Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

Tate had nodded to himself, folded the note slowly and walked downstairs, then outside.

He remembered hearing a Loretta Lynn song playing on the stereo.

He remembered hearing the rustling of the hot wind over the brown grass and sedge, stirring pumpkin vines and the refuse of the corn harvest.

He remembered watching the arc of Bett’s narrow arm as she reached for an orange lantern. She glanced down at him.

“I have something to tell you,” he’d said.

“What?” she’d whispered. Then, seeing the look in his eyes, Bett had asked desperately: “What, what?”

She’d climbed down from the bench. Tate came up close, and instead of putting his arm around his wife’s shoulders, as a husband might do late at night in a house of death, he handed her the letter.

She read it.

“Oh my. Oh.”

Bett didn’t deny anything that was contained in the note: Harris’s declaration of intense love for her, the affair, his fathering Megan, Bett’s refusal to marry him and her threat to take the girl away from him forever if Harris told Bett’s sister of the infidelity. At the end the words had degenerated into mad rambling and his chillingly lucid acknowledgment that the pain was simply too much.

Neither of them cried that night as Tate had packed a suitcase and left. They never spent another night under the same roof.

Despite the presence of a madman now, holding a knife, hovering a few feet from them, Tate’s concentration was wholly on the girl. To his surprise her face blossomed not with horror or shock or anger but with sympathy. She touched his leg. “And you’re the one that got hurt so bad. I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

Tate looked at Matthews. He said, “So that’s why your argument doesn’t work, Aaron. Taking her away from me won’t do what you want.”

Matthews didn’t speak. His eyes were turned out the window, gazing into the blue dawn.

Tate said, “You know the classic reasons given for punishing crimes, Aaron? To condition away bad behavior-doesn’t work. A deterrent- useless. To rehabilitate-that’s a joke. To protect society-well, only if we execute the bad guys or keep them locked up forever. No, you know the real reason why we punish? We’re ashamed to admit it. But, oh, how we love it. Good old biblical retribution. Bloody revenge is the only honest motive for punishment. Why? Because its purpose is to take away the victim’s pain.

“That’s what you want, Aaron, but there’s only one way you’ll have that. By killing me. It’s not perfect but it’ll have to do.”

Megan was sobbing.

Matthews leaned his head against the window. The sun was up now and flashed on and off as strips of liver-colored clouds moved quickly east. He seemed diminished and changed. As if he were beyond disappointment or sorrow.

“Let her go,” Tate whispered. “It doesn’t even make sense to kill her because she’s a witness. They know about you anyway.”

Matthews crouched beside Megan. Put the back of his hand against her cheek, lifted it away and looked at the glistening streak left by her tears on his skin. He kissed her hair.

“All right. I agree.”

Megan started to protest.

But Tate knew that he’d won. Nothing she could say or do at this point would change his decision.

“I’ll call the dogs to the run. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Is it true?” she asked, tears glistening on her cheeks.

“Oh, yes, honey, it’s true.”

“You never said anything.”

“Your mother and I decided not to. Until after Susan died. You know how close Bett is to your aunt. She wanted her never to find out about the affair-it would’ve been too hard for her. The doctors only gave her a year or two to live, We were going to wait to tell you until she’d passed away.”

“But…“ Megan whispered.

He smiled wanly “That’s right. She’s still alive.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last year, or two years ago? I was old enough not to say anything to Aunt Susan.”

Tate examined the wounds on her palms. Pressed his hands against them. He couldn’t speak at first. Finally he said, ‘The moment passed.”

“All these years,” she whispered, “I thought I must’ve done something.” She lowered her head to his shoulder. “What a terrible thing I must have been for you. What a reminder.”

“Honey, I wish I could tell you different. But I can’t. You were half the person I loved most in the world and half the person I most hated.”

“One time I said something to Mom,” she said, weeping softly. “I’d been with you for the weekend and Mom asked how it went. I said I’d had an okay time but what could you expect? You were just an adequate father. I thought she was going to whip me. She freaked out totally. She said you were the best man she’d ever met and I was never, ever supposed to say that again.”

Tate smiled. “An adequate father for an inconvenient daughter.”

“Why didn’t you ever try it again, the two of you?”

He echoed, “The moment passed.”

“How much you must love her.”

Tate laughed sourly to himself at the irony. The child who drove husband and wife apart had now brought them back together-if only for one day.

How scarce love is, he thought. How rarely does it all come together: the pledge, the assurance, the need, the circumstance, the hungry desire to share minutes with someone else. And the dear desperation too. It’s miraculous when love actually works.

He looked her over and decided that the two of them, his ex-wife and her daughter, would be fine-now that the truth had been dumped between them. A long time coming but better than never. Oh, yes, they’d do fine.

Gritty footsteps approached.

“Now, listen to me,” he said urgently. “When he lets you out find a phone and call Ted Beauridge at Fairfax County Police. Tell him your mother’s probably in jail in Luray or Front Royal-”

‘What?”

“No time to explain. But she’s there. Tell him to get cops out here. She told them you were here but they might not’ve believed her.”

The girl looked at him with eyes that reminded him of her mother’s. Not the violet shade, of course-those were Bett’s and Bett’s alone- but the unique mix of the ethereal and the earthy

Matthews appeared in the doorway.

They turned to look at the gaunt man standing before them, his muscular hand pressed to his bloody belly.

“Okay, get going,” Tate said to her. “Run like hell.”

“Go on,” Matthews said, and reached forward to take her arm.

She spun away from him and hugged Tate hard. He felt her arms around his back. Felt her face against her ear, heard her speaking to him, a torrent of fervid words flowing out, coming from a source other than the heart and mind of a seventeen-year-old high school junior.

“Megan he began.

But she took his face in both her hands and said, “Shhh, Daddy. Remember, bears can’t talk.”

Matthews grabbed her again and pulled her away. Took her to the door.

He unlocked it and shoved her outside. The door closed with a snap behind her. Through a dirty, barred window Tate saw her sprint down the driveway and disappear through the gate.

“So,” Collier said, glancing up at Matthews.

“So,” he echoed.

“Outside?” the lawyer asked, looking around at the gloomy place. “Would that be all right? I’d rather.”

Matthews hesitated for a moment. But then decided, why not? “Yes. That’s all right.”

He unlocked the door again and they stepped into the parking area and walked around into the grounds behind the asylum, past the wild rottweilers in their runs.

Matthews was thinking back to the times he’d been committed here. He recalled how beautiful these lawns and gardens had been then. Well, why wouldn’t they be? Give five hundred crazy people grounds to tend and, brother, you’ve got a showplace. He’d sat for hours and hours and hours talking to other patients and-in his imagination-to his dead Peter. Sometimes the boy responded, sometimes not.