The Color of Blood (3 page)

Jessica Howard brought a tray with a pot of coffee, a jug of hot milk and two mugs to the table, and I joined her there. She offered me a cigarette, which I gladly accepted, poured coffee, which I took black, blew a fine jet of smoke toward the ceiling and smiled at me. I shifted in my seat and said, “Mrs. Howard—”

“Jessica. Call me Jessica. And I can call you Ed, can’t I?”

I said she could. Her blue eyes flickered, as if registering a victory, and I noticed how cold they were; the sex that animated every curve of her body didn’t seem to touch her soul.

“Well, Ed, did my husband manage to tell you anything of worth — in between banging on his desk and shouting his head off?”

“He gave me the basic outline,” I said, laying the photographs and the note on the table between us. She leafed through the shots, shaking her head and sighing heavily, but her dismay seemed more aesthetic than maternal.

“That hair is such a mistake,” she said. “Not to mention the tattoo and the piercings. Emily has a good body and fine features, but she seems determined to make the worst of herself. Still, if these photos do end up on the Internet, the consolation is, no one will ever recognize her.”

“Provided she reverts to being an orange-faced south county Dublin blonde,” I said. “Maybe she’s frightened no one will ever distinguish her either.”

“Not everyone can stand out from the crowd,” Jessica Howard said. “Now, what do you need from me? I have to show a house later this morning.”

“I thought you were an actress.”

“So did I. Not enough people agreed. Of course, when theatrical fashion swings toward the more
homely
type, one begins to feel foolish for having hung on to one’s looks. And sometimes, sleeping with all one’s directors can be as bad for one’s career as sleeping with none of them. But that’s the way it goes. And selling houses in the current market is like catching money in a bag — not a comparison one could ever make with working in the theater.”

She smiled and passed the photographs of her daughter back to me, taking care to brush her hand against mine as she did so. She licked her lips and widened her eyes in a “what are we going to do next?” kind of way. I tried not to take her flirting personally, but I was the only man in the room, and I was a man, and I still hadn’t had any gin.

“You don’t seem too anxious about what’s happened to your daughter, Mrs. Howard,” I said. Jessica Howard didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she came close.

“Do you know what’s
actually
happened to Emily?
I
don’t,” she said. “Shane wants to keep treating her like a child. She’s nineteen years old, for Christ’s sake. When I was nineteen, I was living in Paris with my boyfriend, I’d had an affair with a married man, an abortion, I’d taken cocaine, acid, heroin, I’d had any
number
of threesomes,” she boasted, gesturing dismissively toward the photographs of her daughter, as if they presented some kind of threat, as if mother and daughter were rivals. Maybe they were.

“And would you wish all of that for your daughter?” I said. My voice rang pinched and priggish in my ears, but I intended the reproof.

“What I’d wish for her is that she’d get out into the world and live. And it looks like, at last, that’s what she’s doing.”

“Your husband believes she’s being held against her will, that she was forced to have sex on camera — that’s abduction and rape, Mrs. Howard.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. I think this is some scheme the girl’s dreamt up to squeeze more money out of Shane. And to give him two fingers as well, let him know she’s not Daddy’s little girl anymore. That’s what I would do if I were she.”

“Why would Emily need to blackmail your husband? Surely he’s always given her whatever she wants?”

“Only as long as she does what he wants. That’s the Howard family motto: do what we want and we’ll tolerate you. The code of the Howards.”

She drew hard on her cigarette and exhaled in a long sigh of rancor and discontent.

“They wanted me to give up my career when we had Emily. Sandra, and the mother. Said it was unfair to the baby, and to Shane, who had his rugby and was building the surgery and needed support at home.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said Shane wouldn’t have married some
frau
whose only ambition was to raise his children and keep his house, and I had no intention of turning into one. In retrospect, I think that’s precisely what Shane did want. But he didn’t get it. His mother hated me. Always had, hated me even more then. Wouldn’t even come to see me onstage, not once in twelve years.”

“And the father was some kind of famous doctor?”

Jessica Howard rolled her eyes and said “Ye-ah” with two syllables, like a character in an American sitcom.

