by Mark Murphy
The drive home was quiet. Too quiet, really. Mimi stared out of the passenger's side window as the oak trees flashed by, just as they had a few thousand other times on the way home from school. She was sucking absently on the blood-soaked gauze pad. Her breath fogged the window.
Amy noticed that the news trucks were no longer following them.
Thank God for small miracles, she thought.
"You want to talk about it?" Amy said at last.
Mimi shook her head.
Amy turned on the radio. A song, one in which the singer tells everyone to raise their glass, was playing. It was one of Mimi's favorites. Normally when she heard that song she'd dance around the house singing it, arms up in the air.
Mimi reached over and turned the sound off.
"They hate me, you know," she said.
"They don't hate you, Mimi. They're just scared, like everyone else, and they reacted the way scared people do sometimes."
"You didn't see them, Mom. The way they were looking at me. The way they wanted me to suffer. I could see it. They would have killed me if they could."
"They're your friends, Mimi. They wouldn't have . . ."
Mimi turned to look at her mother through battered eyes that looked like a pair of veal cutlets.
"They would have, Mom. I'm sure of it. If Ms. Bell and Mr. Griffin had not shown up, they would have killed me right there in the hallway."
"Mimi . . ."
"I don't have any friends anymore. Friends don't want you dead. Even the ones who didn't hurt me just stood there and did nothing. Tia Robertson looked me right in the eye, turned her back and walked away. Like if she didn't see it then it wasn't really happening. I just spent the night with her last week and she walked away, Mom."
Amy felt a great sorrow welling up in her, a tide of regret building like a tsunami.
I should not have sent her to school, she thought. How could I have been so stupid? I tried to keep things as normal as I could and I threw her to the wolves.
Amy glanced over at Mimi. Her chest ached as she gazed at her daughter's battered face.
"I'm sorry, hon. I'm really sorry."
"I'm not," Mimi said.
"What?"
"If I had not been there, they'd be saying all of that terrible stuff about daddy anyway, and no one would have been there to defend him. Jacie's mean to people all the time now, anyway. If it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else. I was glad I was there to set her straight. That bitch."
At this, Amy laughed out loud. The wave of regret simply dissipated, vanishing in the time it took to take a deep breath.
"Well, I'm certain your dad would appreciate the fact that you defended his honor."
She glanced over at her daughter, who was smiling despite her broken-up face.
"You are your father's daughter, you know that?" Amy said. "You're just like him. He would have done the exact same thing."
"Right makes might," Mimi said, echoing one of Malcolm's favorite sayings.
"Damn straight. Right makes might," Amy said.
She really has grown up, Amy thought.
They turned into Rose Dhu subdivision. Amy waved at the policeman stationed at the gate, who waved back. The news trucks were relatively quiet. She didn't see much activity around them.
Must be lunch break, Amy thought.
As they passed through the gate, Amy looked directly at WKKR's Tina Baker, who was broadcasting from a position that almost had her standing in the road. Amy had seen her on television a thousand times, but in person she seemed much smaller than Amy had ever imagined. She looked to be all teeth and hair, a pixie in a designer suit.
"That's the woman who tried to talk to me at school," Mimi said.
"I ought to run her over," said Amy.
"She was nice, Mom. Ms. Bell was furious that they came onto campus, but Ms. Baker wasn't bad at all. She asked me how I was feeling and kinda rubbed my shoulder."
As they passed by, Tina Baker turned and looked straight into the car. Her microphone dropped. She had a shocked expression on her perfect face.
"I don't think she expected to see us," Mimi said.
I don't think she expected to see you looking like you'd been in a bar fight, Amy thought, but she did not say anything.
As they pulled into the driveway, Daisy greeted them, her tail wagging furiously.
"Hey, girl," Mimi said, scratching between the old dog's ears. Daisy grunted deliriously.
"Why don't you go wash up and I'll make you a sandwich?' Amy said.
"I'm not really all that hungry," said Mimi.
