The Great Divide (15 page)

Austin opened the little doors, picked out one framed print, straightened, then stood there a long moment. His stillness caused Alma to start sniffling again.

Slowly he turned back to the room. Only then did Marcus notice how unraveled the man had become. From the back he was still the tightly wound professor in his vest and starched shirt and suit pants. But the vest dangled open and the tie was gone and the shirt was unbuttoned to reveal a T-shirt and a trace of graying chest hair. He carried the burden back and stood over Marcus, swaying slightly. “Alma put these things away when she saw how it hurt me to look at them.”

Marcus nodded. He understood that perfectly.

Austin turned the picture so that it faced Marcus. “This is my Gloria. Not what you saw there on that screen. This is my baby girl. Right here. You see what they did to her?”

“Yes.” The woman in the photograph was electric. She laughed so loudly he could hear her voice. More than that. He heard his own children, his son singing in the backyard and laughing like the chimes of heaven.

Gloria Hall wore a cocktail dress of emerald green, probably silk. She was graced by a corsage and the grandest smile he had ever seen. She was a tall enchantress, not beautiful by any means, there was too
much of her mother’s strong frame and her father’s sternly powerful features for that. Her shoulders and arms mocked the fragility of the dress. She was aware of this, and she did not care. Marcus stared at the picture and knew he had never met a person happier with her own skin.

“Whatever it takes,” Austin said, his voice burning the words to charred cinders. “You understand me? Whatever you have to do.”

M
ARCUS WAITED
through the police inquiry. He handled the Halls’ refusal to give up the original video, which meant traveling with them to have it duplicated. This was followed by telephone discussions with various State Department people and a visit from a local FBI agent, all of which were utterly futile. By the time the last police officer left the Hall home, Marcus was more than spent. He was afraid.

He took the first exit into eastern Rocky Mount and drove until he found the first bar. It was perfect for his needs. The place was full of shadows and serious drinkers, men who weightlifted with forklifts instead of barbells, women who put up with a tirade-ridden world for six bucks an hour plus overtime. The bartender managed to take his order without meeting his eye. They didn’t care that Marcus wore the only tie in the place. He was just another drifter looking for a drink and a jukebox that would cry for him.

By the third drink the shadows were whispering hated memories and the air had turned hard and mean. Marcus bought a bottle of vodka and carried it out with him. Back home, the drinks went down smoother but the air stayed heavy. Marcus drank until the whispers stopped, or at least until he stopped hearing. He stumbled upstairs, the railing somewhere far out of reach.

He awoke in the hard blackness of another predawn. His breathing sighed like a woman weeping, and he remembered then why he had stopped drinking. It wasn’t anything so noble as a vow, or a hope of righting the past or trying for something better. None of that. The drink chained him down where he could not escape the nightmares. They were free then to eat at him for hours, long enough to stain the bed with his sweat. Marcus left his bedclothes in a soggy mass on the bathroom floor and went looking for his running gear.

Exercise had once come natural and easy. Except for work around the house, however, Marcus had done almost nothing since the accident.
It took him a half hour to find his running shoes. By then his headache had diminished from lightning flashes to rolling thunder.

The first half mile was pure agony. He breathed fire and tasted bile. The second half mile he sweated the remnants of booze and bad dreams. Even so, the mental metronome kept steady count, and when he reached a mile he knew he had to either stop or die.

When Marcus finally caught his breath, he looked around and realized he had no idea where he was.

He took almost an hour to wind his way home. Long enough to grow mildly hungry and to map out the day’s work. By the time he had showered and brewed coffee, the rain had returned. He ate his breakfast standing at the counter, watching crystal curtains close down his world.

The phone rang as he was sorting through papers and mail. Netty said, “Jay is having one of his bad spells.”

“Then don’t come to the office.”

“I could make it after lunch, I guess. Right now it’s pretty bad.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He could hear a high-pitched howling in the background, a single note that went on and on, as though being born mentally deficient had granted Jay the ability to scream without drawing breath. “Are you all right?”

“I should be asking you that. Was the video as bad as they’re saying?”

