Blood Memory

  “How about we get the hell out of here now?” he says.

  I nod gratefully.

  Michael shuts me into the passenger seat and gets behind the wheel. As I pull the clothes over my underwear, he makes a three-point turn and skids back onto the highway, headed north.

  “How did you get down here?” he asks.

  “In my car. It’s on the other side of the river.”

  “Do we need to get it?”

  I would like to have my car back. But to get it, we’d have to cross the ferry at St. Francisville. That’s the only way across the Mississippi River between Natchez and Baton Rouge—other than the ferry at Angola, which is used only for prison business—so it’s an ideal ambush site for whoever was trying to kill me on the island. If the gunman waits for me near my parked Audi, he risks being caught if I bring the cops back with me. But the ferry is a choke point with plausible deniability. If I push my luck and try to cross there, he could get lucky.

  “No. I’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Take it easy now. I’ll have you back in Natchez in an hour.”

  I recline my seat and take a few deep breaths. With the air conditioner on, I feel like I’m resting in a suite at the Windsor Court.

  “I don’t want to pry into your business,” Michael says, “but what the hell happened to you today? You sounded bad when you called my office this afternoon.”

  “I got some bad news.”

  “Okay.”

  He doesn’t ask for details, but I don’t see much point in holding back the rest of it. “Just before I called you, I found out that I was sexually abused as a child.”

  He nods slowly. “I thought it must be something like that, when you asked about repressed memories. I’ve been reading up on the subject today. You got me curious.”

  I’ve been in this vehicle less than five minutes, but already my head feels fuzzy. “We can talk about it,” I murmur. “I just need to rest my eyes for a little bit.”

  “Cat? Wake up!”

  I blink awake and look around. I’m sitting in a truck in a brightly lit garage

  “Where are we?”

  “My house,” Michael says. “In Brookwood.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wasn’t sure where you wanted to go. I tried to ask you, but you wouldn’t wake up. I stopped by my office for some sutures, then brought you here. Let’s get that cut stitched up. Then I’ll take you to your grandfather’s house.”

  Nathan Malik’s words come back to me like a brand burned into my brain: Trust no one. Not even your family. “I don’t want to go there.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Or you can stay here. I’ve got three extra bedrooms. It’s up to you.”

  I nod thanks but say nothing. I don’t know what I want to do. I definitely want my leg stitched up. It hurts like hell, and stitching means local anesthetic. At least I hope it does. “Did you bring some lidocaine?”

  Michael shakes his head. “Nah. I figured anybody who can free dive to three hundred feet can handle a couple of stitches without breaking a sweat.”

  He looks serious, but after a few moments of eye contact, he reaches into his pocket and brings out a vial of clear liquid.

  “The magic elixir,” he says with a smile. “Let’s do it.”

  Michael sutures my leg while I sit on the cold granite of his kitchen island. The gleaming room reminds me of Arthur LeGendre’s kitchen, only there’s no corpse lying on the floor. Michael’s house was built in the 1970s, and until Mrs. Hemmeter sold it, the decor was original to the house. Avocado green appliances and heavy brown paneling like that in my old bedroom. Michael has totally redone the place, and with surprisingly good taste for a bachelor.

  “This reminds me of my grandfather stitching me up on the island when I cut my knee,” I tell him as he pulls the Ethicon through my skin with a curved needle.

  “I guess he always carried his black bag with him?”

  “Oh, he has a whole clinic down there. When my aunt Ann was ten years old, the family got trapped on the island in a storm. She had a hot appendix. Grandpapa removed it by lantern light with one of the island women assisting him. That’s one of his hero stories, but it’s pretty impressive.”

  Michael nods and continues stitching. “You’d be surprised what you can do when conditions demand it. I’ve been on a few medical mission trips to South America…saw some unbelievable things. OBs sterilizing women one after another in the open air. They stretch them out on benches, cut them open, clip their tubes with special plastic clips, and close them up again.”

  “Jesus.”

  He laughs. “I wouldn’t recommend it to a suburban housewife, but it does the job.”

  Medical mission trips. I have a feeling there’s a lot more to Michael Wells than most people know. “I like what you’ve done with this house.”

  “Do you? Your mom did most of it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, when I first got to town, I was too busy to breathe, much less decorate a house. I stopped by Gwen’s interior design store one afternoon and hired her to do the whole place.”

  “Now I’m not sure I like it.”

  He laughs. “You don’t get along with your mother?”

  “We do, as long as we don’t see too much of each other.”

  He ties off the last stitch, then lays his forceps on the countertop. “You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Steak and eggs?”

  “Are you ordering out?”

  “No.” He goes to the refrigerator and brings out a package of rib eyes. “Go sit on that sofa. You’ll be digging into this in twenty minutes.”

  The sofa sits against the wall beyond a round table in the dining area. Too far away for conversation, or even to watch Michael cooking. Given my earlier experiences today, I don’t really want to lie on the couch and let my mind wander.

  Sliding off the counter, I sit on a barstool and watch Michael. It’s strange to have a man cook for me, though Sean sometimes boils crawfish in my backyard.

