by Harker Moore
She opened her eyes, permitting her arms to fall gently at her sides. And then she stood. It was difficult to live as her practice taught. To sit in calm mindfulness. To be in the moment. The world pushed and tugged and forced. And well she knew that what she thought, she could become. That had always been her worry for Jimmy. And for her as his wife. But she also understood that to acknowledge, to embrace a bad feeling, made of it but a single drop in a sea of a thousand drops of peace. She reminded herself that she was sorrowful, but she was not her sorrow.
Soft steps on the stairs. Frozen seconds before the door. Then the turning of the key in the lock. Metal against metal. Another twisting inside the deadbolt. A thwack of release. Door opening and closing. Relocking. Now shoes removed in the genkan. Lined against the wall. His hand reaching, making a slight, almost not there touch against the marriage kimono hanging in the entrance. The American detective safeguarding the Japanese boy from Hokkaido.
“Hanae.”
“I’m here, Husband.” Here in this moment.
He moved toward her, kissing her, sheltering her in his arms. “This is what I need.” He let out a long breath, warm against her hair.
“And much sleep, Husband.”
“There is little time for sleep, Hanae.”
She remained quiet, pressed against him.
“Reese Redmond has identified Margot’s body.”
“But you knew it was she, Husband.” . . . a thousand drops of peace. “Did you hold hope that it was someone else?”
He let her go. She heard the dry paper-sound of the sudare being raised. “She didn’t want Michael on the force . . . wanted him to practice law. With her. . . . She had the most remarkable red hair.” He turned. “Funny thing to remember about a person. Not that she was intelligent. Or kind. Or even a good mother. . . . That she had beautiful hair.”
She nodded. “Maybe it was the red hair that made one wish to know her. The door through which you would pass to see the good.”
He sighed.
“And the husband . . . how is he?”
“What you would expect.”
“And Kenjin?”
“I have not really spoken to him. Reese went in alone to ID the body.”
“And no word of the sons?”
“No . . .” The single word faded.
“And you believe the man who killed Kenjin’s wife murdered those other women?”
“Yes.”
“And took the boys?”
“Yes.”
“But he has not taken children before.”
“No, not children.”
“This I do not understand. His killing the mother and taking the sons.”
“Maybe it was the press conference that caused him to strike out.”
“You must not blame yourself, Husband.”
“We taunted him. Belittled him.”
“And this is his revenge? Killing the former wife of one of your detectives? Kidnapping his sons?” She shook her head. “No, Jimmy, this is not your fault. There is something inside this man, something beyond understanding that makes him do what he does.”
He moved toward her, taking her into his arms again. “I feel powerless, my wife.”
“Your strength has not abandoned you, James.” She took his face into her hands. “And Kenjin, will he help?”
“McCauley will place him on medical leave.”
“Will Kenjin accept this?”
“He has no choice.”
“And will you find Michael’s sons?”
“It is my case now. Part of the serial investigation.”
“And will you find Michael’s sons?” she spoke the words again.
“Yes, Wife, I will find them.”
She nodded, leaning into his chest, cupping her hands between their hearts, remembering her trust, remembering that . . . she was not her fear.
At first, he did not touch her. Though she had welcomed him, naked upon their bed, her kimono fallen to the floor like a shower of autumn leaves. His voice, making Ono no Komachi’s poem his own.
. . . I come to you constantly
over the roads of dreams
those nights of love
are not worth one waking touch of you . . .
And then he was over her, the air between stirring. His brow touching her brow, his breath sweet with the sound of her name. Hanae . . . a thousand times her name. His lips upon the lids of her eyes, the lobes of her ears, resting in the hollow of her throat, catching her pulse. His hands pulling at the arch of her back, a bridge between his thighs, drawing her breasts into the soft wet of his mouth. Words in Japanese, a murmuring Akira demanding patience of himself, lest he go too fast. His long-denied need moving across her flesh. Hands anchoring her hips, setting himself, breaking the veil, finding her moist and swollen. Entering her, drawing her up by the waist, in drifting swells, plunging into the sucking dark.
Now she lay while her husband slept, her left hand caught in her unbound hair . . . midaregami.
Her memory, a tanka of Yosano Akiko.
My shiny black hair
fallen into disarray,
a thousand tangles
like a thousand tangled thoughts
about my love for you . . .
He had trembled afterward, in the circle of her arms. Too long had she kept him waiting, too long chaste. Her offense lay in her failure to wholly speak the truth. Her sin existed in allowing him to fault himself where no fault existed. And her greatest transgression . . . letting the loss of her unformed child seem an impediment where no impediment stood.
Wrongly, she had let him think her wish to be fully free was the boundary that stood guard round their bed. Two problems, divided, had unfairly become one. From their second beginning, always it was her shame that had kept them apart. A self-imposed defilement no water could purify, no penance satisfy. She had denied the path she had had to walk; the path she had had to leave behind. To struggle against blind fate was a fool’s task. Only discernment led to truth. Only love secured the bond.
