Indelible (35 page)

“Who? What’s going on?”

“Natalie saw someone. He was fixated on the statue.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Whit frowned. “Are you saying it’s your stalker?”

He frowned. “I don’t know about stalker, but Natalie said she saw worship and agony.”

Whit’s face twisted. “Worship? That’s psychopathic.”

“Could be.” His gut twisted. “It scared her so much, she blocked it, but I made her remember. I thought it was Michaela’s abductor. I didn’t realize …”

Whit’s shoulders slumped. “They’re connected?”

“I don’t know.” He cocked his head at the helicopter blades lifting. He could almost feel the air pumping, bearing her away.

“It’s Charlie in there,” Whit said. “You know he’s good.”

He did know. It was the best comfort he had right now.

“Aunt Nattie inna ’copter.”

That little boy had good ears. He also had tears pooling. He raised his arm, and Trevor lifted him. Chest to chest, he rubbed the little back and murmured, “It’s okay. You gotta trust me on this.”

Trust? He felt utterly powerless. “Go on home, Whit. As soon as Aaron comes, I’m going to the hospital.”

“Okay. Let me know what we can do.”

It was up to Natalie now. She either had the fight or didn’t. Whit squeezed his shoulder and went out, pausing as the chief stepped in.

Jonah said, “You wanted to tell me something?”

“Show you.” He unlocked the drawer and handed Jonah the photos. “I’ve been getting these in the mail. No explanation.”

The chief flipped through them, muscles rippling along his jaw.

“My brother’s a cop. He put me in contact with the FBI. They have the originals.” He handed over Natalie’s reproduction of him as warrior angel. “Jazmyn Dufoe received this drawing through the magazine that ran her article. The editor thought she’d laugh her head off, but even she found it creepy.”

Jonah frowned. “Why didn’t you show me before?”

“I didn’t put it together until Natalie described how the guy looked at the statue. I don’t know if this has anything to do with Michaela, but this one’s twisted enough to do what we suspect.”

Jonah pocketed the pictures. “Come take a look at her model—what’s left of it.”

“Okay.” Trevor bent and scooped Cody up. They went in through the gallery where one officer was securing the scene with tape, another taking pictures. Trevor shielded Cody from the hideous amount of blood soaked into the carpet, a crowbar lying a short distance away. “Did he use that—”

“Don’t touch anything. We’re processing the scene.”

His stomach plunged. “How bad—” He caught himself. His need to know what that fiend had done didn’t mean Cody should hear it.

Jonah pushed open the door to the studio with his shoulder. “Again, don’t touch.”

Seeing what she’d done after he left, he knew how painful it must have been. But especially awful were the deep, crusting claw marks ripped through the face and graying at the edges.

Jonah said, “Recognize him?”

Trevor kept Cody tight to his chest, his little fingers once again
sinking and pulling, sinking and pulling. The head or hair wasn’t finished, points at the top looking almost like horns. The ears were mostly undamaged, but the face. “She was just beginning. There’s nowhere near the detail she would have given it.”

Jonah pointed to the gouges. “Did she do this?”

“I can’t imagine. It’s … personal, ripping through the face like that.”

Jonah said, “I’ll try to get some state techs out here. In the meantime, keep your eyes open. He’s dressed like a bat.”

Trevor opened and shut his mouth. “How …”

“He broke into the bakery and a witness described him.”

“This guy robbed Piper?”

“Looks that way. And I saw him flee from here.”

Trevor shook his head. “What are we dealing with?”

Jonah stared at the gouged model. “I can’t even guess.”

They both turned abruptly when Aaron pushed through the studio door, ignoring the crime tape, his face pale with shock. “Was that Nattie’s—”

“Daddy!” With a wail, Cody all but dove into his arms.

Trevor felt more than the child’s weight lifted.

It was as though she’d been injected with nanobots, lights flashing, bright lines shooting across and dying away. There was pain and confusion, and then she was sitting on a rock in the middle of a burbling creek. It sparkled in sunlight. Gold flecks in the gravel dazzled her eyes.

There must be banks and land on either side, but everything beyond the rippling water blurred. She heard the gurgling flow, felt the warmth of the flat, chalky rock. She couldn’t see, but sensed someone beside her. Everything moved around her, but she sat still and silent beside her still and silent companion.

It seemed a waiting place. A pause in the flow of time—of life? Her thoughts reached out and touched her companion’s. As the peaceful water coursed around them, she sighed. His name was Death.

Above them all th’ Archangel: but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek.

H
e shuddered. He cringed. There’d been so much blood. He would have stopped the blood if he could. Stopped the pain of the one who saw, forming him with wondrous, traitorous hands.

For what strange purpose had she made him as he might have been?

Seeing his likeness in the clay, unmarred, had crushed and wounded him. His fingers gouged with violence, not ordered by his thoughts but by some dark and primal urge to strike from sight even the impression of wholesome life, for in truth he had no past not sullied by fear and misery.

And yet her gift convicted him, that she would see past waste and ruin, to a finer soul than ever inhabited his wretched shell. For that kindness, he mourned her suffering, dread upon him like ravening jaws, ripping him with guilt.

No blame belonged, though he bore it still. That had always been the way, and were it not, some other woe would take its place. He had perfected agony.

Twenty-One

A
pproaching the paramedic team in the hospital hallway, Trevor must have shown everything he was feeling.

