Time Release (23 page)

Christensen interrupted his parallel parking. Annie was pointing through the Explorer's windshield at their porch, at the antique wooden swing Molly had stenciled by hand. Melissa had her headphones on in the backseat, oblivious.

“I can't see around the big bush, honey. Who does it look like? Somebody we know?”

“He looks cold is all. Wait. It's that guy that came to swimming lessons.”

“Sonny?”

Christensen strained to see. He still couldn't make him out, so he finished wedging the Explorer into the too-small space between the Koslowskis' Caddy and a mound of plowed snow. He never parked in the garage during these occasional visits home, when they picked up fresh clothes to take back to Brenna's. He wouldn't have been surprised if it
was
Sonny. Ever since he'd shown him the coroner's photograph, Sonny had been walking a knife edge of emotion and didn't know why, which confused and frus­trated him. But Christensen knew they were close to a breakthrough, for better or worse. It was like watching a pot come to full boil. He didn't expect this, though, even if he had authorized the release of his home address and phone number to Sonny. He wasn't entirely comfortable, either, now that the killer's son was sitting on his family's front porch. The closer Sonny got to a breakthrough, the more desperate his father was likely to get. Christensen thought of 1986, of Ron Corbett's cruel assault on the detective who was tormenting him. Threatened, he'd simply killed the thing Downing loved most.

“Wait here, ladies,” he said, turning off the engine. He was halfway across the street when the passenger-side doors slammed one after the other.

“We're just going inside,” Melissa said.

“Yeah, it's cold,” Annie said.

Sonny was sitting at the exact center of the swing, his legs tightly crossed and extending to the floor, balancing on a single toe, a daypack slung over his right shoulder. The swing seemed suspended halfway through a downward arc. No jacket, only a flannel shirt. His arms were wrapped all the way around his upper body. He seemed cold, damaged. When he looked up, his face was the color of oatmeal and his eyes had the suspicious look of a feral dog.

“Hey,” he said. His lips were almost blue. His teeth chattered.

“Hey,” Annie said. She climbed onto the swing beside him.

Christensen felt Melissa prying the house keys from his hand, so he gave them up.

“You look half frozen,” he said to Sonny. “Been here long?”

Sonny shrugged, then lifted his foot, letting the swing continue its arc. He stopped the backswing with an awkward stomp. He looked past Christensen and waved at Melissa, who was struggling with the front-door key. Sonny was what she and her friends might call an SLS—a Suitable Love Slave—and she seemed flustered by the proximity.

“That's right, you two haven't met,” he said. “Melissa, this is Sonny Corbett. Sonny, my daughter Melissa.”

“Hi,” she said. She was working the lock furiously now, a living portrait of hormone-fueled anxiety.

“And I think you know Annie”—who was staring up at Sonny with the same reverence she used to save for the mall Santa, the one who this year she accused, loudly and publicly, of fakery.

“Sorry to just show up,” Sonny said. “Tried to call, but I kept getting your machine. Nobody's ever home.”

“Long story. Come inside.” Annie climbed down from the swing and followed her sister through the front door. Sonny didn't get up when Christensen put his hand on his shoulder. He seemed anchored, determined. He whispered something Christensen didn't understand.

“I want to go to the house,” he repeated.

“Which house?”

“The one where David died.”

Christensen froze, trying hard not to react. This was significant. Sonny had maintained as recently as last week that his brother died in a car accident; now he was admitting he'd died at the Jancey Street house. The oblique photograph must have had some impact, but what?

“That's a big step,” Christensen said. Should he acknowledge Sonny's reconstructed memory? “I'm not sure I'd recommend it just now.”

For the first time, Christensen noticed the bandage on the top of Sonny's head. A white, gauzy thing mostly covered by his hair.

“It's vacant, but my dad still owns it. I have a key. We can get in.”

“That's not the point, Sonny. We just need to take these things slowly. What happened to your head?”

“That's part of it, I think.” Sonny touched his scalp. Lightly. “Had an accident this morning, in the river.”

