Dr. Pastore smiled. “Just relax,” he said. “Allow yourself to feel a certain heaviness—in your feet, your legs, your arms, your whole body. A heavy heaviness but nice. Nice and loose and heavy and reee-laxed. Your eyes are feeling heavy, too. It’s okay to close them . . .” A little pause; Nell heard the turning of a notebook page, sound very clear but distant at the same time. “. . . Nell. It’s okay to close those heavy, heavy eyelids of yours. That’s good. Just reee-lax. Take soft, deep breaths. Feel the air inside you. The air is heavy, too.”
Yes, heavy air. It spread through her body, relaxing every cell. And her eyelids, so heavy, too, as though she were asleep and dreaming.
“Hear me all right?” said Dr. Pastore.
She could hear him fine, distant but clear, somewhere outside the dream.
“Say yes if you do.”
“Yes.”
“Now let your mind drift back to the night of the incident. Is it a nice night?”
“Yes. Warm.”
“A warm night. Anything else?”
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“There’s a full moon.”
“Big and yellow?”
“More white than yellow. The little ghost brother.”
“Little ghost brother?”
“That’s what Johnny calls it.”
“Is he with you?”
“We’re holding hands.”
“Where are you?”
“On the towpath. The pier is just ahead. I smell flowers.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. I’m listening to Johnny.”
“What’s he saying?”
“It’s hard to understand. The earth is dynamic. The bottom changes over time. There are some obvious conclusions, funnel effects, but no one seems in a hurry to . . .” Uh-oh.
“No one seems in a hurry to do what?”
“A man. There’s a man on the pier. Something wrong with his face . . . like it’s all misshapen . . .”
“Nell?”
“Yes?”
“You can still hear me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s happening now?”
“He wants . . . no, it’s a bandanna. Johnny’s going to give him what he—oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.”
“Nell? What is it? What’s happening?”
“He . . . oh, God.” She kicked out with all her might. Something fell to the floor. The bandanna slid down.
“Nell?”
“I see his face.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Don’t want to.”
“You don’t have to. Don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”
“The eyes aren’t blue.”
“No? Do you recognize this man?”
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Tears started flowing, wouldn’t stop. The eyes were brown, soft and gentle.
“Nell? Nell? Do you recognize him? Who is he?”
Tears and more tears.
“Nell? Can you still hear me? I’m a little concerned. When I clap my hands you will awake and open your eyes.”
“I’m awake.”
“You are?”
Nell opened her eyes. For some reason, Dr. Pastore clapped anyway.
“You seem a little upset,” he said, handing her a tissue. He picked up a book that lay open on the floor, as though dropped or thrown.
“Visiting these memories can be . . . I don’t want to say traumatic.”
Nell dabbed at her eyes, stopped crying. She started to rise, her limbs still feeling heavy.
“No rush,” said Dr. Pastore. “Just stay there as long as you like, no prob—”
Nell got to her feet.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“In all the commo—” Dr. Pastore cut himself off, tried again.
“Out of my concern, I forgot to say you would remember everything from the session upon awakening.”
Nell remembered, way too much, way too clearly.
“Is there anything you’d like to discuss?” said Dr. Pastore, glancing at her, then moving behind the desk.
“Are these memories always true?” Nell said.
“You refer to memories induced through hypnosis by a properly trained professional?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Pastore looked annoyed. “Why else would I be doing this?” he said. “Maybe if we got into the details of the memories I could be of some help, in a therapeutic sense.”
Was this about therapy? Not now, Nell thought, and maybe never.
The sound of footsteps came from above, workmen on the roof.
The Yeller’s Autobody wrecker was just pulling away from the house when Nell drove into the circle. She caught a glimpse of Norah squeezed against Joe Don in the front seat, and fought off the temptation to keep going, follow them down Sandhill Way.
The phone rang as she went inside.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Is Norah there?”
“Ines?”
“Yeah. Hi.”
“Just missed her. You could try her cell.”
“Is it working?”
“I think so. Why?”
“I’ve left a few messages, that’s all,” said Ines.
