Destiny (112 page)

At four, or perhaps five, in the morning, the light that edged the shades grew warmer, and she heard the first birds begin to sing. It was then, and with a terrifying suddenness, that the noise began. One moment the room and the house were quiet and still, the next the air vibrated with a terrible clamor.

Helene started; her heart seemed to stop and then to pound; it was as if the noise were inside her head, it was so loud, and for a moment, in confusion and fright, she felt as if she herself had triggered the alarm. She froze for an instant, and then sprang to her feet. Beside her, Cat's eyes flew open, and she gave a cry of fear.

"Mother. What is it? What is it?"

Helene reached for her, and held her tight.

"It's all right. It's the alarms—it's just the alarms. Cat, something's triggered them. . . ."

"I'm frightened. ..."

"Darling, it's all right. You remember. It's happened before. It's an animal probably, or a bird—wait. ..."

She crossed to the window and pulled up one of the shades. Behind her, Cat huddled under the bedclothes, her little face pale and scared. Helene covered her ears with her hands and looked out over the garden.

It was lit not with the soft dawn hght, but with the cold unearthly glare of halogen lamps, a light brighter than noon, that bleached the trees and grass of color. In the garden, nothing moved, there was no sign of any intruder, either innocent or sinister.

Helene stared out across the grass. A horrible sick sense of foreboding rose in her stomach; she stared in the direction of the drive, toward the gates which, from here, were invisible. From inside the house came the sound of running footsteps, the voices of Madeleine and Cassie.

"Mother. What is it? What is it?"

Helene turned away from the window.

"I don't know." She reached for Cat's hand. "I don't know." In the hills beyond the house, sirens began to wail.

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But she did know then, when she heard the sirens—or so she thought afterward. Knew then, knew when she took the call from the station later that morning, knew when, with Cassie protesting at her side, she walked into the police morgue to make the identification.

Blue Ught; cold air; white tiles; the drip of sluices. One wall, banked with steel drawers, like safety deposit boxes, only larger.

Cassie caught one glimpse, and hung back. She plucked at Helene's arm.

"You don't have to do this. There's no call. So what if it's the same man? Lewis should be doing this, not you. You should call Lewis. ..."

"I saw him too. I'm going to do it."

"But why? This is a horrible place."

"I feel I ought to, that's all."

"Stubborn!" Cassie's chin tilted. "You was always that way. Well, if you're going in, I'm going with you."

The lieutenant in charge of the case was waiting; he held a clipboard, and looked impatient and ill at ease. He had hardly glanced at Cassie, but he stared at Helene as if trying to convince himself that she was real. Beside him stood an attendant in a white coat. As the women advanced, the two men glanced at each other. The lieutenant shifted from foot to foot.

"Found him dead in his cell around nine. Inhalation of vomit," he said finally. "Happens all the time."

As if this were his cue, the attendant reached forward; the drawer next to them slid forward soundlessly on casters. The body was covered with heavy plastic sheet; a label like a luggage label was attached with a loop of string to one big toe.

"The bruising was caused by his fall. Those walls at your place are fifteen feet. The guy must have been crazy."

The heutenant reached for the sheet.

"He wasn't unconscious when they brought him in. He was okay. Came as quiet as a lamb. The bruising's not as bad as it looks. We had the surgeon examine him. ..."

He sounded aggrieved, as if the man's subsequent death were a reproach to his own efficiency. He hesitated, then tweaked the sheet aside.

"Miss Harte?" He glanced over his shoulder at Cassie. "Lady. This the same guy? Either of you recognize him?"

Helene looked. The man's eyes were open. They were a pale bleached-out blue, and bore an expression of faint surprise, as if the fact of his own

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mortality had been puzzling, and unexpected. He had thin sandy hair, and the stubble of a reddish beard. A tall man, heavily boned. She hesitated.

Cassie stepped forward, looked, and stepped back. She turned away quickly.

"That's him for sure. I saw him close up. I recognize him."

"Miss Harte?"

