“I’ll let you two sort this out,” Sarah said. “I’ve got some news.” Only now was it dawning on her that for Colin, her exciting scoop would come as a blow. She hesitated, then dived in. “I talked to Steven, and you know how he’s kind of a savant when it comes to antiques?”
“He’s amazing,” Jimmy said. “I told him he needs to work for Selkirk’s after col. .”
“What is it, Sarah?” Colin cut in.
“He thinks your map is a fake,” she blurted. “Or maybe not a fake, but not copied in the 1600s − more like the 1800s, at the earliest.” Nobody said anything, so she hurried on. “He said Graham knew, and so did Philip. So that takes away any possible motive for either of them to steal it and try to sell it.”
Jimmy was looking at Colin. “We had it appraised, didn’t we?”
“I hadn’t gotten around to it yet,” Colin said, his voice stiffening. “I had no reason to distrust the man who gave it to us. He’s in his eighties, with prostate cancer, and he’s a descendant of the Ricci family. He found the map when he went to Beijing to learn more about Matteo − stumbled upon it in a stack of antique maps.”
“And he didn’t get it appraised either,” Jimmy guessed. “And a 15-year-old can tell the difference.”
Resting his elbows on the desk, Colin covered his face with splayed fingers. “It doesn’t matter now anyway,” he said, voice muffled. “The school will close just from the scandal. Thirteen families already want to pull their sons out, some at the end of term, others as soon as the police will let them leave.”
She’d never heard him this desolate before. Even when he learned about his mother’s cancer, there was resolve mixed with the sadness. “All we need to do is find out who killed Philip,” she insisted. “Close that gap, and the fear goes away. Parents will know there’s no further danger. The school will be fine.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Let’s hope so. Because now we’re going to need the archdiocese’s money more than ever.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Friday morning Sarah woke to muffled shouts and running feet. Even through thick stone walls she could hear the jolt of alarm in the voices. She threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, opened her door and asked the nearest boy what was going on.
“Everybody’s looking for Steven. Graham heard him scream really early this morning and thought it was a nightmare. But now he’s gone.”
Run away? Hurt? She ran into the dorm and upstairs. Graham was leaving his room, pulling on a navy pea coat. He looked worried.
“What did Steven say?” she asked.
“I think he yelled ‘Go away!’ but I’m not sure. I was sleeping, and it was loud enough to wake me. I waited, but I didn’t hear anything more, so I assumed it was just a bad dream. He talks in his sleep sometimes. I knocked this morning − he’s always up by six − and he wasn’t in his room.”
There was real panic in his voice. Genuine concern or a guilty conscience? She heard Colin at the other end of the hall marshalling a search party and headed toward him. “I’ll bring Simon,” she called.
“No, you stay here. I need somebody on hand in case reporters show up. If we don’t find him the first time out, I’m calling the police. Okay, everybody, let’s go.”
Sarah went back to the milkhouse and stared out the narrow windows. “You could’ve helped,” she said, ruffling the dog’s curls.
Maybe Steven hadn’t left of his own accord. ‘Go away!’ − if he wasn’t dreaming, somebody was trying to get into his room. Did they make it? She stopped there. “Let’s assume he’s fine, just scared. What feels like a safe place to a kid who’s slightly autistic?” Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine the jangle in his head, the flashes of colour and light and noise. He wouldn’t head downhill, toward the deli and the lake. He’d hide someplace dark.
“The cave!” Hearing the excitement in her voice, Simon bounced up. “He kept talking about it when they were doing that report. It’d be safe and dark and quiet and out of the way.” She grabbed her jacket and Simon’s lead. No reporters would show up until Colin called the police. Why should she just sit here?
Outside, she heard the boys calling, their ‘Ste-ven’ echoing loud or faint in different parts of the woods. She turned right and headed toward the river. When she reached the railroad tracks, the wall of rock on her right was almost vertical. She kept going, looking for the brown Lewis & Clark historic marker.
