American Gothic (14 page)

22

Blood Work

L
AVALLE PREPARED THE first slide for study, extracting blood from the vial, adding dye to make the cell structure easier to see under the microscope.

A second injection of cocaine had filled the doctor with compulsive energy, and it was far better to lose himself in productive work than to obsess over Toussaint’s blackmail, Helen and Peregrine, and the faceless killer.

Lavalle had very little hope that a study of the province’s blood supply would provide insight into the recent murders, but the crimes might serve a greater purpose. The superstitious peasants would never agree to cooperate in a study that required them to provide blood samples, but now Lavalle had an excuse to enlist Toussaint to ensure cooperation for the general collection. The policeman was in his employ—which was one way to look at the situation—so Lavalle might as well put him to good use. The data would advance his research into the sickle-cell syndrome. Comprehensive data might even lead to an epidemiological breakthrough.

The doctor’s hands were a little shaky from the cocaine injections, so he got the bottle of rum out of his drawer and filled a teacup with liquor. He never drank while he was working, but what did it matter anymore? It was impossible to maintain civilized standards in the jungle. He had been foolish to try.

Lavalle opened the louvers, squinting against the blinding tropical sunlight flooding into the laboratory. He clipped on the first slide and angled the microscope toward the light, adjusting the mirror to reflect light up through the bottom of the slide and illuminate the blood study. He bent over the instrument with one eye closed, using his thumb and forefinger to adjust the focus.

He saw the bad news immediately.

The doctor turned away from the microscope, shaking his head. He carried the teacup of rum over to the window and looked out through the slats. Across the street, two men were butchering a hog hung by its hind legs from a front porch. A pack of wild dogs watched from the dusty street, waiting for a chance make off with a bit of offal.

Medical research was a paradox, Lavalle thought. (His mind was not usually given to such musings, but the cocaine sent ideas tumbling through him, like a landslide of boulders falling down the hill, each one knocking others free as it fell.) Research could turn up things that would save a person’s life, he thought. He took a sip of rum. But research could also condemn a man to death.

Lavalle went back and took another look through the microscope. He made a notation in his lab book, his handwriting more hurried and crabbed than usual, this also from the drug. He had more than a little familiarity with acute myeloid leukemia. Indeed, it was one of his special areas of expertise. He had been Paris’s greatest expert in the disease. The rich, the noble, the famous—they all sought him out when they were diagnosed with the disease. Not that there had been much Lavalle could do for them, of course, but people always wanted the finest physician money could buy when the case seemed hopeless.

Poor Peregrine. He had acute myeloid leukemia, his time left to live measured in months, maybe weeks.

And when he was dead, and Dr. Lavelle had won back Lady Fairweather’s heart—she had become unaccountably smitten with the American—they would leave Haiti together, the two of them, and go somewhere new. Lavalle would have to be more careful the next time, if for no other reason than to keep Helen from discovering he was a fugitive.

Lavalle eyed the hypodermic needle but elected to pour himself another rum instead. That was the way it was with him and cocaine. Once he dipped into it, he always wanted more.

The vial containing Lady Fairweather’s blood was unopened on the lab table, neatly corked, marked with the tag he had attached to it the night before.

“Sweet Helen,” the doctor said. He picked up the tube and began to bring it to his lips. He turned the vial toward him as he was about to deliver his kiss. It was then that he realized the mistake. In his cocaine-addled state of mind, he had mishandled the two vials in preparing the first slide. The vial he held in his hand was not filled with Helen’s blood but Peregrine’s.

It was not Peregrine who was dying, but the beloved Helen.

23

Les Invalides

“I
WILL SAY a prayer for you, Lady Fairweather.”

Lavalle winced inwardly at his nurse. Magalie Jeanty’s convent upbringing had permanently warped her sensibilities.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Lavalle said, snapping shut his doctor’s bag. He left Helen’s maid to help her pull the dress back over the modest chemise she’d worn during the examination.

Lavalle went out onto the porch, dropped the bag on a table, and let his bones fall back into a rattan chair. He felt bad for Helen, and he felt bad for himself, since everything had gone completely wrong for him over the past few days. But mainly Lavalle felt bad because he had been up all night, indulging in his vice. A servant brought a cool glass of mint tea. Lavalle took a packet from his vest pocket and with shaking hands sprinkled cocaine into the glass. The mint in the bitter drink cut through the dry, pasty taste in his mouth, which instantly went numb.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” Lavalle said out loud, suddenly rejuvenated.

