A Cruel Season for Dying (54 page)

Willie got off the elevator and walked down the hospital hallway on her way to Michael’s room. She had finally been discharged
after her
early-morning go-round with the doctors. She would never have stood for the delay, but she’d fallen asleep in her room, waiting
for the paperwork to be ready.

She’d be a fool to deny that she’d needed the sleep. Yesterday’s ordeal was not something you simply shrugged off, and Delia
Johnson’s earlier visit had turned into a detailed questioning that had further exhausted her. But that had been hours ago.
Why hadn’t Jimmy called since? Surely, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to remove him from the investigation.

Well, she’d be at headquarters soon enough. Just a quick trip to the apartment for a shower and fresh clothes. Maybe this
guy was ready to quit, but she wouldn’t bank on it. And she wanted him more than ever now, wanted to get at the origins of
that fallen-angel fantasy. It was hard to express the frustration she felt, having had him right in front of her. At least
she’d survived the experience. And Michael had survived. A miracle, she’d told Jimmy. Miracle was an understatement.

Michael had come through with no apparent damage to his heart. But it was not his heart she was worried about now. An equally
powerful attack had been waged against his mind.

The door was half open and she knocked softly, not really expecting an answer. For a moment she noted that Detective Rozelli
was no longer in the hall, but as quickly the thought ebbed.

“It’s me, Michael.” She walked in and crossed to the bed. Awake, he didn’t turn to her. His continued unresponsiveness was
not a very good sign.

“Willie …”

She jerked around. He stood in the shadows behind her. “God, you scared me, Jimmy.”

“I went to your room … came to see if you were here.”

“What’s wrong?” He looked terrible. The mask that he wore in place of his face actually made her fear him.

“He’s got Hanae.”

Her heart lurched in instant comprehension. “How …?”

He shook his head, denying time for any explanation. “I think he’s taken her to this house upstate.” He handed her a photo.
“I’m headed up there now.” He took the picture back.

“What can I do?”

“I need a search of the property records of Orange County.”

“You’ve got a name?”

“Adrian Lovett,” he said. “Wife, Marian. Maiden name Chandler. The title could be filed under that.”

Or this house might be rented or belong to a friend.
But she didn’t say it aloud.

“I left my badge for McCauley,” he told her now. “You’re the only one who knows about Hanae.”

“God, Jimmy. You need backup.”

“No.” He was adamant. “That’ll take too much time. Besides, there’s no real proof that he has her.”

She didn’t argue. There was danger the mask might shatter and leave nothing at all of her friend.

He was leaving. She saw him throw a last look at Michael.

“Call me on my cell phone,” he said, “as soon as you nail the location.”

“I will.” She wanted to say more, but his footsteps were already in the hall. She stood shell-shocked listening to them recede.

Michael hadn’t moved and she wondered if he’d understood or even heard anything that Jimmy had said. She went to the bed.
His eyes shifted, and for the first time they focused on her face. But not her gaze. Her eyes, he still avoided. But he spoke.
One word.
Phaos.
She thought it might be Greek. His glance, never fully captured, slipped away.

“Are you warm enough, Zavebe?”

He no longer called her Hanae but used her angel name.
Her angel name.
He had spoken of death and rebirth. Of flesh and spirit. Heaven and Hell. Of awakening, not killing. How he’d craved understanding.
How he’d wished her husband and the others could have clearly seen his path. And he’d spoken, too, of remorse for the priest
who’d had to pay for his perceived sins. But such was the war. The war against the Ineffable One. On and on he’d spoken, spiraling
off into another language. His voice now a bell, harmonious and soothing, then a loud and urgent drum. And finally a reed.
Mystical and hollow. Adrian Lovett. The angel Gadriel. Jimmy’s serial killer.

She understood now how he’d arranged to meet her, following first Jimmy to their apartment, then later her to Ms. Nguyen’s
studio, where he pretended to have been in class from the start. He was not a Web designer, as he had said, but a photographer
whose wife had been killed in a horrible accident. There was no son. The boy on the phone was the nephew of a neighbor, bribed
with the price of a video game. It was all a tissue of lies. The great irony, he said, was that Zavebe should be trapped in
the body of the wife of James Sakura.

He brought his lips close to her ear now. “I asked if you were warm, Zavebe.”

She nodded. “Yes …”

“I want to do nothing but please you.” He brought his hand back into the water, sliding the sponge across
the nape of her neck, down the ridges of her spine. Then over her shoulders, around the circles of her breasts. The white-flower
smell of soap filling her lungs. Then he bent and kissed one nipple, and she felt it grow inside his mouth. Her heart cried
out, but there was no place to hide her shame. She thought of
misogi,
the Shinto exercise of cleansing, how the act of bathing became a spiritual rite of purification. But not this, not this
horror, this obscenity. In the still, unmoving water of the porcelain tub, she was defiled.