He tried to tune out the shrieking. “How did you hear about the Halls’ video?”

“This is a small town inside a small town. Somebody heard about it at church and called around. Word gets out about everything. Including where you stopped off last night.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Listen up, Marcus. You want to do some more drinking, you do it around friends. There could have been a night rider with a New Horizons paycheck in his pocket last night. Somebody who’d love to brag he was the one who turned you into mush.”

“Sounds like a time warp.”

“No it doesn’t. It sounds like good old common sense. Now, was the video bad?”

Marcus replied softly, “It was awful.”

“Those poor people. We gonna help them out?”

He found himself liking the way she said that. We. “I think we’re going to try.”

“That’s real good. You call me if you need me.”

“I’ll be fine.” And for a time after he hung up the phone, he really believed it was so.

M
ARCUS LABORED
all day in his water-enclosed world. His corner of Netty’s office became ringed by law books opened and stacked one upon the other. Marcus had purchased them years earlier for his home office, when an attorney died and his widow auctioned his effects. At the time Marcus had felt sorry for the man. The books were dusty and smelled of disuse. After a while the odor faded into the background with the rain. Noon came and went, and hunger became just one more faint rumble upon the horizon, noted but not acknowledged.

By three-thirty he was done. Marcus showered, then ate eggs and toast standing by the kitchen’s tall sash windows. Sometime in the previous hour the rain had let up. Now the mist did not fall so much as float in the still air. Beyond his back window, sentinel pines stood patient in the gray afternoon, their branches turned to heavy green crystal. He stood and listened to the patter of drops falling off the roof, the sound keeping time to his quietly thumping head. Marcus set down his plate, reached for his keys and jacket and folders, and departed for the Hall residence.

Alma answered the door and led him into the living room. The tableau had changed little from the previous afternoon, except that Kirsten had reemerged and a few other people had gathered. Deacon Wilbur and his sharp-edged wife both nodded somber greetings. Alma started to introduce him to two other women, one white and the other Hispanic, but decided it was not worth the bother. Another couple he vaguely remembered from church stood close at hand and yet in the background. Deacon took note of Marcus’ expression and quietly suggested they give the family a little quiet. For reasons Marcus did not understand, when Kirsten rose, Alma motioned her to stay.

Marcus declined Alma’s offer of coffee, waited for her to seat herself next to Austin, then dove straight in. “There are a number of grave risks involved in proceeding.”

“You’re going to take on the case?” Alma’s voice remained as hollow as the day before. “You’re going to help find my baby?”

Marcus waited until she was silent once more, then continued. “As far as the case itself is concerned, our greatest problem is that we have no direct causal link between New Horizons and Gloria’s disappearance. Unless I can come up with something concrete, and fast, there is every likelihood the case will be thrown out and I will be sanctioned for filing a frivolous claim.”

“The police have come and gone again, this time with a detective and somebody from the FBI office in Raleigh.” Alma turned the words into a tragic litany. “And we’ve gotten three more calls from the State Department. Nobody is telling us a thing we don’t already know. Nobody is offering us any real help at all. They just say—”

“Hush up, Alma, honey.” There was no sting to Austin’s voice. Nor did his eyes leave Marcus’ face. “Let the man have his say.”

“As I explained on Sunday,” Marcus went on, “basically we have no case. But what is our objective here? Are we after some huge financial settlement? If so, we have lost before we’ve started.”

Marcus tapped the manila folder with one finger. “But if what we’re really after is to get your daughter back, there is a chance that just by filing these charges, we’ll spur them to action. New Horizons might fear the adverse publicity enough to press the Chinese to do what we can’t.”

Marcus paused, then continued more slowly, “There is another risk. Filing the charges might have the opposite effect. New Horizons might decide it is in their best interests to get rid of any evidence.”

He did not say more. Just stared across the glass-topped table. And waited.

It was Alma who erupted. Alma Hall, one of the most composed and distinguished ladies Marcus had ever met, now utterly unraveled. “What else are they doing to my Gloria
now?
You know what that FBI man told me? He was contacting our embassy! You know where the embassy is? Beijing! You know how far that is from my Gloria? Two thousand miles!”