“And she hasn’t gotten back to you?”
“No,” Ines said. “Mrs. Jarreau?”
“You can call me Nell.”
“Nell? How’s she doing?”
Nell started to say something innocuous—all right, not bad—but stopped herself. “This is the second time you’ve asked me that,” she said.
Ines was silent.
“Both times in a way I find a bit alarming.”
“Sorry.”
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“Don’t be sorry,” Nell said. “But if there’s something I should know, please tell me.”
Silence.
“What is it, Ines?”
More silence.
“Ines?”
“Just . . . just tell her I called,” Ines said. “Bye.”
“Wait,” said Nell.
But Ines hung up. Nell checked the caller ID menu, found Ines’s number, called it right back. No answer.
Nell went into
the office, turned on the computer and started reading up on hypnotism, specifically the accuracy of hypnotically recovered memories, something she should have done before her visit to Dr.
Pastore. Or maybe not: because twenty or thirty minutes later, she was no further ahead. The answer to the hypnosis question was that no one knew. That left her with the image she’d seen in Dr. Pastore’s office, a brown-eyed memory, persistent and unnerving.
Nell rose. She felt disoriented, as though in some strange place instead of her own home. She went into the laundry room, took her bathing suit from the dryer and walked out to the pool.
Nell swam. Lap by lap, her body took over. Her mind shut down, almost unaware of how well she was swimming, so smooth and easy, as if the water had been shot full of air and lost its resistance.
The disoriented feeling ebbed away. She swam herself into a state of peace.
It didn’t last. When the effortless period ended and she climbed out of the pool, she found Clay seated at the outdoor table a few yards away, very still, watching.
“Hi,” she said, reaching for a towel. “How long have you been here?” She checked her watch: 12:30. He almost never came home in the middle of the day.
“Where were you?” he said.
She paused, the towel against her chest. “When?” she said.
“You didn’t answer my calls.”
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She gestured toward the pool. “I’ve been swimming.”
“For three hours?”
“No.”
“Then where were you?”
“Clay, what is this? You’re interrogating me.”
He didn’t say anything, just gazed at her; brown eyes, yes, but not at their softest: the professional look was back.
“I was at the museum, if you must know,” Nell said. A lie that burst out on its own, and probably a stupid one: Hadn’t he once told her that good interrogators often knew the true answers to the questions they asked? Was it possible Dr. Pastore was some kind of informant? She rejected the thought; that way lay paranoia.
“You were at the museum,” he said.
“Yes,” said Nell, now locked into the lie.
“Okay, Nell.” He turned and walked into the house. A few mo -
ments later she heard his car starting up out front.
Nell sat at
her desk. Was there any possible connection between Clay and Johnny? Johnny had never been in trouble with the law. A safe driver, uninterested in drugs, and hardly drank at all: he found excite-ment in other things. So: no connection, and therefore how to explain her hypnotically induced memory? Perhaps she’d entered paranoid territory before her visit to Dr. Pastore, drifting in deep and unaware, and paranoia had sketched out a memory of its own.
The phone rang. It jolted her, as though electricity had jumped right out of the wire. Nell let it ring. The answering machine took the call.
“Nell? Lee Ann here. Please give me a—”
Nell picked up. “Hello?”
“Screening your calls?” said Lee Ann.
“Then why would I be talking to you?”
“Whoa,” Lee Ann said. “You don’t sound like your usual self.”
How could I? Nell managed to keep that thought to herself.
“What’s up?” she said.
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“A few things,” said Lee Ann. “First, Sheriff Lanier cut Kiki Amayo loose.”
“Who’s that?”
“The drug dealer he arrested in the Nappy Ferris murder. He’s a gangbanger, all right, but he alibied out.”
“What does this mean?” Nappy, in his last moments, stirred in her mind, toppling over outside the cabin up in Stonewall County, the sound of his bourbon gurgling away.
“It means the investigation’s wide open, according to the sheriff.
Here’s a quote from him.” Nell heard Lee Ann flipping pages. “Asked about a possible connection between the Ferris murder and the DuPree case, Sheriff Lanier said, ‘Everything’s on the table.’”
