by John Saul
Ignoring the hand Ralston offered as he rose to his feet, Keith’s angry gaze bored into the other man’s eyes. “I want to know what happened.”
Ralston’s hand dropped to his side, and even though Keith Converse was still on his feet, he lowered himself back into the chair behind his desk. “I can tell you what happened,” he said. “What I can’t tell you is why it happened.” He paused, and finally Keith sank onto the wooden chair that was the only piece of furniture in the room not covered with files or papers. He listened in silence as Ralston told him what he knew. “Two of our officers were on the way up to Rikers with your son when a car rammed their van. The van went over and caught on fire.” Keith flinched, and Ralston’s hands clenched into fists. “There was nothing that could be done, Mr. Converse. Two correction officers were trapped in the van, too. No one survived.”
No one survived.
The words seemed to hang in the air, echoing and reechoing off the walls of the room, battering at Keith’s mind like a jackhammer. As the words sank in, the hope he’d been clinging to ever since Ralston called him faded away. “I want to see him,” he said quietly. His eyes fixed on Ralston once again, but this time the captain saw only pain in them. “I want to see my son.”
Ralston hesitated. He’d already seen the bodies of the two officers who had died in the burning van, and he wondered if Keith Converse would be strong enough to deal with what he would see when he looked at his son. But he knew that Keith Converse had no more choice than he himself had a few hours ago. Looking at the bodies—actually gazing upon the countenance of death—had been the only way Ralston could accept the reality of what had happened to his two men, and he knew it was no different for Keith Converse.
“He’s at the Medical Examiner’s office,” Ralston finally said. He started to write down the address on the back of one of his cards, then changed his mind. “I’ll take you there.”
Twenty minutes later, Keith Converse steeled himself as the attendant pulled open the drawer containing his son’s body. As the young man started to pull back the sheet, Keith almost changed his mind, almost turned away. Perhaps sensing his hesitation, the attendant looked at him, as if to ask whether he truly wanted to do this. Keith nodded. The attendant drew the sheet back.
A face—or what had once been a face—lay exposed to the bright fluorescent glare. The skin was burned away, the eyes nothing more than charred sockets.
The nose had been smashed flat, and broken teeth showed through a lipless grimace.
What remnants of clothing hadn’t burned had been carefully picked away. To Keith, there was something obscene about the nakedness of the body, and he had to fight an urge to turn away from it. But he couldn’t. He had to look at Jeff, had to see him one last time.
As the attendant finally dropped the sheet back over the inert form, Keith found himself making the sign of the cross for the first time in years, and uttering a silent prayer for his son’s soul.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Converse,” Mark Ralston said softly as they started out of the morgue.
Keith didn’t speak until they left the building. “I can’t believe it,” he said then. He sucked air deep into his lungs and blew it out hard, as if trying to expel not only the foul scent of formaldehyde that had hung in the air, but also the terrible image that was the last memory he would ever have of his son.
“I wish there was something I could say . . .” Ralston began. He groped for the right words for a moment, then gave up, knowing there was nothing he could say that would give Keith Converse any comfort.
Keith shook his head. “I’ll be okay—I just need to get used to it.” He took another deep breath, and this time a shudder shook his body. “And I gotta figure out how I’m gonna tell his mother.”
“It’s hard,” Ralston said. “I just wish there was something I could do. . . .”
Keith looked up and fixed his gaze on the other man. “There was,” he said. “There was something all of you could’ve done. You could’ve found out who really attacked Cynthia Allen.” He jerked his head back toward the morgue. “Then my son would still be alive, wouldn’t he?” His eyes locked onto Mark Ralston’s. “Well, fuck you, Ralston. Fuck all of you.” Turning around, he walked quickly away down the street.
Something had been gnawing at Keith, nibbling at the edge of his consciousness ever since he’d gotten back in the truck and started the long drive back out to Bridgehampton. Something about what he’d seen in the morgue.
About Jeff’s body.
He hadn’t wanted to remember that terrible sight at all, had hoped to blot it out of his consciousness. But no matter how hard he tried, it kept coming back. Coming back, jabbing at him.
Then, just as he was leaving the expressway, it came to him.
It wasn’t something he’d seen at all—it was something he hadn’t seen!
It was a tattoo—a small figure of a sun rising above a pyramid, which Jeff had let three of his friends talk him into getting during a spring break trip to the Caribbean two years ago. It had been etched into his skin, just inside his hip. “I wasn’t really sure I wanted to do it at all,” he’d explained when he finally showed it to his father. “So at least here no one can see it if I don’t want them to. And if I really start hating it—or Heather hates it—I can have it removed with a laser.”
Heather hadn’t hated it, and as far as Keith knew, Jeff hadn’t started hating it, either.
But the body he’d seen in the morgue hadn’t had a tattoo.
Keith’s heart was racing now, and he gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white as he slowed to a stop at the red light at the foot of the off ramp. He reached back into his memory, reluctantly pulling the image of Jeff’s body into the forefront of his mind.
