The Body of David Hayes

by Ridley Pearson

  “Yeah.” Lou sat up and grabbed around his knees. “We talked about that a little. He’s got issues.”

  “We should have had him over to dinner.”

  “Him and about a dozen others.”

  “No, I mean it,” she said. “As close as I was to Darlene? All those months?”

  Lou stood. Liz couldn’t remember him looking this fit. He said, “Which, as it turns out, is why he wouldn’t have accepted anyway.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Totally. He resents that you lived and Darlene didn’t.”

  She felt a spike of heat as a wave of indignation and guilt clouded her thought. “He said that?”

  “It wouldn’t have been a pleasant dinner.”

  “I should say not.”

  “It isn’t aimed at you personally-”

  “No, not at all,” she said sarcastically, cutting him off.

  “It’s us as a couple, apparently. Understandable, when you think about it.”

  “It’s not understandable, and it’s not excusable. If there’s a problem there, it’s entirely our fault for not working harder when it counted. Did we even see him after the service?”

  “Of course we did. A bunch of times. But it obviously didn’t work for him.”

  Liz wondered what other tragedies lay in their wake. Children caused some serious waves.

  “Listen, I beat myself up over this last night, but I’m all right with it, I think. It’s all yours.”

  “Thanks a lot,” she said.

  She offered to shower first and take over the breakfast duty, and he thanked her for it. She had to organize Sarah’s tote, but that wouldn’t take but a minute. She caught herself laying out how to juggle the next forty-five minutes in order to carry it off smoothly. No one in the family did well when the kids turned the morning into a zoo.

  While Boldt showered she dressed, taking her time to get it right. Miles entered, sleepy-eyed, awakened by the sound of the shower. The same every morning. Liz slipped into autopilot. Dress them. Brush their hair while they brushed their teeth. Beds made. Breakfast going. A pot of English Breakfast for Lou, which seemed to surprise him. She could tell she’d be a few minutes late to work this morning. But what was, was. She had no desire to change it.

  Over a hurried breakfast, they managed fragments of a conversation.

  “Danny’s case,” she said, moving around the kitchen, now tidying up. “Anything interesting?”

  “That wire fraud case. The seventeen million.”

  “Our case?” she said, surprised. “The bank?”

  “You introduced us once. The guy they caught. Remember? It was a Christmas party I think. That guy.”

  “David Hayes,” she said softly.

  “He’s out on parole.”

  The first butterfly wings fluttered in her chest. She moved toward the wall calendar, as if interested in the week ahead: a dinner date at Jazz Alley and a church board meeting for her, piano lessons for Miles and ballet for Sarah again next Monday. Parole? Already? Was it possible?

  “You didn’t know?”

  Had she spoken her thoughts aloud? She cautioned herself: Steady!

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I would have thought the bank would have been told. That you guys would all be up to speed. On the lookout, as it were.”

  “We will. I’m sure we are.”

  “Well, that’s Danny’s case. Sort of. Not really. It gets complicated.”

  “Yes, it does. It must,” she said, heading for an open chair and sitting down with the kids. Some things were impossible to juggle.

  A bald eagle with a wingspan of nearly six feet soared past Liz Boldt’s twenty-ninth-floor office window at eye level. She took it as an omen, even though she didn’t believe in such things. Liz’s beliefs were rooted firmly in God. And though she preached to no one, not even her children, she prayed her way through her trials and celebrations. Every day offered her an opportunity to learn something about herself, sometimes strengthening, sometimes testing that faith. She lived to see joy in the eyes of her children, to hear laughter around the house. The smallest things in life proved of the greatest significance. Selfishness, which she now felt had predestined her to cancer and to her rediscovery of faith, was a thing of the past. She had wrestled that demon free, throwing herself into service. She thought of her responsibilities in terms of a pyramid, with God at the top, her children and husband next, her church, her job, her community…

  Paroled. It felt like falling out of remission. She had little doubt of where this was headed, only how to handle it.

  Her family, her job, even WestCorp’s reputation and therefore possibly the upcoming merger, could all come tumbling down around her if she didn’t manage this exactly right. The eagle represented something frightening: a phoenix, David Hayes, risen from his own ashes.

  Her phone rang, and she answered it.

  “Elizabeth Boldt.”

  “It’s me.”

  Paralysis. Her breath caught in her throat like swallowing water too fast. She knew his voice instantly.

  “Tommy’s cabin. Five o’clock. Watch for anyone following. Coast to the side of the road. Open the hood like there’s something wrong. Shut it if you’re in the clear and climb back inside. You’ve got to do this, Liz. Please. I’m in serious trouble.”

  With the sound of the click, she too hung up the phone, her hand trembling, her mouth dry, a sickening feeling worming through her. Stunned, she sat motionless, steam wafting from the cup of decaf. Her eyes stung.

  The phone purred a second time but she would not answer it. Feeling as if she might throw up, she hooked the trash can with her foot and dragged it closer. A bubble wedged in her throat.

