This case in particular he was not looking forward to at all. By any stretch of the imagination, Jackson was having a very shitty day, the last forty-eight hours serving only to deepen the mystery. They had gotten exactly zip out of the three spray-paint perps from Tuesday's incident at Custis Manor. Their presumed leader, a lowlife by the name of Henri Hayes, was particularly eloquent in his silence. Hayes had a criminal file over a half-inch thick and knew the drill by heart — he shut up, asked for a lawyer, and waited. The other two henchmen followed his lead, though whether out of loyalty to Hayes or fear of him was up to debate. In Jackson’s view, either was likely.
There was no question that Hayes knew far more than he was saying, which was nothing. There was also no way Jackson could tie any of the suspects to the bizarre scenario that had unfolded upstairs. Everyone interviewed at the scene had placed the trio downstairs the whole time; aside from the coincidence of timing, there was not a scrap of evidence to connect them to the other, far more mysterious incident. They were booked and arraigned on misdemeanor charges and held as long as possible, but when their bail was made, Jackson had no choice but to set them free.
To compound his joy, Jackson's superiors had spent the better part of the day chewing off his not-inconsiderable ass. They wanted answers and assurances: the holiday weekend was upon them, and there was no telling what news of the protests might do in an already charged atmosphere. Fortunately for all, the Custis people had effectively squelched any leakage to the press, presumably at the behest of the estimable Senator Eli. The story had made page two of the papers and had barely blipped on the local news stations, partly due to endless coverage of some new wrinkle in the war on terrorism and the upcoming elections, but also due to the Custis Foundation refusing to allow news crews on the property. It was a small mercy, but Jackson found it strange.
Not nearly as strange, though, as what the media and the good citizens of Stillson Beach didn’t get to hear about — the upstairs bath, or “voodoo room”, as it had been christened in-house. Indeed, given the lockdown effected by the Manor’s tight-lipped security, it was only by sheerest chance that the officers responding to the scene were made aware of the bizarre scenario courtesy of a tour guide named Bambi Walsh. Ms. Walsh was hysterical when the officers encountered her, and given their subsequent grisly discovery, her reaction was entirely warranted — she freaked out, quit, and promptly holed up in her tiny apartment on Bayview Avenue.
Jackson sighed and pushed open the doors leading to the morgue. Elizabeth Bergen, the Chief Medical Examiner, was seated on a rolling stool at the lab counter, munching on a Subway sandwich, red hair pulled back in a ponytail, glasses pushed up on her forehead, feet barely touching the floor. Bergen pushed back from the counter and stood. At five foot two she barely reached his chest, but Bergen made up in attitude what she lacked in altitude.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
“Day sucked.” Jackson replied.
“Wanna trade?”
“No thanks. What you got?”
“Catch of the day,” she said. She tossed him a pair of disposable latex gloves; as he slipped them on Bergen moved to the bank of stainless-steel drawers that dominated the sterile room. Bergen swung a door open and hauled out the man-sized tray on rolling glides, inside, a body lay wrapped in an opaque plastic zippered bag. Bergen opened it, revealing a young Caucasian female.
“Harbor patrol found her on this morning’s tide. We ID’d her off dental records.” Bergen checked her tag, cracking deadpan, “Wallace Jackson, meet Bambi Walsh.”
Jackson looked at the dead girl and grimaced. Her tan skin was puckered and pallid, face and torso chopped into an unrecognizable hash and scored with hundreds of smaller, shallower wounds. She smelled faintly of seaweed. “What’s the cause of death?” he asked.
“Officially? Drowning,” Bergen replied. “There was water in the lungs, anyway. The deeper lacerations are postmortem, most likely a propeller; the rest look like barnacle abrasions from bumping up against a hull.”
“Accidental?”
Bergen shrugged. “Hard to say. Her BAC was point eight-five. Could’ve had one too many and took a long walk off a short pier. Could’ve had help…”
Bergen zipped the bag and slid the drawer back into its recess.
