The Last Family (3 page)

Doris hated it when Rainey was late. She had game birds in the oven that would be ready in a few minutes, but once he knew he was late, he didn’t seem able to hurry along. They both needed time away from the horror; the thought of her daughter running out of the garage—of the flames consuming Eleanor’s clothing—of Rainey rolling her in the grass—her skin coming off in sheets—of the emergency room—the screams that went on and on for days. And Rainey’s eyes as he sat beside the bed with his hands in his lap because there was no part of her either of them could touch. The thoughts took the breath out of her.

Doris stood, straightened her skirt, wiped the tears away with her fingers, and poured herself a glass of vodka. As it was, she’d had too much already, but, she rationalized, George was in the mountains and—then her mind seized an image of Eleanor’s inflated face set against white hospital linen, looking as though she had been barbecued for a giant’s dinner. Doris tipped the glass furiously, throwing several ounces of the clear liquid down her throat in one gulp, and gripped the edge of the sink as it burned back. She took a breath and decided that she had to stop drinking soon.

Rainey had a major bust about to come down, a bust he had worked on for two years, and after that pressure was off, she would stop. Now they’d get through their weekend, and George would be home with or without poison ivy, which he was highly allergic to, and they could finally get back to being a normal family.

They would get over the loss of Eleanor. Never completely—but they had to go on for George’s sake. And they could have more children in time.
But we’ll never forget you, Eleanor. We love you, baby—so much
. So much. She took another sip directly from the bottle and put it away in the cabinet. She heard the Cherokee stop in the driveway and took a lemon wedge from the refrigerator, chewing the bitter pulp from it to cleanse her breath.

She heard the front door close and familiar footsteps on the tile. She listened for the closet door to close after he’d hung up his shoulder rig and his jacket. Then he would … 
That’s strange
, she thought.
He didn’t open the closet
.

She stopped and pushed her hair back and braced herself into a smile. “Honey? Rainey?” she called in a high chirp, feeling about as good as she could feel.

He was walking toward the kitchen, his boots against the parquet.
His boots are muddy—men!

“Rainey, do you want a martini? Dinner will be ready in a few minutes,” she said. When she looked up from the boots into his face, the breath escaped her in a low hiss.

Rainey’s face might have been crafted from wet dough, his lips twisted in on themselves, the jaw quivering. The set of his mouth and his glazed eyes told her that some catastrophe had befallen him. The air around him was sour, malignant, charged with dark electricity. It was even money whether he’d collapse in a heap or put his fist through the wall.

“My mother?” she said. Her mother had suffered a stroke, and her blood pressure had been up and down on a seesaw for months.

He sat in the chair and stared at the table.

“Oh, God, not
your
mother,” she said. His mother
was in good health, but who else could it be? Their fathers were both long buried.

“Sit down,” he said, his voice without body, used up. His shoulders began to pitch and yaw, and tears started streaming down his cheeks. She put her hand on his shoulder and patted. The muscles that ran across it were like steel cable, unyielding.

“I can’t believe it … don’t know how to say it.”

“Say what? Rainey, you’re scaring me.”

“George.” He managed to say between whimpers. “Oh, my God,” he wept.

“What’s wrong with George?”

“Dead. He …”

The curtain that the vodka had closed over her nerves was jerked open, and Doris howled so loudly that the next-door neighbor, Ted Broom, a retired policeman dressed only in a strap T-shirt and boxer shorts, came running over with his .38 in hand. He came right into the kitchen with the gun in the air, his bare feet squeaking against the linoleum. The Lees stared at him through their tearstained eyes.

“Sorry, I thought it was a rapist …,” he said, apologizing. His face was English bulldog, his chest barreled, his arms too long and his legs too thin and rudely veined.

“Everything okay, Rainey?”

“No, George is gone.”

“Camping. Aw, guys, he’ll be back on Sunday. Boy has to get out.”

“Dead!” Doris shrieked. “My babies are both dead!”

Doris’s eyes rolled toward the back of her head, and some invisible magician jerked the skeleton out of her frame. It was Ted who dropped his gun and moved to catch her. Rainey never moved a muscle nor even looked at her. He didn’t seem aware that his wife had fallen to the floor in a cold faint. Ted lifted her up like a sleeping baby, her arms and legs so much wet rope. He abandoned the pistol where it lay on the shiny antique-white floor tiles, and Rainey stared at it as though it might start
spinning in place and playing music out through the barrel.

