A Question of Ghosts

by Cate Culpepper

  “Oh, sweet…” Patricia sagged into a side chair, but Becca kept her eyes on her uncle.

  Mitchell sighed harshly. “They’ve caught him?”

  “He’s in police custody,” Jo said.

  “Becca, you can’t be sure about this.” A shadow of the attorney surfaced. “You’re saying this man sounded like a boy you last heard decades ago—”

  “It was Loren, Mitchell.” Becca sent Jo a humorless smile. “I’ve learned to listen to voices very carefully. He told me to tell his father hello. Loren was named after you.”

  Mitchell’s face was undergoing an extraordinary series of reveals. The disbelief became fear, then denial again, and something quite close to hatred.

  “I always thought that was an honorific,” Becca said. “Rachel naming her son after you, to salute your friendship. But now I’m thinking that’s not true. Loren looks like you now, Mitchell.”

  “I may have sired him,” Mitchell said at last. “He’s not my son.”

  Mitchell went to Patricia and took her arm with an awkward tenderness. He steered her into a chair at the table and sat beside her. He clasped Patricia’s hand on the glossy surface, looking fully his age now, and waited while Becca and Jo pulled back other chairs and joined them. “This woman forgave us both, Becca. Your aunt is a more generous and loving person than you’ve ever realized.”

  He released Patricia’s hand long enough to lift a delicate cup to his lips. His throat moved as he swallowed, giving him time. “Very early in my marriage to Patricia, Rachel and I were…together, for a few nights. It was a terrible mistake for us both. For all three of us.” Mitchell’s newfound candor seemed to desert him and he drifted off, staring at the table. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe he’s come back. Forgive me, Pat. You tried to tell me.”

  “Of course you didn’t believe it, dear.” Patricia lifted her head and spoke clearly, with the careful diction of the drunk. “You always believe the best of the people you love. It makes you blind sometimes.” She looked at them dully. “Rachel insisted on keeping the baby. On raising him alone. Loren became addicted to hard drugs when he was still quite young.”

  “The boy was a monster before the drugs, Pat.” Mitchell’s face hardened, any tenderness gone. “Rachel moved heaven and earth to help that child. Nothing reached him. He was a thief and a bully and a miscreant before he was ten years old.”

  Patricia merely nodded, and they fell silent. Becca seemed content to wait them out, but Jo was less so. She had promised not to grill Becca, but that vow didn’t hold for her kin.

  “So Rachel Perry, a psychiatrist experienced in treating chemical dependency, brought up a drug-addicted son.” They flinched at Jo’s brusqueness, but Becca only watched her. “And in spite of all of Rachel’s maternal efforts, Loren persisted in being a bad seed?”

  “Well.” A new, subtle wave of contempt passed over Patricia’s face. “Rachel had problems of her own, back then.”

  “Pat.” Mitchell’s tone was wooden, and Patricia nodded again.

  Jo decided to let it pass. “Mitchell, why is there a headstone in Lake View Cemetery marking the grave of Loren Perry?”

  “All right.” Mitchell sat back in his chair. “If you must hear the whole, sordid story. When Loren was fifteen, he was suspected of molesting two young girls in the neighborhood. Police were going to arrest him any day. His solution to this was to get drunk and smash his motorcycle all over Mercer Street.”

  Mitchell spoke calmly as if giving a formal disposition. “Loren was comatose in Harborview for several days. I admit readily that I called in favors, pulled some strings. We had new identity papers drawn for him. He was transferred to an excellent hospital on the east coast. He lived there until he was eighteen. Then, I’m happy to say, we lost track of him entirely.”

  “Not entirely, apparently,” Jo pointed out. “The grave?”

  “It’s empty,” Mitchell said. “As I said. I called in favors.”

  “You and Rachel arranged all this.” Becca stirred at last, sounding dazed. “She agreed to have Loren locked up in some hospital for three years? To lose track of him, as you put it, for thirty years?”

