Bad Desire (17 page)

It was 3:20 on Saturday afternoon, the last day of May. Draped in orchids and lilies and blood-red cabbage roses, Rachel Buchanan's coffin waited atop its metal bier, suspended over the grave. The minister raised his hands.

“Let us pray.”

Ignoring the friends that tried to hold her down, Sheila Bonner rose unsteadily from the folding chair, her eyes closed, weeping. The girls attending her had put her hair up; it swooped back over her ears into an elaborate bun. Her black dress was plain and unadorned and perfect and her hands, crossed in front of her, grasped a tissue, which she wound again and again through her fingers.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us …”

Henry Slater watched the pale blond strands escape the French knot and catch the sun like golden filaments; the tiny hairs on the back of her neck glistened like fine gold dust.

“And lead us not into temptation …”

Sheila wiped her eyes.

Although she moved her lips, trying to recite the familiar prayer, she felt the pressure of someone's eyes watching her, and Sheila slowly turned her head. Her sight cleared. In the crowd at the foot of the grave she saw Henry Lee Slater etched against the columns of trees and the white sky, standing with his wife. He was looking at her as if there was no one else in the world.

For a moment, their eyes locked and they stood as though alone, timelessly and in silence. She felt his strength reaching for her. Sheila's lips parted; a sob broke the secret language of their eyes and she was lost again, gone from him in the hard weaving rhythm of her grief.

“Thou knowest O Lord the secrets of our hearts. Shut not Thou merciful ears to our prayers …”

The two of them stood in the glare, the clear, merciless glare. They were so close—so close to freedom now: even the tips of his fingers were heavy with the desire for her. She feels it, Slater thought.

Faith stood at his side, her arm through his. The fragrance of flowers and the sharp scent of newly mown grass were overwhelming, but these were nothing compared to the sensations flooding him. In the shade of the canopy, Sheila's grim-faced boyfriend stood like an usher, uncomfortable in his suit, still very much a boy. Sheila seemed wasted on him, too rich for him, too sumptuous, and Slater hated that he was forced to watch them: the girl who had always wrung his heart and the boy who took what Slater knew should be his. It was elemental, what he felt for her.

But he was also aware of Burris Reeves, nondescript in his seersucker suit. Be careful, he thought, be particularly careful right now. Because Reeves sees everything. Out of the corner of his eye, Slater watched as the chief of police stalked back and forth at the edge of the crowd, near the black limousine. He knew he could never let Reeves see the effect Sheila was having on him today. He tucked his head slightly and didn't move, but beneath his heavy brows, he tracked Reeves's movements. He waited until he saw the assistant funeral director strike up a conversation with the police chief; then, he raised his hungry eyes. Never had Sheila been so untouchable, so forbidden and removed from him.

“O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Savior. In sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our sister Rachel as we commit her body to the ground.”

The blanket of flowers was drawn away and on wheezing hawsers, the big oblong casket slipped massively into the ground. Sheila's hands fled from her face, her stare wide with anguish. Watching her, Slater could feel his own face tighten painfully, a sympathetic ache that glowed deep behind his eyes. “Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return …”

Not for a second did Slater's eyes stray from her now. The minister crumbled dirt into the grave, and a wail wrung from Sheila's throat like a sound at the end of sound. “Gramma!” she screamed—the incandescence of grief. Only then did Slater avert his face, cringing, feeling her cry rip through his body, unable to go to her, unable to move, his fist clenched and white, hanging helplessly at his side. “She's going to faint!” some of the women whispered, and a contingent of Sheila's high school friends closed around her, drawing her down into her chair.

The minister closed the Bible, his eyes cast beseechingly toward the brilliant sky. “Lord have mercy upon us.”

The litany spread throughout the mourners. An older Catholic lady clutched a crucifix to her breast, moving her lips silently. Faith leaned like a dead weight on his arm. “The Lord bless us and keep us …”

The crowd began to shift and disassemble at the fringes; several of the mourners drifted away on the hedge-lined paths toward their cars. Many lingered behind, murmuring, shaking their heads. Greetings were brief and solemn. As the service drew to a close Reeves abruptly retreated to his cruiser and drove away. Feeling waves of relief, Slater moved to speak to those around him, full of solicitation.

