Harvey Connally’s gaze snapped back to Oliver. “I only know what he told me,” he said.
“And what was that?” Oliver asked. “What did he tell you?”
Silence hung in the room for a long time. Finally, Harvey spoke, and though his words were uttered very quietly, they exploded in Oliver’s head like blasts of dynamite. “It was your fault,” his uncle told him. “It was just an accident, but it was your fault.”
Oliver slumped in his chair, unable to speak.
Amy Becker’s fists were firmly planted on her hips as she glared at her father with stormy eyes. “Why can’t I go too?” she demanded.
“Because there isn’t anything for you to do, and you’d just be bored,” Ed assured her. “And I’ll be gone only a couple of hours. When I get back, you and I can go for a hike. Maybe up in the woods behind the old Asylum. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I want to go to the office with you,” Amy insisted. “I want you to teach me how to be a lawyer!”
Ed reached down and lifted his daughter up so he could look directly into her eyes. “If you want to be a lawyer, you have to go to law school. And you can’t do that until you’ve finished college. And you can’t do that—”
“Until I finish high school, and I can’t do that until I finish grade school.” Making a face as she completed the familiar litany, Amy pretended to try to wriggle out of her father’s arms. “I’ll never get to be a lawyer!”
“Sure you will,” Ed told her as he put her back down. “Unless you decide to be something more fun, like a fireman or an astronaut. But all I’m going to do this morning is look at some papers. Okay?”
Amy sighed as if she were being asked to take the weight of the entire world onto her little shoulders, but then shrugged. “Okay. I’ll play with Riley until you get back. But as soon as you come home, we’re going for a hike in the woods. You promised!”
“I promised,” Ed agreed, leaning over to kiss his daughter on the head. He straightened up as Amy skittered out the back door, then moved toward the kitchen sink, where Bonnie was rinsing the breakfast dishes. “And maybe when we get back from the hike …” he began, nuzzling the back of her neck as he slipped his arms around her waist.
“Ooh, promises, promises,” Bonnie replied, letting her body shimmy against his. “Promise you won’t stay more than a couple of hours?”
“Promise,” Ed repeated. “I just have to review the final financing package for the Center so Melissa can give it to the feds. Should have done it yesterday,” he added with a sheepish smile before Bonnie could remind him that he’d put in more time on the chest of drawers than his paperwork. Then, briskly: “In another week, maybe we can all start breathing a little easier around here.”
Bonnie sighed. “I hope so, but sometimes I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t just tear that horrible old place down and be done with it.”
“Oh, Lord,” Ed groaned. “Not you too! You’re starting to sound like Edna Burnham!”
“I am not!” Bonnie protested. “Well, maybe a little bit. But I’m starting to think the whole idea of turning an insane asylum into a shopping center is a little creepy.”
“It was Charles Connally’s home before it was a mental hospital,” Ed reminded her.
“I still think it’s creepy,” Bonnie insisted. Then she smiled. “On the other hand, if it’ll help everyone in town earn a decent living for a change, then who cares what I think? I don’t even care. Go get those papers done so we can all get on with our lives.”
Giving Bonnie one more kiss, this time on the lips, Ed went out to the garage and got into the Buick.
Just as he always did, he started the car, glanced in the rearview mirror, and put the transmission into Reverse in a nearly seamless series of motions, then pressed lightly on the gas pedal.
The rear door had just cleared the garage when Ed felt a bump, followed instantly by a yelp of pain, then a scream of anguish. Instinctively slamming on the brakes, he jammed the transmission into Park and leaped out of the car, his first awful thought being that somehow he had hit his own daughter. A second later, though, as he saw Amy standing in the driveway and realized she was unhurt, he felt a wave of relief. His relief, however, was replaced with horror as he heard what Amy was shouting.
“You killed him! You killed Riley!”
Ed saw the black mass that was half-hidden under the car, and in an instant he was back in his dream, standing at the courthouse window, staring at the mangled body of Riley smashed on the pavement below, crushed beneath the wheels of a truck.
