by John Moss
Morgan grasped for alternative explanations, but nothing took hold. Details and patterns careened through his brain in slow motion as if he were in a car spinning out of control and a part of his mind was poised off to the side, waiting to see how everything turned out.
Griffin had forced himself on Miranda. Before that, on Molly’s mother, and after, on Molly, his own daughter. This history alone, foreshortened by the intensity of the moment, seemed proof of the man’s rapacious depravity. A whole range of ghastly scenarios radiated out from the probability that Robert Griffin was responsible for multiple murders and that Eleanor Drummond had known about his homicidal proclivities.
Molly Bray had become part of her assailant’s world. She had brought up her daughter with Griffin’s resources and assumed strange authority in his life. Was her control not only through using the sordid particulars of her birth like a weapon, but in knowing he was a serial killer, knowledge that would implicate her in his crimes? If power corrupted, wielding power over evil might corrupt absolutely.
Morgan was intrigued, as his ideas coalesced, that he had immediately accepted the explanation offered by Mrs. de Cuchilleros for the unnatural contours at the bottom of her pond. There was a ghastly inevitability to the revelation of profligate death. The bodies, he was sure, were there.
And Miranda was part of the equation, an inextri-cable and vital link between Molly and her mother, between Molly and her daughter. Among the convoluted relations revealed about daughters and fathers, the release of Miranda’s suppressed memories was strategic. Molly, playing with death like a puppeteer, had died with the conviction that Miranda would fiercely protect Jill’s interests.
Morgan turned directly to face Mrs. de Cuchilleros. “We’ll drain the ponds. We can do yours from over here. I believe they connect.”
“Oh, my goodness!” she gasped. “Really?”
She was stunned, faced with the sudden possibility that what she imagined was real. It was as if she had been anticipating the relief of being scolded and sent home. Morgan’s response had thrown her into giddy confusion. She grasped Dolores by the arm, obviously wanting to withdraw.
“My goodness is right,” said Morgan. “You’ve been a great help.”
Mrs. de Cuchilleros seemed to have suddenly aged, and Dolores glanced furtively around like an anxious tourist yearning for something familiar.
“You should leave now and make sure the door in the tunnel isn’t locked. The police will need to get back and forth. And please unlatch your gate so we have access from the street.”
“I don’t know what we’ve got ourselves into, Dolores. Come along now. It was very nice talking to you, Detective Morgan.”
He grimaced at the woman’s genteel formality as the old woman took her accomplice by the arm to steady herself. Leaning precariously forward, they made their way to the French doors and disappeared into Griffin’s den.
Mrs. de Cuchilleros’s closing words drifted back to him. “I believe we both need a nice cup of Tippi Assam.”
Morgan forced his way through the undergrowth outside the pump room and rapped on the glass of the low window to summon Eugene Nishimura. Then he went back to the formal pool and watched the fish weaving colours in the transparent depths. When Nishimura appeared, they both gazed into the water as Morgan explained the situation, looking up at each other several times to confirm the horror of their expectations.
They discussed how best to drain the slime-green water. The simplest thing, Nishimura suggested, was to pump it over the bank from Griffin’s pond. Assuming they were connected, that would empty the de Cuchilleros pond with the least disturbance. They would have to check both ponds, anyway, smooth bottom or not. Nishimura had a portable two-inch pump in his van that could keep ahead of the natural seepage.
Eugene Nishimura got started on that while Morgan went in to call headquarters. He explained to Alex Rufalo that he thought he had multiple human remains and asked the superintendent to notify the coroner’s office.
After he got off the phone, he walked through the tunnel and out into the de Cuchilleros garden. The water level in the widow’s pond was already beginning to recede. He called over the wall to Nishimura but couldn’t be heard above the sputtering of the pump’s gasoline engine. Shrugging, he went back to Griffin’s place to check that Nishimura was removing the fish, which he was, transferring them to the formal pool.
