Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (25 page)

A nurse who had almost the same color hair as Lucy McDermott came up to find out who I was and tell me that I had half an hour to wait before visiting hours. Her features kept getting displaced by Lucy's as she talked to me in hushed tones. I blinked a few times before I started on the importance of the visit, only I was having trouble convincing even myself. She seemed definitely unmoved. I was drawing in a breath to try another convincing aspect of my plight when a second nurse drew up to enter the conversation.

“Are you Mr. Rafferty?” she asked. I said I was. She glanced at the first nurse. “I think it will be alright,” she said. “Mrs. Garber asked for you all day yesterday. She seemed quite agitated. Her daughter has been trying to locate you.” I muttered that I had been out of town and she pointed at the door to Mrs. Garber's room.

I tiptoed in, leaving the door open a quarter. Mrs. Garber lay well tucked into the sheets in the narrow space between the bed rails. She was so thin that her body was indiscernible except for the rise of her feet in the bedding. Her head was sunken in a hollow of the pillow, making her face small and vulnerable. Her eyes were closed and their lids were white, with a transparent quality, like the rest of the skin on her face. She looked more dead than alive, but the monitor sent out an almost steady beep and drew thin, irregularly spaced lines while an apparatus at her nose blew oxygen into her lungs. I stood with my hands on the rail listening to the beeping and the bubbling of the oxygen. Her thin white hands with their bright blue lines lay open on the sheet. I shifted my gaze back to her face and almost immediately her eyes opened, their icy blue burning in her otherwise still face.

There were to be no preliminaries.

“You know why I wanted to see you?” she asked.

“You want to tell me that you killed your husband.”

Her eyes never faltered but it took a while before she said, “Yes. But first you must tell me that you will try to protect Catherine from any further consequences of this shameful business.” She spoke slowly, like she was tired, but her voice was strong—stronger than I would have expected.

“I'll do my best to keep the publicity down. I'm sure Lieutenant Rankin will help, too.”

“I don't mean just the publicity. She must be spared any more pain. She has been the victim of stupid mistakes made over twenty years ago. She must not be a victim any longer. She must try to forget about it, but she is going to need help. I'm asking you because I know she has turned to you. She cares about you.” She stopped and I knew she was waiting for me to say something.

“I care about her, too, Mrs. Garber.”

“I needed to hear you say that. You must understand that she has not had a normal life. There is no possibility for her to have one while either her father or I live. She was a precocious child who was damaged emotionally at an early age. It has been difficult for her to have friends or be close to anyone in any way at all. Why is it that a person must be dying before realizing these things? It is a small consolation to say you did your best but my soul shall not rest in peace for having said it.”

“Why did you kill him, Mrs. Garber?”

Her eyes closed and fluttered open. “Why?” she repeated bitterly. “Because he was a dishonorable man who shoved aside his wife and daughter to have an affair with a woman who was no better than a tramp.” Her anger was as fresh as it would have been if it had all happened yesterday. She raised a withered hand and let it fall back to the sheets. When she spoke again it was with less anger. “I'm afraid I had possession confused with love. It hurt me terribly, and I shared every bit of that hurt and all of the reasons for it with Catherine. She was only seven years old. That was a very great sin. I never did know the entire story, but to have it completed by that woman's friend ...” Bitterness rose into her eyes, making them seem to burn even brighter. I knew she was trying, but she still could not separate herself emotionally from the past.

“But I must tell the story coherently, so it can be repeated to the police. They must have their facts, mustn't they? Have they found Lucy McDermott yet?”

“Yesterday.”

“Have you met her?” I said I had. “A despicable woman. I couldn't understand why Stanley hired her. She belonged in a gutter, not in the bookstore. But I didn't say anything about it until I found out about all the money he had given her. I knew if I asked him about it I wouldn't get any answers. So I went directly to her. That was the day before Stanley—before I killed Stanley. I took the gun. I had assumed they were having an affair, but she denied it. I had expected her to do that, but then she told me she had known Stanley from the days of his affair with Jeannette André and that she had raised his and Jeannette's little girl. She was blackmailing him.”

