The drive back to Falcon Heights was unencumbered by traffic. At three a.m., we had the freeways to ourselves. Even the drunks had gone home.
Merci sat next to me. She wore my jacket over her shoulders and my heater was going full blast, yet she shivered just the same. Several times I asked her if she was all right and each time she said yes. Despite the early hour I felt refreshed, invigorated the way I usually felt after a tough workout. I asked Merci if she wanted to stop for a bite—there was an all-nighter on the strip that served a fair omelet. She wasn’t up for it. She had spent too much time with the decanter of scotch.
“I thought they were going to kill me.”
“They moved faster than I anticipated. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry.” She repeated the word like it was something she had never heard before. “Sorry isn’t going to cut it. You owe me money.”
I nodded my understanding.
“You said a hundred bucks an hour.”
“So I did.”
“I figure you owe me twelve hundred. Plus another fifty to have my dress dry-cleaned.”
“Make it fifteen hundred,” I told her, feeling generous.
“Twelve-fifty is fine. And I want cash. I don’t accept checks. I ain’t no bank.”
“No problem.”
Merci sat back, pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. She continued to tremble.
“Are you okay?”
“I wish you would stop asking that,” she told me.
“I feel responsible.”
“You are responsible.”
“I know. I’m responsible for a lot of things. For example, there’s still the matter of why Richard and Molly Carlson came to me in the first place.”
“To find Jamie,” Merci reminded me.
“No. To find a compatible bone marrow donor for Stacy. Remember Stacy? Little girl who’s dying of leukemia?”
“Little Stacy.” Merci tugged the jacket tighter around her.
“Don’t you think it’s about time you hustled your ass up to Grand Rapids and took the test to see if you’re compatible?”
“Why me?”
“For the same reason they wanted Jamie to take the test. Family members are best. And you’re family.”
Merci gazed out the windshield at something well beyond the reach of my headlights. After a few moments, she asked, “How did you know?”
“This and that. Richard Carlson wanting me to find you—the fact he was so happy when I did. I figure he was holding you in reserve, just in case. And then there was the way he knew exactly when your mother died … .”
“Bastard didn’t even go to the funeral.”
“Probably he didn’t want his wife to know. Then there was Bruder insisting his son was safe with friends. What friends? The way the cops were hunting him, you know they were watching everyone he’s ever known. So, who would he have left his son with? How ’bout his unclaimed sister-in-law, the boy’s Aunt Merci? I figured that when you had to make a phone call before you could accept my offer last night, like you first needed to ask permission. Of who? The baby-sitter, was my guess.
“But to be honest, I didn’t put it all together until I saw you in the gown Jamie gave you.”
“I said I was as pretty as Jamie.”
“And you are. Every bit as pretty.”
We drove a full mile in silence. Finally, I said, “It’s pumpkin time, princess.”
“You’re right. Jamie and I were sisters. We figured it out during our senior year of high school. We weren’t sure what to do about it—deep, dark family secret, small town, all that bullshit. Jamie wanted to tell the world. Richard said he’d disown her if she did. She disowned him first. She came down here to live with me. For seven years I had a family.”
“And the night Jamie was killed?”
“David brought TC to me. He asked me to hide them both and I did. David was terribly confused. A lot of the things he said didn’t make sense. He kept muttering that they were out to get him. That they had killed Jamie and they were going to kill him and TC. At first I thought they were you. Eventually, I learned about the Family Boyz and the Entrepreneurs and about Warren Casselman.”
“Casselman?”
“David admitted that he slept with Casselman’s wife and he believed Casselman might have killed Jamie outta revenge.”
“The thought hadn’t occurred to me,” I admitted, wondering why.
“I tell you, if it weren’t for TC I would have turned him over to the cops right then. He was cheating on my sister.”
“The night you came to my house, it wasn’t to kill me, it was to find out what I knew.”
Merci nodded.
“Later, you realized Bruder couldn’t hide forever, so you sent him to me, hoping I’d help.”
“Instead, you got him killed,” Merci muttered. I ignored the remark.
“Where’s his son?”
“Good people are taking care of him,” she confirmed. “Not like me, they’re straight.”
After a half mile of more silence, Merci asked, “So now what?”
“I think it’s time Richard Carlson accepted his responsibilities, I think it’s time he acknowledged his daughter. Don’t you?”
“Like that’s going to happen. I’m a prostitute. A convicted felon.”
“Yeah, but you’re also family. And you’ll be bringing him and Molly their grandson.”
“I hate the idea of letting Richard turn TC into some kind of tobacco-chewing, back-slapping, ass-kicking, north county good ol’ boy.”
“Perhaps his Aunt Merci will be around to help him out.”
Merci shook her head slowly.
“God, how I hate Grand Rapids.”
I parked the Cherokee at the curb and escorted Merci to my front door.
“When am I going to see my money?” she asked.
“As soon as the bank opens.”
I unlocked the door and stepped inside the dark house ahead of her. It was an impolite act on my part and I was soon punished for it. Before I could switch on a light, someone hit me on the head from behind with the proverbial blunt instrument. Twice. The first blow drove me to my knees. The second knocked me unconscious.
