The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel (21 page)

Hallie hesitated. “He’s . . .
strong
, and I don’t just mean physically. He’s the kind of person who’s never paid a bill late once in his life, who thinks before he acts—sometimes to a fault. He hates Provincetown and fireworks, and he calls a day at the beach ‘savage amusement.’ Sounds like a bore, doesn’t he?”

“Not necessarily,” Gus said, but there was a hint of triumph in his voice.

“Well, the amazing thing is that he’s not. He makes me laugh in a way I never thought I would again; and even though he hates beaches and fireworks, he goes anyway—just for me.”

When Gus made no response, Hallie finally leaned over the edge of the cot, and said, “Hey you, down there. You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Do you still intend to throw me out if I don’t tell the truth?”

“In the rain. With cops crawling all over town looking for you.”

Gus laughed softly. “Okay, then. Yeah, I
am
jealous. I’ve been jealous ever since I heard the words
Hallie’s husband.
Are you happy now?”

“Yes,” Hallie said, her smile visible through the dark. “I’m happy. It means you’re human; and as much as I’m opposed to liars, I’m even more uncomfortable with saints.”

“He still doesn’t deserve you,” Gus said after a moment of quiet.

“That’s what I used to think about your God,” Hallie said. “The ultimate heresy, right?”

Again Gus laughed before turning on his side. “We probably should get some sleep,” he said, though he doubted they would.

Several times during the night, he woke to Nick’s groans. They were promptly followed by Hallie’s soothing voice; the beam of her flashlight slicing the darkness. The sight of her crossing the shadowy room in the thin drawstring pants and tank top she wore to bed affected him more than he wanted to admit. He rolled toward the wall, but he still felt her presence. What had she said?
If you touch me, I just might fall apart.
It was a broken, hallucinatory night of sleep. In the wind, the shack that stood on stilts shook like a houseboat tossed on mercurial seas.

It was close to dawn before Gus fell deeply asleep. A short three hours later, he woke to the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of a gull cracking clamshells on the roof and then skittering across the tin surface to claim his breakfast. Hallie was talking to Nick behind the sheet. Here, where the business of dying was being conducted, routine took over. Medications needed to be dispensed according to a precise timetable. Nutritious foods needed to be prepared, though neither father nor daughter had much appetite. The laborious business of living in a shack without electricity and only a small stove needed to be accomplished.

Gus slipped outside, and a few minutes later, Hallie followed him. He worked the rusty water pump, filling the basin for Nick’s sponge bath, while Hallie lit a cigarette.

“I thought med school would’ve cured you of that nasty habit.”

“I’ve been trying to quit, but now isn’t the time.”

He took one from her pack. “Believe it or not, this is the first one I’ve had in eleven years. It must be your corrupting influence.”

“Excuse me? I think you were the one who introduced me to cigarettes and whiskey—all on the same day, too.”

Gus chuckled, then turned serious. “How long are you planning to stay out here? This kind of life gets pretty hard when it gets cold.”

Hallie exhaled a plume of smoke. “Nick wants to die as close to the ocean as possible—even if it shortens his life. He says it’s a Portuguese thing.” The rain had abated, but the grayness, and the wind remained. Hallie’s hair was blown back. The face of the girl he remembered was marked by the weariness and determination of the woman she had become. “I have to go in to town. You need anything?”

Gus shook his head. “You’re leaving me alone with Nick? What if he needs his pain medication?”

“Then you’ll get it for him, and he’ll tell you how to administer it.” Hallie accepted the basin and carried it inside.

Gus sat on the steps, drinking his coffee, listening to the gulls. He took out his cell phone and frowned as he listened to the worried diatribes that Jack and Sandra had left overnight
.
He wondered briefly if the police could trace his location through his cell phone. He expected he wouldn’t hear from Ava until the end of the week. Robert was likely to be extra vigilant after his visit, and it would take time for her to plan her escape.

