Carolina Moon (31 page)

“You said he didn’t want to leave any of himself behind.”

“Yes, he won’t leave his seed inside her. She doesn’t deserve it. I—this isn’t what I feel from him, I feel almost nothing from him.” Her fingers drilled at her throbbing temple. “There are blanks and dead ends. Turns in him. I don’t know how to tell you.”

“That’s fine,” Carl D. told her. “Go ahead.”

“This isn’t an act of procreation, but of punishment for her, and ego for him. During the process, she ceases to exist for him. She’s nothing, so it’s easy to kill her. When it’s over, he’s proud, but he’s angry, too. It’s never exactly
what he hoped it would be, it never completely purges him. Her fault, of course. The next time will be better. He cuts the rope, he turns off her music, and he leaves her in the dark.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t see his face. I can see some of his thoughts, some of the more desperate of his emotions, but I don’t see him.”

“He knew her.”

“He’d seen her, I think he’s spoken to her. He knew enough to know about the dog.” Tory closed her eyes a moment, tried to focus. “He drugged the dog. I think he drugged the dog. Burger laced with something. Risky. This was all very risky and that added to the excitement. Someone might have seen him. All the other times there was no one to see.”

“What other times?”

“The first was Hope.” Her voice broke. She lifted her tea again, calmed herself. “There were four others that I know of. I had a friend look into it. She found out there’ve been five over the last eighteen years. All of them killed in late August, all of them young blondes. Each one was the age Hope would have been if she’d lived. I think Sherry was younger, but she wasn’t the one he wanted.”

“A serial killer? Over eighteen years.”

“You can verify it with the FBI.” She looked at Cade then, for the first time since they’d sat down. “He’s still killing Hope. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She rose, and her cup clattered in the saucer as she carried it to the counter. “I’m afraid it could be my father.”

“Why?” Cade kept his eyes on her face. “Why would you believe that?”

“He has—when he hurt me, it aroused him.” The shame of it sliced through her, shards of glass jagged and edged with bitter heat. “He never touched me sexually, but it aroused him to hurt me. I think, looking back, I can’t be sure he didn’t know of my plans to meet Hope that night. When he came in for supper he was in a good mood, a rare one. It was as if he was waiting for me to make a mistake,
to open the door so that he could pounce. When I did, when I told my mother she could find the canning wax up in the top of the cupboard—such a stupid mistake—he had me. He didn’t always beat me that bad, but that night… When he was finished he could be sure I wasn’t going anywhere.”

She came back to the table. “Sherry was in the store when he came in yesterday. He asked her about her dog, and she’d just filled out an application for a job. I had the paper on the counter. Her name, her address, her phone number. He would have been certain of me, certain I’d be too afraid to tell anyone I’d seen him. He wouldn’t have expected me to go to the police. But he couldn’t have been sure of her.”

“You believe Hannibal Bodeen killed Sherry Bellows because she’d seen him?”

“It would have been his excuse, his justification for what he wanted to do. I only know he’s capable of it. I can’t tell you any more. I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.”

She walked away from the table and closed herself in the bathroom.

She couldn’t fight off the sickness anymore and let it come. Let it empty her out. Afterward she lay on the floor, on the cool tiles, and waited for the weakness to abate. The quiet seemed to echo in her ears along with her own heartbeat.

When she could she got to her feet, and turned the shower to blistering hot. She was chilled to the bone. It seemed nothing could warm her, but the water helped her imagine all the ugliness, the smear of it being washed off her skin if not out of her mind.

Steadier, she wrapped herself in a towel, dosed herself with three aspirin, and stepped out, prepared to curl into bed and lose herself in sleep.

Cade was standing by the window, looking out over the moon-washed dark. He’d left the lights off so that silvered glow silhouetted him there. She could hear the flutter of night beyond the screen, the wings and whines that were the music of the marsh.

Her heart ached for everything she couldn’t stop herself from loving.

“I thought you’d gone.” She walked to the closet for her robe.

He didn’t turn. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Hardly that. I just want to know if you’re any better.”

“Yes.” Decisively, she belted the robe. “I’m better. Thank you. You’re under no obligation here, Cade. I know what to do for myself.”

