Mary's Child

by Ramin, Terese

  The thought that it had not been ancient demons or cowardice that had kept him on the other side of the door was oddly comforting in the moment before Hallie fired up the computer and they opened the boxes.

  Hallie drew the short straw when they chose who got to go first, and Joe chose to explore Zeke’s files before embarking on Mary’s. That way, if they truly didn’t seem linked to each other, he might find some way of talking Hallie out of scrutinizing—

  Yeah, right, his mind snorted. That’ll happen.

  Mentally he shook his head; he could hope.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked, pulling out the first manila folder.

  “Mary was a patient of Zeke’s for about four years before she died,” Hallie told him. “Since she lost the second baby.”

  Joe inhaled, exhaled. Not surprise; sadness. He knew a few things about Mary that Hallie didn’t yet. “She never told me.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Maura fussed slightly and Hallie took off the “World’s Best Mom” necklace Sam and Ben had purchased for her at their grade-school Secret Santa Shop the previous Christmas, dangled it where Maura could see it and grab for it. “For what it’s worth, Zeke never told me, either.” She grimaced. “Well, he couldn’t, could he? But so you know.”

  Joe nodded. “I know, Hallie.”

  She studied him, the incongruously colored eyes in the dark olive face, the nose that was a little too patrician for the rest of his features. The full, wide, exquisitely talented mouth that had nearly brought her to ecstasy by simply touching her breasts. The generous hands, broad shoulders, and all the other things that made up the physical aspect of Joe.

  It was all this and history that made her love him.

  The admission neither shocked nor intimidated as it might have last night, last week, last year, a lifetime ago. It simply made her wonder what on earth had taken her so long to grow up and recognize what should have been obvious from the moment she and Joe met. And even after she’d slept with Joe last night, felt her heart opening, acknowledging his presence—even then, she’d needed her ex-husband to point out the direction of her lifelong affections.

  She’d have borne his child any number of times, with Mary in the picture or not; she knew that now. Truthfully she’d known it then, too; she—they—had simply all put a different name on it. “For Mary,” they’d said. “For Mary and Joe.” But the real deal was she’d have done...well, she’d do—anything—not for Mary but for Joe.

  She swallowed the taste of shame, reading between the lines of what she’d read in Zeke’s files. Perhaps Mary had had a right to her jealousies and concerns, after all. It had to be difficult to watch another woman love your husband more—and maybe better—than you thought you loved him yourself. Even if—or maybe that was especially if—the other woman never acted on her feelings, and was dense enough to not even be clued in to the fact that she was, and would always be, in love with your husband.

  It had to be impossible, then, wondering how you could compete.

  Wondering if your husband reciprocated a feeling that he, too, didn’t act upon.

  Hallie bobbed the “Mom” necklace out of Maura’s grasp. She couldn’t think about Joe and love in the same sentence just now. It would make her wonder...and really, that wasn’t what this was about. This was about finding a killer, and a person who’d followed her and her kids around for at least a couple of months. A person who, for whatever reason, seemed to be out to at least disturb, if not to threaten, Joe.

  And now for unknowable reasons, her, Hallie, as well.

  She sucked air, blew it out, and continued. “Anyway,” she said, “because Mary was family, so to speak, Zeke felt he couldn’t ethically treat her and wanted to send her to someone else, maybe someone who could prescribe an antidepressant. She told him she was afraid of drugs and didn’t know if she could trust anyone else.” Hallie let her shoulders rise and drop. “It’s a common problem, he sees it all the time. Usually with a little work, some time that asks a patient to look at herself, maybe accept things she doesn’t want to about herself, he can convince her to at least see a psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist once for a consult. But Mary wouldn’t change her mind.”

  “As...” Joe hesitated, looking for the word. “As tractable as she could appear, she was damned stubborn.” And scary, he didn’t add. But he hadn’t known that when she was alive.

