by Jen Blood
“He was the one who called and told me she was out there—I never would’ve found her otherwise. So, Adam was gonna spend the day before with you,” he looked at me. “Then, that night we’d go out to the island. Me and Matt, your daddy, and Reverend Diggins. And we’d haul her out of there, one way or the other.”
“What happened to that plan? You were the one who called my father at the hotel that night, weren’t you?” I asked, only realizing it as I was saying the words. “Something happened—someone got to you, changed your mind about what you were about to do.”
“I changed my own mind,” he said. His eyes slid from mine. “That night didn’t have nothing to do with any of it—I just got to thinking, and then I called Adam and told him I didn’t want to do it. Payson could have Becca and the boy, I didn’t give a rat’s ass anymore. And I guess from there your daddy just decided he’d best take things into his own hands.”
“Bullshit,” I said, advancing on him so fast that he stepped back instead of shooting me where I stood. “Something happened. If you’d gotten that far with the plan, you wouldn’t have just changed your mind.”
He recovered more quickly than I’d anticipated. Before I had a chance to react, he dropped the gun and let it lay where it landed. With a single stride, he had his hand around my neck, pushing me backward until he’d slammed my back against a tree. He held me there, his face close to mine, his breath a rancid mix of whiskey, stale cigarettes, and epically poor dental hygiene.
“Nothing happened. You hear me, you little bitch? I told you: I called your daddy, I told him it was off. I had a change of heart. He called Diggins, tried to get him to help change my mind. I knew he was on the way over, so I told the Reverend to call your mum. No way that pussy would show his face if the mighty Doctor Kat was there, no way he’d let on just how far things had gone. And I was right: She showed, he didn’t. Matt saw him leave for the island, and two hours later everybody out there was dust. You do the math on that one, and tell me if it adds up to anything other than your daddy going out there and torching every last one of ‘em.”
His hand held me still, but it didn’t tighten around my neck as he gauged my response—trying to figure out whether I believed the story, I knew. Before I could tell him I didn’t buy a word of it, a blast split the stillness, so loud that it rattled my teeth and left my ears ringing. Ashmont dropped his hand from my neck, his eyes wide. I waited to see if one or the other of us was dead. Neither of us appeared to be. Kat held his shotgun tilted toward the sky, her eyes pure iron.
“Get away from her,” she said.
Ashmont took a few steps, hands raised, sneer still in place. “Get off my land,” he said.
“You forget who has the gun here,” Kat said.
He walked toward her without hesitation and ripped the gun from her hand. The look on her face was one I’d never seen before—shame, I realized after a moment. Kat wasn’t used to being weak; it clearly didn’t sit well with her.
“You’re not gonna shoot me. Don’t play at games you can’t finish, Kat—it doesn’t suit you. Get off my land. I see you out here again, I won’t think twice before I put you both in the ground.”
Neither my mother nor I argued with him. We left in silence. My knees were knocking together during the hike back to the boat, and neither of us spoke until we were safely back at sea.
August 15, 1990
Rebecca sits in the greenhouse, the night thick with the slow broil of August, moisture forming at the small of her back and the nape of her neck. Tendrils of dark hair curl at her ears from the humidity. Tomatoes ripe on the vine sweeten the air so completely that she can almost taste them. She sits on a granite bench in the light of a full moon. When she first arrived, nearly an hour before, the stone was cool; now, it has warmed to her body temperature. She shifts, and the underside of her naked thigh sticks for a moment before peeling from the hard surface.
Isaac is late, but she is not concerned. Though he told her this morning that he would not come, that he can no longer see her this way, she doesn’t worry. He says the same thing every time they meet: what they are doing is wrong. He has a wife, children, a congregation; their time together is a sin. Rebecca nods her head, tells him that she understands, but in truth she understands far better than he ever will: What they are doing—what she is doing—is exactly as God planned it.
The moon is high above when Isaac finally arrives. Though he makes no sound, she knows he is there in a way that runs deeper than the five senses. When he stands at the entrance to the greenhouse, one hand on the doorsill, Rebecca’s heart slows. Her breath becomes less weighted. It is always this way. When they are alone together, it is the only time Rebecca truly believes that God might walk among them.
“I can’t stay,” he begins.
She nods. When she stands, he realizes for the first time that she is naked—she can tell by his virtually inaudible intake of breath, a sound no one would hear but her. A breeze stirs the air and the fine, dark hairs on her arms stand on end. It isn’t cold, but the breeze on her already-damp skin makes her shiver. Her nipples tighten, and she wonders if Isaac can tell in the scant light; wonders if he believes he is the cause. She hopes, for an instant, that he does.
“I told Mae I had to cover the plants in the garden—that there might be rain tonight.”
There hasn’t been rain in three weeks now. A passing drizzle here or there, but nothing significant enough to warrant a late-night trek to the gardens. Isaac knows this as well as Rebecca does. She imagines his wife, Mae, knows it quite well herself.
“So, go cover the plants.” She says it with no challenge in her tone, still making no move to go to him. Isaac remains in the doorway. The moonlight casts him in a glow that Rebecca believes makes him look distinctly Christ-like.
