The Face of Death (44 page)

64

“
YOU READY TO GO?” TOMMY ASKS.

“Zip me up and then my answer will be yes,” I say.

He does so and then pulls me into him with his one good arm. He kisses my neck. It has a familiar, comfortable feel.

I hear the sound of footsteps. My precocious daughter appears in the doorway. She rolls her eyes and makes an icky face.

“Geez, can’t you guys give it a rest? I want to go see Sarah.”

“Yes, yes, munchkin.” I smile, disengaging myself from Tommy. “We’re ready.”

A month had passed. Sarah had stayed curled into herself for a week. A week after that, she began speaking again. Theresa and Bonnie and Elaina spent hours by her bedside in the hospital, coaxing her away from her despair.

It was Cathy Jones who’d finally gotten through to her, though. Callie had brought the cop to the hospital. Sarah had seen her and burst into tears. Cathy had gone to her and grabbed her up and we left them alone.

Theresa was as wonderful and resilient as Sarah had described her. She hadn’t had much interest in getting better or being coddled. She wanted one thing and one thing only: to see Sarah. She had a strength to her, a warmth, that Juan had failed to extinguish, and she gives me hope for Sarah.

Last week, I got the call. Sarah was coming home. Really coming home—the home she’d had to leave so many years ago. The irony of this gift coming from Juan wasn’t lost on any of us. We didn’t care.

Cathy had moved in, at Theresa’s request. Theresa had cleaned the place from top to bottom, had thrown open all the shutters and let the light in again. She’d hung the painting on the wall above the foot of Sarah’s bed.

I’d had an idea, as well, a possibility. With Theresa’s help, I checked it out and found it to be true. We had a homecoming gift that we were all pretty sure Sarah would like.

“Are we almost there?” Bonnie asks.

“Pretty close,” Tommy says. “I just need to remember which turn to take. Darn snaky Malibu streets.”

“It’s a left,” Bonnie replies, patient. “I memorized the map.”

I sit back and enjoy hearing the sound of Bonnie’s voice. It is magic to me. Music.

“Here we are.”

We pull up. Elaina and Theresa and Callie come out to greet us, followed by a surprise guest—Kirby.

“Is she here?” Bonnie asks, running up to them.

“Yes.” Elaina smiles. “She’s inside, resting.”

Bonnie heads toward the door at a dead run.

“I see where we stand in the order of things now,” Callie says. “We are uninteresting, honey-love, uninteresting and old.”

“Speak for yourself, Red,” Kirby chirps. “I’m going to be young forever.”

“That’s because you’re going to die before you get old,” Brady drawls, appearing from inside the house.

He and Callie are dating. I remember her telling me about her problems with relationships, about how “her cup runneth under,” and wonder if this is changing. I hope so. Her hand still strays to her jacket pocket for the Vicodin more than I would like, and that outcome is uncertain, but there are different kinds of pain, and the hurt of loneliness well…there are no pills for that one.

It swoops down on me from nowhere, not a bat or a dove but something in between. Alan, haunted by the sounds of a shrieking mother. Callie, perfect on the outside, delicately maimed within. Me and my scars. I realize we trade pleasures and pains, back and forth forever, eating our donuts as we search for the glow near the watering hole.

And that’s okay. That’s life. Still the best alternative to death.

“So,” Theresa says, excited. “Are you going to go get it?”

I grin. “Right now. I’ll meet everyone inside.”

The group heads indoors. They’ll be joined before too long by others that are coming. Callie’s daughter and grandson. Barry Franklin. People who had been touched by Juan, or who simply wanted to give Sarah hope. People who wanted the cycle to end at Juan. To ensure that Sarah was not, in fact,
A Ruined Life.

I go next door and knock. A moment later, it opens. Jamie Overman is there, and she invites me in. Her husband appears next to her.

“Thanks for doing this,” I tell them. “And not just this. Thanks for making it possible.”

John is a shy man. He smiles and says nothing. Jamie nods once. “It’s our pleasure. Sam and Linda were good neighbors and good people. Let me get her for you now.”

She wanders off and in a moment she comes back with what I want. Something from the past that I think will give Sarah some hope.

I look down at the Hope Giver, something alive from a long dead past. She’s older, slower, grayer. But I see a spark of dumb love and expectancy in her eyes that makes me grin.

“Hey there, Doreen,” I say, squatting down so that we’re at eye level. She wags her tail and she licks my face.

Hi back and I love you and what are we doing?

“Let’s go, sweetheart. I want to reintroduce you to someone. She needs you.”

ALSO BY CODY MCFADYEN

Shadow Man

THE FACE OF DEATH

A Bantam Book / June 2007

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to reprint the following:

“Self-Pity” by D. H. Lawrence, from THE COMPLETE POEMS OFD. H. LAWRENCE by D. H. Lawrence, edited by V. de Sola Pinto &F. W. Roberts, copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

“Self-Pity” by D. H. Lawrence, copyright © The Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Reproduced by kind permission of Pollinger Limited and the Proprietor.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2007 by Cody Mcfadyen

Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McFadyen, Cody.

The face of death / Cody McFadyen.

p. cm.

1. Government investigators—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.C438F33 2007

813'.6—dc22 2007004712

www.bantamdell.com

eISBN: 978-0-553-90377-5

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