Graven Images

by Jane Waterhouse

  I nodded dumbly. “I’ll just get some things.” My missing daughter. My crippled housekeeper. The usual.

  “Okay,” the cop was shouting now, just to be heard. “Only, take my advice—don’t wait too long.” He jogged back to the patrol car and put it in reverse, spinning out as though he didn’t want to waste a minute.

  EIGHTEEN

  She was sleeping in the same position. The leg cast looked immense, phosphorescent, her crooked old toes peeking out.

  “Cilda.” I shook her shoulder. “Cilda, wake up.” She groaned, turning a little, her eyes closed fast.

  I picked up the amber medicine bottle and shook it. An hour ago there’d been five or six pills in it. Now only two were left. I scanned the label—“One every four hours as needed for pain.” She must’ve taken too many.

  I slapped her cheek, gently, and then harder. “Cilda? Can you hear me?”

  “No,” she cried in her sleep. “Get away.”

  I threw the rest of the water in her face. Her brown eyes rolled open, and then back. “No you don’t.” I held her up by the shoulders. “Look, we have to get out of here. Do you think you can walk?” Walk? She couldn’t even stay awake long enough to reply.

  “I’ll be back.” I said the words right into her ear, blowing them like pointed little darts into her subconscious. “I’m going to find Temple, and then we’re leaving.”

  It occurred to me that the one place I hadn’t checked was my bedroom. If Temple had run away, she might’ve left a note. Pinned it to my pillow. Propped on my nightstand. Tucked into the edge of my mirror. I took the stairs, two at a time, sliding inside my sloshy boots.

  The first thing I noticed was that the pane of glass had been replaced. Sometime during this crazy day, one of Ben Snow’s workers must have come up to do the job. Otherwise, everything looked the same as it had when I left this morning. No Dear Mom letters. No sign of Temple anywhere.

  My energy drained away suddenly. I kicked off my boots, hurling them across the floor until they hit the wall. Then I walked over to the closet.

  The doll swung toward me as I opened the door.

  Splatters of blood covered its face and clothing, dripping onto the floor, speckling the shoe rack. Let me out! it wailed, over and over. Maamaaaaa, let me out!

  I yanked the doll from its noose. A small tape recorder was taped to its back. Let me out! the voice shrieked from the cassette. Maamaa, please! Let me out! I went at the tape like a madwoman, pulling it, shredding it, until it was only a skinny, shiny, tinselly pile of silent ribbon on my lap.

  The doll stared blankly up at me. It looked just like Temple.

  The bottom of the sky had fallen out, releasing great, sweeping torrents of warm air. It pressed down on me from all sides, the charged particles of air burrowing deep into my lungs, cutting like spurs.

  I hammered on the guest house door. There was no answer, no sound of anything going on inside. I dug into my jeans and pulled out the master key. The lock turned easily. I fumbled for the switch, but no lights came on. The storm must have knocked off the power. “Temple?”

  Moonlight shone through the bracketed skylights. I closed my eyes, trying to adjust them to the darkness. I heard a sound coming from outside—a soft, steady shuffling, growing perceptibly louder as the footfalls got closer.

  I ducked into the shadows, plastering myself against the wall. From the window, I could just make out the overhang that sheltered the front entrance. A man stood outside the door, hooded and faceless. The slick dark mackintosh he wore spread like bat wings in the billowing wind. Moonlight flickered on something he was carrying, outstretched in one hand. It was long and tubular, made of metal, like a gun.

  I edged along the wall until I reached the workbench. My hands groped furiously, blindly reading the tools that were laid out on the bench’s surface. Then I crept to the door. The knob was already moving.

  He moved into the room, hooded, his barreled weapon out. Hearing me behind him, he spun, but it was too late. I brought the hammer down, hitting him first on the shoulder; and again, more efficiently, on the back of the head. He swayed, fighting to remain on his feet for a brief moment, before toppling to the floor with a groan.

  I reached down and turned the body over. Once the hood was pushed aside there could be no doubt.

