“Cat?” prompts Kaiser.
“I’m sorry, I was thinking. This saliva could also have come from an edentulous person.”
“What’s that?”
I shrug, thinking the answer self-evident. “Someone without teeth.”
“Somebody who wears dentures?”
“No. Somebody who owns dentures but doesn’t wear them. Dentures have hard surfaces, with cracks and crevices that are ideal for bacterial colonization, just like real teeth. It might be someone who lives alone. Who doesn’t feel the need to put in his teeth, because no one ever sees him.”
Kaiser looks interested. “Would he necessarily have to be old?”
“God, no. Lots of people have teeth so bad they rot out by their thirties. You might look for somebody who needs dentures but can’t afford them.”
“A lot of convicts have their teeth pulled in prison,” Kaiser reflects. “It makes positive identification harder in subsequent trials.”
“Well, maybe this culture will get us somewhere, like I hoped. You can check all the male relatives of the victims for infections, prison records, or for teeth, period. Look, I really need to get to the bathroom.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“May I keep this report?”
“Sure.”
I stuff it into my back pocket. “Let’s see what grows out after another six hours.” When I’ll be long gone. I pat Kaiser on the arm, then walk quickly up the hall to the bathroom. As I push open the door, I cut my eyes right.
He’s no longer in the corridor. Backpedaling fast, I dart to the elevator. The fire stairs are tempting, but this is probably one building where if you open a fire door, all hell breaks loose.
Before the elevator door closes, a blonde woman wearing a blue skirt suit hurries in after me and smiles. I smile back and press the button for the basement. I sense her looking at my clothes. They look pretty rough. Definitely not the uniform of female FBI agents.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Oh, yes.” I offer my hand. “Catherine Ferry. I’ve been working the NOMURS case as a consultant for John Kaiser. I’m a forensic odontologist.”
She looks impressed and interested. “I heard they found another victim.”
“Yes. A cop this time.”
“Wow.”
The elevator stops on the second floor.
“This is me,” she says. “Good luck.”
The door opens onto a cube farm with men and women walking purposefully between partitions. When the door closes, I breathe a sigh of relief and sag against the wall. In twenty seconds, the elevator opens to the concrete-floored motor pool.
About a dozen government sedans are parked diagonally against a wall on my left. To my right are two big black Suburbans, the SUVs used by the FBI forensic team. Thirty yards across the basement lot are the big overhead doors that can get me out of the building. I don’t see anyone, but there’s bound to be someone here.
Something clangs in the emptiness. The sound of a heavy tool being dropped on concrete. Praying that the careless mechanic is underneath a vehicle, I walk briskly across the lot toward the doors. As I near them, I see a large white button not unlike those beside the doors in ERs and surgical suites. I should have a story ready in case someone asks what I’m doing down here, but I don’t. If someone challenges me, I’ll just have to wing it.
I hit the big button, and an overhead chain drive lifts the big door in front of me with no more fuss than my garage door at home. When it’s four feet off the ground, I duck under it and walk quickly up the ramp to the outdoor parking lot.
Hannah drives a white 5-series BMW, but I don’t see it.
Bearing right, toward the main entrance of the field office, I watch the lines of parked cars. Sure enough, Hannah’s white Beemer backs out of a space not far away, then pulls forward and stops beside me. Her window is open. Glancing over the roofs of the parked cars, I see the guard house at the main gate. I don’t know whether the guard is watching me, but he’s not going to let me ride out with Hannah without checking upstairs first.
“Did you open your trunk?” I ask her through the window.
“Yes, but I’m afraid you’ll suffocate.”
I walk to the back of her car and lift the trunk lid as though retrieving something. Then I take a deep breath, climb into the small space, fold myself almost double, and close the trunk lid over my head.
I have a few mental problems, but claustrophobia isn’t one of them. I wouldn’t be much of a free diver if I couldn’t stand being closed into small spaces. People don’t think of the ocean as a small space, but when you’re three hundred feet beneath it, with cold water trying to crush you into jelly, you feel pretty closed in.
Hannah has stopped at the gate.
Shutting my eyes in the dark, I send my mind to its secret haven, the bright coral wall where I dive and dive until the blue turns black, and rapture blurs my sense of separation from the water until my mind takes in the whole of creation. If the guard discovers me in this trunk, it won’t be because he sensed my presence.
I’m not even here.
The BMW jerks forward, pulling me out of my trance. After a couple of bumps, we’re rolling along at a good clip. With each stop, I’m sure Hannah is going to get out and free me from the trunk, but she doesn’t. For one irrational moment I’m terrified she’s going to turn me over to the NOPD, but that’s crazy. She’s just finding a safe place to let me out.
At last the car stops and doesn’t start again.
I hear her door open and close. Then the trunk lid pops open, and sunlight spears my retinas. A backlit silhouette takes my hand and helps me out of the trunk. The ligaments in my knees creak like horsehair ropes as I unfold them.
“You are really something,” Hannah says. “I feel like Ingrid Bergman.”
