A Cruel Season for Dying (40 page)

He turned back. “What are you doing in New York?”

The response was a smile at the brusqueness of his question. His father sat down on the sofa, waited for him to settle in
his chair. “I’m in town for …a conference,” he answered. “And also to deliver this.” He brought out from the side of the sofa
a package that was long and narrow.

He reached without thinking, accepting the gift, shocked by his certain knowledge of what the package contained.

His father was watching his hands.

He, too, watched as his fingers of their own volition worked the knotted cord and unrolled the heavy paper. It fell away,
leaving the sword in his lap. He did not look up but stared at the embellished hilt and scabbard while memories rose like
smoke. An image of Grandfather Nakamura nodding gravely, bringing out the sword from the chest where it was stored in its
fine silk wrapping. Explaining to him once more the history and meaning of the family treasure, passed down from the time
when a samurai wore this weapon as a birthright and called the
katana
his soul. Passed down to Isao as firstborn after Grandfather’s death.

“Why?” He looked up at his father.

“I thought you should have it.”

He was silent, forcing his father to say more.

“Your brother has no real interest….” He’d been obliged to spoil it. “You are firstborn,” he amended.

“Why now?”

Isao smiled, but there was nothing of humor or pleasure in the expression. His eyes were as Hanae’s, fixed on his face, dark
and searching. His father’s lips moved in some mute gesture of communication,
dismissing the smile with the barest sign of denial. A minute shaking of his head.

No translation for this silent script. He thanked his father for the generous gift of the sword.

Hanae returned with tea and fresh cups. She sat between them and poured, her butterfly questions filling space with replies
from his father.

Susan and the children were fine. Paul had made a fine gastroenterologist and was an asset to the practice. Elizabeth had
been happier since her divorce, and she was gaining quite a national reputation with her watercolors and
sumi-e.
It was possible she might have a showing in New York.

He half listened, giving answers when required to. He despised his reactions, the childishness of the feelings he still harbored.
He did not know how to change them.

His father had something to tell him. That much he understood, but he was too exhausted tonight to try to clear some ground
on which they might meet. He was infinitely glad when Isao rose, suggesting they see each other tomorrow before his plane
left for the Coast.

Tomorrow was an eternity. He agreed.

C
oldness had plastered itself against the nearby window, an emanation of outdoors that came through in lieu of light. The finches,
disturbed today for no discernible reason, chirped and fluttered behind their metal bars, while Taiko dozed fitfully at her
feet. Hanae sat forward at her worktable, her fingers struggling with the clay. She had hoped that the bust of Jimmy might
be finished before Christmas, but despite her efforts, she was making no progress. And the gift of his portrait seemed more
than ever urgent.

She knew her husband. She clung to that. But more than her secrets, there were questions unspoken between them, which she
had lately begun to acknowledge. Why had Jimmy chosen her?
Hanae. Damaged blossom.
Was it not in part that she might make the perfect wife for an American policeman? Japanese women expected to be neglected
by their husbands. A blind Japanese woman was the child of isolation. She believed that Jimmy had married her for love. But
was there not the assumption that she, of all women, might be satisfied with what he had to give? Had that, too, not been
part of it?

His father’s visit last night had further stirred these feelings. She had learned of Jimmy’s childhood over the years, gently
wheedling out the story. She understood something of his hurt. It was easy to believe that he had been attracted to her because
she symbolized in many ways the path not taken, the life in Japan he’d been forced to abandon.

Little wrong in that. Men and women were attracted to each other for many reasons. Love had to begin somewhere.

The acknowledgment of her feelings was freeing. She took a centering breath, let her hands have their way with the clay. Their
marriage had been a bargain, as all marriages were. Was it not now unfair of her to change the unwritten rules?

Unfair … yes. To Jimmy, whose love had so graciously opened a world she had never thought to experience. And this new land
where uniqueness could be prized, her blindness a mere inconvenience. A universe where all things were possible. Did she not
owe everything to him? And owing all, could she not justly be faulted for wanting more than was truly offered? For wanting
it all. A normal life—a family.

Jimmy’s reaction when she’d brought up the idea of a baby had stung. A wound she could only now bear to examine. Was it simply
the pressures of this present case that had made him so unreceptive to even the thought of a child? Was it his own unhappy
childhood? Was her place in his life to be nothing more than a companion for his loneliness, his vision for the two of them
so circumscribed that it could not bear a third?

Perhaps it would help her own confusion if she could confide in Willie. But Willie was Jimmy’s friend too. Confiding in her
would seem like another betrayal. Like her friendship with Adrian … that kiss. She could hardly believe it had happened. The
memory of it still pierced her with shame.

