With Every Breath

by Beverly Bird

  Maddie sat back thoughtfully. "But you wouldn’t have to do it publicly. This . . . person . . . needn’t know that you’re the one who accused him. Or her. Whatever." "Oh, yes," Leslie said. "They would know."

  "How?"

  "A few days before you were found, I was up on The

  Wick. I was walking the beach. It was May. The beaches of the big island don’t tend to be very private at that time of year. I needed to be alone, to think, to come to terms with what I was and what I wanted to do with my life. I was twenty-five years old, and it was time.

  "So I was walking the beach, and as I passed your house, I saw someone leaving it. And that someone saw me as well. We’ve never spoken of it, and because I made my decisions that day, I’ve never said a word."

  Everything inside Maddie stiffened. Her blood ran first cold, then hot, and she was overwhelmed with a feeling of righteous anger. For her parents?

  But if they had died, she realized, if they had not abandoned her, then she had no cause to hate them, did she?

  But why, she had to find out, did she so instinctively hate them, why had she always hated them, if they had not abandoned her?

  I don’t want to get into this. She looked out the window into the waiting room, at Josh and Joe. Her heart squirmed. Oh, God, I love them. I have to do this. For both of them.

  "You know who killed my parents," she repeated evenly, "and for twenty-five years you’ve done nothing? You’ve let this person get away with it?"

  "I don’t know anything. I suspect."

  "That’s one way of justifying it to yourself," Maddie snapped.

  Leslie shrugged. "Perhaps. But all I actually saw was someone leaving your house." She took a breath. "Still, I’ve experienced my share of ... guilt over the issue. When you came back here, I thought it was a perfect way to clear the slate. You must have been in that house that day. You must have seen that person leave as well as I did. And I wouldn’t think you’d be concerned about being

  drummed off the island. I’ve never gotten the impression that you were going to stay on Candle indefinitely."

  Maddie felt a hard shiver course through her. Leslie knew. "You won’t tell me who you saw, either, will you?"

  "No." Leslie gave a brief smile. "At this point, that would be as good as telling |oe."

  "It might make me remember."

  "There are other ways I can help you do that." "What?" she asked suspiciously. "Hypnosis?"

  Leslie hesitated, then shook her head. "No, I don’t think that would be safe with you, in this situation." "Why not? You thought I was strong enough to survive getting blasted with the truth that day."

  "That was entirely different. I was jolting you, trying to form a crack in the wall on the off chance that something would slide right through of its own volition. Hypnosis means prying a mind loose more or less against its will. I wouldn’t try that with you."

  "What would you try?"

  "To establish what you do remember and radiate out from there, chipping away at the wall in places where it’s already broken."

  Maddie stood up carefully. She knew in her heart that there was no way the woman was going to say any more. She’d made her decision long ago, and she had lived with it all this time, and she certainly wasn’t going to change her mind after all those years.

  "I’ll let you know," she said quietly. Actually, she thought, chipping was something she could pretty much handle on her own.

  If she did it on her own, she could stop whenever she wanted to.

  She looked out at Joe and Josh again. "I’ll be in touch."

  "Good." Leslie glanced at her watch then stood up. "And Maddie ... I am sorry if what I did to you that day has hurt you in any way."

  "It didn’t hurt me." She sighed. "It just bothered me because it seemed unprofessional."

  Leslie nodded, allowing that.

  Maddie went to get Joe and Josh. She needed to touch them both as soon as she could. She needed it very badly.

  They had lunch at McDonald’s. Joe pointed out that in this comer of the world, fast food was a delicacy. Big Macs were luxuries. Considering that the ferry didn’t always ran with any reliability, it was difficult to get across the ocean to buy one.

  Maddie picked at french fries. Josh bolted down two cheeseburgers, an order of fries, and an apple pie, and went outside to play in Ronald McDonald’s fun house. He darted away from the table before Maddie could stop him, and she jerked to her feet, her heart thudding.

  "Come on," Joe said quietly. "We can sit out there on that bench and watch him."

  She grabbed her purse and ran without waiting to see if he was behind her. And her eyes burned. Dear God, would it never end? How many more times was Rick Graycie going to slip through the authorities’ fingers like so much sand?

  She didn’t honestly breathe again until she reached the bench. She sat carefully, her fingers wrapped like claws around the edge of the wood. She leaned forward a bit to watch Josh play. She felt Joe sit beside her.

  Was Rick dead? Was she putting herself through this extra torment for nothing?

  It almost didn’t matter, she realized dully. Because, somehow, he had gotten tied up with what had happened

  on the island all those many years ago. And that wasn’t going to end until she remembered.

  "What happened, Joe?" she demanded suddenly, then the words tumbled out of her fast and desperately. "What exactly happened that day? Leslie told me the basic details last week, about the pantry and the blood, but I want to know everything. I want to hear your thoughts. You’ve never said. You’ve never really talked about it."

  Joe sat back against the bench and watched her levelly. "I haven’t mentioned my own theories because you haven’t exactly been amenable to the discussion."