The gardens at Fairweather House were as magnificent as ever. It was late afternoon, and the landscape was filled with slanting golden light. It was impossible to imagine how Lady Fairweather managed it. Helen was notoriously easy on her staff. She’d never had a servant flogged, and Lavalle had never so much as heard her raise her voice with the help. Workers in Haiti typically performed only up to the standard their masters enforced. One needed to look no farther than Peregrine’s property to see the lack of work ethic on the island. That plantation had been kept in good condition only through the famously brutal energies of the previous owners and their hirelings. Unfortunately, the American had proven unequal to the task of keeping his people in line. Peregrine’s lands and house grew visibly more decrepit and wild each time the doctor visited.

Lavalle looked up at the sound of footsteps. Helen was so lovely that for a moment he actually forgot. The faint shimmer of perspiration at the edge of her hair brought the truth crashing back down on him with a force that not even the cocaine could relieve. He thought of the night at Peregrine’s, when he had marveled at her glow, not recognizing death in its disguise.

“I am going to die.”

Lavalle could not bring himself to say it, so she had said it for him.

“I think I’ve known for several weeks,” she said, sitting across from him. “I don’t have any strength, and I bruise easily. I wondered what you would find when you looked at my blood in your microscope.”

“My dear Helen, I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

She gave him a crisp nod. “What is it, then?”

“Excuse me,” the doctor said, blinking rapidly. “This is difficult for me.”

“I know how you feel, Michael. About me—about us.”

Lavalle nodded, unable to speak.

“It is all right, darling. I am at peace. This is the Lord’s will.”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Because I know it in my heart and soul.”

“I wish I had your faith.”

“You sound so bitter when you say that.”

“I
am
bitter. I love you, Helen. And now that I’ve said it, I have nothing to look forward to but losing you.”

“You must not despair, Michael. Maybe part of this is about helping you find your faith.”

“Helen, please.”

“If you can do nothing else for me, Michael, at least wish you had faith. All you need to do is wish for faith. If you can do that much, God will take care of the rest.”

“God wouldn’t want me. I’ve done things. The other night you said I was a saint, but I’m a deeply flawed man.”

“As are all men and women. That’s all the more reason for you to learn that God loves you and forgives you for your sins.”

Lavalle considered it. Did he even have it in him somewhere to wish for such a thing, to let the trials and inevitable tragedies of life weaken him to the point that he surrendered the scientific rationality that was the basis for his entire life?

“I will try,” he said in soft voice. Lavalle didn’t know whether she could tell he was lying, but she leaned over and kissed his forehead, so perhaps he was convincing enough.

“As to my illness…”

Lavalle told Lady Fairweather about the leukemia and the prognosis, which was hopeless. She listened calmly and asked several excellent questions, nodding at the answers, her good mind able to easily grasp the medical concepts Lavalle outlined.

In the course of his professional career, Lavalle had told many people they were dying, but none had heard the news with such calm and peaceful acceptance. Lady Fairweather’s inner strength was nothing short of amazing. If her fortitude flowed from faith, then even he would have to admit religion served a purpose.

“So there is no known treatment, no hope of recovery.”

“Nothing short of a miracle, I’m afraid,” Lavalle said, instantly regretting the words.

“Then I shall pray for a miracle but remain obedient to God’s will. Have you told Nathaniel?”

“What?” The question caught Lavalle completely off balance. “No, of course not. I would never discuss your case with him without your permission.”

“What would you say if I told you Nathaniel guessed that I was sick? We talked about it the other night after you left.”

Lavalle felt a stab of jealousy. “He’s a perceptive man, but I don’t know how he could have guessed.”

“He suffers from a similar condition himself.”

“He said that? How could he know?”

“He did not explain that to me.”

“How very odd.” Maybe Peregrine had been afflicted by his own peculiar blood condition for longer than Lavelle had guessed. Judging from the composition of the American’s blood, Lavelle was amazed that Peregrine had been able to sail his yacht to Haiti, let alone carry on the appearances of a normal life, considering that he most certainly had a fatal blood disease, though one heretofore unclassified in any of the medical books.

“Since he told you of it himself, there can be no harm in my confirming as much.”

“Nathaniel has leukemia?”

The concern in her voice was particularly galling, especially so soon after Lavalle’s confession of love.

“I do not know exactly
what
Peregrine has. It’s nothing I’ve encountered in the literature, and with all modesty, I’ve studied every monograph on the subject of blood pathology worth reading. His blood has a tremendous excess of red blood cells, which carry the oxygen to the body. But his red cells are unstable. There is an unnaturally high degree of premature cellular necropsy—cell death.”

“Is he dying?”

“I am afraid so. I don’t know how anybody could live with such abnormal blood.”