  “She had to be stubborn,” he heard Hallie say. “I don’t think I’d have suffered three miscarriages before I decided to try something else.”

  “Yeah,” Joe agreed absently, distracted by a comment he’d missed from one of Mary’s sessions just before she’d found herself a stud to get her pregnant for the third time. The comment was an observation about Mary’s perception of reality—or lack thereof—that rang a bell he couldn’t place. “But you wouldn’t consider not being able to carry your own child as something that took away your womanhood. You’d have gotten on the adoption list and waited for a baby. Or you’d have taken in strays, or worked with kids from Children’s Village, or been a foster mother, or decided to adopt older kids, or found some other way to get on with things. Mary couldn’t get by what her body wouldn’t let her be. Her mother was always on her about that.”

  “About accepting herself?” Hallie was surprised. She’d gotten to know Mary’s mother pretty well over the last year and a bit, and the woman hadn’t impressed Hallie as the accept-who-you-are type. Rather the opposite, in fact; ready to pick on each little failure, turn it into something huge.

  “No.” Joe glanced up from the papers he was reading, shook his head. “Picking on her about whatever Mary couldn’t do. Lose weight, she wasn’t eating enough. Gain a pound so she didn’t look like a stick, she’d better go on a diet. Marry a man who can get you pregnant but whose baby doesn’t ‘take’ ...” His jaw clenched around a mirthless grin. “Well, you take it from there.”

  She’d rather not. “Joe, I’m sorry. I knew—you told me—but I didn’t—or maybe I could have... God, what kind of friend was I, anyway?”

  “The best kind,” Joe said quietly. “The kind who was there all the time, no matter if I told you things or not.”

  “But if...”

  He shook his head, hushing her with the slight compression of his mouth, and reached to remove the necklace from her hand, look at it. “We kept our marriages separate for a reason, Hallie. No sense second-guessing that reason now. The fact I could come to you and not explain anything was—is—” His jaw tightened, muscles ticked. “Until I... screwed up an-and left, you trusted me whether I said anything or not. You didn’t have to be reassured about everything all the time. I could be quiet with you and know I wasn’t alone.” He canted his head to look her in the eye and finish, “I should have realized what I had when I had it, but I didn’t. Now I hope I haven’t screwed up permanently.”

  Then he took her hand and draped the necklace across her palm, closed her fingers over it and brought them to his mouth, brushed his lips gently across her knuckles and pushed them away.

  Stunned, Hallie scanned his face, trying to decide what he’d said. “Joe—”

  He ducked from her scrutiny. “Not now, Hallie. I can’t because I don’t know....” His mouth twisted and he shook his head as if to clear it. Dipped his fingers into the watch pocket of his jeans and drew out a pair of small keys. “For the strongboxes,” he said and handed them to Hallie.

  He thought his heart would stop beating while he waited for her to open them.

  Together as kids they’d read the Hardy Boys books, Joe’s older siblings Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators Mystery series, Agatha Christie, even Nancy Drew when Hallie demanded equal time for a female sleuth.

  Age gave them Dick Francis, James Lee Burke, Ridley Pearson and David Lindsay, among others in common. But the years had also changed their tastes, made them no longer constantly overlap. Hallie loved a good, fast-paced, heart-wrenching romance; Joe read Dean Koontz. Hallie read Bruce Coville and Lou
is Sachar to the boys; Joe preferred reading Piers Anthony or Christopher Stasheff aloud whenever he baby-sat for nieces and nephews—genetic or honorary.

  Neither one of them liked reading psychological or sociological profiles. Neither had ever gotten used to certain kinds of murder scenes in particular or hardened to the horror of rape, the victimization of children or other corruptions of the human condition. But they were prepared to deal with all of those things; deviants came with the job, after all. None of that readied them for dealing with what putting all their available information together showed them about Mary.

