The Unquiet Dead (18 page)

He wheeled around to face her. “This is one part of my life that no one named Getty has touched or ruined. I'd like to keep it that way.”

“I'm not here to ruin it, Zach. Jesus, you're my brother. I care about what happens to you. I needed to know if you were dead or alive. I needed answers.”

“And you thought I'd be strung out on drugs, didn't you? You'd made something of yourself, but there was no chance that I would.”

“Jesus, Zach! You were fifteen. You may not know what happens to kids on the street but I'm under no illusions.”

“That's right.” He scowled at her. “You're out of uniform, I see. Does that mean you quit? Because I never could understand why the sister I looked up to more than anyone would want to follow in the footsteps of the man who beat me bloody.”

“Zach, please.” She took his hand again. “Look, can you take a break? Can we just sit somewhere and have a drink?”

“You look like you need it, Ray.” He shrugged but he didn't resist. “Whatever.”

They found a spot at the cafeteria where Zach could oversee his display from a distance. She bought them both Cherry Cokes.

She tried to think calmly, act calmly. “You've done really well for yourself. Is this exhibit part of a program here?”

“What you really mean is am I a registered student? Surprise, surprise. I'm a fine arts major. It's amazing what you can do with a student loan.”

Something he had chosen, despite Don Getty's attempts to beat it out of him.

“That's wonderful, Zach, so wonderful. I'm proud of you. Your work is really good.”

His eyes softened at this but his tone remained confrontational. “What would you know about it?”

Rachel jerked a hand at the series in red. “I know those are garbage. So are those.” She waved at the sculptures. “But your stuff is good. You get something from it.”

He shrugged again, sinking lower into his seat, the gesture instantly reminding her of a teenage Zach bent over his homework at the kitchen table.

“I would have helped you, Zach. At any time, if you'd come to me.”

He slurped at his Coke. “How could you have? You'd left for your training.”

“I thought it would help me find you. Honestly.”

She patted her brother on the arm, hardly able to believe that this was Zach Getty, alive and well, sitting across from her, noisily drinking a Coke.

“Why are you still at the house, Ray?”

She wanted to cry. Didn't he know? Didn't he know the only reason in the world she would continue to share a roof with Don and Lillian Getty? “It was the only place I knew you might come back to.”

“But I never did.” There was a suspicion of moisture about his eyes.

“No, you never did.”

A silence built between them as she tried to think what to say next.

“So tell me a little about yourself, what your plans are.”

His shoulders relaxed. Instead of meeting her gaze, he kept his attention on the visitors at his exhibit, assessing their level of interest.

“I can't stay here long, Ray.”

“Please, Zach.”

He folded his straw in two, inserted it through the tab on his can, spraying himself a little in the process. “I live on campus. I'm a year from graduating. Then I head to Vienna for the summer to study the Viennese painters.”

She thought of Mink Norman's sister. “Have you ever heard of the Mozarteum?”

Zach looked at her. “Sure. It's in Salzburg. Different city. Why?”

“It came up during an investigation I'm on.”

“So you're still in the police. No uniform though.”

“I got promoted. I work at Community Policing now.”

“That minorities crap?”

“At least Da hates it. That's a plus.”

Zach grinned at her and she caught her breath. It
was
Zach, it wasn't a mirage or her own hopes materialized into delusion. A cautious little ball of hope began to unspool itself in her heart. “Would it be all right if I asked how you got here? How you managed?”

He didn't flare up. If anything, his expression was pensive. “It wasn't easy. I stayed with my friends, at first. Then I moved around a lot. I fast-tracked through school because I knew I could get loans for university and move out on my own.”

Rachel's heart seized up at the thought of it: so much danger, so much risk. Anything could have happened to him. “Weren't you scared?”

His level gaze said a lot about the man he was growing into. “I was a lot more scared at home. And I was sick of feeling that way.”

