Cast a Pale Shadow(53)

"You changed your mind and decided to drag it to the cemetery under the fence where the dogs dig."

"Yes."

"And what if I said it was your blood?

"My...? Was it? I have no answer for that."

"How about this? You crawled into the trunk yourself, at first, then changed your mind. Kirk's blood was in the front seat. Yours was in the trunk. A whole pool of it, so don't try to say you cut yourself changing a tire or something equally stupid. That's it. Take your patient home, Doc."

"Home? Aren't you going to lock me up?"

"If anybody locks you up, it will have to be the doc. I ain't going to waste the time or the space." Chancellor flipped the scribe's pad shut in disgust and rose to leave.

"Wait." The doctor tried to hold Cole's hand back from taking something out of his pocket. Cole won the brief struggle and held the tape out to Chancellor. "You should listen to this first."

"What is it?"

"Listen to it."

"Detective, that tape was recorded during a privileged session between my patient and myself. During the procedure, he was under the influence of an injection of sodium amytal. None of it could be used in court."

"Is it about this murder?"

"No," Fitapaldi said.

"Then I ain't interested. Go home."

For a while after Chancellor left them, Cole just sat there staring dumbly at the rejected tape.

"Let's go, Cole."

"He didn't believe me. He wouldn't even listen."

"He obviously doesn't think you did it. Your answers were lame if you think about them."

"But he asked about Trissa. He can't think that--"

"No, he just said that to rattle you. His mind is set on somebody else. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the wife, Edie, I believe. Let's go." Fitapaldi touched his elbow and got him to rise.

"Go? Go where?"

"Home."

"I have no home. Didn't you hear him? She's not my wife."

"Let's give Trissa a chance to explain."

"No, keep her away from me. I'll take that hospital room you offered earlier. Lock me up. Chancellor said it's up to you, remember?"

"I think you'd be better off at home." Cole did not protest as he led him out the door.



*****



With no help from either of them, Chancellor or Fitapaldi, Cole locked himself away. The cell was his little room off the kitchen, locked from within and barricaded by a chair. He pulled the shade and sat on the edge of the bed and tried to seal his heart from the sounds of life all around him. If he pretended not to hear for long enough, they would become like the steady crash of the sea to someone living at the beach, easy to ignore, easy to dismiss. But it would take a while. Something in his soul refused to shut them out.

Ruth sang a badly off-key old song as she banged the pots and pans preparing dinner, "The wheel keeps turning, turning, turning, while my heart keeps yearning..."

"If I talk Augusta into giving you a raise, will you cease that caterwauling," Roger asked her sourly.

"Mizewell ask me to give up breathing," she answered and continued just slightly softer.

"But what will this do to Trissa?" he heard Augusta's hushed voice say a bit later during a momentary lull from Ruth. Fitapaldi's answer was low and Cole could not make out the words. It didn't matter. The question was enough.

Cole buried his head in his pillow and tried to shutter the world in sleep. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the drugs that snuffed out consciousness so thoroughly that he did not hear the key turning in the lock, or the chair scraping out of the way, or Trissa tiptoeing in to sit in the dark at his side.

She must have been there when the first vague stirring of his dreaming began, when the dirt of the grave fell in on him and he panted with the effort to keep his heart beating in the heavy, smothering silence.

He awoke in the grayness of dawn to find her kneeling beside his bed, her head resting on his chest, and, God help him, he could not resist brushing her cheek with the back of his finger this one last time.

And he could not make his voice match his harsh and cruel words when, at last, he forced them out. "Get away from me." It sounded more like a prayer, an entreaty, than a rejection, even to him.

She slowly shook her head against his chest and when she knelt back to meet his eyes, she was still shaking it, her chin firm and her own eyes shining with defiance. "Never," she said.

"You're not my wife."

"Then marry me."

"You're as crazy as I am."

"Then we were made for each other."

"I'm poison. People die when they know me."

"People die anyway," she said.

"Doreen."

"Lonny," she countered.

"My mother," he said.

"My father."

"Danny, Jill," Cole recoiled from the hand she reached out to touch him, "Valerie."

"You remember who they are," she whispered.

"I remember their deaths." He stood and straightened the clothes he had slept in, turning his back on her where she still knelt on the floor. "I remember they left me. All of them."

"I won't."

Without a word, without taking the risk of looking at her, he pulled on his shoes, the knots still tied from the night before, and walked out. Jack was in the kitchen, dressed for work, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper.

"Jack, can I borrow your car? I won't be long." He wasn't lying. It shouldn't take long. Just enough time to build up speed and find a convenient bridge abutment or sturdy tree. It shouldn't take too long at all.

"Sure, Nick, you know me, I go in when I go in. Got no clock to punch." He unhooked the keys from his belt loop and tossed them across the table. "Have some coffee first."

From the corner of his eye, Cole saw Trissa in her ice blue nightgown like a ghost in the doorway. "No thanks. Gotta go."

Jack drove an ancient Dodge, one he could park in any part of the city without attracting notice or envious looks. Pity was the most he could expect. It would be no great loss to Jack to have to replace it. Cole turned the ignition and felt the car rumble to attention. For as old as it was, the car had spirit. It should do.

He saw Trissa in the rear view mirror, her bare arms reaching out to him. He shut his eyes and closed his ears to her calling his name, both names. When he opened them again, she was gone.

He headed west on Lindell, not knowing where he would go until he got there. To his left, the park beckoned, the rising sun glinting in the lake, blossoms showering from the trees like snow. Like snow. He remembered the silent snow as it collected him in its frigid peace so many lost months ago. He turned into the park and set the white blossoms to flurry and swirl up from the road as he passed, but there was no peace in them, no peace in a raucous spring shouting life from every treetop and green slope.

Damn, the park was a mistake. The car slowed as if it had a mind of its own, meandering through the looping labyrinth of the parkway. Cole patted his pockets for cigarettes. There was always one last smoke, he appeased himself for his malingering. It was tradition.

But his pockets were flat and empty. Surely, Jack would have some. Leaning forward, he popped open Jack's glove compartment. A black leather belt and holster coiled out like a snake waking from a nap. He took the gun from the holster and pushed it into his pocket. "Thank you, Jack," he whispered. "You can have your car back in one piece after all."

He slowly wound through the park until he found a place, a thick clump of trees beyond the zoo grounds. Maybe it would be a long time before they found him there, time enough to buffer the shock.

"But what will this do to Trissa?" Augusta's words resounded in his brain.

"It will save her. It will save her," was all his aching heart could reply. He parked his car in the zoo lot and hiked back to the woods.

His feet scuffed along through a carpet of dead leaves and uncurling ferns and Johnny-jump-ups like tiny pansies winking up at him. "I thought you said pansies always made you smile," he remembered saying to Trissa once and could almost feel her warm body crushed against him.

When? When had he said that to her? Did it really make any difference now? When he reached a spot where the tree trunks blocked all view of the open meadows or the road, he stopped and leaned against a tree, letting his knees crumple under him and his back slide down the scratchy bark.

"Well, Duncan, success at last." He held the gun in his hand, staring at its short black barrel. He hadn't thought to check that it was loaded. He snapped it open. Good old Jack, as reliable as a Boy Scout for being prepared.

Dabbles of sun filtered down on him through the feathery, new leaves. The God damned birds twittered with maddening good cheer. "What are you waiting for? You've dawdled with this business thirteen years already," he muttered to himself.