Blood Rites (13 page)

“And after the twins are born, they’ll change again. AustraGlass must move its headquarters out of Europe within thirty years to as isolated a spot as possible. As we expected, this may be our final move. This area is judged most suitable. The family would like you to find a site. Paul will be sending specifics.”

“We can’t conduct business from the wilderness,” Stephen objected.

“You raised that point last year. The department has repeated their recommendation and suggested that the corporate offices locate in Edmonton. By the time AustraGlass is ready to move, Edmonton will be as modern a city as Toronto. We can have our offices there and our production facilities and the family estates here in the mountains. Paul intends to design a completely self-sufficient family headquarters capable of holding four hundred. He has drawn up a list of site specifications for you to follow in your search.”

“Four hundred! The family only numbers seventeen,” Helen interrupted.

“Nineteen with the twins. We also have friends. Friends have families and we need life to survive,” Stephen said.

“One thing the report makes clear is that the future is getting ever more complex,” Rachel added. “We don’t know that the worst will happen, Helen, but if it does we will need total isolation from the rest of the world.”

“And if the world evolves for the better, Denys would love to manage a wilderness resort,” Stephen interjected.

Rachel smiled. Helen didn’t. She considered the life in her, the world they would enter. “Isn’t there some way we can stop this from happening; maybe someone we could warn?” she asked.

“No one would listen and to try would only draw attention to us. That would be the most dangerous course of action we could take. No, Helen. It’s best to prepare and hope that our refuge will never be needed.” Stephen rested an arm across her shoulders. She leaned against him, looking down at a timetable for the spread of nuclear weapons across the globe.

Later, after Rachel had changed into dark knit pants and a shirt and disappeared for a night’s run, Helen made herself some hot chocolate. When she came back from the kitchen, she saw Stephen with the report open on his lap, staring into the fire. She sat beside him, waiting for him to share his thoughts.

She knew he was thinking of something else when he asked, “Would you like Hillary to stay with us?”

“Oh, yes, but I didn’t think that you would want her here since . . .” Her voice trailed off. She felt oddly embarrassed.

“Then you are aware that she desires you, yes? If she stays, you’ll have to face that.”

“We all will,” Helen said. “I still want her here.”

“Good. I’m going to be gone a great deal after the twins are born. You’ll need help and company and there will be times I’ll want to take you with me.” He fingered the black pendant she wore and she knew he was thinking of Charles as he added, “We won’t give up, Helen. No matter what happens I’ll find a place for us and we will survive.”

Helen stretched out, resting her head on his legs. Her children were silent tonight, waiting. She heard a sound outside, a musical voice calling, felt Stephen turn to face the door. “Shall we join her?” he said.

“Of course.”

He helped Helen up and they opened the door to a rush of moonlight and wind-driven snow. A few yards from the house Rachel stood with a deer beside her, shivering and wild-eyed with fear. —You need your strength.— Rachel conveyed to Helen. —Come. Feast.—

Helen, unconcerned by her bare feet, took a step forward, then felt a moist heat flowing from her. She looked down and saw the liquid running down her legs, the blood and water melting the snow. Her knees buckled. Stephen caught her as she fell.

Through Helen’s labor, Stephen found himself pacing like any expectant father while the women did the work. He had believed the Dawson clinic would be best but he knew, as he felt Helen’s waves of pain wash over him, that she would have died there. She might die anyway, he thought privately. He didn’t dare go near her, didn’t dare take her hand for fear she would sense his doubt and weaken further.

At last, exasperated at his uselessness, Rachel ordered him from the house and he sat outside, running his long fingers through his hair. They were hard, tensed, ready to take on the enemy he could never control. He looked up at the stars, thankful it was night when Helen would be her strongest. He’d professed to a score of religions in his long life. Each had its own deity. He prayed to the sum of these now, “Please, there are so few of us left. For the sake of my family, don’t let her die.”

As he said it, the thought of living without her struck him fully. His hands began to shake as an emotion, new and pure, surfaced from somewhere deep within him. Were he able, he would cry now, not from fear or sorrow but from the exquisite wonder of it.