He took a walk to the ocean with the intention of praying. There were so many desperate pleas he wanted to toss out to the God of sea and wind, but as always, his petitions were subsumed by the layered gray sky, the imposing darkness of the water, and the only prayer he could offer was one of wild gratitude. With her promise, Ava had taken the first step toward saving her life; and being here with Hallie and Nick was a gift Gus had never expected to receive again. He was climbing the big dune toward the shack when he saw Hallie sitting on the steps with her bag. “I was afraid you’d gone,” she said.

“Do you think I’d leave without saying goodbye?”

“Never know what a guy on the lam might do.” Hallie walked down the steps and paused, her bag slung over her shoulder. “I won’t be long.”

Gus brushed away the sand that had begun to blow into his eyes. “Anything else I need to do while you’re gone?”

“Just what you do in the hospital. Give him a little bit of your hope. Your strength. Whatever voodoo you’ve got.”

He watched her tramp across the dunes toward the pitch pines. When he went back inside, Nick was asleep in his chair, his mouth agape, his formerly olive skin the color of oatmeal. Gus watched him for a few moments before he lay down on the cot and wrapped himself in the jasmine scent of Hallie’s blanket.

He was startled by the ringing of his cell phone, and even more surprised that it was Ava.

“Robert knows,” she blurted out, her voice thick with panic. “He came home early and sneaked into the house when I was talking to Cynthia. You have to come.”

Gus kept his voice firm. “Did he hurt you?”

“I think he knew that wouldn’t work this time. He can tell that I am—different. I have nothing more to lose, Father. It was a terrible scene, though. He cried like a child, cried and begged me not to leave. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I thought how little pity he has for me. And now he has involved you.”

“So you told him what he wanted to hear?”

“Yes. I apologized; I swore he is my whole world and no one could ever love him the way I do—all the things he has said to me over the years. Then, later, when I was finally sure he was asleep, I left. But I don’t have much time. When he wakes up and finds I’m gone, he will . . . well, I don’t want to think about it. This isn’t how I wanted to do it, Father, with no clear plan in place, but there is no turning back now.”

“Where are you?”

“At the Pink Dolphin Motel on Beach Road. Room 4B.”

“And your daughter?”

“Cynthia is driving her off Cape as we speak. Robert won’t look for her or try to bring her home until he finishes with me.”

Gus shuddered. “I’m more than an hour away. And I need to stay here until—”

“Did you hear what I just said? Robert is out looking for my car right now. I should have parked it somewhere else, but I’m still weak, and I’m afraid if he sees me walking . . .” Her voice trailed off. “You said you know people who can help me get away.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, but right now you have to call the police.”

“No police,” she said vehemently. “The moment a call comes in on the radio, Robert’s friend would alert him . . . Please hurry, Father.”

When Gus looked up, Nick was watching him. “It was her, wasn’t it? That woman—”

“She’s in trouble, Doc. Serious trouble. I promised Hallie I would stay till she got back, but something’s happened. I have to go to her.”

Nick attempted to speak, but pain stopped him. He grimaced as he rearranged his legs beneath the blanket.

“Can I get you something?” Gus asked.

Nick pointed at a bottle of tablets on the table. “One of those and water.” He groaned again. “On second thought, make it two. And forget the water. I’ll wash it down with a little glass of Madeira.” He indicated a small chest in the corner of the room.

“I don’t know if you should be combining the two. You better wait till Hallie gets back,” Gus said, handing him the water.

“Who’s the doctor here—me or you? Get me my Madeira. And then go. I’ll be fine here.”

Gus made sure there was enough wood in the stove, then obediently poured Nick his glass of wine. “I don’t suppose you’d want me to bless you . . . ,” he said.

“My daughter blesses me every time she walks in the room. That’s all the blessing I need.”

“Just thought I’d ask. Tell Hallie—tell her I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Nick said. “Not to either one of us.” In the morning light, he was alarmingly small and weak.

Gus paused for a moment, and then reached out to touch a skeletal shoulder. “
Adeus
, Dr. Nick,” he said, remembering the way his grandmother always said goodbye, literally meaning:
To God.

Gus was walking through the door when Nick stopped him with his voice.

“You, too, sweetheart,” he said, using the endearment he had uttered the day he found Gus in his mother’s closet.
Adeus.
”

Gus closed the door softly and crossed himself.