  Maddie let her air out on a harsh breath. "I’m not sure I am now."

  Joe waited.

  "But Leslie said something about chipping at existing holes, so ... let’s chip."

  "Existing holes?"

  "The things I do remember. The things that have crept through the wall I ... I’ve built." Her voice was stiff. She found she couldn’t look at him. It was very, very hard to let him see her flaws, her ... craziness. His opinion of her was too dear.

  If he ever stopped wanting her, she thought she would die.

  Because that realization was so hard to deal with, the subject at hand became suddenly easier to cope with. She finally looked over at him.

  "Tell me," she urged again.

  "Maddie, this isn’t a hole. You don’t remember anything about that day, and I don’t want to do anything that could hurt you."

  "I’m not fragile!" she snapped, suddenly angry.

  Joe lifted a brow. "That’s actually the last thing I would call you."

  "Last night you pushed me to remember. So why back off now?"

  "I pushed you to remember with professional help," he pointed out in an infuriatingly reasonable tone.

  "Damn it, just tell me, Joe. Tell me before Josh comes back."

  He hesitated, then his eyes relented. He scowled and rubbed his eyes.

  "I don’t know what Leslie said about that day, so bear with me if I repeat some things," he began. "You were in the pantry. There was blood all over the kitchen. All over you, too. The doors and the windows were locked." Maddie blinked. "Locked?"

  "Yeah."

  "So whoever was responsible for this . this blood then calmly left, locking the door behind them?"

  "So it would seem."

  "Do we know that it was my parents’ blood?"

  He lifted another brow at her. He really did enjoy her mind. "Good point. Yeah, Dave checked that. The blood typed out to be your mother’s. A-Negative."

  She herself was AB-Negative, Maddie thought. Which meant that Beacher must have been B, according to what she remembered learning about the inheritance of blood types in her high school biology course. For a moment she thought that was odd, then realized it was possible that Beacher hadn’t bled tha
t day, in that house.

  "Okay," Maddie said, steadying herself. She told him what Leslie had told her. Something scurried briefly in her stomach as she wondered if she was betraying a confidence. But she didn’t know whom Leslie had seen, and, in the end all her concern had to be for Josh, for Joe, and herself.

  "So unless this person Leslie saw just happened to lock the door behind him when he left," she finished, "then it’s unlikely he killed anybody."

  "He couldn’t ‘just happen’ to lock the door," Joe argued. "Back then, your father had one of those kinds on it where you needed a key. It was in the file. That’s the biggest reason Dave Bramnick has always thought that your father killed your mother and took off," he said bluntly. "Beacher drank, Maddie. Sometimes he got wild. Maybe in May 1972, he got real wild. Maybe he came to, saw what he’d done, and ran like hell. Maybe he’s living in California right now. His keys were never found, although his truck was abandoned down by the ferry."

  Maddie digested this. She realized it felt right. Or, at least, it didn’t feel wrong.

  "Do you think that’s what happened?" she asked.

  Joe blew out his breath. "No."

  "No?"

  "I think that someone killed both of them, threw their bodies in the ocean, took Beacher’s keys, dropped off the truck, and went on with their business. But it’s just a ... feeling."

  "So why do you think this has anything to do with what happened last night?"

  "Well, for Christ’s sake, Maddie, somebody killed Graycie, and that same somebody followed you out of that house!"

  She stared over at Josh again for a moment, then she nodded.

  "I think whoever killed your parents is scared shitless that you’re going to remember and tell me," Joe went on. "I think whoever killed your parents broke into your house and killed the cat to scare you off before you could remember. At first I was willing to go along with the idea that Rick did it. That made enough sense, and I guess I really didn’t want it to turn out to be the alternative. But it wasn’t Rick who broke in that window to kill the cat, and Rick didn’t leave the flowers." He hesitated again. "Anyway, if I’m right, then whoever killed your parents is probably going to keep trying to scare you off. And until we lay our hands on Graycie’s body, we’re right the hell back where we started. Is it him playing with you, or someone else? Goddamnit, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, one way or the other."

  She looked up at him sharply. "That’s why you’re pressing me to remember all of a sudden. In case it has been somebody else. So we can find out who it is before he can hurt me or Josh."

  Joe nodded slowly. "Yeah."

  "Then Rick turning up was incidental? You think it was a coincidence? He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, just happened to find me while all this other stuff is going on?"

  "Maybe."

  Maddie shook her head. "I don’t believe in coincidence, Joe."

  He reached for her hand. It was narrow and fineboned. He turned it over in his own, and heat tried to gather low inside him.

  "Neither do I, babe," he said quietly. "Neither do I."

  Chapter 26

  They went straight to the police station when they got back to the island. Joe pointed out that there were still nine hundred people on Candle, and one of them could be counted on to pick that day to steal the wind chimes off an archenemy’s front porch.