But this wasn’t a dream.
And Amy, now on her knees beside her injured pet, was sobbing brokenly.
“No!” Ed gasped. “I didn’t—” His words died on his lips as he saw a twitch of movement in Riley’s hind leg.
Now Bonnie was next to him too, brought running from the kitchen by her daughter’s anguished cries.
“Help me!” Ed told her. “He’s not dead! If we can get him to the vet …” Leaving his sentence unfinished, he carefully drew the dog out from beneath the car. A faint whimper bubbled up from the animal’s throat, but then, as if to apologize for the inconvenience he was causing, he tried to lick Ed’s hand. “Oh, God, Riley,” Ed said, his own voice now catching with a sob. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“The car, Ed,” Bonnie urged, gently guiding Ed to his feet. “Let’s just put him in the car and get going.” She pulled open the back door, and Ed laid the dog on the seat, ignoring the blood oozing from the corner of the Labrador’s mouth onto the upholstery. “I’ll get in back with him and hold his head,” Bonnie said. “Get in front with your father, Amy. And fasten your seat belt!” Then she caught sight of her husband’s ashen face. “Maybe I’d better drive,” she suggested.
Ed shook his head. “I’ll be all right.”
Less than five minutes later he pulled into the graveled parking area in front of the building that served as Cassie Winslow’s office as well as her home. From behind the house came the sound of half a dozen barking dogs and the cries of twice as many birds. Even before Ed was out of the car the veterinarian appeared on the porch.
“It’s Riley, Dr. Winslow,” Amy cried as she scrambled out of the passenger seat next to her father. “Daddy ran over him. Don’t let him die! Please?”
Cassie Winslow dashed off her front porch and pulled open the rear door of the car. The dog’s breathing was shallow, and his eyes had taken on a glazed look. “Let’s get him inside,” she said. “Ed, go ahead and open the doors for me. I’ll bring Riley.”
“He’s heavy,” Ed protested. “I can—”
“I have him,” Cassie cut in, her voice firm but soothing. “Bonnie, why don’t you see if you can’t find a lollipop for Amy behind the counter in the waiting room?” Picking up the dog with an ease that should have been impossible for a young woman as slim as Cassie, she followed Ed through the waiting room and directed him to the examination room between the kennels and the laboratory. Laying the dog on the table, she expertly began running her fingers over him, feeling for broken bones.
“What happened?” she asked, glancing at Ed only for the briefest of moments before returning her concentration to the suffering animal.
As quickly as he could, Ed explained. “Is he going to be all right?” he asked when he’d told her all there was to tell.
Cassie Winslow arched her brows. “I’m not sure yet,” she said. “I know one of his shoulders is broken, and at least three ribs. As for internal injuries, I can’t—” She fell silent as Riley, with a rattling gasp, suddenly stopped quivering and lay still. Cassie felt for a pulse, looked into the Labrador’s eyes, then gently closed them with her fingers. “I’m sorry,” she said, her gaze finally shifting to Ed.
His hand shaking, Ed reached out to touch the big dog’s body. “I’m sorry, boy,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.” For a long moment he stood perfectly motionless, his hand still on the dog, as if his very touch might bring the animal ba
ck to life. But at last his hand dropped away, and he started back to the waiting room.
As he stepped through the doorway and saw his daughter looking at him, the memory of his dream exploded in his head, and as the voice from the dream cried out at him yet again, so also did his daughter’s.
“You killed him!” Amy shrieked, instantly reading the truth on her father’s face. “You killed Riley! You killed my dog!”
Ed went to his daughter, kneeling beside her, trying to comfort her, but she pushed him away and buried her face in her mother’s breast.
“It was an accident, darling,” Bonnie said softly, gently stroking her daughter’s hair. “Your father didn’t mean to do it. It was just an accident. He didn’t mean to—” But as she looked up at Ed, the words died on her lips. Her husband’s face had gone deathly white.