"How about if I toast it?"
Mimi thought for a minute.
"Okay," she said at last. "But I may rest a little, first. I'm tired."
"That's fine," said Amy.
"I'm taking the dog," Mimi called out as she ascended the stairs.
She's so much like her father it's scary, Amy thought.
Malcolm would always bounce back from crises with a resolve that seemed almost inhuman. He had a steel core. That was one of the things that she loved about him. She figured it was also one of the things that made him a good surgeon. Malcolm was in his element when the chips were down. Before today, she'd never been certain if Mimi had inherited that gift.
After today, she was convinced of it.
Amy took the trash out. The trashcans were all knocked over again, but the raccoons could get nothing from them this time, because they had been empty. The wind coming off the river was unusually blustery today, and that might have been a factor, as well. She tossed the trash bag into the largest trash bin and clamped the lid down tight.
Amy heard a shuffling, scraping noise behind the garage.
"Who's there?" she called out.
No answer.
Amy spied a tree branch on the ground and picked it up. It was half rotten; a crop of rubbery brown fungi sprouted from one end.
She raised the branch over her head anyway.
The shuffling grew louder. More rhythmic.
She rounded the corner of the garage and started laughing.
The wind gusts were blowing their mimosa tree so vigorously that the green branches were rubbing the paint off the eaves of the garage. The tree was in bloom, its diaphanous pink-and-white flowers littering the ground beneath it. Malcolm usually trimmed the mimosa this time of year.
He'd bring in some of the flowers and put them in a little round bud vase for her desk.
But Mal's not here, is' he? she thought.
Amy dropped the stick.
The tears came back again and Amy cursed them.
Somewhere a dog was barking. The wind was whipping up white-caps on the Vernon River. The air carried the verdant perfume of spring, which was Malcolm's favorite time of year, and she had no idea where he was or if he was okay or not.
"Dammit," she said.
She sniffled a few times, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her fingers.
Amy never even saw the hand that clamped the damp cloth over her face. She gasped and flailed but the hands that held her were too strong. She could smell the man's cologne, could feel his broad chest behind her back, but his grip was powerful and she could not break it. Her pulse throbbed in her ears for a moment but then her legs weakened and her heartbeat grew more distant, fading into oblivion, like footsteps echoing down a long tunnel someplace beneath the sea.
Her last thoughts were of Malcolm and of Mimi, and of how much she loved them.
And then the void consumed her at last, leaving nothing but night.
26
Malcolm realized where he was the moment he left Billy.
From where he stood at the edge of the marsh, he could see the low profiles of the Girl Scout camp cabins across the river at Rose Dhu Island. The American flag at the camp fluttered grimly in the face of a relentless wind. He knew that camp well. It was built near an old Civil War gun emplacement, a series of dirt mounds now overgrown with river oaks and magnolias. He and his fathe
r had taken a metal detector over there one fall afternoon and had come away with nothing but a thousand insect bites. He sympathized with the Confederate soldier who wryly noted in his journal that "more men at Rose Dhu were lost to mosquitoes than to Union gunfire."
And the Girl Scout camp was less than a mile from his house.
He gazed across the Vernon River in the direction of his Rose Dhu home. If he rounded the point at Beaulieu he would be able to see its white columns standing guard over the river, as they had for centuries.
He knew that the police would likely be watching his house. That, or they would be staked out at the Rose Dhu entrance, as there was only one way in and out of the subdivision by land.
But Billy had saved him before by picking him up at the dock. And that gave Malcolm an idea.
The houses at Beaulieu sat on a high bluff overlooking the river. Each house had a dock which projected out over the water. Various water-craft, from fancy sailboats and powerboats to humble kayaks and canoes, were kept at the business ends of those docks.
All Malcolm wanted was a kayak.
A canoe would do, as well—anything that would allow him an inconspicuous, quiet passage upriver to Rose Dhu.
