Greg Iles - Blood Memory

As we trundle over the crest of the hill, Grandpapa turns his head and watches his prize bull mount a cow. Pleasure lights his face. Why is he happy? Is he thinking of the money he’ll make from the calf to be conceived? Or does he just like watching the bull thrusting and heaving over the cow? How many times must I watch this same movie?

Ahead, the cows by the pond watch us with dumb indifference. Beyond them the water lies smooth as glass, except where my father floats facedown in it, his arms outspread like Jesus on the cross. I squeeze my hands into fists. I want to close my eyes, but my eyelids don’t work. Mute with fear, I point with my finger. Grandpapa squints at the clouds and shakes his head.

“Goddamn rain,” he mutters.

As we roll down toward the pond, my father gets to his feet and starts walking across its surface. My heart pounds so loudly I can hear it above the sound of the truck. Daddy holds out his arms to me, then begins unbuttoning his shirt. There’s dark hair on his chest. I pull at my grandfather’s shirtsleeve, but he’s mesmerized by the bull straining over the cow.

“Daddy, don’t!” I shout.

He pulls his shirt open. In the middle of his chest is the big sutured Y-incision. To the right of that, the hole where the bullet went in. He puts two fingers into the bullet hole and pulls it open. Again I cover my eyes with my hands, then peer between my fingers. Something is pouring out of the wound like blood, only it’s not blood.

It’s gray.

“Look, Kitty Cat,” he commands. “I want you to look.”

This time I obey.

The gray stuff isn’t liquid. It’s a bunch of pellets, plastic pellets, a stream of them pouring out of my daddy’s chest the way they poured out of my stuffed animals whenever I tore one open by accident. Louisiana Rice Creatures were really stuffed with rice in the beginning, but later they switched to plastic pellets. Cheaper, I guess. Or maybe the rice rotted after a while. The pellets pour endlessly out of my father’s wound, a hissing river of them hitting the water.

When Daddy is sure I know what they are, he pulls his chest open still wider. Then he reaches into his wound and pulls out a Rice Creature, like a vet delivering a colt from a troubled mare. It’s not just any Rice Creature, though. It’s my favorite: Lena the Leopardess. The one I put in Daddy’s coffin before he was buried, to keep him company in heaven.

I want to run to him and take Lena from his hands, but my door won’t open. As I stare, Daddy holds Lena up so I can see her belly. It’s messed up somehow. As he nears the edge of the pond, I see that Lena’s belly has a stitched Y-incision in it, just like Daddy’s chest. With his eyes on mine, he digs his fingers into the thread, rips it apart, then tears open Lena’s stomach.

I scream.

Bright red blood pours out of Lena’s chest, more blood than any doll could hold. Somehow I know it’s my daddy’s blood. He turns pale as I stare, then gray, and then his feet begin sinking. The water can’t hold him up anymore.

“Daddy!” I shriek. “Wait! I’m coming!”

He keeps sinking, his face sadder than I’ve ever seen it.

“I can save you, Daddy!”

I jerk as hard as I can on the truck’s door handle, but it won’t open. I bang my fists on the window until my knuckles split, but it does no good. Then someone with soft hands takes me by the wrists.

“Catherine? Wake up, Cat. It’s time to wake up.”

I open my eyes.

Hannah Goldman is leaning over my cot, holding me by the wrists. Dr. Goldman has the kindest eyes in the world.

“It’s Hannah,” she says. “Can you hear me, Cat?”

“Yes.” I smile for her, my best smile so she’ll know I’m okay. It’s easy to be okay with Hannah here, even if it is only a dream.

“I’ve come to speak to you about something important,” she says.

I nod understanding. “Of course. What is it?”

“Agent Kaiser asked me to come. I think that was wise of him.”

“He’s a wise man,” I agree. “A very wise man.”

Dr. Goldman looks almost as sad as my father. “Cat, you know I believe in honesty and frankness, but life always finds a way to test our beliefs. There’s no easy way to tell you this.”

I smile encouragement and pat her hand. “It’s okay. I’m strong. You know I can take it.”

“You are strong.” She smiles back. “You may be my strongest patient. What I have to tell you is this. Your aunt Ann is dead.”

My smile broadens. “No, she’s not. I talked to her today.”

“I know you did, dear. But that was yesterday afternoon. You’ve been sleeping for quite a while. And sometime last night, your aunt drove to DeSalle Island and killed herself by taking an overdose of morphine.”

My smile freezes on my face. It’s not Dr. Goldman’s somber voice or sad eyes that convince me. It’s the morphine. And the island.

Hannah Goldman is about fifty, with graying streaks in her hair and deep lines at the corners of her eyes. Her eyes are kind, but the intelligence behind them is ruthless. Sitting under Hannah’s gaze, you can feel like a child under the care of a loving mother or a lesser mammal being scrutinized by a scientist bent on dissection. Agent Kaiser was probably right to bring her here, but now that she’s broken the news to me about Ann, I want Kaiser. Psychiatry isn’t going to solve my current matrix of problems.

I sit up on my cot and set my stockinged feet on the carpeted floor. “Hannah, I appreciate you coming here to give me this news. But I need to ask Agent Kaiser some questions.”

“I’ll get him for you,” she says. “But I want you to promise me two things.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll let me sit in while you talk to him.”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll talk to me alone afterward.”

This I don’t especially want to do, but it would be rude not to agree. “All right.”

Left in the silence of the empty office, I enter a strange state where all the images in my mind spin wildly against each other. Foremost among them is my father bleeding plastic pellets from his chest, then Lena the Leopardess pouring blood from her torn belly. I don’t know what that dream meant, but I have to find out. And to do that, I need Lena in my hands again. Only she’s buried in my father’s coffin, in Natchez, two hundred miles away.

I have to get out of this building.

The sound of the door opening and John Kaiser’s voice merge into one startling mix: “Bam-Cat, what can I do for you?”

I stand and face him squarely. “I want the details of my aunt’s suicide.”

Kaiser glances at Dr. Goldman.

Hannah says, “You don’t have to treat her like she’s not in the room with us. Cat’s used to dealing with stress.”

He looks skeptical. “What do you want to know?”

“Does my mother know about it yet?”

“Yes. She’s enraged. She thinks Ann’s husband murdered her.”

“What?”

“Apparently your aunt was in the middle of a bad divorce. The husband wanted to keep her from getting any money. I talked to the guy. I don’t think he even knew where DeSalle Island was until I told him. It feels like a suicide to me.”

“Suicide,” I echo. “In some ways Ann was already dead. She had been for a long time.”

“What do you mean by that?” Kaiser asks, but Hannah is nodding.

“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want to know exactly where Ann was found, who found her, how she did it, whether she left a note, everything. Forget I’m related to her, okay?”

Kaiser leans against the closed door. “A woman named Louise Butler found her in a one-room building on DeSalle Island. I guess you know all about that island?”