Devils cure, p.30
Devil's Cure, page 30
“How’s Isabel?” he asked.
“Oh, fine, fine, very busy at the moment with the alumni association.”
He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t make an appearance. Unlike her husband, Isabel harbored considerable animosity towards him—the man who’d abandoned her daughter and granddaughter, the man who couldn’t keep it all together. Peter, with his slightly dyspeptic air, seemed to have a much more dispassionate view of the divorce, and married life in general.
“Hi, Kevin.”
He stood up as Diane came into the room—a strangely formal gesture, he supposed, but it seemed appropriate.
“Thanks for being so flexible about things,” he said, meaning the unscheduled dinner with Becky.
“Oh, she really misses you. I’m glad you could make it.”
Hard to say whether this was meant as a reproof or genuine pleasure. He found something painful about being in her presence; he still found her attractive, but in her face and body he detected a hardness, a surface he could no longer get past, and that was hard to take. She was once mine, no more. He thought of her boyfriend, their shared smiles, shared bed.
“How’re things going?”
“Well, they’re hoping they’ll have him soon,” he said. He realized he’d used they, not we, and wondered if Diane had noticed this flag of his demotion.
“Is it safe for us to go back home?”
“What’s the hurry?” Peter said. “Stay here as long as you want. Until they catch him.”
“Dad, it’s no fun having houseguests for this long, come on.”
“It’s no trouble.”
“I never thought there was much risk,” Kevin said hurriedly. Oh God, the last thing he wanted to do was stir up tension among Diane’s family. “Honestly, it’s just for your peace of mind, and mine.”
For the first months of the divorce he’d held on lazily to the notion that they could always get back together, but with each passing week, each conversation of suppressed accusation and anger, it had seemed more and more of an impossibility. Talking to Diane now, he was sweating, heat blooming beneath his arms and down his neck. Being in this house made him acutely uncomfortable—all that he’d lost, and he was never getting it back.
“This is confidential,” he said, wanting to regain his sense of authority, “but we think he might be down in Texas, trying to cross the border. I’ll let you know just as soon as there’s any news.”
“Thanks,” said Diane.
“Hey, Dad.”
For the first time since arriving his smile was unforced.
Becky was looking more and more like her mother, he thought. The blond hair, round green eyes, the high forehead that gave her a somewhat solemn countenance. At twelve, she was starting to become a woman—a transformation that filled him with amazement and pride. But as always the sight of her triggered an intense protectiveness. Even though he was apart from her most of the week, he still worried about her daily, a sudden anxiety welling up in his mind unbidden, usually when reading the paper, or going over a new file, watching the news. Worried about trench-coated kids coming into the school with shotguns, worried about sickos cruising the playgrounds, worried about her not looking when she crossed the road.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said. “Ready to go?”
They ended up at a Chinese place in a nearby plaza, nearly deserted because of the rain, sharing out their dishes of lemon chicken, egg rolls, and fried vegetables.
“I don’t understand David Haines,” she told him gravely, after fumbling a piece of chicken into her mouth with her chopsticks. She said it with the air of someone who’d given it a lot of thought.
“In what way?”
“It’s like he’s concentrating on all the wrong things. I mean, Jesus says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Nothing about killing people—even if they do you harm, even if you think they’re against you. There’s that part about just dusting the sand off your feet and moving on.”
“Well, the Crusaders in the twelfth century killed lots of infidels in the name of God. I guess David Haines sees himself like that: that’s his way of honoring God above all else. I don’t agree with it either.”
“Jesus wouldn’t’ve wanted it,” she said, watching him carefully.
He breathed in, let it out silently. “I don’t think so. I hope not. It’s hard to know what Jesus wanted sometimes.”
She had a few more bites and then sipped at her Diet Coke pensively. “I’m glad you’re here. There’s something I wanted to tell you.” She said it with the sort of gravity a parent is supposed to invoke when disciplining a child, or at least imparting great wisdom. At the same time, there was an excitement playing across her cheeks.