Helene stared at the man. Above the sheet, his chest was bare, and thickly matted with red hair. One hand was just visible. It looked too large for the thin wrist; it was square-palmed, and the fingers were callused. She thought of the night of the party, of standing on the driveway, and looking back at the gates; she thought of the odd sense of kinship she had felt then. She reached out her hand, touched the soft fuzz of hair on the man's arm, and then drew back.

"I'm not sure. It was dark when I saw him. I can't be certain."

Again the lieutenant and the attendant exchanged glances. The drawer on its smooth casters was pushed back. A sluice gurgled, and the heuten-ant made a small note on his chpboard.

"Lady—you're sure?"

"I'm sure." Cassie's voice was grim. She was already walking away.

He shrugged.

"It'll be him. Once these guys get a fixation on someone, they stick with it. I'm sorry. Miss Harte. He won't be troubhng you again—that's one way of looking at it. . . ."

He turned away. He was just beginning to wonder at what point it would be decent to ask for Helene Harte's autograph—when they'd gotten the hell out of the morgue, obviously—when he realized that she wasn't following him out. He stopped. She was still standing in exactly the same place, staring at the banks of drawers, and the numbers on them.

"Do you know his name?"

She spoke quite suddenly, in that low cool voice of hers. The Heutenant jumped. He hesitated, looking down at the chpboard. Helene did not turn her head; she did not move. The second seemed to her to lengthen, the room to grow colder and then brighter; she waited, knowing what he was about to say.

"He had a driver's hcense on him. No other ID. License gives his name as Craig. Gary Craig. License was issued—where is it, someplace in the South. ..."

He was scrabbling at his notes, as if her silence and stillness unnerved him.

"Louisiana," she said.

"That's right. Louisiana." He found the entry on his chpboard. He looked up with a frown. Behind him, he was aware that the other woman

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had reacted. She gave an exclamation, quickly cut off, and started back to them. Helene Harte had not moved, but the other woman had gone as white as a sheet. She was coming forward, arms outstretched, like a tigress about to defend her cub.

"Helene, honey—wait a second now. ..."

"It's all right, Cassie. Really. It's all right."

"What is this?" The lieutenant looked from face to face. "That name mean something to you—is that it? You knew him? There some connection here I should know about?"

She turned, and the clear gray-blue eyes met his. The other woman seemed to be trying to stop her speaking, but Helene Harte paid her no heed. When she spoke, she did so in a quiet steady voice, and he stared at her, thinking he was hearing wrong, thinking he was going crazy. She said, "I never knew him. He was my father."

There was a silence. Then the woman beside her gave a little moan, as if it would have been better had that admission not been made. The attendant cleared his throat, and turned away, and the lieutenant, when his mind came out of deep freeze and started working again, thought: the press. Oh, Jesus.

I hat's the wording I want used. Exactly that. No—I don't want it X altered in any way. No—I don't intend to amplify on it. Beyond that I have no comment to make. ..."

Helene's voice sounded firm, and slightly weary. She was on the telephone to her press agent, Bemie Alberg, who was not taking the news well. Helene's side of the conversation had been brief and to the point; in her hand she held a small piece of paper on which she had written out the statement she had just dictated to him. Cassie, who had been asked to stay while Helene made the call, watched her with a frown. The statement was unequivocal, and Cassie was not sure if it was wise. Bemie Alberg thought it not merely unwise, but disastrous; Cassie could hear his voice squawking into the receiver; he was an excitable man at the best of times; now he sounded apoplectic.

Helene held the receiver slightly away from her ear, and gave Cassie a small resigned smile. Cassie made a face. She knew Helene could be immovable when she had decided on something, and she supposed Bemie Alberg would know it too—he was no fool. However, he clearly thought there was some possibility of changing her mind; some of the agonized squawks were now comprehensible.

"The timing's disastrous. There's your Oscar nomination to consider.

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They'll be voting soon. We have to keep this under wraps. There's no need for a statement. Look, listen a moment, will you? Who heard? Two guys. This isn't a problem. Just give me the lieutenant's name, will you? I'll get on to him right away. . . . None of this need come out—you hear me? None of it. Okay, so it'll cost a bit. So what else is new? There may be rumors—so we deny them. That's cool. Rumors die. Statements don't. Look, I'm coming over. I'm coming over right now. . . ."