Which made Rachel think of their mother. “Seven years is a long time to go without any contact, Zach. I don't— I wouldn't have expected you to want to have anything to do with Da, but what about Mum? You can't let her keep suffering, wondering what happened to you. I mean, I'll tell her, but at least you should make a phone call.”

Zach looked at her so oddly that her heart constricted. He would bark at her, telling her she had no right to dictate his decisions when she'd done nothing to help him in the past seven years.

“You've lived at home this whole time?” he said.

She nodded. “I told you. I wasn't going to leave if there was a chance you might come back.”

“You were punishing yourself,” he concluded. “And now you're lost in that house. You never found your way out. I don't understand why she did that to you.”

Rachel's stomach lurched. She had a sick feeling that something bad was coming.

“I wasn't punishing myself.” But she had been. She knew it. She just didn't know how Zach had seen it so quickly, so clearly. Maybe it was because he knew her better than anyone. “I hoped one day you might remember what it was like. Not with you and Da or even with Mum. I mean with you and me.”

Zach's eyes were wet. He stood up and brushed off his jeans with brisk movements. “Someone's screwing with you, Ray. When I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, I called Mum. She's been giving me cash since I started my program. She knows where I am because I call her once a week. On a cell phone that she bought me. I've gotta go.”

There was no bombshell he could have delivered that would have shattered Rachel more.

It simply wasn't possible.

In the desperate years of her search—years of turmoil and misery that nothing could set in balance—Lillian Getty could not possibly have known where her son was. Don Getty managed all her money. She didn't have a dime of her own to give to Zach. Silent, timid Lillian didn't have the wherewithal to find or arrange a cell phone for Zach.

She'd stayed quiet and grieving in the corner of her living room without a word of consolation or hope for Rachel.

Because she hadn't known where Zach was.

No. It wasn't possible.

Rachel trudged after Zach, elbowing her way through students and teachers alike.

“Zach,” she called. “That can't be true.”

He stopped cold. She cowered inwardly, expecting his rage. But when he saw her ashen face, her pained incomprehension, he did something astonishing. He gathered her in his arms, shoving his face down into her shoulder.

She didn't know if he was crying or she was.

“I'm sorry, Ray. I shouldn't have told you like that. She told me that she told you. She said you didn't want to see me again. I could hear you in the background sometimes. She said you refused to take the phone from her.”

And it was clear that her brother still didn't know what to believe.

No, no, no, no, no!

Pain sliced through her heart, exploded in her brain.

What kind of woman would do such a thing to her children? Divide them from each other and kill the memory of the only love and security they had known?

Lillian Getty—pale and timorous on her chair, reading her magazines.

Knowing that Rachel wouldn't leave as long as she held out any hope for Zach. Knowing that her dread for Zach had leached the happiness out of any small moment of personal achievement. Knowing that all Rachel cared about in the world was her baby brother Zach.

Why had she done this?

Don Getty used his fists and only his fists.

Lillian had ripped out her heart.

She gasped out her pain into Zach's ear, her fingers clutching his neck like those of a drowning swimmer.

All this time Zach had been safe and Lillian had known, while Rachel shouldered her burden of terror and guilt.

“Ray-Ray.” He murmured her childhood nickname. “Come back another time. We can't talk about this now.” He drew away from her, hastily wiping his eyes.

“What if I lose you again?”

“You won't. Here.” He drew a napkin from his pocket and scrawled his number and address on it in blue ink that smeared as he wrote. She took it with shaking fingers.

“Take this,” she said, fumbling her business card from her bag. “You can find me at this number anytime.”

She touched her brother's face, his hair, her fingers trying to memorize the man she saw before her now. She reached around him for one of his brochures and tucked it into her bag.

“I have money now, Zach. I'm working. I could help you. We could find a place together, make some changes—”

He cut her off. “I can't think about any of that now, Ray. I have my own life here. I'm being graded on my exhibit, I have to focus.”