Later, after five pints of blood, one of them from Hillary, brought Helen’s bleeding under.control, after the two little boys were washed and wrapped in blankets and resting in their cradle, after Stephen and Rachel hunted silently, letting death renew their bodies, he lay beside Helen, sharing her dreams.

—I love you,— he told her and he knew that the words had never held quite this meaning before. He felt her acceptance, her response.

—Of course.—

Together their minds moved out, embracing their children.

1958

I

Dick Wells was forty-one when he learned he was about to die.

He supposed there wasn’t any way for a doctor to break the news gently and he preferred the straightforward approach. He’d had to tell others the same sad news throughout his career with the Cleveland police and, before that, during the war.
I’m sorry
, Dick would say to the wounded.
Is there anything you need to tell me
? Somewhere beneath the honest sympathy of the words in a place only he could touch he’d felt a mean self-righteousness. He was alive and someone else was dying.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said.

Yeah
, Dick thought.
Yeah, he probably was
.

In two days Dick would celebrate his third wedding anniversary. As he drove home after the follow-up exam, he recalled that he deliberately hadn’t told Judy that the physical the chief had ordered had been anything more than routine. At the time, he hadn’t wanted anyone but John Corey, his old partner and now chief medical examiner for the city, to share his worry. Now he decided to wait a little while before telling her the truth and wondered how long he’d be able to hold out.

He thought of his family—of Carol, ready to start her sophomore year at St. Joe’s High School, of Alan, who was about to skip fifth grade and seemed on his way to getting a math scholarship to Case, of how Judy would have to raise children that were only hers by marriage.

Not that she wasn’t up to it. The fact was, once she knew the doctor’s verdict, she’d take charge of everything. Judy was always willing to take charge of his problems at the first sign of any weakness on his part. Competence was one of her most charming vices and he was glad she was so capable but he’d be damned if he’d let her manage his death for him.

Now, if he ignored how anxiously his heart beat or the tight bands of tension across his chest, he felt fine. He’d wait a week, put together some plan before he gave her the news, something to inspire confidence that though his body was fading, his mind was as sharp as ever.

Well, if this wedding anniversary would be his last, he’d make it as special as possible. There was a little Spanish restaurant south of town that Judy adored. The food was terrible and he always suspected the lights were kept low to hide the bugs crawling along the baseboard but the place did reek of atmosphere and the owner hired a violinist on weekends. Dick decided to make reservations for Friday. Though it was more than a tradition that he gave her flowers on their anniversary, this time he’d arrange to have them delivered to their table.

As he drove home, he remembered the first time he’d sent her any. After Stephen had taken Helen to Chaves, Judy had refused to return his phone calls—all of them—and he’d finally sent a marriage proposal enclosed with two dozen roses. He’d stood outside her apartment that night waiting for her to come home. She’d arrived balancing roses and vase in one hand, her briefcase and purse in the other. Water from the vase had spilled leaving dark stains on her bright blue blouse and purple skirt. She hadn’t said a word as he followed her inside and convinced her that no one would ever understand what had happened to her the way he did, could ever love her the way he did. Though he had a well-trained memory, he did not recall half of what he’d said but apparently it had been enough—and now their marriage wouldn’t last nearly long enough. Purple, bright blue, red. He wanted a bouquet wild and colorful as the woman herself and decided to order them in person.

He’d brought Judy flowers from the shop on Payne Avenue before. Though he didn’t like its new owner, force of habit and an open parking space drew him back to it. As he crossed the street, he noticed the shop’s door hanging half open and approached it with instinctive caution.

Beyond the reflection in the florist’s window, he saw the owner backed against the wall behind the register. His attacker had a gun pressed under his chin, one hand gripping his shoulder. Robbery didn’t appear to be a motive. The young assailant was well dressed and this shop didn’t do much business in midweek. Though Dick wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, he assumed he had to act fast. He pulled his gun, kicked open the door, and leveled it at the attacker.

