Authors: Kathy Reichs
I staggered around the corner, twisting my hands, fighting to loosen the wrist chain. Blood pounded in my ears. I was a robot, my sympathetic nervous system working the controls.
“
Cunt!
”
He was between me and the front door, forcing me to cut through the kitchen! One thought drove me: Get to the French doors!
My right hand slipped free of the chain.
“
Whore! You’re mine!
”
Two steps into the kitchen the pain slammed into me again and I thought my neck had snapped. My left arm flew up and my head whipped back. He had gotten a hand on the trailing neck chain. I felt my insides heave as my air supply was again choked off.
With my unbound hand I tried to free my throat, but the harder I clawed the tighter he pulled. I twisted and pulled, but the chain only cut deeper.
Slowly, he reeled in the chain, drawing me back toward him. I could smell his frenzy, feel his body tremble in the shake of the chain. Loop by loop he shortened my leash. I began to feel dizzy, and thought I was fainting.
“You’ll pay for that, bitch.” His voice was a hiss.
My face and fingertips tingled from lack of oxygen, and my ears filled with a hollow ringing. The room began to heave about me. A spatter of dots formed in the middle of my field of vision, coalesced, then spread outward as a black cumulus. Through the growing cloud I saw ceramic tile rise toward me, as if in slow motion. I watched my hands reach out as I floated forward, an insensible host tumbling with its parasite rider.
As we pitched forward, my stomach struck a section of counter, and my head slammed into an overhead cabinet. He lost his grip on the chain, but pushed up hard behind me.
He spread his legs and molded his body against mine, pressing me against the counter. The edge of the dishwasher cut painfully across my left pelvic bone, but I could breathe.
His chest heaved, and every fiber of his tissue felt taut, like a slingshot stretched to deliver. With a looping wrist motion he retrieved his grip on the chain and forced my head into a backward arch. Then he reached across my throat and placed the tip of the knife under the angle of my jaw. My carotid throbbed against cold steel. I felt his breath on my left cheek.
He held me for an eternity, head back, hands straight out and useless, like a carcass dangling on a hook. I seemed to be watching myself from across a wide gulf, a spectator, horrified but powerless to help.
I got my right hand onto the counter, trying to push against it to elevate myself and slacken the chain. Then I touched something on the countertop. The orange juice container. The knife.
Silently, my fingers wrapped around the handle. I moaned and tried to sob. Divert his attention.
“Quiet, bitch! We’re going to play a game now. You like games, don’t you?”
Carefully I rotated the knife, gagging loudly to cover the tiniest scrape.
My hand trembled, hesitated.
Then I saw the women again, saw what he’d done to them. I felt their terror and knew their final desperation.
Do it!
Adrenaline spread through my chest and limbs like lava rolling down a mountainside. If I was going to die, it would not be like a rat in a hole. I would die charging the enemy, guns blazing. My mind refocused and I became an active participant in my own fate. I gripped the knife, blade upward, and estimated the angle. Then I thrust across my body and over my left shoulder with all the strength that fear, desperation, and vengeance could muster.
The point struck bone, slipped a little, then plunged into mushy softness. His earlier scream was nothing compared with what now ripped from his throat. As he lurched backward his left hand dropped and his right hand passed across my throat. The chain end slithered to the floor, releasing its death hold.
I felt a dull ache across my throat, then something wet. It didn’t matter. All I wanted was air. I gulped hungrily, reaching up to loosen the links and feeling what I knew must be my own blood.
From behind me, another scream, high-pitched, primal, like the death cry of a feral animal. Panting and holding the counter for support, I turned to look.
He stumbled backward across the kitchen, one hand to his face, the other thrown out in an attempt at balance. Horrible sounds gurgled from his open mouth as he slammed against the far wall and slid slowly to the floor. The outthrust hand left a black streak snaking down the plaster. For a moment his head rolled back and forth, then a thin moan rose from his throat. His hands dropped and his head settled, chin down, eyes fixed on the floor.
I stood frozen in the sudden stillness, the only sounds my rasping breath and his fading whimpers. Through my pain, my surroundings began to register. Sink. Stove. Refrigerator, deathly still. Something slippery underfoot.
