by Harker Moore
He loomed once more at the side of the bed, returning again to his chanting. She felt his touch on her breast. His finger gritty with hot ash. The myrrh scent, overpowering, rose up from her skin.
His hand was moving. Making circles.
Sakura reached for the door. It opened noiselessly.
The front room ran the width of the house, with vaulted ceilings like a cathedral. A large fireplace took up a third of the inside interior wall. Over the mantel was another portrait of the same woman, similar to the one he’d seen in Lovett’s apartment. The glass covering the photograph absorbed a thin rivulet of light seeping in from one of the windows.
Then he smelled it. Drifting down from the stairs, ahead of a watery bubble of illumination. Incense. Sticking to the roof of his mouth, burning into the cells of his brain. And between breaths, his ears registering the voice. Soft and guttural all at once. Speaking now in English, now in some other language he didn’t understand.
He grasped the banister, gun still drawn, walking slowly up the stairs, moving toward the voice from Hell.
The singsong chanting ceased. Adrian slid in beside her.
“Zavebe,” he whispered near her ear.
She said nothing. Her silence cried for Jimmy.
Adrian’s hands were on her, his lips following. Kissing her. Everywhere. His breath moving on her skin like mist. She sought to retreat inside herself but could not. The violation was too real. She breathed, relaxed into the pillows. Accepting his touch. Forcing the lie that was the only hope for her and her child to live a minute, a second, longer.
He began speaking again. The words hypnotic. Slipping away from English.
Then his entry. Inside her. Sudden. A shock that stripped her senses. Eyes open, she fought for light.
A noise outside the bedroom. Footfalls like a cat’s on the stairs. The soft swish-swoosh of breath. The tip-tap of metal against wood. And impossibly, the clear insistent beating of his heart, here and now, filling her, like water filling a vessel.
The hungry weight of Adrian’s body easing in that blessed mixture of sound. In the pure realization that Jimmy had come to save her. That her gift of time had not been wasted. Then as quickly as joy came pain. At the heel of her spine, a serpent uncoiling.
She turned her head, her blind eyes finding him.
“Kitsune…” She heard his scream. His voice and the sound of the single gunshot reverberating inside her as she released the blood and water of their unfinished child from between her legs.
EPILOGUE
Sakura stepped off the mat, finished with his morning exercises. He had not practiced Aikido since his boyhood, but in the last few months, he had slipped easily back into performing the aiki taiso. The exercises, designed to restore a condition of harmony in the body’s energy flow, were apparently ingrained like memory in his muscles. Still, he had progressed as far as he could without the commitment to a dojo. To go further, he needed a partner, uke to his nage. An assailant who was also a teacher.
He stopped in the bedroom on his way to shower, standing before the stepped chest that had once held his wife’s clothes. A framed photograph still stood on the topmost level—a picture of the two of them on their wedding day in Kyoto. This was the photograph he wanted to remember. But it was Lovett’s photographs that he could not get out of his mind.
Among the pictures of Hanae and the other victims found packaged in Lovett’s freezer were also photographs of him, surveillance shots trailing him from the Westlake crime scene back to Police Plaza and eventually to this apartment.
While the media had made much of Lovett’s stalking him, it was not likely that he’d ever been a serious target. What was clear to him was that he had failed to protect his wife, that he had been the instrument of Lovett’s attack on Hanae. The greatest of his many failures.
They might have gotten an early break in a routine cross-check, with Lovett’s name surfacing on both the Milne Gallery list and the list of clinic patients. But the clinic staff had resisted what they regarded as an unnecessarily broad intrusion on the privacy of their patients. The investigation had not been given a copy of Kerry’s appointment book or even a complete list of clinic patients. Would Hanae … Would his unborn child have been spared, if only he’d pushed harder?
And then there were his other transgressions. Going it on his own. Taking a department vehicle. The list went on and included the wounding of a suspect who had not been armed. Amazing what the department could overlook when the public needed a hero. And the media with few of the facts had judged his actions daring, had credited him with saving his wife and stopping a vicious killer. He wanted to shout that he was a fraud.
But his badge had not been accepted. And there were those he still respected in the department who made it clear that his work was valued. Without the accompanying paperwork his gesture remained just that, though he knew McCauley was eager for the day he requested the forms that would make an early retirement official. For now, he was on leave and had not made any decision. In truth, his career was the furthest thing from his mind.
He realized he was still staring at the wedding picture, and now he picked it up, as if somehow it could bring Hanae closer. She had been very weak those first few days in the hospital, having to be reassured about Taiko, about Willie and Michael. Eventually he’d had to allow her official questioning. Detective Johnson had done that, with him sitting in the back of the room.
