(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (50 page)

Pastor John shook his head and looked out through the window into the moonlight. "We can build another building, but we might need some help with the steeple."

I nodded. "Yes, sir."

Pastor John leaned over and kissed Maggie's forehead. Then he stood and placed his hand on her head. He whispered, but not really to us. Finally he took my hand, spread it across Maggie's tummy, and covered mine with his. He looked at us both and spoke quietly, the weight of what he was saying pressing in on his voice. "In Isaiah God says, `Fear not, for I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry and barren ground. I will pour My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring. They will spring up among the grass like willows by the watercourses."' He walked over to the door, stood for a moment, and then slipped out.

ON TOWARD MIDNIGHT I HEARD A SOFT RAP ON THE DOOR, as though someone either was afraid to come in or was a southern gentleman of the sort who never barged in on a lady. It turned out to be the latter.

I opened the door, and a man dressed in a bright orange bow tie, white oxford shirt, starched khakis, and gold wirerimmed glasses extended his hand. Jason Thentwhistle, hospital financial officer.

He pointed down the hall toward the nurses' station and doctors' cubicle. "If they want to run a test, or do anything at all, you let them. We'll work out the other side of it on the other side." He turned and walked about four steps.

I reached out and caught him by the arm. He looked at me guardedly, as one stranger would look at another.

`Jason, thanks for coming. We appreciate it."

He smiled, half nodded, and continued walking down the hall.

BY MIDAFTERNOON OF THE NEXT DAY, MAGGIE'S body finished doing what it was doing and no longer needed the bed pad beneath her, so I helped her into the shower. It took awhile to get her cleaned up because she was bruised from head to toe.

She put on some hospital scrubs, and we took a slow and gentle stroll around the halls. Maggie leaned on me and hooked her arm inside mine. When we came to the large viewing window of the nursery, she leaned against the glass and stared at the six babies sleeping inside. When she pulled away, her tears slid down the glass and came to rest on the windowsill.

At dinnertime Amos walked in dressed in his SWAT gear, and despite the singed hair and skin, he looked as though he hadn't skipped a beat. In his hands were two chocolate shakes. He walked over to the bed, set them down, and pulled two straws from his shirt pocket. "I checked with Dr. Frank. He said it was okay."

He knelt next to the bed and slid one huge palm under Maggie's shoulders. "How's our girl?" he asked. The assurance in his voice was worth a million dollars.

Maggie smiled lazily, physically tired and emotionally drained. She took a sip of the shake.

Amos put on his law enforcement face. "Maggs, I need to know who did this."

Maggie leaned forward while I adjusted the pillows behind her back.

"I've never seen them before. Two men. Black. Maybe late thirties, early forties. Both covered in tattoos. One guy had his shirt off, and his whole chest and back were nothing but tattoos."

"Could you recognize them?"

She nodded.

Amos pulled two pictures from his shirt pocket and held them in front of her.

Maggie looked at the pictures, sipped again, then nodded.

"Anton, as he likes to be called, and Felix became tattoo artists in prison. Now most of both their bodies are covered in ink-making them pretty easy to spot. They both look like that dude in Moby Dick. " He snapped his fingers. "The one that was in the coffin."

"Queequeg," I said quietly.

Amos nodded. "Throughout their time in prison, they traded their services for information, which meant they were never too far from the pipeline. They kept pretty good tabs on John."

"Pastor John said he had three partners."

Amos nodded. "Third one's name is Whittaker. Nobody's seen him. His name in prison was Ghost. Due to a sick twist in fate, overcrowding brought him two cells down, and the three got reacquainted. Oddly enough, that same twist brought a former Hollywood pyrotechnics expert next door to the twins, which would explain their newfound love of bonfires. From what investigators have gathered, the former partners became rather vocal about their post prison plans."

"But why me? Why our house?"

Amos shook his head. "I'm working on that. Right now, I have no idea, other than you live across the street from me."

Maggie nodded and looked at me, then back to Amos. "Where are Amanda and Li'l Dylan?"

"Amanda's down the hall. Momma's got L.D. We're staying with them in town for a while."

"You scared?" I asked.

He looked at me, at Maggie, then back at me, and shook his head. "No. Not scared. Worried? A bit. Angry?" He spoke softly, as if he were talking to someone who wasn't in the room. His voice dropped and his eyes narrowed, telling me that one way or another, there would be a reckoning. "Yes."

AFTER DINNER I DIMMED THE LIGHTS AND LEFT Maggie napping in her room. Amanda had gone home for the evening, but the on-call nurse had stuck her head in the door and let me know she'd be checking on Maggie.

I knelt down in the corner of the room and scratched Blue's tummy while he moaned and flopped his ears back. I rubbed his muzzle and picked off the specks of dried blood on the top of his head. I pointed outside. "You gotta go?" The magnolia outside the window caught my eye. "Mark some old territory?"

Blue tucked his nose up under a fold in the blanket, let out a long sigh, and looked away.

I turned into our drive, aimed the headlights at the house, and parked.

Shining my flashlight, I stepped through the door and noticed, above the smell of my burnt house, the unusual and lingering scent of cheap aftershave and lots of it. I checked the rooms, found the house empty, and then opened all the doors and windows, hoping the house would breathe itself free of the stench.