Chapter 20

C
ould you drive a little faster?”
Gus asked, leaning forward in the cab.

“Faster, faster,” the man mumbled with a Portuguese accent. Probably Brazilian, Gus thought. “Everybody wants faster. But nobody gonna pay my ticket when I get stopped.”

“I’ve never known a cab driver to worry about speed. You’re illegal, aren’t you?”

The man regarded him broodingly in the rearview mirror. “You INS?”

“I’m just a guy who needed to be somewhere an hour ago. Please, I’m desperate, brother. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“
Filho da puta
,” the man muttered, clearly not expecting Gus to understand.

“That’s me, the original
filho da puta
,” Gus shot back. Again, the driver shot him a suspicious look. Gus hoped he didn’t recognize him from the Portuguese mass. The speedometer shot up to eighty.

At the Pink Dolphin, Gus reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the handful of cash that Ava had pressed on him the night before. It was still sodden from his trek through the rain, but the driver stuffed the money quickly in his pocket.

“You have a nice day now, you hear,” he said, smiling at the man he had just called a son of a whore. “You need a ride out of here, you call, okay? Ask for Marco.”

“Thanks, but I can walk to the rectory from here,” Gus said, made guileless by relief.
Ava’s BMW was still there.
The only other vehicle in the sandy parking area was a pickup truck, parked askew in front of the office.

“The rectory?” Marco repeated, nodding, as if he understood the meaning of both the threat and the lavish tip. “Don’t worry, Father. I keep your secret, you keep mine.”

Gus smiled as the cab drove away. He knew how it must appear. He could already hear Marco telling his friends:
and the filho da puta was a priest.
Perhaps he would applaud his machismo. Even Hallie might take his absence as proof that he had lied about his feelings for Ava the night before. Not only had he fallen for her, but his obsession had trumped his promise to stay with Nick.

Though Gus sometimes passed the Pink Dolphin in his daily runs, he’d never really looked at it. A gaudy dolphin painted pink, its mouth open in a perverse smile, adorned the front. The building itself was salt-scarred, windswept, badly in need of paint—or demolition.

All the shades in room 4B were drawn. There didn’t appear to be a 4A. Gus rapped firmly on the door but got no response. When he tried it, he was surprised to find it unlocked.

“Ava?” he called tentatively as he went inside. Again there was no answer, but he felt heartened by a strip of light under the bathroom door. The shower was running.

He knocked to let her know that he was there. “It’s me—Gus,” he said.

The only answer was the pounding of the water. It sounded like a cascade of small blows. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. Gus turned on the light and took in the desolate room. Ava’s keys were on the bureau beside a cold cup of coffee, the rainbowed cream on its surface indicating it had been there for hours. Seeing no sign of her purse or the phone she had used to call him earlier, he looked at his watch as he sat tentatively on the edge of the bed. Everything about the scene felt wrong, starting with the unlocked door.

A minute later, the shower was still running. His watch read eleven thirty-five. The exact moment when he began to suspect he had arrived too late: Ava Cilento was already dead.

“
Ava!
” he yelled, banging his fists against the locked door. “Are you in there?” But the room, the entire motel, indeed the whole curling peninsula resounded with emptiness. He kicked open the door, and encountered nothing but the vacancy he felt in his bones. No Ava, but no grisly scene, either. He almost laughed aloud at his garish, film-noir-inspired imaginings. Then he noticed a woman’s top lying on the floor.

The garment was sheer and lacy, unlike the modest sweaters he’d seen her in before. But when he stooped to pick it up, the scent recalled her presence. He tossed the top in the corner and looked around. He picked up her keys from the bureau, willing the inanimate objects to speak.

Wanting to call her, he flipped open his cell phone before he remembered she had never given him her number. He threw it on the bed in frustration. Searching for something he couldn’t name, Gus began to open and slam shut drawers and closets. All were empty. The noise of his footsteps stomping through the small space, the vigorous banging of doors and drawers, his curses felt like an assault on the deep silence he had struggled to create for himself. The hours of centering prayer and contemplation on the beach.