A few yards later, she saw it. And, next to the state marker, a fancy black sign that retold the tale in raised brass letters. Now she just had to find the cave entrance. Was that it, that dark patch up high, next to a few scrubby trees? Unclasping Simon’s lead, she said firmly, “Don’t lose me. You know I hate heights.”
Picking her way up the cliff, which had a gentler slope here, she reached a flat outcropping and looked up, breathing hard. No cave anywhere in sight. No dog, either. She looked down the way she’d come and the world spun.
A single, sharp bark interrupted her panic. About ten yards to her right, silhouetted against a pale blue sky like Lassie, stood Simon. He looked back, making sure she saw him, then disappeared. He’d found the cave. When she reached the entrance she saw a winding thread of dark water, huge rocks scattered around it like a giant’s marbles. Her eyes took a few seconds to adjust, but as the shadowy cavern came into focus she saw Steven on the opposite side, cross-legged on a high ledge, huddled into his hoodie.
“Oh, sweetheart!” She made her way toward him, staying on dry rock as long as she could, then putting one foot down into the dark water. It was shallow and ice cold, the rocks at the bottom slimy. Slipping a bit, she splashed across and stepped up on to the rock below Steven’s ledge. Simon forged through the water behind her. “Up here, baby,” she told him, tapping the ledge. “We’ve gotta get up here.”
He ran to the other end of the ledge, where there were plenty of wide, flat rocks at different heights, and went up like a mountain goat. Picking her way − all she needed now was a sprained ankle − she followed, calling, “Mind if we come up?”
Steven had a trapped-animal look in his eyes. Would a kid with Asperger’s be violent? Stupid question. Anybody could be violent. Moving slowly, she sat down next to him, keeping her voice low and casual. She eased her shoulder against his, and when he didn’t pull back, she slid her arm around him. Whether he liked it or not, he was freezing and needed the warmth.
The cave smelled prehistoric, wet and feral. Waiting for Steven to speak, Sarah counted off seconds, then switched to counting the tiny brown bats hanging from the cave roof and got a little claustrophobic.
“How’d you find me?” Loud in her ear, his voice echoed through the cave, harsh and accusing.
“I just thought this would be a good place to go.”
He nodded and said nothing more. At least he hadn’t shoved her off the overhang. She imagined falling on those rocks − the cold splash at impact, the wind knocked out of her, bruises and broken ribs, lying there unable to move, far from sun and air and light . . . Steven might feel safe here, but to her the thick wet darkness felt like prison.
“Somebody turned my door knob,” he blurted. “I had it locked, but they jiggled it. I yelled and they went away, but I was still scared.”
“As well you should have been,” she said, holding him tighter. She rocked his stiff, unbending shoulders until finally he settled into her arms, letting out a long sigh with a little sob trapped in the middle. Glancing at Simon, who’d remained standing all this time, she nodded her head toward the boy’s other side and whispered, “Go lie down.” Simon pressed his body against Steven’s and slid into a down.
After a few minutes of rocking, soothing murmurs, and the body heat of an unbudgeable poodle, Steven pulled away. “Philip bugged his father’s phone,” he said. “He heard him talking to Adriana about becoming a deacon in the church. His father said, ‘Just how outrageous is Philip these days?’ Philip was angry.” His shoulders were still hunched up and h
is voice too loud, supercharged. He was forcing each word to carry extra weight, trying to release the emotion without telling her the rest.
“What else?” she asked quietly. No answer, just the wheeze of his breathing, the drip and splash of water. As the silence deepened, she heard a shushing sound up high − the flapping of the little bats’ wings. She fixed her eyes in their direction and waited. Steven couldn’t stand the tension of keeping a secret. He’d have to speak it eventually.
He rocked faster, releasing tension like a wind-up toy. Sarah dropped her arm and let him find his own rhythm. One corner of his mouth pulled toward his ear in tiny jerks.
“Flashblood,” he said, and stopped rocking.
“You saw a lot of blood?”
He shook his head impatiently. “Flashblood.”
