Greg Iles - Blood Memory

Dr. Cage sets the sketchbook on his desk. “Well, there’s one answer for you. How Luke came by the necklace.”

“They threatened his life,” I say softly. “They really did.”

“Luke was a stubborn boy,” Dr. Cage says softly. “He tried a couple of times after the war to get an investigation started. He made some headway, but it never came to anything. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the intruder who killed him at Malmaison was sent by the men who wrote this letter.”

I wish he had been, I say silently.

Dr. Cage is watching me closely. “I can see there’s more to this than what you’ve told me. Maybe a lot more. I just hope I’ve helped you a little.”

Though there’s really nothing else he can do to help, I want to tell him more. His opinion has become important to me. “If I asked you whether you think Luke could have sexually abused me or not, what would you say?”

A deep sadness fills Tom Cage’s eyes. “I’d like to say no. I really would. But I’m too old a dog to be offering certainty on a subject like that. The human sex drive is a powerful thing. It dictates to us more than the other way around, often without our realizing it. Freud spent his life trying to understand it and fell far short. Luke was a good boy, but what he did in the dark of the night-or why he did it-I won’t pretend to know. Whatever he did probably had more to do with what was done to him as a child than anything else. And that I don’t know about.”

“You said you treated his parents.”

Dr. Cage turns up his hands. “They were good people, but they died young. I didn’t much care for the uncle who took Luke in. He was a redneck loudmouth who spent most of his time trying to get Social Security disability benefits he didn’t deserve. Of course, that doesn’t make him a child molester. He’s dead now. Lung cancer.”

As I pack my father’s things back into the bag, I say, “If I asked you the same question about my grandfather-whether you think he could have molested me-what would you say?”

Dr. Cage’s eyes lock onto mine with a curious intensity. “I’d have to give you the same answer I gave you about Luke. None of us really knows anybody, and when it comes to sex, anything is possible.”

When I don’t speak, Dr. Cage adds, “You’re looking down a deep, dark hole, Catherine. A lot darker hole than I thought when I walked in that door.” He glances at Michael. “At least you’ve got a good man helping you do it.”

He’s about to speak again when the door beside the couch opens, and a nurse walks in. The doctor’s face darkens. “I said I wasn’t to be disturbed.”

“I’m sorry,” says the nurse. “But Dale Thompson just slid his motorcycle down a hundred yards of pavement. He’s bleeding all over the waiting room.”

“Why didn’t he go to the emergency room?”

“He said you patched him up after his last wreck, and he wants you for this one. Looks like he needs about a hundred stitches, all told.”

Dr. Cage shakes his head. “He needs some sense knocked into him. Put him in the surgery. I’ll be right there.”

The doctor comes around his desk and takes me by the hand. “I’m going to be honest with you, Cat. I never liked your grandfather. I respected his skill, and his work for the city, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about Bill Kirkland. As for what you asked about, I can tell you this: the man’s nearly eighty years old, and he takes as much Viagra as any patient I treat. I know that because he gets it free from one of the drug reps. And so far as I know, he doesn’t see any women in town. But then I don’t know half of what goes on anymore. So, that’s not evidence of anything.”

As I get to my feet, Dr. Cage says, “How’s your aunt Ann? I used to treat her on and off for depression when she was mad at her shrinks.”

“She’s dead.”

Dr. Cage is visibly shaken. “Dead how?”

“Suicide. Last night.”

“Jesus Christ. I hate to hear that.”

“Did Ann ever mention anything to you about sexual abuse?”

He shakes his head. “She was obsessed with having a child, that’s what I remember most. And she had a real love-hate relationship with your grandfather. She depended on him for everything and hated herself for her dependence.”

“Do you know anything about the appendectomy she had on the island?”

Dr. Cage laughs. “Hell, I’ve heard Bill tell that story a dozen times. He acts like he did a heart transplant with nothing but a pocketknife and some rubbing alcohol.”

“Ann was ten when that happened. Do you think she could have been pregnant?”

Dr. Cage’s eyes narrow, but after a while he shakes his head. “No. In over forty years of practicing medicine, I’ve seen one pregnant eleven-year-old. Maybe two. God almighty, you are walking through the abyss, aren’t you?”

I nod. “It feels like it.”

He looks at Michael. “You take care of this girl. She’s tough, but she’s not as tough as she thinks she is.”

“I will.”

Dr. Cage shakes Michael’s hand, and then he’s gone.

“You still want to exhume your father’s body?” Michael asks.

“More than ever.”

He sighs and leads me toward the waiting room. There’s a trail of blood on the white tiles of the corridor, and a bloody footprint near the waiting room door. In an instant, I flash back to the bloody prints on my bedroom floor. The door ahead wavers in my vision, and my knees go weak. Michael braces my arm and leads me past the staring faces in the waiting room.

“I’m taking you to my office and running some tests,” he says.

I blink against the bright sunlight, crazy images flashing in the glare. My father’s tombstone…myself as a little girl putting Lena the Leopardess into his coffin…

“No. If I stop, I won’t be able to start again. We keep going.”

The Natchez City Cemetery is one of the most beautiful in the world, but today it brings me no peace. I’m driving my mother’s car down one of its narrow asphalt lanes, Mom in the seat beside me, looking as anxious as I’ve ever seen her. She has aged visibly since Ann’s death. Her skin is drawn and pale, and her eyes look cloudy.

“I don’t know why you want to come here,” she says quietly. “We’ll be here soon enough to bury Ann.”

“I want to see Daddy’s grave. I want our family to be together when I talk to you. The three of us.”

“What has gotten into you?” Her eyes stare through the windshield. “You’ve got the FBI searching for you. You’ve got Daddy and Pearlie in an uproar. Daddy’s got a very sensitive deal cooking to try and save the city, and he’s terrified you’re going to ruin it by causing all this trouble.”

I continue down the lane through a tunnel of oaks, rolling between long wrought-iron fences and mausoleums hidden among the trees. Our family plot lies in the old section of the cemetery, where the gnarled limbs of giant oaks reach to the ground and Spanish moss drapes everything in shadow.

“Do you visit Daddy’s grave very often?” I ask.

Mom doesn’t answer.

If Michael hadn’t stranded me at Mom’s shop-as I requested-I would never have gotten her to the cemetery. But by offering to drive her home, I got control of the car and-for now at least-her.

“Mom, have you taken a sedative?”

She cuts her eyes at me. “You’ve got a lot of nerve. You’ve been drinking your sedative every day of your life.”

“Yes, but I’m clean today. I have been for a week, believe it or not.”

Mom says nothing.

“I only ask because I’m curious. Did you take it on your own, or did Grandpapa give it to you?”

A huff of anger. “Where else would I get it?”