The well-mannered whispers began.

“Rachel didn't stay in touch with them,” one woman said. “A few distant cousins, that's all. In Connecticut.”

“The poor child …”

“… so young and left alone. What'll she do? What'll happen to her?”

“They said it was sudden,” said still another, lips pale and hardly moving. “Rachel never knew what hit her.”

“This is the worst thing that could've happened,” Slater told Gil Burnett, shaking his hand, “a very sad, terrible day.” Standing a step behind him, touching his sleeve, Faith said, “Henry, I'd like you to meet someone. This is Marjorie Sanders. She's going to be Sheila's guardian.” She directed him to the elderly white-haired woman at her side. “Mrs. Sanders, this is my husband, Henry Slater.”

“Oh, Mr. Slater,” the woman said. “I always hear so many good things about you.”

And the minutes wore ceaselessly on under his watchful and calculating eye.

The minister bent to Sheila, speaking softly, offering her the benediction of his warm brown eyes. She heard only scant fragments of what he said. Then began what seemed to her an endless multitude of hands, touching her shoulders, faces swimming before her, whispering condolences, faces she had never seen and would never see again. Suddenly she felt as though she were suffocating. Her head darted from side to side and she said, “I'm sorry. I've got to stand up.” Hands, anonymous hands, helped her to her feet.

Denny Rivera and her other friends from high school, many of whom had accompanied her to the cemetery, stood several paces back to let the slow receiving line pass. From the corner of her eye, Sheila caught sight of him, but only for a moment.

“I have forty wonderful years of memories of her,” said an older pink-haired woman, squeezing her hand. “Whether you think so or not, you're a lot like her.” It went on and on—a woman with plucked eyebrows pushed a five-dollar bill into her hand; a middle-aged couple offered her a job as an au pair girl—and then at last, the line was beginning to diminish.

On the lane, doors were slamming, cars were whisking away. Sunlight snapped on their polished roofs. In the distance, someone yelled, “Come on! We'll meet you there.” The hearse had gone; the black limousine glinted at the curb.

Faith Slater gently touched Sheila's shoulder. Bracelets of silver and bone clicked on her wrist. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “We're with you in this, Sheila. We're with you. Let us know,” but Sheila had closed her eyes. “Okay,” the girl muttered and Faith withdrew in silence and went toward Meg Winters and three other women, who had motioned for her.

Someone else was whispering then, and when Sheila finally felt the voice's shadow depart, just when she thought she would lose her mind, she opened her eyes and all she could see before her was Henry Slater.

He was leaning toward her slightly and when he gazed at her with those great brooding gray eyes, she could feel her heart throbbing in the hollow of her throat. She felt embarrassed being so close to him, here, but when he spoke, she looked up, her eyelids heavy and swollen. “Sheila,” he whispered, “baby, don't you cry any more. I'll take care of you.”

Her lips were moving and Slater had to strain to hear. “Oh, Mr. Slater,” she told him, her voice small. “I'm so scared.”

“It's okay,” he reassured her. “I promise it'll—”

Her voice overlapped his. “I don't want to die,” she pleaded, utterly sincere and irrational. She kept searching his face to make sure he didn't miss a word she said. “If I'd been there, they'd've killed me, too,” she muttered. Her hands, cold and wet, took his hands. Sheila had always believed that Henry Slater was a tough man, severe and decisive, perhaps the only adult man she knew who loved her—in a way. It had given her a feeling of the same constant, reassuring, occasionally uncomfortable protection that her grandmother had provided through the years. And now she desperately needed him. “Mr. Slater,” she whispered, “won't you help me?”

Slater could almost taste the feel of her. For him, it was like the smell, the crackle of rain and electricity before a storm arrives. “Sh-h-h,” he said, rubbing her icy hands. He looked out among the elaborate winged monuments at his wife, still talking with her friends. “Tell me quick. Where're you staying?” Little by little, he was letting her go.

