Keeper (39 page)

“I may roll off but I imagine I can survive the fall.”

“Good thing, ’cause my back can only take so much of that action.” She took the empty bottles and headed to the kitchen, dropping them in her recycling bin under the sink.

“Night, stud,” she said, and headed for her room.

“Good night, Bridgett.”

She stopped, pivoted on a toe, and came back. With no preamble she put her arms around my neck and kissed me, holding me to her mouth for the duration. She released me with a crooked smile.

“You can call me Bridie,” she said, and then went back down the hall.

The photograph on the wall, the one of the lighthouse, bounced blue light from the street to where I lay on the couch, alone. I listened to Bridgett down the hall, where she was sleeping with her door open. She talked in her sleep, soft and incoherent, and I gained no insight trying to decipher her mumbled words, instead falling into visions of Grant lurking in the Westchester woods with Rich’s bomb. The imagined images taunted me until sleep came.

No dreams.

It was the hole in the ground that I kept returning to, earth cleanly pared away to hold the white casket that had traveled from the city to the sloping and grassy hills of this cemetery, that turned me from observer into mourner. In the hot and humid air, I kept finding the smell of wet earth on the breeze, and my eyes went back to the grave again and again between sweeps of the area.

Felice sat between Natalie and me, slim and stoic in her black dress, hard as coal. Dale and Rubin sat in the chairs behind her, and the other mourners spread from there, familiar faces from the clinic staff and others I didn’t recognize. Veronica Selby sat in her wheelchair with Madeline beside her, both their faces fixed in granite sorrow. Bridgett sat on my left, her hands in her lap, focusing on the coffin, her emotion unreadable. All of us on the gray metal folding chairs, listening to the breeze, or the birds, or the sobs, or the priest.

“We gather here to commend our sister Katherine Louisa Romero to God our Father . .

A radio crackled, its volume turned down low, and a sheriff’s deputy turned away to answer it. Transmissions were being made with less care now that the sweep had been completed. No signs of a bomb or Grant, no signs of danger or distress. I watched the deputy listen to the transmission, radio a response, and take the ten steps to where Fowler stood at the end of our row. They put their heads together briefly, and then the deputy stepped away again, sent another transmission.

“. . . says the Lord, inherit the kingdom prepared for you . . .”

The earth in the grave looked soft, and I imagined it sweet, perhaps comfortable. The casket had been open at the Mass. Inside it, Katie’s face was still kind, the smile fixed and clearly not her own. I’d looked at her face and seen only the expression she had when shot, the tears pooling in her eyes and the turn of her mouth as she asked for her mother.

Now the casket was sealed, set on a platform beneath an evergreen. When the breeze moved a branch, sunlight would grace the coffin, the white metal impossibly smooth and shiny.

A marshal stood beside a sheriff’s van in the distance, helping the deputies there load the dogs back inside. The dogs made no noise, wouldn’t unless they caught the scent of an explosive.

“Grant that our sister may sleep here in peace until You awaken her to glory, for You are the resurrection and the life,” the priest said. He was in his thirties, and his voice was full and strong enough to carry clearly. He spoke with sincerity and faith. He spoke the way Crowell pretended to speak. “Then she will see You face to face and in Your light will see light and know the splendor of God, for You live and reign forever and ever.”

“Amen.” I heard Bridgett say it clearly, but Felice seemed to only mouth the word. She took off her glasses, set them in her lap. Somewhere behind us, I heard someone crying.

A woman stopped at a headstone some fifteen feet away, holding a fresh and simple bouquet. She unbuttoned her blazer before kneeling and then she offered the flowers to the deceased. Her head pitched forward with tears then, and I looked away.

The van pulled out, passing the line of parked cars that had been our procession out of the city. The road was one hundred yards from where we now sat, perhaps further. The marshal looked our way, wiping sweat from his forehead. He turned and walked back along the line of cars, stopping to check the Sentinel Ford that Dale had driven. The marshal dropped to his knees and looked under the vehicle, then rose and continued, passing a groundskeeper in brown coveralls who was pulling a black trash bag of cuttings beside the road. The lawn had been freshly cut this morning, and the smell of the grass was thick.