  Tears threatened behind a screaming in her ears. Fingernails on a blackboard. She forced prayer to replace her thought, her memories, relying on an invisible force that supported her.

  It had started innocently enough. Not so innocent later. And after that a pale, quivering need, a hunger of addictive proportions. The wet slap of flesh and the teeth-gnawing cries of secreted pleasure. A crime, and she the perpetrator. Her husband, the cop.

  Her office intercom chirped, snapping her to the present. She didn’t answer it. Everyone, everything outside this office suddenly felt like a violation.

  Anger stole through her, overcame her, because she knew above all else, that she would do exactly as he’d instructed.

  Nothing would be allowed to come between the peace and happiness she and her husband and their family had found.

  She would end this again, as she had ended it once before.

  Six years earlier, in the same office, she had waited impatiently behind her desk, unable to get any work done before someone arrived, annoyed that these things took so long. It was suddenly as if, with her computer frozen, she had nothing to do. Though she knew this was untrue, that there was plenty on her desk that needed her attention, she couldn’t bring herself to it, her excuse the unresponsive screen in front of her and the resident terror that her data might be lost. She brooded, like a spoiled little girl, angry at herself for pouting instead of getting something done.

  Finally, a knock on her door, and she looked up in time to see him enter. A kid in his mid-twenties. A little pale, but with sweet, intelligent eyes and a habit of pursing his lips between words as he spoke, as if everything he said held some secret irony for him. Dark hair and strong shoulders. She took him for a rock climber, or one of the army of twenty-somethings that headed into the surrounding forests on weekends in search of extreme outdoor experiences.

  “I’m David. I.T.,” he said, referring to the bank’s Information Technologies department.

  “Liz Boldt.” She held him in the same regard as she did a garage mechanic, or the guy who came to fix the refrigerator at home. “You want my chair?”

  “I’d like to sit in it,” he said. “I don’t need to take it with me.”

  A wise guy, at that. She stood behind and to his left
, wanting to see what it was he did to her machine, wanting to step in and move him away if he restored the spreadsheet she’d been working on, because it contained figures such bank employees should not see.

  He typed at a speed she thought reserved for only the highest-paid executive secretaries. It seemed at times his left hand typed while his right worked the mouse, navigating through a dozen screens so quickly that she failed to identify a single one.

  “Control panel?” she asked.

  “Very good.”

  “You’re fast.”

  “Typing, yes,” he said. “Not in everything.”

  She thought him rude for the comment, but wasn’t about to say so, wasn’t about to piss off the one guy capable of getting her back to work.

  “You were working a spreadsheet?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d like the data back?”

  “If possible. Please.”

  “It’s all ones and zeros-anything’s possible.”

  If only that were true, she thought. She and Lou had been nearly as frozen, as malfunctioning, as her computer.

  David Hayes stopped what he was doing and looked back at her. Again, she wondered if she had spoken some of her thoughts aloud. Was there any other explanation for that inquisitive expression of his? Had he asked her something, and she’d missed it?

  He returned to his work at the keyboard, but in that penetrating look of his she experienced both terror and excitement. Terror, because she didn’t know what she’d missed, excitement because from somewhere within her bubbled up a primitive urge born of flesh and nerve and the raw juices that pulsed through her. She dismissed this physical response as nothing more than an errant sensation, like being barefoot on a carpet and having a spark fly from fingertip to wall switch. A low-energy warmth flooded her entire body. She tried her best to ignore it.

  He left a few minutes later, her data restored on the screen, but not before she’d made the mistake of calling out to him, “You’re my hero!” This offering of hers created the opportunity for him to connect with another of those looks. This time, as the door closed behind him, she felt herself shudder toe to head, her body warming as if after a shot of liquor, and she knew she’d crossed some forbidden line.

  Liz skipped out of work early to make the 5 P.M. deadline. She drove through the nightmarish traffic that had come to own Seattle, the sun already sinking toward the green of the islands and the jagged, gray silhouette of the Olympics. She called home and left a message saying that if traffic allowed she would stop by the market, a cheat because she could have spoken to Lou by calling his mobile. Little tricks she had once played so well but that now unraveled her. Her work schedule had become so unpredictable with the approaching bank merger that Lou had taken on picking up the kids from after-school care. She still picked up Miles on Mondays, his music night, because it also happened to be Sarah’s ballet class and both locations fit perfectly into her later commute. But tonight there would be no time for the market.

  She repeatedly questioned her coming here, as if practicing her own defense to Lou, knowing her keeping the date had nothing whatsoever to do with any feelings for David Hayes, long since over, but instead with something much more basic-protecting the family, preventing the past from contaminating the present. David was certainly capable of using their past as a weapon. So she came here out of fear, and she knew that was wrong. She had to preempt or co-opt any attempt on his part to compromise her, and she had to keep her guard up, for she knew David to be a notch smarter than most, and his wounded-hero charm disarming.

