Death in Paradise (54 page)

"Yes."

"Happy to be here?"

"Let's not fool ourselves, Thea," he said. "I'm only here because certain well-meaning people think this will be good for me."

"I hope it will be." I didn't push him. This wasn't the kind of thing that responds to a miracle cure. If the trip worked for Andre at all, I expected it to be a gradual thing. A slow loosening of his iron control. Besides, neither of us reacts favorably to being pushed. I was hoping he'd be pleased with the room. I'd stayed at the Clift while I was out there on a consulting job. It was the kind of place where all the staff must have Ph.D.s and everyone is always helpful and polite. While I was staying there, I'd discovered that up on the sixteenth floor there are some rooms with enormous windows and beautiful views. When I decided San Francisco was the place to take Andre for his rehab, I'd called the manager and wheedled one of those rooms. Andre had never been to San Francisco before and I'd been looking forward to sharing this view with him.

The bellboy had turned on all the lights when we checked in. It was just a room, not a suite, but it had almost as many lights as our whole apartment. Ceiling lights. Floor lights. Desk lights. Bedside lights. Plus a ceiling light and two fancy black-and-silver deco fixtures in the gray marble bathroom. The minute the bellboy left, I turned most of them off. I wanted Andre to enjoy the view in all its glory.

"Nice," he said without turning. "Very nice. Only I wasn't expecting California to be this cold."

"It's because of the damp. Even in the summer, fashionable ladies wear their furs in this city."

"Did you bring your furs, Kozak?"

"You can call me Thea. And no, I didn't. I try to be sartorially correct."

"So I won't need my bathing suit and T-shirts?"

"I hope you brought some sweaters to wear over them. I told you that you'd be perfectly comfortable here if you dressed like you were going to Labrador."

"I was thinking sunny California."

"When you should have been thinking foggy California."

"Right now I'm not thinking sunny or foggy."

"Am I supposed to guess what you are thinking, Detective Lemieux?" It was the closest we'd come to intimate conversation since we got on the plane. Since the accident, in fact. Accident—that was a silly term for it. Since the incident? No sense in beating around the euphemistic bush. Since Ray died. I tried not to get my hopes up. Since then he'd been as chaste and distant as a missionary. He'd been recovering, but it was more than that. He hadn't been incapacitated, he'd been disinterested. Sex was something people did when they were alive; Andre's mind was full of death. I joined him at the window. He put an arm around me and pulled me against him.

"If you can't, Ms. Kozak, you don't know me very well." He kissed me with a frightening intensity and began fumbling with the buttons on my blouse. They were too small for his hurried fingers. He grabbed the blouse and ripped it.

The doorbell buzzed. I'd ordered a late dinner from room service, but why did they have to bring it now? At this hotel, the least they could do was read minds. "Saved by the bell," I said, trying for a light note as I headed for the door.

"Are you going to answer it like that?"

I glanced down at my gaping blouse. "I guess I'd better not." I looked around for something to put on.

"There are some robes in the bathroom." The buzzer sounded again. I grabbed a robe and admitted the patient bellboy.

"Room service," he said, wheeling in a cart and positioning it in front of the window. Andre had had the foresight to put on some lights. "The manager sent some chocolate-dipped strawberries with his compliments to welcome you back to the Clift."

He lifted the covers to prove he'd brought what I ordered. "Will there be anything else?"

"The champagne?" I said, impatient with his careful attention, his slow and gracious way of moving. He was trying to give good service; I was wishing he'd get out before Andre lapsed back into indifference.

"Of course. Excuse me." He went to the door and came back with it. "Would you like me to open it?"

"Thanks. No. I can manage." I crossed his palm with silver and he graciously departed.

Andre was standing at the window again, his back to me. I hoped I hadn't lost him. I put an arm around his waist. "Champagne?" I suggested.

"I'm sorry, Thea," he said. His voice sounded heavy and forced. "I didn't mean to be rough with you."

I shrugged off the robe and tossed it toward the bed. "I didn't mind...."

"I tore your blouse."

"You kissed me. I wish you'd do it again."

He picked up the bottle and stared at it thoughtfully. "Remember the first time we had champagne?"

The town I grew up in was built along the shore of a lake. The effect of the seasons on the lake left a lasting impression on me, especially spring when the ice was breaking up. When it finally happened, it happened fast. One day it would warm up and great cracks would grow in that solid, forbidding gray surface. One piece would shift and then another, and suddenly there would be open water. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but something about Andre reminded me of that lake. "How could I forget a big macho cop backing me up against the counter and kissing me against my will?"

"The big macho cop," he said scornfully. "What the hell good does it do to be a big macho cop, to be a cop at all, to be anything, if you can't keep the good people from dying?"

"It wasn't your fault," I said, "there was no way you could have kept it from happening."

"What difference does it make whose fault it was? Ray is just as dead."

"And you're not dead." I put my arms around him. He didn't respond but I didn't give up. I stood there and kept my arms around him, moving when he did but not letting go. It was like dancing without the music.

"I've been sitting there every night with my gun out," he said. "Staring at it. Thinking how much easier it would be to just shoot myself and it would be over. Then maybe I could get the image of Ray out of my mind. I tried to save him, Thea. I tried. But I couldn't get the bleeding to stop. It just came pouring out of him. I didn't stop trying until Cooper came and then I went after Wheeler. I did it all by the book. I warned him. I told him to stop. I fired a warning shot. Everything. And then I shot him. I kept on shooting him and he still wouldn't stop. Just went over to his car, got in, and drove it straight at me. When I was being dragged by the car all I was thinking about was that when he stopped I was going to get him."