  I’d killed Dane Blackmoor.

  NINETEEN

  I circled the body, my extremities bucking. In the half-light Dane’s face was waxen pale. With all the life drained from it, his features had relaxed into mere conventional handsomeness. I remembered what I’d been thinking as I swung the hammerhead.

  I was hoping it would be Jack.

  A stab of panic needled my ribs. I still hadn’t found Temple, and I’d killed the only person who might’ve known where she was. I slipped my fingers inside the starched stiffness of Blackmoor’s shirt collar, searching for the pulse in his neck. Day-old whiskers rubbed against my hand, erect, bristling. His skin was still warm. My foot hit something small and hard. I picked it up.

  He hadn’t been carrying a gun. He’d been carrying a flashlight.

  It was black metal, quite long, with a nasty-looking barrel. I trained it around the room, skimming over the shadows. Everything appeared the same as before. The litter of empty wineglasses and abandoned coffee cups. Tools neatly aligned. Cartons and crates, in various stages of being unpacked. The marble.

  I edged closer, wanting to believe the weak light played tricks with my eyes. But this was no optical illusion. The female torso that, only hours ago, had grappled under a cloak of stone, was now smashed. Deep veins of crushed crystal glittered like unmined diamonds within the granite. Each perfect breast had been gouged several times. The nipples were painted bright scarlet.

  At the base of the mutilated sculpture I saw a rounded shape draped in muslin. I approached it, warily, crouching as I lifted the cover. Temple’s face stared back at me, unblinking and—except for a thick slathering of lipstick—unnaturally white. I forced myself to touch it.

  The casing felt light and fragile. Empty. The sudden wave of relief was so powerful it buckled my knees. I toppled into a narrow box made of plywood.

  Two words—“open me”—had been printed in neat block letters on the lid.

  The nail heads protruded, as though the person who’d hammered it shut had done so carelessly. It didn’t take long to find a crowbar among the near-perfect array of tools on the bench. I used the toe of my boot for leverage, working the wedge-shaped end of the bar under the lip.

  The box moved with each thrust of the iron, until it splintered with a loud crack. I threw aside the tool and began pulling on the lid with my bare hands. It gave way all at once, sending me sprawling, still clutching the ragged length of wood.

  I shuffled forward on my knees. Blackmoor’s cockatoo lay inside, lifeless. Something was tucked under his wing. I let the paper flutter to the floor. A pen-and-ink drawing, a graven image. The flashlight haloed the inscription—

  To my lady of ladies

  Love, Jeff

  Something was under the bird. I pushed the carcass aside, whimpering in fear.

  My own face smiled up at me. I flipped the picture over, noticing the embossed title. Dust to Dust. A narrow red ribbon stuck out from one page. I cracked it open to the mark, staring at the words that had been specially outlined in bright yellow crayon.

  But Deirdre Purdy had not only been kidnapped, she’d been buried alive. Somewhere, her parents knew, their daughter lay, embedded in the earth, in an airtight box, with just enough oxygen to last until morning. If she didn’t panic.

  A violent gust of wind smacked and battered the windows. The entire east wall seemed to shudder. I started tearing apart the book, systematically, five or six pages at a time. I remembered Jeff Turner sitting inches away from me, on that prison cot. Jeff, in prison blue, which so brought out the color of his eyes. I recalled the look on his face when he spoke about my work. I saw myself leaning toward him, in the flush of shared
confidence, admitting that I was drawn to crimes that played on my own deepest fears.

  But Temple—how did he get to Temple? The crumpled love note was still in the pocket of my jeans. Not for Blackmoor. It had been Jeff all the time. On the beach. Near the wall. In the woods. All over these dangerous grounds. I’d given up struggling with the book and was sitting in a daze when, from the other side of the room, I heard a groan.

  “Jesus,” Blackmoor muttered. “What’d you hit me with?”

  TWENTY

  “You’re not dead!”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Couldn’t prove it by me.” I ran to him. “I’m so—” I was crying again.

