Life Sentences (29 page)
"I'm just trying to sort it all
out."
"When is your detective friend
supposed to get here?"
"His name is Jack. I know you
don't like strangers in the l| house, Mom, but he's a nice guy. He just
wants to protect' us."
"Do we need protecting?"
"Yes, Mom," Daisy told
her. "We do."
"How long will he be staying?"
"I don't know. Until he feels
the house is secure."
Lily looked down at the tissue in
her hand. "After Gregory died," she said softly, "I must've
lost twenty pounds. I had such terrible stomachaches. If you'd told me at
the time that I'd get over it eventually, I never would've believed
you. I remember hugging him before he took off for work that day. I don't
remember what we talked about. I hope I said, 'I love you.' I think I
did. Afterwards I missed him so much, but there was nothing I could do
about it. He was gone."
Prisms of light touched the bureau,
the footboard of her bed, the salmon-colored blankets-magic fairies,
Anna used to call them.
Quick, make a
wish.
Suddenly, Daisy's cell phone rang.
She'd left it in her backpack at the foot of her bed, and now she scrambled
to answer it. "Hello?"
"Ms. Hubbard? This is Dr.
Brown's office. We got the results back from Noah's newborn screen."
"Yes?" she said breathlessly.
Maybe Lily was right. Maybe they were better off not knowing.
"He is a carrier, but he doesn't
have
Stier-Zellar's
."
She could feel her whole body relax.
"Really? Honestly?"
"We also have the results of
your genetic test," the nurse went on. "You have one mutation
for the gene, so that makes you a carrier as well."
"Thank you." Daisy hung
up. It stung for only a second. "He's fine, Mom. He's a carrier, but
he's perfectly healthy. He's going to be fine."
Lily's face became so raw and nakedly
vulnerable that Daisy almost feared for her health.
"Mom? Are you all right?"
She emitted a high, shivery laugh.
Tears clung to her eyelashes. "I'm just so happy."
"Me, too." Daisy gave
her a lingering hug.
Jack's gutless rental car didn't
have enough horsepower to get it over the next hill, let alone the next
mesa. It was sluggish as a snail gliding along on a slimy, muscular foot.
The interior was so cramped his knees were jammed up somewhere near
his skull. There was something on the windshield, a speck of something.
He'd been trying to scrape it off with his thumbnail, but he couldn't seem
to get rid of it. No wonder. It was on the outside of the glass. This car would
drive him insane.
He was in a lousy mood. He'd been
in a lousy mood for days. The wildfire had scorched fifteen thousand
acres, and over fifty homes and cabins had been destroyed. The damage
estimates continued to climb. Erosion and mudslides would be a big
problem in the fall when the rains came. A homeless man had died in the
blaze. The cause of the fire was still under investigation, but all
fingers pointed to Jack's reckless behavior. The investigators had
found a set of charred handcuffs at the point of the fire's origin. Did
they need any more proof?
He regretted his actions. He lamented
the destruction of so much property and the death he'd apparently caused.
He went to bed at night wishing he could turn back time. He woke up wishing
he could go back to sleep. He carried the guilt on his frame and in the
way that he moved. He was ashamed on more levels than his tormented
psyche would ever admit. He was currently on suspended leave with pay and
had hired a lawyer to handle the Internal Affairs Division investigation
into his "egregious misconduct." Only Tully was standing by
him.
The drone of the rental car's tires
thundered in his ears as he cruised through southern Arizona in search
of the small town where Roy Orion
Hildreth
had
grown up. A hot desert wind rushed into the car, blowing his hair around
in streamers. He passed a bar. He passed another bar. He was hungry. He should
eat. He took out his cell phone and dialed Tully's number.
"Hey, Jack," his ex-partner
answered.
"Just tell me you love me, and
I'll go away."
There was a pause. "Where are
you?"
"Waltz Lake. Only there is no
lake. And nobody's dancing."
"I'm in charge of this investigation,
Jack. Don't go running interference. You're on suspended leave* remember?"
"Relax. I'm taking a vacation."
"Uh-huh." ‘'Think of all
the money I'll be saving the department."
"Uh-huh."
He glanced in the rearview mirror
at his own defeated-looking eyes. "Look, I'll share whatever I find
with you, Tully. I just want to help you catch this guy."
"Stay out of it, Jack."
"The paperwork alone could
take weeks. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
There was a long pause.
"No," Tully finally said.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"We didn't have this conversation."
"You have a weird and unique
way about you, Makowski," his friend said, and hung up.
Half an hour later, the road Jack
was on went from gravel to loose rock, and after a few minutes, this bumpy
ride ended in a chalk driveway. The two-story house was made of wheat-colored
concrete and hovered in the morning mist like a fortress overlooking
its own deteriorating grounds. The windows were all boarded up, and
there were no other buildings around for several miles. So this was
where Roy
Hildreth
had spent his miserable childhood?