She pulled her fingers through her tangled hair and deep inside she smiled.
CHAPTER
24
The morning had no right to its beauty. Late November. A spiraling downward to the dead of winter. But dew fed the green in grasses as yet untouched by snow. And dawn light like rosy mist hung in the branches, heightening what remained of scarlet and gold.
Walking the damp fields with one of the K-9 units, Michael Darius remembered other mornings filled with the wood smoke of autumn, days when he and Elena, both too young for school, had rumbled together through piles of leaves so carefully raked by their mother. The air, cool and untroubled, had carried their laughter in that time before death had crept from the shadow of his childish nightmares.
A snatch of birdsong rang from a thicket as the searchers moved from meadow to woodland, the carpet of sodden leaves muffling the sounds of their passage. But his memories were not muffled. They fell with full weight. A roll call of loss that had begun with Elena.
Ahead of him, the dogs plunged on. With the car seats from the Navigator as scent articles, a team last night had retraced a trail from gallery to parking lot. Beyond this, they had found nothing. The conclusion being that the twins had been taken in the vehicle that had carried their mother to the city, possibly to be dumped along the way.
So the teams were out in full force today, searching in expanding circles in the wooded areas around Kingswood, with additional sweeps down both sides of the highway. If all else failed, the volunteers would be let in, kept out till last so their odors would not confuse the scent. In between would come the cadaver dogs.
He took it as a sign that he could not imagine Jason and Damon lifeless. They inhabited his mind as he had seen them only days ago. Their energy defined. Their little-boy smells so easily summoned. Snips and snails and puppy dog tails. In his memory, Elena, who enjoyed being sugar and spice, sang out the differences between little boys and girls. In one of his mor
e famous cases, it had been an imagined odor that helped rescue a kidnapped boy. An irony now if he failed to save his own sons.
The hound just in front of him stopped, snuffling through the brush at the base of an oak. But after only a moment the dog moved on with his handler. He pushed on in their wake, conscious of forces that warred within him. A darkness that could not be defeated and the will to hope.
He was so completely sick of being in his skin. His choices so few, but the only things he owned. Sending Willie away would be one of those choices. Being here in the futility of this moment was another. He would fight for ground. He would move till something took hold. Margot, like Elena, was among the lost. But not Margot’s children. Every minute was a promise to find them.
“I want to thank you, Dr. French. Not just for this morning, but for everything you’re doing.”
“It’s Willie, remember.” She looked up into Reese Redmond’s face, handsome in its way, but the eyes so damn sad. And a kindness there too. It had been easy coaching him. “You’re welcome,” she added. “Think you’re ready?”
“I better be. I’m on in a few minutes.” He gazed across the field to the satellite truck, where the local reporter was setting up with her cameraman. “I don’t know why we had to do this out here,” he said.
“More dramatic with the command post as a backdrop,” she said. “And that’s good. We want the public to see the search effort. Makes them want to take an active part.”
“The reporter told me the feed’s getting picked up by the network.” He had turned back.
“Also good. Saturation coverage is exactly what we want. That’s why you’re going to do your statement again tonight on cable.”
“As many times as they’ll let me.” He turned again as if to shield his eyes from the wind, but she guessed the gesture was more to hide a sudden surge of emotion. She had seen it overtake him more than once this morning, but an impulse to reassure him died on her lips. She wouldn’t mouth false hope. Words were cheap; it was action that spoke. This morning’s exercise already presumed a best-case scenario, that the boys were still alive. Her job with Reese Redmond was to craft a message that might keep them that way.
“What did you think about our meeting with the reporter?” Redmond was asking her now. “Think she’ll keep to the questions we approved?”
“I wouldn’t count on it. But you know what to do. Just say it’s something you can’t discuss and steer her back to where you want to go. You’ve seen the politicians do it. Answer the question youwished she’d asked.”
“I imagine I can handle it.” For the first time, he smiled.
“Good.” She smiled back. “Because I think it’s time you got over there.”
“You coming?”
“In a minute.”
She watched him walking away with shoulders squared. Reese was a class act. The hell he was going through showed clearly in his face, but his dignity remained. She supposed she could understand why a woman like Margot would . . . What, Willie? Finish that totally tasteless thought. Choose Reese over Michael? What did that mean, anyway, “a woman like Margot?” She herself would always choose Michael, and damn the consequences.
She looked up into the cloudless sky. The early damp had burned away with the passage of the sun. She shivered inside her jacket, with fatigue rather than cold. She’d been up early for the drive out to Kingswood, after a fitful night.
It was anger more than anything that had kept her up. She was just so damn mad about leaving herself so open. But that was Michael’s doing. She had left New York last year with no expectations. He had been the one to come to her. And what was that room, that bed that he had made for them with his own hands?