  Dane reached into his coat and took out a handkerchief, swabbing first my nose, and then the blood clotted in his hair, “Jesus,” he said again. He sank against the workbench, weakly. “The last thing I remember was pouring myself a glass of wine. When I came to, the power was off, so I went outside. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

  “He drugged you,” I said. “He drugged Cilda, too. And he took Temple—”

  He sat straight up. “Jack?”

  “No, not Jack. Him—”

  The whole time I talked Blackmoor didn’t look at me once. He walked around the room, touching things with his hands—the hacked-up marble; the bird in its pine coffin, unshriven and unnamed (would it be turned away at the gates of animal heaven, I wondered, or had Jefferson Turner already performed the necessary rites?); the plaster bust of Temple, her lips painted in a lewd Kewpie doll smile.

  “We were going to surprise you with this,” he said, picking up the cast. “The funny thing is, I knew she was seeing someone. A boy she met through her friend’s brother. She made me promise not to tell you. I thought it was just one of those things kids go through.” He hurled an empty wine bottle toward the wall. “Fuck me.”

  “What else did she say?”

  He put a hand up to the back of his head. “That he was older. He was doing some kind of manual labor to pay for college.”

  I thought of the endless stream of faceless workers, their eyes obscured by hard hats and hooded slickers, parading in and out of these gates. I went over to the window. Put my head against the cool pane. The wind rattled the glass, boring a hole into my skull, where it flew around, shrieking.

  Blackmoor came up behind me. “He put her in the wall,” he said softly.

  “Oh my God.” I followed his gaze. The fat, arrogant moon sat in the sky, tickling light over the tumbling foundation of stones, taunting the waves over. “Oh my God. My God, my God.”

  “Remember, he was on his own, working fast,” he said. “That means he couldn’t have put her down too far.” What he didn’t say was that when people worked too fast, things tended to go wrong. Boxes weren’t sealed properly. The necessary amount of oxygen was miscalculated. A boulder could slip from the jaws of a crane. There might even be a rockslide, if one was moving in too much haste—

  I pushed these thoughts from my mind. Something fragile fluttered against my throat, like the beatings of small wings. Hope. “The engineer said there were tunnels big enough to fit cars in.”

  “Listen, Garner.” Blackmoor was choosing his words carefully. “What I said before, about her not being in too deep—that’s true…but still, he must’ve used equipment. We’re talking rock here. There’s no way—”

  “We’ll get help.”

  He turned me so that I faced the window again. “What do you see?”

  “I can’t see anything.” Then it hit me. All the lights were off in the main house. “He’s cut the lines,” I said dully.

  “The tires on our cars are slashed, too,” Blackmoor said.

  I clung to his arm. “We could do it together.” His face was set in the same old disparaging lines. “I know we could,” I insisted. “You’re a sculptor. You know about things, about rock and stone—”

  “I’m a fake, Garnish,” he said. “You said so yourself.”

  I saw the tired cynicism in his eyes. “Play it any way you want,” I said. “But I, for one, am not going to sit here counting the hours until my daughter runs out of air.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Mountainous waves shattered over the seawall. Fingers of foam probed. Over, under, in. I tried to concentrate on the hundreds of times I’d walked the slender balance beam of these rocks before, one foot in front of the other, never giving it a thought. Now I made my way slowly, looking for breaks in the stone, testing the filler to see if it felt too hard or too soft.

  We had to shout at each other to be heard. “Over there.” Blackmoor pointed to a section of the wall just ahead, throwing down the leather pouch packed with tools. “Hold the beam steady.”

  I focused the flashlight. The surf was almost directly at our backs. In a few hours the wall would be completely submerged. Had Turner calculated for that when he built the box? Had he considered the possibility that Temple might drown?

  “Damm it, Garner,” Blackmoor cursed. “Keep the light on me!” He ran his hands over the rocks, then took a chisel out of his pocket and began to tap.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking for movement.” I could hardly hear him over the roar. “For gaps.”

