I woke at eight-thirty the next morning in Lee Ann’s bed. Sunlight fell through the slats of the window blinds. I’d been dreaming of grackles, the black birds that crossed the south each fall in flocks of thousands and descended noisily on clusters of live oak trees, ate the acorn fruit and moved on. In my dream I’d been alone in my house and the grackles had darkened the sky and lowered like a suffocating blanket over the roof and walls. I’d screamed but the sound of my voice had dissolved in the Gah, Gah, Gah cry of the birds.
I opened my eyes, startled to find myself away from my own bed. Outside the window, a steady drip of rainwater from last night’s storm fell from a branch or a roof eave and plinked against something metal. No birds cried or sang.
Lee Ann lay beside me. Her face had the soft fleshiness of sleep and death. She opened her eyes when she felt mine on her and she smiled sleepily. ‘Since when do you spend the night?’
‘Since Susan left me.’
Her eyes opened wider. ‘Did she?’
I gave a half nod.
‘Did she cut your forehead and kick you in the ribs on her way out?’ she asked.
‘She took Thomas with her.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ We lay for a while and listened to the plink of water on metal and I wondered how many minutes or hours we could lie in bed before the dripping stopped. ‘What does this mean for us?’ Lee Ann asked.
I thought about it. ‘It means I can spend the night sometimes.’
‘I’m not sure I want you to,’ she said. She smiled sadly and kissed me, got out of bed and went into the kitchen. This is what the world must come to when the love of one’s life died, I thought – the solitude of lying alone in a strange bed that reeked of sweat and sex but not love. For some reason, that thought comforted me, as if I’d lived my whole life moving toward this inevitable moment, and now it was here and it was bearable, or nearly.
We drank coffee at the kitchen table, the windows open to the storm-cooled morning, and Lee Ann said, ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’
‘What?’
‘All of this. What’s been happening the past few days.’
‘It’s my whole life,’ I said. ‘Are you sure you want it?’
‘I’ll stop you if I don’t.’
I told her about the past four days and about the moments that had led to them and I felt like I was confessing but that the confession wouldn’t lighten the burden, and when I finished I said, ‘I’ve told other women I loved them but Belinda’s the only woman I’ve ever really loved. I know that makes me a bastard.’
‘I don’t know what it makes you,’ she said.
We ate breakfast together silently and when I stood to go she said, ‘Come back tonight.’
Susan’s car was gone from the driveway and the house was empty when I let myself in. I wandered into the sunroom. She’d made her bed and cleaned the room before leaving, stacking magazines on the bedside table, lowering the blinds halfway. I resisted an impulse to tear the covers from the bed and ravage the room and instead wandered through the house to Thomas’s bedroom. He’d taken clothes, his laptop computer and his stash of comic books. He hadn’t made his bed. But he’d left a gift for me. Tacked to the wall above the bed was a new drawing. A female character stood against a white background in leather lace-up boots, her thin muscular legs rising to short shorts, her breasts bulging from a bustier. She raised her arms above her head. One hand shot sparks into the air and in her other hand she held the severed head of a cat. A word bubble that rose from her mouth said: Kill the asshole!
‘Well,’ I said, and wandered back through the house.
A quick search on the computer brought up the phone number of the Consulate General of Jamaica in Miami and a call to the Consulate redirected me to the Jamaican Embassy in Washington. The Embassy gave me a United States phone number for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The woman I talked to at the Ministry, sounding more British than Caribbean, said that Godrell Graham was on a business trip but gave me a cell phone number where I could reach him.
One of Graham’s assistants answered my call. He hesitated when I asked to speak with his boss until I said that my call concerned a party that Don Melchiori hoped to hold in his honor.
Graham picked up the phone and asked angrily, ‘Who is this?’
‘My name’s William Byrd, Mr Graham,’ I said. ‘I think we share some concerns.’
‘What’s this about Don Melchiori?’
‘He’s one of the concerns,’ I said. ‘I know what happened to your daughter. I’ve seen pictures of the night she died. I know who was there.’