“Oh?”
“I want to be a Catholic.”
Any impulse he might have had to laugh it off as a joke was vanquished by the seriousness and delight in her eyes.
“When did you decide this?” he said, putting down his chopsticks.
“Last week.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot?”
“I think so. I liked those times we went to mass together, and I’ve been going with Kira and her parents sometimes. We talk about it a lot, and I finished reading the New Testament again.”
She said it with some pride, and he remembered how, some months ago, she’d shared with him her resolution to read all of it. He imagined her under the covers with a flashlight, concealing it behind a magazine so Diane wouldn’t find out. Diane. She was going to kill him when she heard about this. It would all be his fault. And maybe it was. What had he expected out of all their weekend field trips to churches? Had he really meant it solely as an educational and aesthetic exercise? No, if he was honest, he must have hoped that something would lodge itself in her heart and mind. His mind skittered back to Diane’s threat—to try to bar his visits if Becky got involved with anything weird. He was pretty sure that not even Diane could construe the Catholic Church as something weird, though she might give it a damn good try.
“Why Catholicism?” he asked her, curious. He didn’t know if he would ever have chosen the Catholic Church, but he could see its attractions: a long history, a reputation for theological rigor, a strictness in upholding its doctrines and tenets. And for a child, the drama of the mass, the sumptuousness of the iconography.
“Well, I started with a pro and con list first,” she said, and at this he couldn’t help smiling, his methodical daughter totting up the benefits and demerits of world religions on a lined notepad.
“And Catholicism won out?”
“Not really. I mean, it was impossible. Some things were more important than others, and it got so there was no way to compare them. In the end I guess it was the praying.”
“You’ve been praying?”
“I fall asleep sometimes in the middle.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Kira says I should kneel at the side of the bed. Keeps her awake.”
“Good idea.”
“I just kept praying to know which was the right one. And more and more it just seemed like I could believe in Catholicism. It makes me feel good. It feels right.” She dropped her eyes. “Anyway, so that’s how I decided.”
He nodded, and for a moment didn’t know what to say. He tried to imagine the expression on his face, and could only assume it was stupefaction. She was twelve. On what level could a twelve-year-old make such a decision? And yet, didn’t the Catholic Church confirm its members at eleven, making them full communicants? Becky was brighter than most her age, brighter than a lot of people he worked with, and more level-headed, but still … he could see all the obvious influences. Her best friend was a Catholic. And despite his own attempts at impartiality, he gravitated towards the Judeo-Christian tradition. Was this just a hangover from God’s Children, though, or because it contained the most divine truth?
He laughed at himself, thinking of all his dabbling with religions, all his reading and clinical observances. He’d treated it like some all-you-can-eat buffet and pecked and sampled until he felt bloated but never satisfied. He’d been playing at faith, analyzing it like an anthropologist, but he felt so little in his heart, unable—or maybe simply unwilling, he didn’t know—to commit. Was it some gloomy certainty in his heart, or just his fear of being wrong, a naive, blinkered fool? Waiting for a sign, a big special effect that would split the heavens. Maybe holding back was the easy thing to do, and all the work lay in commitment.
He envied his daughter. Maybe it was an immature decision, but so what? If it was, it wouldn’t hold. It would crack under examination, under the duress of life, and she’d have to make new choices. He didn’t wish those on her yet. He could see the purity of her feelings, the simplicity of them.
“I’m really happy for you,” he told her. “And proud of you. You’ve thought a lot about this.”
She nodded. “I’ve already talked to the priest.”
He coughed into his water glass. “Already?”
“He says I just need my parents’ permission and he’ll start me on catechism lessons after school.”
“Well, you’ve got mine,” he said. “But I don’t know about your mom, Becky. She’s going to flip.”
“I was wondering if you could talk to her about it.”
“Probably best if you do it first, so it doesn’t seem like it was my idea. Oh God, she’ll think I’ve been brainwashing you.”