  I watched, desperately wanting to believe that this was something more than another Dane Blackmoor performance. He moved confidently enough, but never once did he meet my eyes.

  The wind filled his coat like sails. He yelled for a crowbar. I scrambled for the bag. By the time I got it to him, though, he was shaking his head. “It’s solid.” He pointed in another direction. “Let’s try over there.”

  We walked in single file, me with my arms out, steadying myself against the wind. Blackmoor paused occasionally, moving his hands over the surface of the wall, tracing the crevices, sometimes tapping. We’d been at it for maybe fifteen minutes when he stopped short.

  “What?” No answer. “What? Tell me!”

  He signed that I should put my ear up against the rock. “Listen.”

  “I can’t hear anything,” I yelled, frustrated.

  He backtracked several paces. “Now listen over here.”

  “The ocean sounds different.”

  “That’s because this section is hollow.”

  Still avoiding my eyes, he lowered himself on his heels. I huddled next to him, cautioning myself against a false alarm. But this time I could even see it. The irregularity in the wall. Instead of a solid bank of stone and concrete, several medium-size boulders had been stacked in a heap and packed with loose gravel.

  Blackmoor began digging with his hands. “Got anything like a shovel in that bag?” he shouted.

  “There’s one in the garage.”

  His eyes scanned the dark house. “Forget it,” he told me.

  He feels it, too, I thought, senses that we’re not alone. I dropped onto my stomach, scooping fistfuls of tow stone. A wave crested, dousing us with cold salt water, but we kept on working. Minutes later, we’d cleared away the area around one of the smaller rocks.

  “Get the crowbar,” Dane directed. “I think we can take it out.”

  I found it. “Now, look,” he said. “When this sucker starts to move, we’ve got to keep it going. We can’t have it slide back, understand?” I nodded. He didn’t have to explain what the falling weight could do. If the box were below it. If Temple were still alive. Please, God, please, let her be alive.

  Blackmoor dug himself in. “Okay, on three, then—”

  The sound of the surf, and my heart, pounded in my ears. I couldn’t hear the three-count, but moved forward when he did, felt the dead resistance of the stone, as every fiber of my being flexed against it. For an instant it seemed hopeless, but Blackmoor pulled down the bar, and suddenly the boulder moved—rolling, at first slowly, then picking up speed and momentum.

  I fell on my face, cutting my chin. When I got up, Dane was already leaning into the hole, smoothing the sand and gravel off something flat and shiny. I crawled toward him, ma
rveling at those magic hands, which could produce a metal box out of the surface of sheer rock.

  “Temple! Temple? Honey, can you hear me?” A faint thumping came from below. Once. Twice. The third time much stronger. I grabbed on to Dane to keep from falling over.

  “Sit tight, sweetheart,” he called. “We’re going to get you out of there.”

  Just before he lowered himself into the wall, Blackmoor clapped his hand around the back of my neck and drew me toward him. I collapsed under the tent of his raincoat, allowing myself to be smothered within the folds of his shirt. His heart drummed softly in my ear.

  “He’s made it too easy,” he whispered. Or at least that’s what it sounded like. Before I could ask, he’d pushed away, telling me to train the flashlight on the top of the box.

  She emerged from the metal coffin just the way she’d been born, shiny-wet, crying, gulping for air. Beautiful. Dane lifted her up and placed her in my arms.

  “Mommy, Mommy, oh, I’m so sorry—” Her slender body convulsed.

  “Shhh.” I hugged her tightly. “It’s over now.”

  Blackmoor took off his big raincoat and placed it over her shoulders. “Do you want me to carry you,” he asked, “or can you walk?”

  “I…I don’t know,” Temple sobbed.

  He caught my eye. “We’ll try for the house,” he said.

  The rusty staircase rattled like false teeth. I went first, followed by Dane, who half-supported, half-carried Temple, talking to her all the while in a soft, encouraging voice. Once we were off the wall, the wind suddenly abated. A mother-of-pearl sheen glazed the sky. The air had texture. I could feel it, settling in my pores, pressing against my hair, thick as wool.