  She pulled over, as directed, along a stretch of two-lane roadway bordered by a forest of cedar, pine, and fir. He’d chosen this time of day, no doubt, for the limited light of dusk’s gray wash. It was as if, for these few minutes, a fog had descended, enveloping her. The ground was spongy beneath the tires. She overheated, a result of nerves, and put down her window. A tangy pine scent, loamy and dark, filled the car, reminding her of their own family cabin on a lake. She stepped out of the car in a moment of anxiousness, hoping to cool off. Her shoes sank into the muddy grass, and she leaped back behind the wheel and pulled the door shut.

  “Hey, Lizzy.” She jumped. “I wondered if you’d come.”

  David Hayes stood just outside her window. His black Irish face was swollen and discolored with orange bruises, his green eyes sparkling as she remembered. By the look of the way the gray T-shirt held to him, jail time had been spent in the prison gym. He limped around the front of the van-blue jeans and a brown leather belt-and slipped through the passenger door, pulling down the visor and setting both the makeup mirror and the van’s rearview mirror to his liking. His eyes darted constantly between Liz, the windshield, and to both those mirrors, moving with the speed of a fly sensing the swatter.

  A mathematician and programmer, David lived for calculation. She knew he already had a plan, that in his mind she was already a part of it. This she could not allow.

  “It’s good of you to come.” He wore a single leather driving glove on his left hand. She made out a ring of medical adhesive tape on that same wrist.

  “Was I offered a choice?” She stared a little too long at his bruises and cuts, and realized too late that he might take this as interest.

  “I don’t remember forcing you.” He inspected her in a way that had once made her warm all over. Now it rippled fear in the form of gooseflesh. “I heard about you getting sick and all. That it was hard on you. But it isn’t true. You look incredible.”

  “Don’t. You’re in trouble. I can see that. But I can’t help you, David.”

  “You can, actually. If you want. If you don’t want… Then that’s another thing.”

  Looking straight ahead, she reached for the ignition. “It was wrong of me to come here.”

  He reached across, his right hand clasping hers, preventing her from starting the van. His gloved hand remained in his lap. “Can we talk this out, please?” She felt his temper bubble. She’d seen it boil a few times. Stand back. “You came here so we could talk, right? If not, why else are you here?”

  “I don’t know.” She felt angry, on the edge of tears, and this made her angrier still. “Fear, I think. Afraid you’ll ruin my life.”

  “No. Never,” he said. “Just the opposite. What I propose benefits us both. You for your reasons, me for mine.”

  That reasoning of his.

  “Please get out of the car. You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m not talking about running off together, about jumping into bed. We’ve done that, no matter that we feel differently about it. Message received. I’m talking about freeing us both.”

  She felt herself shudder. She had felt free until a few hours ago. Now she found her own eyes wandering to the driver’s side rearview mirror, hoping someone might drive by. She could jump out, flag them down. David was sure to run if she tried such a thing. Wasn’t he?

  “I fucked up, Lizzy.”

  “Don’t call me that. And don’t use that language with me.”

  “Got the wrong people mad at me. I think they would have killed me except they want their money back.”

  “Please get out of the car.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lizzy. I’m missing two fingernails on my left hand, my head’s caved in.” He touched his head. “They would have killed me.”

  I wish they had.

  “You’re probably wishing they had.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Absolutely not. Cut a deal. They’ll protect you. It’s how it’s done.”

  “From these people? I don’t think so.”

  “Please get out of the car,” she repeated, her eyes desperate for traffic now.

  “They described my dog, Buck. You remember Buck? They described killing Buck.”

  “Please get out.” She felt frantic. Do something!

  He held the car keys in his right hand, fingers blindly counting through them as if they were prayer be
ads.

  “My mother wrote me about Buck. She was looking after him for me. Said he’d gotten into some bad food or something. Poisoned, maybe.”

  “I’m sorry about Buck.”

  “It’s not about Buck. It’s about my mother. The point is they know where she lives. They can get to her. They will get to her if I don’t cooperate. These people don’t care about anything but that money.”

  “Then give them the money. And give me my keys, please.”

  “I can’t give them the money, because I can’t get into the bank.”

  She felt her heart pounding, grow painful.

  “You see?”

  “No. That is not on the table. Turn yourself in. Make a deal for protection if you turn over the money.”

  He scoffed. “You think anyone cares about that money other than the people after me? The bank was insured. The state got their conviction. It’s over.”

  “The bank would welcome the money returned, believe me.”

  “You’re missing the point. The point is that these people would welcome the money returned. A few minutes, Liz-” He caught himself before he completed his nickname for her. “A few minutes of your time. If the money transfers, my mother lives.”

  “Do not put this onto me.”

  “Okay… Okay… Then who would you suggest? Tony? Who else has access to I.T.? Or should I call Phillip and ask for a hall pass?” Percolating, the lid still on.

  She extended her open hand, awaiting her keys. “You know exactly how to help your mother, David. It is not up to me.”

  He inhaled and threw himself back against the headrest. “Some money then? Maybe get my mother on a plane or something. I’m good for it.” He smiled an ironic smile.