We’re not at the airport. We’re in the parking lot of a small, upscale shopping center. I’ve been here a few times, shopping for clothes.
Hannah notices my concern. “You’ll attract a lot less attention here than at Lakefront Airport. That’s not a busy place.” She stuffs some paper into my hand. “That’s eighty dollars. Call a cab at the last minute to take you to the airport. It’s less than ten minutes away.”
I hug her hard, then pull away. “Get out of here, Ingrid. You’ve done enough already.”
Hannah takes my right hand in both of hers and squeezes tight. “You’re close to finding out the truth, Cat. But don’t expect a blinding flash of insight, or instant peace. In cases like yours, getting the true facts is only the beginning. Many sexual abuse survivors never get the kind of resolution they’re looking for.”
“I’ve been lost for a long time, Hannah. A beginning sounds pretty good to me.”
She smiles sadly, then gets into her car and drives away. I look down at my watch and wonder if Michael is airborne yet.
I need to find a pay phone.
Chapter
47
I’m five thousand feet over the Mississippi River, flying north at two hundred miles per hour. Michael Wells is beside me, piloting his Cessna as if he’d rather be doing this than anything else in the world. Natchez is thirty minutes ahead.
The shocks of the past twenty-four hours have pushed me to the point that fl;ight in a small plane produces no airsickness at all.
“What are you going to do now?” he asks, his face somber.
“What I should have done in the beginning. Find out who killed my father. I’m going to exhume his body.”
Michael looks at me like I’ve taken leave of my senses. “What will you learn from that?”
“For one thing, it will give me DNA to compare against any body fluids I find on my bedroom floor. I’m hoping I’ll find preserved semen.”
“Are you going to work the bedroom yourself?”
“No. I’m going to bring in a first-string team to do it, no matter what my grandfather says. I’m also going into the barn to see if my father’s green bag is still under t
he floor. It’s padlocked, but I shouldn’t have much trouble breaking in.”
“Do you think that green bag really exists?”
“Absolutely.”
“Technically the barn is Kirkland’s property, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure, actually. Some of the old DeSalle holdings are held in trust for me. I don’t really know what Grandpapa owns and what he manages for my mother and me. It’s very complicated. But if he tries to stop me, I’ll go to the DA and make it an official murder investigation. It’s not my father’s body I really want, though. It’s Lena.”
Michael looks away from the Plexiglas windscreen long enough for me to see his confusion. “Your stuffed leopard?”
“Leopardess. I don’t know what she’ll tell me, but I know she’s important. May I use your cell phone?”
He unclips it from his belt and hands it to me. My pride tells me not to do what I’m about to do, but I have no choice. I dial Sean Regan’s cell number.
“Detective Sergeant Regan,” he says.
“It’s Cat.”
“Jesus. They’ve got a statewide manhunt going for you, and you call my cell phone?”
“Sorry to be an inconvenience.”
“Shit, it’s not that. But Karen wants to see copies of my cell phone bill from now on. I’m sure Piazza will be reviewing it, too.”
So, the women in Sean’s life finally got wise to him. “Well, I’m sorry. This is a business call.”
“Somehow I knew that.”
“I need you to do me a favor, Sean, no questions asked.”
“What favor?”
“That sounded like a question.”
In the silence that follows, I sense him remembering what it’s like to deal with me on a daily basis. “Okay, Cat. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
“Thanks. You know my aunt committed suicide last night?”
“I heard. I’m sorry.”
“There’s going to be an autopsy today in Jackson, Mississippi. Kaiser’s expediting it. I need to see that report, or at least know what the findings are.”
“Didn’t Kaiser tell you I’ve been suspended from the department?”
“Yes, but I know you’re still wired into the task force. Like knowing my aunt committed suicide. You’re already angling for a way back into this case. And if you help me, I might be able to give you one.”
More silence. “You need an actual copy of the autopsy report?”
“Whatever you can get. I’m particularly interested in anything the pathologist finds out about Ann’s reproductive organs. Scarring, old operations, anything like that.”
“Uh-huh.” Sean sounds anything but excited.
“I need this as fast as you can get it. Like yesterday.”
“I can’t give you what I don’t have yet.”
“I know. I just want you to understand—”
“Cat?”
“What?” I snap, realizing I’m trying to avoid any personal conversation whatever.
“How are you doing? I mean with the baby and all.”
Anger surges up from a well deep within me, darker and more intense than I could have imagined. “Fine,” I say in a taut voice. “You don’t need to worry about me. Us. Whatever. I’m not your problem anymore.”
“You never were a problem.”
Cut the cord, orders the voice in my head. “We both know that’s a lie. Look…good luck piecing your life back together.”
“Yeah. Hey, I’ll get that report for you.”
“Thanks.”
“I miss you, Cat.”
Not badly enough. “Hurry, Sean.”
I hang up and punch in my mother’s cell phone number. As it rings, I feel Sean touch my arm. Then I realize it’s not Sean, but Michael Wells. For a moment I actually forgot I was sitting beside him in his plane.
