of water appeared on the shoulders of Jarrell's gray tank top.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” Jarrell said.

As they pulled into the parking lot of the Best Western on Forest Parkway, rain was coming down in sheets. Martha had Peavy's shoebox in her lap, and to its contents she had added the silver amulet.

“Who else have you told about the Peavy case and your plans to investigate?” Jarrell asked.

Martha traced back through her thoughts of the past few days. There was the old couple, but she hadn't told them of her plans to visit the site of Peavy's disappearance. Dr. Goodwin knew about the case, but she had no idea Martha had even left the island. “Just you and me, your roommate, and the people at that table last night.”

Jarrell shook his head. “I think someone knew you were going to be there. Someone who wanted to fuck around with us.”

“Do you think we should call the police?” Martha asked.

Jarrell stared at the rain rolling down the windshield of the Monte Carlo. “I don't know.”

“We could call that police lieutenant, now that I have his direct number.”

Jarrell grabbed the door handle. “Yeah, I think Somis is all right. Let's go inside and make the call.”

Upstairs, after they'd dried off with a couple of white towels that said
BEST WESTERN
in beige letters across the center, Jarrell dialed the number from the police lieutenant's card. “May I speak to Lieutenant Somis?” he said into his iPhone. He looked up at Martha. “They're putting me through to voicemail.”

Jarrell left a callback number, then tucked the business card into his pocket. He took the amulet from the shoebox and placed it on the room's small desk. He lifted it by the thong, careful to avoid touching the amulet itself.

“What are you doing?” Martha asked.

“I'm going to send him a photo.”

Jarrell took the picture with his phone, typed in the email from the business card, attached the photo, and sent it. Then he put the phone on the desk, tore a sheet of paper from the notepad, and folded the amulet inside it. He turned and looked at Martha. The rain had made his tank top nearly see-through.

“Jarrell, I'm scared. I'm worried about what I might have stirred up.”

She fought back a selfish impulse to put her arms around him, just to hold him for a moment and try to reassure herself that everything was going to be all right. Jarrell must have read her mind or her expression, because he stepped closer and gave her a hug. “Everything's going to be cool,” he said. “This could be a good thing. I don't see how they can help but reopen the case now and take a closer look.”

With their bodies pressed together, she could feel both of them responding. Martha looked up at him, and his eyes were like dark eddies, swirling, questioning. Then her hands were exploring his back and shoulders, the slightly damp, lovely contours, and he began to gently caress her back. Martha closed her eyes, and for a moment the hotel room was gone, her fear was gone.

The iPhone buzzed on the desk across from the bed. “I better get that,” Jarrell said, releasing her. “Maybe it's him.” Martha nodded, stepped back, adjusted her hair.

“Yes,” Jarrell said, holding the phone to his ear. “Thanks for calling back.” Then his eyes narrowed as he listened. “No, no one else here. Just Martha and me. We're in her hotel room.” Jarrell glanced at his wristwatch. “Sure, we can make it.” He ended the call.

“Was it the lieutenant?” Martha asked.

“Yeah. He said he wants us to meet him at Panola Mountain State Park at six
P.M.
”

As they pulled into the visitor center of the park, eighteen miles south of Atlanta, the rain had stopped, but a ceiling of clouds hung just above the pines and sycamores lining the roadside, making the hour seem later than it was. The visitor center was closing, and a couple of stragglers were getting into their cars and leaving.

Jarrell pulled into a spot and looked at his watch. “Not quite six,” he said, and rolled down his window with the hand crank. Martha followed suit, letting in the cool night air. She looked to her right, out the open car window, and saw a black Lexus parked one space over. The driver's side window was down, and Martha could see a man sitting in the driver's seat. The man was bald and unusually pale. His skin looked like the sheath of fat on a frozen rib roast. He turned his head directly toward her. He wore reflective aviator sunglasses, even though the sky was sunless.

“Jarrell,” Martha whispered, touching him on the knee. “Jarrell, look.”

“What is it?”

When she turned back to look at the man again, the tinted window on the Lexus was rising. “That man parked next to us, he…” The window closed and she heard the engine start. The Lexus began to back up.

“Yeah?” Jarrell asked.

Martha watched in the rearview mirror and saw the black car leave the parking lot.

“Nothing. I guess I'm just feeling a little paranoid.”

“Yeah, me too,” Jarrell said. “Let's get out and watch for Somis.”

They stepped out of the car and looked around. The parking lot was almost empty when a Subaru pulled into the circle. “That's probably him,” Jarrell said. “He told me he'd be driving a blue Forester.”

The SUV rolled up and Somis lowered the window.

“Hop in,” Somis said. The lieutenant was dressed in plain clothes—a flannel shirt and jeans.

“Where are we going?” Jarrell asked.

“Just someplace private, where we can talk.” Martha thought he looked even more haggard than the night before at the party—more drawn, the circles under his eyes deeper.

Martha took the front seat and Jarrell climbed into the back. They left the parking lot and followed a wooded surface street for a short distance. Then Somis pulled onto a dirt road. In another half mile they reached an embankment where the road overlooked a low field overgrown with kudzu. Behind the field was the beginning of a forest, and the kudzu vines had climbed to the highest reaches of the first stand of trees, enveloping them with potbelly swags and draperies of pea-green leaves. In the foreground stood the remains of a partially collapsed chicken house, also enshrouded by vines.

“Why here?” Jarrell asked.

“I just wanted to make sure no one was following us,” Somis said. He lowered his window and pulled a pack of Camel cigarettes from the pocket of his windbreaker. “Mind if I smoke?”

“No, it's fine,” Martha said.

“I know it's a nasty habit, but I wandered back into it over the past year. Probably because of stress. Right now I need the nicotine just to keep going. I've been averaging two hours of sleep per night this week.” He lit the Camel.