“Dr. John Howard. Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at UCD, Master of the Rotunda Maternity Hospital, Knight of Columbanus, senator, adviser to four successive ministers for health, the power behind the Howard Maternity Center, where the sons and daughters of the comfortable are born, the Howard Clinic, where they go for repairs, and the Howard Nursing Home, where they die. Famous enough for you?”

“Kind of.”

“It’s refreshing there’s someone who doesn’t know the Howard legend, chapter and verse.”

“I lived in L.A. for twenty years.”

“Well, if you didn’t know what a great man he was, you’d quickly learn: his children keep his memory alive like he was a saint; they practically light candles to him.”

“And Shane’s sister, Sandra, is she a doctor too? It tends to run in families.”

“A doctor? Sandra Howard was a
teacher,
” Jessica Howard said, using “teacher” in the sense of “failure.” Her voice had darkened, curdled with bitterness and smoke.

“She was deputy headmistress at Castlehill College. The youngest deputy headmistress in the country, no doubt you heard about that in L.A., her mother certainly regarded it as of international importance. Now she runs the whole medical setup, all the clinics and trusts and funds and chairs and so on. The keeper of the Howard flame.”

A foghorn sounded in the bay, harsh and prolonged. Jessica Howard looked out toward the gloom and shuddered. It was such a theatrical gesture that I almost laughed out loud, but something — a flash of rage, then a dark shadow in her cold eyes — made me stop. I didn’t know what the shadow meant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but it was no laughing matter. When she spoke again, it was in a completely different register, as if she had conceded her facade had been too brittle for the situation.

“I’m not an uncaring mother, or indifferent to my daughter’s safety. On the contrary — it’s because I care that I want her to break free, to gain her independence. I don’t want her in thrall to the Howards, you see.”

“You make them sound like a cult.”

“Sometimes I think they are. The confidence and security of believing you’re part of a natural elite, that your family has some great mission to accomplish, that you’re
entitled
, by reason of your birth — all that is pretty seductive. Certainly seduced me. The power, the prestige, the charm of the Howards. But the way they want to control people’s lives — it didn’t succeed with me, so now they’re trying with Emily.”

“When you say ‘they’—”

“Oh, the mother played her part before she died, but Sandra and Shane, mainly — they speak as one voice, usually Sandra’s. Don’t get me wrong, Sandra is in many ways a great lady, and she’s had her share of troubles: her first husband died, and she had to look after her awful mother on top of her own kids. It’s just weird when it feels like the man you married’s a stand-in for his sister. Eventually, it’s beyond weird.”

“So what are you saying, it was Sandra’s idea that Emily should do medicine, she’d be carrying on the family line, so to speak?”

“You pay attention, Ed. It’s rare in a man, almost unheard of in an Irishman. Yes, despite the fact neither of Sandra’s kids is going to be a doctor, the burden of family destiny came to rest on Emily’s shoulders.”

“Against her will?”

“I thought so. She seemed happy enough, but she always did. She liked to please, she was a dutiful daughter, that was the role she played. And now that’s exploded, hasn’t it? The center wouldn’t hold. I should have protected her. I should have been there more.”

She slumped in her chair, suddenly looking awkward and ungainly, like an adolescent herself, exhausted by the passions that surged through her without warning.

I shook my head.

“We don’t know. Maybe your daughter is as angry and resentful as you say. Maybe she engineered all of this. Or maybe she’s being held against her will. We need to find her, and find out from her what she wants.”

“If it means being returned to her father—”

“She’s nineteen years old, Mrs. Howard, as you pointed out. She’s free to go wherever she pleases. Is her father really such a monster?”

“No. No, of course not. I just think what Emily needs now more than anything is her independence—”

“And what do you mean, ‘returned to her father’? Do you not live together anymore?”

“I don’t know that that’s any of your business. But no, is the answer. We’re in the process of separating. Solicitors are drawing up papers. All that good stuff.”