“Great,” Jackson muttered. “Just great.”
“Hey, don’t order yet,” Bergen said. “You also get a free set of steak knives.” She motioned to the microscope. A wafer-thin slice of matter lay pressed on the little slide under the lenses; Jackson regarded it warily, then leaned forward and squinted into the eyepiece.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“Tissue sample. It’s fresh.”
“And?”
“Consider the source,” she said. Bergen gestured to a small steel tray adjacent to the scope. Jackson peered inside. The severed hand lay: palm up, fingers folded loosely over like the legs of a dead crab. She looked at him gravely. “We get our share of parts down here, Chief,” she said. “But they’re usually not still moving.”
Bergen looked at her quizzically. But before he could say anything, the damned thing twitched.
“Whoa!” Jackson blurted. “What the…” he stammered. “How the fuck…?”
“Good questions,” she said. “Been asking them myself all day.”
Jackson looked again. As he watched, the hand twitched again, a weak spasm.
“This is a trick, right? Like that thing with frog legs…”
“Galvanic response? You wish.” She shook her head. “We first noticed when we tried to print the thing. Had it in the meat locker to stave off decomp, but then we noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“There is no decomposition,” she said. “The stump’s severed so clean it’s like it’s been cauterized. I took a tissue sample about an hour ago to analyze it, and that’s when it started. Like it woke up or something.” She paused a beat. “Go ahead and touch it.”
Jackson looked at her like she was nuts. Bergen rolled her eyes. “Relax, Jackson. It won’t bite.” She took his hand and placed the fingers lightly upon the severed wrist. “Notice anything?”
“It’s still pliant,” he said, curiosity overcoming revulsion. He felt again, then jerked his hand back suddenly.
“Jesus, is that…?”
“Yup,” she nodded gravely. “Fucker’s got a pulse.”
Jackson sat back on a stool in naked shock as Bergen reached around him. “I wanted you to be here when I did this. Borrowed this rig from EMS.” She reached for a pair of wires with a small plastic clip on one end, placed the clip carefully on the tip of the index finger, then reached over to a small life-systems monitor and flipped it on. The screen lit up, a glowing green line scrolling. It blipped, scrolled some more, blipped again.
“Whatever it is,” she said, “it ain’t dead yet.”
Jackson stared at it, dumbfounded. “Liz, what the hell’s going on here?”
“Beats me, Chief,” Bergen said. “But if you find the guy this belongs to, ask him if he wants it back.”
6
It was just after nine when the Land Cruiser swung into the narrow gravel drive, tires crunching stone as the headlights illuminated the modest ranch-style split-level home surrounded by a thick grove of trees and a large, unmowed yard. It had been a long, tense trip, the crush of beltway traffic gradually giving way to secondary highways and a vast suburban sprawl of strip malls, fast-food joints and faceless neighborhoods. As darkness fell, the scenery faded to long wooded stretches of state parkland dotted with glimpses of beaches, marshes, tidal flats, and inlets, and all of it punctuated by the complete absence of conversation within the vehicle. Caroline had refused to leave Zoe behind, and Kevin didn’t dare leave them without a referee.
Caroline had felt the knot in her stomach tighten with each flat and passing mile. And as the road whipped by she felt herself transported back through time as well as space to a night long ago and a younge
r version of herself, younger even than the sullen shadow of her daughter slumped in the back seat: a young Caroline Tabb driving down these very same roads in a beat-up VW Beetle, long hair wafting in the slipstream, the Police’s Ghost in the Machine wailing on the stereo, a roach clip smoldering in the ashtray. A young girl dreaming of a mysterious and gleaming future in New York or Paris or London, far beyond the tidal pull of this place. A young girl dreaming of one day escaping and never, ever coming back.
The truck pulled up in front of the garage and stopped. As Kevin keyed off the ignition, the sounds of crickets and cicadas swelled oppressively in the night air. Caroline checked her makeup in the visor mirror and gave a practice smile. “Well, we’re here,” she said.
