Fortune's Deadly Descent (19 page)

This is the most animated I’ve seen Moreau.

I sit up, bring my cheek close to his face. “Please keep going,” I say. “Take me to the hospital.”

“Stay
down”
, he says, almost hissing at me. He checks the rearview, then the side mirror. The icy halogen lights of a car that’s trailed us shine on his face, making him squint fiercely. The car draws even with us and goes by without changing speed.

“Did he have an accent?” he asks.

“Ha! Did he ever.”

“What kind?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“American?”

“What else do you know that you haven’t told me?”

He starts to respond but instead jams the car into gear and pulls back onto the roadway and accelerates.

“Who
is
this man?” I ask after a minute.

Moreau says nothing.

Then the car makes a swift turn and stops again. This time, through the rain-dotted window I see the universal sign for hospital above an arched doorway. I grab the handle, ready to dash.

“
No
,” he says. “I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come inside.”

We stare at each other a moment.

“He told me Benny was alive,” I say. “And he said something strange about my money, actually he said my
family’s
money. The way he said it didn’t sit right with me.”

Moreau stares straight ahead. I can see his jaw flexing. He rubs his forehead, then goes back to staring ahead.

Finally he says, “I must apologize for accusing you of texting with this man.”

“I wondered. Did you just make that up?”

“A tactic—Isak’s idea.”

“I guess I’m not surprised. Did you two know what Benicio and Emily were talking about?”

“The restaurant.”

“Why did you let me believe it was something else?”

“This I cannot tell you.”

“You’re using me…for something else, aren’t you?”

“You mustn’t share with Isak what I’ve told you.”

“Is that for your protection or mine?”

Moreau doesn’t answer.

“What do you
want
from me?” I ask. “Why did you want me to come to Saint-Corbenay?”

Seven years ago, I woke next to Benicio in a Zurich hospital. I’d lost a lot of blood and couldn’t stand on my own. The pain was so piercing I could barely speak, let alone laugh. Benicio was worse off than me but healing steadily. As I lay watching him sleep, I was surprisingly flush with gratitude. We were
alive
,
together
, and even as violent as our beginning had been, I was going with the odds. It could only get better from there.

But now?

After I’ve waited in the car for an hour, Moreau sneaks me into the hospital through a locked side door. He plucks out the stick he wedged it open with and tosses it into the shrubbery, ushers me in, and snugs the door behind us.

Benicio has just come out of surgery, he tells me.

I concentrate on walking with a steady gait, counterweighted by purse and computer bag. Shortly before we reach Benicio’s room, Moreau stops and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“I was wrong about the bullet count,” he says. His face is stonewashed in the hospital lights.

“You mean you lied to me,” I say.

“No. As I told you, facts change. You need to prepare yourself.”

“Just let me see him.”

“You have to understand—”

“I’ve seen things, Monsieur.” I start to pull away.

“A bullet entered here,” he says, touching his temple. “And exited here.” He points to his forehead. “Another hit his chest, and a corner of his stomach and liver.”

“I see.” The fact that I’m fairly calm isn’t lost on me. And I can see Moreau’s taking note of it too.

“Another, the one that should have been
mortel
, tore his lung and an artery to his heart. He was, if you please, dead when they arrived. It took two
ressuscitations
to bring him back.”

“Can I go in now?”

Moreau squints at me.

“Is there more?”

“Indeed. Though not about this.”

“What?”

“It must remain between us. You mustn’t let Isak know I told you.”

“And why is that?”

“He forbids it.”

“Does he? Is that why you’re telling me? To show him he doesn’t have jurisdiction over you?”

The tiniest of nods from Moreau. He says, “You cannot tell anyone, not even Oliver.”

“I can’t promise that,” I say, starting toward the room again.

Moreau calls after me. “
Un moment
.” He grips my arm as if I might fall. Or run. “You need to have this information. Please.”

“Why?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Why don’t you tell me what they are?”

“
Non
. Not yet.”

“Does this have something to do with your brother, Inspector?”