At Rose Dhu, he would pull up to his own dock. He would see Amy and Mimi. He'd collect his thoughts, gather his wits, take a shower, and decide what to do next. Perhaps he'd even turn himself in and trust that the criminal justice system would do its job properly and acquit him.
One thing Malcolm was certain of: he was tired of running. He could not live the life of a fugitive forever. It would consume him whole, eating him up from the inside like a cancer, hollowing him out until there was nothing left but cinders and ash.
For now, Malcolm just needed to be home.
Hidden amongst the trees, invisible to anyone but God, Malcolm surveyed the river. He knew many of these people. They were friends and neighbors and colleagues. He wondered what they thought of him now, as they read the serial exploits of his alleged crime spree in the newspaper each morning over their cups of coffee. He could almost hear their conversations, murmured between bites of their bran muffins and spoonfuls of yogurt:
Do you think Dr. King did all this?
Sure sounds like it, doesn't it?
And then they'd go on with their lives, to their law firms and insurance offices and hospitals, and lose themselves in the collective oblivion of work. Oh, he'd be discussed over business luncheons and on the sidelines at soccer games, and they'd catch up with the latest developments of his case while watching the evening news on WKKR, but he'd be a sideline for most of them. A diversion.
He was jealous of them, lost in their miasma of office romances and the inevitable he said/she said of daily life—the minor crises that expand to fill the available space. He was there once, not so long ago. Really terrible stuff happened to other people. Not to Malcolm and Amy.
What was it his grandfather once said?
If you live long enough, fate catches up with you.
Damn fate, then.
He spotted a red plastic one-man kayak in a rack on a floating dock nearby. He thought it might be Jimmy Douglas's dock. He'd been to a debutante party there once. Jimmy had inherited millions when his father died. Investments, real estate, the like. He dabbled in the family's construction business, but generally just went to various charity functions and engaged in idle gossip. It was common knowledge that he was screwing his twenty-something "personal assistant," a gorgeous blonde. His wife knew all about it and said nothing, of course. Such was the power of a good prenup.
Jimmy would never miss the kayak.
Leaving the shelter of the trees, Malcolm began jogging through the Douglas's yard towards the dock entrance.
He heard the dogs before he saw them—a deep-throated gawrrrru-ruff, and then they were rounding the corner of the house, a pair of incredibly muscular tan-and-white boxers with spiked collars and sprinters' speed.
Malcolm calculated their trajectory in his head. He'd never make the dock. Malcolm had seen firsthand what a pair of well-trained attack dogs could do to a man. Dogs hunt well together. Their pack instincts are genetically hard-wired.
These two would catch him and tear him apart.
He sprinted back toward the river.
The dogs were snarling just a few feet behind him when Malcolm reached the marsh. The dark mud was thick and viscid. Malcolm plowed through it, arms flailing, trying to get to the water as oyster shells hidden in the muck stabbed into his legs and razor-sharp marsh grass sliced a thousand cuts across his arms and face.
One of the dogs hurled itself into the marsh after him and immediately sank up to its chest. Panicked, the animal gave up the chase and instead wallowed about in the unforgiving mire trying to free itself. The second dog, seeing its partner struggle, wisely elected not to enter the marsh and instead galloped out onto the dock.
Shit! Malcolm thought. He kept slogging toward the water, but he knew he would never touch the kayak if a hundred pounds of pissed-off boxer were sitting there waiting for him.
But halfway down the dock, the dog stopped cold.
"Hah!' Malcolm said out loud.
A locked gate—designed to keep intruders from entering the yard via the dock—had thwarted the dog's passage. It could go no further.
Malcolm made it to the river, a swirl of mud eddying behind him, and swam the ten feet or so to the floating dock. Hoisting the kayak over his head, he plopped it into the water and grabbed an oar from a storage rack.
The boxers were both on the dock now, barking furiously.
