Greg Iles - Blood Memory

I feel like I’m standing on the ledge of a skyscraper in a high wind. “Which is that?”

“Father and daughter. Old Leviticus skimmed right over that one. Because he knew the reality of life.”

“Which is?”

My grandfather’s eyes shine with the conviction of a zealot. “You came from my loins, Catherine. Your mother and Ann, too. You are the issue of my blood . You were mine. To do with as I saw fit.”

He walks to the gun safe, quickly spins the dial, and opens the heavy door. From it he takes a rifle, which he calmly loads with a cartridge from a box on the shelf. As he walks toward me, I recognize the Remington 700 that killed my father.

“It’s still true,” he says, his eyes locked on mine. “You’re still mine.”

He works the bolt and chambers the round. “What if this gun were to go off?” He brings the barrel within a foot of my face. “What if it blew your brains all over the wall? What do you think would happen?”

“You’d be convicted of murder.”

He smiles. “Would I? I think not. A woman with your psychiatric history? Documented bipolar disorder, unstable past, threats of suicide? No. If I really considered you a threat, you wouldn’t leave this room. But you’re not a threat. Are you, Catherine?”

I should back down. Show submission. Live to fight another day. But I can’t. I’ve done it all my life for him, and I won’t do it anymore. “Oh, I’m a threat. I’m going to make sure you die in prison. And you should know this: if you kill me now-or before I get back to New Orleans-someone’s going to do the same to you.”

He looks more interested than afraid. “You mean Detective Regan?”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

There’s a hint of humor in his eyes. “Catherine, do you honestly believe I don’t know who you see down there? I own Sean Regan. Do you think he would kill me in revenge when that would result in photographs of the two of you rutting like animals being sent to his wife and children?”

No…he wouldn’t.

“If this Malik film you spoke of really exists, you’d do well to get it for me or destroy it. I’d hate to give you something to really be depressed about.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Life’s little tragedies.” He smiles again. “You hate me for being this way, but one day you’ll thank God that you have my blood flowing through your veins. My genes determining your fate.”

When my voice finally emerges, it’s utterly devoid of emotion. “You’re wrong. I wish I’d never been born. You don’t know this…but I’m pregnant. And for the first time since I found out, I’m wondering whether I should bring that child into this world. I feel contaminated. Like I can never wash your poison out of me.”

He lowers the rifle and steps closer, his eyes glowing. “You’re pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Boy or girl?”

“I have no idea.”

He reaches for my arm. I jerk backward.

“Take it easy, girl. Who’s the father?”

“You’ll never know.”

“Don’t be that way. You’ll come around. You’ve got more of me in you than you think.”

“What do you mean?”

A knowing smile now. A man hoarding a secret. “I could be your father, Catherine. Do you realize that?”

With these words, what’s left of my composure crumbles. My very being is unraveling into nothingness. My grandfather’s face is red, the way it gets when he’s stalking game on the island.

“Luke spent all his time on the island,” he says, “chasing that nigger girl, Louise. And your mother just lay sleeping in her room here, half-looped on Luke’s medicine.” He nods slowly. “You see now?”

The triumph in his face is absolute. It’s the triumph of the hunter standing over his dying prey. He’s shoved the steel into my heart and broken off the handle. He revels in the pain in my face, just as he must have all those years ago. The savage joy in his eyes brings me back to the world, and in returning, I feel a horror I never thought imaginable.

“Is that true?” I ask in a small voice.

He shrugs. “It’s certainly something to think about while you’re making plans to talk to the district attorney.”

I’m backing away from him, reaching blindly for the doorknob.

“And if you’re thinking of Pearlie testifying to anything, forget it. She’ll never do it.”

My hand closes around the brass knob. “Why not?”

“Because she knows the order of things. You might get her stirred up with a lot of nonsense, but in the end she won’t say a word against me. Pearlie knows her place, Cat. Same as the niggers on the island. Your ancestors taught them well, and I’ve reinforced the lesson.” He goes to the sideboard and pours some Scotch into a glass. “You know your place, too, honey. Deep down, you do.”

I drop my shaking hand from the knob, then raise it and point a quivering finger at him. “No. You were too strong for me when I was a baby. But not anymore.”

With a bemused look on his face, he drinks off the Scotch and wipes his mouth on his cuff.

I pull open the door, stumble through it, then run down the hallway toward the kitchen. I don’t know where I’m going, only that I have to get away from this house. Sean expects me in New Orleans, but it’s hard to imagine functioning in any normal capacity. Simple linear thought seems beyond me now.

I crash through the kitchen door and race through the rose garden, toward the parking lot behind the slave quarters. Mom’s Maxima is parked where I left it, a few yards away from the Lincoln and the Cadillac. As I near the cars, I hear a muted banging. Then the passenger door of Pearlie’s Cadillac opens, and Billy Neal climbs out. There’s a pistol in his hand. He aims the barrel at a spot between my breasts.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he says. “Let’s take a ride.”

“What’s that noise?”

With a gleeful smile, he opens the trunk of the Cadillac. “Come see.”

I walk to the back of the car.

Pearlie lies bound in the trunk, her hands and face covered with blood. Her wig is gone. A grayish white fuzz covers her narrow skull, which is wedged against the spare tire. I’ve never seen her eyes so filled with terror. As I reach down to help her, Billy’s gun pokes the ribs under my left arm. He slams the trunk shut, then shoves me toward the driver’s seat.

“You’re driving,” he says, pushing me behind the wheel.

“Did you shoot her?”

“Don’t worry about that old bitch. Worry about the driving.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think?” He grins so broadly that it makes my cheeks hurt. “The island.”

My last ride to the island is both dream and nightmare.

Highway 61.

A narrow, winding strip of asphalt following the Mississippi River.

Mythical American highway.

Escape route for northbound refugees, most of them black, fleeing a place that held no hope but where their hearts remained nonetheless, yearning for the body’s return. I tried to use this highway as an escape route, too, only I never got away. For thirty-one years I’ve driven up and down this road between two lovely, sleepy cities, but always the island lay between them, a dreamworld shrouded in fog and memory, waiting like an empty stage for my life’s final act.

Today it will be played out.

The messenger of my fate is Billy Neal.

It seems wrong, somehow. I never really knew this man. This black-haired, pale-skinned, dime-store-handsome Vegas punk with snakeskin boots and a night-school law degree. What the hell is he doing in my life? Obligingly, he answers me without being asked.