“Big whoop,” Zoe muttered. Caroline glared at her daughter in the mirror. She knew full well that Zoe hadn’t seen her maternal grandmother for years, collateral damage from a mother-daughter blowout shortly after the death of Caroline’s father; the resulting years had led to an escalating estrangement, familial bonds winnowing down to holiday phone calls and the barest of contact. It was only reasonable to expect that Zoe’s grandma would be a peripheral figure in her life. But at the moment, Caroline was not feeling reasonable.
“Behave,” she said. Their eyes locked for a moment, then Zoe looked away in defiant resignation.
Outside, the porch light went on. A silhouette appeared in the kitchen doorway: Doris Tabb, waving. Caroline waved back. And for better or worse, she was home.
Zoe looked on in surprise as they entered. Her grandmother’s house, like Grandma herself, was a genetic one-eighty from her mother’s carefully coiffed domestic ambience: a cluttered clash of castoff flea-market fare interspersed with tumbling piles of newspapers, magazines and junk mail, all buttressed by plastic shopping bags from designer discount chains like Ross and T.J. Maxx. Elvis and Beatles memorabilia covered the tabletops, some still in their original packaging. It looked pack-rat pathological, an Alzheimer shopaholic.
“Never mind the mess,” Doris said, waving it all off. “I cleaned out the guest room for ya, and Zoe, sweetie, you can have the couch. Just throw your bags in and take a load off. Y’all want some iced tea?”
Doris ushered them in as Kevin smiled and humped the luggage upstairs. She was a rumpled dumpling of a woman in an oversized denim shirt and workout pants, silvered hair cut short, with dangly earrings and bangly bracelets and a perpetual cigarette between her fingers. She hugged Caroline, who stiffened and tilted her head, not so much returning the gesture as enduring it. “Good to see you, sweetie,” Doris said, patting her back.
“Hello, Mother,” Caroline said, then disengaged. “I better help Kev.” As she retreated Doris turned to Zoe, beaming. “And look at you, baby girl,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Come give your ol’ gramma a hug.”
Doris threw her arms open and enveloped Zoe, who hugged her back awkwardly, looking over her shoulder. “Wow, check it out,” Zoe said, teen angst ceding to momentary wonder. The dining room table had been overtaken by an elaborate rig of laptop computer with an extension flat panel LCD monitor, multifunction fax/printer, flatbed scanner, and cable modem; wires snaked off and draped down onto the floor in tangled piles. A digital camera sat on a tabletop tripod. “Damn, Grandma, are you like a hacker or something?”
“EBay, baby.” Doris winked conspiratorially. “When your Granddaddy died, he didn’t leave me a pot to pee in. Thank God for the Internet — do you realize how much money you can make selling crap?”
“No way,” Zoe said.
“Way.” Doris smiled and ducked into the kitchen, returned with two glasses of iced tea. She handed one to Zoe, clinked glasses, and took a sip. “I was a sixty-five-year-old widow with no visible means of support, and I didn’t know a computer from a Coupe de Ville. But I took a couple of courses and figured it out.”
“You make a living doing this?”
“Hell, sweetie,” Doris said. “I cleared sixty grand last year. I got fifty auctions running round the clock. I go to flea markets, swap meets, yard sales. Buy low and sell high. I’m Dick Cheney’s wet dream come true.”
“Damn,” Zoe said, frankly marveling.
Doris took another sip of tea and looked at Zoe. “So what y’all come down for? Not that I’m not glad to see ya, but your momma don’t tell me squat.”
“Some guy died,” Zoe shrugged. “She’s been all freaky ever since.”
“Who was it?” Doris asked.
“I dunno,” Zoe said. “Justin something…”
Doris heard the name and her face fell.
“Oh, hell,” she said.
Caroline sighed grievously as Kevin placed their bags in the corner of the tidied guest room: bed freshly made, dresser, bookcase and night tables dusted and smelling faintly of Pledge. Even the spines of the books were dusted. “It’s not that bad,” he said, conciliatory.
