Magic hour: a novel (43 page)

He worked the lock. When it clicked, he turned to Julia. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“I’m sure.”

He eased the door open.

Alice slipped into the pen. She and the wolf rolled around together, playing like littermates in the snow. Every time he licked her cheek, Alice giggled.

Floyd shut the gate again. He stood there, watching them play. “This is the first time he’s stopped howling since I got him.”

“She missed him, too,” Julia said.

“What do you suppose—”

“I don’t know, Floyd.”

They fell silent again, watching the girl and wolf roll around in the snow.

“It’s amazing what you’ve done with her,” Max said to Julia.

She smiled. “Kids are resilient.”

“Not always.” His answer was so quiet she almost missed it.

She was about to ask him what he meant, but before she’d formed the question, she heard sirens. “Do you hear that?”

He nodded.

The sound was far off at first, then it drew closer.

Closer.

When the first flashing lights appeared, cutting through the hazy snowfall, Floyd jumped into action. He grabbed Alice’s coat and pulled her out of the pen, then slammed the gate shut.

Alice dropped to her knees and howled miserably.

The police cruiser drove into the yard and parked. The lights remained on, flashing in staccato bursts of color. Ellie walked toward them in the surreal light. “He’s come for her,” she said without preamble.

“Who?” Julia asked, but when Ellie glanced at Alice, Julia knew.

“Alice’s father.”

M
AX CARRIED
A
LICE INTO THE HOUSE.
S
HE WEIGHED ALMOST NOTHING.

He tried not to think about how natural this felt, carrying a child, but some memories were imprinted too deeply to ever erase, and some movements felt as natural as breathing.

He tried to set her down on the sofa so he could build a fire.

But she wouldn’t free him, wouldn’t uncoil her arms from around his neck, and all the while, as he carried her around the house and built the fire, she was howling in a quiet way that broke his heart.

Finally, he sat down on the couch and drew her onto his lap. Her eyes were tightly shut; her cheeks were still pink with cold. The sound she made—more whimper now than howl—was the physical embodiment of loss. Too much feeling and too few words.

Look away,
he told himself.
Put on a movie or turn up the music.

He leaned back and closed his eyes. He knew instantly it was a mistake. In his mind he heard a child crying—great big crocodile tears.
My fish isn’t swimming anymore, Daddy. Make him all better.

Max tightened his hold on Alice. “It’s okay, little one. Let it out. That’s a good thing, actually.”

At the sound of his voice, she drew in a sharp breath and looked up at him. It made him realize that it was the first time he’d spoken since they left the game farm. “Julia had to go to the police station with Ellie. They’ll be back soon.”

She blinked up at him through eyes that were surprisingly dry. He found himself wondering if she knew how to cry. The very idea of it—that she couldn’t release her pain that way—wounded him.

“No Jewlee leave Girl?”

“No. She’ll be back.”

“Home Girl?”

“Yes.” He tucked a straggly, still damp lock of hair behind her tiny ear.

“Wolf?” Her mouth trembled. The question was so big and complex; yet she asked it all with that one word.

“The wolf is okay, too.”

She shook her head, and suddenly she appeared too old for her face, too knowing. “No. Trap. Bad.”

“He needs to be free,” Max said, understanding her easily.

“Like birds.”

“You know about trapped, don’t you?” He stared down into her small, heart-shaped face. As much as he wanted to look away—needed to look away—he couldn’t. She made him remember too many moments that had passed. The surprising thing was, they were
good
memories, some of them. From a time when he’d been able to stand still . . . a time when holding a child had made him laugh instead of cry.

“Read Girl?” She pointed to a book on the coffee table. It was already open to a page.

He picked it up.

She immediately resettled herself so that she was positioned closely beside him.

He looped one arm around her and opened the book between them.

She pointed to the top of the page, very certain where she’d left off.

He began to read: “‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the skin horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’”

Read to me, Daddy.

He felt Alice’s hand on his cheek, comforting him. Only then did he realize that he was crying.

“Ouch,” she said.

He looked down at her, trying to remember the last time he’d let himself cry.

“All better?”

He tried to smile. “All better.”

Smiling at that, she snuggled up against him. He closed the book and started telling her another story, one he’d spent a long time trying to forget, but some words stayed with you. It felt good, saying it all to someone, even if, by the time he got to the sad part, the part that made him want to cry again, she was fast asleep.

TWENTY-TWO

T
HE
DNA
IS CONCLUSIVE?”
J
ULIA ASKED.
I
N THE QUIET OF THE
car her voice sounded louder than she would have liked. Because of the snow and the falling night, it felt as if they were cocooned in some strange spaceship.

“I’m no expert,” Ellie said, “but the lab report indicated certainty. And he knew about the birthmark. I have a call into the FBI. We’ll know more in the morning. But . . .”

“What’s her real name?”

“Brittany.”

“Brittany.” Julia tested out the name, trying to make a match in her mind. She thought that if she focused on little things like that—tasks—she wouldn’t think of the big things. Alice—Brittany—wasn’t her daughter; she never had been. All along, the A answer had been this moment—Alice’s reunification with her real family. It didn’t matter that she had made a fatal mistake and fallen in love with the child. What mattered was Alice. That was the ledge Julia clung to. “Why did it take him so long to get here?”

Ellie pulled into the parking slot marked
CHIEF OF POLICE
and parked.