“. . . when the love of Christ, which conquers all things, destroys even death itself,” the priest said. He looked up from his book at us and added, “We will pray silently.”

Heads bowed. At the far end of our row, in the last seat, Alison looked my way and offered me a smile. She was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt, and I moved my eyes back to the grave, wondering what the smile meant.

During the silence, Felice shuddered once and began to weep.

The priest moved to the coffin, sprinkling the glossy surface with holy water. Another radio crackled. The groundskeeper hoisted his bag and then dropped it, bending to clean the spilled cuttings. He adjusted his cap and looked around, embarrassed.

The priest began to read the Gospel, Matthew.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .”

Alison had come after all, had changed her mind. I wondered why she had done it, what had happened to make the funeral become something she felt she could attend.

“. . . for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness . .

It was confusing that she had changed her mind. Had she come for me or herself? Or was this, for her, more about our aborted child?

The priest began the Song of Farewell, and again I heard Bridgett’s voice clearly amongst all the others. She knew the words, and sang with the confidence of someone who’s had voice lessons.

Natalie had put an arm around Felice’s shoulders. Her eyes were on me, sympathetic for my loss.

Catalogue of losses, I thought. Home, child, and child again. Felice had said that no matter where you stood on the line, somebody always got hurt, and she had taken the worst of it. What could be worse than outliving your own child?

I looked at Alison again, and she was still looking at me, now only serious and concerned. She’d never been one to change her mind, and if she was playing games, if this was some guilt maneuver, I wanted no part of it.

The priest began the Prayer of Commendation as I turned away from her, seeing the groundskeeper get back to his feet, the spill cleaned up, on his way down the road and away from our car.

“. . . console us and gently wipe every tear from our eyes: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the priest said.

“Amen.” Chorused, and I imagined Alison adding her voice to the rest.

“Go in the peace of Christ.”

“Thanks be to God,” and that was the only time I heard Felice clearly. Then she was rising, taking my hand as I stood beside her. Dale, Rubin, and Natalie closed around her, too, and we stood with her as she accepted condolences, as if we were part of the same family. Bridgett waited, looking sculpted and immovable. She was wearing a white vest under a black double-breasted jacket and tuxedo pants, and she made them work, made them seem the most appropriate clothes possible for mourning Katie. I had arrived with her, and I would leave with her when the time was right.

Because the job was over, now.

Madeline guided Selby’s chair to Felice, and waited while Veronica spoke softly to Dr. Romero, holding her hands as she had before the conference. Then Selby released them, wiped her eyes, and said to Madeline, “We should be going.”

Madeline nodded once and began pushing the chair toward the road.

Lynn Delfleur gave Felice a hug. There were tears in her eyes.

“Katie was a princess,” Lynn said. “Perfect.”

Felice kissed her cheek, then pulled away, turning to the consolations of another mourner. Lynn stood still for a moment, looking at each of us, then touched Dale’s arm before heading toward the road.

Fowler caught my eye, held his hands open in an empty gesture. Nothing. I nodded, and he moved to speak to one of the marshals. Most of the law enforcement types were heading to the cars. Already one of the sheriffs vehicles had pulled away.

Rubin asked, “How’re you feeling?”

“I don’t know.”

He worked a thin smile up, then sighed. “Me, too. It’s over, I guess, huh?”

“I guess.”

“It wasn’t our fault, was it? Katie?”

That seemed the most important question, suddenly, and I could say only what I had told him before. “We did everything we could, Rubin. It wasn’t our fault.”

“You don’t believe it, though. You haven’t forgiven yourself.”

The woman with the blazer and the flowers rose from the headstone she had been tending, and I watched her walk away, wondering. “Have you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “But I’m trying to.”

I focused on the grave again, heard Rubin move off a few steps.