Malcolm hopped into the kayak, steadying himself with the floating dock. Pushing away, he dug in with the paddle. Its blades dipped into the dark green waters of the Vernon River. He paused for a moment to point back at the vociferous pair of boxers as he drifted out into the current.
"Hush!" he said.
Inexplicably, the dogs did just that. They sat in tandem on their haunches, silenced, puzzled expressions on their canine faces.
Malcolm felt invigorated. His luck was changing. He had taken a near-impossible situation and turned it into a positive. He was filthy, he stank to high heaven, his muscles ached and his head throbbed, but this was a small victory, and he was grateful for it.
As he paddled across the river, he noted a pair of snowy egrets peering down their narrow yellow beaks into the shallows as they looked for a minnow or two. A seagull wheeled its ungainly way across the sky. A slight breeze had scalloped the waves, and they lapped quietly against the hull.
And, suddenly, there it was.
He had not realized how much he had missed being at home until now. His eyes filled with tears.
Crossing the river faster than he ever had before, muscles sore and aching with the effort, he reached his dock and dragged the red kayak onto his own dock. He'd return the kayak to Jimmy Douglas when this was all over.
As he walked down the dock, the house looked the way it always had. But Malcolm felt a prickle at the back of his neck.
Something isn't right, he thought.
A few fat crows circled overhead. A gang of four or five of them huddled at the end of the upper porch rail, eyeing him suspiciously. "Amy?" he stage-whispered. "Mimi?"
There was no answer.
Glancing about, he walked through the yard toward the main house, careful to avoid the shell path.
It's too quiet, he thought.
"Ames?" he called out. Louder, this time.
There was a snuffling sound. A strangled whimper seemed to come from a nearby bush.
Malcolm stepped toward the bush. Another whimper.
Malcolm pushed a few branches aside.
Daisy lay on her side on the mulch. Blood stained the matted fur on her flanks. She was panting heavily, her chest heaving, but when she saw Malcolm her broad tail thumped the ground in recognition.
"Hey, girl," he said, kneeling beside the old hound. "Who did this to you?'
Malcolm found the bullet woun
d and explored it with is finger. It appeared to be a through-and-through injury, entering the muscle of the upper portion of her right rear leg and exiting the inside of the same leg, grazing her belly in the process. There did not appear to be any damage to the abdominal cavity. He checked the integrity of the femur and the hip joints. They appeared to be intact as well. This was, in all probability, a non-lethal injury.
"You got lucky, old girl," he murmured, scratching her head.
The old dog stood up, her legs shaking, and pressed her muzzle against Malcolm's thigh.
"Let's get you inside," Malcolm said.
The old dog limped up the back steps. Malcolm found the key hidden under the potted fern on the stoop and went to unlock the door with it, but the door was already open.
He settled Daisy down in her bed in the laundry room, cleaned her wounds with peroxide and applied some Bacitracin ointment that he found in the pantry. He tried to suppress what all of this might mean, but he could feel the hysteria welling up in him, the inexorable pressure building behind his eyes.
"Amy? Mimi?" he said, yelling at the top of his lungs.
There was no noise in the house but the sound of Daisy's ragged breathing.
Malcolm unzipped his jacket pocket, took out his cell phone and called Amy. He didn't think the thing could have survived all that he had been through, but there it was—dry as a bone, and completely intact. Amy's phone rang four times and went to voicemail. He did the same with Mimi and got the same result.
They're gone, he thought.
Dropping the phone back into his jacket pocket, he walked through the entire downstairs. Everything appeared to be in order. There was no sign of a struggle.
His study, oddly enough, had all of its lights ablaze. His computer was left on, as well, the screensaver spiraling patterns of red and blue across the Mac's large LCD screen.
I never leave the computer on, Malcolm thought. Amy and Mimi both know that.
He sat down at the keyboard to type.
The icons were weird. Only the basic stuff was there. He accessed the hard drive and found that it had been completely wiped out—all documents gone, all history gone, as if the computer were just right out of the box. Even the date was off: it said today was January 1, 1999.