Second Chance (31 page)

"There was a reason—one you don't know about."

She shook her head. "It's impossible."

"I've got proof."

"
There is no proof," she said dismissively.

"It's in my office safe right now. Bankbooks for
accounts that Phil established in Ethan's name. Accounts that were
used to pay off Rita Scarne."

"Pay her off for what?"

"For helping to arrange Estelle's murder with
the help of a woman named Chaney or Chase."

"Chase?" Louise said, looking surprised.

"
You know her?"

"Phil had a secretary named Chase. At least I
think that was her name." She ducked her head. "Actually
the one I'm thinking of was more than Phil's secretary. She was . .
.involved with him right before we met."

"It could be important, Louise."

She stared at me for a long moment. "Al1 right,
I'll find out tomorrow. I'll go through his old files. Okay?"

I nodded.

She held out her hand. "Now will you come back
to bed?"

I got up from the chair and flipped off the light,
dropping the torn photo of Kirsten back in the drawer. Upstairs we
made love, although there wasn't much love in it. I wanted her. And
she didn't want to be alone in the dark. That was how it started, and
how it finished. Just a one-night stand with the beautiful widow.

"Don't brood," she said, running a hand
down my chest.

"You helped me tonight."

I shook my head. "Did I?"

"Yes," she said, touching my cheek.
"Sometimes it's the only thing that does help."

I stared at her voluptuous body, pale white in the
moonlight. "You're very beautiful"

She smiled. "No, I'm not."

But she was. Very beautiful.

We lay there for a while without speaking. Outside
the cold December wind rattled the casements.

"Once this is over, I'm going to go away,"
Louise said.

"I'm a wealthy woman now that Phil is dead, so
I'm going to go away. And when I come back I'm going to marry Saul
Lasker."

"Why?" I said with surprise.

"Because he's very rich, my darling. And he'll
do anything I want. "

"You just said you had money of your own."

"Not enough. There isn't enough of that, ever."
She reached down and stroked me gently. "I won't stop seeing
you, darling, even after I've married Saul. You're good at this, you
know."

I stared at her for a moment, unhappily. I had no
claim on her. I doubted if any man ever really had.

"What if I'd said no tonight?" I asked.

She sighed peacefully. "I knew you wouldn't."

36
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Dawn broke around seven, filling Louise's bedroom
with pale filtered light—the color of the lace on her windows; I
the pattern of the embroidery in the lace. The light woke me up—I'd
scarcely been sleeping. I turned on the mattress and looked at
Louise. We'd made love a second time early that morning. It was what
she'd needed all along to calm her down, to chase away the ghosts, to
put her to sleep. It wasn't what I'd needed.

She'd wanted someone to hold her in the dark. In the
day I knew it would be different. Her need would lessen, while I mine
would remain. What hurt me was that she'd known that—she'd counted
on it.

The thought depressed me so much that I got out of
bed and started to dress. The moment she felt my weight shift off the
mattress Louise opened her eyes, as if her sleep depended on the
presence of a body beside her. I didn't flatter myself that it
depended on me.

Her face was drawn with fatigue, her eyes puffy with
it. She sat up in bed, and the blankets slipped beneath her breasts.
Even across the room she smelled of sex—and sleep and the sweet,
floral fragrance that she wore.

"You're going?" she said groggily.

"Yes."

Arching her back she breathed out a sigh. Her long
nipples hardened in the cold air. "You don't have to go, you
know."

"I have things to do," I said.

Louise glanced around the room uncertainly, as if she
didn't remember how we'd gotten there. "I was fairly . . .crazy
last night, wasn't I?"

"You got upset. It happens to all of us."

"
It doesn't happen to me. If I said anything
stupid . . ."

"Don't worry, Louise. I won't tell."

She brushed the hair back from her forehead. "You're
pissed off, aren't you?"

"No," I said.

"Yes, you are."

Pushing herself up on the pillows she leaned against
the headboard and stared at me sadly. "Harry, I truly like you.
You're a good man—good in bed, good for me. But don't try to change
me. Okay? I can't be that person. I tried to be someone else when I
married Phil. It doesn't work." Her face turned hard and remote.
"Sooner or later you run up against your past. And it doesn't
change. It doesn't want you to change, either."

When I didn't say anything, Louise lay back on the
pillows and closed her eyes. "I'll try to find that file you
wanted. What was her name?"

"
Chase. Jeanne Chase."

"Chase," she said dully. "Do the
police think she's involved?"

"Parker thinks the case is closed. And since
it's his jurisdiction it will be closed, unless I can come up with
something fast."

"About Phil and this woman?"

"Yes."

"You're wrong, Harry. But I'll find her file for
you if I can, and call you later today. I owe you that." She
rolled on her side, away from me, so I couldn't see her face.

I drove back slowly to the apartment on Ohio. I'd
only had a few hours sleep and I felt very tired. And very old. Too
old to being play love games with a pro like Louise Pearson. I would
be pushing forty-five come fall. The bachelorhood I'd half courted
was already on me. I'd seen too many years to kid myself about a
woman who gave me a hard-on. I wasn't what she wanted. And what she
wanted wasn't enough for me.

I took a hot shower when I got home, trying to steam
Louise out of my body and brain. But she stayed inside me like a dull
ache. She'd stay in there for a while.

After the shower I wandered into the bedroom and sat
down heavily on the bed. Through the blinds I could see the day
dawning in earnest in a blaze of light. Sleepily I picked up the
phone off the nightstand and called Shelley Sacks at his office. He
didn't sound particularly happy to hear from me. But then he was
still keeping secrets that he knew I wanted to share.