"No, Bemie. You're not." Helene cut him oflf in mid-flow. "We're not discussing this. There's nothing to discuss. Those are the facts. Any queries, and you put out that statement—"

There were some more squawks, and Helene frowned.

"Bemie." She cut him off again. "Either you do it, or I get another press agent to do it. It's as simple as that."

There was a silence at the other end of the line. A few more remarks, inaudible to Cassie, and obviously made in a quieter tone of voice.

"Thank you, Bemie," Helene said finally, and hung up.

She tumed away to the window of a living room, and looked out at the garden. The aftemoon sun struck the pale gold of her hair, and the calm oval of her face, and Cassie, looking at her, wondered at that calm. She wondered sometimes what it cost Helene, that calm—and also what it would take to shatter it.

"He's agreed?"

"But of course."

Helene did not look around, and Cassie's voice became gruff, as it always did when she tried to disguise her concern.

"You sure you're doing the right thing?"

"Oh, yes."

"It's just that ..." Cassie hesitated.

She was proud of Helene's success, and kept a scrapbook of her cUp-pings. She was well aware that Helene never spoke of her past in interviews; she was also aware of how journalists, facing a wall of silence, had embroidered and invented and—possibly encouraged by Bemie Alberg— had trailed hints of a background that bore no relationship to the tmth.

"People think of you different," she burst out at last. "That's all. Right or wrong, that's what they think. They built up a picture of you in their minds. And Gary Craig—he don't fit into it, honey. He just don't. A father like that. A down-and-out. A lush. Maybe . . ."

"He was my father, Cassie." Helene tumed around.

"Yes, but he don't fit. And he wasn't hke your father, not really. You never knew him even. What did he ever do for you? What did he care? Why'd he want to come around here, anyway, hanging out by those gates? He must've been crazy. . . ."

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"He was looking for me, perhaps."

"Didn't bother looking for twenty years. And if he was, how come he didn't come right on in, and announce himself, straight out, same as any normal man would? He was buildin' up to it, I reckon. Biding his time. Traced you to Orangeburg, traced you here through me, that's how I see it. Then—well, who knows? Maybe he was going to sting you for a few bucks. Maybe worse. There's no telling. He could have been dangerous. . . ."

"I don't think so. I think—he just wanted to look. That's all. He was an alcoholic—a sick man—he probably didn't even know why he did it."

"Well, he's dead." Cassie's mouth set in an obstinate line. "Let sleeping dogs lie, I say. The way I see it, he never done nothing for you, so why go telling the world he's your father—a man like that?"

"Oh, Cassie. It's the truth. That's why."

"So? Bend it a little. Why not? Plenty of folks do."

"Not anymore." Helene smiled at her gently. "I'm tired of lying, Cassie. And I'm tired of pretending. That's all."

Cassie could see the appeal in her face, and hear it in her voice. Her heart softened. She shook her head.

"Well. If you see it like that. I'd just hke to save you some hurt, that's all."

"The truth oughtn't to hurt. ..." Helene began, and Cassie gave a derisory snort.

"'Ought not, maybe. But it can. I seen truth cause trouble you wouldn't believe, when a little lie—now that would have eased things over real nice. Still. I won't argue. No sense in wasting my breath . . ." She paused. "You going to this funeral you're fixin'?"

She knew what the answer would be before the question was out; Helene nodded. Cassie drew herself up.

"Well. You ain't going alone, that's for sure. I guess I'll have to come with you. You want me to do that?"

"I would hke you to, yes, Cassie."

"You want me, you got me." Cassie paused, and they smiled at each other. Cassie hesitated, and then turned to the door. She looked thoughtful. In the doorway, she turned back.

"I'll wear my best black," she said decisively. "Violet would've liked that. She helped me choose it, way back. Took the skirt up for me. Yes. My best black—that'd be the thing, I reckon."

She shut the door, her expression more cheerful. Helene smiled. She turned away then, her face growing still and thoughtful, and looked out for a while at the garden. There, Cat was playing. She had a line of dolls, with which she rarely played, but which, today, seemed to be in favor. They had