Morgan returned to watch the water drop slowly down the clay edges of the de Cuchilleros pond. He splashed the water periodically with a rake to make sure the fish swam through to the Griffin side. Turning, he saw Mrs. de Cuchilleros and Dolores, side by side in the dining-room window, each of them holding a bone china cup of Tippi Assam. He waved and they waved back.
By the time a lump at the bottom of the pool emerged into open air, the place was swarming with police personnel, a forensic team, an emergency unit from the fire department, and a squad of coroner’s people, including Ellen Ravenscroft, to whom he nodded without speaking.
Everyone watched in horror as the water receded and the extent of the atrocities became apparent. At first it looked like a series of clay drumlins rising from the depths, the long thin deposits of silt from a glacial retreat. As glistening contours of limbs and torsos and heads took shape, Morgan grieved. He mourned because no one had missed these girls and women enough to resolve the circumstances of their disappearances.
Just as he had immediately accepted that Robert Griffin was a serial killer, Morgan knew with certainty that the man’s victims were female. How many had gone missing each year from the streets, how many would have leaped at a ride in a sleek convertible, driven by a man getting on in age who would easily be satisfied and undoubtedly generous? He might just want to bring them home to talk.
Someone turned a hose on the pile with a gentle spray. Morgan’s assumption that they were female was confirmed as body after body separated in the wash from the mass, each of them wrapped naked with plastic sheeting and duct tape, in various stages of dilapidation. Their flesh seemed shrivelled to the bone despite the water. Decay had been arrested and the effects of putrefaction had been controlled by the clay silt that shrouded each body in layers stirred up by the fish, season by season over years, and by the coldness of the water and its continuous flow through the soil, leaching through the embankment into the ravine.
Morgan felt an overwhelming loneliness. It should never have happened this way to these human beings, most of whom were known only to God. He was drawn, he wanted to hold them, and he was repelled by what they revealed of human depravity and the human condition. Morgan gazed away, up into the foliage of the silver maples, then down into the gaping hole. His eyes were dry, his mouth was dry. He could taste his own blood.
On impulse he looked around and saw that Mrs. de Cuchilleros and Dolores were absent from the window, but striding toward him from the direction of the door below the carriage house was the young woman he had last seen at the morgue. Before he could stop her she was at his side. He tried to steer her away from the hellish scene, but she was focused on him. Her eyes were raw and her expression was resolute. She had clearly been coping with demons of her own.
“Jill, for goodness’ sake, you shouldn’t be here!” he declared.
“I need you to come with me, Mr. Morgan.”
“Jill, I can’t. Wait for me over at Griffin’s. Tell them I said it’s okay. You should be at home.”
She pulled on his arm. “Please, you have to come.”
She wasn’t a young woman; she was a terrified child.
When he resisted, she turned and peered into the gaping hole at the tangle of bodies, and emitted an involuntary moan of pure anguish. Morgan gazed down at her, confused by her unflinching refusal to look away and by the incomprehensible pain she seemed almost to share with the dead. He put his arm around her, intending to guide her back up the lawn.
Abruptly, she took the lead and drew him toward the door leading into the tunnel. He stopped at the darkness and i
ndicated the scene behind them. “Did you know about this?” he asked.
“I knew there were others.”
“Others?”
She pulled away from him. “Mr. Morgan, you must come with me. Now.”
Jill wheeled about, striding ahead of him through the tunnel. When they emerged in the den, instead of taking the bypass that led directly into the bowels of the labyrinth, he expected she would lead him to the garden. But she turned and entered the corridor and went past the big door that was slightly ajar from Nishimura’s comings and goings. She walked past the bathroom, with Morgan two paces behind, so that he had to step back when she swung open the second big door and plunged into the gloom. Unexpectedly, she veered to the right. They hurried past several side passages and stopped at the wine cellar.
The key was in the lock where she had left it. She turned the key and pulled back on the massive door. Morgan helped her, then stepped around her into the rank darkness as she fiddled with the switch. There was a snapping sound, and the room suddenly flared into light. He squinted at the filthy rumple of sheets on the bed. With horror he realized what he was looking at. He lunged forward, stopped, pulled the sheets gingerly aside, and gazed down at Miranda’s tortured body.