His wife had asked Adelia what she had not asked him, about Lovett’s condition. She had been told he was recovering from the single bullet that had penetrated his shoulder. She had simply nodded and told Adelia her story. He could still see her face, her emotions clear projections on its pale translucent screen. Disbelief … horror. Guilt. Why did he choose me? The last question had been hers.
It was the question that plagued them both. For beyond the obvious suppositions was something so haunting in Lovett’s photographs of her. In her own portrayal in clay of the man who’d befriended a blind woman. He had once been the stranger who’d befriended her. And he could not get out of his mind a movie that played there— Hanae’s long fingers moving with their slender grace over the face of a killer.
Why did he choose me? The question remained unexamined. A thing that stood between them.
The baby was another. He had been such a fool. So unseeing. The one who was truly blind. He had tried to explain his sorrow. She had spoken no words of blame. But for the first time since they’d met, communication was difficult.
I will only be gone for a while, she had said, and it was six months now since she’d left for Kyoto. Many times in those long weeks, he had thought of his grandmother. It was many years since she had died, and yet he could recall her in a way that went beyond simple memory. Summoned, he always felt her presence. Her wisdom had spoken to him on a thousand occasions. Indeed, it spoke to him now.
It was not this way with Hanae. Though his memories of their life together were sharp and clear, and would always remain so, Hanae herself seemed in danger of slipping beyond his reach. And were he to allow that to happen, he would never again in this life, or in any other, be whole.
And yet he understood that he must not act too quickly. His preparations must be only within his heart for now. A Zen poem came to him, and he spoke the words aloud:
“Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
“Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.”
In New Orleans even breathing was an effort in summer. Days under the relentless sun paralyzed, and evenings lay heavy and seductive like a narcotic. Only cicadas stirred with any purpose in the thick night air.
A pale skink appeared lifeless against the bone white stucco of the lower Garden District home, resurrecting itself from a dark wedge of aspidistra. There was a faint smell of wet, but the rain had failed to materialize. Willie French pushed her bare feet against the wide planks of porch, arcing back and forth in the wooden rocker, humming notes that didn’t fit any particular song. The last
of the ice had melted, diluting her gin and tonic. She brought the glass to her lips and pinched the lime between her teeth, eating the pulp, then tossing the rind. Something skittered across the green water inside the huge black cauldron, where slaves had once boiled sugarcane to syrup.
She pressed the cool glass between her breasts. There was no relief for the heat, but she spurned the damp air-conditioning inside the house. It froze something inside her. The heat only made her listless. She took another swill.
She had stayed on in New York after Lovett’s hearing—there had been no trial—hoping that he would eventually talk. Her dream case study. But that never happened. She eventually told herself that she remained in the city to help Jimmy tie up loose ends with the investigation, help him come to terms with Hanae’s miscarriage and her decision to return to Kyoto. But none of it was the real truth. The case had been put to bed officially, and Jimmy was quite capable of handling his life, both professionally and personally.
She had remained in New York because of Michael Darius. Trying to understand, to find some answers for what had happened between them. The intensity of the murder investigation seemed to have blunted her reasoning, had kept her in a state of unreality. Only Michael’s brush with death had finally forced her out of her stupor. She remembered his kissing her good-bye at the airport. It was dark and cold. A light snow fell. She had shuddered in his arms as his mouth covered hers. It had felt like a kiss that was meant to last a lifetime.
Her brother’s request begging her to come home had been a reprieve. Flying first to Virginia, she’d quickly settled things at Quantico and closed up her apartment. And so she had returned to New Orleans, to the house of her childhood, to reunite with ghosts she’d forgiven but never forgotten.
Once the seat of imperial power, Kyoto was a city of contradictions. Of ancient ways and modern energies. Of mountain and sea. A place whose heart measured its course in the rhythms and colors of the seasons.
From behind latticed walls, Hanae heard Mrs. Kawabata sprinkle water across the narrow pathway that fronted her own home and the home of her parents. A common ritual that kept dust from rising in the summer heat.
She moved from the elevated tatami room where she slept, down into the main room, Taiko at her side. As she passed the tokonoma, she could smell the fresh blossoms her mother had arranged earlier this morning. She knew a small card, placed in the alcove the day of her arrival, rested still against the vase. On the square of rice paper had been written a prayer, offered in thanksgiving for her safe journey home.
It had been January when she’d returned, after the New Year celebrations, and the sky shivered, releasing ghosts, moving in white flurries of snow. Her own heart and mind frozen. At first she had allowed her parents to indulge her, her mother feeding her warm bowls of miso, insisting on long afternoon naps. Her father spoiling her with his funny stories and the sweet cakes she’d loved as a girl, buying her combs to pull her shorter hair back from her face.
Her parents had asked few questions, respecting her privacy, believing that what she most needed was time to heal from the loss of the child. In the mornings she sat in their small garden. In the evenings she walked with Taiko through the neighborhood as far as a small Buddhist temple, then back home again.
She bent now and gave Taiko a scratch on his muzzle. Twice she and her dog had been blessed with good fortune. First the shepherd had suffered no ill effects from the drug he’d been given that day she’d been taken from the apartment. And then later in Japan, the authorities had allowed her to keep him with her during the required two-week quarantine. Settling in with him, however, had been more difficult. A small home that had once made room for her birds had at first found it difficult to accommodate a large dog. She heard the tattoo of his tail on the tatami as though he’d read her thoughts. “Yes, Taiko, even Mama-san you have charmed.”
It had been almost six months since she’d returned home. But still, she saw few friends or relatives, except for Nori, who came to visit regularly, often accompanying her on her evening walks or to the store to buy art supplies so she could start sculpting again. Unlike her parents, her cousin refused to stand on polite convention and asked question after question. Though most remained unanswered, Nori chattered on.
Jimmy called often. Always mentioning coming for a visit. But never a plan. And never asking when she might return. Not since the first time he’d asked and she’d answered he would know when the time was right and would not have to ask.
When she’d first returned to Kyoto, she had not been able to think of Jimmy. Her thoughts a cold dark pool, moving in endless, useless circles. Then after a while she had been able to do nothing but think of him. And that was worse. Her thoughts like glassy heat rising from a desert. Then one evening she tied Taiko to a willow and made her way inside the small temple she regularly passed. Resting on her knees, she sat back upon her heels, her arms on her thighs, palms up, her index fingers joining thumbs to form circles. Slowly the pool became calm and the desert cooled. Her mind stilled and she emptied herself. In that moment she was able to think clearly about Jimmy. And Adrian Lovett.
Why had I ever doubted that Adrian Lovett could harm me? Was it a wish to believe I could not have misjudged him? A wish to believe he was not what he was? Syringes with potassium compounds and LSD had been found in the bedroom of the house in Chatwell. A pair of wings. And she had inhaled the burning incense, felt his fingers rub it into her skin. He had meant to kill her. And himself.
Her instincts had failed her. And so had her heart. The man she had befriended in the park had been Jimmy’s serial killer. Adrian Lovett had killed those men. Had murdered the little girl. Had taken Willie and hurt Kenjin. And twisted inside this horror was her betrayal of Jimmy, and the death of their baby.
Alone now in the house of her childhood, she wept, a shadow of monoganashii inside her heart, the beauty of something precious slipping from her grasp.
Michael Darius parked his car in one of the spots reserved for visitors and walked up the paved drive to the entrance. The evening was still hot, and he could hear the splishing sound of an underground sprinkler system at work. Mueller was on the desk, and he flashed him his identification. Merely a formality now, but still a necessary ritual in these kinds of facilities.
The building had undergone extensive renovations the past few months, and a bank of new elevators had been installed. He entered a car, pressing the button for the top floor, watching the lighted digits pop one after another, waiting for the freeze-flash of his number. The car glided to a stop and the doors sucked open.
Along with the new elevators, all the interior walls in the building had been resurfaced and painted a matte institutional white. The floors had been retiled, and glass and stainless surveillance cages had been constructed on each floor as part of the overall face-lift. He moved up to the cage now. Hodges rose to his feet.
It was a fairly short walk down the hall. There were only twelve rooms on this floor, and at present only three were occupied. Hodges walked ahead, aiming toward the last room on the left. When he stopped, he glanced momentarily through the small window cut into the steel door. Then he turned and gave him the go-ahead nod. Michael stepped up and looked inside.
Only Lovett’s eyes remained alive now, and only when they rested on him, his one regular visitor from the outside. And then they were the eyes of a child, or an animal, who wants to understand why it has been so betrayed.
Severe withdrawal, Willie called it, a not unusual outcome in a subject whose psychosis was as deep-seated as Adrian Lovett’s. The surprise, she’d said, was the degree to which he had functioned normally outside the parameters of his delusion. An atypical paranoid psychosis was her diagnosis. And with no violent episodes prior to the head injury he’d received in the automobile accident, it was a condition that might have been at least partly explained by damage to his brain.
Willie’s expert assessment made a lot of sense. Michael accepted it all. Except in his drea
ms, when once again he pushed against the barrier toward the light, and in one slow instant between heartbeats, he remembered what it had meant to be Lucifer, who wore them all as a garment, transcending all in knowledge and in glory.