The Night Before

by Lisa Jackson

  “Coffee, if you’ve got it. And, yes, instant’s fine.”

  “Good.”

  Within seconds she was cradling a warm mug and sitting on a corner of the couch. Adam slipped his glasses onto his nose and leaned back in his desk chair, a pen in one hand, a legal pad balanced on one knee.

  “I called you because I’m having bad dreams.” She blew across her mug and didn’t let her gaze linger on the lines of his face, didn’t want to wonder where he’d gotten his high forehead or straight hair, dark as the coffee crystals he’d poured into her cup.

  He waited. Clicked his pen.

  “Sometimes they recur. Other times they’re new, but they’re always horrible, always nightmares.”

  “The same, or different?”

  “Different, but always awful.” She shuddered. “I mean, graphic and emotionally wrenching.”

  “How often do you have them? Every night?” He began writing.

  “Just about. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the dream and I’m covered in sweat and gasping for breath, confused even though I’m in my own bed. Other times, the dream plays out and I wake up with only a hint that it was there. Then later in the day, it’ll hit me.” She managed what she knew was a feeble smile. “They always involve some member of my family and a life-and-death struggle and . . . and while I’m in the dream I know something bad is happening. I try to help, but I can never stop what’s happening. Sometimes I’m the age I am now, other times I’m a little girl. The last one I remember was the dream with Charles.”

  “Your older brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s deceased, right?” His eyebrows had drawn together, and all sense of humor had evaporated from his face.

  “Yes. I dream about the day he died. I was the one who found him.” She took a sip from the coffee and tried to keep her voice calm, without emotion. “You see, there was this horrible bow-hunting accident,” she said, shivering as she remembered the day that she’d been playing in the woods and had stumbled upon her dying older brother. She told Adam everything she could remember about the accident, about the snow, about being lost while playing with Griffin and Kelly, about finding Charles near death and about pulling the ghastly arrow from his chest.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have done that. I was just a kid and I didn’t know any better, but Griffin, my friend who was with me, he told me not to. I ignored him. Thought I was saving Charles’s life.” Her voice caught and she took in a deep breath. It was over. Long over. She had to deal with it. “Anyway,” she said, staring at the floor, “the upshot was that Charles died. The doctor assured me and my mother later that Charles would have died anyway, but I think . . . I mean, I wonder . . .” She sighed and shook her head. “I think Doc Fellers might have been protecting me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because I was only nine at the time and I—I’ve always felt somewhat responsible, but maybe it’s all just part of the Montgomery curse.”

  Adam was writing notes. He looked over the top of his glasses. “The curse?”

  She blushed. Hadn’t meant to bring it up. “It’s probably just . . . talk. Superstition. But I’ve heard about it for as long as I can remember. Lucille—she’s my mother’s maid and was as much a nanny to us kids as anything—she swears it’s true. But then . . .” She took a sip of her coffee. “Lucille believes in ghosts, too.”

  “And you don’t?”

  Caitlyn shrugged. “I don’t think I do and I swear to anyone who asks that I don’t, but . . . sometimes . . . well, I just don’t know. It’s kind of the same position I have about God.” Leaning back into the soft leather, she closed her eyes. “That’s not really right. I mean, I want to believe in God, but I’m not sure I actually do. I don’t necessarily want to believe that there are spirits walking around, invisible beings who haven’t yet decided to pass on, but sometimes I think . . . I mean I sense that I’m not alone.”

  “When you really are?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered, nodding. “At least it seems that way.” She let out a little laugh. “You know, this even sounds nuts to me. A lot of my family thinks I’m losing it, like my grandmother . . .” Her voice faded as the last image she remembered of Nana—her waxen face and sightless eyes—sliced through Caitlyn’s brain. Her skin curdled and she sucked in her breath.

  Adam’s eyes narrowed on her. “You okay?”