I made an appointment to see him in the afternoon. I
didn't mention Jeanne Chase to him. I wanted to see him face-to-face
when I did that. It wasn't only Jeanne Chase I wanted to talk to him
about.

Lying down on the bed I shut my eyes, thinking I'd
rest for a few minutes. I didn't open them again until the telephone
rang around noon.

I'd been dreaming about Louise—about the way she'd
looked on the porch, bathed in white light. It turned out to be
Louise on the phone. For a few moments I didn't know whether I was
awake or asleep.

"Harry," I heard her say in a heavy voice.
"The State Patrol just called. They found the kids."

I shook myself. "They found the kids?"

"They're bringing them out of the Miami River
right now. They need me to make the identification?

"I'll come get you," I heard myself say.

She hung up. I sat there on the bed for another
minute waiting for time to catch up to me—real time not dream time.
But I was in it already. As I got dressed I couldn't shake the
feeling that I was in them both.

It took me fifteen minutes to drive from Clifton to
Indian Hill. Louise was waiting for me outside the door of the estate
house. Lasker, her intended, was there too. "I don't know if I
can do this," Louise whispered as I came up beside her.

"Perhaps you shouldn't," Lasker said.

"I can go," I told her. "I know what
Kirsty looks like. You can come to the morgue later, if necessary,
for Ethan."

"Good," Lasker said, clapping me on the
shoulder.

I shrugged his hand off. Hard. For the first time
since I'd met him I saw his smile completely vanish. Grinning I
squared around to face him.

Louise stepped between us. "I'm going with you,"
she said to me. To Lasker she said, "Go home."

She went over to the Pinto and got in. Lasker and I
eyed each other for a moment, before he drifted over to his Porsche.

I got in the Pinto and drove off.

Louise didn't say anything as we headed up I-71 to
275. The scene with Lasker hadn't registered with her. It woke me up,
though.

I gunned the motor as we tore through the rolling
farmland on the western edge of Hamilton county. The day was clear
and bright and everything around us sparkled with ice, even the dark,
turned earth.

I-275 deposited us on Harrison Pike, heading west
past bait shops and loaf-shaped diners. The highway jogged southwest
at Taylors Creek, and the scattered roadside businesses gave way to
undeveloped lots, trashy fields dotted with scrub pine and river
maples. To the east I could see the forested ridge that rose above
the far bank of the Miami River. I couldn't see the river itself yet,
just the ground clutter on its western bank and a few rusted
pedestrian bridges—bare steel hoops rising above the treetops. A
mile farther on the river came into view, thick with plate-ice that
flashed in the sun. A mile after that I saw the cop cars—a nest of
them in a gravel clearing above the Miami's western bank.

Louise saw them too. Reaching over she grabbed my
hand and squeezed it tightly. I glanced at her face. She looked
scared to death.

I slowed up and pulled off the highway, turning left
onto a slick, gravel lane. Down we went, half sliding toward the
police cars and ambulances in the clearing below us.

"Oh, Christ," I heard Louise whisper.

I pulled to a stop and parked the car on flat ground.
Glancing at Louise I opened the door and got out into the brilliant
sunlight. She got out, too. Together we weaved through the tangle of
cars to the riverbank.

The area above the river was teeming with men. Cops
and ambulance drivers and newsmen. The air was filled with the smoke
of their breath, and the steamy exhalation of the river itself—like
a fire in the midst of the deep, frozen cold. A cop stopped us as we
started down a dirt trail to the river's edge.

"Officials only," he said, barring the way.

"This is the kids' mother," I said,
gesturing to Louise. "Mrs. Pearson."

"Christ, I'm sorry," the cop said heavily.
He was just a kid himself, and he looked genuinely hurt. I knew at
once that whatever was waiting for us at the end of that trail had to
be pretty goddamn awful. Louise didn't understand that. She looked
overwhelmed by the activity going on around us.

I caught sight of Larry Parker standing hands on his
hips on an outcropping above the river. I called out to him and he
turned his head. His face was grim.

"Wait here," I said to Louise.

She nodded once, quickly.

I let go of her arm and walked over to where Parker
was standing.

"They shouldn't have called her here," he
said angrily.

"It's bad?"

He pointed down. Immediately below us the bank fell
away in a tangle of frozen vines and crusty shale to the water's
edge. The Miami was frozen solid all the way across.

"
Two men in wet suits were kneeling on the ice,
about ten feet out. They were looking down at something between them.
All around them the ice smoked in the sun like doused embers.

Fighting the glare I ducked and squinted to make out
what the two divers were looking at. Then I saw it. It was a human
face—or what had been a human face—half submerged in the frozen
river. A foot or so to its right a human hand dangled like a wilted
lily above the ice. The hand was as white as snow, except for the
nails, which had turned jet black with stagnant blood.

"Jesus Christ," I said, turning away. After
a moment I asked him if he was sure it was the Pearson children.

Parker nodded. "It's them. We're going to have
to use chain saws to cut the bodies out." He glanced over his
shoulder at Louise. "They shouldn't have called her down here."
`

"I'll take her home."

I turned to go and Parker grabbed my arm.  "This
is a terrible thing, Stoner. More terrible than you know. You can see
through the ice in places around the girl's body—see what the
bastard did to her." His mouth filled with bile and he spat it
out on the dark frozen ground. "If there's somebody left to
punish for this," he said bitterly, "I want to know."

"I thought you said this case was closed."