I lay on an exam table in the ER at University Hospital. A young black nurse had cleaned my cuts and abrasions and a Pakistani doctor was checking me a second time for the concussion Terrence had given me with the branch. Two uniformed police officers stood outside the exam room. They hadn’t arrested me but they’d ridden in the ambulance and had stayed within a few feet of me since arriving at the scene on the Interstate.
The doctor shone a pen light into each of my eyes and asked the questions you ask when you think someone might have a brain injury. ‘Do you know your name?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it, please?’ he said.
‘I’d rather not tell you.’
‘Why?’
Because, from what Charles had told me before Terrence had broken my phone, the officers outside the room would slap handcuffs on me, but I still hoped I could walk out of the hospital and pursue Terrence. I said nothing.
The doctor’s expression remained neutral. ‘How old are you?’
‘Forty-two.’
He nodded. ‘Your birthday?’
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘Well, would you like to tell me what hit your head?’
‘A large tree branch,’ I said.
‘And how did your head meet this large tree branch?’
‘Sorry.’
He sighed. ‘I believe this is a mild concussion, not that you’re helping me to be sure. You should avoid drinking alcohol for three or four days and of course avoid any illegal drugs. Take it easy, rest, sleep well.’
‘May I leave?’ I asked.
He smiled, tightlipped. ‘If you can persuade the police officers to let you go.’ He left without another word.
The nurse appraised me. My legs were caked with mud, my clothes soaked with swamp water. I smelled like sulfur and decay. ‘Honey, you’re a mess,’ she said. ‘Don’t you have someone you can call to bring you clean things?’
‘If I can get to a cab I’ll be all right.’
The exam room door swung open and the nurse said, ‘Sorry,’ and seemed to mean it.
Daniel Turner stepped in. He looked at me for several seconds and said, ‘Jesus, you’re a sight.’
‘Morning, Lieutenant,’ I said.
‘What the hell’ve you been crawlin’ through?’
‘Worse than you can imagine.’
He shook his head. ‘You look it. Smell it too.’
‘Are you here to arrest me?’ I asked.
A faint smile appeared on his face. ‘Now why would I do that?’
‘Because you think you’ve placed me at Melchiori’s house and Aggie’s room.’
‘Yeah, I want to hear about all that,’ he said.
‘And because yesterday at Belinda’s house you sent two deputies after me.’
‘That was when I thought you were responsible for all kinds of nastiness that I now know you had nothing to do with.’
‘So you finally figured out who did it?’
He looked at the nurse. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Not at all, honey,’ she said, but in her eyes I saw a disdain for Daniel and a protectiveness for me that neither of us had earned. ‘Make yourself at home,’ she said and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Daniel turned to me. ‘Terrence Mabry blamed you for the fire. He said you and Charles Tucker threw Molotov cocktails through the windows. But when he left through the closed garage door I decided we should take a closer look. We found the remains of some bottles of gas but anyone could’ve thrown them, including him. We also found clothesline that matches the line that the killer used on Belinda and the other women. We found plastic bags that match. And we found some of the filthiest pictures you’d ever want to see, including one of Ashley Littleton. We’ve issued a warrant for his arrest.’
I considered all he’d told me. ‘So I’m free to go?’
‘There’s still the matter of who shot Don Melchiori,’ he said.
‘You know it wasn’t me,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid of guns.’
‘So you say. What about Aggie?’
I looked him in the eyes. ‘What about her? I haven’t seen her since your fellow officers talked to us behind the old Chevy dealership.’
‘What worries me is no one else has seen her either. But we’ve got a motel room with blood on the mattress and an eyewitness who saw you going into the room.’
‘I don’t know about a bloody mattress and I’m betting that any eyewitness you found at a motel where Aggie would be staying wouldn’t be worth much.’
‘So you say.’
‘What’s happening with Terrence?’ I asked.
‘We found the car that he stole in the parking lot at the Avenues Mall. There was plenty of blood. We’re guessing he took another car though we haven’t received any reports of one stolen.’
‘He took the owner with him?’
‘That’s the worry right now. But all the witnesses say his arm’s in bad shape. He’ll need to get help for it sooner or later.’