  “Yes . . . no . . . I mean, I don’t think I’d be here if I was really ‘okay.’ ” She looked him steadily in the eye and pointed out, “You are my shrink.”

  “So let’s get back to the Montgomery curse.”

  “Oh. That.” Setting her coffee on the table, she stood and walked to the window. Outside, clouds covered the sky, threatening rain. As ominous and dark as the damned curse. On the verandah of the house across the alley, a woman in a big hat was refilling her bird feeders with seeds.

  “Yes, the curse.” Caitlyn hesitated, felt the same sense that the family’s privacy was about to be breached, the same sensation she’d experienced when she’d confessed everything to Dr. Wade. Absently she rubbed the inside of her wrists, felt the slits that were beginning to heal—cuts she didn’t remember making. There were people who self-mutilated, who inflicted pain on themselves. Surely—Oh, God, please—she wasn’t one of those. “My family is plagued with mental instability . . . well, okay, so I’m here, telling this to a shrink, I guess you know that much.”

  He smiled a little. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “I don’t know how many generations this goes back, but my grandmother Evelyn, she suffered from some kind of . . . dementia for lack of a more precise medical term. Her condition was never diagnosed, not officially, or if it was, it was one of the family’s skeletons that was locked away in the closet with the rest of them.” She glanced over her shoulder and arched an eyebrow. “That poor closet is getting pretty full, I think. The Montgomerys might have to rent out another one, or one of those storage units, or a whole damned attic. Anyway, my grandmother and grandfather, Benedict, had two children, my father, Cameron, and his sister, Alice Ann. She was, well, as the family so kindly puts it, ‘never quite right,’ meaning that she suffered from severe depression and was what I think they might call bipolar today. I don’t remember her, as she was institutionalized. Meanwhile, Evelyn—”

  “Your grandmother, correct?”

  “Yes. Nana,” Caitlyn said, feeling that same skin-crawling sensation she always did when talking about her grandmother. “She turned out to be kind of crazy herself. Even before the dementia set in, but then it could have been because she was dealing with my grandfather, who was . . . oh, there’s no nice way to put it. He was a womanizer. Big time.” She stared out the window as the first drops of rain began to hit the panes. How many times had she, as a child, listened to whispered conversations between her older siblings, or Lucille and Berneda. “His name was Benedict Montgomery, the man responsible for the creation and success of Montgomery Bank and Trust. He had a long-term affair with his secretary, Mary Lou Chaney, and she got pregnant and did the then-shocking thing of having the baby out of wedlock. I wasn’t alive then, of course, but I’m sure my grandmother Evelyn was mortified. Mary Lou wasn’t one to go quietly away to some home for unwed mothers, oh, no. She had the baby and named her Copper Montgomery Chaney. The way the family tells it, that scandal was the start of all Nana’s mental problems.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “You know, I don’t know. I never knew my grandmother as anything but . . . weird. Bitter, I guess.” She stared outside to a ledge where pigeons were sheltering from the storm. The rain had gathered speed, spitting against the window and chasing the lady on the terrace across the way inside.

  “The scandal didn’t stop with Copper’s birth. According to all my family, she grew up wild and tough and married a guy named Earl Dean Biscayne. They had three children, who should be my half-cousins or something, but no one’s real sure about that because C
opper died a few years back in a fire in her home.”

  “Why isn’t anyone sure that her kids are your half-cousins?”