Morgan dropped to his knees beside her, reaching tentatively to touch her forehead, which felt clammy and colder than the air. He raised her against his chest and cradled her carefully like a broken thing, examining the fissures of dried blood extending from her mouth in grisly contrast to her taunt and sallow skin. Morgan breathed deeply against her, trying to quell the rising panic, trying to breathe for her, too, as if his own vitality could be passed between them.
“Is she okay?” Jill’s voice was tremulous.
There was an interminable silence. Morgan shuddered, holding Miranda close. He leaned down so that his cheek pressed against hers.
“Is she alive?”
Morgan looked up at the girl without pulling away. His eyes glistened. He lowered his gaze, then closed his eyes. Tears appeared at the corners, gathered, slid down his cheeks. He rocked her gently, and a humming dissonance emerged from his lips. The sound of his involuntary keening startled him. Returning his attention to Jill, he said in a low voice, “Get water. A doctor. Ask for Ellen Ravenscroft.”
“Where?” Jill asked, confused.
“Out where the bodies are. She’s over there. Hurry, Jill.”
The girl disappeared, and Morgan shifted his grasp on Miranda, lowering her weight back to the bed. Then, still kneeling, he placed one hand on her head and lightly mussed her hair while with the back of his other hand, tentatively, as if afraid he could damage her, he stroked her cheek.
She had to be alive. He knew she was alive despite the room being permeated with the presence of death. Morgan focused wholly on her. She needed his strength; she was strong. He thought of how close he had been over the past few days, relaxed in the den, standing casually outside the door, looking in, seeing nothing.
Morgan spoke softly to her. He thought of how he had let her down, not searching, not finding her, not acting on his concern. He had failed her. Morgan concentrated only on her, urging her to respond, to rise from the depths of her suffering and be with him again. Her skin clung to her skull, her torn lips were an untended wound. He leaned down and placed his own lips on hers and remained like that, breathing her air, breathing for her. Then, from deep within her body, a sound slowly rose to her mouth.
“Morgan … you’re smothering me.”
“Oh, my God, Miranda, my God!”
He pulled back. Her eyes opened in the shadows of his body, but as he twisted away to see her, they were battered by the light. She squinted, the lids of her eyes wavering heavily, then she opened them wide.
“Oh, my God!” he repeated.
Her voice scraped against her bloodied mouth. “Morgan …”
Jill came rushing through the door, a mug of water in her hand. “The doctor’s on her way. She’s coming. Is Miranda all right? Miranda! Did she speak?”
Jill knelt beside them. Morgan reached to take the mug, but Jill held it away, refusing to release it. Leaning over him, she poured a few drops between Miranda’s lips. Miranda struggled to find the girl’s eyes, and then the corners of her own eyes crinkled. Her lips made a gesture, but they were crusted and she painfully whispered, “Jill … I’m smiling.”
“I know,” said Jill. She tried to smile back, to fight away tears.
Morgan picked up on the intimations of a complex narrative between girl and woman that their nearly wordless exchange brought to some kind of resolution. He recognized Jill was responsible for Miranda’s entombment, but whatever had traumatized the girl to such an extreme had been, through Miranda’s ordeal, transformed into a shared experience that bound them together. All in good time, he thought. It will make sense all in good time.
He cradled Miranda while Jill poured her another few drops, knowing instinctively not to give her too much. Miranda coughed dryly, choking, then nodded for more. Jill tilted the mug, and Miranda drank a full mouthful, then fell back into Morgan’s arms.
In a voice that seemed to tear at her throat, cracking open her wounded lips so that droplets of fresh blood glistened in the bright light, she murmured, “I was dreaming —”
“For God’s sake, don’t talk,” Morgan cautioned.
“Underwater dreams …” She took a long, shallow breath, exhaled slowly, releasing all the air from her lungs, then inhaled again, her head lolling back as she tried to bring him into focus.
“Will you … with me?”
“What?”
