The Astral (3 page)

Whatever that might have been, however, remained unsaid in a silence that eddied around husband and wife. Catherine went to the bay window and stared out at the back garden. The flowers were wilted, the grass brown from lack of water, the leaves of the maple tree hung down dispiritedly. She supposed it was a measure of her healing that she could even notice such things, though she hadn't yet reached the point of caring much.

“I'd better get to the restaurant,” Walter said to her back. “If you have any...if you need anything, call me on my cell.”

“I'll be all right,” she said again. Relenting, if only slightly, she came to give him a perfunctory kiss.

When he had gone, when she heard the car door slam, heard the Buick pull out of the driveway and move off down the street; when she was sure he wasn't coming back but was truly on his way to the restaurant he owned in Santa Monica, she went to the wastebasket and retrieved the card, smoothing it out. She too studied it for a long while, as if seeking some coded message invisible to the undiscerning eye.

They had been rivals, Walter and Jack, if unequal ones. It had always been Jack who had ruled in her heart, though she liked Walter well enough, and felt kindly toward him for his unrequited love.

“You're sweet. I do like you, honestly,” was the best she could give him then, and that, of course, was not enough for a man in love. Even as she said it, she was aware of its inadequacy.

What can I do, she asked herself? She couldn't help being in love with Jack anymore than Walter could help being in love with her. Not just love, either: her feeling for Jack had been a burning, an overwhelming passion that never left her for a moment.

Maybe, she sometimes thought even then, more passion than love. Waking or sleeping, he was always there. She had only to close her eyes and see him drawn in flames upon her lids: the dense dark curls of his hair, his blue gray eyes that seemed to see into her heart, his lips, too full, perhaps, for a man, but sensually thrilling to her. Especially when he kissed her, when he kissed her lips, when he kissed her
there
, the delirious prelude to that moment when he lowered his lean, hard body onto hers and she gave herself up to him so utterly.

I mustn't think of this, she told herself severely. I mustn't remember. From the kitchen she heard the rattle of cups and silverware as her mother set the table. She started to throw the card away again, but her hand refused to do her bidding. Instead, she dropped it into the pocket of her denim skirt.

She ran her fingers through the shapeless fringe of reddish blonde hair just beginning to grow back in over her scars. He wouldn't find her so desirable if he saw her now, she thought grimly. And, probably, that was just as well.

She followed the aroma of lamb stew into the kitchen.

CHAPTER THREE

Summer became autumn. The house stifled her. Everywhere she looked she found memories of Becky. She tried to watch television, and instead of Oprah, she found herself watching Becky's one time favorite show, Daffy Danny's Alley. It was a passion that Becky had shared with a great many pre-teens and one that (thankfully so far as Catherine was concerned) she had quickly outgrown. Catherine had come into the den one day to discover Becky watching cartoons instead.

“No Daffy Danny?” she had asked.

Becky's answer was brief and to the point: “He's smarmy.”

An opinion Catherine shared. Danny was Danny O'Dell, host and hand-puppeteer, an altogether too fey young man—or, probably not really so young, but who worked hard at that illusion—who wore too-short trousers and a too-tight checked jacket and a tam with a red pom-pom and who mugged a little too outrageously for the benefit of the squealing girls in the studio audience.

In the past she had gritted her teeth while Becky sat enrapt, from “Kids, what time is it? It's Daffy Danny time,” through every “daffy laffy,” to the last “daffy bye-bye,” delivered with a big kiss thrown at the television screen.

Now, of course, she would have kissed Danny O'Dell herself if it could have brought her daughter back to her.

She clicked off the television with an angry gesture.

* * * *

She went back to work finally at Dean and Summers, Publishers, half days to start, both glad to have her time occupied, and sorry to have to face the well-meant expressions of sympathy, the worried glances that she pretended not to see when she went past people. As if the jungle drums had alerted them, everyone seemed to know when she was coming, were waiting for her appearance in the drama of their lives.

Alden Summers had passed away years back, but the firm still carried his name on the masthead. She went first thing to Fermin Dean's office. Fermin's secretary waved her in with a friendly but guarded smile.

“Catherine,” Fermin greeted her with evident delight. He was tall and gaunt, silver haired, one of those people who seem to be in motion even when sitting still. He bounded up from his chair and came round his desk to clasp her hands. “It's good to have you back. Though when you see the load on your desk, you'll know just how much I've missed you.”

“I'll be glad for the work. I can use the occupation,” she said.

“Don't overdo it. And, I mean this, Catherine, make your own hours, please, come and go as you want.”

