Greg Iles - Blood Memory

“I can help you with that,” I say softly.

“What?”

I nudge his hip with mine. “That.”

“How did you know?”

“I just do.”

He keeps staring at the ceiling. “Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know. Because you need it. You can kiss me if you want.”

He’s silent for a time. Then he says, “I don’t want to kiss you right now. Not like this. I can’t help the other. I’ve had a thing for you for a really long time, but I don’t want to be what other men have been to you.”

I squeeze his hand. “We don’t have to make love. I can just use my hand. Or…whatever.”

Michael pulls his hand out of mine, and I hear his breathing stop. Then he turns on his side and looks at me. I can barely make out his eyes in the dark. “I don’t want that,” he says. “Okay? That’s not the way this is supposed to happen. You may not know that, but you need to learn. Now, go to sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

I guess I know how he looks at me now. I suppose I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. I should probably feel regret. But I don’t. Here I lie, pregnant by a married man, sleeping next to the first nice guy I’ve come to know in a very long time.

And I feel nothing at all.

When you dream the same dream over and over, you begin to wonder whether, like a Hindu who has lived an immoral life, your punishment is to be reincarnated again and again in the same body, unable to rise up the chain of being until you learn the elusive lesson of your sin.

I’m back inside the rusted pickup truck, my grandfather behind the wheel. We’re rolling up the sloping hill of the old pasture. I hate the stink inside the truck. Sometimes a river breeze blows it out of the cab, but today the air hangs dead and still over the island, as though trapped under the overturned bowl of steel-gray clouds. My grandfather grits his teeth as he drives. He hasn’t spoken since we left the house. I might as well not be here. But I am. And soon we will crest the hill-crest it and sight the pond on the other side.

I don’t want to see the pond. I don’t want to see my father walk across the water like Jesus and pull open the bullet hole in his chest. I already know what he’s trying to tell me. I already know that I killed him. Why won’t he let me rest? If I could apologize to him, there might be some reason for this dream. But I can’t. I can’t speak at all.

“Goddamn rain,” Grandpapa mutters.

He downshifts and steps on the gas, and we trundle over the hill. The cows are waiting for us as they always are, their eyes glassy with indifference. Beyond them lies the pond, a perfect silver mirror reflecting only sky. To my right, the prize bull mounts the cow and begins lunging forward.

Grandpapa smiles.

Dreading the sight of my father in the water, I cover my eyes with my hands. But sooner or later I will have to look. I peer between my fingers and brace myself against the horror I know is to come.

But it doesn’t come. Today the pond is empty. My father isn’t floating on its surface, his arms splayed out like those of a man on a cross.

The perfect mirror remains undisturbed.

Grandpapa brakes as we roll toward the pond, then stops twenty yards from the water’s edge. I smell decay, rotting plants and fish. Where is my father? What’s happened to my dream? Even something terrible is more comforting than the unknown. I turn to Grandpapa to ask a question, but I don’t know what the question is. I couldn’t ask it anyway. Fear is clawing around in my chest like a trapped animal trying to get out.

A new smell cuts through the decay of the pond. Something man-made. It’s the tonic Grandpapa uses on his hair. Lucky Tiger.

“Goddamn rain,” he says again.

As I stare through the windshield, a curtain of rain sweeps across my field of vision like a great gray shadow, all the leaves trembling under its weight. In seconds the glassy surface of the pond is sizzling like water thrown into a hot skillet. Pearlie told me once that a person is like a raindrop, sent from heaven alone but destined to rejoin all the other drops at journey’s end. I can’t remember heaven, so I must have left it a long time ago…yet I still have such a long way to fall…

“All right, now,” Grandpapa says.

He reaches across the seat, takes hold of my knees, and turns me sideways like a man shifting a sack of seeds. When he moves toward me, I beseech him with my eyes. He hesitates like a man who has forgotten his car keys. Then he reaches under the seat, pulls out Lena the Leopardess, and shoves her into my hands. As I shut my eyes and press her soft fur against my cheek, a feeling like warm water spreads through my body. The rain sweeps over the truck as Grandpapa pushes me back on the seat, and the hard, percussive patter of raindrops on a tin roof fills my ears. When his big hands unsnap my jeans, I don’t feel them. When his leather belt creaks and jingles, I don’t hear it. Lena and I are a million miles away, padding through the jungle, listening to the endless music of the rain.

And it begins.

When I wake to sunlight streaming through Michael’s bedroom, I know.

Like Saul on the road to Damascus, the scales have been stripped from my eyes. My recurring dream was no dream at all, but a memory. A memory trying to come back to me any way it could. The business of my father walking on water was something grafted onto it, a different message from my subconscious, pointing me toward something I’ve yet to learn.

And today I will learn it.

Where Michael lay beside me in the bed, I find a note on the pillow with a house key lying on top of it. The note reads, Gone to work. Tried to wake you, but you wouldn’t budge. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to. Call me at the office when you wake up. Michael.

I take Michael’s phone off the bedside table and dial Sean’s cell number.

“Detective Sergeant Regan.”

“Tell me you got the autopsy report.”

“Cat, I moved heaven and earth to get that fucking thing, but it’s not to be had. John Kaiser’s sitting on it like national security depends on it. If you want that report, you’re going to have to ask Kaiser for it. I’m sorry, babe. I tried my best.”

I hesitate only a moment. “Give me Kaiser’s cell number.”

“Shit. Are you sure? The Bureau’s still looking for you.”

“If Kaiser really wanted to find me, I’d be in jail now.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

Sean reads out the number. I commit it to memory, then hang up and dial it.

Kaiser catches his breath when he hears my voice. “Do you have something for me?” he asks.

“No. I need something from you.”

“That’s not the answer I was looking for, Cat. The only reason you’re not in jail is because I thought you could help me solve this case.”

“I can. But it’s a quid pro quo situation. You help me with my problem, I’ll help you with yours.”

“Christ. What do you want now?”

If I seem too anxious to get the autopsy report, Kaiser might not give it to me. “Tell me where you are with the murders first. What about the saliva cultures? Any Streptococcus mutans growth yet?”

“Not yet. The pathologist thinks it’s still early, though, that we’ll see it by the thirty-six-hour point.”

“No, twenty-four hours is enough, if it’s there. The saliva in those wounds is either coming from someone without teeth, or someone taking penicillin with gentamicin. You haven’t found any victims’ relatives who fit that description?”

“We’ve got a couple of male relatives with dentures. I’m going at them hard, but they look clean to me.”

“Talk to their families. If they wear their dentures at all, they’re not the source. What about the antibiotic angle?”