“I feel sorry for you, Michael. You have two close friends on the island, and both are invalids.”

“Save your pity, my dear. I will find a way to get by.” He thought of the syringe waiting back at his house. “I always do.”

“Nathaniel says he has learned to live with his condition.”

“That is highly unlikely, from a medical standpoint.”

“He says he can help me overcome my own illness.”

“My dear Helen,” Lavalle said in a long sigh. “There is nothing I would rather do than give you hope, but there can be none. No doubt Peregrine means well, but it was cruel of him to lead you on.”

“Promise me you’ll try to help Nathaniel, even if you can’t help me.”

“I will do what I can, of course. I am a physician.”

“But the two of you are also rivals of a sort.”

Lavalle almost asked Lady Fairweather whom she preferred—him or Peregrine—but he lacked the nerve. It would only make him feel worse to know it was Peregrine she loved.

“That hardly matters now. Not for any of us.”

“Please try to help him. I care for you both very much. Promise me, Michael. Do it for my sake.”

“I promise.”

Lady Fairweather smiled, at last satisfied. Peregrine’s health notwithstanding, Lavalle planned to flee the island as soon as Helen died. What did it matter if he lied? She would never know.

“Have you ever noticed that there is something peculiar about Nathaniel?”

Lavalle snorted. “He is an American. They’re all peculiar.”

“It is nice of you to try to lighten my spirits.”

Lavalle shrugged. More cocaine would lighten his own.

“I think there is something different about Nathaniel, though I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Lady Fairweather said. “I think there are secrets in his past.”

“There are secrets in all of our pasts.”

“Not mine, Michael.”

“No, I suppose not,” Lavalle said, and smiled sadly. “You are too good for this world. Perhaps you should have been a bit more like me.”

“You’re a good man, Michael.”

That was not true, of course, but not even Lavalle was a big enough cad to contradict the dying woman.

24

Basic Research

L
AVALLE GASPED WITH frustration and rolled off the prostitute.

The doctor lay on his back in the dark, panting, feeling his sweat soak into the sheets. At least the linens were clean. He always insisted on that when he visited the brothel.

The whore sat up in bed. He could see her profile in silhouette against the open window. She wasn’t the youngest or the prettiest, but her body came closest to matching Lady Fairweather’s elegant frame. The smell of the perfume he’d given the prostitute to wear was still strong in the air. It was Helen’s perfume. Lavalle had stolen a little of it that afternoon while Lady Fairweather got ready for her examination, in order to make this little charade more realistic.

Seeing Helen nearly naked, touching the softness of her breast with his stethoscope, had filled Lavalle with a crude desire that she was far too ill to satisfy without risking hemorrhage. He had had his chance, between her husband’s death and Peregrine’s arrival, but he had let it pass by. One always thought there would be an opportunity for these things, but there was never any way to know how much time was left. The future was an illusion and the end usually never very far away.

“Are you finished, Monsieur le Docteur?”

Lavalle struck a match and brought it to his cigarette. He filled his lungs with smoke and answered with the exhalation.

“Oui.”

No doubt she was finished with him, too. He had pounded away for nearly an hour without attaining release. That was the way it was when he was on the cocaine. The desire was powerful but usually not the ability to finish, no matter how raw or exhausted he and his paid lovers became.

The woman got up, pulling the sheet around her. The door opened and closed. It was Lavalle’s preference to be left alone when it was finished. He made it a habit only to come to the brothel when the lust was more than he could bear, but once he was done, he did not want the whore’s company. As exotic and forbidden as it was to make love to an island woman, afterward he felt disgusted with himself in a way that he never had with a Parisian prostitute.

Poor Helen. He had seen her in his mind’s eye the entire time he had been ravaging the black woman, even as he had smelled her stolen perfume on the whore’s skin. The charade had worked far too well. As much as he wanted to fantasize about fucking Lady Fairweather, he could not for a moment forget the awful fact that she was doomed to waste away before his eyes over the coming weeks, her face turning cadaverous, her lusterless skin hanging off of bones that would weigh very little when the time came to lift her into a coffin.

Feeling very low indeed, Lavalle lit a candle. From his jacket he took out the little black leather case that held the silver syringe he reserved for his personal use and a vial of white powder.

There was another horse tied to the hitch outside beside Napoleon, a black stallion that looked familiar to Lavalle.

“Just the man I was looking for.”

Lavalle spun around to see that Peregrine had come up behind him without his notice. He must have come out of the brothel, but the doctor hadn’t heard footsteps. Peregrine had a way of creeping up on Lavalle that the doctor found particularly disconcerting, an attribute, no doubt, of the American’s lack of the deeper European sense of culture and deportment.

