The Ferryman (18 page)

She commanded love from nearly everyone who knew her—love and loyalty—and she gave it in return. Father Charles at St. Matt's was the only exception he could think of, and that was more Annette's doing than the priest's.

David parked on Massachusetts Avenue and reached into the backseat for an enormous black umbrella. He got out and ran around to Janine's door to keep her from getting rained upon. Though he had run home to dress appropriately for the party, he cared not at all about getting a little wet. On the other hand, Janine had taken time to get her hair and makeup perfect, and the crimson dress she wore seemed too immaculate to allow a single raindrop to mar its perfection.

As he walked her the block and a half to the restaurant, he wielded the umbrella with almost absurd intensity, making certain she remained unsullied.

Inside the front door, they received a nod of recognition from the hostess, checked their coats, and headed up the stairs.

“You didn't come last year,” David observed. It was something he had wondered a lot about.

Janine reached down to take his hand, tapped their clasped fingers against her thigh as they ascended. Her eyes appeared almost violet in the dim light of the stairwell, and the dress rippled over her as though she were an alluring phantom rather than flesh and blood.

“I didn't want to see you,” she confessed. Then, quickly, she shot him an alarmed glance. “Out of guilt, I mean. I thought I'd hurt you enough. The last thing I wanted to do was show up here with ...”

Her words trailed off. She didn't want to say Spencer's name. David reached out to slide his fingers beneath her hair, and he rubbed his thumb gently across the nape of her neck.

“Got it. And on that note, no more of the past tonight. Just the future.”

“Agreed.”

At the top of the steps, they pushed through a pair of French doors into a small room with windows along the front that looked down on Massachusetts Avenue. There were nine or ten round tables, each set for six, but most of the activity was around the bar. The people mingling in that room were a collection of Annette's friends who were almost as eclectic a grouping as the décor in the main restaurant downstairs. David saw Clark Weaver with some of the other teachers from St. Matthew's in a kind of tribal circle in one far corner. Clark laughed loudly and nearly spilled the martini in his hand. The sight made David smile. Clark had been struck particularly hard by Ralph Weiss's death, and it was good to see him loosen up.

Around the bar was a clutch of women, some of whom David recognized, most of whom he supposed to be gay. Along with them were a handful of men, including Montenegro's longtime companion, Alex Cotton.

“Looks like the party's well under way,” David observed.

“We're fashionably late,” Janine told him, squeezing his hand.

“Maybe late isn't fashionable anymore?”

“Yeah, then where's the birthday girl?”

David could not stop the devilish grin that spread across his face. “Getting her spankings?”

“If she's lucky,” Janine replied, with a smile that matched his own.

They laughed and merged with the partygoers, began to mingle. Though he did not recognize her at first, David found himself talking to Annette's cousin Gwen, a recovering alcoholic and rabid Republican, and Gwen's boringly wealthy stockbroker husband. There were also a handful of friends Annette had picked up at college or at one of the various nonprofits she had worked for over the years. All in all, their coworkers and the gay couples were much better company.

He was relieved when Lydia Beal bustled up to him, knocking aside a textbook editor from Little, Brown and her accountant husband.

“David, I've been looking all over for you,” Lydia told him in a hushed voice. “You've got to point out which of these guys are straight and unattached.”

“I'm on the job,” he vowed, and began to gaze around the room in earnest.

“Lydia!”

Janine had peeled herself away from Montenegro, who had proclaimed her a horrible person for not having visited him in nearly two years, then begun to regale her with his tales of trench warfare in the restaurant business. David had listened with one ear for the first few minutes and then tuned them out. If Janine had needed an escape from the conversation, Lydia provided it.

The two women embraced and cooed at one another. Janine thanked Lydia for the sympathy card and flowers she had sent, which caused a brief wave of gravity to sweep over them. It was gone quickly enough, however, as the two old friends began to gossip.

“Have you met Jill yet?” Lydia asked. “My God, she barely looks old enough to have graduated from college.”

A frown furrowed David's brow. “You mean she's here?”

Lydia gave him a confused look.“Of course she's here. It's Annette's birthday.”

“We haven't even seen Annette yet,” Janine said with regret. “We thought she was late.”

“She was,” Lydia confirmed, her gaze beginning to rove over the people gathered around the room. “But she's here now. Somewhere.” After a moment, Lydia's eyes brightened. “Over there. With that nice lawyer and his boyfriend.”

Sure enough, they spotted Annette right away. The lawyer and his boyfriend weren't familiar faces, but Annette seemed animated enough talking to them. David had to assume the woman next to Annette was Jill, though she had her back to them. Still, even across the room, he could see that the woman with the taut body and long blond hair seemed young. Even in the way she carried herself.

Intrigued, he smiled.

“Lydia, do you mind?” he asked.

“Not at all. It's her birthday. Go say hello before she starts hunting for you.”

Lydia began to mingle again, on the prowl for available men without appearing to be that interested. He silently encouraged her, hoping she would find what she was looking for.

Janine took his hand again and they nudged through the partygoers in a cloud of apologies and nearly spilled drinks. All the while, David peered in between bodies for a good look at Jill. The lawyer's boyfriend told a joke, and both Annette and her new lover laughed. Jill turned to gaze sweetly at Annette, gave her a soft kiss on the cheek.

David froze.

Janine's fingers slipped out of his. Eyebrows raised, she turned to stare at him with concern.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “David?”

Slowly he brought a hand up to rub at his eyes, and then he looked again. As if she had sensed his attention, Jill glanced over her shoulder at him.

“David?” Janine prodded, sounding even more worried now. “Are you all right?”

The lawyer added something else to the conversation, and Annette and Jill laughed again. The women's amusement was a lovely sound, a light, lilting melody. He saw that Jill had her arm around Annette. David could no longer see the girl's face, but he did not have to. Her image was etched on his mind's eye.