  God, this was hard. She watched a drop of rain drizzle down the glass. “Maybe I should amend that statement. We’re all sure they’re at least our half-cousins. Maybe more.” She turned to face him and expected some kind of censure in his eyes, a hint of revulsion, or, at the very least judgment, but his expression was the same as it had been, serious enough to etch lines across his forehead, but not enough to pinch the corners of his mouth. “You see, my father, Cameron, opted to pick up where his father left off. He met Copper through Benedict, who doted on Mary Lou until the day she died. Meanwhile, my father, who’s already married to my mother, decides to have a fling with Copper. His half-sister.” The thought turned her stomach. “There’s even a rumor slinking through this city that at least one of Copper’s children was sired by my father, maybe all three.” Caitlyn leaned her hips against the windowsill and didn’t let herself think about the times she’d stood at her open window and had seen shadows on the lawn, silhouettes of illicit lovers meeting, heard the soft moans of passion along with the wind stirring the field grass. “I guess there’s a reason my grandmother went batty,” she said. “First her husband cheating on her, then her only son involved in incest. I think she used to talk a lot about ‘bad blood’ running through the family.”

  “What happened to her?”

  In Caitlyn’s mind’s eye, she saw her grandmother’s coffin as it was lowered into the ground, felt an overwhelming sense of relief as she’d stood huddled with Kelly, her eyes dry. “She lived in Oak Hill, that’s the name of the family home. It’s a big house, one of the few plantations close to Savannah. We all grew up there, and Nana lived with us. She died when I was around five. On Christmas Eve. At the hunting lodge the family owns in West Virginia.” She considered leaving it at that, but couldn’t. After all, she was here for a reason. She couldn’t doubt him. If she wanted to get better, she had to tell him the crux of her problems. “I have trouble with my memory sometimes, Dr. Hunt—”

  “Adam. Remember? We’re going to keep things informal. I’ll call you Caitlyn and you call me Adam, if that works for you.”

  “That would be fine. Adam.” She tested out his name, managing the weakest of smiles, and then plunged on before she lost her nerve. “As I said, I have trouble remembering things, periods that are unclear and not even blurry—just missing. Holes in my life. It’s frustrating and scary and I never know when it’ll happen. It’s . . . it’s beyond a worry. Way beyond. It’s the primary reason I was seeing Rebecca . . . Dr. Wade.”

  “I know,” he said with a kind smile that she found surprisingly sexy. “I did see that in one of her files.”

  “Did you?” she asked, surprised. “I thought you said you didn’t have any files.” Don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious, don’t be so damned suspicious! This man is trying to help you.

  “You must’ve misunderstood.” He was calm, staring straight at her through his rimless lenses. “What I said was that there wasn’t anything on the computer. The computer files, if there were any, are completely erased.”

  “That’s impossible. I saw her typing her notes . . . maybe she put them on disks.”

  “So far I haven’t found them.”

  “Wouldn’t she want you to have them if you’re going to help her patients?”

  “I would think so. As you said, maybe they’re on disks somewhere.” He mentioned it casually, but she noticed a new hardness in his features, a hint of determination bracketing his mouth. “I did find some of Rebecca’s handwritten notes. But they’re incomplete.”

  “That’s so odd. She seemed meticulous to me . . . was always clarifying things.”

  “When I talk to her again, I’ll figure it out.”

  “She’s going to call you?”

  “I would hope,” he said but there was a trace of a shadow in his eyes, a lie, she sensed, buried in the truth.

  She was suddenly uncomfortable. Wary. What did she know of him? “So if you’ve got the files, why am I going over things you probably already know about?”

  “Because the information in the files is spotty at best and I would like to get my own impression of those things you’re telling me.” He slid his pad and pen into the desk, then leaned forward, hands locked and dangling between his knees, his gaze as friendly as it was seductive.

  That was the problem with her, she was attracted to the kind of men born to hurt her. Like Josh Bandeaux.

  “Listen, Caitlyn, if what we’re doing here doesn’t feel right, then I think I should refer you to someone else. There’s a chance you’d be more comfortable with a woman.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it’s what you’re used to with Rebecca.”

  She couldn’t start over. Not again. This was tough enough. Besides, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she liked being with him. Felt safe and sheltered, which, of course, was silly. What did she know of him? To reassure herself, she glanced at the degrees hung on the office walls.

  He must’ve read the indecision in her eyes. “I really want to know what you feel is important to talk about. A lot has happened since you saw Dr. Wade.”

