Retribution (30 page)

Later, after he'd showered and changed, he flashed a twenty at the maid, who was still cleaning rooms on the fifth floor, for new blankets and sheets, took his clothes to the cleaners, and found a corner restaurant which served weak coffee and brisket sandwiches he could cut with his fork, and he sat and waited for darkness to fall. He would find out why the lights had blazed all night at Charlie's house. With no dog to stop him, he would make her pay for all the humiliations she had heaped on him. Every one of them, throughout the years. Every Goddamn last one of them.

* * *

The sky held a faint purplish tinge by the time John finished his kennel chores, locked Sultry in the storeroom, her puppies all snug by her side, and the bitch giving him a proud yet protective look over her litter. He rushed through the runs in the exercise yard, every moment nagging at him, and Jagger pushed at his hands with an anxious whine as if feeling what he felt.

Charlie had not called him, nor had the voice mail been lifted. What he had to say to her, he could not tell her over the phone. He wanted to be at her side, for she would take it hard, and he could not let her take the blame. She would recoil, he knew that, once he told her about Linda Finley and Holly Garner. She would retreat to some faraway place behind her blue-gray eyes, and thank him politely, and turn away.

He wondered if… somehow… some way… she had discovered that same similarity ten years ago. If that discovery had been what stopped her from painting. If the shock of it had wiped the memory from her mind as completely as the desire to create. If knowledge had scooped the will out of her as neatly as a scalpel had scooped out a tumor.

Jagger pushed and whined at his knee, and pawed at the gate as John maneuvered him back inside so he could lock it. The golden's ears hung limply, and his feathered tail barely swung. He nudged his nose through the chain-link diamonds, marking Ruby wetly. John stuck his fingers through to scratch the top of Jagger's head lightly. He felt the same worry the dog did. Neither of them figured that the day would go without Charlie calling, without hearing her voice, without her welcoming them back to her.

He checked the locks on the gates, turned his beeper on, and headed for his van. As he strode across the lot, a muffled bark or two followed him, and a high-pitched, warbling howl of utter despair. It made him ache to hear it.

A light shone in the front room, a side light which barely threw any illumination at all out the window, and he did not feel very reassured to see it. It was the sort of light left on by someone to protect against the dark when they were gone or expecting to come home late or they'd left on a timer to fool burglars. It did not look as though Charlie were even home.

Nonetheless, he tucked his folder under his arm, took his baseball cap off uneasily, and rang the doorbell. Because it made him feel better, he pounded the ball of his fist on the door two, three, four times, venting his frustration. When the door yanked open abruptly, he nearly went to his knees on the doorstep and he made a startled yelp.

Charlie stared at him as if he'd gone mad.

John lost his grip on the folder, and papers cascaded everywhere. She bent to help him pick them up, looking, slowly, at each paper before she handed it back. "What were you doing with these?"

"I could use a drink," he said. "Anything cold and wet."

He had already all but fallen in. She took a swaying step back to let him in the rest of the way.

"I was working in the studio," she told him, "weaving on my loom."

"You didn't take the voice mail off."

"Oh. I didn't notice, really." She turned, saying, "Let's talk in the kitchen."

He followed her, her manner more distant than cold, and when he sat at the table, he noticed that she had put kibble down, as if forgetting that Jagger was not there. She poured him a soft drink and sat down opposite him, and watched him as though they were strangers still.

"Charlie…"

She put her hands on the table. She looked at her palms, face up, as if reading the lines, and she must have been, because she gave a little laugh, saying, "I have a very long lifeline."

"Charlie, what is it?"

She shook her head. "The hands can't lie, can they?" She traced the line with her index finger, showing him. "I should have shown this to Dr. Clarkson."

"You saw him today? I thought you wouldn't see him until the results came back."

"He left word for us after the last lab." She rubbed her forearms lightly, and he could see the faint thumb-sized bruise on the inside curve of one elbow where someone had clumsily taken blood.