“Good.” He turned, but his face remained in shadows. She couldn’t read it, refused to try to see anything else. “Tell me what to do for you.”

“Nothing. I’m grateful you went with me, and that you brought me home. It’s more than you had to do, more than can be expected of anyone.”

“Now back off? Or is that just what you expect? For me to go, to leave you alone, to take myself off to a nice comfortable distance. Comfortable for whom? You or me?”

“Both, I imagine.”

“You don’t think any more of me than that? Any more of us?”

“I’m awfully tired.” Her voice wavered, shaming her. “I’m sure you are, too. It couldn’t have been pleasant for you.”

He stepped toward her then and she saw what she’d known she would see. Anger, black waves of it. So she shut her eyes.

“For God’s sake, Tory.” His hand brushed over her cheek, back into the wet tangle of her hair. “Has everyone always let you down?”

She didn’t speak, couldn’t. A tear slid down her cheek and lay glistening on his thumb. She went, biddable as a child, as he led her to the bed, lifted her onto his lap.

“Just rest,” he murmured. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She pressed her face into his shoulder. Here was comfort, and strength, and above all the solidity no one had ever offered her. He asked no questions, so neither would she. Instead she curled into him, lifted her mouth to his.

“Touch me. Please. I need to feel.”

Gently, so gently, he ran his hands over her. He could give her the comfort of his body, take his own in hers. Trembling she reached for him, her lips parting under his and going warm.

Slowly, so slowly, he loosened the tie of the robe, slipped it from her. Laid his hand on her heart. It beat frantically, and her breathing still caught on sobs she fought back.

“Think of me,” he murmured, and lay her on the bed. “Look at me.”

He touched his lips to her throat, her shoulders, skimming his hands through her hair when she reached up to unbutton his shirt.

“I need to feel,” she repeated. “I need to feel you.” She put her palms against his chest. “You’re warm. You’re real. Make me real, Cade.”

She sank into him when his mouth came back to hers, sank deep into the tenderness of it, the kindness that erased the horror she’d seen. The calm came first, the understanding that this brush and slide of flesh, this meeting of bodies, had nothing to do with pain or fear.

His mouth on her breast, feeding, arousing, sped the beat of her blood. His hands, strong, patient, washed her mind clear of everything but the need to join.

She sighed out his name as he danced over the first peak.

She was fluid, and open, rising toward him, sliding against him. When she rolled, he found her mouth again, then let her set the pace. She rose over him, her hair like wet ropes gleaming over her shoulders. Her face was flushed with life, damp with tears.

She took him into her, bowing back, her breath catching, releasing, her fingers locking with his as she began to move.

There was nothing in his world now but her, the heat of her surrounding him, the steady rise and fall of her hips as she rode him. The dark smoke of her eyes stayed wide and fixed on his even as her breath began to tear.

He saw her come, watched the force of it ripple through her.

“God.” She brought their joined hands to her breasts. “More. Again. Touch me, touch me, touch me.”

He took her breasts in his hands, reared up, and took them into his mouth so that she arched back. When she gripped his hair, he drove deeper. Filling her, taking her. Taking himself.

They stayed wrapped around each other. Even when he shifted to lie with her, they remained tangled and close. She breathed him in.

“You should sleep now,” he murmured.

“I’m afraid to sleep.”

“I’ll be right here.”

“I thought you would go.”

“I know.”

“You were so angry. I thought…” No, she needed another minute. Courage didn’t come without effort. “Would you get me some water?”

“All right.” He shifted, and rising, pulled on his jeans before he went out into the kitchen.

She heard him open a cupboard for a glass, close it again. And when he came back she was sitting on the side of the bed in her robe. “Thank you.”

“Tory, are you always sick afterward?”

“No.” Her hand tightened on the glass. “I’ve never done anything like … I can’t talk about that yet. But I need to talk. I need to tell you about something else. About when I was in New York.”

“I know what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”

“You only know parts and pieces. What you heard in the news. I need to explain.”

Because she’d tightened up again, he combed his fingers through her hair. “You wore your hair differently there. You’d lightened it, cut it shorter.”