“Under … water,” she said with throaty deliberation, then breathed deeply through her nose and relaxed, pleased with her effort.
He grinned and rocked her gently against his body.
From the corridor they heard Ellen Ravenscroft calling, “Morgan, are you here? My God, this is a terrible place! Where are you?”
He called back, and they heard her continue to mutter as she approached. “What the hell’s going on? I’ve got bodies out there. This place is a bloody crypt, Morgan. I’ve got work to do. It’s bad enough —” From the door she spotted Miranda. “Oh, my God, Miranda! What happened? What’s going on?” Then her voice took on sudden authority. “Morgan, let the poor woman lie back so she can breathe. Here, girl, give me the water!”
Jill and Morgan backed away, but only a little. Ellen quietly examined Miranda, who didn’t try to speak at first. After a while, Miranda rasped, “Bedside manners … appalling.”
“I’m used to more passive clients. What do you expect?”
“Sorry,” said Miranda. “I’m … I’m not dead.”
“That’s all right, love. You were close enough.” There was silence. Ellen explored Miranda’s entire body, not healing from the laying on of hands but drawing life from within. It was a form of magic, Morgan thought. A form of love.
“You’ll pull through,” said Ellen at last. “You need fluids, my love, and lots of affection.” She turned to Jill. “Girl, go and —”
“Her name’s Jill,” said Morgan.
“My name is Jill,” the girl echoed.
“Sorry, love. I didn’t know you were a friend of the family. Go and find the emergency unit. They look like firemen. Tell them Dr. Ravenscroft needs a saline drip pronto. Tell them I’ve got a live one.” Ellen leaned over Miranda, and Morgan knelt beside her.
“How the hell did this happen, Morgan? Where the hell were you? Your partner was near enough dead we’ll have to cancel the wake.”
“Not funny,” whispered Miranda.
“Coroner humour, my love.”
Miranda gagged and coughed what sounded like a prolonged death rattle, and her eyes rolled back into her skull. She closed her eyes, then opened them with a mischievous glint.
“Cop humour,” she said.
Morgan stepped back. Miranda searched for him, and as Ellen bantered, she reached out, drawing him closer, her hand trembling from the effort. He too
k her hand in both of his.
“I did it myself,” she said in an unexpectedly strong voice. “I locked myself in. It wasn’t your fault, Morgan.”
“Well, you left the key in the door, love,” said Ellen. “That’s a hard one to figure.”
“Don’t try,” Miranda said, pausing to swallow against the pain in her throat. “Morgan, you got me through this …”
“Where there’s lust there’s life,” quipped Ellen.
Miranda lay back, too exhausted to respond. Morgan felt emotionally depleted.
“Sorry, Morgan,” Ellen said. “It was dumb scolding you. Nerves. I’m not used to life and death, just death. She’s going to pull through.”
“Damn right,” murmured Miranda without opening her eyes.
Jill returned with a medic, who was carrying equipment for the saline drip. He went about setting up the stand while Ellen inserted an IV needle into Miranda’s forearm. The medic didn’t ask what was going on. When he was finished, he exchanged glances with Ellen to see if she needed anything else, then left without speaking a word.
“Taciturn fellow, but very efficient,” Ellen said.
Once she hooked up the drip and regulated the flow, she pulled the chair close beside the bed and arranged Miranda’s hands over her breast, gently resting her own hand over Miranda’s. She sent Jill for more water and at intervals poured small amounts through Miranda’s lips, which had become swollen, restoring their elasticity and relieving the discomfort a little.
As the deathly pallor of her complexion slowly receded, Miranda imagined she could feel the entire inventory of her internal organs rearranging themselves, one by one, for further use.
After hooking up a second bag of intravenous solution, Ellen said to Morgan, “I’ve slowed down the drip. I’ve got to get back out there. It’s a miserable scene. Give her a couple of more litres. I’ll be back with the talkative guy in a bit, and we’ll get her to a hospital. But she’s coming around. Everything seems to be functioning. I don’t often see this in my line of work — the coming-around part.”