Zero at the Bone (35 page)

If Sharb could make an acceptable picture from the puzzle pieces he had, she could just throw away those painful extra pieces. Why not? Like that snake in her parents’ bedroom, she could banish all the other memories right back under the rock of obscurity where they’d lived for thirty-one years.

She could wait until tomorrow and see what Sharb came up with on the pointman. That was the sensible approach. If he managed to identify the pointman and arrest him, then she could just leave it at that. She did not have to tell the other things to anybody, or even think about them.

Alonzo Stokes knew, but he would never talk, even if he died for his silence. Even if she died for it.

And anyway, all she had were bits and wisps of memory. Nothing solid. It was not up to her to do this.

She clenched her fists and felt knots of tension throughout her body. The problem was she couldn’t stand this incompleteness, this not knowing. It felt as if the story had germinated and was growing through her body like a bean stalk, pushing its way relentlessly up and out. It demanded closure.

And if this story was true, Anne Driscoll knew it all.

Katherine couldn’t wait any longer. She had to find out.

Now.

Tonight.

*   *   *

She opened her eyes and smiled at Sophie, who had let her needlepoint drop into her lap and was staring into space, her eyebrows squeezed together. Katherine shifted over on the bed a few inches and patted the space she’d made. “Sophie, let’s talk.”

Sophie rose and perched very gingerly on the edge of the bed, trying not to rock it. “So. Are you going to tell me all of it, or an abridged version?”

Katherine smiled. “I’m going to tell you everything I know. Some of it is going to be hard for you to hear. And some of it is going to be hard for me to tell.”

Sophie crossed her arms over her chest. “Go ahead. I can take it if you can.”

Katherine began with Cooper Driscoll’s misuse of foundation money. Step by step she led Sophie through the evidence. “So,” she summarized, “with the photos my father left, and with Max Friedlander’s records, and with the photos Vic took in Kerrville last night, it’s pretty conclusive that your father’s been looting the foundation for some time.”

Sophie sighed and let her head droop forward. She ran both plump white hands through her frizzy hair, then massaged the back of her neck. “Well, it doesn’t really surprise me. He’s been so desperate.” She glanced up at Katherine without lifting her head. “I suppose he was behind that mess at your father’s house, looking for the pictures?”

Katherine sighed and nodded.

Sophie closed her eyes. “And Belle. What are you going to do, Katherine?”

“I don’t know. Before I make up my mind, I’m going to ask Anne Driscoll what she wants done.”

Sophie lifted her head. “Yeah. I can see that. It’s her money. It’s really her decision. But with her, the family name and reputation is everything. I don’t think she’ll want you to go public with it. She’ll be mad. God, she’ll be mad.” She thought about it for a minute, then looked up. “My father may be a real sleaze, a money-grubber, a blow-hard, but I don’t believe he’s killed anyone.”

“No. I don’t think so either. I don’t think his swindle is related to the killings at all. Sharb thinks the murderer may be the son of a man who was killed at the zoo thirty-one years ago and that he’s doing it it for revenge.”

Sophie’s blue eyes rounded with interest. “Revenge for what?”

Katherine told her about the payments Lester Renfro had made to Dorothy Stranahan through Travis Hammond. She continued with Alonzo’s revelations yesterday and Sharb’s information that Donald Stranahan had been killed by a bushmaster.

Then Katherine took a deep breath and told her about the dream that was not a dream and how it felt to be locked in the room with the bushmasters. “Sophie, I’m not sure why, but it’s so liberating to discover that this terror of snakes comes from what happened that night. Now I have to know the rest of it.”

Sophie’s eyes were wet with empathy when she finished, which made Katherine’s eyes mist over. “So,” Katherine said, blotting her eyes with her hospital gown, “Sharb is waiting for a description of Donald Stranahan, Junior, from Belton. He’s sure it’ll turn out to be Vic, Wayne, Danny, or Harold Winters. And I agree with him. I think some old injustice is coming home to roost.”

Sophie looked stunned. “Oh, Katherine. I hope for your sake it’s not Vic.”

This was one thing Katherine was not prepared to discuss yet. “What time is it?” she asked.