  “Do you know what having a son convicted of child molestation would have done to Rachel professionally?” Mitchell scrubbed his napkin across his lips. “She had no husband to support her. Not that she considered the impact on her career, mind you. I did. I was the one who cared that this creature was ruining Rachel’s life. All she cared about was saving Loren from arrest, giving him a fresh start.”

  “What kind of hospital houses a mental patient for three years.” Becca wasn’t asking a question, and Jo knew she was picturing a distant facility much like Western State. “What kind of pit did you find to launch Loren on this fresh start?”

  “It was better than he deserved, Rebecca.” Mitchell tossed his napkin to the table. “I don’t know why he’s come back into our lives now, unless he imagined that harassing my niece would result in some kind of payoff. That he could bleed me dry financially, to call him off.”

  “Oh, you know better, Mitch.” Patricia pushed back her chair and went to a side table, her step halting. She poured an amber liquid into a small glass. “Rachel’s son never made any effort to contact us. Not the entire time he’s been terrorizing Becca.”

  “Pat, don’t start again.” Mitchell’s voice lowered. “You’re not used to it, and you’ve had more than enough.”

  “That’s certainly the truth. I’ve had enough of your blindness. I knew it was Loren the second Joanne told me about that fucking doll. Forgive me, Becca.” Apparently, Patricia was apologizing for either the profanity or the alcohol. She turned her back to Becca and downed the glass in one shot. “It’s time you stopped protecting her, Mitchell.”

  “Patricia, I’ve told you I’m not going to entertain this paranoid delusion of yours again.”

  “Becca almost died. Hasn’t that even registered with you?” Patricia spun, and her bloodshot eyes brimmed with tears. “Doesn’t it matter to you that this girl we raised almost lost her—”

  “Of course it matters.” Mitchell rose sharply enough to knock back his chair. He stared at Patricia, the tendons in his jaw standing out. “But Becca is safe now. That is all that matters. And now you’ll have to excuse me, as I’m due in court.”

  He walked toward the stairs, his back bent, his shoulders curved toward his chest. Jo knew of no court that held sessions on a weekend. Mitchell looked back at Patricia. “Leave her alone, Pat. You’re wrong about her. She would never have hurt me like that. The woman’s dying. Let her be.”

  Jo was trying hard to listen through her exhaustion. Becca sat very still as her uncle left the room.

  “It’s his career that’s over now, you know.” Patricia filled her glass again and made her way back to the table. “I don’t think that’s quite hit him yet. Once they identify Loren, this whole sad shit sack of history is going to come out.”

  “Mitchell said, ‘She would never have hurt me like that.’” Jo struggled to find an inroad through this maze. “He was referring to Rachel Perry? Was he saying that Rachel wouldn’t have hurt him by bringing their son back to Seattle?”

  “No, Joanne, I’m afraid not.” Patricia sipped from her glass now, rather than bolting it. “Mitch wasn’t talking about Rachel dragging Loren back into our lives. He was referring to a much older injury his darling Rachel inflicted on this family. I think Becca knows that.”

  Becca watched her silently.

  “Mitch’s career was essentially over the night your parents died, dear. His hopes for political office, gone. There was scandal involved. Vicious rumors about Mitch and your mother. I thought for a time that he might even be named a suspect.”

  Patricia turned the glass of amber liquid in her fingers slowly. “Your uncle is a man of many passions, Becca. I’ve always known that. Rachel. Other women. Your mother. I’ve never doubted my husband’s love for me, never. But he loved your mother more. More t
han any of them. More than me. I’ve always known that, too.”

  Decades of drunken emotion passed over Patricia’s aged face in the sun-filled dining room. “There was something special about Madelyn. Even I saw it, and I’m heterosexual as a brick. There was some spark in her. Some kind of innocent purity. You have it too, Rebecca. It drew Mitch like a flame. And Scottie knew it.”

  She put down the glass and rubbed her face in her hands. “They hated each other, Mitch and his brother. I’m sorry, Becca, but hatred is the only word for it. I honestly suspected Mitch of the killings myself, for a moment, as I looked down at the bodies. But I was wrong.”

  Patricia focused on Becca with effort. “I didn’t know for sure. Not until I realized Loren Perry had come back. Are you ready for another hard truth, Becca?”