“Should you be out this time of night?” Lavalle looked the other man up and down. He showed no outward sign of illness. Just the reverse, in fact. Peregrine projected his usual air of vigor. He was dressed all in black, with leather English hunting boots that came up to his knees. The stallion was Peregrine’s. “How do you feel?”

“Quite fine, thank you.”

“That’s difficult to imagine, having had a look at your blood under the microscope.”

“Which is exactly what I came to talk to you about.”

Lavalle unfastened Napoleon’s reins from the hitch. “If you want to come along to the house, I’ll give you a brandy and we can discuss your case. I don’t suppose a brandy will do you much harm.”

“It hasn’t so far,” Peregrine said, and grinned in the darkness.

The American’s ill health notwithstanding, Lavalle wished he had Peregrine’s fine white teeth.

“I rode over to Helen’s earlier,” Peregrine said, swinging his leg over the saddle. “She told me the bad news.”

Lavalle felt like brooding, but the cocaine made him talkative. Still, he managed to keep silent for a few moments as they rode side by side along the darkened street. Lamps and even candles were a luxury for most of the people in Cap Misère, who went to bed with the sun.

“She said you knew she was sick.”

“I sensed it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I sensed it. I know things sometimes. I pick them up. It is difficult to explain.”

“Like a gypsy fortune-teller?”

Peregrine laughed softly. “Something like that, but without tarot cards or crystal balls.”

“Sometimes you say the damnedest things, Peregrine.”

“You haven’t heard the half of it.”

Lavalle’s stable boy took their horses, and the men went into the house. The doctor lit the lamps in his study and poured them both snifters of his finest cognac. Peregrine deserved as much, given how little time he had to live.

“Is there anything you can do for Helen?”

“There is nothing anyone can do for the poor woman.” Lavalle looked at Peregrine past lowered eyebrows. “You shouldn’t fill her head with false hopes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t be evasive, Peregrine. You told Lady Fairweather you could help her.”

“I can,” Lavalle said with what seemed to be perfect earnestness.

“Stop it! She’s dying and we both know it. There is no treatment for acute myeloid leukemia and certainly no cure.”

“That may be true, but with my help she can live as long as she likes.”

Lavalle stared with slack-jawed disbelief, but his mind, quick even without the cocaine to drive his thoughts ever faster, soon generated the hypothesis that Peregrine wasn’t merely trying to provoke him.

“How long have you been sick?” Lavalle asked, sounding more like a kindly physician than a drug-addicted, lovesick man.

“For many years.”

“I find that difficult to imagine. Your blood cells are severely damaged.”

“I know.”

“How aware are you that the condition is influencing your thinking? Are you subject to bizarre fantasies? Do you sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between reality and something you have dreamed?”

“The problem is not with my mind, Lavalle.”

The doctor did not contradict the American, but looked at him with a self-satisfied smile.

“You think I’m mad.”

“You have been saying things that are not rational. That you
know
things. That you can somehow save Lady Fairweather from a quick and tragic death. Frankly, I am surprised I have not seen evidence of this incipient psychosis before, my poor friend. It must be linked somehow to your blood condition. We have spent many an evening playing chess and talking. I should have noticed.”

“Do you think you can help me?”

“With your condition?” Lavalle sat up straight. “I will have to do more tests. I would be lying if I told you to be optimistic. The damage is too severe.”

“I came to Haiti because you are one of the world’s preeminent specialists in disorders of the blood.”

“It is kind of you to say so, but even if it is true, how do you know about my work?”

“Because I sought out the best doctors in Europe looking for a cure.”

Lavalle took a mouthful of cognac but held it in his mouth, his mind racing.

“Do you know…”

“Of course. In a way, the fact that you’re a fugitive made it more convenient for me. And the fact that you had gone away to live in a remote place also suited my purposes. I am an extremely private person, Lavalle. I do not want anyone to know about my illness.”

But the doctor was hardly listening.

“I have done a very evil thing,” he said into his glass.

“Yes, but your crime is of no consequence to me. You have an unhappy love affair and a crime in your past. I have an unhappy love affair with a Creole woman and many crimes in my past, and before that a sorrow I still cannot bear to think about. The only thing I care about, Doctor, is that you help me. I will give you money, if you need it. I have more wealth than I could ever spend.”

Lavalle waved his hand dismissively.

“If you change your mind, my resources are at your disposal,” Peregrine said. “If Toussaint bleeds you dry with his blackmail, you can come to me for help.”