  Individually opened, each Pandora’s box contained its own trials and truths. Zeke’s observations were as straightforward and literal as he was: notations of what Mary told him, what they discussed, typed transcripts of their sessions; the increasingly recurring comment that although he felt she needed more help than he could give her, Mary vehemently refused to see another doctor. Compared against her own stud-exploration-data files, there seemed to be a clear correlation between something Zeke interpreted point-blank, then withdrew as a personal observation that he might have misunderstood, then re-alluded to in his notes at a later date—after Mary’s third miscarriage.

  I think she came on to me again today. She seems to be having a problem getting into bed with Joe, but that doesn’t quite make sense. It’s not what she said, so it’s probably my imagination. I could have sworn she said, “There’s proof yours live. Give me a baby.” She didn’t say it very loud and I’m not sure I heard what I thought I heard. Listened to the tape but couldn’t make it out for sure. She’s not well. I can’t help her and want to stop treating her, but when I told her that, she said if I didn’t see her in the office, she’d come to the house. I believe she would. Don’t want to risk her coming when the boys are there.

  Then there was a side note.

  I’m too close to this. Ask Tim Dooley to do hypothetical personality profile for cross reference.

  Mary’s notes for the corresponding date were uncharacteristically choppy, and obviously furious.

  He won’t do it. Men are such cowards. They don’t get it. They think if you cut off their hoo-ha’s you’ve damaged them. But what good are they if they can’t give you live babies? Might as well make a sperm gumbo and use a turkey baster. So damned much ego to make sure whatever comes out of you is theirs. My father—

  The diatribe broke off without warning, picked up on the next line, clear, simple and unemotional as you please.

  A good scientist doesn’t quit when a subject refuses to cooperate. Have to move down the list to the next candidate or the one after that. Maybe another one from Joe’s office.

  “Another one from the office?” Puzzled, Hallie looked up at Joe. “Who was the first?”

  He shook his head. “According to her earlier notes, the other one was big and looked enough like me to cover up genetic questions later. Even if you were talking one of my cousins from over in Corrections, there’s none of ’em my size.”

  “But this looks like Zeke was right. She was coming on to him in the office.”

  “Yeah.” Controlled, dispassionate. Taut, but not... hurt. Accepting. He couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t change it, and the woman he wanted was curled on the floor opposite him about to learn things about his late wife that could seriously damage the relationship he hoped to have with her.

  Hoped that somehow, despite time and circumstance, he already had with her.

  They viewed the videotape together first. Filmed in color, it was bad, a journal of Mary’s death shot perhaps from across the street. When he’d first seen it by himself, Joe had assumed the stalker-as-a-separate-person or the killer’s accomplice had shot it. Hallie paled watching the tape, lifted Maura from her chair and held her tightly, pacing back and forth in front of the television. But she maintained her cool enough to note that no matter what happened, the camera angle never changed nor did the camera ever seem to waver. As though the shot had been set up beforehand—perhaps while Mary was inside the grocery store.

  As she pointed out, the blessedly silent footage opened on the Blazer, then showed Mary stepping around the truck, opening the door, setting the groceries inside, straightening and turning to greet someone behind her. She had Joe rerun that bit again and again, getting up close to scrutinize Mary’s face, see if she could learn anything that way. Then she sighed and told him to rewind it and set it aside. They’d have to get the experts to take a look at it, use their equipment to enhance every grain.

  He’d done that, Joe told her, to no avail.

  But of course, as Hallie told him bluntly, he’d been half blind with rage, hadn’t been working with a full deck, and hadn’t been working with her. And hey, that made all the difference in the world.

  Joe eyed her with wry amusement and more than a little amazement, stuck his tongue in his cheek and, in the words of some distant Southern relative of his father’s, “allowed as how she might be right.”

  Finished with the video, they moved on to the shoe box.