“Zion was asleep when you left?”
She nods again. Isaac takes the first step inside, and she gestures toward the plants at her feet. “Adam should tend the tomatoes—they’ll rot if we don’t pick them soon.”
He takes another few steps, under the guise of verifying her words. She considers telling him now what she’s recently learned of his sacred Adam—who, as it happens, is not Adam at all. Matt has been unable to find out the truth of his identity, but the Adam Solomon he claims to be died an infant in a Midwest hospital in 1966. The Adam Solomon Isaac considers his trusted confidante is nothing but a lie. She remains silent, however. All in good time.
Isaac kneels only a few inches from her, his back turned away, head bowed as though praying. Rebecca wonders what he would do if she reached for him now—let her hand fall to his head, allowed her fingers to curl in the soft thickness of his hair. It is an idle thought, though. She makes no move.
Still on his knees, Isaac turns until his head is even with her waist. She can feel his breath on her right hip when he exhales, warmer even than the night air. He reaches out and touches the back of her thigh with one hand, pulling her closer. They remain like this for a moment: the preacher and his whore, his face pressed to her sex, both hands at the backs of her thighs. His hands begin to move first, sliding up the backs of her legs. He straightens, his lips leaving a trail of wet kisses up the soft flesh of her stomach, to her breasts. When his teeth graze a nipple, she gasps; he bites down harder at the sound, his hands at her buttocks, and he finally stands before her. She can feel him now, hard inside his jeans, pressed against her naked stomach.
They remain that way only a moment before he turns her away from him—as he always does. It is unspoken, but understood: she will never lock eyes with him when he is this man. She reaches behind her, unable to stop touching him now that she’s started, her hands lighting on the worn cotton of his t-shirt, the denim of his jeans. There is nothing in the world but this instant.
She hears his clothes fall to the soil beneath them. Isaac guides her to her knees, one hand at her shoulder, the other on her hip. Though everything she has ever been taught runs counter to the notion, she knows this is a hol
y moment. Isaac kneels behind her, naked now. His hand is at her back, guiding her forward; she complies until she is on hands and knees. A single pebble in the soil bites into the heel of her left hand. Isaac reaches between her legs and she knows that he finds her wet, ripe for this moment. He positions himself at her entrance with one hand, wrapping his other arm around her neck, his right hand braced on her left shoulder to keep her still. It is the closest to embracing her that he ever allows himself.
When he fills her, he does so completely. He makes no sound—does not speak her name, does not moan, barely breathes. Rebecca is also quiet, knowing the risk of someone finding them like this, but she is unable to match his absolute silence. With every whimper that escapes her lips, Isaac moves with a little more violence than before. She believes that in this moment, he sees them all: Eve, Jezebel, Delilah…She is the whore Magdalene beneath him, at once Christ’s greatest weakness and his solitary comfort, during his trials on Earth.
Isaac’s mouth is at her neck, but he does not kiss her. When her inner muscles contract around him, he bites into her shoulder, hard enough to pull her back from the pulse of white light running through her. Present once more, she pictures the scene as an onlooker would: She on hands and knees beneath him, their coupling increasingly frantic as Isaac buries himself deeper with every thrust. They are animals—a fact that Rebecca alone freely acknowledges in this place. Every day they eat, they sleep, they excrete, and then have the arrogance to ascribe a higher meaning to their lives than those of every other creature on the planet. But in this instant, the single instant when Isaac can no longer stop himself and his strangled cry breaks the stillness, the truth is undeniable:
They are animals.
Just as God intended.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The boat ride back to Littlehope was notably silent. Kat stood starboard with her eyes on the horizon, and I didn’t have a clue how to reach her. But then, I never really had. Night had fallen, dark and starless. The forecast called for heavy rain and high winds over the next few days, and I could feel it in the damp bite of the ocean breeze.
My mother’s cell phone rang just before we docked back in Littlehope. I was grateful—the silence was getting old. There were still questions I needed answered, but the standoff between Kat and Ashmont had thrown everything off kilter. I could handle my mother drunk, raging, irreverent, in control, out of control…I just didn’t know how to handle her when she was weak. I’d never had to.
The call was from the hospital. She stayed on the line while I docked the boat, and didn’t hang up until a good ten minutes after I’d cut the engine and checked my watch pointedly a dozen times. Apparently, all she’d needed was the chance to play Dr. Everett again—once she was off the phone and out of the boat, Kat got behind the wheel of her Beetle without waiting for me, clearly back on top.
“His story doesn’t change anything,” she said, once I’d gotten in the passenger’s seat.
“Excuse me?”
“That shit Joe just told us. So he and Matt had their own reasons for keeping things quiet—it’s not like I thought they were keeping the secret to protect me all that time.”
Kat is a sociopathically good liar, but this was one time when I could see right through her.
“I think that’s exactly what you thought. All this time, you’ve been thinking you were part of this exclusive society of men who’d do anything to keep your secret. Jesus, Kat—your ego knows no bounds.”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she pulled in front of the Trib. I noticed that Sheriff Finnegan’s patrol car was parked out front again. Kat put the car in park, but made no move to cut the engine.