One of the only parts that hadn’t been scorched was the groin. Like a tan line, he remembered thinking when the sheet had first been lifted and he’d seen horrible contrast between the badly burned skin above the waist and the less damaged skin lower down, where it had been protected by the heavy denim of his jeans.
There had been no tattoo.
And that meant—
No, I’m wrong, Keith told himself, refusing to let himself even complete the thought. He must’ve gotten it taken off.
But even if he had, wouldn’t there have been a scar?
And there hadn’t been a scar—not that he’d been able to see. And if there was no tattoo, and no scar, then—
Again he refused to let himself finish the thought, but as the light turned green and the car behind him began to honk, he just sat there, unable to do anything.
And the thought finished itself.
He’s not dead.
If Jeff hadn’t had the tattoo removed, then the body he’d seen in the morgue wasn’t Jeff’s.
His hands shaking, Keith picked up the cell phone, turned it on, then scrolled through its memory until Heather Randall’s home phone number came up. He pressed the number, then waited nervously until the connection was made.
An answering machine picked up.
“It’s Keith Converse,” he said. “Call me as soon as you get this message, Heather. I’ve got to know if Jeff still had his tattoo. The one of the sun rising over a pyramid.”
Leaving the number of his cell phone, he hung up.
This time, though, he didn’t turn the cell phone off.
He left it on, and prayed for it to ring.
CHAPTER 7
Keith’s phone started to ring less than a minute after he broke the connection with the answering machine in Perry Randall’s apartment. Snatching it up and flipping it open, he pressed it to his ear and began speaking: “Heather? Tell me that Jeff hadn’t had his tattoo removed.”
But it wasn’t Heather who replied, it was his wife. “His tattoo?” Mary said. “Keith, what are you talking about? What’s happened?”
Keith ignored her question. “Mary? Where are you?”
“I’m at home,” Mary began. “But—”
“Stay there,” Keith told her. “I’ll be over in ten minutes. I just got off the expressway.”
Mary’s voice rose, taking on a querulous edge. “Tell me now, Keith. I’ve been calling you for hours, but your phone—”
“My phone’s been off,” Keith said. “Just try to stay calm, Mary.”
“I am calm,” Mary said, her voice rising another notch. “But what do you expect, telling me—oh, there’s another call coming in. Let me get rid of them and—”
“Take the other call, Mary. I’ll be there by the time you get done.” He snapped the phone closed before she could say anything else, and in two minutes less than the ten he’d promised, he slid his truck into an empty space in front of the art gallery on Hoquaquogue Road and was hurrying down the narrow path that led to Mary’s little apartment. The open door framed his wife, whose face was ashen.
“He’s dead!” she said. “And you didn’t even tell me!” He reached out to put his arms around her, but she pulled away. “What happened?” she asked. “They said it was some kind of an accident.”
“That’s what they told me, too,” Keith replied, reaching out again and gripping her shoulders. “They were taking him up to Rikers Island, and a couple of blocks before they got on the Williamsburg Bridge, a car hit the van. And the van caught fire.” Keith felt Mary stiffen as she braced herself for his next words: “They couldn’t get him out.”
“God’s retribution,” Mary breathed. “It’s God’s—”
“It’s not God’s retribution!” Keith cut in. “God didn’t have anything to do with it!” Mary recoiled as if he’d slapped her, but he ignored it, adding, “And there’s something else, too. When I saw him—”
Mary drew back, her eyes wide. “You saw him?” she demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“I had to talk to them,” he said. “I had to find out what happened and I—” He hesitated, then went on. “I had to see him for myself.”
For the first time, Mary reached out and touched Keith, her fingers resting for a moment on his arm. “You should have taken me with you,” she said. “I should have been with you.”
Remembering the terrible visage he had forced himself to look upon—the charred flesh and ruined features—Keith shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice rough as he struggled to control his emotions. “No one should have to see what I saw. But . . .” His voice trailed off. He’d been about to tell her about the tattoo and the doubt that it had created, but now he wondered if he should. If he told her and he was wrong— His thoughts were cut short by the ringing of his cell phone.
“I just heard what happened,” Heather Randall said on the line, her voice shaking. “Daddy called me—he said it was some kind of accident, but—I can’t—I just can’t believe it—not Jeff! He—”
“Heather, listen to me,” Keith cut in. “Do you remember Jeff’s tattoo?”
“His tattoo?” she said, sounding dazed, as if she hadn’t quite understood his words.
“The pyramid. The pyramid and the sun.”
There was a moment of silence, as if she still hadn’t understood, but then she said, “Of course I remember it.”
As his wife regarded him with curiosity, Keith’s pulse quickened, as it had in the truck a little while ago. “And he still had it?”
“Still had it?” Heather echoed, puzzled. “Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he?”
Keith kept his voice carefully neutral. “People have them removed sometimes.”
“Not Jeff. He loves his tattoo.”
“And you’re sure he still had it?” Keith pressed.
“Well, of course I’m sure,” Heather replied. “I mean—Mr. Converse, what’s going on? Why is Jeff’s tattoo so important?”