“At Mary McPhearson's.”

“When will you go back home?”

Sheila shrugged listlessly. “Maybe Monday sometime … afternoon.”

Again he leaned toward her and for an instant she thought he was going to kiss her cheek. But he didn't. “All right,” Slater said, his voice smooth and quiet. “Don't worry about things. I'm taking care of it. I'll find you.” His hands were in his pockets when he casually walked away. It was as if he had taken something from her, something that she willingly gave, while they spoke.

Denny Rivera watched the mayor talking to her, and when Sheila's eyes lifted, he saw a devotion in them that hadn't been there for him in a long time. As Slater went to join his wife, Denny watched the way Sheila's gaze followed him.

“So,” he said, making an appearance at her side, “what was he trying to sell you?” Denny meant it to be light and diverting, but Sheila gave him a scathing look and didn't answer. “Never mind,” he said, feeling as though he had committed some sacrilege. “I was just wondering—what you two were talking about?”

She gave no indication that she heard him. She felt steadier, now, a little firmer on her feet. So when the sexton released the canvas straps and pulled them out of the open ground, Sheila did not look into the grave a last time. She had observed more than her mind could hold. Her grandmother was down there now, at the bottom of the world, and nothing would ever bring her back. Nothing would ever be the same again. But knowing it and trying to resign herself to it still seemed impossible to Sheila.

A temporary marker had been placed at the head of the grave, a two-inch paper nameplate in a tin frame on which was engraved:
RACHEL SIMMONS BUCHANAN. REST IN PEACE
. Sheila leaned down and touched it.

“Bye, bye,” she whispered, “bye, bye.”

Folding her damp tissue into smaller and smaller squares, she turned toward her friends. Denny put his arm around her waist, the same way he had done many times before. “Tell me what I can do to make you feel better,” he said, quietly.

For the first time since the murder, she tried to smile, her face, her eyes in particular, still puffed and traumatized, her teeth dazzling white against her pale lips. “It doesn't feel like it's over,” Sheila whispered. Then, she was quiet again.

“Babes—” he began.

“It's all right,” she said. “Really, Denny, I'll be all right. Just stay with me. I'm sorry I'm such a mess.”

He tried not to think about anything else, concentrating entirely on her. She still wasn't herself and she was worrying the hell out of him. At eighteen, he was not quite as young as he had been a week ago; now he was part of something that was more important than himself.

“You're no trouble,” he said. He hadn't kissed her for a long time, nearly four days. “You know I love you, Sheila,” he said, devotedly. “You know I'll do anything for you.” He bent his face toward her, but Sheila whispered, “No,” and turned her head away, slipping out of his arms toward their friends. “Not here.”

Neither of them looked back at the winding cemetery lane, neither saw Henry Slater as he opened the door of the Cadillac for his wife, and then watched them over the blue sunstruck roof of the car.

They were silent on the way home, both preoccupied with their thoughts, Slater at the wheel and Faith watching the afternoon drift past her window. The Eldorado ran smoothly through the sunlit city streets, full of Saturday traffic. I have to ask him, she thought.

Some serious trouble has been brewing a long time … I must talk to you … This has to do with Henry
. Rachel's letter kept repeating itself in her mind, a thousand times, ten thousand times, till now it lay open like an unhealed wound. There had been times over the past days when she wanted to thrust the letter at him and scream,
What is it, Henry? What did you do?
But at the same time, there was a small, secret, afraid place in her heart that insisted: you don't really want to know. You don't. You don't.

But she did.

They were headed through the northside neighborhoods before she laid her head back against the seat and rubbed her eyes. Whether from dread of what she might uncover or fear of the thing she was about to attempt—she hardly knew which it was—Faith's heart was beating heavily.

“Wasn't it awful?” she said, lifting a hand and brushing back a limp lock of hair with her wrist. “I can't imagine it getting much worse than that.”

Henry glanced at her, then turned back to the road. She noticed how his attention wandered disconcertingly from object to object, from noise to noise. “It was bad,” he said.