Lavalle nearly choked. “How do you know about Toussaint?”

Now it was Peregrine’s turn to look satisfied. “You were wrong about the islanders not welcoming a white man to their voodoo ceremonies.” He burst into laughter. “If you could see your face, Doctor!”

“I cannot believe you would be so foolish as to involve yourself in peasant witchery, Peregrine.”

“It’s harmless. Well, mostly.” The American winked. “You’d be amazed at the things you would learn if you could bring yourself to deal with the peasants on their own level. I tried to talk Toussaint out of blackmailing you, but you know how it is with the police in a place like this. The government assumes they’ll make most of their salary through their own initiative. And they always do.”

“Then the prefect should live very well for the next few years, thanks to me.”

Peregrine slid his chair closer and leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “I’ll tell you my plan. I’ll help Helen. You don’t have to worry about her. She will not die. What you do need to do is devote your talents to finding a way to treat us both. Helen will be trading one disease for another, her leukemia for what I have.”

“Peregrine, please! You’re talking nonsense.”

“No. You don’t know what you’re dealing with, but when you do, it all will become plain. I have not been entirely honest with you, though in fairness I must point out that you have not been overly honest with me, either. I am a rare creature, a member of a small and secretive race.”

“Of course you are.”

“You do not need to indulge me. I am no lunatic. Do you remember being followed the other night, coming home from my plantation house?”

Lavalle felt the blood drain from his face.

“And then you were attacked in your house—in this room, in fact.”

Lavalle ran his hand again and again through his hair, searching his mind.

“You can’t quite remember, can you? The memory was repressed, but this will help you remember.”

The American reached over and touched Lavelle lightly on the forearm. The doctor threw his hands up in horror as the experience fell back down on him with enough immediacy to leave him shaking—the shadowy form coming up fast from behind, an irresistible force that swarmed over him, driving him to the ground, helpless against the strange sensation that someone was forcing his way into Lavalle’s mind. But even worse was the sense of menace, the sensation of being at the mercy of a lethal malice that was utterly devoid of mercy. And yet, he had survived.

“I knew that you were considering fleeing Cap Misère,” Peregrine said as Lavalle looked out from between his lowering arms. “I needed to assess the chance that you would stay, that you would agree to help me—and Helen. What I saw in your mind convinced me, so I did not bother you in any other ways. It would have been such a waste to have killed you when you could be such a valuable tool.”

The American smiled so that Lavalle could see two wicked supernumerary fangs extending from the upper jaw. Peregrine moved the muscles of his cheeks in a grimace and the teeth disappeared under his lip.

“Your supposition is entirely correct, Doctor. My blood teeth retract into the upper jaw when I do not need them. You see, my friend, I am a vampire. I am also, I almost regret to say, responsible for the recent deaths that have been such a concern to you. I require meals of fresh human blood. I suppose it has something to do with the sorry state of my own blood. I will leave that up to you to determine. You’re the physician and scientist, not I.”

Lavalle felt a peculiar tingling sensation in his head, as if something was gently moving within his brain. Maybe he was having a stroke. His blood pressure spiked after each cocaine injection, putting him at risk. The lack of sleep, the overindulgence: Could this all be an elaborate paranoid hallucination?

“A vampire possesses many powers that would seem strange to you, Lavalle. That is how I know that at this moment you are wondering if the cocaine binge you have been on has filled your mind with fearful fantasies. What is that word you use to describe it?
Paranoid.
You have been reading Dr. Freud lately, haven’t you? He has strange ideas. Do you think he is right about sex being the root of most people’s unhappiness? It is an interesting idea. I shall have to read him for myself to see if I agree.”

“You
can
read my mind.”

“But of course, and I can be far more subtle about it than I just was, but I wanted you to feel me inside your mind. Probing your thoughts is how I was able to verify that despite your many virtues, my good doctor, you are at heart a coward. You will do what you can to help Helen and me because you realize there is nowhere you can go to escape me if you don’t.”

It was suddenly very close in the room. Lavalle took out his handkerchief and patted the perspiration from his forehead.

“Whatever you need I will supply it. Money. Equipment for your laboratory. Cocaine. I had Toussaint send a man to Port-au-Prince to fetch you some. I realized you were worried about running low the other night when I was rummaging around inside your mind. You won’t have to be concerned about the shipment from New Orleans being late again. You can have as much cocaine as you want, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of your work.”

Lavalle began to shake his head slowly. What the American was telling him defied his every certainty. It was madness.

“Not madness,” Peregrine said.

The doctor pressed his fingers against his head. “I can’t accept this. I
can’t.
”