I stared at the form slumped inert on my kitchen floor, legs splayed forward, chin on chest, back propped against the wall. In the dimness I could see a dark smear trailing down his chest toward his left hand.
Lightning sparked like a welder’s torch, and illuminated my handiwork.
His body looked sleek, smoothed by the peacock blue membrane that encased it. A blue and red cap stretched across his scalp, flattening his hair and turning his head into a featureless oval.
The handle of the steak knife rose from his left eye like a flag pin on a putting green. Blood streamed down his face and throat, darkening the spandex on his chest. He had stopped moaning.
I gagged and the flotilla of spots sailed back into my field of vision. My knees buckled and I tried to lean against the counter.
I tried to breathe more deeply and raised my hands to my throat to remove the chain. I felt a warm slipperiness. I lowered one hand and stared. Oh yes. I’m bleeding.
I was moving toward the door, thinking of Katy, of getting help, when a sound froze me in place. The slither of steel links! The room flickered white, black.
Too beaten to run, I turned. A dark silhouette moved silently toward me.
I heard my own voice, then saw a thousand spots, and the black cloud rolled over everything.
Sirens wailing in the distance. Voices. Pressure on my throat.
I opened my eyes to light and movement. A form loomed over me. A hand pressed something against my neck.
Who? Where? My own living room. Memory. Panic. I struggled to sit up.
“
Attention. Attention. Elle se leve
.”
Hands pressed me gently down.
Then, a familiar voice. Unexpected. Out of context.
“Don’t move. You’ve lost a lot of blood. There is an ambulance on the way.”
Claudel.
“Where. I . . . ?”
“You’re safe. We’ve got him.”
“What’s left of him.” Charbonneau.
“Katy?”
“Lie back. You’ve got a gash on your throat and right neck and if you move your head, it bleeds. You’ve lost a good amount of blood and we don’t want you to lose any more.”
“My daughter?”
Their faces floated above me. A bolt of lightning flared, turning them white.
“Katy?” My heart pounded. I couldn’t breathe.
“She’s fine. Anxious to see you. Friends are with her.”
“
Tabernac
.” Claudel moved away from the couch. “
Où est cette ambulance?
”
He strode into the hall, glanced at something on the kitchen floor, then back at me, an odd expression on his face.
A siren’s wail grew louder, filled my tiny street. Then a second. I saw red and blue pulse outside the French doors.
“Relax now,” said Charbonneau. “They’re here. We’ll see your daughter is looked after. It’s over.”
T
HERE’S STILL A GAP IN MY OFFICIAL MEMORY FILES
. T
HE NEXT TWO
days are there, but they’re fuzzy and out of synch, a disjointed collage of images and feelings that come and go, but have no rational pattern.
A clock with numbers that were never the same. Pain. Hands tugging, probing, lifting my eyelids. Voices. A light window. A dark window.
Faces. Claudel in harsh fluorescence. Jewel Tambeaux silhouetted against a white hot sun. Ryan in yellow lamplight, slowly turning pages. Charbonneau dozing, TV blue flickering across his features.
I had enough pharmaceuticals in me to numb the Iraqi army, so it’s hard to sort drugged sleep from waking reality. The dreams and memories spin and swirl like a cyclone circling its eye. No matter how often I retrace my steps through that time, I cannot sort out the images.
Coherence returned on Friday.
I opened my eyes to bright sunlight, saw a nurse adjusting an IV drip, and knew where I was. Someone to my right was making soft clicking noises. I turned my head and pain shot through it. A dull throbbing in my neck told me further movement was ill advised.
Ryan sat in a vinyl chair, entering something into a pocket organizer.
“Am I going to live?” My words sounded slurred.
“
Mon Dieu
.” Smiling.
I swallowed and repeated the question. My lips felt stiff and swollen.
The nurse reached for my wrist, placed her fingertips on it, focused on her watch.
“That’s what they say.” Ryan slid the organizer into his shirt pocket, rose, and crossed to the bed. “Concussion, laceration of the right neck and throat region with significant loss of blood. Thirty-seven stitches, each carefully placed by a fine plastic surgeon. Prognosis: she’ll live.”
The nurse gave him a disapproving glance. “Ten minutes,” she said, and left.
