The Edge of Recall (41 page)

Donny started to shake his head, then said, “What book?”

“A science book.” Dr. Brenner nodded at the men who had grabbed hold, and they let go. “Would you prefer astronomy or geology?”

They were in the hall now, and he couldn’t see Tessa at all. “I’d prefer them both and all my others.”

“Well, I can’t get the others, but I’ll bring you the stars and the stones. How’s that?”

He wanted Tessa, but he would take the books because Tessa was gone, but now he knew she was close. Somewhere close and he would find out where. Find her and make her take him home. He imagined sharing his place with Tessa. The thought made his stomach shrink in and his throat get tight and his hands get sticky and his whole body feel like it was lit on fire.

Dr. Brenner’s phone rang, and Donny stared at it. His phone would have Tessa in it the way Smith’s had. All he needed was Dr. Brenner’s phone. But how to get it? No knife. Oh no, no. But somehow.

Dr. Brenner motioned him into the room without windows that felt like the cistern when the lights were off. He didn’t have his well of nice pure water, but he had seven books already against one wall and soon two more.

“Excuse me.” Dr. Brenner stepped into the hall and answered his phone. With the door closing between them, he said, “What took so long? Never mind. I thought you should know … she remembers everything.”

CHAPTER

37

Genie plowed up the steep road, gunning it for the final curve, but even so the wheels spun and fishtailed to the edge and wedged. She put the vehicle in gear and turned the key. “That’s as far as we can go.”

Tessa climbed out of the car into the falling snow. She raised her face and stared up through the twirling flakes to the gray womb that birthed them. Each cold flake that landed on her cheeks melted into tears, but she didn’t cry. Her sense of loss was deep and silent.

Had her dad—whose sweatshirt she cuddled up in—done something bad enough to get him killed, bad enough Dr. Brenner wouldn’t tell her what? He must know. Or had he only guessed, or was he part of it? She didn’t know what to think. If she believed he’d been protecting her mind, she would have to believe her mother knew also, that she had created an illusion of waiting for Dad’s return, all the while knowing it impossible. Tessa closed her eyes.

“Why did Daddy go?”

Her mother’s hand stroking her cheek. “Sometimes things
happen.”

“I want him to come back.”

Sorrow in her face. “I wish he would.”
Or had she said
could
?

Smith slid his arm around her waist. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”

She opened her eyes, her face wet with snow, her lashes clumped. A gust of wind stole her breath and her vision, but she tromped behind Bair and Genie up the final grade to her home that she didn’t remember leaving.

Genie unlocked the house door and Roscoe squeezed out onto the porch to rub Tessa’s legs. She picked him up, and he wrapped his paws around her neck, rubbing the sides of his mouth against her jaw and purring deep down in his throat. She carried him inside, then released him before he embarrassed himself.

Genie turned. “So are you all right?”

Was there any gauge by which she could say yes? “I need to call the marshal, ask him to look for Dad … for dad’s body. The least I can do is not leave him. …” Grief kicked her again as she imagined all the snows that had fallen over him.

“I’ll do that,” Smith said.

“Thanks, but I need to.” She would not let him protect her from her responsibility as Dr. Brenner and her mother had. “Verbalizing it is important.”

He nodded. “All right, but there’s nothing anyone can do now with the snow.”

“You’re right.” She sighed. “I’m sorry for falling apart.”

“You’re doing fine. Better than fine. You’re stronger than people think.”

“You mean Dr. Brenner?”

He cupped her shoulders. “If I was out of line, I apologize.”

“But you don’t think you were.”

“I don’t know what to think, Tess. It doesn’t sit well.”

Genie fed the fire, then shut the black metal door. “Are you going to tell us what happened?”

Smith turned to her. “She relayed her father’s death, at length, to her therapist, and the less said about it now the better.” He looked at Bair. “Maybe we could have some tea. We’re all chilled.”

As the men went to the kitchen, Tessa clasped herself in her arms and told Genie, “I know what happened, but I need to know why.”

“Are you sure you want to?” Genie flicked her dark hair back.

“I have to.” Tessa drew a ragged breath. “The monster’s still out there.”

“What is it with you and the doctor?” Bair spoke softly over the water running into the kettle.

“I hope I’m wrong. I really do. Maybe the man just has a God complex and needs to be integral in his patients’ lives. I thought that until today, but learning he knew Tessa’s dad cast a different light on things.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“She didn’t know. He kept it quiet all this time.”

Frowning, Bair put the kettle on the stove. “That is odd.”

“Plus, he wouldn’t say how he knew him or what he knew about the murder unless I left her there overnight.”

“Was it a mistake, taking her there?”

Smith looked at her sitting by the stove with Genie. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

When the tea had brewed, they brought mugs to the girls and sat down to get their bearings. Wind worried the windows, packing the screens with snow, but the stove drove back the cold.

Tessa set her mug on the low walnut table. “I need to search what’s here. Maybe there’s a reason Mom kept Dad’s things, besides making me believe he was still alive.”

“Fair enough.” Smith nodded. “Where do we start?”

“Dad’s workshop. Mom boxed some things and stored them out there. I’ve never gone through them.”

He touched the bruising on her wrist. “Does this hurt?”

“Not as much as it did.”

Bair spread his hands. “What are we looking for? Some sort of record or …”

“I don’t know.” Tessa sighed. “But if Mom knew more than she said, I think it would be out there.”

“Let’s go.” Genie stood up.

None of the coats from the closet fit Bair, but he pulled on a thick rain poncho while Smith replaced his loafers with waterproof boots. The shed wasn’t that far, but the snow was getting deep and still coming down, and Tessa said the workshop would be cold until the space heater did its job.