“Should I put her on the couch?”

Rainey looked up at Ted, his eyes clouded. “Bed, I think.”

“Maybe you should call a doctor …,” Ted said. “… Minister or something?”

“She likes the Episcopal minister Hodges.” Rainey stood and began looking out through the window, where birds were watching him, tilting their heads here and there and shuffling their feet.

“Which church is it?” Ted had returned.

“Something …,” he said. Two cardinals were trying to decide if they should go for some of the seed that Doris had put out or if Rainey might be about to pounce at them through the glass.

“Are you all right? I mean, is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

“I don’t …”

“What happened?”

“Happened?”

“To George.”

“Murdered.”

“Murdered? But he’s on a camping trip—saw him leave myself.”

Rainey looked at the old policeman. Rainey’s eyes were moist from tears but dead as mica. “I have to go make the arrangements for my boy. He’s coming … in a couple of hours.”

“Shouldn’t you and Doris go together? I mean, she’s his mother, would she want to …”

“George fell into rocks. They picked him up with shovels. Nobody’ll ever see him again because he doesn’t exist.” Rainey squeezed his eyes shut. “I wish to Christ I hadn’t … seen him. Sweet Jesus, how could anybody hurt George?”

“I’ll call Mary over here and I’ll go with you. Drive you.”

“Stay here for me. I’ll call the preacher from the office.
I just can’t be here right now. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I appreciate …”

“Don’t mention it, Rainey. We’d do anything to help. What’s that smell?” Ted asked. He turned to the stove, shoved his hands into oven mitts, and opened the oven door. While Ted was pulling the blackened game hens from the oven and the kitchen was filling with angry smoke, Rainey stood and took his leave.

Special Agent Rainey Lee was stuck in a dream with walls of albumen, curtains of clouding. He felt no more substantial than a ring of cigar smoke as he floated out into the evening air, was absorbed by his Cherokee and … found himself at the office. The elevator delivered him up like Jonah to his floor, and then … he was in his office drinking bourbon and looking out the window. He found himself locked on to his children’s faces, where they were fixed in the silver frame on his desk beside the image of their mother. The smile, Eleanor’s missing front teeth, bright-blue eyes; George’s face, the freckles, the elfin smirk. They seemed almost alive to him. He didn’t cry again. He took his Smith & Wesson automatic from the shoulder holster, put the barrel into his mouth, cocked the hammer, and tasted the gun oil, but the fabric of his resolve had holes in it large enough to climb through. He fell back into the chair, alive and disappointed. He laid the pistol on the desk. He found the second pint of bourbon in the deep drawer among the files, resigned to screw up his courage with the bottle. A walk to the roof, a minute under the evening sky, and then he’d be out there in the stars. The idea was drawing at him, pulling him along as he spun the top from the bottle and turned it up so whiskey flowed into the cup that read “Daddy’s Coffee.”

3

T
ED
B
ROOM, RETIRED, DRESSED NOW IN A KNIT SHIRT AND
S
ANSABELT
slacks, opened Rainey’s front door to a distinguished older man in a navy blazer and a knit polo shirt. Ted’s eyes ran over the steel crutches with the stainless bands that circled the man’s forearms. Polio most likely, he thought. The crutches that had been so common at one time were now rare, and Ted hadn’t thought about polio in decades, but his brother had a son who’d had it in the early fifties. The doctor carried his bag by hooking the handle with the tips of the fingers of the hand on the right crutch grip.

“Dr. Evans. Rainey sent me. To see after Doris.”

“Come in,” Ted said. “Please.”

The doctor followed Ted like a shadow, the crutch tips chirping as the old man moved in fluid, one-way pendulum strides. Ted opened the bedroom door, where his wife, Mary, was sitting on the bed holding Doris’s
hand, cooing to her sobs. It had been less than half an hour since Rainey had abandoned the house.

“Tom Evans,” the older man offered, his voice surprisingly vital.

“This is Dr. Evans,” Ted said, introducing the man to the two women.

