Greg Iles - Blood Memory

I jerk backward. Sean has kissed me, and the touch stunned me like an electric shock.

“Hey,” he says, worry in his face. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” I feel tears on my cheeks. “I don’t know . I have this feeling that everything’s connected, but I can’t see how.”

“What’s connected, babe?”

“Everything! All of it. The murders, me, Malik. Kaiser thinks so, too. He just doesn’t see any upside to telling me right now.”

“Come on, Cat. How could everything be connected?”

“How could it not ? A month ago, these murders begin. Then I start having panic attacks at the crime scenes, something that’s never happened to me before. The only connection between the victims is a psychiatrist I happened to know ten years ago, a shrink who hit on me. Then you make another connection between the victims. Vietnam. Who went to Vietnam? My father, Nathan Malik, and two of the victims. Maybe more of them. And they were there in the same year . What are the odds of that, Sean?”

“I’m no mathematician, but it’s not impossible. Coincidences like that happen all the time.”

His attempt to minimize the significance of these facts infuriates me. “My father was murdered, Sean. And I don’t know why.” I reach backward and touch the picture window. The cool hardness of the glass reassures me somehow. “I don’t remember anything about that night before seeing his body in the garden, but I found blood in my old bedroom. And I’m having nightmares. Recurring dreams and hallucinations. I’ve always had them, but now they’re getting worse. The fucking rain…it won’t stop. And what does Nathan Malik specialize in? Recovered memories.”

Sean is looking at me strangely. “What rain are you talking about? And you found blood where?”

I forgot he knows nothing about my visit to Natchez. “In the bedroom I grew up in. Old blood. I think it dates from the night my father died.”

“Cat…what the hell are you talking about? That was twenty years ago.”

“Twenty-three. I only found the blood by accident. When I went home the other day-Jesus, that was yesterday-a little girl spilled some luminol in my room. I think they’ve been lying to me all this time. My mother, our maid, my grandfather. For a while I was afraid my father had killed himself, but I don’t think that anymore. I think-”

Sean grips my shoulders tight enough to make me stop speaking. “You’ve got to calm down. I want to hear this, but you’re starting to fly. Can’t you feel it? You’re going too fast. You told me to tell you when you sound like your thoughts are racing. Well, I’m telling you.”

He’s right. My thoughts are racing, and I don’t want them to slow down. I’ve experienced amazing epiphanies during manic episodes. From that dizzying neurochemical height, the seemingly random details that confuse normal people form themselves into coherent patterns. I’m almost certain that if my brain kicks up to the next plateau, the connections among myself, Malik, his patients, and the dead men will leap into stark relief.

“I know what you’re thinking,” says Sean. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re thinking riding the high is worth the low that’ll follow the crash.”

He knows me well. Thank God there’s enough of my baseline identity left for me to hear him. In my present circumstances, the next crash could kill me.

“Tell me about Natchez,” he says. “What happened there?”

“I think I may have seen my father murdered, Sean.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The night he was killed, I stopped speaking.”

“That sounds normal enough.”

“For a year?”

His cheek twitches as though from the effort of trying to look calm. “Okay, maybe not so normal.”

“And after talking to Malik today, I’m thinking maybe I was so traumatized by what I saw that night that I became dissociated. That the truth about his death is locked inside my head somewhere, but I can’t reach it.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to talk to Malik again.”

Sean blinks in disbelief. “Jesus, Cat. The guy’s going to be in jail soon.”

“I don’t care. I think he knows something about me.”

“What could he know about you?”

“The reason my father died.”

“You told me your dad was killed by a prowler. And your nightmares are consistent with that. Faceless men breaking in and hunting you through your house?”

“What if they’re also consistent with something else?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe his death had something to do with Vietnam. Our maid thinks one of my dad’s friends came looking for drugs, and they argued. But what if it was about something else dating back to the war?”

“Like what? The Vietnam War ended thirty years ago.”

“Yes, but it hadn’t even been over for ten years when my dad was killed. And I really don’t know what he did there.”

Sean clearly wants to help me, but he has no idea what to do. We’ve been in similar situations before.

“Listen,” I tell him, not at all sure I should confess this. “I didn’t tell Kaiser this, but I have the feeling I’ve met Malik before.”

Sean looks confused. “You have met him before. At University Medical Center.”

“No, somewhere else. Or some other way.”

“Shit. What way?”

“That’s what I want to ask Malik.”

“You’re freaking me out, Cat. The guy did act like he knew things about you. Is Kaiser right? Could you have had more contact with Malik than you think, but blocked it out somehow?”

I turn up my palms in frustration.

“Cat?”

“I want to go to bed. Right now.”

“To make love, you mean?”

“No. To sleep.”

Sean closes his eyes, then opens them and gives me a long-suffering smile. “Okay. Let’s get you tucked in.”

After managing a smile of gratitude, I walk past him and down the stairs to my bedroom. I want to fall into bed, but my hygiene ritual is one of the things that holds me together. I manage to finish most of it, but my skin lotion will have to wait until tomorrow. As I climb under the covers, Sean comes in and sits on the edge of the bed in the least threatening position possible.

“Feel better?” he asks.

“No. What are we going to do?”

“About what we were just talking about?”

I shake my head. “About us.”

He gives me what he must think is a brave smile. “I don’t know, Cat. Now that Kaiser knows about us…there’s no telling what kind of stories will spread.”

“Can you leave them, Sean? Just tell me the truth. Can you leave your wife and children to be with me?”

He takes a deep breath and slowly blows it out. “I can. I can give up everything to be with you.”

I see in his eyes that it’s true. “But do you want to? Is it the best thing?”

“Best for who? For me? Yes. For the kids? I can’t say that. It might be the worst thing that ever happens to them. It might ruin their lives.”

I close my eyes. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s life. But I don’t want to lose mine, either. “You’ve got three days to decide. After that, you’re either all the way in my life, or all the way out.”

Sean has witnessed terrible things in his life, but those quiet words seem to have put him into shock.

“I’m pregnant, Sean. I can’t wait anymore. I have to live a real life.”

He nods slowly. He gets it. “Can you sleep?”

“I’d sleep better if you were here.”

“I can stay.”

“How long?”

“It’s still afternoon. Five or six hours, maybe. Unless the killer hits again. Then I’ll have to go.”