Charlie held his hands up and said, “You’ll hear it anyway, so I’m telling you myself. We lost her in the chopper, got her back in two.”

For two minutes she’d been dead.

“She came to for a while. That’s the good news. A ten on the GCS.”

He needed better news than her not being comatose. The shaking started inside his chest as he breathed the hospital smells of fear and antiseptic.

“We’ve been hanging around to hear, since it got sort of personal up there.”

And as a favor to him, Trevor knew.

“At this point, they’ll have to tell you anything else.”

“They won’t tell me anything unless her brother includes me in the family loop.”

“Yeah, all that HIPAA stuff. Good luck, man. Hope she pulls through.”

Pulls through. As though this were just a tight space, a crevice she would work her way out of with the right technical maneuver.

He pressed his palms to the sides of his head as the flight emergency team walked away. He sank into a chair in the surgical waiting room. He felt utterly helpless, as terrified and confused as the day his dad left. A cavity opened inside too primitive for words.

Aaron came in and sat down beside him. Staring at the wall, he said, “So, I know what you did for Cody and for me, but how are you involved with my sister—besides landlord and tenant?”

“Nattie’s my—” ANR Inc. Aaron and Natalie Reeve? They’d been paying rent to her without a clue. The thought made him want to laugh and cry.

“You didn’t know she owns the building?”

“We don’t talk that much about our businesses. We just …” He swallowed. How could he make it believable? “She’s special.” A stupid word like
unique
that applied to everyone. “She’s important to me.” It hadn’t taken this to realize it.

Aaron rubbed a hand over his face. “What happened?”

“She saw a guy.”

“And modeled him?”

“Not at first. It paralyzed her process, formed a block.”

Aaron looked confused.

“I know. Not at all normal—for her. Working with the police chief and a couple counselors, she retrieved it. While she was making the model, he broke in and attacked her.”

Again, the wall took Aaron’s focus, tricolor forest in a copper frame, a posted
STAFF ONLY
sign, an exit light over the doors. “She never hurt anyone.” His voice broke.

There was no correlation between goodness and safety, or five-year-old boys wouldn’t snap their necks looking for kittens.

Aaron cleared the emotion from his throat. “How bad is it? You saw her?”

“No. I had Cody. I didn’t want to traumatize him again.”

“Thank you for that.” His face twisted. “I never should have asked her …”

“She loves him. She appreciated your trust.” Even if she couldn’t do it alone.

After what might have been a few notches or a few rotations on the clock, Aaron raised his head. “She had her heart broken in college. Some schlep who led her on, then couldn’t take it.”

Trevor nodded. “I don’t intend to hurt her.”

They sat in silence as it all sank deeper.

Again, Aaron broke it. “I’ve always thought she’s one of those souls who wouldn’t take long on earth to get perfect.”

“I’m not letting go.” He pictured her wrist clamped in his grip as she dangled off a cliff. An experienced climber could maintain that grip longer than they showed it in the movies, but eventually the muscles seized and cramped and failed.

Aaron teared up, then soldiered through the emotion. “Do you believe in God?”

He swallowed. “I’m ambivalent.”

“Nattie would want us to pray.”

He stared at his hands, reposing uselessly on his thighs. Either God was moved to action by their pleas, or events followed a course determined by cause and effect. He had begged God for Ellis, then watched his mother put her baby in the ground. It had rained, a kind of sleeting rain, while his small body hovered over the curtained hole in a casket too big, as though he’d grow into it.

The shaking took his chest again. Since there was nothing else his hands could do, he brought them together and lowered his head. Maybe he’d used the wrong words that time, or the anger and self-loathing had clogged the channel. This time he kept it simple.

When the diminutive neurosurgeon came in, both men towered over him, yet he held the power over the immediate direction of their lives.

“I’m Dr. Derozier.” The nasal cast to his voice was probably a northeastern seaboard accent. “You’re here for Ms. Reeve?”

“How is she?” Aaron asked in a steadier voice than it appeared he could manage.

“The patient presented with an epidural hematoma, resulting from contact force. In debriding the wound, we discovered fracturing of the skull, though surgical evacuation of the hematoma revealed no disruption of the dura mater.”

“Doctor, please,” Aaron said. “Speak plainly.”

Between himself and his son, his wife, and now this, he must be weary to death of jargon.

Dr. Derozier’s nostrils drew in. “Neither the fracture nor the shards of glass in her scalp penetrated the brain; however, the tissue may have sustained trauma from the blow. There’s no sign at this time of spinal cord compression or brain stem involvement.”

“That’s good, right?” Aaron probed.

“It’s good. She had a period of lucidity after resuscitation—” The doctor caught himself, rose onto the balls of his feet and drew a breath through
his nose. “She was conscious for a time prior to surgery, which … ups her odds.”

Trevor swallowed hard. “Will this affect her ability?”

“You mean cognition, memory—”

“She’s a prodigy. An artist with eidetic memory.”

Aaron looked surprised that he knew about it. He didn’t fully grasp their relationship.

Dr. Derozier paused, clearly skeptical. “We know very little about that, and frankly it’s the least of my concerns. Traumatic brain injury can cause personality shifts, memory loss, cognitive difficulties.”

Aaron closed his eyes.

Trevor pressed, “Are you saying that’s what she has? TBI?” He’d dealt with enough fall victims to be familiar with not only the term but the symptoms.