She managed a laugh. “My attempt at a new me.”

“I like it better this way.”

“I changed a lot more than my hair when I went there. Escaped there. I was only eighteen. Terrified but exhilarated.
They couldn’t make me go back, and even if he came after me, he couldn’t make me go back. I was free. I’d saved some money. I’ve always been good at saving money, and Gran gave me two thousand dollars. I suppose it saved my life. I was able to afford a little apartment. Well, a room. It was on the West Side, this cramped little space. I loved it. It was all mine.”

She could remember, could bring back inside her, the sheer joy of standing in that empty box of a room, of hugging herself as she stared out the window at the dour brick face of the next building. She could hear the riot of noise from the street below as New York shoved its way toward the business of the day.

She could remember the absolute bliss of being free.

“I got a job at a souvenir shop, sold a lot of Empire State Building paperweights and T-shirts. After a couple of months, I found a better job, at a classy gift shop. It was a longer commute, but the pay was a little better and it was so nice to be around all those lovely things. I was good at it.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“The first year, I was so happy. I was promoted to assistant manager, and I made some friends. Dated. It was so blessedly normal. I’d forget for long periods that I hadn’t always lived there, then someone would comment on my accent and it would bring me back here. But that was all right. I’d gotten away. I was exactly where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be.”

She looked at him then. “I didn’t think of Hope. I didn’t let myself think of her.”

“You had a right to your own life, Tory.”

“That’s what I told myself. God knows that’s what I wanted more than anything else in the world. My own. I’d gone back to see my parents during that period, partly out of obligation. Partly, too, because things never seem as bad as they were when you’re away from them. I suppose I thought that since I felt so … normal, that I could have a normal relationship with them.”

She paused, shut her eyes. “But mostly I went back because
I wanted to show them what I’d made of myself despite them. Look at me: I have nice clothes, a good job, a happy life. So there.” She gave a weak laugh. “I failed on all three levels.”

“No, they did.”

“Doesn’t matter. I guess I was a little off balance because of the visit even after I got back to New York. Then one day after work, not long after that, I went by the market. Picked up a few things. I don’t even remember exactly. But I took my bag home and started to put everything away.”

She looked down at her water, clear water in a clear glass. “Then I was standing there in that tiny kitchen, with the refrigerator open and a carton of milk in my hand. A carton of milk,” she repeated, her voice hardly a whisper. “With a picture of a little girl on the side. Karen Anne Wilcox, age four. Missing. But I wasn’t seeing the picture, I was seeing her. Little Karen, only she didn’t have blond hair like in the picture. It was brown and cut nearly short as a boy’s. She was sitting in a room by herself playing with dolls. It was February, but I could see the sky out her window. Pretty blue sky, and I could hear the water. The sea. Why, Karen Anne’s in Florida, I thought. She’s at the beach. And when I came back to myself, the milk carton was on the floor with the milk spilling out of it.”

She drank again, then set the glass aside. “I was so angry. What business of it was mine? I didn’t know this girl, or her parents. I didn’t
want
to know them. How dare they interfere with my life that way? Why should I have to be involved? Then I thought of Hope.”

She rose, walked to the window. “I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about the little girl. I went to the police. They thought I was just one more lunatic, passed me off, rolled their eyes while they spoke very slowly, as if I were stupid as well as crazy. I was embarrassed and angry, but I couldn’t get the child out of my head. While two of the detectives were interviewing me, I lost my temper. I said something to one of them about how if he weren’t so damned closed-minded he’d listen instead of worrying
how much the mechanic was going to hose him for over the transmission job.

“That got their attention. Turned out the older one, Detective Michaels, had his car in the shop. They still didn’t believe me, but now I worried them. The interview turned into more of a grilling. They kept pushing and pushing, and my nerves were fraying. The younger one, I guess he was playing good cop, he went out and got me a Coke. He brought back this plastic bag. Evidence bag. Inside were mittens. Bright red mittens. They’d found them on the floor of Macy’s, where she’d been snatched while her mother was shopping. At Christmas. She’d been missing since December. He tossed them on the table, like a dare.”