Sarah had borrowed the trick. Now, with Dennison’s sobs in her ears, she went around to the front and let herself in.
When he heard her footsteps his head came up. “What?” Tears had washed away the outrage, but he still sounded testy.
“I want to know what you’re hiding. Because your son’s paying the price.”
“Oh, fuck off, Ms. Markham.” No more syrupy, carefully modulated inflections; he spat the profanity. “I’m not hiding a damn thing. I’ve got a crazy wife and a crazier son and it’s been a lit-tle stressful, all right?”
She’d forgotten to hit ‘Play’. Sitting down and situating her purse on her lap, she reached into the side pocket, and as she crossed her legs, her finger pressed the right spot on the glass. “So the affair was just, what? Self-soothing?”
Resting his forehead against his palm, he kept his expression hidden.
“I already know what happened,” she lied. “And the damage is done.”
The silence felt like a child’s game − who’d break the stare first? Sarah kept her gaze trained on his face and waited. Finally he looked down.
“I never meant to hurt her,” he muttered, more to himself than to Sarah.
“But you did hurt her.” She waited again. He’d have to defend himself; his ego couldn’t leave it there.
“I was talking to a . . . friend . . . on the phone. Laurel was completely out of it − I knew she couldn’t hear me.”
Sarah was pretty sure where this was going, but she had to make him say it. She held her breath.
“Graham came in when I was . . .”
“Whispering sweet nothings?” Careful, she warned herself. If sarcasm punctures that inflated ego, he’ll shut up until he can patch it.
Sure enough, he stopped talking.
“What happened when he came in?” she asked, making her voice soft and sympathetic and fighting down the gag reflex.
“Graham told me I at least ought to have the decency to make the call outside.” He stared past her, eyes unfocused. “He was right. I went out in the hall. A few minutes later he came running out and told me to get the nurse. God help me, I thought he was just trying to get me off the phone.”
The room was chilly, but the back of Sarah’s dress clung to her skin, sticky with sweat. As it dried a shiver ran through her, and she crossed her legs to hide the tremor. She had to keep going − if he stopped now, they were nowhere. “So you didn’t react,” she guessed.
He nodded miserably. “I was mad, so I just kept talking. When he came out again and saw me, he went back and hit the buzzer and everybody ran in. Obviously I couldn’t explain what really happened, and I had no idea what Graham would tell them. I pulled it together and said” − his voice dropped in self-disgust − “‘my son was over at the ventilator and the next thing I knew, she was in crisis’.”
The original flaw in Bryan Dennison’s nature, a craven need to be seen as better than he was. Early in his career he’d been willing to defend anybody just to catapult himself forward. Later he’d been willing to betray his own son.
“You had to know you were setting him up,” she pointed out. “What did you expect people to think?”
“I couldn’t afford the blame.” His voice was stronger now, peeved with her for not understanding. “He’s young. I knew I could fix it, get him in a good school out of town. I knew they couldn’t charge him with anything. Graham doesn’t give a shit what people think of him anyway.”
“So he’s been covering for you all this time?”
He shrugged. “He said he’d do it for his mother’s sake.”
“And how’s it supposed to help her to think her son tried to kill her?”
“We never dreamed they’d make so much out of it. I didn’t even think she’d find out.”
“So, wait − what did cause the crisis?”
“I don’t know! I left the room. Don’t you see? I wasn’t lying. He was standing there, and she went into crisis.”
“Right after she heard you on your phone with your girlfriend,” Sarah said slowly.
His head came up. “Laurel was unconscious. She didn’t have a clue what was going on around her.”
“That’s not what the medical experts say. People can register all sorts of information in a twilight state. That phone call could have set your wife’s heart racing, even if she wasn’t fully conscious of what she was hearing. And that would have been just enough stimulus to compromise what little lung function she had.”
He paled.
“So you not only nearly killed your wife, but you let your son take the fall,” Sarah continued, relentless now. “And he let you.”
