Under Cover of Daylight (24 page)

Outside in the cockpit Thorn gazed out at the dark, felt a drop of rain against his face. The sky overhead was still clear, but the air was charged. He jumped back across to the dock.

He hefted the cardboard box. It was a square box, might have held a clock or a softball, but it weighed at least six pounds. Six pounds of pulverized bone and char. Thorn held it in one hand, breathing the airless breeze. He steadied himself against the fish-cleaning table and opened the flap of the box. From the faint light of a new moon he could tell the dust was whitish. Flecks of coarsely ground meal mixed into it.

Then he looked up at the stars, made a slow circuit of the bright sky. Nothing up there to pray to but a plane, too high for its engines to be heard. Thorn watched it slip through the stars.

He stepped out to the edge of the dock and swallowed a good breath.

“I’m here,” he said to the dark. He waited. “I’m trying,” he whispered.

The wind continued to build.

Thorn touched his finger to his tongue. He dabbed it in the open box. And brought the grit back to his tongue.

T
HORN CLIMBED THE GRASSY TERRACE
up to the house. The porch swing was banging. He hooked it back, then sat in one of the wicker chairs to catch his breath, taking the rain-scented wind almost straight on.

When the first fat drops exploded against him, he went inside and began turning on lights, working his way through the house. Even the pantry light and the small tensor light above Kate’s bed. Sending the shadows back to wherever they came from.

In the refrigerator he found a carton of strawberries webbed with a blue mold, probably a cure for something by now. Thorn threw them in the empty trash can. There was also a six-pack of Busch. He opened a beer. Drank half of it down in a swallow. He stayed in the kitchen till he’d finished it. He walked back into the living room, opening another beer.

Kate’s desk was empty. The contents had been examined and returned and were still in the sheriff’s cardboard cartons. Thorn sat at the desk, sipping his beer, gathering himself for this. The wind was sealing the house now, bellowing at the windows, bringing the rain against the tin roof with that roar Thorn had always found so comforting.

The first box took him an hour to wade through. He was thirstier for facts than he’d imagined, reading her tax forms straight through since 1958. And reading letters he and Ricki had written from Sea Camp in Grassy Key when Thorn was twelve, Ricki ten. “Your little camper,” Thorn had signed all his letters. Ricki had just demanded over and over that Kate forward her snorkel and mask, water gun.

For another hour he worked through the second and third boxes. Reading every word, adding up sections of her checkbooks, balancing her statements. Trying to interpret the deviations in her signatures. Recalling what he could about every month her records covered.

Two hours and he’d read her history. All he knew now was what he had known already. She was a careful woman. She had spent a great deal of time saving things. Possibly for just such a night as this.

Thorn repacked all the cartons and looked again through the drawers of her desk. He pulled each drawer all the way out, set it aside on the floor, peered into the desk for spillage.

He was down to the last two drawers when he found it. A partition in one of the drawers, separating off about an inch of space at the rear. The DEA boys had pulled it out one inch short. In that slot Kate had placed a file folder.

The folder was thinner than the others. Thorn opened it, glanced at the newspaper clippings there and abruptly sat back in the swivel chair.

It was a file on Dallas James.

Thorn rocked his head back, grimaced up at the ceiling, scanned the cobwebs up there, let his eyes come gradually back to the desk.

There was the clipping about the first accident, the one Thorn had read at thirteen. He’d forgotten the headline,
NEWBORN SURVIVES AUTO CRASH
. There were three articles about Dallas’s dying in Lake Surprise. An article from the
Miami Herald
gave just two inches to it. The local Key Largo paper had published two stories about Dallas’s death, describing other accidents at that same curve in the highway.

Thorn hadn’t seen those articles when they first appeared. He’d been in a kind of perpetual shock back then, waiting for a knock on his bedroom door, for a man with a badge to want to ask him a few questions. Kate and Dr. Bill had been fishing in Alaska when it happened. They hadn’t returned until late in July that year. She must’ve heard about it when they returned and tracked down the articles. She might even have harbored suspicions all those years.

He read the articles twice, but little of it took hold. He rubbed his eyes, propped his face over the old newsprint again, and forced himself to see the words,
LOCAL BANKER DIES IN WATERY CRASH
.