Keith hesitated, part of him wanting to tell Heather about the idea that had taken root in his mind, but an equally strong part wanting to spare her from false hope if it turned out he was wrong. But the look on Mary’s face told him it was already too late, and the words she spoke confirmed it.
“What is it, Keith?” Mary asked. “Why are you asking her about the tattoo?”
Keith hesitated, then told her: “I’m almost certain the body I saw this morning didn’t have a tattoo.”
“You mean it might not be Jeff?” Mary asked, immediately grasping what he was saying.
“I don’t know,” Keith said, still trying to protect both Mary and Heather, in case he was wrong.
“I want to see,” Mary said. “I want to see for myself.”
A little more than two hours later, Keith stood once more in the morgue, facing the drawer in which lay the body he had seen that morning. This time, though, Mary stood on one side of him and Heather Randall on the other.
“I have to see,” Heather had told them when they’d found her waiting just inside the front door. As he had with Mary, Keith tried to dissuade her, and like Mary, Heather had insisted.
Now, as the drawer was pulled open, her fingers dug into the muscle of his left arm. The orderly—a different one than had been on duty that morning—pulled the sheet back, and Mary uttered a strangled sound of horror. She turned away, steadying herself against her husband as she struggled to fight back the wave of nausea that had risen inside her.
The orderly glanced questioningly at Keith. His own stomach knotted as he looked down again at the charred remains that had been pulled from the burning wreckage that morning.
His eyes fixed on the spot where there should have been a tattoo.
And all he saw was charred flesh.
CHAPTER 8
He wasn’t crazy.
No matter what anyone said, Francis Jagger knew he wasn’t crazy.
He’d had to kill the girl. He’d even tried to warn her. When they first met her, he warned her about Jimmy, how she needed to stay away from Jimmy.
But she hadn’t.
Instead, she started acting real friendly toward Jimmy.
He’d warned Jimmy about her, too. Told him she was just like his mother.
Jimmy had just smiled at him, the way he always did. “Come on, Jag—you don’t even remember your mother.”
But he did remember his mother. He remembered how, when he was a little boy—before he even went to school—she started hanging around with someone. Ted, that was his name. And right from the first time he met Ted, he’d known what was going to happen.
“Don’t worry, Francie,” his mother kept telling him. “He’s not going to take me away from you.”
“Don’t call me that! That’s a girl’s name!”
“No it’s not. And even if it was, so what?” She’d picked him up and swung him in the air. “Aren’t you pretty enough to be my little girl?”
The boy next door had heard her say that, and started calling him Francie, too. And then Francine.
He’d hated that.
And he would have stopped that boy from doing it, too, except that before he could decide exactly what to do, he’d come home one day and his mother was gone.
His mother, and Ted, and all their stuff.
He waited for her to come back, and tried not to cry, and ate the food he found in the refrigerator, and sat up all night so he’d be awake when she came back for him.
He waited all the next day, and the next night, too, but his mother hadn’t come home.
Finally, a stranger had come and taken him away from his house and sent him to live with someone else.
There had been a lot of people he’d lived with, moving from one house to another, never staying in any of them long enough to feel like he belonged. By now, all the people who had taken him in for a few weeks—but never more than a few months—had run together in his mind. Even if someone had asked, he wouldn’t have been able to put their faces together with their names.
The only person he really remembered—even wanted to remember—was Jimmy.
He’d met Jimmy three years ago, and right away he knew they were going to be friends. Part of it was Jimmy’s smile—the way
it made him feel inside. He hadn’t felt anything like it since his mother left. He and Jimmy started hanging around together right away, getting drunk and doing some drugs. Jimmy didn’t have a room, so Jagger let him come and stay with him. He’d even given him the bed, and started sleeping on the sofa himself. Jimmy told him the bed was big enough for both of them, and that almost wrecked everything. For a second he felt like killing Jimmy, but then got himself under control. “I ain’t no fag,” he said, his voice trembling with barely contained fury.
Jimmy’s smile had faded away. “Hey, man, I never said you was. All I said was the bed was big enough. No big deal, okay?”
And it had been okay—it had been okay right up until they met Cherie. “It’s spelled the French way,” she said right off, like he cared. “It means sweetheart.” She smiled at Jimmy when she said that, and Jimmy smiled back at her.
That was when Jagger knew she was going to go away with Jimmy, just like his mother had gone away with Ted. But he hadn’t let it happen. He’d known when they were planning it—known that whole day. The way they were looking at each other, and talking to each other when they thought he wasn’t listening. But he’d known exactly what they were up to.
He’d even told Jimmy: “You’re goin’ away, aren’t you? You’re goin’ away with her, just like my mom went away with Ted.”
“What’re you talkin’ about, man?” Jimmy asked, but there was a look in his eyes that told Jagger he knew exactly what he was talking about. “Why’d I wanta go away with her? You’re my bud, Jag. It’s you and me!”
Jimmy had smiled at him, and Jagger had wanted to believe him—had wanted to believe him more than anything. But he hadn’t, and that night, while they were smoking some dope that Cherie had picked up somewhere, he started seeing things really, really clearly.
He kept looking at Jimmy—looking at his eyes, and his slim body, and the way he smiled.