Jimmy loves me.
The thought was a prayer, unfolding in her mind the countless times her husband’s gentleness and encouragement had warmed
her. His kindnesses beyond words. She felt heartened in these memories, her doubts and fears half foolish.

I love him.
The other half-equation.

She closed her eyes, fighting the headache that threatened, reaching for that illumination that was her inner vision. It would
be difficult to express to Jimmy these things that troubled her. But she must have the courage, a belief in the strength of
their marriage. The baby she carried was a fact.

She sat for long moments, willing a silence into her mind, a resting place for heart and will to gather. She was surprised
when she came to herself to find that her fingers had continued their work. But it was not her husband’s face that had formed
beneath her hands.

Pat Kelly could hear members of the task force and Crime Scene people upstairs. The ceiling overhead creaked and moaned with
this surprise assault of moving bodies and equipment. An old soldier giving up the ghost. They were taking the St. Sebastian
rectory a floor at a time. An army of officers attacking the enemy. Attic. Third. Second. First. Next was the basement in
which Adelia Johnson and he now stood as the advance guard. The outbuildings would be last. The search warrant included everything,
extended to the grounds. Precinct uniforms had been stationed outside to keep the neighborhood and press at bay.

“Cold as a witch’s tit down here, Sergeant.” Johnson’s words came out in big puffs of frosted air. She rubbed her arms to
get the circulation going.

“Yeah.” If the attic had been secular, the basement was sacred. He looked around at the inventory of St. Sebastian’s past,
discarded into heaps and piles, remnants of a time when saints were in and the Mass was said in Latin.

“We’ll need some light,” said Johnson.

His eyes moved up to the row of stained-glass panes at ground level. With sunlight filtering through, he could imagine the
blue-and-red diamond patterns erasing some of the gloom. Today the bleak December weather leached all color from the room.

“This place gives me the creeps.” Johnson was examining a life-size plaster statue. A thin fracture ran down the forehead
across the cheek to the jaw, splitting the face into uneven halves. She turned. “You Catholic, Kelly?”

“Not anymore.” He watched dust motes spiral in a shaft of weak light, thinking of the last time he’d been to Mass. Somebody’s
funeral. He’d left before Communion and gotten drunk on his own wine.

“I’m Baptist and I sure as hell don’t understand this stuff.” She nodded toward the statue. “Who’s this woman?”

He moved to where his partner stood. His latexed hand wiping away a tangle of cobweb that attached itself to the neck and
shoulder. “I think that’s St. Lucy.” Once, he’d known all the saints. In his altar boy days.

“Why is she holding eyes?”

“They’re her eyes.”

“She was born with two pairs of eyes? No wonder she was a saint.”

Kelly laughed. “The statue is St. Lucy once she got to Heaven. The eyes in the plate are the ones she had on Earth.”

“Why is she holding eyes, Kelly?”

“Shit, Delia, I ain’t the pope. I think it had to do with her not wanting to give it up, and the jerk took out her eyes. That
happened a lot.”

“What? Catholic ladies not wanting to give it up?”

“Yeah, the Church is full of virgins.”

“Well, Sergeant, that was then and this is now.”

“What you saying, woman? That there ain’t no more Catholic virgins?”

Delia’s whole body shook as she laughed. She patted St. Lucy’s rear end. “You go, girl.”

“We’re ready to come down, Sergeant.”

“Okay, Miles. You gonna need extra lights.”

For over an hour CSU techs and task force officers took apart the basement. Everything was moved by section, according to
a grid, carefully examined and cataloged. Hymnals, altar cloths, collection plates, glass votives, brass candelabra. The bowl
of a marble baptismal font photographed and scraped for a questionable stain. A sample of holy water taken, a cake of Benediction
incense bagged. The Infant Jesus of Prague and St. Jude, Patron of Impossible Cases, dusted for fingerprints. Nothing was
spared.

“Hey, Sarge, you better get over here. I think we got something.”

Kelly turned, saw Miles and another tech standing in a corner; a pile of blankets, like a mountain of old wool, was gathered
near their feet.

“What you got?” he said, walking over, his focus directed toward Miles Turner’s pointing finger. He looked down. Against the
faded deep blue of the blanket, something gold winked like a tiny star in the arc lights.

Dominick Mancuso peered out the window of the brownstone, where his wife and children had lived quietly for the last twelve
years,
his father and mother for thirty-odd years before that. No one lived here quietly anymore.

The street for now was silent, though, the press people having given up for a while. The phone was silent too. The ringer
turned off until the number could be changed to something unlisted. The message light blinked steadily, demanding that he
wade through the voice mail for the legitimate calls from family and friends. Though they could be worse than the press, trading
on their closeness for the secret thrill, as if, as the father of the murdered child, he had an insider’s knowledge. As if
the police told him much of anything.