And the photograph showed a smiling Dallas in his banker’s suit. The smile looked sincere, but his eyes were bleary, strained. Local banker, Dallas James, was survived by his wife, Marilyn, and daughter Sarah Ann, ten.

The storm rattled the front door. The white curtains stirred. Thorn stared again at the photo.

Dallas’s mouth. His bottom lip was full, and his top lip was almost thin. There was a dimple in his left cheek. It was a very familiar mouth. A very familiar set of lips, that hint of a smile, that haunted flicker in the eyes.

Thorn studying the newsprint mouth, blinking his eyes, trying for a better focus. He shifted in his chair, looked up at the sound of the wind rearranging the porch furniture.

Survived by Sarah Ann. A daughter whose mouth was grown up by now. A daughter who was old enough to let men kiss her mouth. To kiss back, with passion or something like it. She would be thirty years old. Old enough for almost anything.

A woman with a mouth like that might let a man grow fond of her, fond of kissing her and of talking with her. A woman with Sarah’s mouth, Sarah Ann’s. A man might eventually bare himself to a woman with a mouth like that. He might confide in her, confess his deepest guilt.

Thorn opened his eyes and peered once more at the dots of ink, the full lower lip, the thin upper, the wary half-smile. It was a beautiful woman’s mouth, the kind of mouth that dead men probably dreamed about when they were wishing they could return.

Southern Bell information had four M. Jameses in Miami. Thorn asked the operator if one of the parties happened to live in Coral Gables. Yes, sir, 3535 Anastasia Circle.

It was eight-fifteen when Thorn hung up the phone at Kate’s and nine o’clock when he pulled into the driveway of Marilyn James’s Spanish-style house. He parked where the ’64 Buick had once been parked.

Thorn rang the chimes and waited. In a minute she pulled the heavy oak door open against a gold chain.

“I’m Bill Christian,” Thorn said, his voice only a little shaky. “A friend of Sarah’s from law school.”

She showed no suspicion, but no warmth either. Thorn hoped for a moment that it was all wrong. This woman had never had a daughter in law school.

“I’m just in town for the evening, and I couldn’t seem to locate her phone number.”

“She’s changed her name,” Marilyn James said.

Thorn took a slow, even breath, waved a night bug away from his ear.

“Let me guess,” he said. “I bet she uses Ryan now.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, surprised. “That was my name.”

Thorn said quietly, “I probably shouldn’t have dropped by like this, but Sarah talked about you so much I just thought ...”

Her face relaxed, and the door closed. The chain came off, and she swung the door open.

“You can come in if you like, Mr. Christian.”

Thorn thanked her and stepped into the bright foyer.

She was Sarah’s height but thinner, more brittle. Sarah’s straight nose, Sarah’s wiry black hair, going gray, held under tight control. An ankle-length navy blue sundress. Her skin as white as Sarah’s. But the corners of her mouth turned down, and her eyes were red and desolate as though she had stared too long into the sun.

Looking past her into the living room, Thorn said, “You have a very nice home,” There was a fireplace, a burgundy rug, highly polished cherry furniture.

“I’m afraid everything’s terribly dusty,” she said. “I just can’t keep up with all the work.”

Thorn followed her into the living room, his heart revving.

Over the mantel was a painting of Dallas and Marilyn and Sarah, dressed as though for Easter services. Dallas stood behind the two of them and tilted his smile upward in what might have been patriarchal pleasure. Or maybe, Thorn thought, he was drunk.

Marilyn offered him a glass of beer, some coffee, a real drink. Thorn refused everything, saying he was unfortunately short of time.

“I never get to meet Sarah’s friends,” she said, seating herself on the gray herringbone couch, making an empty smile. “You say she talked about me?”

Thorn sat opposite her in a wing-back chair, making sure to plant himself on the edge of the seat. Young man in a rush.

“She told me about the accident,” Thorn said, nodding up at the painting.

“Did she?” Marilyn said. “But then I guess she would.”

Thorn said, “She seemed to take it very hard.”

“I’ve tried to snap her out of it,” her mother said, “done everything I know how. But she doesn’t listen to me. Never has.”

“She
did
seem a bit ... I don’t know what it was.”