She nodded helplessly. “But you'll call me?”

“I'll call you.”

“If you need anything—”

“I'm okay, Ray. Try to believe that.”

She smoothed her trembling hands over her face, tried to get her thoughts in order. “Don't say anything to Mum, Zach. Don't tell her that we saw each other.”

Because if she could make Zach disappear once—

“No,” he agreed. “You either.”

She nodded again, knowing he wanted her gone but loath to leave.

“Could I have one, Zach? One of your paintings to keep at work?”

He studied her card. “I'll send it to you. Now, please go.”

She hugged him once more, aware that even though he was sending her away, insisting that she leave, he was bruising her shoulders with the fierceness of his grip.

They looked at each other uncertainly, their faces mirroring the same pain.

And then she forced herself to turn away and leave her brother behind.

There would be a reckoning of all she had learned. And when it was done, she would walk away without looking back.

 

18.

Simply, they left no witnesses behind.

The next morning, she called Nate. She'd stayed at the office overnight reading
Apologia
. She wasn't ready to face her mother. Instead, she'd gotten her skates out of her locker, found an indoor rink, and raced around its perimeter for an hour. Spent, she'd ordered pizza and hurtled through Nathan's last book. She'd been bleary-eyed and exhausted, taking her mind off her troubles by focusing on Nate's. She understood what the book was now, the meaning of the dedication. It was Nate nakedly displaying his longing for forgiveness.

He was just as screwed up as she was.

That was why she had called him. That, and for a tour of the Bluffs.

He was waiting for her at the trailhead. She greeted him with a wave.

“Have you ever noticed,” she said as an opening, “that everything about you matches your hair?”

Nate blinked at her. He was wearing a tweed jacket the color of autumn leaves and narrow slacks in the same shade of amber as his eyes. On his feet were the sensible shoes Rachel had proposed for a walk along the Bluffs.

She grinned, getting out of the car. “It's like a palette—the country gentleman's catalogue for fall. Do you have a valet?”

“I have Audrey,” he said drily. “She hasn't gotten out of the habit of thinking of me as her personal dress-up doll.”

“She has an eye for things,” Rachel said. She felt safe in her compliment because it was directed at his sister. From the corner of her eye, she could feel the intensity of his regard.

“Shall we walk?”

He was guiding her down the path Drayton would have walked the night he fell to his death. The lake unfolded before them like a bolt of blue silk, a tangy breeze fresh against their faces. Rachel was glad she had opted for her ponytail and running shoes. The ground was uneven beneath her feet, covered with a sparse, thready grass that gave way in places. She could hear the rumpled murmur of water against the shore. The Bluffs rose in an illumination of chalk-white cliffs before them, the path winding its way above the headland.

Rachel found the spot marked with yellow police cones without much difficulty, Nate trudging along behind her. Sixty-five feet below them, the detritus of the lake had scrubbed the shoreline clean.

She looked around.

It had rained often during the past ten nights. There were no tracks on the ground, no broken tree limbs, no indication of any kind of a struggle. She looked inland. The walk had taken them fifteen minutes. She could make out the barest outline of Nate's house. Ringsong receded even further into the distance.

If anyone had seen a figure walking on the Bluffs that night, there would have been no way of identifying the man as Christopher Drayton. If he'd been pushed to his death, someone would have had to have been following him closely. And why would he have stood there so obediently, making it easy for the person who wished him harm? Unless the relationship between Drayton and his pursuer had been one of trust—if it had been Melanie Blessant, for example.

If it had been anyone at all, she reminded herself. As Khattak was fond of saying:
a man fell to his death.

She stood beside Nathan companionably, their hands shoved in their pockets, their faces reddened by the walk. She could taste the lake on her lips.

“Rachel,” Nate said after a time. “Why would anyone push Chris to his death? Or why would he commit suicide? There must be something more to the matter here, and it's obvious you think it has something to do with the museum.”