They formed a grim parade to the little log shed he’d entered the night before. Tessa’s jaunt up the mountain in search of answers had gutted her. He hoped this wouldn’t do the same. They tromped inside, and while Bair started the heater, Tessa unlocked the cupboard. She handed Bair and Genie boxes from the shelves, then pulled one out for him.

As they transferred the weight of the box, he said, “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

“I can’t depend on anyone else to give me answers. I need them straight from my dad.”

And she would need all the support she could get. “Would you all mind if we prayed first?” A heaviness had descended, and he felt disinclined to go into this unprepared. He bowed his head. “Lord, guide this search, we pray, and protect Tessa from what hurt the answers may bring. In your wisdom reveal what you would have her know. We make this prayer in the holy name of Jesus. Amen.”

He sat on the bed and set the box beside him. Tessa sat next to him with her side just brushing his as he dug through memorabilia of several different sports, nothing at all about transporting illegal goods or anything else worth dying for. He refolded the box flaps, replaced it, and took another while Tessa scrutinized the contents of hers—cards and photographs mostly. She went slowly, examining each item, absorbing it. He set his new box on the bed but didn’t dig in.

She looked up. “I wish I’d known these were out here. Mom must have stowed them because it was too painful.” She lifted out a handful of letters. “It’s early correspondence from their different colleges, cards from when they were first married.”

Probably nothing to do with her dad’s death there either.

She pulled out an envelope of pictures and thumbed through the images. “I’m in these.”

Smith fit himself around her back to look over her shoulder at the pictures of a happy family. Her spine pressed against the tender spot in his chest, but it felt good to have her nestled there. That close, he felt it the moment she began to shake.

“What’s wrong?” He stared at the photo she held, her dad, he presumed, with little Tess on his back, her mom with a hand against her willowy waist, and another man.

“It’s him.”

He took the photo from her unresisting hand. “This is the man you remember from the woods?”

She nodded. “He must have been a friend.” The shaking increased. “I must have known him.”

“You were awfully small.”

“I would have recognized him.” She drew a ragged breath. “Why can’t I remember knowing him?”

Bair said, “I don’t remember anyone my parents knew when I was five.”

“That’s not the same.”

Smith stroked her arm. “If he was involved in your dad’s murder, you probably never saw him again.”

With trembling hands she searched the other photos in the batch and found two others that included the man from her nightmares. She looked on the backs for a name. “They must have known him well enough that he didn’t need identifying.”

Smith stroked her arm. “We’ll give those to the marshal.”

She looked through the remaining snapshots. No more of the unidentified man. Genie opened a new box and took out a large manila envelope. She raised the flap and peered in, then dropped it with a cry. Before Smith could get to it, Tessa snatched it up and drew out the eight-by-ten photograph. She screamed even after it fell from her hands.

As Bair grabbed the gruesome photo and shoved it back into the envelope, Smith caught the words written on the back.
Don’t
make me hurt Tessa.

“Shh,” he breathed into her neck, though he wanted to scream along with her. “Shh, dear heart.” Who would send such a thing to the people it would hurt most? A monster. Tessa had been right to believe it. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Her spine straightened. “I want him,” she rasped. “I want him found.”

“We’ll take it all to the authorities.”

Sniffling, Tessa eased back and looked into his face. “Why didn’t Mom do that?”

Genie said, “She was afraid for her child.”

Tessa rubbed the tears from her face. “She obviously knew who she was dealing with, that they would kill without thinking twice, but she must have believed as long as I didn’t remember, didn’t say a word, we’d be safe. She kept me from remembering by helping me believe Dad was alive.” She looked around. “All his things the way he’d left them, his clothes in the closet, as though he could come back and pick up where he’d left off.”

Bair shook his head. “But Dr. Brenner—”

“He made me so afraid to recall the trauma without him that I denied it completely.”

“Why would he do that?” Bair asked the million-dollar question.

She shook her head. “Protecting me, like Mom.”

Maybe,
Smith thought.
Maybe.

CHAPTER

38

As soon as Dr. Brenner delivered the books, Donny added them to the stack. He would read them, but not now. Now he had to find Tessa, to make her come for him. He had trusted Dr. Brenner, but he should have stayed in his place and not left it.

Tessa would help him. He only had to get the phone, get the phone and get out. His heart raced at the thought. He pressed a hand to his chest. Dextrocardia with situs inversus it was called, having his heart on the opposite side of his chest, all his organs reversed from other people’s.

Dr. Brenner had shown him the diagram. He had looked at anatomy books before but never realized it a mirror image. If he had held it up against him, the hearts would have matched. He had done that with Dr. Brenner’s book, but the doctor had explained about the mirror image. Now he knew.

Part of him wanted to let Dr. Brenner teach him other things, but he couldn’t go out at night, couldn’t run and find food, find places, find books. They gave him books, then made him put them back. Except Dr. Brenner. He let the books he brought stay, but Donny couldn’t stay. He twisted a crackle from his spine.

Everybody stared or looked away. Some of them screamed and he screamed back. He had been lonely, so lonely, wanting someone to see him, but now he wanted to be invisible. Except to Tessa. He wanted her to look and not look away. He wanted it and he would have it. He was small and he was clever and he had found a way.

He had already undone the bolts. Now he let himself into the vent. He crawled with the stealth of a field mouse under the owl’s stare, pulling himself on his stomach, his shoulders only narrow enough when he pressed them down where they shouldn’t go. His body was a marvel of ill-design, but it served him now.

As he neared each vent he paused and listened. He knew how the halls went, and he had counted the vents before the turn that would take him where he needed to go. Slowly, slowly, quiet as a mouse, he pulled himself to the vent he wanted.