The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (28 page)

He turned. Laney was framed in the archway, silhouetted by the kitchen light.
“He’s gone.”
But not far. Never far.
It took him two tries to lock the safety on the Sig Sauer. His fingers were carved out of wood. His legs were heavy. Numb. “He said that we have to get him the necklace. That he would come after Robert if we don’t, and others. I should have—there was a second there, where I could have—why didn’t I shoot him?”
“Stop.” Laney stepped forward, wrapped her arms around him. He stiffened. Didn’t want to be touched, didn’t want comfort. Didn’t deserve it. A beautiful person, a beautiful friend, gone. Her last moments horror. Because of him.
The sob took him by surprise, seemed to break from somewhere deep inside. Laney reached up to stroke his neck. He struggled. “Let me—”
“Stop, baby.” She seemed to be wrapping her whole self around him. “Stop.”
He squeezed his eyes closed hard enough to see stars and spots. They almost blurred out the vision of Sophie. His body shook, his chest heaved. The sounds he made weren’t quite crying. More like grunting, an animal sound. No tears came. Just ragged heaves of pain.
“Shhh. Shhh.” She pressed against him, primal in her comfort.
He didn’t know how long they stood like that, while the world outside darkened and the pistol he hadn’t fired dug into his belly and Sophie . . .
Finally, he took a deep breath. Patted Laney’s back. He pulled away, and this time she let him.
Daniel rolled his shoulders, shook his head. He had a flash of Sophie in her kitchen, washing the coffee mugs, talking over her shoulder. The ease of that moment, the familiarity. She had been the first person to touch him. The hug she had given him this morning—
my god, only this morning?
—had brought him back from the dead.
He took a deep breath, then opened his cell phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“911.”
“What?”
Daniel pressed send, raised the phone to his ear, turned to look out the window.
Be calm, but specific. Give them the address. Tell them there’s been a murder—
His hand was yanked away from his ear. He spun, surprised, but Laney had a grip on the phone, managed to tug it free. Immediately she snapped it shut. He stared at her. “What the hell?”
“Let’s just think for a minute, okay?”
“Think about what? Sophie’s dead. He killed her. Tortured her. We have to call the police.”
“And tell them what? That we broke into her house and found her dead? How’s that going to look? They already believe you’re a killer.”
“Yeah, but
I’m not
, remember? And why would either of us hurt Sophie or her boyfriend?”
Laney shook her head, slipped his phone into her pocket. “No police, baby. We can’t.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Just raised her hands and ran them through her hair. “It won’t solve anything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said he threatened Robert, right?”
“Yeah, but . . .” Daniel spread his hands. “Look, it’s different than before.
He killed Sophie
. And her boyfriend. The police will go after him now. And if we tell them everything, there’s no reason for him to hurt Robert.”
“What if he doesn’t need a reason?”
“So we’ll have Robert come with us. He’ll be safe while we—”
“Listen to me.” She stepped forward, took his hands in hers. Her gaze was steady, those hypnotic blue eyes locked on his. “We can’t go to the police.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. I know why you want to call them, I do, and I wish we could, but we can’t.”
“Why—”
“I know how confusing this must all be. I can’t imagine how scared you are. I’m scared, and I
do
remember my life. But we can’t go to the police.”
He opened his mouth to argue. Yes, things looked bad, but who would really believe they would murder Sophie?
On the other hand, what did going to the police accomplish? There still wasn’t much to point them to Bennett. The man was careful, would surely have worn gloves, collected his spent bullet casings. Besides, even if by some miracle the police did catch him, it would lead only to a trial and—maybe—jail. What kind of end was that? A cage wasn’t enough. He wanted Bennett dead. Dead for all the things he’d done to Laney before they even met, and for every obscenity he’d wreaked on their lives since, and most especially for Sophie. Daniel was a writer, and he believed in the justice of a story, and the only ending that fit was Bennett’s death.
But before he could say a word, before he could argue with Laney or agree with her, a terrible thought flashed across his mind. What if she didn’t want him to go to the police, not because of what Bennett would do, but for some other reason?
What if there was more going on here than he knew?
“Please, baby. I love you. And I need you.” His wife stared up with eyes wide and soft. Her hands were warm against his. He could smell a hint of citrus, her shampoo, and it smelled wonderful. “Can you trust me?”
I don’t know.
God help me.
I don’t know.

This close to LAX, every 747 on a westbound approach was a streak of white he could almost touch. Each started with a subsonic tingle in Daniel’s deep belly, then a rumble that became a roar, and out the window the plane would to come to ground like a long aluminum duck, landing lights bright, the blur of superheated air through the engines making the moon wobble.