Marcus glanced at her husband, who said simply, “You already know how I’m thinking.”

Austin’s quiet tone steadied his wife. She looked at him. “You agree with me?”

“There’s too much danger in waiting.” This Austin said to them both. “We need to strike the best we can.”

Alma gathered up her husband’s hand in both of hers, shifting it
over so she could clench it in her lap. Hold it tight. She said to Marcus, “What will you do?”

“With your permission, I will leave here and drive straight to the federal courthouse in Raleigh. On your behalf I am filing a civil action against New Horizons and unnamed Chinese partners.” His voice sounded strong in his own ears. Professional. Lacking any hint of the apprehension he felt inside. “The charges are false imprisonment, labor and human-rights abuses, and intentional infliction of emotional and physical distress.”

Marcus slid the folders across to them. “One of these is for me, another for the court, the last contains your copy. The first page is a letter of agreement assigning me the role of counsel. Because there is an issue called diversity of citizenship, where our legal action holds national and international dimensions, this is a federal case. I am asking for both compensatory and punitive damages. You need to read all this carefully.”

“No I don’t.” Austin Hall extricated his hand and flipped open the folder. “Let me borrow your pen.”

“Mr. Hall—”

“Call me Austin and give me your pen. Time enough for reading later.”

Marcus relented. “You need to sign all the copies. You too, Alma.”

Austin scribbled and shoved the folders aside with angry jerks. Alma watched him, one hand on his arm, and said quietly, “I lay in bed all last night listening to my Gloria cry for help. You go do this, Marcus. Do it now.”

T
HE ONLY REASON Marcus heard Kirsten’s arrival at all was because he was listening to the night chorus outside his open window. The first sound was a faint hint upon the boundary of hearing, a swish across the lawn, a scrape upon his stairs. For some reason, it only occurred to him much later that the noise might have warned of coming danger. As though on some level far beyond the realm of sight and sound, he knew the noise heralded something good.

He arrived on his front veranda in time to see nothing but a blond head bobbing into the night. Then he spotted the box resting by the door, and understood. Marcus bounded down the stairs and out across the lawn, calling softly, “Kirsten!”

She spun around. For one brief instant, the streetlight illuminated a different Kirsten, one of soft angles and tremulous needs. Then the hand gripping her throat lowered, and the harsh angry tone returned to her voice and her features. “Don’t sneak up like that!”

He found no need to point out that she had done the sneaking. “Sorry.”

“I just wanted to drop off some more data on New Horizons.”

She said nothing more as he fell in beside her, perhaps because the night was so still and so dark, perhaps because she was ashamed that she had parked two houses down instead of pulling into his drive. “Did you file the case?”

“I just got back a couple of hours ago.”

“Everything go all right?”

“It’s a pretty surefire procedure. I dropped the papers through the courthouse mail slot.”

Kirsten halted by a nondescript Nissan. She fitted in the key and pulled up the trunk, revealing two more boxes. “I don’t know why I brought this stuff down from Washington. All along I figured you were going to drop everything. Just like that other lawyer.”

Marcus realized it was the only apology she was ever going to offer. He hefted one of the crates, surprisingly light for its size. “A friend of mine pointed out that some cases are won even when they’re lost.”

For some reason the words caused her gaze to become even more revealing. But she said nothing, merely lifted the final box and waited for Marcus to reach out and shut the trunk. Together they crossed the lawn, the house yellow-red and welcoming ahead of them. Kirsten said, “Alma told me this was your grandparents’ house.”

“And mine. It’s the only home I ever knew.” Strange how the night and this closed woman could open him. “My parents weren’t much into parenting. They drank. My dad left when I was nine, just didn’t come home one day. My mom lasted about a year longer, then one night I woke up and heard her screaming on the phone at her mom, my grandmother. Telling her how she couldn’t take it, couldn’t raise me, either my grandma came for me or she was leaving me in an orphanage.”