“Like a flash going off in your head?” she tried. Anything to keep him talking.
“No. Philip said it. He said he was going to try flashblood. He said it over and over, like he liked the sound of the word. I was afraid it was something bad, so I didn’t say anything. But I keep thinking about it.”
“When was this?”
“When I set up the recorder for him.” He sounded proud of himself. Good. That ought to stabilise him a bit, give him back a little control. “He said it would help him. He said he was going to ‘do somebody who could be useful’.” The quote sounded stilted, its meaning as alien to Steven as a phrase in Urdu.
“And you don’t know what he meant by ‘flashblood’?”
He shook his head fast and hard.
“No worries. Father Mac will figure it out. I’m glad you told me. For now, we’d better get back. Everybody’s looking for you.”
When Colin saw them trudging across the lawn, he was too relieved to care that she hadn’t played sentinel. He even apologised for ordering her around.
Yawning, she waved off the apology. “I’m going back to bed.” But the minute she closed the milkhouse door, she opened her laptop. Research was like scratching off a lottery ticket − she wanted to know what she’d won before she told anybody.
Searching ‘flashblood’ she found a Wiki stub. A practice among impoverished heroin users, it said. They shot up, then extracted a syringe of their blood and injected it in somebody else. It was a frantic attempt to share the high. They couldn’t get much of the drug from the other person’s blood, the writer noted, but in many cases the idea of sharing the hit was enough to make them feel high. Classic placebo effect.
She clicked a few links. According to field research in an anthropology journal, flashblood was also used as a ritual practice in primitive, animist cultures. That one was worth reading, but she’d have to come back to it. Surreal as it felt right now, she had to go to a photo shoot. The foundation job application required a photo, and Kat had promised to take it at her studio. No way was Sarah wearing anything she’d packed; she’d have to swing by her apartment first.
As she drove, eight words made a litany. This is my body. This is my blood. There was nothing primitive about the Catholic church, but Philip, in love with ritual of all kinds, could have drawn a parallel between flashblood and the Eucharist. Maybe that’s why his arms were outstretched like Christ’s.
But whose idea was it to sacrifice his life?
*
Kat took one look at Sarah’s face and led her to a zero-gravity recliner. “Tilt all the way back and lie still.”
“Wait a minute, I wanted to . . .”
“Ssshshhtt.” No arguing with the Greek imperative. A few minutes later Sarah felt two discs of cucumber land, cool and fresh and wet, on her closed eyelids. “Stay there for fifteen minutes.”
She drifted off to sleep. When her lids fluttered open, a double moon, glowing pale greenish white, had risen in the sky. Lifting the wilted slices of cucumber, she saw Kat standing in front of her holding a tray with a teapot and gingersnaps. “Brighter already, my little raccoon. Now, I’ve got a million questions, but first we’re going to do this shoot.”
Once Sarah had dunked a few gingersnaps and drained her tea, Kat led her to a make-up table. “Close your eyes.”
It was a relief to be docile. Sarah shut her eyes, felt something tickle, and opened a thick fringe of fake eyelash, freshly glued. “Kat!”
“Po, po, po. Stop fussing and look in the mirror.”
Darkened and outlined, Sarah’s hazel eyes dominated her face. She looked like she was inviting somebody − anybody − to bed. “This is a serious article about human rights,” she said sternly. Kat met her eyes in the mirror, and they both cracked up.
“So you’ll seduce an activist,” Kat said, handing her a lipstick. “Don’t worry. The camera tones everything down. First we exaggerate, then we seek subtlety.”
“Just don’t stop halfway.”
It took several dozen angles and expressions before Kat was satisfied. She went to her Powerbook and marked her favourite images, not even asking Sarah. “I’ll email you a contact sheet,” she said, “but these are the best.”
“Whatever you say.” Sarah sank into the rocker Kat had used to soothe her boys when they were babies, lulling them back to sleep so she could work a little longer.
“So, tell me,” Kat said, angling her chair to face the rocker. “First, is there any chance a stranger did this?”