  “Yes,” Becca said.

  “I hated your mother because my husband wanted her desperately. I’m still glad she’s dead. But I credit her with this much—Maddie was faithful to your father. She never let Mitchell touch her. He’s been truthful with me over the years, about every one of his little peccadillos, and I believe him about this. Do you?”

  “Yes,” Becca said.

  “Good.” Patricia downed the rest of her glass, and Jo couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Pardon me,” Jo said. “What injury did Rachel inflict on this family?”

  Becca got up. “Come on, Jo.”

  “Are you going to see her?” Patricia asked, her voice soft now.

  “Yes.”

  Patricia rose too and came around the table, weaving only slightly. Jo was torn between an impulse to take her arm and support her or tear her arm off completely, but Becca allowed her to clasp her hands.

  “Do you know how I’ve managed to hold on to a solid marriage for forty-seven years, Becca? By accepting the fact that the people we love can be flawed. Even deeply flawed. And choosing to love them anyway.”

  Becca looked down at Patricia’s trembling hands.

  “Forgive us,” Patricia said gently. “We do love you, the best way we know how.”

  “I know that. I always have.”

  Family, Jo thought. Clan. There could be such a chasm between the two.

  Becca leaned forward and kissed Patricia’s cheek. “Get some sleep.”

  She held out her hand and Jo took it, and they walked together toward the entry.

  “Becca?” Patricia’s voice drifted behind them. “She was taken to the hospice at Swedish Hospital last night. She doesn’t have long.”

  Becca nodded, and they left the house.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Finding parking was unusually difficult, and Jo focused on that minor annoyance. She circled the BMW around Swedish Hospital twice, a process that took twenty minutes. Pedestrian traffic was thick on Seattle’s First Hill, people of every gender swarming the streets. It was the morning of Gay Pride.

  Becca was a still presence beside her, her hands in her lap. An Olivia Newton-John song surfaced on the car’s generic radio setting. Jo could smell the sweet freshness of Becca’s hair as she listened, her gaze distant out the window.

  Before driving to the Healys’ house, they had gone to Becca’s second-story apartment in a working class neighborhood off Lake City Way. To Jo’s disappointment, Becca had asked her to wait in the car. She had been gone long enough to shower, and she returned carrying a small satchel. Jo thought glumly that her own clothes still smelled of smoke, and she rolled her side window down.

  “You’re all right?” Jo asked again.

  “I am. I’m fine,” Becca replied again.

  That settled, Jo finally turned into the hospital’s subterranean garage. She circled its depths for several years before finally pulling into a narrow wedge of a parking space. She keyed off the engine and suppressed her automatic urge to open the car door, to get on with things. Jo rested her hands on her knees and waited until Becca spoke.

  “Mitchell was saying that Rachel would never have robbed him of the love of his life. He still won’t believe Rachel would have hurt him that much, all those years ago, by killing my mother.”

  Jo had worked this much out in her head. She waited.

  “I’m not fine,” Becca said finally.

  “Of course you’re not.”

  “I think I’ve done pretty well.” Becca’s voice was starting to shake. “Last night, at the fire, talking to Loren. Earlier today, with my uncle and aunt. But now I have to see Rachel, and before I do, I might have to fall apart a little. I’m s-sorry—”

  “You never have to apologize to me for your tears, Becca.”

  Becca rested her head against the swell of Jo’s shoulder, which had been created solely for this purpose. She cried for a while, and Jo sat with her. Like Becca, Jo knew who had shot Scott and Madelyn Healy. Also like Becca, she didn’t yet understand why, but they could take time now for this.

  “Should we find a vending machine inside? It would have chocolate bars.” Jo was serious.

  Becca actually smiled and knuckled tears out of one eye like a child. “Yeah, that would be good. But maybe later. We need to get out from under all this concrete so I can make a call.”

  “You’re sure, Becca?”

  Becca nodded. She got out of the car, and Jo followed her through the labyrinthine passages of the parking garage into the light. Becca flipped open her cell, pressed keys, listened, spoke at length. When she was finished, she pulled open one of the double doors to the hospice unit, and Jo followed her through.