When I brought my eyes back up, Bridgett had moved beside me and the mourners had withdrawn. Alison was taking Felice’s hand.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Alison said. “I wish I could say more.”

Felice accepted the sentiment with a little nod. “And you, Miss Wallace? You’re well?”

“I’m well.”

“I’m glad.” Felice was watching the casket now. “It’s always a difficult choice to make.”

Alison looked at me, at Bridgett, then withdrew a few steps near the evergreen, waiting. Only she was left now. Even the priest had withdrawn, leaving us, and a groundskeeper to clean up.

“Why don’t you guys take her back to the car,” I said to Natalie. “I’ll catch up.”

“I’m having a reception at my apartment,” Felice said. “Will you and Bridgett come?”

“We’ll come,” Bridgett told her.

They started toward the car, Rubin in front, Natalie in the primary position behind Felice, and Dale behind her. “Alison,” I said, “this is Bridgett. Bridgett, Alison.” 

“That’s a nice outfit,” Alison said.

“Thank you,” Bridgett said. She patted my elbow. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

After Bridgett had left us, Alison asked, “How are you doing?”

“Reasonably well, I suppose.”

She looked over her shoulder at Bridgett. “She doesn’t seem your type.”

“I don’t know if she is,” I said. “I’m surprised you came, you said you weren’t going to attend.”

“I hadn’t planned to.” She put a hand out on the casket, feeling the metal. “But we got off the phone and I felt guilty, and then that FBI agent called about the guest list and asked if I was coming. I told him no, and he said that you really wanted me here.”

“Fowler said that?” I asked. Beyond the tree about fifty feet I saw Bridgett stop, turn back to watch us. Another forty yards or so down I could see Rubin leading the squad to the car.

“No, that wasn’t his name, it was Burgess, I think. Did you really want—”

Grant must have taken the file on Alison from Crowell’s office, I realized, and I was already stepping forward when I heard her suck quick air, saw the color leech from her face.

“Don’t take another step. Just turn around. Turn around or I’ll shoot.”

Bridgett had her hands on her hips, waiting, but I knew we were too far apart, that she couldn’t see my expression. My gun was at my hip, and even at my fastest I couldn’t index it and fire in time.

I turned and Grant was only six feet away across Katie’s grave, the same young face captured in the photograph, the same face I had seen in the crowd, looking just as much the groundskeeper now as when he had slipped the bomb under the car. He appeared almost serene, but that broke with the bum in his eyes. At his waist he held a service .45, pointed at my middle.

And in his left hand he held the small black plastic box Rich had made from radio components. The antenna was tiny, but more than enough to do the job. His thumb rested on the toggle switch.

“I’m going to finish this,” Grant told me. “If you move, if you try to warn anyone, I’ll shoot.” He craned his neck to look past us, and I imagined the squad slowly making their way to the car. Maybe twenty yards left before Grant flipped the switch.

Alison swayed in my periphery, her right hand going to the casket for support.

“You’re doing this for no reason, Paul,” I told Grant. “Melanie never had an abortion—”

“She went to the clinic,” he said.

“For a checkup, for a Pap smear. You killed her and she was innocent.”

“Don’t lie to me. Crowell lied to me. Barry lied to me. Now you’re trying to lie to me,” Grant said. He craned his neck again and I took the chance to move my hand to my belt, nearer my weapon, hoping Bridgett would see the movement, wonder why Alison and I were so suddenly enthralled by a rubbernecking groundskeeper.

Grant looked back at me. “I won’t be used. I’m going to finish this.” He saw my hand and cocked the pistol. I stopped moving. “You think I’m joking?” Grant asked. “You fire and they’ll know exactly what’s up.” Perspiration had soaked onto the bill of his baseball cap. He exhaled sharply, then trained the gun on Alison, canting the barrel at an angle to put the bullet through her head. “You willing to sacrifice her? After all, she murdered your baby, too. Or don’t you see it like that? This is all about choice, right? So you make a choice.”