Even with his warning, she was not quite prepared for the workload waiting for her despite everyone's obvious efforts to keep things moving along. As chief editor for their art books divisions, one of Dean and Summer's major divisions, her input was nearly indispensable. Books that ought to have been in production by now had been held up for months and newer projects waited for her green light. A mountain of correspondence, most of it submissions for book proposals, filled up one half of her desk and overflowed onto a chair.

She threw herself into her work. It was the best antidote she had found yet for the pain. Not, of course, that the pain ever quite went away, it merely curled itself up into a little knot in a far corner of her mind, where it ever waited to come back out into the light.

She saw that her coworkers eyed her cautiously, and knew that many of them wanted to talk. She understood that they were saddened for her, and horrified by what had happened; but there was a certain thrill there, too. Murder, ghastly murder, tainted everyone with its evil glamour, even those at a distance, those whose involvement was only vicarious, the more so the more gruesome it was.

She had no desire to satisfy their grisly curiosity and avoided the hesitant glances. Fortunately, most of them kept their distance. Her assistant, Bill—black and gay—worked closely with her each day, but she had learned early on that he was a very model of discretion, a fact for which she could be grateful now.

Only Mrs. Pendergrast from their young adult division ventured beyond her door with personal condolences. “Catherine, you poor, poor thing,” she cooed and leaned over Catherine's desk so far that Catherine felt she meant to embrace her, and cringed inwardly. “I just can't tell you how awful I feel for you. If there is anything I can do, anything at all.”

“As a matter of fact.” Catherine held up a pile of sketches, needing to divert all that dripping sympathy, “These need to go back to art, if you wouldn't mind dropping them on your way.”

“It would be a pleasure.” Mrs. Pendergrast's voice was a shade less cordial. One did want one's sympathy to be appreciated.

Later, in the ladies room, Mrs. Pendergrast shared her insights with Mrs. White from accounting. “Such a tragedy,” she said, repairing her lipstick. “Of course, let it be said, I would never, ever leave my Samantha unattended. You just can't be too careful these days.”

Mrs. White patted her hair and frowned. “But, that isn't quite the way it happened, is it?”

Mrs. Pendergrast ignored the question. “I keep her practically glued to my side every minute when we're out. People may call me over-cautious if they like, but no one will steal my little girl.”

After two years of marriage, Mrs. White was still childless, and afraid to question her doctor because she was sure he would share her husband's opinion that the fault was hers. She could not help thinking, however, that if God ever granted her the little baby girl she prayed for, she would be ever so vigilant as well.

Of course, she did understand that it had been the husband looking after the Desmond girl, but, really, you just couldn't leave something like that up to a man. Certainly not a man as easily distracted as her Robert.

* * * *

At first, Catherine went every day after work to Forest Lawn Memorial Park, to bring flowers to Becky's grave. Becky had so loved flowers
. “Red and orange and yellow and white and blue....”

“I don't think there are any blue flowers, darling.”

“Purple?”

“Yes, definitely purple. And pink. You forgot pink.”

“And pink. And purple and blue....”

She said nothing to Walter about her visits. She had no desire to share this pilgrimage with him, with anybody.

She and Becky had used to come here in the past, not as morbid a destination as one might have supposed. There were fountains and gardens, and an uncanny look-alike of Michelangelo's David.

The winter rains came. They did not in any way deter her, though by now she went only once or twice a week. The gravesite was on a knoll from which bright green lawns, salt and peppered with gravesites, spilled down to the Golden State Freeway with its endless rush of cars, their sound a murmur at this distance. She stood without umbrella and let the cool droplets fall upon her, in hope that they would wash away her grief, or at least the numbness.

Both remained. Her soul was condemned to hold on to every memory, until surely it must break from overloading. She knew that she must one day come back to herself. She had to return to the world of the living. She could not continue as she was. If you were condemned to be alive, you ought at least to live.

At home, she and Walter shared the house, they moved about in the same finite space and yet they remained light years apart. Sometimes she could hear him in his office, crying. Most of the time he watched her warily with red-rimmed eyes and sniffled until she thought she must scream, but how could she, eyes tearless, rail at him for his grief? She wished that she had solace to offer him, but of that her heart was empty.

He spent more and more time at the restaurant, pleading increasing numbers of diners. She had no doubt that he found it more comfortable away from her, just as she was relieved to see him go. It was not that she hated him, nor that she even consciously blamed him for what had happened. They could hardly share their home day by day, however, without reminding one another of what was missing from it. And you could only say, “it's all right,” so many times before
that
began to sound silly.

He had lost ten pounds and gained ten years. He looked faded, like a shirt too often washed. It wasn't only Becky those two men had killed, she thought grimly. They were killing Catherine and Walter Desmond day by day, inexorably and she felt helpless to prevent it.

A casual question one day—“Will your mother be coming for Christmas?”—made her aware of the time she hadn't noticed passing.