“He said he’d rather take the blame than be weak like me,” Dennison said, his voice bitter. “And you know what? He’ll do just fine. I’m pulling some strings. I can still get him into Harvard. I can give him the best opportunities there are.”
“You have an interesting way of defining that.” She stood, pulled out her phone and held it up. “We both know there’s not a thing I can do legally with this tape. But I’m giving it to your son and your wife. They need to know who you are. And Graham needs a real fresh start.”
Instead of answering, Dennison walked ahead of her to the front door.
Then he turned and leaned against it, blocking her way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Islay police chief had sent Morganstern scans of his file on Nell McAvoy’s suicide. No finding of suspicious death at the inquest. She’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer, after all. And she’d taken Xanax and way too many pain pills − not enough to kill most people perhaps, but she suffered from Type 1 diabetes, weighed less than one hundred pounds, and was in poor health. The drugs had suppressed her respiratory system just enough to throw her heart into arrest.
Morganstern slid the email into a folder labelled ‘Philip Grant’, then clicked open the folder and read it again. She was a diabetic. What chance she’d taught her sweet, dutiful son to give her insulin injections? At the very least, he would have grown up watching her inject herself. Would he have known how to get heroin? He grew up poor in Scotland, at the height of its heroin epidemic, she reminded herself with a sigh. She liked Colin McAvoy. When she’d said he was her prime suspect, she’d only been bluffing, hoping a little selfish panic would break him open and spill a few more secrets.
But it was starting to look like she’d been right.
*
Back against the door, Dennison folded his arms and glared at Sarah. “Give that tape to anyone else and I’ll see that you lose your job.”
“Worried about yours?” she retorted. “You may continue to practise what you call law, Mr. Dennison. Your son will need the tuition money, so he can get as far from you as possible.” She reached around him, grabbed the doorknob and pulled as hard as she could, hoping to at least knock him off balance. He stepped away from the door to stop her and the sudden force slammed the edge of the door into her forehead. Dizzy from the impact, she twisted away from his grip and managed to get around the door and on to the sidewalk. “Hi!” she yelled, waving wildly at some guy across the street who was fetching his mail.
Dennison slammed the door behind her.
Hands shaking, she drove to the nearest shopping centre, pulled into the lot, and tested the recording. Loud and clear. She dug in her purse for a cable and saved the recording on to a flash drive.
This made it even less likely that Graham had killed Philip. But who had?
Sarah went back to that Saturday, standing outside Philip’s room as they wheeled his body out. Her brain still charged with adrenaline, she replayed every detail. She saw the candles, lined up like a choir. She smelled wax and vanilla and blood, heard the music throbbing low and insistent from Philip’s speakers. And realised what she should have known all along.
Those drums weren’t Haitian.
*
North and Adriana sat next to each other in the hosp
ital waiting room, just where Sarah had left them. North had Adriana’s hand clasped in both of his, and they leaned against each other, heads touching.
“You two still here?” Sarah asked, smiling.
They straightened like teenagers caught breaking a rule.
“Graham’s about to get discharged,” Adriana said, smoothing her hair. “We thought we’d wait.”
Judging from the elation on her face, North must have convinced Adriana this was more than raw need. Sarah’s heart lifted. They’d be so much happier together than apart.
Then she remembered the email. “Hey, North,” she said lightly, “what did you want to talk to me about when you emailed?”
Laughing, he pulled Adriana close. “This. I wanted advice.”
Sarah smiled. “You didn’t need any.” She paused. “I thought maybe it was about that morning you drove up to the school.”
“You mean last Friday? No, I just wanted to see if Philip’s clothes were still in his room. All those ruffles and flounces kind of undid me when I packed up his things, and I was pretty awful about it. I went back, thinking I’d take them home with me after all, but his room was empty.”
“I’m sure they found a good place for them,” she said, feeling like a worm. A relieved worm − the explanation made sense. She walked down the hall to Graham’s room.