Through the back window of the motel room, he saw a cluster of cottages that would remain deserted until the season. Had she spotted Robert’s car in the lot outside and escaped through the window? Could she be hiding in one of those empty cottages? But when he tried the window, he found it sealed with disuse.

Then something on the mirror above the bureau caught his eye. It was small, minuscule, like the drop of blood that beaded in the corner of her mouth when she bit her lip the first night he met her. This, too, appeared to be blood—a smear about the size of a fingernail. It could have been the result of a paper cut, it was so small. But the second Gus touched it, he suspected the worst.

His first thought was to go to the office and ask the manager if he had seen someone else enter the unit—or had some idea as to where Ava had gone. But the office was at the opposite end of the building, and its shades were closed as forbiddingly as those in 4B. It was unlikely the manager had witnessed anything; and if Gus introduced himself,
he
would be the one who was identified at the scene. Realizing how thoroughly he had painted the scene with evidence of his guilt, he decided against it. What he needed to do was go to the rectory and think things through. To replace the damning silence of the motel room with Jack’s voice, and maybe even put in a call to Lunes Oliveira.

He imagined Lunes mocking him with his down-home common sense.
One drop of blood does not make a murder scene, Little Cod. Don’t get carried away.

And then he noticed a large rectangular square of carpet beside the bed that was stained darker than the rest. Four neat compressions in the rug indicated that the bed had been moved recently.

He had only pushed it about a foot to the side when he saw another inky splotch. It was the sickening dark red he knew it would be, and it was still wet. Forcefully, he pulled the bed away from the wall, exposing the horrific design. Behind the place where the headboard had been, the wall was also splotched with blood.

As he stared at the soaked carpet and the bloody wall, he finally remembered what he had done after his mother died, and why he had blotted that hour so completely from memory. He knew because there, in room 4B, he lived those hours all over again. He recalled the utter darkness of the closet, the soft material of his mother’s dresses that brushed against his face, assaulting him with her rosewater scent. Attempting to make himself disappear, he had curled his body into itself. But no matter how tightly he closed his eyes, he couldn’t escape the narrow stripe of light under the door. The light that illuminated his mother’s lifeless body. The dryness in his throat that he might have previously identified as thirst, it had demanded nothing of him beyond the shutting down of the senses, the heart’s stubborn beating.

And he understood why he had sealed all these details from memory long ago: because instinctively, at nine, and more clearly at thirty-one, the hours now condensed into a few short minutes, he understood that the place he had gone that day was the darkest and most terrifying one imaginable.

When Gus shook off his stillness this second time, he was not a nine-year-old boy in his pajamas, but a grown man, and his mind was oddly clear. He considered straightening up the room and returning it to the state it had been in when he first entered it. Then he thought of all the fingerprints he had already left throughout the unit and decided it was hopeless. Besides, wouldn’t cleaning up ultimately make him appear even more guilty? Instead of trying, he walked out, leaving the door open for the police.

It had begun to rain again, a downpour that prodded Gus up the hill and toward the rectory. Soon he was running—motivated not just by the lashing rain, but by something inside himself that had always found freedom in movement. By the time he reached the third mile, he felt that he could go on forever. He stopped briefly in town and called the police.

“Ava Cilento has been murdered in the Pink Dolphin Motel,” he said, his voice flat with exhaustion. “You need to talk to her husband immediately.” Then he directed them to the ostentatious house on the water.

He thought of the child he knew only from her photograph.
Mila.
For now, at least, she was safe with Ava’s friend, but how long would her father allow her to remain there? Gus shuddered as he imagined her alone in the house with the man who had killed her mother.

At the sound of his entrance, the dogs tumbled down the stairs of the rectory and welcomed him with a cacophony of joyous yelps and barks. Gus was crouching to receive their exuberant licks and wriggling nudges when he heard Jack’s desk chair being pushed back in the office. He stood up as the pastor walked into the foyer. Almost simultaneously, Sandra appeared in the doorway that led to the kitchen.

“Gus,” Jack said, and nodded gravely. He appeared tired, and his old-fashioned white collar was slightly askew. Sandra stood in the doorway, forebodingly silent.