Julia stared at the sign. The beam of the headlights seemed to set it aglow. At the same time, the falling snow obscured it. Everything about this night was conflicted, it seemed. “I understand you have a job to do, El. We both do. We let ourselves get too involved with her. I get it. But I’m a professional. Believe me when I tell you that I never lost sight of the risk I was taking, and I understand what’s best for Alice.”

“That’s a bunch of shit, but I know why you’re saying it.” Ellie turned to her. In the weird mixture of light and darkness, her face seemed older and full of shadows. “There’s a problem.”

“Tell me.”

“Do you know who George Azelle is?”

Julia frowned. It took her a moment to remember. “Oh, yeah. The guy who murdered his wife and baby daughter? Sure. He—”

“He’s her father.”

“No.” She shook her head. There must be some mistake. The Azelle case had been a big deal. The millionaire murderer, they’d called him, referring to the dot-com empire he’d built. A circus of media attention had followed every confusing aspect of the process. The only certainty in the whole proceeding had been his guilt. “But he was convicted. He went to prison. How—”

“I’m not the one with the answers. He is.”

Julia couldn’t seem to move.

Ellie touched her arm. “I can go in alone, tell him I couldn’t find you.”

“No.”

As Julia stepped out into the freezing night, she tried not to panic. Losing Alice to a loving family was something she would have made herself deal with. George Azelle was something else. “Not to a murderer,” she muttered more than once on the long walk across the yard and up the stairs. All the way there, she tried to remember what facts she could about the trial. Mostly, she recalled that the jury had found him guilty.

Cotton-ball snowflakes drifted lazily from the night sky, glowing in the pyramids of light from streetlamps and windows.

Inside the station it was quiet.

Julia blinked, letting her eyes adjust slowly to the light. The main room seemed larger than usual, but that was because she’d usually seen it during press conferences. Cal was at his desk, headphones on, and Peanut stood beside him. Both looked at Julia through worried eyes.

Ellie’s desk was empty. So was the chair in front of it.

“He’s in my office,” Ellie said.

“Oh.”

Ellie looked at Peanut, then at Cal. “You two stay out here.”

Peanut’s eyes filled with tears. “We don’t want to hear it.”

Cal nodded and reached for Peanut’s hand.

Ellie led Julia through the main room, past the twin jail cells with their open doors and empty bunks, to an open door. On it was a brass plaque that read:
CHIEF.

Ellie went in first. Almost immediately there were voices; hers a little too fast, his gravelly and low.

Julia took a deep breath and followed her sister into the office.

There were things to notice, of course—bookcases and a desk, and family photos—but all Julia saw was George Azelle.

She might not have recognized him on the street or in a crowd, but she remembered him now. Tall, dark, and deadly. That was how the press had characterized him, and it was easy to see why. He stood well over six feet, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. His handsome face was all sharp angles and deep hollows and bruiselike shadows; the kind of face that darkened easily into anger. Black hair, threaded with gray, hung almost to his shoulders. His was the kind of face that launched a woman’s dreams, although he looked worn.

“You’re the doctor,” he said. There was an accent in that voice, an elongation of syllables that made her think of Louisiana and bayous, of hot, decadent places and conversations that went on long into the night. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for my little girl. How is she?”

Julia moved forward quickly, almost jerkily, and held out her hand. His handshake was firm, maybe even a little more than that.

“And you’re the murderer,” she said, drawing her hand back. She had a sudden urge to wash the feel of him away. “A murder-one conviction, if I remember correctly.”

His smile faded. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it on Ellie’s desk. “To make an extremely long story short, the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s denial of a Motion to Dismiss. It was a sufficiency of evidence thing. The Supreme Court agreed. I was released last week.”

“On a technicality.”

“If you consider innocence a technicality. I came home one day and my family was gone.” His voice cracked. “I never knew what happened to them. The cops decided I was a murderer and that was it. They ignored any other evidence.”

Julia had no answer to that. She tried desperately not to
feel
all this, but panic was stalking her. “She can’t survive without me.”

“Look, Doc, I’ve been locked up for years. I have a big house on Lake Washington and enough money to hire the best care for her, so let’s not beat around the bush. I need to show the world she’s alive, so I want her.
Now.
”

She stared at him, actually shocked by that. “If you think I’m going to just hand Alice over to a murderer, you’re crazy.”

“Who the hell is Alice?”

“That’s what we named her. We didn’t know who she was.”

“Well, you know now. She’s my daughter and I’ve come to take her home.”

“You’re kidding, right? For all I know, you were behind the whole thing. You wouldn’t be the first man to sacrifice a child to get rid of a wife.”

She saw a flash of something in his eyes. He closed the small distance between them. “I know who you are, too, Doc. I’m not the only one here with a shady past, am I? Do you really want a public fight?”

“Anywhere,” she said, holding her ground. “You don’t scare me.”

He towered over her, whispered, “Tell Brit I’m on my way.”

“I won’t let you have her.”

His breath was warm and soft against her temple. “We both know you can’t stop me. Washington courts are pro-reunification of the family. See you in court.”

A
S SOON AS HE WAS GONE,
J
ULIA SANK ONTO A COLD, HARD CHAIR.
H
ER
whole body was trembling. George Azelle was right; the Washington State courts valued reunification of the family over almost everything else.