He sighed, lifting his head. “How sweet this human flesh. I shall miss it.”

“Then do not leave it.” Her voice was not her own.

“I am finished here.” The bath stirred around her. “You and I go to greater glory.”

“Wait….” She found his hand under the water. “It is but a short time now,” she said, placing the flat of his palm against
her abdomen where the child grew. “Wait until after,” she whispered, bringing her mouth close to his. “And we enjoy this flesh
awhile longer.”

He laughed softly, and she tasted his breath in the moment before his mouth closed over hers. Almost a chaste kiss. Then his
hands were at her shoulders, pushing her gently back into the water. Her hair unwinding, floating outward. His fingers on
the point where her sternum began, at the center of her chest, submerging her face, her mouth swallowing the wet pooling inside
her, her nostrils flaring, sucking moist air.

Yesterday’s sleet had returned. The trees patterned with ice. The Hudson, a silver ribbon on the right, could be glimpsed
now and then from the highway. Sakura saw nothing but the road ahead, moving as fast as he could in this weather, blanking
the scenery along with every image that he’d banned from his brain.

The force of the sleet increased, little needles attacking his wind-shield. He looked out at his surroundings now, but visibility
was limited. A white sky pressed the trees. He could not see the river.

Willie hadn’t called. He glanced at the cell phone, which was lying with the photographs on the passenger seat beside him.
He had disciplined his mind, but doubt was hammering the borders. He turned on the radio, scanning for a station that played
his music.

The phone rang.

“Sakura.” He shut off the radio.

“I’m sorry, Jimmy.” Willie’s voice. “I called Orange and the surrounding counties. None of them liked the idea of giving out
information on the phone. I had to pull an FBI …” Her voice petered out.

“And …?” He knew the answer.

“Nothing. No listing for Adrian or Marian Lovett. Or Marian Chandler either. I’m sorry,” she said again. “Where are you?”
she asked.

“Still on the thruway.”

“Let me call Kelly. Maybe he can coordinate something with the locals. They might even be able to help locate this guy. Like
I said before, I think Lovett’s finished. He’ll suicide, Jimmy….”

The rest went unspoken. He would kill Hanae first. “Okay,” he finally agreed, “call Kelly.”

A lotus in an uncertain wind, Hanae sat, shivering in the porcelain tub, water noisily draining. In the room no other sound.
Legs drawn up, hands crossed over her breasts, she tried to quell her shaking. Tears mixed and fell with the beads of water
that ran down from her face. She must regain control. She could survive her shame. What mattered was that she was still alive,
still making time for Jimmy. Her
shivering turned to rocking, a motion instinctive that seemed to calm. She stopped and returned to her practiced breathing.

Adrian’s footsteps returning, bare skin spanking tile. She kept her breathing even, kept the air from rising in a sound of
fear from her throat.

“This shell you inhabit is beautiful, but it masks a greater splendor.” He had knelt at the side of the tub, his voice at
her level. His finger made a gentle circle at the base of her neck. “You are afraid,” he said, “but only because you cannot
remember.” His hands reached to remove hers from where they clasped her shoulders. He began to stroke her breasts.

“I want to remember,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Tell me again about the accident … and the tunnel.”

His fingers ceased their motion on her skin. She sensed his smile, his eyes intent upon her face, as if he guessed that her
purpose was delay. “It was in the tunnel I remembered,” he began, and wrapping her in a large towel, he lifted her from the
tub and carried her back to the bedroom.

She lay where he placed her on the bed, the towel spread beneath her. He turned her to face him, where he sat beside her,
and began to rub her body with a warm and scented oil. He continued to speak—his hands kneading her skin—of the kinship they
shared, she Zavebe and he Gadriel, beings of pure spirit who had once shared a union unimaginable to humans. A union they
would soon share again.

She flinched when the blade touched her, moving first in the hollow of her underarm. She let his voice become a droning. Withdrew
into the light. It was the light that glided above her skin with the razor. The light that purified the act, even to the shaving
of her pubis.

The singsong of his recital stopped. The feel of the towel was raw reality. “You had little body hair.” His words as he wiped
her down, removing the residue.

He sat her in a hard straight chair, draping some covering around her shoulders, securing it under her chin. Words she could
not believe whispered in her ear: “I will not hurt you.”

She did not understand what was coming, her mind reaching for every bit of information, every detail she had gleaned of Jimmy’s
case. But it was none of that. Her only warning was the sudden grind of metal near her face, the scythe sound of the scissors
beginning their harvest.

It was a kind of cleansing, he explained, this further mortification of her body. When he was done, when she was shorn, he
brushed the clumps of hair from her neck and her cheeks, then removed the cover carefully from her shoulders.

“You are yet beautiful, Zavebe.”

She nearly broke. Some part of her yearned for an end to it, to let go, to dissolve to nothing inside his madness. But in
this moment she was still alive, the child within her still alive. In this moment, and in this moment … and this.