The question caught her by surprise. “Is it December?”

“The second.” The gravity of his tone made it sound the most important thing in the world.

Which meant, she realized, that Thanksgiving had come and gone without her noticing. They had always made such a big deal of it in the past. Becky had been quite set in her preferences. The turkey's wings were hers, both of them, and woe betide the foolish mortal who thought to claim one. The pie must be pumpkin.

“Punkin pie, punkin pie, punkin pie.” She used to chant it while her mother cleared the table, brought in the pie, took the ice cream—pumpkin ice cream it must be—from the freezer. “Punkin pie.”

“I hadn't thought that far ahead,” she told Walter. She got up and began to clear the table, but she did manage to rest a hand, briefly, on his shoulder. She really did wish she could comfort him.

He sniffled and said nothing.

When he had gone, she went into the garage and got down a box of Christmas ornaments and carried it into the living room. The first one she unwrapped turned out to be Becky's favorite, the little Christmas angel they had bought the year she was born. She set that aside and found another one: the papier-mâché camel with one leg missing. Becky had insisted they hang it anyway each year, legs or no legs.

“Jesus will love him anyway, won't he, Mommy?”

There were, it seemed, memories attached to every ornament. She put them back in the box and taped it closed again, and carried it out to its shelf in the garage.

A car, a fire engine red Bronco, pulled into the driveway just as she came back into the kitchen. It was unfamiliar to her and at first she didn't recognize the woman who got out and walked briskly to the door. Not until she had rung the bell and Catherine had studied her long and hard through the glass in the front door, stared at the red hair that clearly refused to obey any bidding of brush or comb, did she realize that it was the FBI agent who had interviewed her in the hospital. What was her name, she wondered as she opened the door?

“Mrs. Desmond.” The visitor stepped inside.

She remembered then. “Officer Chang.”

“Agent Chang.” She smiled to show that no offense had been taken. “Just Chang. Or you can call me Roby, if you like, there's no need to be formal.” When Catherine still looked blankly at her, she added, “Roby. As in Roberta.” She saw the familiar puzzlement and waited for the customary question. Catherine Desmond's glance took in her decidedly Asian face, heart-shaped, sloe-eyed, and went up to the frizzy hair. At least she put the question a bit differently from most.

“You must get told a lot, that doesn't sound Chinese.”

“Not as much as I hear, ‘funny, you don't look Jewish'.”

Catherine laughed briefly. She must have done that often, before, Roby Chang thought, and felt her throat tighten with anger at what had been done to this woman. Watching her, she was surprised to discover how beautiful Catherine Desmond was. When she had seen her earlier, in the hospital, her face had been purpled with bruises, her head swathed in bandages. The gold hair, glinting with its own copper highlights, had mostly grown back out, the bruises had faded from a face that just missed classically beautiful and was the better for it. She was taller, too, than Chang had realized. Five nine, she guessed, maybe five ten, and full-figured. She was no fashion model, but rather what the boys described as “a babe.”

“Daddy's the Chinese part,” she said aloud, “Momma was a Jewish princess. Still is, to tell the truth, but she would have a fit if she heard me say it. That explains this, too.” She put a hand up to her spiky orange hair. “I'm afraid I'm the classic American mongrel.”

Who looked not at all like an F.B.I. agent, Catherine thought. It wasn't just that she was little, nor that her heart shaped face and the frizzy red hair gave her a comic-cute look entirely at odds with any kind of police work. Her costume, too, was something less than authoritative: jeans, a gore-tex jacket, some kind of boots that Catherine couldn't put a name to.

“Maybe hybrid is the better word,” she said aloud. Really, she chided herself, how was she to know what an F.B.I. agent should look like? “Come in, please. Can I get you something? Coffee? A drink?”

“Nothing, thanks, I won't stay long.” She looked around, avoiding Catherine's eyes.

“Have you come with news? Have you found them?” Catherine asked, hope flaring for a moment.

Chang looked directly at her then and Catherine knew the answer before the agent shook her head. “Nothing, unfortunately. Actually, I was hoping you might have something for me. I thought maybe you had remembered something after all this time, some detail that you forgot earlier.” Her look was so earnest, so pleading, that Catherine hated having to disappoint her.

“Nothing that I didn't tell you before.”

Chang hesitated a moment. “There's been another one. Several, actually, over the last few months, but a couple of them look awfully similar to your...your case. Yesterday a girl got snatched from a shopping mall. The mother got just a glimpse, but the description she gave us sounded like the same two men.”

“That poor woman. I wish...I wish I could do something to help her.” Catherine swallowed a lump that rose in her throat and looked away. “There's something that I've...I've struggled for hours at a time to understand: how anyone could do what these men do? Can you help me to understand that, Agent Chang?”