Sophie glanced at her watch. “Almost ten.”

“Sophie, I need to talk to Anne Driscoll now. Tonight. I have this sense of urgency, that if I don’t do it now, I’ll never have another chance. It’ll be like what happened with my father. I can’t stand the uncertainty. Let’s drive over there now.”

Sophie’s mouth fell open. She snapped it shut. “No way. No damned way.”

“Please just hear me out. You heard the doctor say it all looked good and the treatment was complete.”

“Yes, ma’am. And I also heard him say you were to stay in the hospital, in bed, another few days to ensure a good recovery.”

“Yeah, but if you drove the car around to the front door, I’d hardly have to walk at all. There’s a cane in the closet so I wouldn’t have to put much weight on the leg. And if I wore your raincoat, I wouldn’t even have to get dressed.”

Sophie stood up and went back to her chair. She picked up her needlepoint. “No. It’s a dumb idea. You can go in a few days.” She sat down hard on the chair and studied her canvas.

“I have to go now. Please, Sophie. Just a half hour alone with her would do it. Then I can come back here and be a good patient. I’ll sleep and eat and make a good recovery. But I have to do this first. Please.”

Sophie pushed her needle in and jerked it through the canvas.

“Sophie,” Katherine pleaded, “we’ll be back here before they even miss us. Come on. Let’s just wait until the hall is empty and go.”

“Oh, there’s no problem getting out of here,” Sophie said, “but how do you plan to get past Janice Beechum?”

Katherine smiled. She’d hooked her. Her heart began to pound with excitement. “We’re resourceful. We can cook up a plan together. You know her, Sophie, and she wouldn’t be suspicious of you. Could you distract her somehow? Keep her downstairs. So I could slip upstairs. Maybe you could excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and leave a door unlocked for me?”

Sophie rubbed her chin for a minute. “Well, she’s a passionate needlepointer. She works at it in the kitchen at night. Maybe I could get her to show me a stitch or something and you could sneak up to Gram’s room.” She threw her canvas onto the floor and stood up. “Oh, God this is absurd, Katherine. We sound like kids at summer camp. We’re grown women. We can’t do this. If she sees you, she’ll call Daddy and he’ll be furious.”

Katherine looked her steadily in the eye. “Well, that would be just awful—to make Daddy mad.”

Sophie stared back angrily, then let her face relax into what was almost a smile. “Just awful,” she said. She walked to the small closet next to the bathroom and rummaged around in it. She pulled out a heavy aluminum cane and her wrinkled trench coat.

Katherine stifled a groan as she sat up and swung her legs off the side of the bed.

Sophie turned around and tossed her the coat. “I know I’m going to be sorry for this,” she said. “Hell, I’m already sorry.”

*   *   *

The pointman had been slumped down in his car watching the hospital for hours. His head was still hot with shame. “If it’s worth doing, sonny, it’s worth doing well,” his mother had always said. He should have taken the antivenin from the refrigerator and thrown it away. No. They would just have flown some in from Houston or Dallas. Snakes were too unreliable, insufficiently aggressive.

Sluggish creatures really.

From now on he’d use a more certain method. No more trusting to chance. He fingered the .45 automatic tucked into his belt, under his leather jacket. Enough fooling around. The remaining three he’d waste the way he knew best—efficiently, with a bullet to the brain.

At least he’d given her a good scare, a few nightmares, locked in there with the bushmasters. And her afraid of snakes anyway. He smiled thinking about it. She wasn’t going to die from the snakebite the way he’d planned, but at least she’d had a little taste of what it felt like.

It was important she should know how it felt. It was her family that had treated his daddy like some dead dog to put out with the garbage. He’d make her see how wrong that had been, make her admit it.

He couldn’t be bought off like his mother. No way. He was a man who carried out his threats. Not some little weasel who backed off when the going got tough.

And no little setback was going to stop him. No sirree. He was a force of nature. Like Brum.

“When you fall off a horse, sonny,” his mother had always said, “get right back on so you don’t lose your nerve.” Well, there wasn’t much chance he was going to lose his nerve. He was getting right back on.

He should do it right now. Just go up to her room and do it. If the cousin was still there, waste her, too. She was part of that family. It would serve her right, the fat bitch.