A flash of memory shot fear through the layer of drugs.
“Katy?”
“Relax. She’ll be here in a while. She was in earlier, but you were out cold.”
I looked a question mark at him.
“She showed up with a friend just before you left in the ambulance. Some kid she knows at McGill. She’d been dropped at your place sans key that afternoon, but talked her way through the outer door. Seems some of your neighbors aren’t exactly security conscious.” He hooked a thumb inside his belt. “But she couldn’t get into your unit. She called you at the office, but no score. So she left her pack to flag you that she was in town, and reconnected with her friend. Sayonara, Mom.
“She meant to get back by dinnertime, but the storm hit, so the two of them hung tight at Hurley’s and sippped a few. She tried to call, but couldn’t get through. She nearly blew a valve when she arrived, but I was able to calm her down. One of the victim assistance officers is staying in close touch with her, making sure she knows what’s up. Several people here offered to take her in, but she preferred to crash with her friend. She’s been here every day and is going snake wanting to see you.”
Despite my best efforts, tears of relief. A tissue and a kind look from Ryan. My hand looked strange against the green hospital blanket, as though it belonged to someone else. A plastic bracelet circled my wrist. I could see tiny flecks of blood under my nails.
More memory bytes. Lightning. A knife handle.
“Fortier?”
“Later.”
“Now.” The ache in my neck was intensifying. I knew I wouldn’t feel like conversation for long. Also, Florence Nightingale would be back soon.
“He lost a lot of blood, but modern medicine saved the bastard. As I understand it, the blade slashed the orbit but then slid into the ethmoid without penetrating the cranium. He will lose his eye, but his sinuses should be great.”
“You’re a riot, Ryan.”
“He got into your building through the faulty garage door, then picked your lock. No one was home, so he disabled the security system and the power. You didn’t notice since your computer goes to battery when the power fails, and the regular phone isn’t tied in to the electricity, just the portable. He must have cut the phone line right after you made your last call. He was probably in there when Katy tried the door and left her pack.”
Another icicle of fear. A crushing hand. A choke collar.
“Where is he now?
“He’s here.”
I struggled to sit up and my stomach felt as if it were doing the same. Ryan gently pushed me back against the pillow.
“He’s under heavy guard, Tempe. He’s not going anywhere.”
“St. Jacques?” I heard a tremor in my voice.
“Later.”
I had a thousand questions, but it was too late. I was slipping back into the hollow where I’d been curled the past two days.
The nurse returned and shot Ryan a withering look. I didn’t see him leave.
The next time I woke Ryan and Claudel were talking quietly by the window. It was dark outside. I’d been dreaming of Jewel and Julie.
“Was Jewel Tambeaux here earlier?”
They turned in my direction.
“She came on Thursday.” Ryan.
“Fortier?”
“They’ve taken him off critical.”
“Talking?”
“Yes.”
“Is he St. Jacques?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Maybe this should wait until you’re stronger.”
“Tell me.”
The two exchanged glances, then approached. Claudel cleared his throat.
“Name’s Leo Fortier. Thirty-two years old. Lives off the island with his wife and two kids. Drifts from job to job. Nothing steady. He and Grace Damas had an affair back in 1991. Met at a butcher shop where they both worked.”
“La Boucherie St. Dominique.”
“
Oui
.” Claudel gave me an odd look. “Things start going bad. She threatens to blow the whistle to wifey, starts dunning lover boy for money. He’s had it, so he asks her to meet him at the shop after hours, kills her, and cuts her body up.”
“Risky.”
“The owner’s out of town, place is closed up for a couple of weeks. All the equipment is there. Anyway, he cuts her up, hauls her out to St. Lambert, and buries her on the monastery grounds. Seems his uncle is custodian. Either the old man gave him a key or Fortier helped himself.”
“Emile Roy.”
“
Oui
.”
Again the look.
“That isn’t all,” said Ryan. “He used the monastery to do Trottier and Gagnon. Took them there, killed them, dismembered their bodies in the basement. He cleaned up after himself, so Roy wouldn’t suspect, but when Gilbert and the boys gave the cellar a Luminol spray this morning it lit up like halftime at the Orange Bowl.”