Not another word did she have to say, and he didn't want to hear her say it, but he had to know just how bad it was going to be. Had to understand how it was he was expected to brace himself, to know that he was going to lose her after having just found her. "What did he say?"

Charlie still would not look directly at him. "I want you to keep Jagger," she said lightly. "Retrain him for someone else. Don't let him be alone too long—" Her voice choked to a halt. She made a stifled sound, and could not get another word out. He leaped up. His chair crashed to the floor behind him as he pulled her up, lifted her into his arms, and carried her from the kitchen. She hunched over in his arms, making tiny, strangled noises, and the front of his shirt grew damp as he bore her through the house until he collapsed on the living room couch, Charlie cradled in his arms. She wept. And he cried with her.

When he had finished, and she slowed, he smoothed her hair back and just held her. Her weight in his lap did not stir passion as it had the last time he'd held her like this only… had it only been a day or two ago? But he felt tremendously possessive, as if his hold on her could keep the inevitable from happening. As her breathing quieted, he whispered, "Tell me what he said."

Charlie rubbed her nose on her shirtsleeve, childlike, and took a deep breath. "He said he was going to have to consult on treatment. His partner, the clinic oncologists."

"There is a tumor."

She gave a jerky nod.

"You told me was a surgeon."

"Yes. But he didn't mention surgery."

He tightened his arms. "Even if it's inoperable, that doesn't mean terminal. Or malignant."

"No. It doesn't. I keep telling myself that—" She wrapped her arms about his neck, crying hoarsely into his shoulder, "I'm so scared!"

"I know. I know you are. You and me both." He fished a clean if wadded up handkerchief from his back pocket and gave it to her. Charlie unfolded it, folded it neatly, and then proceeded to massacre it. She blew her nose with a vengeance and dried her face vigorously, then clenched the poor handkerchief in the palm of her hand.

"I couldn't talk to anyone."

"I understand." He caught a trailing strand of hair and moved it back over her brow, and smoothed it into place. "You may owe Jagger extra kibble, though."

"Life goes on, huh? A dog has to do what a dog has to do."

He nodded. "Sometimes that's the best view. A day at a time." He rubbed his chin over the top of her head, pressing her near to him. "He didn't tell you to expect the worst."

"No. It was just such a shock. The tumor… well, I knew it had to have come back. I had myself all prepared for surgery. Then… for him to say what he did… everything just came to a stop. I went numb."

"Tell me what he said. As much as you can remember."

Haltingly, she repeated what she could. John listened. Tried to find loopholes. Found every word as hard to listen to as the first. When she was done, she lay limply against him, grieving, now too spent for tears. And he understood. He did not know what to do.

So he lied to her. "You can't give up. He has options beyond surgery. You don't know what he has in mind."

Charlie made a furtive movement. "Do you think?"

"I think. And I hope." He squeezed her reassuringly.

After a few long moments, she asked, "Why did you have copies of my paintings?"

He did not want to tell her. To heap devastation on despair. But he sensed that she had reached a kind of emotional numbness. He'd seen it in disaster victims before— a point at which nothing else could hurt or touch them. He started with the lesser first. "I went to see a woman whose daughter disappeared."

She sat up and drew back slightly to look into his face. "And?"

He could not quite find words.

Her mouth drew into a bitter line. "John."

"The paintings matched the scenario fairly closely."

"Life imitating art." She shuddered. "Maybe this is all for the best. I can't go on like this."

"What are you talking about?"

"I can't live thinking I created some kind of monster. I don't want to." She gestured with her hand. "Maybe it's just as well Clarkson hasn't got treatment in mind."

He heard the defeat in her voice. His protest roared out of his chest. "Don't you care give up on me! Dammit! Don't you dare quit!"

She sat up straighter, and took his head, and held it to her chest, and then it was she who rocked him, crooning lightly.