He pulled his lucky charm out from under his shirt and ran his fingers lightly over the flat head. He needed to calm down. He was a good worker. He wouldn’t fail. But he was hyped up from all the waiting. He needed to do something, to get rid of the tension.

He pulled the door handle and started to push the door open when he saw something that made him shrink back and slump down in the seat again.

Un-fucking-believable. There she was right now. Coming out the main door. What the hell! She was wearing a long raincoat and limping with a cane. How could she be out so soon? God, she must be tougher than she looked. Who would think it to look at her? Looks so hoity-toity and self-satisfied, but there she is. And there’s that cousin of hers picking her up. In a BMW. Look at that. You can see she hurts the way she gets into the car.

Hell, I wonder where they’re going.

When the BMW headed west on Fifteenth Street, he started the car and followed them, staying far enough behind so they wouldn’t notice. The BMW took MoPac north and exited on Windsor. When it turned right on Woodlawn, the pointman began to feel an excitement in his loins. God, they’re going to the old crone’s house. Sure they are. This is too good to be true. He could get two at the same time. What a break!

Then only one to go.

His work would be done.

His duty fulfilled.

21

IT was a blessing she hadn’t been able to get a shoe on her swollen left foot. Socks made for greater silence on the uncarpeted wood stairs. Leaning her weight on the banister, she climbed painfully, one step at a time, the cane stuck under her arm. Slow progress, but quiet. One slip and Janice Beechum in the kitchen would hear, even though the television was on and Sophie was fulfilling her part of the bargain by talking loud and steadily.

Before she was halfway up, her arms and shoulders shook with the strain. Each time she bent the left knee, a stab of hot pain shot through her leg, up into her hip and abdomen. She gritted her teeth and kept climbing. Thank heavens it was just one floor.

This was certainly not how she had fantasized her first visit to her grandmother—sneaking in at night dressed in a wrinkled trench coat and dirty socks. But she was going to meet Anne Driscoll, finally.

For better or worse.

At the top of the stairs, a tiny cloisonné lamp on a mahogany table lit the landing. Katherine stopped and leaned against the wall, panting and trembling. When she’d caught her breath, she turned right, and supporting her weight on the cane, hobbled along the hallway. First door on the right, Sophie had told her.

The door was open.

The large bedroom was dark except for the glow of a single night-light and the meager rays from the hall spilling across the hardwood floor. In the center of the room stood a hospital bed like the one Katherine had just gotten out of. A rolling tray-table next to it was covered with bottles and vials, a pitcher and some glasses.

At first Katherine thought the bed was empty. But when she looked again, she saw that a very thin body, covered only with a white sheet, lay there, so still it made Katherine hold her breath. As she stood in the doorway, she sent up the first prayer she’d said since she’d stopped going to Sunday school at age nine. Please don’t let her be dead. If I don’t get to talk to her, I’ll never know for sure. And please don’t let her be comatose. More than anything in the world I want to talk to her. Just a half hour of lucidity. That’s all I ask. It’s my history and I have a right to it.

She entered the room, one tiny step at a time, careful to make no sound that might be heard below. The room was overheated and smelled strongly of furniture polish. Leaning on her cane for support, she walked slowly toward the bed.

When she was about six feet away she caught the glint of light on an open eye, large and luminous. She stopped, suddenly panicky. What if she’s frightened and she screams? What if the shock brings on another stroke? In her haste to get here, she hadn’t thought it through.

Katherine raised her index finger to her lips and held it there as a plea for silence and calm.

The head on the pillow turned slowly in her direction until both eyes were visible in the glow of the night-light. There was no trace of fear or panic in the eyes; they studied her, fixed her, absorbed her into their depths. Then they narrowed slightly, as if displeased with something.

Keeping her finger to her lips, Katherine took one step forward. Then another. And another. Until she was looking down on the very alert, sharp-chinned face of an old woman. The left side of the woman’s mouth drooped slightly. Her thin white hair was drawn back tight into a hair net, and the skin was blotched and wrinkled, but Katherine recognized the straight, delicate nose and the large gray eyes. Just like her mother’s.