“Rainey sent me,” he explained to Doris.

“Where is he?” she asked, the words trembling out. Doris was on her back with her hands over her eyes when the doctor sat on the side of the bed and propped his crutches against the wall.

“Please excuse us,” the doctor said as he opened his bag. By the time he looked up from its depths, the door was closing behind the couple.

Doris stared up like a frightened fawn. The doctor smiled at her, his eyes soft through darkened lenses. Her own eyes were points of horror.
Get me out of here! Get me away from this place, now!

His face floated above her, the peppermint breath washing her as he spoke. “I understand how you feel,” he said. “I lost a child years ago.”

Her hand flew to his forearm and was like a claw. “I want to go to him,” she whimpered. “I’m his mother.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Some vodka—before.” She started crying again. She knew drinking was a sin, and she a sinner. Her mind was running from one place to another and touched on the thought that God was perhaps punishing her for that sin among many. Or punishing Rainey for something she didn’t even know about.
Hadn’t Rainey cursed God, questioned his worth?

“Now, now.” The aged physician removed a syringe and filled it from a vial of clear liquid, the bottom pointed at the ceiling as he pulled back the plunger. “Doris, are you allergic to anything?”

“No,” she said, “just dairy products.”

“This’ll sting a little, but it will help you get through the next few hours.” He inserted the needle, but it didn’t hurt at all. Doris was numb to the needle because she
was overwhelmed by real pain. Immediately after the shot she closed her eyes.

“What’s that?” her words slurred.

“It’s succinylcholine. It’ll force you to relax. I want you to close your eyes and remember a good time with your children. Imagine their smiles. They aren’t in pain now. They’re in a far better place. Do you believe that?”

She smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“Now, imagine the two children together hugging somewhere far away, happy to have each other again. I imagine they’re waiting for you.”

Her head rolled gently to the side.

“Doris?”

She didn’t move. Her eyes were open slightly. He put his hand to her neck, gently. Then he kissed his index finger and touched it to her nose. “Sleep now.” He lifted her arm and felt for a pulse. “One more just to be safe.”

He refilled the syringe and held it against the light. He took her arm in his hand, twisted it, and carefully inserted the needle into the artery, depressing the plunger until the liquid was gone. Then he dropped the syringe back into the valise, closed it with a snap, and placed it on the bed. He put his fingers to her neck and smiled at her.

“Go into the light,” he said, snickering. Then he pulled a note from his pocket and placed it between Doris’s breasts.

There were two telephones beside the bed, one for Lee family personal use and a secure one for agency business. He lifted one and removed small oblong pieces of plastic from the base. The microphone in his pocket, he dialed a number on the small Sony. It was answered on the third ring.

“Special Agent Lee?”

“Yeah.” Rainey’s voice was flat, his words slurred. “Who’s this?”

“This is your family’s doctor.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Fletcher. Martin Fletcher. We haven’t met in some years.”

“Who?” Rainey demanded, his voice raised. “Martin Fletcher? Can’t be.”

“Check the caller ID readout on your desk. What do you see?”

“What?” Rainey was silent as he looked at the display on the machine. He didn’t speak for the time it took for him to realize that the number Martin Fletcher was calling from was Rainey’s own private line. The secure line. Rainey’s mind flew in a thousand directions at once. “What … do you want?” he said, trembling.

“I want you to think about some things. Remember when I said … I forget the exact wording—that I would eat your hearts?”

“Martin … I didn’t …” His mind raced to remember what it was Martin Fletcher was referring to.

“I want you to listen to me. I have a lot to say and not much time. Let me tell you first that I am the one who killed your little girl. It wasn’t an accident … I designed it to look that way. If I live to be a hundred and fifty, I will never get over the horror of it. Fire is so ugly. And the way you tried so valiantly to save her. I watch the tape often late at night when I’m feeling nostalgic.”

“Martin …?”

“This morning your son, George. It is amazing how long a scream can last when it’s echoing all around the rocks like that. What did he say in those last seconds? Secret. Five seconds. Sobering, I tell ya. Bet he was a mess. Hard to see over that railing. Thinking about how he must have looked? Did you look … course you did.” He laughed.