“Are you kidding? It’s worse,” Caroline replied. “Do you see this?” She gestured to the neat room. “It’s like she did it to spite me.”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a little bit?”
“Am I?” Caroline huffed, then sat on the bed. “I don’t know,” she confessed miserably, then added, “Sorry. I just really don’t want to be here.”
“Then why are we?”
“Because,” Caroline started, then stopped, thinking, because I owe him… because I need to know if I made the right choices with my life… because I need to know if I ever really had a choice at all. But all that came out was, “Just because.”
From downstairs, a burst of laughter sounded — Doris’s raspy nicotine cackle, followed by a rare accompaniment: Zoe’s laughter, uncharacteristically girlish and delightful. Caroline looked at Kevin, dejected.
“Great, they’re bonding,” she said sarcastically, then, softer: “Sorry. Go on down. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Kevin nodded and kissed her on the forehead, then moved to the door like a man tip-toeing through an emotional minefield. Caroline watched him go, feeling a thousand hairline cracks spread through the thick shell of defenses that constituted her psychological Kevlar.
As the downstairs conversation swelled to a cheerful burble, Caroline’s gaze fell upon the bottom shelf of the bookcase; she reached down and pulled out a thin hardbound edition of the Stillson Beach Sentinel, her senior yearbook. The sea green leatherette cover was faded, but the embossed logo — a pre-P.C. Indian brave in full feathered headdress and stoic, chiseled profile — was still visible. Caroline ran her fingers across the image, remembering the contest amongst the student body for the new design that would grace the cover, remembering Doris goading her into submitting a drawing, Caroline feigning disaffected disinterest while secretly excited. Remembering the day they announced the winner and hearing her name reverberate through the halls as she hunkered in the girl’s bathroom with Amy Kaplan and Mia Cheever, blowing a joint in one of the narrow stalls.
Caroline opened the book, its laminated pages stiff and crackling. She paged quickly past the ‘T’s’ and her own younger self until she came to the ‘V’s’ little black and white picture of the roguishly good-looking kid with the dark and soulful eyes, a sly little bad-boy half smile on his face, peering out from another lifetime ago. The name beneath the photo read Justin Van Slyke.
Caroline looked at the picture; she felt fragile, vaguely resentful, but weirdly exhilarated, like there was a strange sense of completion to this, some long-neglected loose end about to be tied at last.
“Because I owe him,” she murmured. Then put the book away.
After dinner, Doris and Zoe were seated at the kitchen table as Kevin and Caroline bid an early good night; Caroline wavered a moment at the door, then gave Doris a stilted hug.
“’Night, Mother,” she said.
“’Night, sweetie,” she replied, and patted her back. “Y’all sleep tight.”
Caroline nodded and looked at Zoe, who was lingering at the table. “You going to bed?�
� she asked. Before Zoe could answer, Doris interceded.
“Y’all scoot. I want to spend some time with my only granddaughter,” she said, waving them off. Zoe looked at her, than back to Caroline.
“It’s okay, I’ll hang awhile,” she said, smiling. “I’m still pretty wired from the trip.”
“All right,” Caroline said awkwardly. “G’night, then.”
“G’night,” Zoe replied serenely. They did not hug. Doris and Zoe watched as they retreated, then Doris winked at Zoe conspiratorially.
“Hot damn,” she said impishly. “Wanna drink?”
Zoe’s eyes widened as Doris went to the kitchen cupboard and produced a bottle of Jack Daniels. “I tucked this away out of respect to Kevin, but after an evening with your momma I damn sure need one.”
Zoe giggled as Doris returned with the bottle, a pair of gold-rimmed shot glasses, and a fresh pack of smokes. She lit one and looked at Zoe. “How old you say you were again?”
“Nineteen,” Zoe replied.
“Close enough,” Doris said, and poured. The two women clinked glasses and downed the shots. Zoe felt the liquor burn and exhaled sharply; she looked at Doris. “Gotta tell ya, Grandma, you’re like the anti-mom.”
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