  “You want to talk about today?” Michael asks, meeting my gaze long enough to let me know he’s genuinely concerned.

  “It isn’t just today. It’s the past month. It’s my whole life, really.”

  “Can you give me the gist in twenty minutes?”

  I laugh. And then I start talking. I start with my panic attack at the Nolan crime scene, the one prior to Arthur LeGendre’s house. That leads me to LeGendre, then to Carmen Piazza removing me from the task force, and then to my trip back to Natchez and to finding the bloody footprints in my bedroom. I’m talking on autopilot, though, because what I’m really doing is watching Michael cook. He’s good with his hands, and I can tell from the way he uses them that he’s a good doctor. He asks questions during my pauses, and before long I’m telling him about the depression that began in high school, the mania that followed, and my serial monogamy with married men. He’s a good listener, only I can’t tell what he makes of all this. He looks as though he’s hearing nothing out of the ordinary, but inside he may already regret rescuing this particular damsel in distress.

  When the steaks and eggs are done, we move to the glass dining table, but I do as much talking as eating. I can’t seem to stop. The funny thing is, he doesn’t try to force me to eat, as most men would. He just keeps watching my eyes, as if they’re telling him as much as my words. I tell him about my father, Grandpapa, Pearlie, my mother, Dr. Goldman, Nathan Malik—even the things Grandpapa told me earlier today. The only thing I don’t tell Michael about is being pregnant. That I cannot bring myself to do.

  When at last my stream of words slows to a trickle, he sighs deeply and says, “You want to watch a movie? I rented the new Adam Sandler.”

  I’m not sure whether I’m offended or relieved. “Are you kidding?”

  He grins. “Yes. You want to know what I really think about all that?”

  “I do.”

  “I
think you’re under more stress right now than most people could stand. I think your life is probably in danger from whoever is behind these murders, not to mention the risk of dealing with your disease without adequate therapy or medication.”

  I say nothing.

  “Does it piss you off that I said that?”

  “A little.”

  He holds up his hands, palms outward. “I know it’s not my business. If you don’t want to take your medication, fine. But I know a little bit about being bipolar. I had a good friend in medical school who was that way.”

  “I’m not bipolar. I’m cyclothymic.”

  “That’s just semantics. Same symptoms, just a question of degree.”

  I concede this with a nod.

  “What I learned from my friend was that a lot of bipolar people tell you they want to get better, but they really don’t. They feel so good during their highs that they’re willing to endure the lows as the price of that euphoria. Even if the lows are so bad that the person is suicidal when they crash.”

  “I can’t argue with that. What happened to your friend?”

  “He flunked out of med school.”

  “Just like me. Is that your point?”

  “You didn’t flunk out. They basically kicked you out for causing someone else to try to kill himself.”

  “Yep.”

  Michael’s face is nonjudgmental. “I don’t think any of that stuff was your fault, Cat. I don’t know too much about the links between childhood sexual abuse and adult psychological problems, because I treat kids. That’s why I knew so little about repressed memories. But I do know about child abuse. I’ve seen a lot of it, especially as a pediatric resident working ERs.”

  There’s something in his eyes that reminds me of John Kaiser’s eyes. Knowledge earned through pain. Wisdom never asked for.

  “Those cases are the easy ones, though,” Michael says. “The tough cases are the ones where you know something isn’t right, but you’re not looking at genital warts or something obvious like that. Dealing with those cases is how I learned the most surprising things about sexual abuse.”

  “Like?”

  “Like it’s not usually the physically painful, horrible thing that people imagine. It’s not violent rape or even necessarily a terrible experience in itself. Not in the beginning. If it were, sexual abuse wouldn’t be the invisible epidemic that it is. Sex is pleasurable, even to a child. Adult abusers know that. They seduce the child a little at a time, gradually raising the stakes. The family dynamics are altered in ways it would take Freud years to figure out. Complex power games are played between abuser and victim. You get young girls serving as surrogate wives in the home, sisters competing for the sexual attention of their father, fathers training sons to use women the same way they do. Of course, the reverse happens, too. You get older daughters trying to protect younger siblings by doing anything they can to keep the abusive father focused on them.”

  I close my eyes in horror. “I’ll bet this isn’t how you thought you’d be spending this evening.”

  Michael spears a piece of cold steak and chews it thoughtfully. “No, but I’m okay with it. I was always curious about you. Why you picked the guys you did in high school. And these repeated relationships with married guys. That’s not hard to figure out now, is it?”

  “My therapist tells me I pick unavailable guys so that I can’t become too attached to a man. That way the loss I experienced with my father can’t be repeated.”

  “Is it too late to get your money back?”

  Michael’s eyes silently apologize for joking about something so serious. But he’s so honest about his opinions that it’s difficult to get angry.

  “I think it’s the secrecy that’s the root of your affairs,” he says. “Secrecy was part of your sexual imprinting. I think you’ve been reenacting your abuse for most of your life. You thrive on a secretive relationship with a forbidden partner, a relationship that’s very sexual in nature. Is that accurate?”

  “Are you sure you didn’t subspecialize in pediatric psychiatry?”