“Whoa,” he said, letting out a long breath.

“Hey,” Janine said, her voice gentle, but worried.

He met her concerned gaze and offered a wan, but nevertheless reassuring smile and a shake of his head. “Sorry. I just . . . it's impossible.”

“What is?”

Awkwardly, he glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then lowered his voice anyway.

“This Jill? She looks exactly like someone I knew in high school.”

“How exactly?” Janine asked.

“A lot.”

“She's twenty-two, David.”

He smiled weakly. “Yeah. Freaky, huh?” With a wave of his hand, he tried to push away the chill that had surrounded him when he had first seen the girl.

It was Annette's birthday.Time to celebrate.

And even if Jill had not been so young, she could not have been Maggie Russell. Maggie was dead.

David had killed her himself.

 
Fucking dyke.

Spencer sat in his Mercedes and glared out through the windshield at the face of the Cayenne Grill. He had left the BMW at home. They had both seen that car before. The dark blue Mercedes was beautiful, but inconspicuous enough. He had been parked half a block from Janine's apartment all night. That asshole teacher Bairstow had never gone home, not until the middle of the afternoon.

There were images in his mind, pictures of them fucking, but Spencer could not banish them. Janine and Bairstow, together. It killed him.

He hated them both. She had gotten herself pregnant, trying to lock him down, put him in a box; then she had let his baby die and buried it somewhere and he'd never even gotten to see it. Not that he'd wanted the thing, not after the way she'd gone about it. But he was the father, goddamn it. He had rights.

Without the baby, it could have been good with Janine again. He would have laid down some new ground rules, but they might have made it work. All through college, they'd had a heat he never found again after.That had been why he'd tracked her down in the first place. Years later, and he had not been able to get her out of his head. Then she pulled the shit with the baby ... but now, no baby.

It could have been good.

If not for Bairstow.

Still, he didn't blame the teacher. He was an asshole, but he had a dick, and Janine was an extraordinary piece of ass.

Bairstow would get his. Spencer would drag the fucker into court for assault, nail him to the goddamn wall. And Janine? He'd already hurt the bitch a million times over, but this thing with the baby? It'd tear her heart out if he got to exhume the kid. Not that that was his only motivation. His flesh and blood should be buried with his family. Period.

The only one he couldn't hurt was the one he blamed the most. That dyke, Annette. Spencer knew that she had been the one behind getting Bairstow and Janine back together. Little matchmaking twat had been working against him all along.

Fucking dyke,
he thought again.

The rain blew in sheets across his windshield and turned his view of the restaurant into a bleary neon mess. Not that it mattered.Though he was parked in the strip mall parking lot across the street, a stone's throw from the T station, he had a good view of Bairstow's car. He would see them when they left.

But he would not follow. Not this time. Spencer had spent a lot of time ruminating about ways he could hurt Janine and Bairstow. There was plenty of time for that.

The dyke, though, that was something else.

Hurting her was going to require a more direct approach.

On the seat beside him lay a pair of leather gloves and a crowbar. In the glove compartment was a Frankenstein mask he had bought the previous Halloween but never worn.

Spencer sat back and listened to the patter of the rain on the roof as he waited for Annette's birthday party to end. Her biggest surprise was yet to come.

After a while, he grew bored and turned the key backward in the ignition. The dashboard lit up and the radio came on. An old Queen song. Nostrils flared, he punched the preset buttons until he came upon something a little more suitable to his mood.

Someone rapped on the window.

Startled, Spencer glanced over to see an old man peering in at him through the rain-slicked window, all weathered features and white Hemingway beard. It amused him how accurate the comparison was. The old man did look a lot like Hemingway. Contrary to Spencer's expectations, however, he was too well dressed to be some panhandler aggravating people until they gave him money. The old man looked sharp, and his eyes were warm and intelligent.

Worried that the crowbar might raise suspicion, or that the old man might remember it later, Spencer shifted forward on the seat before lowering the window.

“You're getting wet, pal. What can I do for you? You need a jump start or something?”

The old man was fast.

He thrust his left hand through the open window and grabbed a thatch of the long hair Spencer was so proud of. Then he raised the bowie knife in his right and punched it through Spencer's throat, rupturing his windpipe. The sound of it reminded Spencer of ripe water-melons and backyard barbecues.

The old man held on tight to his hair and drew the knife sideways. Arteries spurted blood in Rorschach patterns across the upholstery and windshield.

Spencer slumped down in the seat, on top of the crowbar and gloves. As the old man walked across the parking lot, he dropped the knife, and the rain sluiced the blood from the blade and from his hands.

 
The windshield wipers squeaked across the glass on high speed, but even then, David could barely see the road in front of him. His headlight beams refracted off the heavy rain and he sat rigid, back straight, fists gripping the steering wheel. The wiper on his side went too far when he had them set at high speed, and its tip kept pushing over the edge of the windshield, each time making a small popping noise.

“God, this weather is awful.”

He said nothing. Though he could feel Janine's eyes upon him where she sat in the passenger seat, he had no idea how to express what he was feeling in that moment.The storm had him on edge, yes, but it was far more than the storm.

“David, hey.” She put a hand on his shoulder and kneaded the muscles a bit. “Do you want me to drive?”

The suggestion was so ironic, he laughed a little. It allowed him to relax ever so slightly. “No. I'm all right.”

“This is all about Jill? 'Cause she looks like some old girlfriend of yours? Don't tell me you're still in love with a girl you haven't seen in fifteen years.”

An image of Jill swept through his mind, then seemed to freeze there, a face behind a curtain of ice. The line of her jaw, the flare of her nostrils when she laughed, the way the skin at the edges of her mouth crinkled just so when she smiled.