He was quiet for a moment. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing. Just to talk.’
‘About what?’
‘A friend of mine was also at the party where your daughter died,’ I said. ‘My friend’s dead too.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘Why?’
‘I’d like to meet with you and talk.’
‘We’re checking Florida port facilities. I’ve been in Miami but we’re heading north to JAXPORT this morning.’
‘I can meet you by the port,’ I said. ‘How long have you been in Florida?’
‘Two weeks – why?’ he said.
Two weeks brought him to Florida just before the killings started.
‘And what do you drive when you’re in the States?’ I asked.
He said, ‘I have a driver. Why?’
‘Does he drive a green SUV?’ I asked.
‘What’s this about?’
‘What does he drive?’ I said.
‘A limousine.’
I said, ‘A place called Blackeye’s Fish Camp, a couple miles from the port, has a restaurant. Can you meet me?’
‘I can be there at two,’ he said. ‘Bring the pictures of my daughter.’
I hung up.
An ugly job awaited me in the kitchen. Susan had made her bed and adjusted her shades but she hadn’t dealt with the real mess. I figured she must have seen Fela’s severed head as a fair reminder of what I’d done to our family.
When I opened the refrigerator, the gamey smell of rancid meat poured into the room. I picked up the bowl but Fela’s blood had softened the unfired clay and the sides crumbled in my fingers, so I scooped up the pieces as well as I could and ran into the backyard, past the pool and down the slick grass to the quarry pond. I dropped them on the mound where I’d buried Fela’s body. Then I returned to the kitchen, unloaded the refrigerator of milk, juice, a bag of oranges, a slice of pizza – everything that the stink of Fela’s rotting head could contaminate – and carried it all outside to the garbage.
The morning sun was high and hot but a cool breeze crossed the quarry pond as I shoveled Fela’s head and the pieces of clay bowl into a second hole. Afterward, I scrubbed my hands and arms in the shower, though I knew that the stain was deep. I didn’t get dressed. I climbed into bed naked and lay with my eyes wide, staring at the white ceiling, shaking with a guilt and sadness worse than cold.
I needed to decide whether to call Charles before going to see Godrell Graham. When I’d told him about my conversation with David Fowler he’d said that the information Fowler had given me pulled this thing together. But I’d still been a long way from knowing what had happened or why. Melchiori’s Jamaica pictures explained a lot. Belinda had died because she was at the party. Someone was angry about what had happened to Tralena, or someone wanted to get rid of the women who had witnessed her death, or Tralena’s death had tipped someone’s mental balance and turned him into a killer. If I followed Melchiori’s hints and the implications of the cut-and-pasted pictures that fell from an S&M magazine, that someone was Terrence.
What if Godrell Graham gave me information that pinned the killings on Terrence? Would I kill Terrence? Would I hurt him? My own son? I didn’t feel the blood between us, not as I felt it with Thomas. But still I was uncertain what I would do.
Charles wouldn’t hesitate to kill or hurt him though. If I called Charles now and Graham made us believe that Terrence had killed Belinda and the others, Terrence would be dead or so badly injured he’d never fully recover. Not because Charles loved or cared for Belinda. But because there simply was no alternative for him. He fixed what needed fixing, broke what needed breaking.
Eight years back, when I’d suspected Susan was having an affair with that real-estate agent, I’d called Charles and asked him to help find out whether I’d lost her for good. We’d followed the man to work. We’d watched him meet Susan for lunch. We’d sat in Charles’ car as they stood together in a park. Then one morning while we waited for him outside his house, Susan arrived and went inside.
‘Go in after her?’ Charles asked.
‘No,’ I said.
We waited for two hours and Susan came out again and the man, wearing a bathrobe, walked with her on to the driveway. They stood together and Susan looked happy in a way I hadn’t seen since before Thomas was born and they kissed and then she got into her car and drove away.
The man stood alone on his driveway, enjoying the breeze – happy, too, as far as I could tell – and so I got out of Charles’ car and went to him.