“Nope.” Sarah rocked harder, feeling like Steven.
“So somebody at the school killed him.”
“Yep.”
“One of the kids?”
“Possibly. Which makes my sociopath the most likely.”
“Except there’s no conviction in your voice. Tell me about everybody else. There’s Colin, his friend Jimmy, the beautiful English teacher . . .”
“A crazy priest, a kid who’s genius and almost autistic, the dead boy’s father . . .” When Sarah finished describing the cast of characters, Kat stared at her. “They’re all crazy.”
Sarah shrugged. “Anybody’s crazy if you dig deep enough. Look at our masthead. Rob’s a narcissist, the copy editor’s bipolar, the art director’s OCD − shame those two aren’t reversed − and Casper’s got delusions of something, I’m just not sure what.”
“We’re sane.”
“Only in our own eyes.”
“Speaking of which, you can keep the rest of the eyelashes. They really do look fabulous, not that you’ll ever bother to glue them on again.”
“I don’t see you batting any Minnie Mouse lashes.”
“I’ve got George who needs bifocals just to see the dog.”
Sarah grinned. Kouros was a Neapolitan mastiff.
“So how long are you staying out there?” Kat asked, her tone changing.
“I’m not sure. I’d planned on coming back to work Monday, but Casper emailed saying I should stay a little longer and − get this − blog about the experience. I haven’t dignified that with an answer yet. Why?”
“Because you get distracted, honey. You get caught up in other people’s problems.”
This again. “Other people’s problems are my job.”
“But you are not reporting this story. You are holding your friend’s hand and playing sleuth to solve his problem. Which is fine, but you’ve got your own work too. Sometimes you’re better at living other people’s lives than your own.”
“I meet my deadlines,” Sarah said. Even she could hear the sulk in her voice.
“You do, and even at our crummy little weekly, you manage to win awards. So imagine what you could do if you focused harder on your own work.”
Reaching behind her to Kat’s desk, Sarah touched each boy’s portrait with the tip of her finger, then the wedding photo, then Kouros’ glamour shot with the cat. “You don’t.”
“I would if I were single.”
The words went into Sarah’s heart like a corkscrew, sharp point first, in and twisting. Paul had wanted kids. If she’d stayed . . .
She shook it off. He would have been the world’
s worst father, and she would have gotten caught up in a story and forgotten to heat the formula. Kat was right − she’d lost focus. She hadn’t gotten any real work done since Colin’s panicked phone call, and the manuscript was due in ten days.
“Any chance you’ve got a bottle of wine here?” she asked. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
Kat’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t answer, just produced a dusty bottle of pinot noir she’d used for a stemware ad and the stemware she’d forgotten to return. “You’re making me nervous,” she said.
“It’s nothing, probably won’t even happen.” Sarah explained about the foundation job. “Colin’s got his school. You’ve got your family. I need some compensation for being thirty six and alone.”
“You sure you’re not just trying to escape that fact?” Kat asked gently.
“I’m sure. I’m sick of writing about quirky characters and weird lawsuits. I want to do this kind of writing.”
“That why you went to Haiti?”
Sarah nodded.
“Okay. Then I’ll hate you leaving, but I want you to do it. So promise me you won’t let yourself be distracted. Especially by Colin.”
“Why him in particular?”
“Because, sweet friend, he has an extraordinary pull on you. You’ll drop anything for that man. George and I decided you must have been half in love with him for a very long time.”
“You talked about this with George?”
“Just a little. I didn’t mention that I’m beginning to wonder if it’s deliberate. Did you ever stop to think that you might be the one terrified of commitment?”
“I was with Paul for four years!”
“Paul doesn’t count. We all knew that marriage wouldn’t last − he was a pompous, self-centred jerk.” Kat reached over to squeeze Sarah’s hand. “You either pick saints or sinners, not much in between.”
“Colin’s no saint,” she grumbled.
“Ha! You see? You do think of him in that category.”
A Circumstance of Blood Page 18