  That much was true. Truer than he realized.

  “But if you want to see someone else . . .” he offered.

  “No,” she said quickly. Decisively. The next unknown shrink could be worse, far worse, and then where would she be? On to the next counselor and then the next. It had taken her nearly a year to find Rebecca, and not because she was the highest priced, but because she was a warm and caring person. She and Caitlyn had clicked immediately. Now Caitlyn felt a connection to Adam. She’d stick it out. For now. “Let’s go on,” she said. “I need to get some things off my chest.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I am,” she said, but it was a bald-faced lie. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Not one damned thing.

  “Okay, so tell me about your grandmother, Evelyn.” Adam offered Caitlyn a reassuring smile, showing just the hint of his teeth, then glanced down at his notes again as he picked up the legal pad. “You mentioned her and your lapses of memory just about in the same breath.”

  “That’s right,” Caitlyn said, and her voice seemed to reverberate in her head. That cold, dark morning had stretched into an eternity. “What I was about to say was that even though I sometimes don’t remember things, I’ll never forget the night Nana died because I was locked in the room with her, sleeping in her bed. I woke up and she was there—icy cold, just staring at me. I freaked, I mean really freaked. I screamed and cried and pounded on the door, but her room was located over the carriage house, away from the other bedrooms, and the windows were covered with storm windows. No one missed us. No one heard me.” Her throat tightened, and her voice cracked as she remembered curling into a ball near the closet and sucking on her thumb. “No one came for a long, long time.”

  Fifteen

  “This damned case—and I’m not including damned in the swear-word piggy bank,” Morrisette announced as she slung her purse over her shoulder and hurried down the back steps of the station. Reed was half a step ahead of her. “This damned case just gets screwier and screwier.”

  “Amen.” He’d been thinking the same thing. Too many people had a connection to Josh Bandeaux. Too many people hated him. Too many women had been involved with him. Too many pieces of evidence didn’t fit. He’d talked to Diane Moses and was supposed to meet with her later to sort through her theories on the evidence the crime scene team had collected.

  On the first floor, he shouldered open the door to the parking lot. It was late afternoon, and the station’s shadow crawled across the rain-washed asphalt, but despite the recent shower, the temperature was still hovering somewhere near ninety. He didn’t want to take a stab at how high the humidity was. He was sweating by the time he reached the car. “Tell me what you’ve got. I’ll drive.”

&nbs
p; “I’ll drive.”

  Reed flashed her a smile as he unlocked the door to the cruiser. “Next time, Andretti.”

  Scowling at his smart-assed reference to a race-car driver, she slid inside. “I’ll hold you to it.”

  “I know you will.” He twisted on the ignition and wipers, letting the blades slap away the remaining raindrops. Morrisette leaned against the passenger door as he backed the cruiser out of its slot. “Okay, we know that the wife had reason to hate Bandeaux’s guts, but he had a few more enemies. Not only business types, but ex-girlfriends by the dozen.” He slid a glance her way.

  “Oh, don’t even go there, okay? I’m not an ex-girlfriend. And Millie’s not a suspect. Jesus, Reed, I wish I’d never said anything!”

  “I would have found out anyway.”

  “Of course you would have,” she said sarcastically. “A crackerjack detective like you.”

  He winced as he pulled out of the lot and headed past Colonial Cemetery. Sylvie Morrisette was one of the few people in Homicide who knew about his botched stakeout in San Francisco. “Does Jesus count as a swear word?”

  “I was praying, all right.”

  “Sure.”

  “Damn it all to hell. There’s another thing I wish I wouldn’t have said anything about. You’re worse than my kids.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Very funny. I have great kids.”

  “They’re not teenagers yet.”

  “And what would you know?” She snorted and rolled her eyes. “You know, I get damned sick of every dam—er, stupid single cop on the force offering me up advice on my kids. I’ve got it waxed.”