  He shakes his head. “Once you know about the abuse, it’s easy to see the connections. You may not feel comfortable telling me this, but do you have any quirks in your sex life that seem abnormal?”

  I feel myself flush, and it surprises me. I’m usually quite candid with men about sexual matters, sometimes shockingly so. But tonight…“I’m not sure we know each other well enough to go there yet.”

  “You’re right.” He puts down his fork and lays his hands on the table. “Let me ask you another question.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did your mother have an illness that kept her bedridden for long periods?”

  “After I was born, she had some kind of female problem. Pelvic inflammatory disease, maybe? I’m not sure. But she would stay in bed for weeks at a time. I was very young then, of course.”

  “What about later? Was she absent from the home a lot?”

  “Yes.” My main memories of my mother are of her leaving home or returning. And she always had something in her hands—something besides me. “Mom was completely obsessed with her interior design business. If you asked her whether I liked mayonnaise on my sandwiches or not, she couldn’t have told you. But if you asked her how many shades of grass-cloth wallpaper were available in America, she could list them from memory.”

  Michael doesn’t seem surprised. “Was alcohol a problem in your house? Or substance abuse?”

  “Both. More drugs than alcohol. My dad used all kinds of drugs when he got back from Vietnam. Prescription, mostly. My mother didn’t drink when I was growing up, so I thought she was clean. But apparently she was taking my father’s prescription meds for years. Why are you asking these questions?”

  “They’re classic markers for an abusive situation.”

  His uncanny accuracy about my life makes me want to know more. But to learn more, I’ll have to give more. Can I trust him with my secret self?

  Michael reaches out and touches my hand. “You’re shaking, Cat. You don’t have to tell me any more.”

  “No, I want to,” I say quickly.

  He withdraws his hand and leans back in his chair. “All right, then. Tell me.”

  Chapter

  33

  “I’ve always needed certain things during sex,” I say softly. “Pain, for example. Nothing masochistic really, but just…very physical penetration. With fingers, objects…I don’t know. And choking. Sometimes I have this intense desire to be choked during sex.”

  Michael is still leaning back from the dinner table, but I sense a new alertness in him. “And?”

  “I have a problem reaching orgasm. Even if I get those things I want, it just doesn’t happen for me. On one hand I have this hyper-active sex drive, but on the other, I can’t make it to the point of release. Not with a man, I mean. I can do it alone. But with men, it’s this maddening spiral upward without ever being able to break through.”

  “But the men you’re with think you’re the best sexual partner they ever had, right?”

  Now I’m really blushing. “They say so.”

  “All classic signs of past sexual abuse. Pain was part of your sexual imprinting, just like secrecy. Your father may have put his hands around your throat during sex. Or maybe you just felt you couldn’t breathe during the acts. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to repeat with the choking. That makes me wonder about your free diving, too. Lying on pool bottoms for five minutes at a time to relax? That would put most people into a coma.”

  “I guess it is kind of a red flag.”

  “And your sexual performance? That’s the easiest thing of all to understand. From childhood you were trained to please a man sexually. That was the only goal of the abuse, and your survival instinct made you learn it well. So, you’re an expert at giving pleasure. You just can’t feel it yourself.”

  “I guess.”

  “The good news is that now that you’re aware of the abuse, this therapist
you like—Dr. Goldman?—she should be able to make some real progress with you.”

  “Maybe. But right now I just want to pretend it never happened. Even if it’s the answer to everything, I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Who would? That’s a normal response.” Michael gets up and starts clearing the table. “I’m actually more concerned about this murder case you’re working on. I mean, somebody tried to blow your brains out tonight.”

  I carry the glasses to the sink, and he starts rinsing the plates to put in the dishwasher. “I’m not sure that has to do with the murder case,” I tell him.

  “What, then? These revelations of abuse? Your father’s been dead for twenty years.”

  “What about the Vietnam angle?”

  “You think someone’s trying to prevent thirty-year-old atrocities from coming to light? You said Jesse Billups served in a whole different theater of the war than your father. I don’t think that’s it, Cat.”

  “Then what?”

  “I think the murders in New Orleans are somehow connected to your life here. To your past. Maybe even to your abuse, though I can’t see how. But sexual abuse is the common factor in both situations.”

  It’s oddly familiar, standing in a kitchen batting around theories about a murder case with a man. Only the man I’m doing it with is not familiar.

  “Both Pearlie and Louise told you that Tom Cage was your father’s doctor here in town. He’s been practicing for more than forty years, and he’s a great guy. You should talk to him about the Vietnam stuff. Do you know him?”

  In my mind I see a tall man with a salt-and-pepper beard and twinkling eyes. “I know who he is. I don’t think he likes my grandfather much.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me. Tom Cage is the opposite of your grandfather. He never gave a damn about making money. He just treats sick people. I’ll be glad to call him for you, if you like. Set up a meeting.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Michael turns on the dishwasher, then takes a tub of Blue Bell ice cream from the freezer and starts scooping it into two bowls. “This is my reward for doing a good deed tonight,” he says with a smile. “I didn’t ask if you wanted any, because I knew you’d say no. I’ll have to run an extra mile tomorrow morning.”