Christensen tried again to guide Sonny into his house, but he wouldn't budge. “You hit your head?”

“A plank or something, real heavy. Swam right into it. Knocked me out for I don't know how long. But man, things got hairy.”

“Stitches?”

“Seven. No biggie. Almost drowned, though. And that's when it started happening. I'm going down, right? I can feel the cold water in my lungs, and it's like I've felt it all before. What do they call that? Something that happens that feels like it happened a long time ago? And all of a sudden I'm remembering that same sensation, clear as can be.”

Repressed memories, Christensen knew, could be triggered by anything—a color, the sound of a car horn, the scent of a menthol cigarette, a soft brush of wind against a cheek. It didn't have to be a sensation as powerful as water in the lungs. But a recovered memory also could be a case of brain-chemical trickery, like dèjá vu.

“Remember that dream I told you about?” Sonny said. “The drowning one where I was underwater and couldn't pull my head up?”

Christensen nodded. He also looked around to see if anyone was watching. He desperately wanted to get Sonny inside. “You were on your back or something.”

“Lying on something hard and looking up at this square kind of light, but my head was underwater. I was twelve or thirteen. I couldn't breathe.”

Christensen sat beside Sonny on the swing. Annie was pressing her face against the picture window just a few feet from them, puffing out her cheeks, trying to get Sonny to notice. He didn't, and she seemed to understand from her father's disapproving look that now wasn't the time. She retreated into the house. “We talked about that dream a few weeks back,” Christensen said.

Sonny walked stiffly to the far end of the porch.

“It wasn't a dream. Something about that sensation, I don't know why, but I know it really happened. Down in the basement of the Jancey Street house. There's a laundry sink with a window above it. A font. That's what the voice calls it.”

“The voice?”

Sonny was pacing now. “I don't know. I don't know. It's the same one I hear underwater, all burbly: ‘I am baptizing you in the water, but there is one to come who is mightier than I.' Remember that?”

“That note you got,” Christensen said. “The one that wasn't signed.”

Sonny stalked back and forth across the porch. “‘His winnowing-fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire.' I can hear the voice.”

“Who?”

“I don't know. I'm underwater, so it sounds, you know, all garbled. I can feel the water in my lungs, and the adrenaline. The need to breathe. Next thing I know I'm in the ER at Allegheny General and they're stitching up my head. As I'm lying there, I flashed on some other things. And I know
they're
not dreams either. One was this guy, Peebo. He and his old man still live next door to my mom's apartment. When he was little, I think I—”

Sonny shut his eyes. “He was like three or four. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen. He'd do anything I said. So one time I, uh, I—”

“Tried to hurt him?”

“No! No. I don't know why I did it. But I held him underwater once, you know, to see what would happen. I can feel him fighting me, pushing me away, kicking. I remember feeling so strong, holding his life in my hands like that.”

“But he was okay?”

“My mother stopped me.”

“Do you think you would have stopped anyway?”

Sonny hesitated. “I don't know.”

“What else, Sonny?”

“My brother,” he said. “The house on Jancey. David died there, didn't he?”

Christensen tensed. “From what I understand, yes.”

“I know he did. He died in our room. I remember it now.”

If Sonny linked the memory to the photograph, or if he remembered anything more specific about David's death, he didn't let on. For now, the gamble seemed to have paid off. “You seem pretty sure about all this,” Christensen said.

“It's weird. Like this stuff suddenly came into focus.”

Melissa pushed through the front door with an armload of clothes. She walked between the two men without a word, headed for the car. Sonny didn't seem to notice her.

“How could I have been so wrong about my brother?”

Careful now, Christensen told himself. He cleared his throat. “Sometimes we tailor our memories so we can deal with them better. Losing a brother is a pretty tough thing. Maybe your mind just did what it had to do to deal with the loss.”

“But you knew. You didn't say anything.”

“I knew you'd remember it when you were ready.”

