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Scary indeed. “So what should I do?”
“Depends. What do you want to happen?”
“I want to find out who killed that girl. I want to do right by her, if it’s possible.”
He nodded. “Wouldn’t have expected anything less. So just do what you always do: speak for the victim, tell the truth, and use your brain. Oh, yeah — watch your back from now on, too.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me, Supercop?”
“Hey, it’s all I’ve got for me, too. Seems to be working okay. So far.”
“Such a comfort. No wonder I wanted you with me.”
“Damn right. But wait, there’s more. I’m not just a comfort and a lifesaver; I’m also a primo evidence gatherer.” Art reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded handkerchief, which he handed to me.
“This hanky is primo evidence?”
“Shit, no, Sherlock. Look inside.”
I unfolded it. Tucked in the folds was a hank of human hair.
“Whose is it?”
“Fresh from the scalp of Sheriff Thomas Kitchings. Remember when I saved your skin back there? I had a pretty good grip on his curly locks while I was holding my gun to his head. Seemed like long as I was there, might as well bring a few strands home as a souvenir. You still got that former student working up at the Pentagon’s forensic lab?”
“Bob Gonzales? Yeah, but why?”
“Might be interesting to see if there’s any links with your cavewoman or the baby.”
“I say again, why? The sheriff just admitted he’s her cousin. And you already convinced me that he was too young to have fathered the baby.”
“Bill, this is Cooke County. Never say never. You never know what might turn up.”
“Whatever you say. You’re the primo criminalist. Thanks, by the way, for saving my skin back there.”
“Anytime. Except probably not for the next day or two. I’m still working that child abduction.”
“Any luck?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. We’re three weeks out without a trace, and we’ve been tailing the bastard for two-point-nine. Unless we’ve badly misjudged this slimebag, the kid’s been dead since the night he nabbed her. We’ve got the cadaver dogs searching for a body.”
I could think of nothing heartening to say.
The sky had clouded as the day wore on, but suddenly — just as we crossed the big bridge over the French Broad River — spokes of sunlight shot from behind a tower of cumulus. Against a purplish-black storm front to the west, the nearer clouds and the forested river banks glowed with such luminescence my heart tightened in my chest. “God’s light,” my mother had always called such displays.
I wasn’t at all sure I believed in God anymore. But I believed this: despite its pockets of darkness, the world can be a beautiful place.
CHAPTER 14
I’d been avoiding the calendar for weeks, but I couldn’t suppress the memory of the day that had finally crept up on me: September 27, the two-year anniversary of the day Kathleen had died. I’d ushered in the day promptly at midnight, during the first of many hours of fitful tossing. By daybreak I was nursing a screaming headache, and my hand shook as I poured my coffee. When the telephone shattered the silence of the kitchen, I jumped so much I sloshed out half the cup.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Dad, it’s Jeff.”
Jeff lived fifteen miles and a world away from the tree-lined sanctuary of Sequoyah Hills. He and his wife had just bought a sprawling new house in Farragut, a booming suburb far to the west on Kingston Pike. Having an anthropologist and a social scientist as parents had given him enough ivory tower experiences to last a lifetime, I suppose, for Jeff had majored in accounting at UT, quickly earned his CPA certification, and built a lucrative practice in less than a decade. His two boys, ages five and seven, were already enrolled in a soccer league, and Jeff’s wife, Jenny, meshed well with the other affluent soccer moms in Farragut. At thirty-two, my son was successful and happy. And I could hardly bear talking with him.
“Hi, Jeff. I need to keep it short — I’m about to be late for class.”
“It’s Saturday, Dad. Is UT scheduling classes on Saturday now?”
“I didn’t mean class. I meant an exhumation. I have to go exhume a body.”
“You okay? You sound…strange.”
“I’m okay.”
“Listen, I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking about you today.” I wished he hadn’t said that. “How you feeling — really? Don’t just say ‘fine,’ because you don’t sound so hot.”
“Gee, why could that be? Oh, now I remember — my wife died on this day a couple years ago.”
There was a momentary silence on the other end of the line. “I know, Dad. So did my mom.”
“Well, you seem to have had an easier time getting over it.” My tone was sharper than I meant it to be.
“What is that supposed to mean? Is that some kind of accusation?”
“No. Just an observation. You don’t seem to be especially grief-stricken.”
I heard a deep intake of breath, then a long, forced exhalation. “You are way over the line here. I loved Mom. A lot. And when she died, it hurt like hell; sometimes it still does. But you know what, Dad? I cried a lot, and then I faced the fact that she had died, and I decided to carry on with my life. You, on the other hand, seem determined to make some sort of crusade out of wallowing in your grief — you carry it like a cross, you wear it like a crown of thorns, some self-inflicted stigmata. And anybody who doesn’t get down there and wallow with you, you think their grief just isn’t quite up to the mark, s
o maybe their love for her didn’t measure up, either. And when you do that, Dad, you alienate yourself from the people who love you and wish you well and want you to be happy again.”
“I’ll be happy again when the time comes.”
“No, you won’t. Because you resist it. It’s like some perverse challenge to you — seeing how long you can milk your misery and loneliness.”
“And this conversation’s supposed to be cheering me up?”
“I didn’t start this; you did. Come on, Dad, admit it — you’re hiding from life. You bury yourself in your work, and you immerse yourself in your grief. And those two things are all you do anymore.”
“My work is very demanding.”
“So demanding you don’t have time to call or see your son and your grandkids? So demanding you don’t have time to go out to dinner? When’s the last time you had a sit-down dinner with a woman? Or with a man? With me, for that matter?”
“It’s hard to see you. It hurts.”
“And why is that, Dad?”
If I were telling the truth, I would have said to my son, “Because I blame us both for her death. I blame myself and I blame you, whose birth was so hard on her reproductive system.” But I was not telling the truth — I could not tell him that truth — so what I said was, “You remind me too much of her.”
“Why can’t you take some comfort in that — in the fact that a part of her lives on in me?” I didn’t even attempt an answer. “Hell, if you still can’t handle an evening with me, at least see somebody. Preferably a therapist, but anybody would be better than nobody. I bet you haven’t had a social engagement since the funeral.”
It was true, I hadn’t, but I didn’t want my son reminding me of it.
“Look, Jeff, I appreciate your concern for my social life, but I’m fine. I’m a grown-up, and I can manage that quite well on my own.” It was a transparent lie, so I blustered as I served it up.