  All the wind chimes were present and accounted for, but there were a pile of phone messages waiting for him. The continuation of the search party up on The Wick had yielded nothing. Kenny was running the show and had widened the radius to include the big island, but so far nothing had turned up there, either. He’d checked with all the doctors and hospitals within thirty miles of Jonesport on the mainland. No one matching Rick’s description had been in for emergency treatment.

  Joe couldn’t shake the increasingly certain feeling that if Maddie could remember, Graycie’s carcass would turn up.

  While she stared pensively out the window, he went back to sorting through the phone messages. Mildred Diehl had called. She wanted to know if anyone was going to charge Maddie Brogan with her ex-husband’s murder.

  Maddie stiffened at that one, but Joe crumpled it disgustedly and tossed it into the trash can. "There’s somebody who needs a shrink," he muttered.

  "Maybe not," Maddie answered weakly. "Other people are probably wondering the same thing, Joe. I was there, and Rick is gone." And the blood, she thought. All that blood. But if he’s dead, where is he?

  "Doesn’t matter." Joe reached for the phone again. "I happen to be of the opinion that all you did last night was run like hell." He watched her expression for a moment as he punched a number into the phone. "You’ve got to understand Mildred. Thirty-five years ago her parents shipped her off to the mainland real suddenlike. When she came back, she had Cassie with her. There was some story about her having been married, and the guy took off. Who knows? She changed her last name from Mulligan to Diehl, and ever since then, she makes damned certain that everybody she comes into contact with becomes as bitter and unhappy as she is.

  "Yeah," he said suddenly, turning his attention back to the phone.

  Maddie listened to his side of the conversation for a while. Her brows rose slowly. "What are you doing?" she breathed when he hung up.

  He rubbed his eyes. "Attempted suicide means a night in the loony bin," he answered. "If there’s any reason to believe that Gina’s a threat to anyone in addition to herself, they’ll keep her for an additional seventy-two hours. Crazy goddamned law. I don’t know what good it does. But it comes in handy now."

  "Me," Maddie whispered uncomfortably. "You still think she’s a threat to me?"

  "You’re all I’ve got, babe." His words were casual, and she knew he was talking about using her to keep Gina in the hospital, but they made her pulse skip anyway.

  "She needs longer than three days, Joe," she said suddenly.

  His face hardened. "I know. But three days is all I’m empowered to do." He was quiet for a minute. "In three days, maybe I’ll be able to deal with her. Right now I don’t need to worry about guarding you from her on top of everything else."

  Maddie realized that he was hoping that within three days she would remember. She reached out for Josh and pulled him onto her lap for her own comfort. It seemed dismally farfetched.

  Then again, odder things had happened in a short time so far.

  A knock sounded on the partially open door. Maddie jumped. An officer came in with a large box. He put it on the floor next to Joe’s desk and nodded at her.

  "Ma’am."

  She greeted him and leaned over to peer into the box. It was their stuff from the house. It made her world feel both less fractured and more off kilter. It was good to have it back, but it seemed odd to have it there, not in the house she’d thought she’d be peacefully renting.

  She sighed and let Josh slide off her lap so she could dig through it.

  "Everything’s there that you asked for," the cop said defensively.

  "Yes. Thank you. I just want to make sure my camera equipment made the trip okay." She found it and held various pieces up to the light. Then she got a sudden headache.

  "Those other pictures," she thought aloud.

  "What pictures?" Joe asked sharply.

  "It’s something else that doesn’t make sense," she went on, almost to herself. "I asked Aunt Susan to send me pictures of my parents. She never did." She put her equipment back carefully. "Why did she lie to me? Did she lie to me?"

  "About sending them?" Joe looked at her blankly. "No, no." She shook her head fretfully. "Why did she tell me that my parents just disappeared if they didn’t? Why saddle me with something like that?"

  "Call her and ask." He pushed the phone at her. Maddie flinched. "Chips in the wall."

  "Yeah."

  She picked up the phone and hesitated. She didn’t know why, but she felt instinctively that she didn’t want to talk to Aunt Susan just then. She r
ealized that she’d only called her once since she’d been there.

  And that was definitely a sign that she was hiding. From something.

  Maddie tapped in the number reluctantly. The phone rang for a long time, and her aunt’s voice was breathless when it came over the line.

  "Hi, Aunt Susan, it’s me." She felt oddly awkward. This woman had raised her.

  "Oh, dear, then I’m glad I came to the phone. I was pulling up weeds in the garden. How are you? How’s our Josh?"

  Maddie glanced over at him. "Better." It was nothing she could put a finger on. He seemed ... stronger, she thought, in spite of everything. "Aunt Susan," she went on suddenly, "I never got those pictures."

  "What pictures, dear?"

  "The ones you were going to send me of my parents." There was a short silence. "Why, I plumb forgot."

  "I figured that. Could you send them now?" Maddie realized that her voice was strained.

  "Oh. Of course. As soon as I finish up outside, I’ll look for some."

  "Thanks."

  "Is something the matter, dear? You sound odd." Maddie closed her eyes. So much. So much was

  wrong, and unless she was way off base, Aunt Susan was a part of it.

  "Rick is here," she said finally, flatly.