With Every Breath (32 page)

Maddie picked at french fries. Josh bolted down two cheeseburgers, an order of fries, and an apple pie, and went outside to play in Ronald McDonald’s fun house. He darted away from the table before Maddie could stop him, and she jerked to her feet, her heart thudding.

"Come on," Joe said quietly. "We can sit out there on that bench and watch him."

She grabbed her purse and ran without waiting to see if he was behind her. And her eyes burned. Dear God, would it never end? How many more times was Rick Graycie going to slip through the authorities’ fingers like so much sand?

She didn’t honestly breathe again until she reached the bench. She sat carefully, her fingers wrapped like claws around the edge of the wood. She leaned forward a bit to watch Josh play. She felt Joe sit beside her.

Was Rick dead? Was she putting herself through this extra torment for nothing?

It almost didn’t matter, she realized dully. Because, somehow, he had gotten tied up with what had happened

on the island all those many years ago. And that wasn’t going to end until she remembered.

"What happened, Joe?" she demanded suddenly, then the words tumbled out of her fast and desperately. "What exactly happened that day? Leslie told me the basic details last week, about the pantry and the blood, but I want to know everything. I want to hear your thoughts. You’ve never said. You’ve never really talked about it."

Joe sat back against the bench and watched her levelly. "I haven’t mentioned my own theories because you haven’t exactly been amenable to the discussion."

Maddie let her air out on a harsh breath. "I’m not sure I am now."

Joe waited.

"But Leslie said something about chipping at existing holes, so ... let’s chip."

"Existing holes?"

"The things I do
remember. The things that have crept through the wall I ... I’ve built." Her voice was stiff. She found she couldn’t look at him. It was very, very hard to let him see her flaws, her ... craziness. His opinion of her was too dear.

If he ever stopped wanting her, she thought she would die.

Because that realization was so hard to deal with, the subject at hand became suddenly easier to cope with. She finally looked over at him.

"Tell me," she urged again.

"Maddie, this isn’t a hole. You don’t remember anything about that day, and I don’t want to do anything that could hurt you."

"I’m not fragile!" she snapped, suddenly angry.

Joe lifted a brow. "That’s actually the last thing I would call you."

"Last night you pushed me to remember. So why back off now?"

"I pushed you to remember with professional help," he pointed out in an infuriatingly reasonable tone.

"Damn it, just tell me, Joe. Tell me before Josh comes back."

He hesitated, then his eyes relented. He scowled and rubbed his eyes.

"I don’t know what Leslie said about that day, so bear with me if I repeat some things," he began. "You were in the pantry. There was blood all over the kitchen. All over you, too. The doors and the windows were locked." Maddie blinked. "Locked?"

"Yeah."

"So whoever was responsible for this . this blood then calmly left, locking the door behind them?"

"So it would seem."

"Do we know that it was my parents’ blood?"

He lifted another brow at her. He really did enjoy her mind. "Good point. Yeah, Dave checked that. The blood typed out to be your mother’s. A-Negative."

She herself was AB-Negative, Maddie thought. Which meant that Beacher must have been B, according to what she remembered learning about the inheritance of blood types in her high school biology course. For a moment she thought that was odd, then realized it was possible that Beacher hadn’t bled that day, in that house.

"Okay," Maddie said, steadying herself. She told him what Leslie had told her. Something scurried briefly in her stomach as she wondered if she was betraying a confidence. But she didn’t know whom
Leslie had seen, and, in the end all her concern had to be for Josh, for Joe, and herself.

"So unless this person Leslie saw just happened to lock the door behind him when he left," she finished, "then it’s unlikely he killed anybody."

"He couldn’t ‘just happen’ to lock the door," Joe argued. "Back then, your father had one of those kinds on it where you needed a key. It was in the file. That’s the biggest reason Dave Bramnick has always thought that your father killed your mother and took off," he said bluntly. "Beacher drank, Maddie. Sometimes he got wild. Maybe in May 1972, he got real
wild. Maybe he came to, saw what he’d done, and ran like hell. Maybe he’s living in California right now. His keys were never found, although his truck was abandoned down by the ferry."

Maddie digested this. She realized it felt right. Or, at least, it didn’t feel wrong.

"Do you
think that’s what happened?" she asked.

Joe blew out his breath. "No."

"No?"

"I think that someone killed both of them, threw their bodies in the ocean, took Beacher’s keys, dropped off the truck, and went on with their business. But it’s just a ... feeling."

"So why do you think this has anything to do with what happened last night?"

"Well, for Christ’s sake, Maddie, somebody killed Graycie, and that same somebody followed you out of that house!"

She stared over at Josh again for a moment, then she nodded.

"I think whoever killed your parents is scared shitless that you’re going to remember and tell me," Joe went on. "I think whoever killed your parents broke into your house and killed the cat to scare you off before you could remember. At first I was willing to go along with the idea that Rick did it. That made enough sense, and I guess I really didn’t want it to turn out to be the alternative. But it wasn’t Rick who broke in that window to kill the cat, and Rick didn’t leave the flowers." He hesitated again. "Anyway, if I’m right, then whoever killed your parents is probably going to keep trying to scare you off. And until we lay our hands on Graycie’s body, we’re right the hell back where we started. Is it him playing with you, or someone else? Goddamnit, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, one way or the other."

She looked up at him sharply. "That’s why you’re pressing me to remember all of a sudden. In case it has been somebody else. So we can find out who it is before he can hurt me or Josh."

Joe nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"Then Rick turning up was incidental? You think it was a coincidence? He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, just happened to find me while all this other stuff is going on?"