“You didn't know about the child?”

“No. It shocked me. I didn't really hear what else she said. I didn't need to—I knew most of it already. She agreed to leave town after I threatened her. We left together and I went home. Stanley and I had a terrible argument. Twenty years’ worth of anger poured out. We were making the same mistakes all over again. He had started it all and I wouldn't let it drop. He wanted to push everything aside, forget it happened. But he kept trying to push me aside, too, just like he'd always done, to go off into his own little world where he had lived during most of our marriage. I became more and more worked up until it's a wonder I didn't drop dead that day. Catherine walked in during all that. She locked herself in her room and wouldn't come out. I know she heard every word. I knew what she was suffering and I think it was then that I decided to kill him. It was a very cold and calculated decision. I went to the store the next morning and did it.”

She had become very tired while telling me her story and now her eyes closed. I stood for a moment and then started to leave, but a cold, veined hand came up and clutched mine on the bed rail. Her eyes were wet, but not as bright as they had been.

“I deserved that bullet. AH these years. I wouldn't let her forget it. I talked about it. I told her every horrible thing I knew about him. I wanted her to know. I wanted to protect hen I didn't want it to ever happen to her.” She paused as one side of her mouth dropped in a grimace. “I pulled that trigger twenty years ago,” she said. The hand slid back to her side and the eyes closed again. I glanced up at the monitor. The beeps were coming very far apart and the jagged lines were not reaching as high as they had.

I walked stiffly to the door and jerked it open. Catherine was standing on the other side of it, one foot in the room. Her mouth was quivering and her eyes, her whole face was full of misery. I felt something that went far beyond sympathy and I desperately wanted to do something to help her, but I was helpless as a drowning kitten as she passed me on the way to her mother's side.

I went on out leaving the door open as before and stood with my back to it a few steps away. I wasn't there very long when three nurses rushed past me into the room. I turned to see a straight line on the monitor

Outside in the waiting room I sat dragging on cigarette after cigarette like the same kitten back on the bank of the river sucking in the air.

When Catherine came through the swinging doors her eyes were blank. I sat with her and held her. She looked at me, first with disbelief, then with despair. She would put her hand on my arm, but it kept slipping off like she couldn't hold on. It was like that for a while. I wanted to take her home, but when we got down to the parking lot she told me she had to be alone and would I come in the evening. I followed her to make sure she made it alright and then went on uptown.

35

Deathbed Wish

I slept for about two hours and woke with a start that almost landed me on the floor. I felt vile, but I was in a hurry to do something. I dashed around the apartment shaving, showering, and changing clothes before I realized that I didn't know what I was doing or why I was in such a damn hurry.

I ate lunch and then went up to the office and played around with the heavy assortment of junk mail that Thursdays always bring. I usually throw most of it directly into the trash can, but not that day. That day I went through every piece. If I was pressed hard I might be able to remember what some of it was about, but my mind wasn't on what I was doing. I was using it as a decoy, for something else to concentrate on instead of the small details from the past week that kept cropping up and gaining footholds in my memory. The mail wasn't nearly as stimulating.

I finally sat back with my feet on the desk and let the details swarm. I wasn't seeing the picture in its totality, just isolated vignettes juxtaposed with perfect clarity like they were being reeled off onto a screen in front of me. I saw a seven-year-old child being poisoned by a bitter marriage, helpless, having to hear and absorb all the ruinous details, like it or not. Then the same seven-year-old child, but a woman now, beautiful and withdrawn. One of André's frogs loomed into view and a white hand with large blue veins reached out to pat its head. Two people stood in a darkened room trying to touch each other, frustrated behind a barrier of long-armed demons. One of the arms reached out and clutched at the air. The picture dispersed by fragments, leaving only the arm in a circle of light. The circle broadened, encompassing Lise André as she had been that day in the farmhouse. She faded out of the spotlight and a parade of faces took their turns in it like flashbacks of the cast at the end of a movie: Al the bartender as he leaned on the bar talking to me; Carter Fleming smiling big to show his perfect squared-off teeth; Mrs. Parry with a cigarette growing from her bottom lip; a haughty Lucy as I had imagined her to be but not as I had seen her; the Boy Scout, his bulbous cheeks quaking with fury. The light went out for quite a while before Stanley Garber materialized sitting behind his desk, dead. Mrs. Garber buttoned his coat neatly, but the hand that reached for his glasses jerked back suddenly and she left them on his mouth.

