James Burke - Light of the World

“Your smile,” Alafair said.

From the moment Felicity Louviere stole Gretchen Horowitz’s cell phone, she knew that her life had changed and that she would never be the same again. She also knew that nothing from her past life could possibly prepare her for the ordeal that lay ahead. As she drove away from the health club, there was a well of fear in her breast that seemed to have no bottom. At the red light, she looked at the impassive faces of the drivers in other cars, as though these strangers, whom she never would have noticed under ordinary circumstances, might know an alternative to her situation and somehow remove her from the scorched ruins that her life had become.

Her hands were small and powerless and without sensation on the steering wheel. She felt that a poisonous vapor had invaded her chest and attacked her organs and that nothing short of death was worse than living in her current state of mind. She drove through town, barely aware of the traffic around her, going through a yellow light without seeing it, ending up in a park on the north side of Missoula, not sure how she got there.

She turned off her engine down by the creek, in the shade of trees, and didn’t pick up calls. The creek was as clear as glass and rippling over rocks that were orange and green and gray-blue, but she could take no pleasure in the pastoral quality of the scene. She had never felt more alone in her life, except on the day when she realized her father had abandoned her to seek martyrdom in a South American jungle. For the first time since she last saw him, she understood the burden he must have carried to his death. The guilt over the killing of the Indians by the men he worked with must have been so great, he could have no peace until he atoned for them and himself. He did this, she was sure, in order to be the father he wanted his daughter to have.

She had never thought about her father in that way. That he’d chosen to travel the path up to Golgotha’s summit on her account.

Gray spots, like motes of dust, were swimming before her eyes. She opened the windows to let fresh air in the car and was surprised at how cold the weather had turned, even though the equinox was at hand. She got out and saw snow flurries spinning in the sunlight, sparkling in the branches of the trees that lined the stream. Her stomach was sick, her skin clammy; she could not remember when she had felt this light-headed. When she closed her eyes, the earth seemed to tilt under her feet. Gretchen’s cell phone vibrated on the dashboard. She reached back in the car and looked at the screen. The call was blocked.

“Hello?” she said.

“Who’s this?” a man’s voice said.

“If you called for Gretchen Horowitz, she’s not available.”

“So I’ll talk to you. What’s your name?”

“Felicity Louviere.”

There was a pause. “Caspian Younger’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“This is a surprise.”

“You’re Asa Surrette?”

“Surrette is dead. Burned up in a big puff of smoke. That’s what the state police in Kansas say.”

“You were photographing me.”

“I’m casting a movie. You might be in it. Where’s Gretchen?”

“Gone away.”

“To a bar mitzvah?”

“I don’t know where she went.”

“The weather has taken quite a turn. The snow is falling on the creek while the sun is shining. It looks like cotton floating on the water, doesn’t it? Maybe the devil is beating his wife.”

She turned in a circle, her heart pounding. She saw no one. On the far side of the creek, an SUV was parked by a picnic shelter. No one seemed to be inside it. The SUV was either painted with primer or it was black and powdered with white dust. “Is the girl alive?” she said.

“Who?”

“The waitress.”

“Could be. I can check. Want me to do that and call you back?”

“I want to take her place.”

“You’re a bag of tricks, aren’t you?”

“I can see you,” she lied.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“If we get together, I might have to wash out your mouth with soap.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Of you? How silly.”

“You murdered my daughter. Are you afraid to look me in the face and admit that? Are you the frightened little man the authorities say you are?”

“The authorities? What are the authorities ? Stupid and uneducated people who would be on welfare if they didn’t have uniforms. Maybe you should watch what you say.”

Her knees felt weak. She sat down behind the steering wheel, the door open, the wind like a cold burn on her brow. She could hear herself breathing inside the confines of the car. “Is the girl hurt badly? What have you done to her?”

“Maybe I’m a kinder man than you think. Maybe I have a side that others don’t know about. You think you’re going to set me up?”

“I don’t want to live,” she said.

“Say that again.”

“You’ll be doing me a favor if you take my life. But you’re not up to it. You’re what they say you are.”

“What do they say?”

“You were in a foster home. There was a room where someone was kept locked up. Or where the children were forced to go when they were bad. What happened in that room? Were you sodomized? Did you have to kneel all night on grains of rice? Were you told you were unclean and unacceptable in the eyes of God? My mother was declared insane. Maybe I can understand what happened to you as a child.”

“Somebody put that on the Internet. It’s a lie. Those things never happened,” he said.

“Then why are you so afraid of me? Did you plan to kill me from afar?”

“Who says I was planning any such thing?”

“I think my husband paid you to kill my daughter. That means I was next.”

“Your husband does what I tell him. Don’t provoke me.” His voice sharpened. “Believe me, you do not want to provoke me, you little bitch.”

“I saw the pictures of the people you suffocated.”

“You want that for yourself? I can arrange it. I would love to do that for you.”

“I think you’re all talk. I think you’re scum. Call me back when you can speak in an intelligent manner.”

He was starting to shout when she closed the phone.

A moment later, she saw someone enter the SUV through the passenger side and drive away, scouring divots of grass out of the lawn, the exhaust trailing off like pieces of dirty string.

An hour later, at the Younger compound on the promontory above the Clark Fork, the cell phone Felicity had taken from Gretchen’s purse vibrated on top of her dresser. She picked it up and placed it to her ear. The French doors on the balcony were open, and she could see the pink and blue blooms on the hydrangeas by the carriage house. She thought of New Orleans and the Garden District and the way the tenderest of flowers opened in the shade, as though defying the coming of the night or the passing of the season. “Did you mean what you said?” the voice asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Wait on my instructions. Tell no one about our conversation. If you do, I’ll put Rhonda’s tit in a wringer and let you listen. You’ll never get those sounds out of your head. You still there?”

“Yes,” she said.

“We’ll see if you’re up to this. Have a nice day.”

After he hung up, Felicity sat down slowly in a chair, as though afraid that something inside her would break. Then she began to weep. When she looked up, her husband was standing in the doorway, blocking out the sunlight, his face veiled with shadow. He was eating a bowl of ice cream mixed with pineapple syrup and appeared to be savoring the cold before he swallowed each spoonful. “PMS time again?” he said. “That stands for ‘piss, moan, and snivel.’ ”