Moreau’s eyes dart to the left. I’ve read how liars look to the left when telling their stories, searching the side of the brain where new information is stored. But then Moreau looks to the right when he says, “Benicio has been in contact with your ex-husband.”

I feel a smile spread across my face. I know it doesn’t belong there. I know it must appear menacing, but there is nothing I can do to stop it.

“Sure he has,” I say.

“They were exchanging letters for some time through a post office box.”

“This
tactique
is even more absurd than the last.”

“All post coming in and out of the prison is read. The authorities were alerted to their communication. Your ex-husband—”

“You saw him, didn’t you?”

“Yes. A man quite disfigured in the face, thanks to you. I have no doubt he deserved this, and more.”

“I believe you went there,” I say. “But the other, no way.”

“
Que faire?
Ms. Hagen, this is the plain truth.”

“I need to get in there,” I say.

“Benicio sent him news a father wants to hear about a son. How his boy fares in school, his interests, his friends, these things.”

Benicio would
never
do this. He wouldn’t engage Jonathon, wouldn’t betray our family this way.

“OK. Let’s say there really were letters. How do you know they were from Benicio? Someone could easily impersonate him through the mail.”

“But who would know these things about the boy?”

“Boys are boys. Anyone could have made up anything. Jonathon wouldn’t know the difference.”

“No boy is like Benny.”

This is true.

“Naturally, we had the same suspicions. We have other proof, I’m afraid.”

I shake my head, tell him, “No. I’m going to see Benicio now.”

“He sent a photograph of Benny.”

For a moment, Moreau and I simply look each other in the eye.

“Your handwriting was on the back, according to the prison. Your ex-husband is a bit of a celebrity. Everyone knows his story. And yours—your novel is very popular at this…private boys’ school. The post inspector remembers clearly the photograph with your writing on the back, or at least someone writing in the American fashion, a woman’s hand.”

I must have swayed. Moreau has taken hold of my arm.

“A photograph with a date of June,” he says. “This is all according to the inspector at the prison. Your ex-husband claims not to have seen it, and a search of his cell found nothing.”

I shake off Moreau’s hand.

“Perhaps you should sit,” he says.

“No, I’m fine.”

“We don’t know what significance this photograph has,” he says. “There are many leads, and every one could lead to a hundred more. But this, now, the timing is very suspicious.”

I nod, knowing exactly which picture he’s talking about. It’s right here in the pocket of my coat.

A bank of monitors, color-coded cables, IV drips on stands…I don’t recognize the man I’ve loved for seven years. It could be anyone in this bed. Head swollen beyond what would seem humanly possible. Bloody gauze everywhere. Chest pulling for air, helped by the oxygen forced down his throat.

Oliver stands near the bed, his eyes glazed in shock. He greets me with a quick, fierce embrace. Over his shoulder, I see Seraphina in a corner chair. She rises, offers me a sympathetic smile, and gently takes my things and sets them on a table.

A young doctor with thin facial hair and thin wire glasses barely glances up from his clipboard while a female nurse rattles off French he appears to be writing down. The room smells like blood, raw tissue, fear.

They must have seen him leave Zurich, must have followed him all the way here.

Somewhere I find the strength to step closer to Benicio, but I am frightened by the feel of his chilled pale hand, made paler by dried blood in the creases of his skin. Someone has attempted to wipe it clean, and removed his bloodstained clothes. Despite myself, I think of my bloody fight with Jonathon, his flesh beneath
my fingers, the sound it made when I bore down and wrenched the skin from his face.

All the times we discussed Jonathon, all Benicio’s fidgeting and pacing suddenly takes on new meaning. What I understood to be a general indignation over what Jonathon had done to us, now seems closer to pangs of conscience for hiding what was going on behind my back. I can’t begin to imagine how or why Benicio would engage Jonathon about anything, especially Benny, whom he loves. What in the world made him take that first step?

A plastic Ziploc bag containing Benicio’s wallet and phone lies on the side table. Small smears of blood cover that too. The police must have overlooked it as evidence in the chaos of the crime.

It’s a miracle he’s breathing, even with assistance. Do I really get what I mean by this? That he should already be dead?