“I dreamed it, Bonnie,” he said, nearly strangling on the words. “Last night, I dreamed I killed Riley.”
“No—” Bonnie began, but Ed cut her off.
“I did,” he said. “I dreamed it. And now it’s come true.”
Wordlessly, desperately trying to convince himself that there could be no connection between the dream and what had happened this morning, Ed knelt next to his wife and daughter and did his best to comfort the child whose pet he had killed.
But there was no comfort. No comfort for his daughter, and none for Ed Becker.
Chapter 6
A silence hung over the Becker house, but it wasn’t the kind of comfortable silence that often settles over dwellings whose occupants are happy and content with each other. This was a tense silence, the kind of quiet in which people wait nervously, knowing something is going to happen, but not knowing what.
Bonnie had finally succeeded in putting Amy to bed, though the little girl had insisted that without her dog there was no possibility at all that she would go to sleep. She refused even to say good night to her father, to whom she hadn’t spoken all day. Bonnie had sat with her for almost an hour, though, and finally Amy drifted into a fitful sleep.
When Bonnie came downstairs, she found Ed sprawled on the sofa in the living room, his feet propped up on the coffee table. Though his eyes were fixed on the television, she was sure he saw nothing of the flickering image on the screen. Sitting down beside him, she took his hand in hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly. “And I know it doesn’t seem like it tonight, but Amy will get over it. And we’ll get her another dog.”
At first Bonnie wasn’t sure if her husband had heard her, but finally he returned her squeeze. “I know.” He sighed. “What’s really freaking me is that I dreamed the whole thing last night before it happened.”
Bonnie shook her head. “C’mon, Ed. It wasn’t the same as your dream. The circumstances were completely different.”
For the first time since that morning, Ed managed a smile, though it was little more than a wry grimace. “Now you’re starting to sound like me in a courtroom,” he told her. “I always could split enough hairs to get the worst kind of sleazebags off hooks they should have been left dangling from.”
“It was your job,” Bonnie replied, though without an enormous amount of conviction. While she loved everything about her husband, even after having been married to him for nearly ten years, there were still some things she didn’t understand, not the least of which was Ed’s insistence that everyone, no matter how heinous his crimes might be, deserved the best defense that could be presented. The prosecution will always twist things against the defendant. He’d told her this so many times, the words were permanently etched in her memory. It’s my job to twist them the other way, so that in the end the jury has a shot at coming to a fair verdict The problem for Bonnie had always been that Ed was so good at twisting the facts, he often was able to get acquittals for people both of them knew were guilty. The final straw was a case that left such a bad taste in both their mouths that Ed had finally decided to give up his criminal practice in Boston and come back to Blackstone and a very quiet civil career. It was a capital case in which he’d won acquittal for a defendant accused of killing three children. Ed had convinced the jury that the police had somehow framed the man. The day after the acquittal, Ed’s last criminal client had gone out and killed a fourth child.
“And I was good at my job,” Ed said now. “Too good, as we both well know. But the plain fact is that last night I dreamed I killed Riley, and this morning I did it. You can’t change the facts.”
“Dreams don’t involve facts,” Bonnie insisted. “They aren’t anything more than your subconscious taking out the garbage after you’ve gone to bed.”
“Even if you’re right, it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Well, I’m not going to sit here and argue about it with you all night,” Bonnie told him. “In fact, I think I’ll go to bed. Want to come with me?”
Ed shook his head. “I’m going to stay up for a little while,” he said. “Maybe I’ll even go down and work on the dresser for a couple of hours.”
Bonnie leaned over and kissed him. “Suit yourself. But whatever you do, don’t keep on brooding. Things are going to be fine.”
After Bonnie was gone, Ed reached for the remote control, intending to turn off the television set, when he saw the old stereoscope they’d found in the dresser, along with the collection of pictures, sitting on the coffee table. Ignoring the television, he picked up the stereoscope and pictures, then stretched out on his back on the sofa so the light of the table lamp would fall fully on the faded images printed on the cards. Dropping the first one into the rack, he twisted the knob until the scene came into focus.