Sonny stopped and leaned against the porch rail.

“I'm going to the house. You don't have to come if you don't want, but I'm going.”

He couldn't let Sonny go alone. “You've worked hard to get this far. It's a big step, Sonny, but you're the best judge of whether you're ready.”

“Can we go now?”

Annie appeared at the picture window in a wedding dress. A flower girl dress, really. She'd worn it in a cousin's wedding last year, and at the moment was a vision in white lace and pink satin ribbons, topped by a frothy veil, hands folded as if in prayer. Very pious. Very subtle.

“You're pretty popular around here,” Christensen said.

Sonny wasn't diverted. His face was as intent as Christensen had ever seen it. When Sonny leaned forward and repeated, “Can we go now?” Christensen knew he had no choice. Sonny was going to the house. His demons had an address.

“I want to go with you, but I need to make one stop first, to drop off the girls,” Christensen said, his stomach churning at the thought. Brenna's house was still safe, separate, away from this madness. Did he really want Sonny to know where the girls were staying? He swallowed hard. “You can ride with us.”

Without another word, Sonny hoisted the daypack and started down the steps toward the Explorer.

Brenna wasn't home. They'd resumed a relationship of sorts, but not a healthy one. His deceit seemed always just beneath the surface of every strained conversation. They still weren't sleeping together.

“Where is everybody?” Annie asked, laying her fresh clothes on the living room couch. “Taylor!” Her voice echoed through the house.

“Brenna probably took him across town to see his dad, honey. They should be back this afternoon. Will you be okay here if Dad goes out?”

“Is Sonny staying? We could play Candy Land.”

Sonny wouldn't even get out of the car. He'd had a death grip on the front-passenger seat armrest all the way to Brenna's, and Christensen had wondered again if this visit to Jancey Street was somehow avoidable.

“Sonny and I need to go out, honey. It's important. I'm sorry I'll miss a Saturday with you, but maybe we'll take a day off this week and do something, okay?”

Annie's bottom lip quivered. Melissa stomped into the room, dropping her clothes onto the couch. “That guy's got a serious attitude problem,” she said. “I said good-bye twice and the stuck-up jerk didn't even answer.”

“I'll explain later,” Christensen said. “Right now I need you to promise me you'll stay here with Annie until Brenna and Taylor get back. I have to go out, and I'm not sure how long I'll be.”

“Guys like that always think they're God's gift. So excuse me if he's twenty-two. Big friggin' deal.”

He put both hands on his older daughter's shoulders. She was agitated and he expected her to pull away, but instead she returned his gaze. “Melissa, remember after you got burned by the shampoo, I told you about the Primenyl case? How I've been working on something that had to do with it?”

She nodded. He couldn't remember the last time he had her undivided attention.

“Sonny may know something about the killer. He may have seen something when he was a kid that the police think could be really important in finding the person who killed those people, the one they think is killing again.”

“Cool,” Annie said.

He'd forgotten his younger daughter was in the room. He kept one hand on Melissa's arm and stooped to Annie's level. “This has to be our secret. Please. It's very important.”

“Not even Brenna?” Melissa said.

“She knows,” he said, then immediately knew he'd blundered. Both girls looked hurt. Betrayed.

“Look, I can't tell you the whole story now, but Brenna knows a lot about the case and has been helping me. But she doesn't know anything I haven't told you.”

“Bullshit,” Melissa said. “She just knew it long before we did, that's all. You don't trust us.”

“Yeah, bullshit,” Annie echoed.

“Come on, guys. I need your help here.”

“Just go, okay?” Melissa said.

“I wish I had a choice.”

They stood together for a long moment, close enough to feel one another's warmth. Annie was still mad, her body as rigid as an ironing board when he tried to pull her into a hug. Melissa, though, threw her arms around his neck when he stood up. She seemed as startled as he was when she stepped back.

“No big deal,” she said, turning away. “Just be careful.”

His wink forced a tear onto his cheek, but he brushed it away before she saw. “No big deal.”