Then Julia came down the stairs. “Papa Gus! I’m so glad you’re home. We were—” But she left her sentence incomplete as she raced past her mother and reached up to hug him.

“Thanks, Jules. I’m happy to be home, too.”

“I’d suggest a shower, but I’m not sure you have time for that,” Jack said, taking in his wet clothes. “The cops have already been here once.”

In spite of the warning, Gus did shower, sloughing off the rain and sweat, hoping in the process to wash off the gloom of Nick’s illness, and the grief that was already in Hallie’s eyes, to pummel away the desolation of the motel, and the memory of the dark stain on the carpet he had found there. By the time he rejoined them in the living room, his essentially hopeful nature had already begun to war with the facts . . .
Maybe there was another explanation . . . Maybe Ava had come to the motel with a weapon . . . There was no proof, after all, that the blood was hers. Maybe she’d finally fought back . . .

Jack, Sandra, and Julia were lined up stiffly on the couch. Gus smiled sadly. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do next,” he announced, still standing in the center of the room. “But I wanted to make sure it was okay for the dogs to stay here if I go away for a while. Otherwise, I know a couple of people in the parish who might be willing to take them.”

“You’re worried about
dogs
at a time like this?” Jack interrupted. “And what exactly do you mean by ‘go away’? You really intend to go on the lam? For God’s sake, Gus, you’ve got to be the most inept criminal I’ve ever met.”

“How many criminals do you know, Jack?” Gus sunk into a chair opposite the three of them. He sighed, feeling the despondency return.
What had he been thinking? Ava was too weak, both physically and psychologically, to fight back—or even to manage the artful cleanup he had witnessed.

“Too many,” Jack said, struggling to rise from the couch. “And, unfortunately, they all seem to live with me.”

Sandra cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Monsignor! The law ain’t messed with me in at least seven years.”

“See what I mean!” The old pastor’s eyebrows shot up. “Julia and I are the only ones who are clean around here.” He went to his liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Jameson, shaking his head as he filled a tumbler with strong drink. “Sixty-nine years old and I’ve never had a drink before four o’clock. Even at a wedding. The stuff took down too much of my family.”

Gus got up and poured himself a shot. “If you can break your rule, I guess I can break mine.” He hadn’t tasted hard liquor since the night of his high school prom.

“Dammit, Gus,” the old priest said gruffly. “You’re the closest thing to a son this old goat is ever going to have.”

“If you had been my father, Jack, my whole life would have been different.”

Gus moved to embrace him, but, as always, the old priest roughly shook him off. “And for that reason alone, I’m glad I’m not. Codfish’s boy turned out pretty damn good, if you ask me.”

“Until now.”

“This accusation doesn’t mean anything, Gus,” Jack scoffed. “It’s how you handle it that’s important.”

“And we all know what a great job Gus has done with
that
,” Sandra interjected. She got up and paced the room nervously. “I hate to interrupt this touching scene, but in case you guys haven’t noticed, we got ourselves an issue here.”

“Could you really be sent to jail, Father Gus?” Tears sprang into Julia’s eyes.

Gus looked from one fear-stricken face to the other, then downed the rest of his shot.

“What on God’s earth made you go to her house, Gus?” Jack asked.

Sandra continued to pace, her heels clicking rhythmically as she drew a narrow circle around him. “When you’re talkin’ philosophy, theology, contemplation, all that—you’re a brilliant man, Gus. But when it comes to practical shit—I hate to say it—”

“Stop, Mami,” Julia interrupted. “Let Gus talk—all of you.”

“It’s worse than you think,” Gus admitted. “A whole lot worse than forcing my way into her house or breaking bail.”

The clock on the mantle had never ticked so loudly as it did in the minute when they waited for him to continue speaking.

“Ava asked me to meet her at the Pink Dolphin this morning, but when I got there, she was gone. Then I started looking around and—” He was about to describe the dark-red blood he’d found beneath the bed and the chilling sight of the mattress when he looked into Julia’s face and decided to exclude the details. “There was no body, but the amount of blood . . . It looks bad.”