"Maybe."

Maddie shook her head. "I don’t believe in coincidence, Joe."

He reached for her hand. It was narrow and fineboned. He turned it over in his own, and heat tried to gather low inside him.

"Neither do I, babe," he said quietly. "Neither do I."

Chapter 26

They went straight to the police station when they got back to the island. Joe pointed out that there were still nine hundred people on Candle, and one of them could be counted on to pick that day to steal the wind chimes off an archenemy’s front porch.

All the wind chimes were present and accounted for, but there were a pile of phone messages waiting for him. The continuation of the search party up on The Wick had yielded nothing. Kenny was running the show and had widened the radius to include the big island, but so far nothing had turned up there, either. He’d checked with all the doctors and hospitals within thirty miles of Jonesport on the mainland. No one matching Rick’s description had been in for emergency treatment.

Joe couldn’t shake the increasingly certain feeling that if Maddie could remember, Graycie’s carcass would turn up.

While she stared pensively out the window, he went back to sorting through the phone messages. Mildred Diehl had called. She wanted to know if anyone was going to charge Maddie Brogan with her ex-husband’s murder.

Maddie stiffened at that one, but Joe crumpled it disgustedly and tossed it into the trash can. "There’s somebody who needs a shrink," he muttered.

"Maybe not," Maddie answered weakly. "Other people are probably wondering the same thing, Joe. I was there, and Rick is gone." And the blood,
she thought. All that blood. But if he’s dead, where is he?

"Doesn’t matter." Joe reached for the phone again. "I happen to be of the opinion that all you did last night was run like hell." He watched her expression for a moment as he punched a number into the phone. "You’ve got to understand Mildred. Thirty-five years ago her parents shipped her off to the mainland real suddenlike. When she came back, she had Cassie with her. There was some story about her having been married, and the guy took off. Who knows? She changed her last name from Mulligan to Diehl, and ever since then, she makes damned certain that everybody she comes into contact with becomes as bitter and unhappy as she is.

"Yeah," he said suddenly, turning his attention back to the phone.

Maddie listened to his side of the conversation for a while. Her brows rose slowly. "What are you doing?" she breathed when he hung up.

He rubbed his eyes. "Attempted suicide means a night in the loony bin," he answered. "If there’s any reason to believe that Gina’s a threat to anyone in addition to herself, they’ll keep her for an additional seventy-two hours. Crazy goddamned law. I don’t know what good it does. But it comes in handy now."

"Me," Maddie whispered uncomfortably. "You still think she’s a threat to me?"

"You’re all I’ve got, babe." His words were casual, and she knew he was talking about using her to keep Gina in the hospital, but they made her pulse skip anyway.

"She needs longer than three days, Joe," she said suddenly.

His face hardened. "I know. But three days is all I’m empowered to do." He was quiet for a minute. "In three days, maybe I’ll be able to deal with her. Right now I don’t need to worry about guarding you from her on top of everything else."

Maddie realized that he was hoping that within three days she would remember. She reached out for Josh and pulled him onto her lap for her own comfort. It seemed dismally farfetched.

Then again, odder things had happened in a short time so far.

A knock sounded on the partially open door. Maddie jumped. An officer came in with a large box. He put it on the floor next to Joe’s desk and nodded at her.

"Ma’am."

She greeted him and leaned over to peer into the box. It was their stuff from the house. It made her world feel both less fractured and more off kilter. It was good to have it back, but it seemed odd to have it there, not in the house she’d thought she’d be peacefully renting.

She sighed and let Josh slide off her lap so she could dig through it.

"Everything’s there that you asked for," the cop said defensively.

"Yes. Thank you. I just want to make sure my camera equipment made the trip okay." She found it and held various pieces up to the light. Then she got a sudden headache.

"Those other pictures," she thought aloud.

"What pictures?" Joe asked sharply.

"It’s something else that doesn’t make sense," she went on, almost to herself. "I asked Aunt Susan to send me pictures of my parents. She never did." She put her equipment back carefully. "Why did she lie to me? Did she lie to me?"

"About sending them?" Joe looked at her blankly. "No, no." She shook her head fretfully. "Why did she tell me that my parents just disappeared if they didn’t? Why saddle me with something like that?"

"Call her and ask." He pushed the phone at her. Maddie flinched. "Chips in the wall."

"Yeah."

She picked up the phone and hesitated. She didn’t know why, but she felt instinctively that she didn’t want to talk to Aunt Susan just then. She realized that she’d only called her once since she’d been there.

And that was definitely a sign that she was hiding. From something.

Maddie tapped in the number reluctantly. The phone rang for a long time, and her aunt’s voice was breathless when it came over the line.

"Hi, Aunt Susan, it’s me." She felt oddly awkward. This woman had raised her.

"Oh, dear, then I’m glad I came to the phone. I was pulling up weeds in the garden. How are you? How’s our Josh?"

Maddie glanced over at him. "Better." It was nothing she could put a finger on. He seemed ... stronger, she thought, in spite of everything. "Aunt Susan," she went on suddenly, "I never got those pictures."

"What pictures, dear?"

"The ones you were going to send me of my parents." There was a short silence. "Why, I plumb forgot."

"I figured that. Could you send them now?" Maddie realized that her voice was strained.

"Oh. Of course. As soon as I finish up outside, I’ll look for some."

"Thanks."

"Is something the matter, dear? You sound odd." Maddie closed her eyes. So much.
So much was

wrong, and unless she was way off base, Aunt Susan was a part of it.