The handset was damp with Nell’s sweat.
“Nell? Still there?”
“Yes.”
“Any comment?”
“For the paper?”
“Preferably.”
“No.”
“What about off the record?”
“No.”
“What if I told you that Nappy Ferris had a long history of deal -
ing marijuana himself, mostly right out of his store?”
Nell remembered Clay in the clearing:
Ferris had two drug
priors—one for possession, one for dealing, marijuana both times.
“Didn’t we know that already?” she said.
“In a way,” Lee Ann said. “I looked into those priors. They’re both over twenty years old.”
“So?”
“So my sources tell me he kept dealing out of the store all those years, right up until Bernardine.”
“I don’t understand,” Nell said. “You’re saying he was killed because of drugs after all?”
“Not really,” said Lee Ann. “Doesn’t mean that’s not what happened, of course. But what I find interesting is how Nappy kept his nose clean, at least in terms of the law.”
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PETER ABRAHAMS
“Meaning?”
“This sideline of his. I’m not suggesting he was a big-time dealer.
But it wasn’t a secret, not in Lower Town.”
“How do you know?”
“Fifteen years with the paper, Nell. What kind of a reporter would I be if I hadn’t cultivated Lower Town sources in all that time?”
“I don’t know,” Nell said; kind of a stupid answer, especially since it was obvious that Lee Ann was a good reporter, and very clever; maybe clever enough to tape phone conversations. She felt Lee Ann was homing in on something, irresistible.
“A lousy one is the answer,” Lee Ann said. “But what keeps snagging in my mind is this issue of how a borderline or maybe full-fledged alcoholic like Nappy Ferris managed to stay out of trouble while running an illegal second career.”
“Maybe it caught up with him in the end.”
“Maybe,” said Lee Ann. “Any guesses on who pulled the trigger?”
“Of course not,” Nell said. “I don’t know anyone in that world.”
“What world?”
“The drug world.”
Pause. “No offense,” Lee Ann said, “but I’m finding you a little obtuse right now.”
“My apologies,” Nell said. The mouthpiece reflected her voice back at her, hard and cold.
“None necessary,” said Lee Ann. Another pause. “Everybody likes you.”
“You told me that already,” Nell said. “The first time I believed you.”
Lee Ann laughed. “There’s something I want to run by you. Any chance at all you’d be willing to meet with Alvin DuPree?”
“Why would I want to do that?” Same hard, cold tone, but Nell was shaking.
“I can’t speak for you, even though I think I know you a little bit,”
Lee Ann said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if the answer’s yes.”
“It’s no,” Nell said.
“Don’t decide now,” said Lee Ann. “Sleep on it. I’d be there the
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whole time, if it’s the one-on-one aspect that’s worrying you. He’s still at the Ambassador Suites—I can swing by and get you anytime you say.”
“No.”
“No you don’t want me to be there or no to the whole thing?”
“The whole thing,” Nell said.
A tall bookcase
stood in the family room. It had two big drawers at the bottom, both filled with letters, game programs, award certificates, report cards, souvenirs. Nell pawed through all that until she found what she was looking for: an old clipping from the
Guardian,
the caption headed
Young Sharpshooters.
She took the clipping to the window, examined it under bright light.
The picture showed Clay and Duke, both in profile, aiming rifles at an unseen target. The caption read:
Clay Jarreau and his friend
Duke Bastien, both thirteen, shown competing in the Southern
State Riflery Championships. Clay finished second. The winner, not
shown, was Duke’s eleven-year-old brother, Kirk Bastien. Good job,
boys!
Did it mean anything? Probably not: What had Sheriff Lanier said?
Just pointing out the level of shooting ability around these
parts—kind of like at the Olympics.
And what was she allowing herself to think? Clay couldn’t shoot anyone, not the way Nappy Ferris had been shot. He actually had killed a man once, but in the line of duty—he’d stepped into a shoot-out already in progress, saving the life of a convenience-store clerk and earning a commendation for heroism.
So stop this right away.