“Police!” he yelled, then, “Drop it.”

Instead of obeying, the assailant swung his own gun toward Dick. In the moment before Dick fired, he saw the man’s hands shaking, the sweat on his face, the painful hunger in his eyes. As Dick’s bullets hit him, the man fell backward, cracking the glass of the cooler, staining the roses and white carnations behind him with his blood.

Dick raised the man’s head just enough to pile some of the florist’s bags underneath it, dialed for an ambulance he knew would arrive too late, then phoned the police. Afterward, he turned his attention to the florist. The florist’s knees had buckled and he lay in a heap behind his counter. “You know him?” Dick asked.

“Christ, yeah. I’m surprised you don’t.” Dick stared at the unconscious man while the florist continued: “That’s Peter Carrera.”

“Dominic Carrera’s son?”

“Yeah. Domie couldn’t handle the kid’s habit so he cut him off. Word got out that anybody who supplied Pete would be out of business permanently. I used to sell to him. He tracked me down.” The florist pulled open a counter drawer. In the back were cellophane-wrapped packets of what looked like heroin. “I would of sold to him again if you hadn’t come in. You gonna arrest me?”

Dick nodded and the florist replied, “Good. A couple of years in jail will give Domie time to remember it wasn’t me who shot his only kid. As for you, your future ain’t worth shit, not anymore.”

Dick laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Life could be so damned ironic.

Judy knew about the shooting before Dick came home. Corey might have called her or maybe one of her friends on the force. She greeted Dick at the door with a hug, then sat beside him. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Dick nodded and gave her a few details she might not have heard from the stoolie at the station. “The florist has decided to trade everything he knows about Dominic Carrera for full-scale police protection. It’s the break in their investigation that the crime unit’s been praying for. They’ll put Carrera away for a long time.”

“When?”

“If everything goes right, they’ll arrest him in the next few weeks. Once he’s in jail nobody in that organization will touch me.”

“In the meantime, what about us?” She sounded as if his paycheck were going to be late or he planned to take an unpaid leave. Brave, like always.

He hoped she wouldn’t become suspicious when he gave her the chief’s order. It wasn’t like the chief to tell one of his officers to cut and run, but since Dick would probably be quitting work soon anyway, the chief had ordered him to take a paid leave. Dick left out the chief’s rationale when he told her he had the month off. “I thought we might take the kids to Boston to visit your folks. Maybe we could leave them there and take a side trip to New York. Paul and Elizabeth are always offering to put us up.”

“Your fall vacation’s coming.”

“Do you want to go to Canada?” For the last two years, he’d spent a week with Stephen and Helen every autumn. He always asked Judy to come. She always refused but these were different circumstances.

“No. I want you to take Alan when you go.” Sensing Dick about to say no, she added, “He’s more levelheaded than Carol. He’ll keep their secret. Stephen told you last year that you could bring him, didn’t he? And Alan would love to go.‘.’

“You sound like they’re . . . well, normal people.”

“They’re
not
. That’s the point. Listen, Dick, I know Carrera. I met him when I worked for the
Press
. If he can’t reach you, he’ll go after Alan. I want you both in the safest place you can be.”

“What about you? You can’t stay here.”

“Carol and I are going to stay with Elizabeth and Paul. I called her while I was waiting for you. We can leave in the morning. There’s a flight to Denver leaving about the same time. From there you can catch a plane to Edmonton. There’s even enough time to wire Stephen and have him meet you.”

“You have this all planned out, don’t you?”

“I want you safe, that’s all.”

“Protected once again by the predatory beast?”

He sounded so bitter that Judy frowned. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

Last time he’d been in this much danger he and Stephen had been partners in the fight. Now Dick was just a potential victim. “Nothing,” he lied, then added the truth, “it’s just that a month seems like such a long time.”

“It is but those trips north are always good for you. If we go to my parents’ place, you’ll spend your time worrying about every stranger on the beach. This way you’ll be able to relax. Considering how well you’ve been sleeping nights, you need it.”