  It contained the lesser evils—computer diskettes, the rest of the early series of photos of Mary alive, several small notebooks crammed with daily notes. As Joe had told her yesterday—was it only yesterday?—the books weren’t exactly diaries, but more like records, cryptic reports to herself on case files she’d taken too personally to leave at work. Dates, but no names; a little description, but no faces; no obvious case numbers, but plenty of commentary—a few bits of which included questions to herself about various of these ... clients, for want of a better term, acting as possible sperm donors; notations to access physical and mental-health histories for her “personal donor” files.

  The books dated back years—some from even before Mary met Joe and some from the time just prior to when they were introduced. The entries at that point sickened Hallie, included a description of the man she would have recognized anywhere. As much as it had been in her power to do so, Mary had looked Joe over, checked him out, eyed the size of his family and decided he was the stud for her. Then she’d done her homework, made her notes, studied hard, found a friend who had a friend who introduced her to Joe. Simple, particularly given the way the department of social services and the sheriffs department had to constantly interact. Crossing Joe’s path had been simple.

  The whole thing was so cold, so unlike the woman Hallie thought she’d known that she wanted to deny the evidence, the written calculations right in front of her. Some people schemed, finagled, hobknobbed and married for money, power, status. Mary had married a man with a big heart from a big family she could use to make her babies. And when that plan had failed, she’d made a new plan.

  Or returned to the old one.

  It was all terribly sad, if you thought about it. With Maura in her arms scrunching down in search of mother’s milk, Hallie didn’t want to. Didn’t really want to think of Mary again. But with all the stuff remaining to be sorted through, it was impossible not to think of Mary. Not with Maura at her breast. Not with Joe squatting in front of her, fists straining and relaxing against each other, regarding her through wary eyes, a man waiting for a verdict.

  A man waiting to get on with it, who told her without speaking a word that once begun they had to go on with it or risk more than he could bear.

  No way out except through.

  So they finished it And as Joe had warned her, it wasn’t pretty.

  Didn’t even come close.

  The strongboxes were full of photographs, videos, mementos of Hallie’s life after children: a pair of Ben’s bootees, a lock of Sam’s hair—innocent enough on the surface until Hallie looked at the photos. Most of them came in two sets: those with Hallie in them, and those with Hallie taken out and Mary put in her place.

  The older pictures had simply been cut and pasted. The more recent ones had been scanned into a computer and cut and pasted to look frighteningly real. Hallie eyed them with revulsion.

  “She wanted my life?” she asked, turning to
Joe. “Mine?”

  “That’s what it looked like to me.” Joe shrugged, wanting to reach out, to protect, but not sure if she’d accept what he could offer. She’d always been pretty too damned capable of looking out for herself, after all. “She figured hers wasn’t working, why not try yours.”

  She stared at him. For the first time in her life, she truly understood what it felt like to hate someone almost beyond reason, to be filled with contempt. But it wasn’t for Joe. Nor was it, as Joe had feared it might be, for herself for having been taken in.

  It was for Mary.

  “And she would have ... you think she would have...” She couldn’t ask it. The very thought was untenable, incomprehensible.

  “I think she was capable of a lot of things nobody was aware of,” Joe said steadily. The admission that had nearly killed him to recognize a year ago came next. “And yes, especially after comparing this stuff against Zeke’s notes, I think she might have tried. But then you came to us about the possibility of an embryo transfer and she saw things differently. Look—” He pulled a newer notebook out of the pile, flipped through a few pages, pointed out passages to Hallie. “The comments she made here—” he turned another page “—and here.” More pages. “And look at how her handwriting changes. Loops and swirls, not all mincy and cramped.” He shrugged. “She was happy. I don’t know if it would have lasted, or what would have happened when Maura got here, if the jealousy would have started over again, maybe worse, or if she’d have been too busy with the baby...” His mouth twisted. “You want to know the truth, I hate that she was killed, but the more I learn about her, the gladder I am Maura will never come in contact with her.”

  “Except through what you tell her,” Hallie said gently.

  He nodded, feeling old and tired. “Except for that.”

  She touched his face, drew a finger along the line of his jaw. “And then Mary will be the person we thought we knew before she died.”