* * *

Valdor crouched by the side of the van, the wavering pale beam from the far side of the street barely giving him enough light to read the logo. He fished his dry cleaning slip out of his pocket and scribbled down the information before creeping near the house, parting shrubs and slipping in between them. A block away a dog barked faintly, a small dog, its voice in falsetto. In this house, nothing seemed to stir. He moved from window to window and stood in stark amazement at the old studio window, where curtains had been eased back for daylight, and he looked in.

He could see a row of canvases against a wall, only faintly visible in thin, reedy light spilling over from the hall, but he could tell they'd been filled. It made his heart soar and he stood, trembling, at the discovery before pulling himself away and continuing to the side window at the living room, where blinds hung a bit crookedly, perhaps from the dog's big head pushing them aside so he could look out. He could see the two of them on the couch and the moment of intimacy made his mouth twist.

No dog guarded her now. And she had paintings, more paintings than he ever dared hope for, and they had looked new and fresh to his critical eye. But now there was another obstacle in his path, and he drew back from the window, and sat silent in the night, and decided what to do.

* * *

John waited till his anger subsided, then he sat back, and she released her hold on him, and he knew what it felt like to be so spent that nothing else could faze him. Whatever else he might have told her, he held back. It seemed pointless at that moment. Charlie stretched, then relaxed against his chest as he leaned on the couch back.

"What are we going to do?"

He shifted. "Do you date your paintings?"

She shook her head. "No. Sometimes I put a year after my signature. Mom used to pencil in the year on the back if I didn't. Most artists don't."

He brushed his lips across her hair. "I think it's possible you read something in the newspaper. Heard something on television. It sank into you. Days, weeks later, you painted it. I think you saw something that made you identify with their grief, their loss, and when you couldn't take it any more, you took up your brushes. You purged it."

"My paintings came after the fact." She considered it. "I don't remember it."

"No. Because all you remember is Midnight."

She ran her fingers through her hair. "So maybe I don't create psychos."

"I would hope not. If I can track down the date on the first painting of that series, it will tell us."

"If the painting isn't dated, it's possible Valdor has a record. He kept close track of the ones I finished, and the showings and sales." She smiled slightly. "And what if you're wrong?"

"I don't think I'm wrong."

He prayed he wasn't.

His beeper went off. John checked it and saw his neighbor's phone number in it. Charlie got off his lap to get the portable phone for him but before he could dial, the beeper went off a second time.

This time the code was that of his security system. Something at the kennel.

He called his neighbor first. She answered hastily, excitedly. "John, your dogs are loose. They're running all over. Hans got hit by a car, he's not bad, I've got him here in my kitchen—"

"They break into the office?"

Charlie watched him anxiously.

"I don't know."

"I'll be right there. Call the vet." He stood. She took the portable. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"I'll be up. Phone first." She pinked slightly. "I'll take it off the answering service."

He leaned down and kissed her gently, a brush of lips, and then she was pushing him out the door.

"I'll bring Jagger back."

"Just go," she urged him.

He hurried into the night.

Charlie went and washed her face, and ran a brush through her hair, then found a tie-back and secured it loosely at the base of her neck. She felt faintly hungry and realized she hadn't eaten since lunch in the clinic cafeteria. Tomato soup sounded good. She would make iced tea and have soup and then go through her catalogs in the studio, to see if there was any hope at all of dating her paintings more closely after years that seemed like an abyss in her life. In the morning she would call her mother and see if she had copies of Valdor's records.

Moving through the bedroom, she stopped and put her brace on. The crunch and rip of the velcro straps as she positioned and then repositioned them for security sounded loudly in the empty house. She nearly tripped over the food dish in the kitchen, bent over, and picked up Jagger's bowl. She stowed it in the pantry, faintly guilty that she had not followed through getting the paperwork for the county. There would be a tomorrow and a day beyond that and a day beyond that. She couldn't see forever… but then, who could?