It was the room that was Amy’s now, though in the picture it looked little like the room in which his daughter was currently sleeping. Nor did it look anything like he remembered it from when he himself had been a boy and his grandparents had still lived in this house.
Yet there was something familiar about it, something that made him feel as if somewhere deep inside him, there was a memory of the room as it was in the picture, rather than as it was now. He studied the picture for several minutes, then put in another.
Again he had the sense that there was a memory lurking just beyond the fringes of his consciousness, but again he couldn’t quite grasp it, couldn’t quite pull it into a bright enough light to examine it.
One by one, Ed examined all the pictures, finally returning to a scene of the room he was in—the living room. It too held that vague feeling of déjà vu, though at least in that picture he was able to identify the source of the eerie feeling: two of the pieces of furniture—an ornate Victorian sofa and a large Queen Anne chair—had been in this room when he was a little boy.
Ed was still gazing at the picture when he slowly drifted into sleep.
He was back in the basement, working on the dresser.
Opening a drawer, he found a stereoscope, exactly like the one upstairs. There was a card in its rack, and Ed picked up the instrument and peered through its lenses.
This time he was staring not at a familiar room but at a scene in which a man was crouching over a woman almost as if he were about to make love to her. But there was a knife in the man’s hand, and as Ed stared at it, its blade turned red. Then he saw that the woman’s chest was oozing blood from at least a dozen wounds.
Suddenly, the man’s face came into focus, and Ed recognized it as the face of a man he had defended a decade earlier.
A man who had stabbed his wife a dozen times, then left her—still conscious—to bleed to death.
Shuddering at the image, he dropped the stereoscope back into the drawer and slammed it shut, but when he pulled another drawer open, he found another stereoscope. This time he hesitated before picking up the instrument, but although he willed himself to resist, his hands seemed to close on it of their own volition. The image this time was of a fast-food restaurant. He felt a momentary sense of relief as he gazed at the scene of families seated at tables, munching on hamburgers
and french fries. But then—like the image he’d gazed at before—it began to change, the happy faces on the children transformed into masks of terror, the black-and-white image horrifyingly reversed to its negative. A blinding flash, and then the floor was writhing with a tangle of bodies, and now crimson blood spouted from arms, legs, torsos. The blood of the innocent.
Ed had defended the man who had abruptly appeared in the doorway of that restaurant six years ago, carrying an automatic rifle with which he’d killed a dozen people in less than ten seconds, and maimed two dozen more. Within the privilege of their relationship, the man had calmly and with no remorse told Ed that he’d done it simply because “there were too damned many people in the place, and I was sick of seeing them.” Not guilty by reason of insanity. His stomach knotting, Ed slammed the second drawer closed. He wanted to get up and walk away from the dresser, but it wasn’t possible—something inside him compelled him to keep opening the drawers, keep pulling out the stereoscopes, keep viewing the atrocities his clients had committed.
The drawers seemed to go on forever, but finally he closed the last one. Having witnessed the final grisly scene, and looked once more upon the guilty face of another man he’d extracted from the jaws of justice, he at last was able to turn away from the dresser.
And found himself facing the same man he’d been defending in his dream the night before.
His great-uncle stared at him through the eyes of a madman; in his hands he cradled a double-barreled shotgun. Raising the gun, Paul Becker pointed it directly at him. “You got them off,” he said. “You got every one of them off! Every one of them except me!”
As if in slow motion, Ed watched Paul Becker fire the gun. An explosive roar filled the basement, and suddenly there was blood everywhere. Ed could feel it, feel its hot stickiness as it oozed from the gaping wound the shotgun had torn in his belly, feel it running down his body to puddle at his feet. Somehow it had already flowed across the basement. It was smeared across the floor; it was flowing from the beams overhead. Every surface was dripping with it.