He seemed to recognize me – Susan must have shown him pictures – but he didn’t seem to fear me. I could have killed him then. I felt the strength in myself to do it. But I talked to him instead. I told him he needed to end the affair. I might have threatened him but I didn’t touch him.
He looked at me calmly. He was shorter than I was and thick around the middle, a friendly-looking man. ‘OK,’ he said.
‘You’ll end it?’
He nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘OK,’ I said and went back to Charles’ car and climbed in. ‘He said he would end it,’ I told him.
‘I’m unconvinced,’ Charles said.
‘He said it.’
‘And I’m unconvinced.’
He reached into the backseat and got out of the car with a wooden bat. He went to the man and swung it so hard against the man’s knees that they buckled backward and the bat shattered. The man screamed with the purest pain you would ever want to hear.
Charles climbed back into the car as the man lay broken on his driveway. He started the engine and said, ‘Now he’ll end it.’
‘That was unforgivable,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘That’s why I did it.’
I would go see Godrell Graham alone, I decided. I shaved and got dressed. My meeting with Graham wouldn’t start for another two hours but everything in the house spoke to me of all that was gone or leaving, so I got my keys and stepped out the front door.
Charles’ Dodge Charger was parked at the curb. Charles was getting out of it. I forced a smile. ‘Hey … Good morning.’
He glanced at the sky as if he hadn’t noticed. ‘You didn’t answer your home phone when I called. Or your cell.’
‘I was burying Fela’s head,’ I said, ‘and then I showered. What’s up?’
‘I found your hooker friend, Aggie.’
‘Where?’
‘Come on,’ he said and climbed into his car.
We drove to a stretch of Philips Highway lined by cheap motels. Rusting late-model cars stood in the sun-bleached parking lots. Charles pulled into the lot of the Luego Motel, a dirty-brown two-story strip with an attached diner.
‘Luego. What kind of name is that for a motel?’ I said.
‘It’s a good name. Hasta luego. Makes you want to come back and stay again.’
‘It doesn’t make me want to come back.’
Charles parked at the far end and went up a set of concrete stairs to the second-floor landing and stopped outside the first door.
‘Is she alive?’ I asked.
‘Depends on your definition of alive,’ he said and opened the door.
The room was a wreck. A metal chair was bent, the seat torn off. An easy chair that looked as if it had been in bad shape to begin with was toppled over, its cushion gone from the room. The television, ripped from its metal mount, lay face down on the carpet. The covers and sheets were stripped from the bed. Aggie was in the middle of the bare mattress, naked, her knees pulled to her chin. Her back had cuts from her shoulders to her thighs – thin lines of blood, as if someone had sliced her carefully with a razor blade. She didn’t move. As far as I could see, she didn’t breathe.
I asked, ‘Is she …?’
‘Not quite,’ Charles said and nodded at a couple of syringes and a rubber tourniquet on the floor. ‘But whoever did this to her pumped her up with so much coke and heroin that she’s not feeling a thing.’
‘Who did it?’
‘He was gone by the time I got here.’
‘What did he cut her with?’ I asked.
‘He didn’t. He whipped her.’ He pointed to a long strip of plastic next to the bed. ‘With the electric cord from the TV.’
I looked around the room. There were no large plastic bags and there was no clothesline. This didn’t look like the work of the man who’d killed Belinda and the others.
‘What do you want to do with her?’ Charles asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘D’you want to get rid of her?’ he asked.
‘I want to get her to a hospital.’
‘She could cause problems,’ he said.
‘What kind of problems?’
‘The police already connect her to you.’
‘I was with you when they say the man forced her into his car.’
‘Sorry, but they won’t see me as a very good alibi.’
‘Let’s get her to the hospital,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I’ll take her. But I’m dropping you off first. You don’t want to be around.’
We wrapped the bed sheets around her as well as we could, carried her downstairs to Charles’ car and squeezed her into the backseat.
‘How did you find her?’ I asked as we pulled on to the highway.
‘Same way I find anyone. I asked questions and asked them the right way.’