Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

“Missus…” The officer began.

“Lang,” the paramedic offered.

“Missus Lang, your house is in something of a state—”

Kaye started up the porch steps. Let them work out the jurisdiction and procedure. She had to see what Saul had done before she could have any idea as to where Saul might be, what he might have done since…Might be doing even now.

The police officer followed. “Does your husband have a history of self-mutilation, Missus Lang?”

“No,” Kaye said through clenched teeth. “He bites his fingernails.”

The house was quiet but for the tread of another police officer descending the stairs. Someone had opened the living room windows. White curtains billowed over the overstuffed couch. The second officer, in his fifties, thin and pale, slouched at the shoulders, his face seamed with perpetual worry, looked more like a mortician or a coroner. He started to talk, his words distant and liquid, but Kaye pushed up the stairs past him. The bull-bellied man followed.

Saul had hit their bedroom hard. The drawers had been pulled out and his clothes were scattered everywhere. She knew without really thinking that he had been searching for the right piece of underwear, the right pair of socks, appropriate to some special occasion.

An ashtray on the window sill was filled with cigarette butts. Camels, unfiltered. The hard stuff. Kaye hated the smell of tobacco.

The bathroom had been lightly sprayed with blood. The tub was half-filled with pinkish water, and bloody footprints went from the yellow bath mat across the black and white checkerboard tile to the old teak floor and then into the bedroom, where they stopped showing traces of blood.

“Theatrical,” she murmured, glancing up at the mirror, the thin spray of blood over the glass and across the sink. “God. Not now, Saul.”

“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” the bull-bellied officer asked. “Did he do this to himself, or is there someone else involved?”

This was certainly the worst she had seen. He must have been concealing the worst of his mood, or the break had come with vicious speed, occluding every bit of sense and responsibility. He had once described the arrival of an intense depression as long dark blankets of shadow dragged by slack-faced devils in rumpled clothing.

“It’s just him, just him,” she said, and coughed into her fist. Surprisingly, she did not feel sick. She saw the bed, neatly made, white cover drawn up and folded precisely under the pillows, Saul trying to make order and sense out of this darkened world, and she stopped by a small circle of splatted drops of blood on the wood beside her nightstand. “Just him.”

“Mr. Madsen can be quite sad at times,” Caddy said from the bedroom door, long-fingered hand pressed flat and white against the dark maple jamb.

“Does your husband have a history of suicide attempts?” the medic asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Never this bad.”

“Looks like he cut his wrists in the tub,” said the sad thin police officer. He nodded sagely. Kaye decided she would call him Mr. Death, and the other Mr. Bull. Mr. Bull and Mr. Death could tell just as much about the house as she could, possibly more.

“He got out of the tub,” Mr. Bull said, “and…”

“Bound his wrists again, like a Roman, trying to draw out his time on Earth,” Mr. Death said. He smiled apologetically at Kaye. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“And then he must have gotten dressed and left the house.”

Just so, Kaye thought. They were so right.

Kaye sat on the bed, wishing she were the fainting type, blank this scene here and now, let others take charge.

“Mrs. Lang, we might be able to find your husband—”

“He did not kill himself,” she said. She waved her hand at the blood, pointed loosely toward the hall and the bathroom. She was looking for a tiny shred of hope, thought for a moment she had grasped it. “This was bad, but he…as you said, he stopped himself.”

“Missus Lang—” Mr. Bull began.

“We should find him and get him to the hospital,” she said, and with this sudden possibility, that he might still be saved, her voice broke and she began to quietly weep.

“The boat’s gone,” Caddy said. Kaye stood up abruptly and walked to the window. She knelt on the window seat and looked down on the small dock thrusting from the rocky sea wall into the gray-green water of the sound. The small sailboat was not at its moorage.

Kaye shook as if with chill. She could slowly accept now that this was going to be it. Bravery and denial could no longer compete with blood and things out of place, Saul gone awry, in the control of Sad/Bad, blanketed Saul.

I can’t see it,” Kaye said shrilly, looking out across the choppy water. “It has a red sail. It’s not out there.”

They asked her for a description, a photograph, and she provided both. Mr. Bull went downstairs, out the front door, to the police car. Kaye followed him part of the way and turned to go into the living room. She was unwilling to stay in the bedroom. Mr. Death and the paramedic stayed to ask more questions, but she had very few answers. A police photographer and a coroner’s assistant went up the stairs with their equipment.

Caddy watched it all with owlish concern and then cattish fascination. Finally, she hugged Kaye and said some more words and Kaye said, automatically, that she would be fine. Caddy wanted to leave but could not bring herself to do so.

At that moment, the orange cat Crickson came into the room. Kaye picked him up and stroked him, suddenly wondered if he had seen, then stooped and slipped him gently back on the floor.

The minutes seemed to last for hours. Daylight faded and rain spatted against the living room windows. Finally, Mr. Bull returned, and it was Mr. Death’s turn to leave.

Caddy watched, made guilty by her horror and fascination.

“We can’t clean this up for you,” Mr. Bull told her. He handed her a business card. “These folks have a little business. They clean up messes like this. It’s not cheap, but they do a good job. Husband and wife. Christians. Nice people.”

Kaye nodded and took the card. She did not want the house now; thought about just locking the door and leaving it.

Caddy was the last to go. “Where you going to spend the night, Kaye?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Kaye said.

“You’re welcome to come stay with us, dear.”

“Thank you,” Kaye said. “There’s a cot at the lab. I think I’ll sleep there tonight. Could you take care of the cats? I can’t…think about them now.”

“Of course. I’ll round them up. You want me to come back?” Caddy asked. “Clean up after…you know? The others are done?”

“I’ll call,” Kaye said, close to breaking down again. Caddy hugged her with painful intensity and then went to find the cats. She left ten minutes later and Kaye was alone in the house.

No note, no message, nothing.

The phone rang. She did not answer for a time, but it continued to ring, and the answering machine had been turned off, perhaps by Saul. Perhaps it was Saul, she realized with a shock, hating herself for having briefly lost hope, and instantly picked up the phone.

“Is this Kaye?”

“Yes.” Hoarsely. She cleared her throat.

“Mrs. Lang, this is Randy Foster at AKS Industries. I need to speak with Saul. About the deal. Is he home?”

“No, Mr. Foster.”

Pause. Awkward. What to say? Who to tell just now? And who was Randy Foster, and what deal?

“Sorry. Tell him we’ve just finished with our lawyers and the contracts are done. They’ll be delivered tomorrow. We’ve scheduled a conference call for four P.M. I look forward to meeting you, Mrs. Lang.”

She mumbled something and put the phone down. For a moment she thought now she would break, a really big break. Instead, slowly and with great deliberation, she went back up the stairs and packed a large suitcase with the clothes she might need for the next week.