Jack reached into his leg holster
for his off-duty gun and approached the house up a series of stone slabs
built into the graduated ground. He pried open the rusty wrought-iron
gate and took the flaky flagstone pathway across a
sunbaked
front yard. The coyotes had finished their night wanderings, and if you
looked real hard, you could see them scampering into the dusty hills. The
surrounding desert held hundreds of plant species-creosote,
chuparosa
, jojoba, lavender, mesquite. He was burning
up in this heat. The mercury had already hit one hundred. The ancient
rock garden in front of the house contained a weird topography, barrel
cactus growing next to desert-varnished boulders.
In the garden, partially hidden
beneath a tangled mass of vines, was a marble slab with father etched
on its pale pink surface. Jack had ingested every bit of data he could
find on Roy
Hildreth
. Twelve years ago, Roy's father
had died of a massive heart attack. According to Benny
Hildreth's
wishes, he'd been buried on the property.
He'd gotten permission from the state to be interred in his own front
yard, since he refused to be buried in a cemetery. Benny knew all too
well what went on in those places. He'd been a bone trader for far too
long to trust the men who handled dead bodies.
A strong odor of mulch filled
Jack's nostrils as he leaned over the marble slab and parted the weeds.
There was an enormous hole in the ground. The grave had been dug up recently.
The coffin was down in the hole. The lid was off the coffin, and the body
was missing. Jack clapped his hands, knocking off the dust, and gripped his
gun. It looked like Roy had been here recently. He'd stolen his father's
corpse.
Jack walked toward the house and
mounted the creaky wooden steps, then turned the brass doorknob and
gently pushed the door open with his spread-apart fingers. At the end of
the formal entryway was a shattered floor-to-ceiling mirror. Jack could
see his reflection in the broken shards-he looked like a madman with
his hair blown
i
wildly about his head. The bruises
on his face were healing nicely, and his singed eyebrows were beginning
to grow back. He smoothed his wind-whipped hair behind his ears with his
bandaged hands. He'd burned them pretty good. His index finger was in a
splint, and the waist chain had left behind a string of dark red welts on
his neck. A few years ago, Jack would have told you that he knew himself
and his place in the universe, but as he slipped toward thirty-nine, he
was beginning to distrust this perception of himself.
His scalp shivered as he heard a
skittering sound. It was coming from the living room. He crossed the water-damaged
parquet floor, where the rotten wood felt as soggy underfoot as an
enormous hot dog bun. The entry-way's heavily varnished moldings were
alligatored
with neglect. This was exactly the kind of
house the neighborhood kids would insist was haunted. Step across
th
threshold, and you'd hasten your own death. Bring
plant inside, and it would shrivel in seconds.
The living room at the heart of
the house was barely beating. The vents and light fixtures were congested
with dust. A decade's worth of cigarettes had been snuffed out along the
edges of the flat-wood molding. Jack trained his gun on a skittering sound.
It was coming from behind the dusty learner recliner peppered with shotgun
blasts. He could feel the tension in him diffracting like cracks on thin
ice as he circled slowly around it.
A dozen rats scattered in all directions,
abandoning the corpse that was propped up on the leather chair. The
body was spiffily dressed in a gray flannel suit, a blue silk tie and black
shoes. The smell was repugnant. The corpse's face and hands were covered
with a disgusting yellow waxy substance that could've been
adipocere
.
Adipocere
happened
when the body's fat turned to wax as a result of a wet burial. Caskets were
like cars; they deteriorated in much the same way. Once the enamel was
breached, the metal casket would begin to rust and leak. That might account
for the skin's soapy appearance. Around the corpse's neck was a hand-lettered
sign:
bone TRADER BLOWOUT SALE-TAKE
ME HOME FOR $5!
Repulsed, Jack took a step back and
trained his gun on the smallest of sounds. Was Roy watching him? Was he
there inside the house?
He could just imagine embers glowing
in the wood-burning fireplace. Benny
Hildreth
used to keep the A/C on full blast, no matter what the season. Jack had read
about it in one of the files. It was usually a cool sixty-six degrees
in here. Benny ran the A/C hard and lit a fire every night, talk about extravagant.
The house had been passed from father to son, and now Jack glanced at the
ruined furniture-the brown leather sectional sofas, the Barcelona
chairs, a tipped-over candelabra on the tarnished copper mantelpiece.