"I know, Andre. I understand...."

"How can you understand?"

He tried to twist away from me but I stuck right to him. "I don't mean I understand perfectly. I know better than to say that. But I've been afraid for my life and angry at the other person for making me afraid. And I've lost someone I loved deeply and felt guilty about surviving when the other person's dead. I'm not like you. I know that. We're very different. But I understand some of what you're going through."

"No, you don't!" He tried to push me away but I hung on. He twisted forcefully aside, broke my hold, and shoved me away from him, sending me crashing into the desk with hip-bruising force. "I should have done better."

"You couldn't have done better. You didn't do anything wrong. It just happened."

"If I'd only done things differently. If we hadn't gone—"

"But you had to go. It was your job."

"There must have been something I could have done."

"There wasn't, Andre."

He put his hands over his face. "That's what I can't stand," he said. "That we could do it right and still have everything go wrong. I can't accept it. I can't accept that I can't fix
it...
that I couldn't fix
it...
that there was nothing I could do."

"You did the most important thing you could, from my point of view, Andre. You didn't let him kill you, too."

"Sometimes I wish he had."

"How would the world be helped by having two good men dead instead of one?"

"At least I wouldn't have been left here feeling guilty for being alive."

"Don't say that again!"

I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him until he sat down on the edge of the bed. I sat down beside him and grabbed one of his hands. I'd been kind and understanding long enough. It was time he heard my side of things. "I used to be married to a man named David," I said.

"I know that."

"David meant everything to me. He was the touchstone of my life. Seeing him. Knowing him. Being with him was enough for me. I was very happy. It's probably a cliché but I felt satisfied and complete." He didn't say anything, but Andre's face was puzzled. He already knew all this, so why was I telling him again? "Then David was killed. I felt like the center had been ripped out of my life and I was sad for a long, long time. When I began to recover and to live my life again, I erected barriers and didn't let myself become involved with anyone because I never wanted to take a chance on being hurt like that again."

"What's that got to do with—" he began.

I put a finger on his lips. "Just listen to me and maybe you'll see." I thought I saw the beginning of understanding in his face. "Six months ago, I woke up one morning thinking about coffee and breakfast and the first thing I heard on the news was that there was a police standoff up in Maine where an injured detective was being held hostage. The announcement that I've been dreading almost as long as I've known you. I'm tough. Things don't shake me. You know that. And the thought of losing you reduced me to Jell-O. Luckily, I was with Dom and Rosie—"

"He's a good man—" Andre began.

"I'm still not finished. During the hours that we were driving to Maine, and the hours that passed before I finally saw you... during the endless hours at the hospital while we all waited to hear that you were out of surgery and that you weren't going to die, I experienced pain and fear that are beyond description." My voice was shaking and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish what I wanted to say. "Whether I wanted it or not, I knew then that I had let myself care about you, let myself have a stake in your life. I knew then that if you lived, it was worth making whatever sacrifices were necessary so we could be together. I'm saying that it matters to
me
whether you live or die and I can't stand it when you say it doesn't matter to you. You aren't all alone out there, Andre. That love and loss you feel for Ray Dolan—I know about that. I know how it hurts. I lived through it once and I stared it in the face again when you were shot. I'm not just talking when I say I know how you feel. If I lost you, I don't know what I'd do, how I'd handle it. Maybe I would head for the sea like a lemming. Just walk in and keep on walking until the water closed over my head."

Sometimes you don't know how you feel until you hear yourself speak. That was what had just happened to me. I hadn't meant to tell him this stuff. I'd meant to keep it to myself and not burden him with it. To just be there for him. I hadn't even realized that I was angry. "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to make this a contest... I wasn't trying to say that my pain was as great as yours...." The tears I'd been holding back were like a rising tide. I couldn't contain them any longer.

He turned and buried his head in my chest, his own tears warm and wet against my bare skin. I put my arms around him and this time he didn't push me away. He wasn't going to stop hurting just because we'd talked, but it was a beginning. When he made love to me, it was with an intensity I'd never experienced. I don't know if the earth moved—in California that's not such a unique experience anyway—but I'm sure that the people on the floors immediately above and below us were thrown out of their beds and rocked liked ships in a storm.

Afterwards, I was starving but too exhausted to move. Andre brought my club sandwich and some champagne. "I think I'm ready to join the living again," he said. I certainly hoped so. Always one to up the ante, I was beginning to wonder if we could rock the whole hotel and not just a few floors.

 

 

 

Kate Flora, who also writes as Katherine Clark, was an assistant attorney general in Augusta, Maine, before moving to Massachusetts to marry, later working in public interest law and general private practice. She retired to raise her children and to write. Flora is the author of seven Thea Kozak mysteries and two Joe Burgess police procedurals, as well as co-author of the true crime work,
Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine
. As Katharine Clark, she is the author of
Steal Away,
a suspense/thriller. She is a former editor and publisher of Level Best Books, and former international president of Sisters in Crime. She divides her time between Maine and Massachusetts. Flora teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston.