McParland was waiting for them at another corner, this one at the edge of a rotary. To the left a bridge with columns shaped like saltshakers crossed the Charles River to Cambridge; to the right a wide road let into the center of Boston. A stairway and footbridge led to a subway platform. Headlights flowed in every direction at once. Beyond the rotary hulked the outline of the old jail, with its blackened windows like eye sockets; to its right a short road leading to the bright hospital entrance.
“Are you all right?” McParland asked South.
“Of course,” South said.
“Fine, then,” McParland said.
Outside the glass doors of the hospital entrance a cab driver argued with a police officer about where he could wait for a pick-up; an ambulance orderly smoked a cigarette and chatted with a nurse in light blue hospital scrubs.
McParland stopped and looked at South again. “Should we leave the boy here?”
South glanced at Sam. “No,” he whispered.
McParland studied South. “Fine,” he said.
The lobby was well lit and busy. McParland led the way past an information desk down a long hallway that branched several times. They rode an elevator and climbed stairs and came to a hallway, dimmer than the others. In a small waiting area a middle-aged woman with a heavy chin sat, asleep. Halfway down the hall scarlet poured from under a door. Behind a waist-high counter a nurse in clean white smiled at them.
“We’re here to see Mr. Hammond,” McParland said.
“I’m afraid visiting hours are over,” the nurse said. “You’ll have to come back another time.”
South began to shake. He blinked dryly and started to walk past the desk.
“Please,” McParland said to the nurse.
“Sir,” the nurse said, standing up, reaching for South.
“We know the room,” McParland said, his voice husky.
“I’m going to have to call security,” the nurse said.
“No,” McParland said. “No, you’re not. This man is a very old friend of the patient’s and has come a long way to see him. You may come in in a few minutes to make sure we don’t tire the patient.” He touched her wrist.
The nurse stared at McParland. “A few minutes,” she said.
“My God,” South said, stopping, his feet awash in scarlet. He opened the door.
The room had a hospital bed surrounded by beeping machines and monitors, a deep blue rug, a bookcase, a bureau, and armchairs. Flowers in glass vases covered every available surface.
South blinked. For a moment the center of the bed was only colors, swirling; he made out the figure of an old man, bald, mouth open, head tilted back on a pillow, bones protruding from pale skin, wide dark eyes staring from deep sockets. Tubes of various thickness led to and from the body.
“Hammond,” South said, approaching, his mouth twitching. He stopped and pressed his head in his hands.
Sam and McParland stood in the doorway.
The eyes in the tiny dry head, full of fear, turned slowly to South. The lips moved soundlessly.
“Hammond,” South said again.
The old man closed and opened his eyes slowly. A fleeting relaxation of his brow and drawing back of his lips from his teeth in a smile indicated relief; then it was gone and his face was still. He stared at South.
“Steady,” McParland said from the doorway.
“South,” the old man whispered.
“Yes,” South said, stepping closer. “You have not forgotten, Hammond.”
The old man groaned.
South tottered and Sam moved a chair for him to sit in.
Hammond’s lips moved, struggling over his teeth, grimacing. “South,” he said again.
South leaned forward. “Yes, Hammond.”
“Over,” Hammond said, his voice barely audible. Spittle formed at the corner of his mouth. He closed his eyes and opened them. “Not dead, am I?”
“Soon,” South said. “Soon enough. Do you know what’s next, Jamie?”
Hammond shook his head faintly. “Hell,” he said.
South stared at the wrinkled skin, tight over bone as if it were clinging. He wondered if he had looked so terrified when Hammond had struck him the first time. He felt his body twisting and felt nauseous.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know, Jamie, if anyone goes there. I’ve heard rumors.”
Hammond’s lips moved. “What,” he said after great effort.
South nodded. “I see fear of Hell hasn’t made you repentant,” he said.
Hammond labored again to speak. South pressed his hands to his eyes and McParland moved to stand just behind his chair.
“But—you… here… torment me….” Hammond managed to say finally. He tried to sit up but had to lie back.
“No,” South said. Rage massed in his chest but suddenly began to subside. “You are singularly ungrateful, Jamie, but you always have been. I will let it pass,” he said.
Hammond’s eyes opened wide. “Nothing there,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Yes, I am here,” South said. “If I am an hallucination of yours, would you like me to pull the plug on some of your wonderful machines?”
Hammond looked at him. “Please,” he said. “Please.”
The two men regarded each other with full eyes.
“I never had the chance to be where you are,” South said. “To be so sick and tired of living that I would rather give it up. That’s another thing you took from me.”
“Hell with you,” Hammond said.
South wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. Hammond stared at the ceiling. The machines by his bed hummed; one beeped at regular intervals.
“Hell with you, friend,” South said. He breathed deeply to calm himself. “Listen to me, Jamie,” he said, leaning forward, his voice soft. “Your time is short, is it not? You can probably see it already. Perhaps not as short as you’d like, but think of all those whose wasn’t as long as they’d liked and have the decency to enjoy your last hours. While I was alive we were friends and you killed me. You killed me, James Hammond. But I am not here to torment you or to forgive you, though I pray that you will have to answer for it all. All of it. I am here to set right the one thing that I can—the one thing that you can.” South turned to Sam and motioned him forward. “Sam,” he said, “read the new papers to Mr. Hammond.”
Sam took the papers from his breast pocket and cleared his throat.
“Codicil to the last will and testament of James Hammond,” he read.
Hammond lifted a hand from the mattress and shook it.
“It was my father’s land,” South said.
“Long ago,” Hammond said.
South leaned forward until his face almost touched Hammond’s. His voice came quiet and forcefully. “I will tell you what’s next,” he said. “That’s what you want? I don’t know about hell, but I know you will dangle as I have, as hundreds of others do. There are people who have dangled for three hundred years and when you get near them you still feel afraid, tense, and angry. What do I know of those who dangle with me? They are cheated and hating, even in death. Some move on. A feeling comes, a rumor spreads that a messenger of God is coming, an angel or a saint. But I’ve never seen one. We gather, and some disappear. But no one chooses them, Hammond. They choose themselves. They are each God.
“And you cannot feel time here, Hammond. You can watch the living measure it but you stop feeling the cycles subtly, as you did when you were alive. You don’t look up and think, My God, another year gone.
“But do you know what I have learned? Looking upon the living and their time is like looking upon children measuring the score in a playground game. Looking upon people and their fights, their arguments—even their killings—is like looking at the childish arguments on that same playground. I can remember the sting of being insulted, I can remember how it hurt to be arrested. To have my brothers hate me. But I understand it was how it had to be because humans are children, too smart for our own good.
We feel every slight as if a slight to us is as important as anything in the world. But it is not, Hammond. Your life is not about you, even your very own life, can you imagine such a thing? You cannot, and neither could I. You took away my chance to understand differently while I was alive, and I cannot forgive. I cannot help you by forgiving you.”
South slumped and nodded to Sam, who handed him the papers.
“Listen to me,” South said. “I found the deed to the land. To something from my life. I took it to Sam—to Mr. Morgan, to see who owned it now. And now I know. I have brought it to you. Sign the papers, Hammond. Be at peace.”
Hammond stared at South and his lips moved. “I won’t,” he managed to say.
“Jamie,” South said.
“Hell with you,” Hammond said, the last word nothing more than a squeak.
McParland stepped past South’s chair and, removing his hat, leaned over Hammond so that his moustache almost touched the old man’s ear.
“Mr. Hammond,” he said in a faint but steady whisper that no one else could hear, smelling Hammond’s stale breath and medicated skin. “I have killed, too, Mr. Hammond. There is a special hell for us and I will take you there. I will drag you there and flay the unrepentant skin from your body—the first time. Others will do it a thousand times more. Sign the paper, old man.”
Hammond’s eyes were wide. A sour smell filled the room.
“Give him the paper,” McParland said to Sam. He opened the door and called for the nurse, who came quickly. “Mr. Hammond has asked to change his will, and this is his attorney,” he said, nodding at Sam.
“What’s going on?” the nurse asked.
Sam stepped close to the bed and asked Hammond his name and if he understood what was going on.
“Do you truly want to sign this?” the nurse asked.
Hammond nodded.
Sam held the paper for him and he signed; the nurse signed as a witness.
South raised his head and stood up. He stared at Hammond. “Good luck, old man,” he said.
Hammond looked from South to McParland and back. His lips struggled over his teeth. He blinked slowly.
As McParland and Sam and South left the room the machines hummed for a moment; Hammond’s head sank into his pillow. His lips moved silently over the Hail Mary again and again. Dimly aware of the alarms going off around him, he realized it was now and cried out against it.
Chapter Thirty
Mrs. Atlee
Mrs. Atlee thought she was crying. The pain was everywhere. The room was dark and she could not see in it and thought she must be dead and cried out.
Phillip seemed nearby but she couldn’t see him, only images of his death and of looking down at herself, dying. Then it seemed like the pain wanted to become all she felt or thought so she cried out against it; then it would hurt too much and she would cry out to it for mercy. Life, what was that? Everything, and everything used to be different from this and maybe it could be again if she fought hard enough. Part of her said not to fight, but that was the part that hurt too much. Part of her loved Phillip and missed him and told her of warm sunlight; she could even feel Phillip sometimes. But he wasn’t there but he seemed nearby. So she fought on because giving up was pain and pain she could not trust.
She felt a hand wrap its fingers through hers. How warm those fingers felt; she gripped them and began to cry because it wasn’t Phillip after all. The pain said that if she stopped fighting she’d see Phillip. It attacked her again. She held the fingers and felt how weak her own grip was.
She opened her eyes and it wasn’t Phillip, it was Daddy. But it wasn’t Daddy, either.
Yea though I walk, she said, and said it again.
She opened her eyes again. “Auntie,” she said.
The face leaning over her smiled and the hand gripped hers tighter. There was something she needed to say to that face but all she could remember was that she’d seen her aunt recently and had known that meant her own death was coming.
“Oh, God,” she cried, thrashing in her bed.
Two sets of hands held her down. She opened her eyes—there was Auntie with her hair slick and that awful moustache and another man with a moustache and a black hat.
“It is good to let go,” South whispered.
Mrs. Atlee shook her head. “No,” she said. “God, no.”
The pain attacked again. She squeezed the hand and it squeezed back.
“You have fought long enough,” South said. “It’s a good fight, and now you must let go.”
Stop fighting, Mrs. Atlee thought. But she hated the pain and would not give in to it. So it attacked.
“Please, God,” she said.
South reached over with a towel and wiped saliva from Mrs. Atlee’s mouth. He leaned close to her. “You cannot survive this,” he whispered. “That is all. The tides, the seasons. It is well and good to let go, my dear.”
Mrs. Atlee looked up at him, blinking. “Oh, God, it hurts,” she said.
“Let that go,” South whispered.
Mrs. Atlee felt her head toss back and forth on a cloud of pain while her body floated messages of rust and tearing fabric. She cried out and she couldn’t tell anymore what was pain, what she could trust. She gasped and sobbed.
“It is well and good,” South said. “It is well and good to accept it.”
“Liar,” she said, gasping. Her aunt did not exist; her aunt had been sent by the pain to lie to her. Pain became everything she knew or thought or felt and in that instant it disappeared and there was nothing and it took a moment for her to realize that in the nothing was peace so she leaped to accept it but was pulled back. She opened her eyes and her aunt was still there. Her body would fight on its own. So the pain returned.
Mrs. Atlee felt a face near hers and a hand gripping her own.
“What can I do?” her aunt asked.
Mrs. Atlee moaned. The room wobbled before her, warm and dark. Life the body would fight for even as the soul accepted death. She’d fight to live and she’d lose and accept it. She wanted to tell her aunt this but the pain ripped through her and in a series of flashes the room disappeared and she felt her aunt’s hand for a moment more and then began thrashing, not feeling anything; she was in the nothing again, though it was bright. In a moment she was still.
In the suddenly still room the figure by the bed leaned forward, touching again, soothing. A moment later he jerked back and his hand went to his forehead.
“Gone?” McParland whispered.
“Yes,” South said. “Gone.”
He slumped to his knees. Death again, death always. Mrs. Atlee had fought to the end but without hatred—like a pilgrim, a supplicant. He had accepted his own life now, how he had been cheated during it and cheated in the taking of it. Wasn’t that humility? But it wasn’t enough, was it, to be humble in a struggle or to forgive so that one could feel better because in either case one was still struggling or feeling aggrieved. Humility was in nothingness, in knowing that one was not the most important thing even in one’s own life. To know that was to accept life, and therefore to die at last. My God, he thought. He raised his face. Through the window he saw the night sky.
Chapter Thirty-One
Mrs. Atlee’s Will
“Does anybody want anything before we start?” the lawyer asked, glancing around the conference room as he adjusted a stack of papers in his hands. He was soft and bald and tired.
“Tea, please,” Robin said through her black veil. “With milk.”
The lawyer nodded to his assistant, a dark-haired young woman in a skirt suit, who left the room.
Sam smiled. The conference room had glass walls and a shiny table. His law firm had had rooms just like it, and he thought how glad he was to be leaving there soon. He needed to find something, though. He’d been crazy to walk out on a job without another one lined up and he’d be out of money soon. What the hell was he going to do. His father was sitting across from him, next to one of Robin’s sisters, who was also wea
ring a black hat and veil. Which sister had thought of the veil first, Sam wondered. Robin sobbed into a handkerchief and Sam felt guilty for having uncharitable thoughts.
“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” Robin said, crying.
Gerry Morgan put a hand on her arm. The assistant returned with a Styrofoam cup and placed it on the table in front of Robin.
“Shall we begin?” the lawyer asked, putting on a pair of reading glasses.
Sam stared at the table. He thought of Mrs. Atlee lying in her bed on that last weekend, not really looking at him.
The lawyer read from the papers and Sam tried to block out the legal language. He’d have to go back to being a lawyer of some kind, and probably soon. But until then he didn’t want to hear anything remotely legal. What was he doing there, anyway? It seemed unholy, sitting in a conference room talking about Mrs. Atlee. Across the hall a floor-length window offered a view of the harbor. Snow was falling on the tall, shiny buildings, on the stumpy brick buildings, on an airplane taking off at the airport across the harbor.
Where was South, Sam wondered. And McParland. Alice was at his apartment, packing some boxes—just trying to keep busy, she’d insisted. As near as Sam could figure it, he had enough money for a couple of months at the most. But he couldn’t imagine not helping Alice with money—Christmas presents for the kids, security deposit and last month’s rent for her own place. So really he didn’t even have a couple of months. He’d have to find something right away. Alice could stay with him for a while, of course, but she’d want to get her own place.
“Sam?” his father asked.
Sam looked up. “Yes?” he said. Everyone was staring at him. “Excuse me?”
“When did she write this will?” Robin asked. “Was she—had she lost her mind?”
“No, Mrs. Morgan, she had not,” the lawyer said. “I witnessed it. She knew what she was doing.”
“Nonsense. When? When did she do this?” Robin said.
Sam looked out the window. The water in the harbor looked black.
Robin sobbed. “It’s not fair,” she said. “It’s not fair. The doctors said she’d—she’d live another month at least. At least, they said. I would’ve been there.”
THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston Page 29