Oliver pats my back.

“I told him to stay home,” I say.

I feel so strange, as if my limbs are floating, as if everything’s become insubstantial and I might suddenly drift through the walls to god knows where.

“Is he going to die?” I ask the doctor.

He turns, stares as if mute. “No English,” he says.

“No English?” I glance at Moreau who quickly shakes his head. I throw up my hands.

Oliver has returned to Seraphina’s side, and he’s holding his face in one hand. He was in the square when the medical team slid Benicio into the ambulance. He was there when Benicio had stopped breathing. Apparently, so was Seraphina.

I turn to him, and say, “Oliver, I have to ask you something: What did your father say to you when you saw him in prison?”

He looks up, confused, frowning, even annoyed.

“
Tell me
.”

“Not now,” Moreau says, stepping in.

“Stay out of this,” I say, and glare at him until he finally backs off.

“I don’t have time for games, Oliver. None of us does. Tell me what your father said.”

“That was so long ago.”

“
Soll ich weg gehen?
” Seraphina asks. Should she leave? Her eyes are full of alarm.

“Yes. I don’t know what you’re doing here in the first place.”

“
Mom
. Stop. You’re upset. Let’s go in the hall.”

He touches my arm.

I step out of his reach. Clearly, I’m frightening him. I don’t care.

The wispy doctor addresses Moreau in French. Moreau nods in return.

The doctor makes to leave.

“Where’s he going?” I ask Moreau. “Where are you going?” I call after the doctor, who turns at the door. “You’re a doctor. How can you not speak English?” I’m watching my disintegration as if from above. The drive to understand is primal. I don’t want to have to think. I want English, and I want it now.

“He is from Poland,” Moreau says. “He speaks Russian and Polish, and of course, French.”

Is it possible to be slipping down the shiny chute to insanity if I’m aware of it happening? “And what does
she
speak?” I say of the nurse whose face is stark with fear.

“I have a little English,” she says, timidly. “Your husband is
en condition stable
. His brain has”—she makes her two hands look like they’re holding an inflating balloon—“
enflure
? But now”—she lets some air out of the balloon.

Why do I have the urge to crack up? Nothing is funny, but every last thing is ridiculous. Gypsies. Helena Watson, a goddamn Agatha Christie character in the flesh. I cover my mouth but laughter springs from my throat and the next thing I’m bent over, snickering, drunk with hysterics.

Moreau says something to the nurse and I hear her leave the room. Is he asking her to bring the straitjacket?

“It’s
all right
,” I say. “He’s stable. His head is a balloon.”

“Sit
down
, Mom.”

Oliver’s voice is like a blow meant to sober me up. How far we’ve come, I think, since I looked into this face the first time, his dark eyelids peeling open, his tiny pink hand slapping the air. Another of the hideous things Jonathon did to me was make it impossible to see this image of Oliver without seeing him there with us, kissing Oliver’s head, gazing over it at me, either lovingly or in a flawless impersonation of loving—I’ll never know which. I didn’t give birth again after that, but the intensity of what I felt for Oliver, how could that ever be surpassed?

Then the line from the e-mail again:
Never yours to begin with
. I drop my hands. For the first time I wonder if I should just give Benny back to Isabel. What an ugly, awful thought. I’m not thinking straight, I know this, and yet I wonder if it came down to it, would I exchange Benny for Benicio? For keeping Oliver,
all of us
, safe?

The weight of the room, my body, my grief returns. “What did he say, Oliver?”

A wave of awareness seems to pass across his face—the look of someone just realizing he won’t be able to keep his grip on a rope he’s been hanging on to for dear life.

“What’s happened here—Benny, everything,” I say, “could’ve been orchestrated by your father. I know you know that. But I need to know what he actually said to you that day.”

Oliver nervously wipes his mouth. His gaze circles the room, Seraphina, Moreau, Benicio, finally me. “I wanted to protect you. I thought,
This is something I can do, I can keep my mouth shut
, so you wouldn’t have to think about him more than…you can’t help doing.”