Built in the 1950s, this house had once been the envy of the entire town
with its Palladian windows and illuminated backyard. A pathway lined
with Grecian urns had led from the house to the octagonal gazebo. There
was a patio with cafe" umbrellas, stainless-steel gas heaters and
a dark stone Buddha. Jack had seen pictures in the court files. Beyond
the patio was a sleek rectangular pool with an infinity edge. Roy's parents
used to hold parties year round, sometimes wife-swapping shindigs during
the Swinging Sixties. Linda would retire early, however, due to her delicate
health. Then she and young Roy would sit in the master bedroom and look
out the window at the colorful paper lanterns and listen to the party noises
below. Now the house smelled of rot creeping up the foundation, of mold
permeating the ductwork, of mildew drifting through the heat registers.
Aiming his gun around every corner,
Jack left the living room and stood on the threshold of Benny
Hildreth's
office. Lingering in the doorway, he
felt many things-apprehension, excitement, curiosity. He believed
that the place must be holy to Roy. A touchstone of sorts. He would come
back to remind himself of who he was. He would stash things here-fake identity
papers, credit cards, a getaway car.
Now Jack studied the cracked faux-leather
sofa, the sun-damaged chairs with their delaminating finishes, the
heavily varnished table with its water rings and natural oils gone all
dark and wavy, the stack of out-of-date Fortune magazines crazed with
cobwebs. This room was a coffin. He spotted the Pooped Pussycat jewelry
box on top of the black filing cabinet and crossed the room. There was a
collection of silver keys inside. He selected a key and fitted it into
a lock, and the top file drawer rolled open.
Jack scooped out a handful of yellowing
manila file folders with stick-on labels from a manual typewriter:
Police Archive Photos, Autopsies,
World War II, Famous People.
He set the files down on the scratched
wooden desk and opened another file drawer. It screeched like a child.
He randomly selected a folder, its contents smelling of dry rot. The manila
folder spread apart like the dusty, translucent wings of a carefully
preserved butterfly. In his hands were eight-by-ten glossies of dead people-a
headless man who'd been struck by a train, red chunks of human body parts
taken from the belly of a crocodile, stacked Holocaust victims labeled
brennholz
-firewood. He slapped more folders
down on the desk, dust rising from the wormy wood. He removed all the files
and found what he was looking for-a rumpled paper bag. Inside the bag
were some phony ID papers and a few hospital name tags, which he spilled
out.
Henry Wendell, M.D., Evan Baker,
Behavioral Pediatrics…
He heard a noise. It sounded like
footsteps. Jack's limbs filled with an unnatural energy as he hurried
back across the hallway into the living room. A dog glanced up from the
corner, then trotted away. It left through a broken window.
With a shiver of residual anxiety,
he looked around at the toppled, broken furniture and mentally reviewed
the history he'd pieced together from the commitment files and psychiatric
evaluations, years of accumulated recommendations and court assessments.
Roy had grown up in this house surrounded by the pornography of death.
His hypochondriac mother had died when he was eight years old. His bone-trader
father had taken him on gruesome business trips from hospital to morgue,
trading and selling death memorabilia. When he was a little boy, Roy
wanted to become a doctor. He told his psychiatrists later on that he'd
wanted to cure his mother of her elusive illnesses. But then after she
had died, so did his dream. He dropped out of high school during his sophomore
year and was in and out of juvenile hall from that point onward. He impregnated
Kerry Pearl but never married her. She raised the baby with her parents'
help, and it died later on. At twenty-three, he did a stint in a mental institution
after slashing his wrists in jail with the sharpened edges of his driver's
license. At the hospital, he told the doctors he wanted to die. Why did
he want to die?
Upstairs in Roy's bedroom, the
walls were painted Utah-sky blue. The frogs in the dusty terrarium had
hardened to shoe leather. The plants had withered to straw. Jack dug around
in Roy's bureau drawers, groping through moldy Jockey shorts and Spider-Man
pajamas sprinkled with petrified rat pellets. He stepped back and studied
the room for a beat, then noticed a cardboard box bidden under the
bed. He got down on his hands and knees and slid it out. He sneezed from inhaled
dust balls.
The box contained a bunch of scientific
magazines, some of them over a dozen years old. Jack leafed through the
top periodical, stopping wherever the pages had been turned down. He
scanned an article on genetics, an article on DNA. Then a picture fell
out.
Jack scooped it up. The snapshot
had been folded and unfolded so many times it was almost torn in half. A
cute toddler sat in a wheelchair. She had a thin face, pronounced cheekbones
and dark eyes that seemed to drift in and out of focus. She had curly dark hair
and dimples and looked very frail. Jack turned the picture over. Written
on the back in girlish script, it said
Suzy
Pearl
Hildreth
, 1991
. Roy and Kerry Pearl's
daughter, Suzy, would've been three years old at the time this picture
was taken.