Becky nodded. “If I tell her how important it is to me, don’t you think she’ll be okay with it?”
“I hope so.”
“She knows I go to mass with Kira, and she’s seen the Bible I was reading, and she doesn’t mind.”
“Good,” he said, surprised he hadn’t gotten an accusing phone call about this, too. He looked at her, smiling across the table, and felt a surge of happiness. It was what he’d wanted for her, what he’d hoped for, and in some way, her faith went some way towards erasing the emptiness of his own faithlessness. A fisher of men: maybe there was some kind of divine tally sheet he’d gain some marks on.
“Child of light,” he said to her.
“What’s that?”
“The term the priest uses when you’re baptized.”
“I like that,” she said.
The rain was still coming down as he drove her home, and when he kissed her goodbye on the doorstep he felt as if something cold had touched him. It was hardly the first time he’d had an unpleasant premonition that he might never see her again; they were like rogue electrical impulses, and they never came to anything. But it wasn’t a nice way to leave his daughter.
“That’s great news,” he said. “Break it to your mom gently.”
“I will. Thanks for dinner.”
“I’ll see you soon, I hope.”
“Okay. Be careful.” He smiled, remembering how, as a little child, she’d learned to echo these words of Diane’s as he left for work. “I pray for you, too, you know,” she told him. “Every night.”
“That’s good. I need a lot of work.”
She chuckled, having no way of knowing how touching a child’s benediction was. Kevin saw her indoors and turned back to his car, wishing he could believe in the power of prayer.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LOOKING SOUTH DOWN MICHIGAN FROM HER FATHER’S BALCONY, SHE saw the skyline decapitated by the low cloud, the Hancock’s twin antennae glimmering dully through the mist before being extinguished. Even standing back against the sliding door, she was getting soaked by the hammering rain, but she didn’t want to go back inside just yet. She needed air, an open window to quell the swelling anxiety she felt inside; she needed the rain and noise to distract her from that little bottle of phenmetrazine in her purse. No more until tomorrow morning, or she’d screw up her whole withdrawal regimen.
Lightning backlit the fog over the dark lake and then, like splitting wood, came the thunder’s reply. From a construction site down Burton came some resonant, cataclysmic gonging noise that she could only guess was a winch swinging against the side of its crane. The rain itself created an ambient roar, beating at windows and metal balconies, punching leaves, cratering the swift shallows of North Michigan and Lakeshore Boulevard.
At last she went back in, slamming the door shut against the storm’s din. In the bathroom she took a towel and dried her hair, pacing absently, unable to get rid of her nagging guilt about Rachel’s note. Maybe she should have shared it with Kevin. She didn’t have to, did she? It wasn’t illegal. Could they put her in jail for concealing something? But it was sent to her, it was private property.
The only thing she was worried about was Rachel’s safety—but this was still conjecture, she reminded herself. She still had to prove paternity. Wait until you know.
Wait. That was about it. She still had over two hours before she could get back to her lab.
She sat down in front of the TV and surfed without seeing anything, the speed of the images unsettling her enough that she soon switched it off. From her briefcase she extracted the fat folder she’d brought back from the lab. It was the file her researcher had put together on David Haines over a week ago, when they’d been hopeful of getting his blood or tracking down other family members. Mostly it was photocopied articles from magazines and papers, but there were a couple of paperbacks, too, the kind with hot-stamped covers sold in supermarkets. Idly she picked one up, noted the appropriately lurid cover and title (Dark Angel) and the long list of Newsweek writers who’d doubtless churned it out mere weeks after Haines was captured. She hadn’t the slightest interest in the case, really, or in David Haines.
She wanted to find out about Kevin.