“You’re crying,” Michael says. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t think ‘okay’ is something to be aspired to at a time like this. I just have to keep moving forward.”
He withdraws his hand and goes back to flying.
Just as I expect to be kicked over to voice mail, my mother answers in a sleepy voice that makes me think sedatives.
“Dr. Wells?” she says.
“No, it’s Cat.”
“Cat?” A brief pause. “I don’t understand. Are you at Dr. Wells’s house?”
“No. Mom, listen, I know about Ann.”
“Well, I figured you must have heard by now.”
“How are you doing?”
“Fine, I suppose. Considering. I’m at work, and it’s a very busy time for me. Which is good, I guess.”
At work? She sounds like she just woke up from surgery.
“I always knew this was a possibility with Ann,” she says. “One of her doctors even told me to prepare for it. He said that if this ever happened, I should know ahead of time that there was nothing I could have done to prevent it.”
“But is that how you really feel?”
She sighs heavily, and in the background I hear the Muzak she runs in her shop. “I don’t know. Look, I told you, I’m really busy today. I have to get out to Dunlieth to show the owner some new drapery fabrics.”
“Mom, I need to talk to you. Will you be at home this afternoon?”
“That depends on how long Dunlieth takes, doesn’t it?”
“Please try to be home. This is no day to be worrying about work.”
“Life goes on, Cat. I figured you of all people knew that.”
“What about the funeral arrangements?”
“Your grandfather’s taking care of all that.”
Of course. Nothing but the best for one of my daughters…
“I don’t mind talking to you,” she says, “but I don’t want you to start trying to tell me how to feel about this. I deal with my own feelings in my own way. You know that.”
“Or you don’t deal with them.”
Chilly silence. “I may not wear my heart on my sleeve like some people, but I’ve managed just fine so far.”
“Have you, Mom? Has life really been fine all these years?”
“I think I’ve done a pretty good job, considering the obstacles life put in my way.”
God…“How is Pearlie taking it?”
“I don’t know. She’s gone to the island. Deserted me with barely a word.”
This throws me. “The island? Pearlie hates the island.”
“Well, that’s where she went, right after she heard the news about Ann. I’ve got to go, Cat. If I don’t see you later, make sure you’re at that funeral. Ann would want you there.”
Like I would miss my aunt’s funeral? “Mom, why did I go riding in the orange truck with Grandpapa on the island?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been having this dream about riding in that old truck with him, and it’s always raining.”
“Ohhh,” she says, her voice suddenly musical. “Daddy always got so tense when it rained, because no work could be done. You were the only one who could calm him down. He’d ride around the island showing you the birds and cattle and deer, and when he got back, he’d be tolerable to live with again. I think children are the only thing that keep men from being altogether savage. I just—”
“Mom,” I cut in, stopping what could become an endless flow. “Try to come home this afternoon, okay?”
“Bye-bye, darling.”
I hang up and pass the phone back to Michael, more dazed than upset. John Kaiser described my mother as furious over Ann’s death, and suspicious that she’d been murdered by her husband. Now Mom sounds like she’s on Thorazine. She often sounded that way when I was a child. Distracted, bored, out of it. Sedated. For some reason, I sense my grandfather’s hand in this. How easy it would be for him to give her a shot and remove the inconvenience of her emotions from his life.
“Cat?”
“I’m fine, Michael. Can you fly us over the island? Is it too far out of the way?”
“Well, t
he river’s just over the horizon to our left. You said the island is opposite Angola prison?”
“Just south of it.”
He banks the Cessna in a wide arc to the west, and almost immediately I see the silver line of the river ahead.
“Can you fly low?”
“Sure. We can buzz the treetops.”
“No thanks. Just low enough to make out cars and people.”
Michael laughs and begins descending.
Soon the river is a great silver serpent slithering across a vast green floor. On the near shore, endless ranks of trees march over the hills. On the far bank, flat fields of cotton and soybeans stretch as far as the eye can see. The river cuts through the land with implacable abandon, bisecting the continent almost as an afterthought.
“Can you believe we were right down there the night before last?” I ask. “Or all that’s happened since then?”
Michael tilts the plane a little and looks down. “I can’t believe you swam that river. I mean shit.”
“Do you see an island?”
“I see a half dozen of them.”
“This one’s four miles long.”
Michael whistles low. “I think I was looking right at it without knowing it. There’s Angola prison. So that must be DeSalle Island.”
I can’t see it from my side, and Michael quickly realizes this. He banks and drops the nose, and suddenly we’re boring in on the long, humped mass of the island like a fighter plane on a strafing run.
“How high are we?”
“I’m going to stay at four hundred feet. You can see all you need to from there.”
In a matter of seconds, we’re roaring over the island. I’ve seen it from the air before: once long ago from the cockpit of a crop duster, then later from the basket of a hot-air balloon. Today’s view reminds me of that first trip, the landscape below flashing past at a hundred miles an hour. I see the hunting camp, the lake, the lodge, the pastures and the pond, and then we’re banking left to avoid what might be restricted airspace over Angola.
“Can you make another pass?”