I thought about him enduring the pain and fears of trudging through the midnight swamp. ‘He may take some time before popping his head up.’
‘We’ll be waiting for him when he does,’ he said.
The air conditioning and bright lights of the exam room made me shiver. I asked, ‘So why did you come here to tell me all this?’
‘I figured I owed it to you.’
I didn’t think anyone owed me anything. ‘You had good reasons to suspect me.’
‘But I did more than that,’ he said. ‘I told Susan she should leave you. For her own safety and Thomas’s.’
I knew that Susan would’ve made the same decision on her own but anger flooded my belly all the same. So I changed the subject. ‘How’s Bobby Mabry?’
‘Second- and third-degree burns on his arms and legs. The doctors say he’ll survive.’
‘He’s had to survive a lot in his life.’
Daniel nodded. ‘Some men seem to be born that way,’ he said and he seemed to be including me. ‘Susan and Thomas are outside. You want to see them?’
‘What are they doing here?’
‘I called them,’ he said. ‘I thought I owed you that too.’
I wasn’t ready to face them but I said, ‘I’d like to see them.’
He stepped into the hall and waved them over, then left with the two police officers who’d stood sentry.
Susan wore a blue floral-print cotton dress and carried a small duffel bag. Thomas wore khaki cargo shorts and a white T-shirt. They looked freshly bathed. Thomas came to the exam table and though I was filthy I pulled him to me in a hug. Susan stayed by the door. ‘Hi,’ I said to her.
‘Hi.’ She sounded almost shy. ‘I brought you new clothes.’
‘Come here,’ I said.
She did. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t be. Why?’
‘I thought you did it,’ she said.
I felt a weight in my stomach. ‘Why would you?’
‘You go out at night while we’re sleeping. You aren’t … normal.’
I looked at Thomas. ‘What do you think?’
He shrugged.
‘Did you think I was killing these women?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said.
I said, ‘I think I’m normal.’
Thomas laughed – at me, with me, I didn’t know which – and then Susan laughed too. She put her fingers tenderly on one of the scratches on my face. ‘How are you feeling?’
My head ached. My arms and legs were sore. I was exhausted in body and spirit both. ‘Hungry,’ I said.
We went to the Metro diner and I ordered eggs, bacon, toast and pancakes. After my night in the woods, sitting and calmly eating breakfast with Susan and Thomas, surrounded by men and women dressed in clean clothes and having polite conversations, felt dizzying, a scene from another life. When I pushed back from the table Susan said, ‘Are you going to tell us about it now?’
I gazed at her. She looked like she had nothing to lose from me any more and that made me think I had nothing to lose either. I turned to Thomas. ‘To begin with,’ I said, ‘you’ve got a brother. Or a half-brother. His name’s Terrence Mabry.’ I asked Susan, ‘Did Daniel tell you about that?’
She shook her head though the news didn’t seem to shock her.
So I told them more than I’d ever told anyone other than Charles. I told them about falling in love with Belinda when I was just two years older than Thomas was now. I told them that my friend Christopher had assaulted Belinda’s brother Bobby, that I’d failed Belinda by letting Christopher walk away from what he’d done, and that I’d lived with that knowledge for all my adult life. I told them about meeting Terrence for the first time after Belinda’s death and of coming to think that he must be responsible for his mother’s and the other women’s deaths. I told them about chasing him through a waking nightmare in the swamps and woods north of the airport.
When I finished I looked from Thomas to Susan.
Thomas said, ‘Wow.’
Susan said, ‘Yes.’
‘I love you,’ I told them both.
Susan raised her eyebrows. ‘You’ve said that too often.’
‘I want you and need you,’ I said. ‘Both of you. Like no one else in the world.’
Susan and Thomas dropped me off at home and left again to get their bags from the hotel where they’d stayed the previous night. Inside the house, the motors on the air conditioner and refrigerator hummed like insects. They were familiar sounds in a familiar place, but in my exhaustion I felt out of sorts, out of myself, a man wearing another man’s clothes, an impostor in his house. I walked down the hall and stopped at the kitchen door. Through the back windows the sun was glinting off the swimming pool water and the quarry pond beyond. The grass was dark green and cool to the eyes.