“I should get back.”
“What?”
“You heard me—I should get back. You have the answers you were looking for; I’m going back to Portland.”
“You can’t leave now. I still have questions—”
Before I could finish the sentence, someone rapped lightly on the window. Kat and I both jumped, which made me feel marginally better. She might put up a good front, but it was nice to know she wasn’t completely unruffled by the events of the past twenty-four hours.
Finnegan leaned in after I rolled down the window.
“Sorry to startle you ladies. Erin, I wondered if I might have a word with you?” He leaned in a little further, giving my mother a polite smile. “You too, ma’am. Just a couple of routine questions.”
Kat put up a perfunctory protest, but gave up when Sheriff Finnegan just arched an eyebrow and shot me a little twist of a smile. Clearly, he’d dealt with worse than she was prepared to dish out today.
“Do you need us to follow you to the station or something?” I asked.
He laughed. “No, no—that won’t be necessary. I’m just trying to get a handle on the timeline for everything that happened yesterday, and I understand you both spoke with the victim before he died. Diggs said we could use his office.”
Kat shot me a glare that suggested I was to blame for the whole mess we were in. I ignored her and we followed the sheriff inside.
Half a dozen newspaper folk looked up from their desks as we walked past, sensing a story. Finnegan spoke with me first. He shut the door to Diggs’ office and offered a kind smile before he began. His questions were pretty basic: when had I spoken with Hammond last; what had the last conversation been about; had I noticed him acting strangely?
I sat in a folding chair in front of the desk while the sheriff made himself comfortable in Diggs’ leather editor’s chair. Just when he’d lulled me into thinking the interview was almost over, Finnegan surprised me with a follow-up question that went straight for the jugular.
“You know, I was thinking this morning about your run in the other day with that ornery door that gave you so much trouble.”
I froze. “Yes?”
“It’s your business if you don’t want to file a report—I’m not sure of your thinking, but you’re clearly a smart woman. I imagine you’ve got your reasons. But now I have a problem, because I have a dead man—a former policeman, and you know how we cops stick together. There’s gonna be a lot of people asking a lot of questions about this. If the…incident you had the other day does end up having something to do with Noel Hammond’s murder, how do you think you’ll feel about that? Especially if somebody else gets hurt because you wouldn’t come forward?”
I didn’t know what to say. He was right, of course. Whoever attacked me had to be the same person who killed Hammond—nothing else made sense. He’d been very clear with me: Stop looking. Hammond had been one step ahead of me in the investigation. What had he found that got him killed?
“Erin,” Finnegan said. His voice was gentle, but something in his eyes suggested that things could take a turn if needed. “If you want to change your story, now would be the time.”
I hesitated. The phone number Hammond had written, the voice so hauntingly familiar on the other end of the line, the secret Ashmont said Rebecca had been threatening to expose about my father…I was so close. I didn’t have a goddamn clue anymore what I was close to—but I was close. I couldn’t show my hand yet. Not now.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff. I told you—I’m just clumsy.”
“So you’re telling me, here and now, on the record, that those bruises on your face, the injuries you sustained, had nothing to do with Detective Hammond’s death.”
Those formally peaceable eyes had hardened. I held my ground.
“Not to my knowledge, Sheriff. They do not.”
He looked genuinely disappointed in me. “All right, Erin. Take my card—give me a call anytime if you think of anything that might help. You can send your mom in now.”
Kat went in without saying a word to me. She didn’t look nervous so much as pissed off. I’d been on the receiving end of the look enough times to feel sorry for Finnegan. I sat down at an empty desk in the newsroom. MSNBC was still on the TV, the BBC World Report on the radio. A couple of the reporters
gawked at me when they thought I wasn’t paying attention, but no one said a word until Diggs came in and sat on the edge of the desk.
“Kat’s in there now?”
“She is.”
“Did you find anything out?”
I looked around at the mini-squadron of prying eyes. “I’ll tell you later. Have you heard anything from Jack?”
“Perkins is still on the loose. Finnegan hasn’t said anything, but I have a feeling our former constable is high on the list of suspects for Noel’s death.”
This was hardly surprising.
“So, what’s the plan from here?” he asked.
“I just need to try and get a few final answers from Kat, but she’s on her way out of town after that.” I looked around at everyone typing madly at their desks. “I’m guessing tonight’s another late one around here?”
“Between the fire and this whole Hammond’s-been-murdered thing, we’ll definitely have our work cut out for us.” He eyed me guiltily. “Sorry. I wish I could be there for you a little more than I have been. This job…”
“Don’t worry about it, I’d be doing the same thing in your shoes.” I stood when Diggs’ office door opened and Kat emerged. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll give you a call later?”
He nodded.
Kat didn’t give either of us so much as a glance before she swept out the door, and she was already in the driver’s seat with the car in gear before I caught up to her. As it was, I had to stand in front of the car to get her to stop; if I hadn’t had Einstein with me, I’m pretty sure she would have just run me down. Instead, she waited with obvious impatience while I put the dog in the back and got in the passenger’s seat yet again. I was barely buckled in before she was barreling down the road.