For the second time that day I started. I felt shaky around the stomach. I was sweating. I was beginning to get an idea about what I should do. I wasn't sure I could. All my life I'd had this fixation about being tough. Rather, about not being tough. It was such a cliché to be a tough guy from the Channel. The way the old man talked seemed like a travesty to me. It wasn't realistic. But he would have made his decision about this one, shown his grit, the real stuff. He would have been the all-knowing hero to the end. The consequences be damned. This is what had to be done. I put a call in to Uncle Roddy.

I took him a long time to pick up and when he did it was obvious that my timing was bad.

“What do you want, Neal?” He sounded harassed and tired. “If you got trouble or any bright ideas, call back later.”

“Give me a break, Uncle Roddy. I was just wondering how things are going.”

“Swell. Swell.” He dragged the words out.

“I take it that means Lucy McDermott isn't saying what you'd like her to say.”

“We're working on it,” he said.

“No go on the gun?” The old conversational stall.

“She didn't do it with that one,” he snapped. I nodded like he was sitting across the desk from me. Silence grew like a fungus in the wire. “Do you know something I oughta know?” he demanded.

I was clutching the phone like it was a lifeline. “No,” I said.

“Then I'll talk to you later,” he said and hung up.

The phone stayed glued to my ear for a few seconds and when I put it back in its cradle, it was like I was putting an infant to bed.

The palms of my hands were moist. I wheeled around in the chair and flung open the bottom desk drawer. The bottle of bourbon wasn't there anymore.

The cicadas were out in force as I walked up the familiar path through the treed area. I think I noticed every gnarled branch. Even the dew on the grass stood out glistening in the light from the houses. I saw every crystalline detail.

All the lights in the Garber house seemed to be on. The shades were up and the curtains pulled away from the front windows. The place looked almost cheerful.

When Catherine opened the door I could still see a lot of suffering on her face, but to me she was so beautiful that I involuntarily stopped breathing. There was no gray in her eyes. They were soft and blue like that billowy edgeless blue of the sky right after a spring rain, before the sun gets too bright and turns it into a hard blue ceiling.

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Are you alright?” I asked.

She nodded and smiled weakly at me. “I guess I'm going to make it.”

We went into the living room. I couldn't take my eyes off hen I ran my hand down her arm and put my fingers through hers. I led her over to the sofa. We sat very close to each other.

“Neal,” she said, “there is something I want to say to you.” She paused. “This week—I really may not have made it through this week, you know,” her eyes filled with tears, “without you ...”

“I know. It's okay. You don't have to say those things.”

She rubbed her eyes. “But I want you to know.”

“I do. Really.”

I didn't want that kind of talk between us. Not yet. I had some important things to say to her first, and I didn't want the issue clouded like that. I didn't want to be diverted.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked.

“No. I'm fine.”

She put her arm across me and leaned her head on me. It felt heavy, the hair up against the side of my face smooth and thick. The lights in the room seemed to dim. I closed my eyes. I thought I could feel every movement of her body against my own. I opened my eyes for a second, but closed them again because the room seemed to be leaning precariously. I felt curiously removed, like part of me had become dislodged and was far away or was viewing everything from far away. I was strangely suspended, floating, but quiet, the only still thing in a noiselessly loud flurry of movement around me. There was what seemed to be a fractional moment in which there was nothing, and then everything slipped together and Catherine and I were kissing each other. One hand was in her hair, pulling her to me so that her lips would press harder against mine. She took my hand that was straying at her waist and moved it up her satiny-feeling lounging dress to her breast. All hell broke loose in my head. I moved my hands to her shoulders and pushed away from her. Her eyes opened slowly.