There was something in my hand, something small and oddly shaped. It was driving me crazy. I lay there on the living room floor, my eyes shut, and played with the object, squeezing it, rolling it between my fingers. When at last I was able to open my eyes, I found I couldn’t see. Blackness everywhere. Was I blind? No. It was night. I was at home. Someone had hit me from behind. Must’ve been Merci. I tried to rise. It was hard work. I managed to kneel. My eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light and I could make out shapes of furniture. But why would Merci hit me? Money? Surely, she didn’t think I had it on me, that I had it lying around the house. I managed to stand. My mind cleared a bit more. I heard noises coming from upstairs. The thudding sound of someone walking across the hardwood floors above me. What would Merci be doing up there? I continued to roll the object between my fingers. Oddest damn thing. I held it close to my eyes, tried to catch it in the dim street light shining through my windows. It looked like a bullet. The .22 I had ejected from Merci’s gun. How many days ago was that? I turned it in my fingers again, squeezed it tight. A muffled scream from upstairs. My God in heaven! I dropped the bullet and reached for my Beretta as it clattered on the floor. Only my gun wasn’t there—Alec never returned it and I forgot to ask.
I stumbled unsteadily up the stairs, making entirely too much noise. Light spilled out from under the door to my guest room—the room that once belonged to my father. I leaned on the door. It flew open. It wasn’t even closed all the way, much less locked. I nearly stumbled to the floor, but regained my balance. Devanter laughed at me. He had been waiting, a knife in his hand. One of my knives from the wooden block in my kitchen. In his other hand was a lit cigarette. He flicked it to the floor. Merci Cole was behind him on the bed. She was nude. Small, round burn marks dotted her flesh. Her hands and feet were bound to the headboard and baseboard with strips of raspberry lace, the rest of her
gown was shredded and lying on the floor. She screamed. Panties in her mouth muffled the cry.
Devanter rushed at me. Or rather, he rushed at someone I recognized as me. See, I wasn’t there any longer. Instead I was up high, floating near the ceiling somewhere, looking down. Watching. Watching what this person did, this person who looked like me, who staggered on quaking legs like a drunk about to pass out. He didn’t seem afraid, this person. He just stood there when Devanter rushed at him, the knife held high above his head. And when Devanter tried to strike down at him, this person who looked like me crossed his right forearm over his left forearm and thrust them above his head, meeting the blow straight on, blocking it with the V of his crossed arms, absorbing the shock of the blow with those already impossibly weak legs.
This person who looked like me but who couldn’t possibly be me then grabbed Devanter’s wrist. He grabbed the wrist with both hands like it was a baseball bat. He swung the wrist down in a clockwise motion. Swung it down and then up again even as he stepped in under the arm that was attached to the wrist. He turned his body and pivoted on the balls of his feet—amazing that he could still stand—and kept swinging that arm upward until it reached twelve o’clock and then back down again, winding Devanter’s arm like a corkscrew until Devanter’s body simply had to follow that arm, up and around in a clockwise motion.
Then boom. Just like that, Devanter was on his back on the floor. His wrist broken. He had dropped the knife when the bone cracked. It skittered across the floor and the person who looked like me went to fetch it. “Hurry,” I kept telling him. “Hurry.” But he seemed to take forever to get that knife. While he was getting it, Devanter struggled to his feet. It didn’t bother him a bit that his wrist was broken—he didn’t seem to mind at all. He rushed again at the person who looked like me just as he retrieved the knife and spun to meet the attack, holding the knife low with both hands, the point of the knife tipped upward.
Devanter’s momentum carried him forward. The person who looked like me brought the knife up. Devanter tried to parry the knife aside with his hand. But he forgot. His wrist was broken. His hand didn’t respond. He missed the knife.
A look came over his face. Devanter knew he had made a mistake. Only there was nothing he could do to correct it, nothing he could do to check his forward momentum. The person who looked like me thrust the knife into Devanter’s chest just below his rib cage, angling the blade upward toward the heart muscle. Devanter’s weight and speed did the rest. His body fell onto the blade. The blade went in cleanly all the way to the hilt because of Devanter’s weight and momentum and because of the upward thrust and because the person who looked like me but who couldn’t possibly be me enjoyed working in his kitchen and had always kept his knives razor sharp.
For a moment Devanter hung on the knife, literally hovering in the air, the person who looked like me holding him maybe two, three inches off the floor. His mouth was open and from where I was up by the ceiling I could see that it was filling with blood and that the blood was trickling from the corners of Devanter’s mouth and down his chin. Devanter’s eyes were open, too, and the person who looked like me could see them roll backward into Devanter’s head until only the whites were showing. And then the knife broke. The blade snapped off at the hilt. And Devanter fell to the floor, the blade buried in his chest. And the person who looked like me was left holding the wooden hilt.
The person who looked like me dropped the hilt and moved unsteadily to the bed where Merci Cole lay spread-eagled between the bedposts. He worked the knots in the lace but they were so tight. Then he did a remarkable thing this man who looked like me. He pulled the knife blade out of Devanter’s chest with his fingers and used it to saw through the lace. Even so it seemed like forever before he freed her. She removed the panties from her mouth and screamed at him, but he didn’t
understand what she said, her words were incomprehensible to him. He helped her from the bed. Her screaming became deafening sobs. He led her past Devanter’s body. Her bare foot stepped in blood, warm and sticky, and the sobs became screams again.
Merci Cole and the person who looked like me stumbled from the room. He held her with one arm. The other he dragged along the stucco wall of the hallway, supported them both as they moved toward the master bedroom. Once inside the person who looked like me locked the door. Merci Cole collapsed on the bed and curled herself into a fetal position. Shaking uncontrollably. Weeping as if she would never stop. The person who looked like me pulled a blue-green comforter over the woman, a final act of chivalry before he reached for the phone. He punched 911 on the number pad. The phone rang once. Twice …
I don’t recall what happened next.