“I believe it’s known as an obsession,” she said. A cold burn crossed her face. Thorn sat still and watched her choose another face, a hostess smile. She brushed at the lap of her blue sundress.

Thorn said, “Maybe losing her father like that gave her a purpose, a drive she might not have had otherwise.”

Marilyn stiffened and brought her face together into a frown. She looked up at that painting, leaning back from it the way one might measure the height of a mountain.

She said, “You know, it’s terrible, but I think sometimes that Sarah was competing with me over this. Who loved him more, who was hurt more. She acted it out her way, and I, I’ve done it another way. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but I won’t even drive the car anymore. I have a girl who does my shopping. I stand here and watch the golfers go by and I paint and that’s my life. That’s my entire life.”

Thorn was silent, watching the face come apart, mouth forming an apologetic smile, but the eyes staying back there, flirting with anger and despair. She was lacing and unlacing her fingers, looking at Thorn. She shifted on the couch. She seemed to be inviting him to comment on her miserable lot.

When he said nothing, she said, “When I was thirteen, I lost my father. It took me forever to forgive him for dying. Maybe that’s how Sarah feels, I don’t know. She might feel anger at him, and that makes her feel guilty.” She paused and appraised Thorn. He tried to look sympathetic. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. I hardly do anything else.”

Thorn edged an inch farther back on the chair.

“Black lung,” she said. “That’s how
my
father died. I never knew him when he wasn’t coughing. But that I got over. I didn’t make it my life’s work.”

“Lately,” Thorn said, “has she been any better?”

“Sometimes I think so. And then I don’t know,” she said.

“She might be getting over it,” he said.

“She’s maturing, I suppose.”

“If she were in love, finding someone to love,” Thorn said, “that might help.”

She eyed him. Thorn feeling safe behind this mask, Bill Christian.

“I suppose it’s possible she’s found somebody,” she said. Her mouth made a motherly smile. “But I wouldn’t let that stop me from looking her up.”

Nodding toward her easel in the corner of the room, Thorn said, “Before I go, maybe you’d show me some of your work.”

Marilyn James turned her eyes shyly to the floor.

“You’re kind to ask.” She rose, and Thorn followed her across the room to a pair of French doors leading out to the patio. He glanced out there. It was exactly as he remembered it. The same furniture, high-backed metal chairs, webbed chaise longue.

Marilyn drew off the cloak covering an oil painting she had half finished. It showed a gray weathered one-story house with a tin roof and a ramshackle porch facing a barren field. A single naked tree stood beside the driveway up to the house. The house glowing golden, the sky and field stark white.

“My old Kentucky home,” she said. She stepped away from it, appraised it for a moment. “I’d probably go back there to live. But it’s not there anymore.”

“It looks like a nice fire’s going inside, spring on its way and all that.”

“Well,” she said. “I think of it as November. I’m calling it
First Freeze.
That’s what I’m working on now, putting the frost on the grass.”

“It must be hard,” Thorn said, “to look out at the golf course and paint a scene like this.”

“No, not at all.”

She let the cloth back down and led Thorn onto the patio. He ran his eyes over it all. Nothing out of place from his memory. The same half circle of furniture facing the golf course. Even a whiskey glass sitting on a metal table beside the chaise.

“That’s her place,” Mrs. James said, pointing at a light across the dark golf course. “She seems to be home.”

“I should call first,” said Thorn.

“No, no. Go on, surprise her. She needs to see somebody from back then.” Her hand went to her forehead, pushed back some strands. “She needs somebody now.”

Thorn asked her why. He watched her staring at Sarah’s light.

She said, “Sarah’s just lost somebody else. I’m afraid it was somebody she cared a great deal about.”

He parked the Cadillac two blocks from Sarah’s garage apartment, in the parking lot of the Church of the Little Flower. As he was working through the bushes onto the long fairway, the rain began. It had none of the vigor of a storm, a listless summer downpour. By the time he reached Sarah’s, he was drenched.

Her apartment was part of a large walled estate. The main house was a bulky two-story modern Spanish. Spotlights shone on its white stucco walls and the patio, pool, and Jacuzzi were lit up from within. The rain came straight down, so light it was almost soundless in the trees around the house.