Eleven o’clock in another shitty motel, one of those long-stay places for C-list businessmen. The “kitchen” was a microwave atop a mini-fridge. The flowered bedspread wilted. A stink of cigarettes rose from the sofa. Out the window was a parking lot hemmed in by the 405. A steady stream of head- and taillights rolled in each direction, people with places to go, safe warm homes waiting for them. On the other side was a billboard for a movie,
Die Today
, with a glowering actor pointing a gun at him.

He was Sophie’s client.
Daniel raised the disposable plastic cup, took another swallow of bourbon.
“It’s not your fault,” Laney said from behind him, as if she could read his mind.
He didn’t respond. She had taken his silence as guilt over Sophie, and of course, she was right—
blood on your hands, Daniel; blood on your soul
—but the truth was more complicated. His head was a tangle of contradictory thoughts, of half-formed plans and animal urges. Of white-hot hate for a man he barely knew. Of fear of the police, and of Bennett, and of whatever fresh horror tomorrow might bring.
But worst of all, the terrible question. Could he trust her?
If he couldn’t, he was lost. She was the home he had brought himself back to. She was the keeper of their mutual story, the only person in the world who truly knew what they had been to each other. Until his memory came back—if it did—the only truth was the one she told.
Besides, what reason did he have to think he couldn’t? Just the fact that she didn’t want to go to the police. Even if he didn’t fully agree with her thinking, it was a big leap to deceit. To read too deep into her hesitation was like walking into a party just as people started laughing, and assuming the laughter was aimed at him. There was no evidence.
It’s more than that, you asshole. She so haunted you that before you knew your name, you knew to look for her. She hates violence, but when she thought you were in danger she grabbed a gun and chased a murderer. Her feet are always cold and your chin snugs perfectly into the curve of her shoulder and she moves her lips when she’s reading a script and, in short, you love her.
So stop it. Stop letting exhaustion and fear make you paranoid. You are who you choose to be.
Tired. He was so tired. He took another sip of bourbon.
“Won’t you talk to me?”
He turned, leaned against the window. Laney sat on the edge of the bed, hands between her knees. Her face was pale and drawn.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you. I’m just thinking.” He shook his head. “I still can’t remember her. You’d think that would have made it hurt less.”
“Why? You loved her. Like I said, there are things we do that we can’t change. Love is one of them.”
“Is it?” Yes, he realized. It was. What had he said earlier?
Memories are stories we tell ourselves to explain how we got where we are.
“I guess you’re right. I just . . . I owe it to her to remember her, and I don’t.”
Laney was silent for a moment. Then she leaned back on her elbows. “Do you remember Bernie?”
He shook his head.
“A couple of years ago Sophie was working in her garden, and this puppy came up to her. She didn’t like dogs. Something had happened to her as a kid, I think. Anyway, she shooed him away. Five minutes later, there he is again. Just sitting there. She chased him off again; five minutes later he’s back. That’s why she started calling him Bernie—same as her ex-husband, he was hard to get rid of. He was a husky. He was going to be huge, you could just tell, and he had this enormously fluffy white coat. I mean, he was supposed to be pulling sleds in Alaska, you know? And here he was roasting in Los Angeles.” Laney shook her head.
“Anyway, Sophie finishes, goes inside, makes herself a sandwich. Only, Bernie just climbs up on her porch and flops down in the shade. And Sophie being Sophie, even though she doesn’t like dogs, she goes back out, looks more closely. He doesn’t have a collar on. And he’s got scars, places where the fur is missing or lopsided. He’d been mistreated, or maybe just had to fight, but she can’t let that go. So she opens the door, gives him water and the rest of her sandwich. Lets him fall asleep on her couch.”
“She adopted him?”
Laney laughed. “No, she posted signs looking for his owner. Called her neighbors. But nobody knew the story. He’s a stray. He could be dangerous. They have children. People tell her to call the pound.”
Daniel thought he saw where it was going. “But she won’t. She may not like dogs, but she likes strays.”
“Uh-huh. She couldn’t stand to imagine him rotting in a cage, waiting to be put down. So she puts an ad in the paper. ‘Puppy looking for good home.’ ”
“That’s nice.”
“I’m not finished. She gets all kinds of calls. But somehow she can’t do it, won’t go through with it. Something about just passing him off, it bugged her. So she puts another ad in the paper. ‘Purebred husky, smart, loyal, four hundred dollars.’ ”
“She
sold
him?”