I forced myself to smile. Susan and Thomas were coming home. For better or worse, they were coming. Probably worse but they would be with me and that was good and I hadn’t needed to ask. They were coming because they’d chosen to come. Thomas would draw obscene comic books. Susan would sleep in the sunroom. I would make my rounds to my gas stations and spend occasional nights with Lee Ann. We would try not to infuriate each other.
But first I would sleep.
When I stepped into the kitchen, a shadow moved from beside the door. I stepped to the side, spun and saw Terrence – wild-eyed, his broken arm in a sling, a knife in his good hand. He lunged at me. The knife slashed at my chest but missed. I moved toward his bad arm and the knife slashed again. It caught my sleeve.
I kicked at him and missed. I kicked again and connected and he hollered and the knife clattered to the floor.
He scrambled after it but fell and rolled on to his back. Somehow he got the knife and held it up at me. I kicked his legs and went for his ribs but he slashed again.
He lay on the floor, panting. He was filthy from the night in the swamp. Blood from the exposed arm bone stained his sling and shirt. He smelled like death and decay. His wild, glassy eyes locked on to me.
‘I spend all night chasing you,’ I said, ‘and as soon as you escape you turn around and come after me. Why?’
‘Because you’ll never leave me alone if you’re alive,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to run anymore. Sooner or later you’ll come after me. You know that’s true.’
He was right but I said, ‘I didn’t want to know you to begin with. If you’d kept your hands off your mother and the others I would’ve left you alone.’
‘You’re sick,’ he said.
‘You’re lying on my kitchen floor like a dying animal and you tell me I’m sick?’
He lunged sideways and swept the knife toward me. But he moved too slowly. I sidestepped him and booted him in the ribs. Something cracked inside him and the knife fell from his hand and slid across the floor.
‘You motherfucker,’ he gasped. ‘I’m your son.’
‘You’re nothing.’ I stepped over him and picked up the knife.
He slid away from me until he reached the refrigerator and pulled himself to his feet. His cracked ribs bowed him at the waist. ‘Motherfucker,’ he said again and stumbled toward the French doors. Sunlight danced on the pool and quarry pond. The green grass looked like a cool shadow. As he reached for the doorknob I sank the knife into his back. His body arched and he spun and faced me. I stuck the knife into his chest and left it there.
He found enough life only to cry once before he slid to the floor, his shocked eyes locked on mine.
‘You’re nothing,’ I said and I kicked him again.
When Daniel arrived, Terrence was dead, hunched against the French doors. The room smelled of swamp, sulfur, and the urine that had streamed from Terrence on to the floor as he died.
Daniel asked, ‘What was he doing in your house?’
‘He came to kill me,’ I said.
He stooped in front of Terrence. ‘After running away from you all night?’
‘He tried to kill me last night. He hit my head with a branch.’
‘But this time he tried to stab you with a knife.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which you took away from him.’
‘It wasn’t hard,’ I said.
‘And you stabbed him in self-defense.’
‘I suppose.’
‘In the chest,’ he said.
‘Also the back,’ I said.
‘I see that.’ He looked at Terrence’s body. ‘And the caved-in ribs?’
‘Self-defense.’
‘Uh huh.’
A bald man in a khaki shirt with a patch that said District Four Medical Examiner’s Office went to work on Terrence. An evidence technician bagged the knife. A uniformed police officer stood at the door to the hallway and tried not to look at the body. I went to the thermostat and turned it down.
Familiar voices came from the front of the house. Susan and Thomas had arrived and a police officer was telling Susan that she couldn’t come in. I went to see them. Thomas was sitting on the front porch steps facing the street, his head in his hands. Susan was trying to get past the officer. ‘BB,’ she said when she saw me, ‘will you tell this man to let me into our house?’
I shook my head. ‘You really don’t want to come in here right now.’
‘Yes,’ she said angrily. ‘I do.’
She pushed past the officer and headed down the hall.
‘Stay where you are,’ I said to Thomas and followed Susan into the kitchen.
She stood a few feet from Terrence and gazed at him as if his corpse might hold the answer to an old, painful question. She said, ‘This is him? This is your son?’
‘It’s Terrence Mabry,’ I said.
‘Terrence Mabry,’ she repeated and she spit on him.