Tess Gerritsen - Bloodstream

“It wasn’t anything you said.”

“What was it, then?”

“You never talked about anything personal. As if you didn’t want me to know things about you. It didn’t bother me. I realized that’s just how it is up here.

People keep to themselves, the way you did. But after a while, after we’d known each other, and that invisible wall still seemed to stand between us, I thought:

Maybe it’s not just the fact I’m an outsider. Maybe it’s me. Something he doesn’t like about me.”

“It is because of you, Claire.”

She paused. “I see.”

“I knew what would happen if I didn’t keep that wall up between us.” His shoulders sagged, as though under the weight of his unhappiness. “A person gets used to anything, even misery, if it goes on long enough. I’ve been married to Doreen so long, I guess I accepted it as the way things are supposed to be. I made a bad choice, I took on a responsibility, and I’ve done the best I could.”

“One mistake shouldn’t ruin your life.”

“When there’s someone else who’ll be hurt, it’s not easy to be selfish, to think only of yourself. It’s almost easier to do nothing and just let things slide.

Add on another layer of numbness.”

A gust swept the windshield, leaving streaks of melting snow on the glass. Fresh snow swirled down, whitening over that fleeting glimpse of the night.

“If it seems I didn’t warm up to you, Claire,” he said, “it’s only because I was trying so hard not to.”

He reached, once again, to open the door.

Once again, she stopped him with a touch, her hand lingering on his arm.

He turned to face her. This time their gazes held, neither one flinching away, neither one retreating.

He cupped her face in his hand and kissed her. Before he could pull away before he had time to regret the impulse, she leaned toward him, welcoming his kiss with one of her own.

His lips, the taste of his mouth, were new and unfamiliar to her. The kiss of a stranger. A man whose longing for her, so long concealed, now burned like a fever. She too had caught the sickness, felt the same heat flush her face, her whole body, as he pulled her against him. He said her name once, twice, a murmur of wonder that she was the one in his arms.

The glare of headlights suddenly penetrated the snow-covered windshield. They pulled apart and sat in guilty silence, listening to the sound of footsteps approaching the truck. Someone rapped on the passenger side. Snowflakes slithered in as Lincoln rolled down the window.

Officer Mark Dolan stared into the truck. His gaze took in both Lincoln and Claire, and all he said was, “Oh.” One syllable, an ocean’s worth of meaning.

“I, uh, I saw the doc’s engine running and wondered if everything was okay,”

Dolan explained. “You know, carbon monoxide poisoning and all.

“Everything’s fine,” said Lincoln.

“Yeah. All right.” Dolan backed away from the window. “Night, Lincoln.”

“Good night.”

After Dolan had walked away, Claire and Lincoln sat without speaking for a moment. Then Lincoln said, “It’ll be all over town tomorrow.”

“I’m sure it will be. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” As he stepped out of her truck, he gave a reckless laugh. “Truth is, Claire, I don’t give a damn. Everything that’s gone wrong in my life has been public knowledge in this town. Now, for once, something's gone right for me, and it might as well be public knowledge as well.”

She turned on the windshield wipers. Through the clearing glass she watched him wave good-night, then walk away to his car. Officer Dolan was still parked nearby, and Lincoln stopped to speak to him.

As she drove away, she suddenly remembered what Mitchell Groome had told her earlier that evening about Damaris Horne’s inside source.

Dark-haired, medium build. Works the night shift.

Mark Dolan, she thought.

The next morning Lincoln drove south, to Orono. He had not slept well, had lain awake for hours mulling over the night’s events. The town meeting. His conversation with Iris Keating. The damage to Claire’s office. And Claire herself.

Most of all, he’d thought about Claire.

At seven he’d awakened unrefreshed, and gone downstairs. It was a cold slap of reality to find Doreen still asleep on his living room couch. She lay with one arm dangling off the side, her red hair dull and greasy, her mouth half open. He stood for a moment, looking down at her, pondering how to convince her to leave with a minimum of yelling and crying on her part, but he was too weary to deal with the problem at that moment. Worrying about Doreen had already drained so much energy from his life. Just the sight of her seemed to drag down on his limbs, making them hang heavy, as though Doreen and the force of gravity were intimately connected.

“I’m sorry, Honey,” he said softly. “But I’m going on with my life.”

He made one phone call, then he left Doreen sleeping on the couch and walked out of the house. As he drove away, he felt the first layers of depression peel away like a worn outer skin. The roads were plowed, the pavement sanded; he pressed the accelerator, and as he picked up speed he felt he was shedding more and more layers, that if he just drove far enough, fast enough, the real Lincoln, the man he used to be, would finally emerge, scrubbed and clean and reborn. He sped past fields where the snow, so freshly fallen, puffed up in clouds of white powder with the slightest gust of wind. Keep driving, don’t stop, don’t look back. He had a destination in mind, and a purpose to this journey, but for now, what he experienced was the joyful rush of escape.

When he reached the University of Maine campus an hour later, he felt renewed and refreshed, as though he had enjoyed a long night’s sleep in a comfortable bed. He parked his car and walked onto the campus, and the cold air, the crystalline morning, invigorated him.

Lucy Overlock was in her office in the physical anthropology department. With her six-foot frame clad in her usual attire of blue jeans and flannel shirt, she looked more like a lumberjack than a college professor.

She greeted him with a calloused hand and a no-nonsense nod and sat down behind her desk. Even seated, she was an imposing woman of Amazonian proportions. “You said on the phone you had questions about the Locust Lake remains.”

“I want to know about the Gow family. How they died. Who killed them.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s about a hundred years too late to arrest anyone for that crime.”

“I’m bothered by the circumstances of their deaths. Did you ever locate any news articles about the murders?”

“Vince did-my grad student. He’s using the Gow case for his doctoral thesis. A reconstruction of an old murder, based on the remains. It took him weeks to track down an account. Not every old newspaper, you see, has been archived. Your particular area was so sparsely populated at that time, there wasn’t much news coverage.”

“So how did the Gow family die?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s the same old story. Unfortunately, family violence is not a modern phenomenon.”

“The father did it?”

“No. It was their seventeen-year-old son. His body was found weeks later, hanging from a tree. Apparently a suicide.”

“What about motive? Was the boy disturbed?”

Lucy leaned back, her tanned face catching the light from the window. Years of work in the outdoors had taken their toll on her complexion, and the wintry light illuminated every freckle, every deepening crease. “We don’t know. The family apparently lived in relative isolation. According to the deed maps for that period, the Gows’ property encompassed the whole south shore of the lake. There may not have been any neighbors around who’d know the boy very well.”