“Only after she’d gotten three people interested, played them against each other, and raised the price to six hundred.”
In spite of everything, Daniel laughed. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. See, the way Sophie looked at things, if she’d given him away, he would always be a stray. This way he was something special. Plus she used the money to throw a dinner party. BernieFest.”
Daniel smiled, rubbed his eyes. His belly ticked with the approach of another plane. He thought of sitting at Sophie’s table, sipping coffee. Of the way she wouldn’t let him talk. Those photos on the wall, her life in pictures. None of those versions of her earlier self could have imagined what was to come for her. The plane roared overhead.
“Stop it,” she said.
“Huh?” He looked up, surprised.
“You’re blaming yourself.”
“How did you—”
“Because I know you. You’re sitting there thinking it’s your fault.”
“It
is
my fault.”
“No, you egotistical ass. It’s not. You didn’t hurt her. Bennett did. You didn’t kill her. Bennett did.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And if I really had gone over that cliff, that wouldn’t have been your fault either. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. Bennett came for me, not you.”
“Yeah—”
“But maybe that’s not far enough back. Maybe the jerks I was with in high school are to blame, for making me think that was how boys treated girls. Maybe Marlon Brando is to blame, for teaching girls to like guys who ride motorcycles. Maybe my parents are to blame for conceiving me.”
“Come on. I came up with that stupid plan that got her killed.”
“No. You called her and told her to run. It’s not your fault that he found her. And you still don’t get Bennett. He was going to kill her regardless. That’s how he stays alive. No one knows anything about him. He doesn’t trust anyone. It’s just Bennett, self-contained and all alone. Sophie knew too much.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“How soon after you left the pier did your cell phone ring?”
“I don’t know, maybe two minutes—” He caught her line of thinking.
“You see? She was already gone.” Laney leaned forward. “You’re a good man and a smart guy. But just because you see life as scenes in a story doesn’t mean you’re responsible for how everything works out. You don’t write the goddamn world.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
She slid back on the bed, patted a space beside her. “Come here.”
Daniel set his cup on the windowsill, walked across the room. He kicked off his shoes, then lay down beside her. She leaned back, her head nestling in his chest, her arm across him. His nose was buried in her hair, and he could smell her skin, the clean scent of soap from her bubble bath. She yawned, burrowed closer. They lay still. It should have been wonderful, a sanctuary. Everything he thought he had lost, returned to him. But his brain wouldn’t let him enjoy it. When he closed his eyes, he saw Sophie’s face. When he opened them again, the bare drop ceiling stared hopelessly back.
Into his chest, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Daniel stroked her hair, a gesture so familiar he knew he must have done it a thousand times.
“Everything. All of this.”
“It’s not . . . You didn’t know. You were a kid. He’s to blame, not you.”
“I know. But still.” Her head rose and fell with his breath. “What do we do now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If we can figure out where the necklace is—”
“No.” He cracked the word. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we can’t go to the police. But I’m not paying him. Not after what he did to her.”
“But if we don’t, he’ll keep hurting people.”
She was right. They were trapped. Every road led to hell. The only question was how direct a route.
His eyes were dry and raw, and his head throbbed with every beat of his heart. His whole self ached. To have lost and gained and stand poised to lose so much again, all in the space of such a short time. To discover that the distant past could shatter the present. A mistake Laney had made before Daniel had even met her. Before they had started to forge all the memories he had since lost.
Outside the windows, the traffic moved down the freeway, steady and implacable as waves on a beach. A rap star pretending to be an actor pretending to be a gangster aimed false menace down from a bright billboard, while real evil lurked in the shadows, only attacking where they were weak. His own past played hide-andseek, while their future raced toward them like an express train off
the rails.
It’s not about who you were, or what you can remember. It’s
about who you
are
. Who you choose to be, and what you decide
to do.
“I’m scared,” she said, in a voice so soft it tore through him. “Me too. But sleep now. We’ll figure it out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
He stroked her hair until he heard her breath steady and her
muscles relax. Then he slipped his arm free, took the gun out. His
fingers tapped the grip as he stared at the ceiling.
How did you beat a man who anticipated your every move? Who
would never face you directly? A man who survived by being invisible, who had no weaknesses to lean on, and so was free to lean on
yours?
And especially, how did an actress and a writer do it? He thought
back to Laney’s rebuke, telling him that he didn’t write the world.
The words had been meant as a comfort, but now they stung. If he
did, he knew the ending he’d write for that fucker.
They couldn’t get help. They couldn’t pay him off. They couldn’t
run and hide.
What does that leave?