Laurel had one arm resting across her son’s leg, the other cushioning her head. She and Graham had both fallen sound asleep and Sarah hated to wake her, but this news mattered. She rested two fingers, feather-light, on Laurel’s back.
She woke with a start and grabbed her son’s calf with one hand, as though he might fly away.
“Can I talk to you?” Sarah mouthed, pointing to the corridor.
Laurel nodded and scooted her chair back silently. In the hall she whispered, “Has something happened?”
“Sort of.” Sarah steered them around a clattering meal cart and past the waiting room, to a bench at the far end of the hall. When they were seated she said, “I’m not sure how to tell you this.”
Laurel made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh. “You picked a good time. There is not one thing I can hear that will push me any further off balance.”
Just wait, Sarah thought. “It was your husband who nearly killed you,” she said bluntly. “Not on purpose. But he was calling a girlfriend − I’m guessing you know about the girlfriends − from your room. Graham made him go into the hall. When you started having problems breathing, Graham yelled to him to get the nurse, but he thought Graham was just trying to guilt him into hanging up. So . . . he didn’t get the nurse. And then he couldn’t explain, so he let your son take the fall.”
Laurel covered her face with her hands. Sarah stayed quiet while she sobbed, handing her tissues when shiny strings of mucus dripped through her fingers. “That heartless rat-fuck bastard,” Laurel muttered as she wiped her eyes. “How the fuck − you’re sure?”
Sarah nodded.
“Bryan’s a child,” Laurel said, her voice acid. “At first I thought he was impulsive about saving the world, but really he just needed attention. And he needed it from every babysitter and secretary in sight. I’d hire a grad student to sit for Graham and then fire her two months later because I couldn’t stand wondering.”
Sarah flinched, thinking of all the tiny abandonments Graham had endured. Kids paid for their parents’ sins again and again. She reached into her purse and pulled out the flash drive. “I’ll give this to you. I’m going to tell Graham we know what really happened, but it seems kinder not to play the tape for him.”
“Agreed.”
“You have your son back,” Sarah softly.
“And no husband.” She didn’t sound sorry, exactly. Just aware of the irony.
“You would have left him eventually.”
She nodded. “I was only waiting for Graham to go off to college.” Her arms were wrapped tight, hugging her body. “I’d started to wonder if Bryan ever really loved me, or it was just my parents’ money.”
“One thing’s sure: You’re better off without him.”
She nodded, but the tears started again. “This isn’t grief,” she insisted, swiping at her eyes without relaxing her arms’ tight hold. “If anything, it’s shame. Do you know what I’d say to a patient behaving as stupidly as I have?”
“How could you have known?”
“Oh, it occurred to me. Either my baby or the man who shares my bed − that was my choice. Or the machine went haywire for the first and only time − I tried so hard to believe that.” She sighed. “I leaned in the wrong direction. That’s the part I can’t forgive myself for.”
“Again, how could you have known?”
Laurel’s voice grew distant. “Bryan’s affairs got a lot more obvious when he changed jobs. I was busy, exhausted, hurt. And then I was sick, really sick, without warning. And he was so sweet to me, and so steady about Graham. So forgiving.” A smile twisted her lips. “This’ll ruin Bryan. A son who might be a sociopath is a secret you can keep. When a midlife trophy affair destroys your marriage, that’s just tawdry.”
“And imagine if people knew the rest.”
“I’ll keep that in my back pocket.” She ripped a broken nail from her thumb with a sudden, fierce tug, and blood oozed across the exposed skin. “I got stuck on the part I still can’t understand. How could he let his own son take the blame?”
“I think we were looking in the wrong direction for the sociopath.”
*
Wednesday morning, Sister Ann’s email arrived. “Not in Haiti, dear. Africa’s the place you’ll find flashblood. Kenya, mainly. The practice was just beginning in Mombassa when I was there. Nothing ritualistic about it, just sheer desperation. Someone who could afford heroin would shoot up, then let a friend extract a vial of his blood. Poor souls, they couldn’t possibly get high on such a tiny bit of the drug. But it was brutally effective at transmitting HIV.”