The wind gusted up from another direction now, blowing wisps of hair to trap themselves in whatever lip gloss remained intact. She pushed them back, dragging sticky color in tracks across her cheek. She smudged it away with her hand, glad that she wasn’t the one going on camera this morning.
“This is Tara Wilson of KKRX, and the gentleman at my side is Reese Redmond, stepfather of missing three-year-old identical twins Jason and Damon. We’re coming to you from a wooded area near downtown Kingswood, New York, epicenter of a massive search for the two boys believed to have been abducted with their mother sometime around midday Wednesday from a local parking garage. . . .”
Willie stood listening just out of camera range. She was generally pleased with how the interview was going, pleased that the reporter kept focus on the twins. The idea was to resist the temptation to sensationalism, especially in regard to Margot’s brutal death. Too dangerous to hold up a mirror to the monster you pray is watching. Better to pretend for the moment that he is one of us, that he has concerns for the children he’s taken. The notion might take his fancy. He just might play along.
Reese was giving the description. “Jason and Damon have bright red hair and were wearing green quilted jackets on Wednesday.”
“You’re seeing a recent photograph taken of the boys,” the reporter took over. “If you have any information or think you may have seen them, or if you saw a suspicious vehicle, particularly a black van, in the downtown Kingswood area around midday on Wednesday, please call one of the numbers or log onto one of the websites that appear at the bottom of your screen.”
The interview was winding down. They had come to the critical moment. “I believe you have a statement.” The reporter had turned to Reese.
“Yes.” He looked straight into the camera. “I have something I’d like to say to the person who has Jason and Damon.”
Willie held a breath. Calm and direct. Not judgmental.
“You have never to anyone’s knowledge harmed innocent children . . .”
Good. Put the best face on it. Don’t make this sound like a challenge.
“. . . and being with Jason and Damon, I’m sure you’ve gotten to know them a little. I bet by now you may even be able to tell them apart.”
Invite him to see the boys as individuals.
“So I’d like to ask you . . .”
Cede him the power.
“. . . that you go someplace that’s comfortable for you, somewhere safe you can leave Jason and Damon for us to find.”
Reese paused, and she held her breath, wondering if he was going to ad-lib.
“That would be . . . generous.”
Be careful. Don’t suggest that you’re dictating the value of the act.
“And if there’s anything that I can do to make Jason and Damon’s return easier, you only have to let me know how I can help you do that.”
They had gone back and forth on this. It might be dangerous if it sounded too much like a bribe. On the other hand, you never knew. This guy was all over the map. The son-of-a-bitch just might decide he could use the money, especially if he thought that things were getting too hot and he needed to make an escape. She had decided it was worth taking the chance. Their best chance of enticing him to communicate.
Reese and the reporter had finished. The woman was helping him remove his wire. Willie thought he had done well. The two of them had. She had given “cajoling” this monster the best shot she could, recompense for a very opposite effort. She had avoided admitting it, even to herself, but she had to wonder if the wording of that press conference had not led directly to Margot’s murder and the twins’ abduction. She was certain that Michael had thought of it. She did not believe it was simply her guilty imagination that put the accusation in his eyes.
Her problem was she was still such a Catholic. Toting up penance. Believing that you could weigh things in the balance and strike some bargain with God. Her work on Reese’s plea had been a prayer. An effort to fix things. The question was, did it have a prayer of working?
She hoped so. She tried with all her might to believe it. But the real question that kept nagging was why the killer had taken those kids in the first place.
Reese was walking over. She looked at her watch. She would say a few words to him, then ch
eck in with Jimmy at the command post. She’d done what she could here, and needed to start thinking about driving back into town. She had several regular patients scheduled at her office this afternoon.
The gallery was small, but bright and airy. Adelia Johnson stood looking around while she waited for the manager. She’d always thought she liked art, but she sure didn’t understand half this shit, especially the little glassed-in boxes with pasted scraps of newsprint and broken spoons and stuff—the kind of trash you could find in any vacant city lot. Who would buy other people’s garbage? Who would want to look at it?
Delia’s favorite paintings were the ones she had seen when she and Samuel had taken that cruise to Jamaica. Canvases crammed with people and plants and animals. Color bursting out in reds and blues and greens. So bright you almost fell out. That’s what she liked. To be fucked by art.
The thought tickled her, and she was smiling when she found a painting here that made her look twice. A canvas filled with trees. Not too realistic, and definitely alive. She could imagine sap like blood.
“Like it?” A tall blond woman in a neat skirt-and-sweater set had come to join her. Bony ass, in Delia’s mind, but she had a kind face.
“I do like it.” She matched the woman’s smile.
“Lena Baker painted it. She’s one of our best local artists. . . . See that?” The woman was pointing to the remnants of a tree that had toppled into the foreground. “The rotting stump is a theme in Hudson River art. It’s what used to be known as a memento mori, a reminder that death lurks in the midst of life.”