In the race to save the house, the screen door had been torn off, the back door broken off its hinges, and most of the inside sprayed with water under very high pressure. The water put out the fire, which had bubbled much of the paint, while the pressure behind the water peeled many of the blisters, making our walls look leprous.

From what I could see, most of the inside was wet and stained black. I walked down the back hall and looked overhead. The ceiling had caved in, exposing the rafters and pieces of hanging insulation. I made it to the doors that led into the bedroom and nursery, but there was no need to go in. Whoever had started the fire had evidently done so in both rooms.

The other half of the house-which included the kitchen and den-escaped everything but hose drag marks, overspray, and muddy footprints.

In our room the walls had burned to the studs, the furniture was nothing but soggy, charred cinders, the mattress on our bed was little more than a crumbling mess, and the ceiling and roof were gone. The motor for the Hunter fan that once hung above our bed now sat at an angle in the middle of the mattress, its wires sticking up like an insect's antennae. The moonlight shone through the blue tarp and gave the room an eerie blue haze.

I was afraid to look into the nursery, but I knew I had to. All the stuffed animals were little more than charred remains, and the rocker had all but disappeared. The crib sat at an angle, as if one leg were shorter than another. The books of nursery rhymes were crumbling and wet, and all the baby clothes in the closet lay in pieces on the floor, blackened scraps of cotton.

Between the two rooms, my writing closet, its door marred and bubbling from the heat, remained locked. I didn't know what it looked like on the inside. As for Maggie's orchids scattered around the house, they had not fared well. They were nothing but naked stems without bloom or petal.

I was standing in the kitchen surveying the damage when the phone rang-which surprised me, given that the guys had disconnected the electricity at the street to avoid an electrical fire.

"Dylan, it's John."

I knew Caglestock had become comfortable with me when he started calling me by my first name. I also knew that if he was calling me at close to ten thirty, he had something on his mind.

I sat down. "Hey, John."

"Listen, we've got to move one of Bryce's accounts from one trading house to another. We can get a better rate, so it makes good sense. But, as with any transaction of this type, it will produce a commission-of about $45,000." He let that sink in.

I understood. It was the cost of doing business, and Bryce understood this.

"No matter how or where I move them, I'll end up paying a commission to move these funds." He let that sink in too. Then he said what he'd called for. "I want to know if you will let me hire you for a day to make one transaction."

I looked out through the kitchen window overlooking the pasture.

"Dylan," he continued, "Bryce's estate, his LLC, or any of the partnerships we've formed would pay this commission to anyone regardless of their affiliation with him."

He was right. And in terms of Bryce's account total, which now ran in the hundreds of millions, it wasn't even a drop in the bucket.

"I want to hire you for a day."

I took a deep breath. `John, I made a promise to Bryce that I would never seek to profit from him or the management of his funds."

"Yes, but given the good decisions you've made now over an almost-five-year period"-John paused-"do you know how much money you've made him?"

`John, I gave him my word."

"I don't think this qualifies as-"

"And second, I don't ever want Bryce to think I want any part of his money. I don't. Not one penny."

"That makes you different from most of the people who've befriended Bryce."

"That makes me me."

"It might also make you poor."

`John?" I knew he meant well, and his intentions were good, but I also knew that wasn't good enough. `Just because it's legal doesn't necessarily make it right."

He started to say something, but I cut him off. "I was maybe ten, standing with my grandfather in the grocery store checkout line, when the lady at the cash register handed him his change. He counted, paused, recounted, and then handed a twenty back to her and said, `This one was stuck to the other one. You gave me one too many.' To say the least, she was pretty relieved when she realized he was right. We got in the truck, and I asked him why he didn't just keep it. She'd never know. You know what he said?"

"I'm listening."

"He said, `I'll know.' He must have seen the confused look on my face, because he said, `Son, I won't sell my word, my integrity, for twenty dollars. Not today. Not ever.' He stuck his face real close to mine and said, `Words are what men live by, and once you sell them, not all the tea in China can ever buy 'em back."'

John chuckled, and I could hear his chair squeak as if he'd just sat back and propped his feet up.

"I would have liked to have met your grandpa."

John was an honest man, and I knew this. Every audit of his firm and, specifically, his firm's work with Bryce's money, had produced nothing but praise from every auditor we'd ever met. Bryce had been good to him, but maybe more important, he'd been good for Bryce.

The problem was not the legality of the action he proposed; of course it was legal. The problem it posed for me was the gray area it presented with respect to my relationship with Bryce and my promise to him.

"I think you two would have gotten along well," I said.

I hung up the phone and leaned against the kitchen sink. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly between my teeth, feeling the pressure in my cheeks, and wondered if my grandfather and I were just plain crazy.

Knowing I needed to quit carrying a loaded shotgun around in the van, I brought it inside, unlocked my writing closet, and slid the gun onto the floor just above our "safe." I locked the doors and walked outside onto the porch. It was close to midnight, but a flicker in the distance caught my eye and told me something about the world was distinctly different.

I stepped off the porch, walked out into the cotton, and ran my fingers along the tops of the white flowers. Beneath the moon, spotlight-bright above me, the cotton field shone with thousands of moon white flowers, waving ever so slightly in the cooling breeze. They had opened in the last few hours and would remain that way for twenty-four more, in which time a single, microscopic grain of pollen, carried on the breeze, would come to rest inside, pollinate the flower, and start once again the mystery that grows inside.