Sarah leaned back and closed her eyes. Philip would have hated knowing the sordid truth about flashblood. He’d always had money. It was drama he craved. Experiences of the extraordinary, the divine, the transcendent. And somehow he’d come upon an African ritual that sounded almost sacramental.
How though? Online? There weren’t any students from Africa at Matteo.
Sarah’s eyes opened wide. There was somebody who’d lived in Africa though.
In Kenya. Working with the poor.
*
Sarah and Colin walked down to the river and stood on the bank. The water shone dull, its mottled silver like the clouding of an antique mirror. The weather had turned cold again, the air heavy and wet from all the snow melt.
“Look!” Sarah whispered. About fifteen yards out, a pure white heron stood on top of the water. The bird’s body was in shadow, outlined by a sunlit curve of white across its back. Its long neck made the slightest S curve.
“Probably standing on a submerged log,” Colin said.
“Don’t ruin the miracle.”
They stood and watched for a minute, Sarah drawing courage from the bird’s serenity. “I found out more about flashblood,” she said.
“Good. Tell me.”
“It’s not Haitian. It’s a practice in Kenya.” She paused, hoping he’d make the connection for himself, but of course he didn’t. “Colin, have you wondered if maybe Jimmy and Philip did get . . . close?”
“God, not this again. Jimmy didn’t even like Philip. I actually asked him about being in Philip’s room. He said Philip wanted spiritual direction. His latest brainstorm was to become a priest, but an ‘independent’ one − not celibate, and not ruled by any particular order. Jimmy told him he should call himself something else then, because that wasn’t priesthood, and Philip went into a rant about the hypocrisy of organised religion. Jimmy stayed and talked it through with him.” Colin buttoned his coat against the wind. “I think you got a little too close to Graham. You’re seeing the wor
ld as cynically as he does. You’ve lost perspective.”
“And you don’t think you have?” she asked, wheeling on him. “You can’t even hear a simple question about Jimmy because he’s a friend and fellow Jesuit. No bias there.”
Colin set his jaw. “I just don’t want you to make things more complicated than they are.”
She turned back to the river, looking for the white heron. In the distance, a streak of white vanished into grey sky. “Kat once told me that when you look at a picture, and parts of it are out of focus, there’s an area called ‘the circle of confusion’,” she said, her voice detached. “I think we’re in it.”
“We are if we’re suspecting Jimmy just because he was in Kenya.” He couldn’t let it go. “Philip could have found out about this flashblood thing anywhere.”
“Jimmy was in Philip’s room a long time the boys said. What if it wasn’t spiritual direction? What if they had sex, and Jimmy was desperately ashamed afterward, or just terrified Philip would tell?”
“Jimmy would never have sex with a student. Or anybody else for that matter. He took a vow of celibacy.”
“And you think that stops him from wanting?” Her words echoed in the cold stillness.
Colin’s eyes found hers before he spoke. “No,” he said quietly, “I don’t.”
Unsettled, she broke from his gaze and looked out toward the river again. He reached over and touched her icy cheek. How was his hand so warm? She stepped closer to him, resting a striped mitten against the rough woollen lapel of his navy peacoat.
“Maybe you should go,” he said abruptly. “Get back to your apartment and your life. Get your work done. This could take months to untangle. I can’t ask that of you.”
The chill in the air washed through the inside of her body. Why the 180-degree turn? For days he’d been begging her to stay.
She dropped her hand. “Maybe I should,” she said, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She jammed her shirts, jeans, and dirty underwear into her duffel bag like a boxer working out with a punching bag, then sat on the bed, sweating. How dare he force her out there and then demand that she leave? Jimmy was involved in this somehow.
A Circumstance of Blood Page 28