She started at the beginning, skimming through the paragraphs of tedious investigative procedure, stopping only when she spotted his name. She was hoping for personal details, but there weren’t many. Served with the Chicago field office for fifteen years … a specialist in cult psychology … in the past he’d been instrumental in blah blah blah. “Tall and rangy.” That was about it in the way of description. Jesus. She flipped to the front of the book and looked at the list of writers’ names again. Figured. What was it with male writers? Didn’t they notice his eyes, that lupine balefulness? Nothing on the way he spoke, or dressed, or whether he was married. Or single. Or whether his fourth finger had ever held a wedding band. She supposed the readers of these books didn’t really care about that kind of thing.
She was getting ready to skim again when the chapter hit a portentous end note: “No one knew it yet, but Sheldrake would turn out to be the task force’s most valuable asset. In the early days of the DOCKIL file (the Bureau’s abbreviation of Doctor Killer), no one had yet surmised that the murders were religiously motivated. But it was ultimately Sheldrake who identified the killer’s modus operandi, Sheldrake who anticipated Haines’s next fatal moves—a man who, twenty years earlier, had been a member of a religious cult not unlike the one that forged David Haines.”
She felt almost angry, as if someone should have told her. But here it was, public knowledge. Maybe if she’d been in the country instead of working up in Toronto when Haines was killing, maybe if she were the type of person who scrupulously followed such things and read shitty little books like this one, she would have known. She was surprised at herself. A month ago, if any man had confided in her that he used to be a member of a cult, she would have instantly classified him as a loony: a weak mind and spirit.
But right now she couldn’t help finding it bizarrely, maddeningly perplexing. A man who’d been in a cult, and spent the rest of his professional life debunking them, while at the same time craving religious belief. It was a bit twisted. Was this how he could want to imprison David Haines but at the same time be so infuriatingly sympathetic towards his precious civil liberties?
Well, Kevin had left, that was the important thing; he’d seen through it all, and was smart enough to shake it off.
In the middle of the book were a few pages of black-and-white photos. Haines’s victims. A few crime scenes, which made her wince: windows shattered by high-powered rifles, yellow police tape, cruisers. There was only one picture of Kevin Sheldrake. It wasn’t a particularly good shot. He was standing against a map, pointing at some location, probably for a press conference. His posture could use some work, his shoulders starting to round. He had nice hands. And his eyes … she still couldn’t decide if she liked them or was simply mesmerized by their intensity. She couldn’t say as much for his style of dress. In the photo it even looked as though he was wearing the same banal suit she’d first seen him in. He looked younger. It wasn’t his hair; he still had pretty good hair. In most men his age, it was the first to go: hair, gone or receded into a monk’s tonsure; face, squared out with jowls; expression, smug with a fat income, in the case of most of the men she met.
Kevin’s age showed in his face. He was gaunter now, more weary. She wondered what had happened to him in the last three years. Maybe just life. She looked at his hands again. There we go: a wedding band on the fourth finger. So he’d once had a wife, maybe kids, and was now on his own. Interesting.
Staring at the photo, she wondered what it would be like to hold him. After Adrian’s broad shoulders and barrel chest, Kevin would be hard and edgy as a lightning rod. Be like wrapping yourself around a current of electricity. She felt a pleasant flush through her upper thighs.
Thunder vibrated through the floor, and the lights flickered. She checked her watch. Nine-thirty. The RFLP would probably be done within the hour. Again the lights dimmed, more deeply this time. Shit. She closed her eyes, tried to remember if the RFLP machine was plugged in through a surge-detector. Yes, probably. But now all she could visualize was a blinding snake of electricity coiling from the outlet into her machine, an exuberant shower of sparks, and inside, a smoking puck of electrophoresis gel, her DNA samples fossilized.
In less than five minutes she was in her car, windshield wipers on full, brushing a strand of wet hair away from her face. She pulled onto Lakeshore, feeling the water through the wheels. There weren’t many cars on the road, and the beaches were deserted as she swung around behind Streeterville. She’d called Kevin before she left, got voice-mail, and told him she’d gone in early to make sure the samples were okay: she’d meet him there.