  “Good morning.” Becca spoke to the young nurse behind the reception desk. “We’re here to see Rachel Perry.”

  The nurse looked startled. “This early? Is Dr. Perry expecting you?”

  Jo glanced at the nurse’s nametag. “Monica, this is quite important. To Dr. Perry, as well as to us.” She allowed the girl to absorb Becca’s expression, and her own.

  “Well, we’ve finished with morning meds. But I do need to check. Dr. Perry just joined us last night.” Monica lifted a headset and touched buttons. She turned away from the desk and spoke quietly. She turned back and nodded. “Room sixteen. It’s down that hallway, last door on the left.”

  “Thank you.” Becca laid her hand on the counter, then turned and looked up at Jo. She was faltering again; Jo could read it in the sudden sheen over her eyes.

  “I’ve got your back,” Jo said.

  Becca steadied and took Jo’s arm. Jo nodded at Monica, and they entered the long hall.

  Jo’s work had made her familiar with the workings of end-of-life care, and she knew a good hospice could be a good place to die. This was a good hospice. There was no chemical smell of disinfectant, just the pleasant freshness of the morning air through several open windows. The carpet beneath Jo’s feet was thick enough to muffle their steps, but tailored to accommodate a wheeled gurney when necessary. The walls were painted a soothing blue with a cream accent, and framed paintings were positioned low, in the view of people in wheelchairs, on stretchers.

  They passed three staff in the corridor, young attendants who smiled pleasant greetings. The unit was mostly silent. Jo heard no moans of pain, no demented cries. A hospice provided palliative care. It existed solely to make the dying process as painless as possible, and if that meant heavy medication, so be it. But they tried to help patients find meaning in the journey as well—closure with family, legal arrangements, spiritual consolation. Jo wondered which of these services Rachel Perry would choose to access.

  They stopped before Room 16. Without pause or ceremony, Becca lifted her hand and knocked on the door.

  “Come in, Becca.”

  Rachel wore a soft velour robe the color of dawn, closed high around her neck. She stood with her back to them, looking out a large oblong window, a patchwork of colorful stained glass. The room was large and well furnished. There were few personal belongings among the tasteful décor. Rachel traveled light.

  She turned and smiled at Becca. In the brief time since the nurse placed the call, Rachel ha
d brushed her hair and applied lipstick, but her posture was bowed and she looked ancient. All Jo could read on her worn face was fierce relief and genuine love.

  “I knew you’d be all right. I knew it.”

  “No, Rachel, you didn’t.” Becca closed the door behind them and stood close beside Jo.

  Jo waited, and so did Rachel, but Becca seemed incapable of further speech. The look of loss and betrayal in her eyes was unbearable.

  “She means your son could have killed us both last night.” Jo spoke to Rachel with great restraint. “And he could have killed us two days ago when he cut the brakes of my car.”

  “Becca wasn’t supposed to be with you.” Rachel’s voice emerged as a sudden hiss and Jo almost recoiled. A wild denial crossed her withered face. “You were supposed to have breakfast with me that morning, Becca! You promised me you would!”

  “Stop shouting at us. And sit down.” Jo took three steps and touched Rachel’s elbow with pragmatic detachment. She guided her to the side of the wide, raised bed and helped her sit. Becca stood frozen near the doorway.

  Rachel brushed her finger across her lower lip, wiping away spittle with a wince of repugnance. Her face cleared, and she looked up at Jo calmly. “None of this had to come out, Joanne. We have you to thank for raising these old ghosts. And I don’t know whether to hate you for it or thank you. Both, perhaps.”

  “I believe that.” Jo stepped back from the bed and crouched on her heels slowly, making herself as unthreatening as possible.

  She did believe Rachel, and that amazed her. Rachel’s facial expressions had convinced Jo she wanted this study to succeed, for the truth to be known. Some part of her psyche had badly wanted confession, this very confrontation. And another part of her had arranged to have Becca burn to death last night. Both were Rachel’s absolute truths, and Jo found this amoral dichotomy incomprehensible.