So Denis Finnegan had more than one reason to be concerned about Jessica Howard’s highly spirited personality. I watched her now, talking into a mobile phone whose insistent ring had rescued her from any further interrogation. As she spoke, her shoulders eased back and her chin lifted, as if her relief at escaping the demands of her family was warming her blood. She closed the call and shook her hair back and moved her teeth against her pouting lips, like a Thoroughbred in the show ring.

“That’s work. I’ve another client who wants to view the house. I need to go now. Shane can take you through anything else you need.”

I looked at her, unable to conceal the astonishment I felt.

“What?” she said.

“You sure you’re not too busy to be bothered with all of this?” I said. “Your ex-husband-to-be passed me over to you because he wouldn’t keep his patients waiting; now you want me to go because you can’t postpone an appointment.”

“It’s work—”

“What are you, chasing the mortgage here, two houses on the top of Bayview Hill?” I said. “I’m being paid to find your daughter, so I have to take it seriously; it would be nice if her mother did as well. Maybe you’re right, she’s just letting off some steam, going through a wild phase to shock you all. But if she’s not — if she’s been kidnapped, and raped, and abused and degraded, and is trapped somewhere, frightened and alone — it would be nice when I find her if I could say with confidence that you’re worried about her; nice if you could promise to be here for her if she needs you.”

Jessica Howard reddened with anger and started to shout.

“How dare you? Who the hell do you think you are, that you can talk to me like that? I run my own business, it took me time and energy and goodwill to build up, I’ve worked bloody hard, I can’t just jeopardize it all for the sake of…”

Shock spread across her face as she realized what she had been about to say, hung there for seconds in the quivering O of her lips and the horrified stare of her eyes and the now all-too-visible lines in her brow, and then dispersed with the tears she began to shed.

“I need to see Emily’s room,” I said quickly. It was exhausting trying to keep up with her shifts in mood, and not a little unnerving. I needed some space to remember what her behavior reminded me of.

Through sobs, she directed me down the hall to the last door on the left. It looked like she was going to accompany me, and I was about to reassure her that there was no need when her phone rang again and she composed herself and wheeled about and headed toward the living room, laughing brightly, back in business.

Emily’s room hadn’t been painted black or scarlet; she didn’t have a pentagram on her floor or a coke spoon in her jewelry box; there were no whips in her underwear drawer, no vodka in her desk. But you could tell the occupant of the room was someone in the process of change. The furniture was antique French, white-stained with gilt trim; the bed was brass, the bedclothes plain white. A desk sat by a window with a sea view that would have been spectacular if you could have seen through the mist, which was deepening. On the desk was the outline in dust of a laptop computer and a white telephone without caller ID. There were lecture notes and textbooks in pathology, anatomy and microbiology; no diaries or personal notebooks. There was a CD player and a few CDs: Britney, Christina and a clutch of boy bands quaked before Deicide, Sepultura, Slayer and System of a Down. On the bookshelves, brightly colored chick lit squared off against the two Naomis, Wolf and Klein, and a handful of volumes by Alice Miller, the psychotherapist who reckons we’re all abused children one way or another, and it’s all our parents’ fault. There were dictionaries of mythology and phrase and fable, and several books about the supposed properties and applications of crystals. Her wardrobe and chest of drawers told the same story her father had: three-quarters of the clothes were preppy suburban, then suddenly there were red satin dresses, leather jackets, fishnet stockings, spike-heeled boots. In her jewelry box, there were little gold chains and charm bracelets and a few swimming medals; on her dressing table mirror hung an array of Gothic crosses, chains, beaded and jeweled necklaces and bracelets. I picked up a silver wristband that had greenish stones with red flecks. They looked like smaller versions of those I had seen set into the walls of the garden pond. Against the light, the red in each stone looked like veins in a tiny green skull.

Under the bed, I found a beautifully made dollhouse: it had castellations and a turret and a tower. The back doors opened to reveal the usual furniture and a random assortment of toy figures; neither side of the roof opened. The house stood on a broad wooden base; to the front there was a drive lined with plastic trees; at the rear there was a lawn sloping down to a circular pond; the perimeter of the pond was made of tiny pebbles glued together. A fine coat of dust clung to it like age; I guess it hadn’t been played with for a long time.