After their visit to the actor’s Malibu house, Jane had told Trahern that she needed to understand him. He had said that no one could understand anyone. Maybe there were times when it was better not to understand.
“When I come around,” Trahern continued, his voice growing softer, “I’m trussed up with duct tape. Can’t move at all. In pain. Face swollen. Teeth missing. Blood in my mouth. I hear voices. They don’t make sense at first. My vision’s blurred. I blink it clear.”
Rivulets of sweat trickled down Trahern’s chalk-white face, perhaps blended with tears. On his thighs, his hands clenched into fists, opened, clenched, opened, as though he was grasping for something to which he could hold tight and steady himself.
“I’m on the floor in her…in Justine’s bedroom. After he subdued her, he carried me there. To her bedroom. Now he…he’s doing things to her.” The horror that contorted his face belied the quiet equanimity of his voice. “She begs him to stop. He won’t. She’s crying. Begging him. But he won’t stop. He sees I’m awake. Tells me to watch. No. I won’t. My eyes tight shut. Can’t move to help her. Duct tape. Can’t move. Hands numb. Feet numb. The duct tape. I can’t move, but I can’t stop hearing. Can’t make myself deaf. It goes on…for an hour. Longer. I’m sick with fear and rage…and self-hatred.” He whispered now. “I want to die.”
Jane could not bear even to glance at him anymore, to see the depth of his suffering, for which the passage of time and all of his achievements could provide no balm. She focused on the highway, on the cataracts of rain and the slick pavement. The greasy highway and the rain were things with which she could deal.
“I want to die. He kills her instead. He’s done with her. So he just…just throws her away. He does it…does it…with a knife.” The big man’s voice had grown small, from a whisper to a murmur, yet each word was too clear. “It takes a while. And then he says, ‘Hey, kiddo, look at this.’ No. I won’t look. He says, ‘You’re next. Look and see.’?”
Jane couldn’t deal with the rain and highway, after all. She had to pull to the shoulder of the road and stop. She leaned back in her seat, eyes closed, listening to the madness and the rain.
Trahern continued in a voice louder than a whisper. “I never hear our mother come home. Neither does he. My dad keeps a gun in his study downstairs. My mother comes into the room. Shoots the killer. Once. Shoots him once. She picks up a paperweight from Justine’s desk. Throws it through a window. She screams. My mother screams. Keeps the gun on him and screams. Not just for help. She screams because she can’t not scream. She screams until her voice is raw, until the police come, and still she screams. She doesn’t shoot him twice. She doesn’t kill him. I don’t know why she doesn’t. I don’t know why she couldn’t.”
Trahern opened the passenger door and got out into the night. He stood in the rain, staring out into the dark valley.
Jane waited. There was nothing to do but wait.
In time, he returned, pulled shut the door, sat sodden and dripping.
She would have expressed her sympathy; but all the words that she could think to say were not merely inadequate but also offensive in their inadequacy.
He said, “Our mother was a gentle person, not tough at all. She was never the same after that. Broken. Empty. Five years later, she died at forty-one. A blood clot broke loose from somewhere and went to her brain. I think she must have wished it on herself. I believe that’s possible. The killer was Emory Wayne Udell. He’d seen Justine walking home from school one day. He stalked her for a week, watched the house, waiting. He’s still alive. In prison for life, but alive, which isn’t right. Me, too. I’m still alive.”
Jane said, “I’m glad you are.”
He wasn’t angling for her endorsement. He sat in silence until she put the Gurkha in gear and returned to the highway. Then: “Why do some people—so many—need to control others, tell them what to do, use them if they can, destroy those who won’t be used?”
She sensed that the question wasn’t rhetorical, that he cared what she would say. “Why Hitler, why Stalin, why Emory Wayne Udell? I don’t know. Demonic influence or just miswired brains? In the end, does it matter which? Maybe what matters is that some of us aren’t broken by it all, that we can take it to the Emory Udells and the William Overtons and the Bertold Shennecks, take it to them and stop them before they can do everything they dream about.”
North of Stockton, the rain diminished. Two miles later, it stopped falling altogether.
Although an hour of silence had passed since either had spoken, Dougal said, “If I’d had the gun, I would have shot him twice. I would have emptied the magazine into him. I would have killed him.”
Jane said, “So would I.”
In Sacramento, they transitioned from Interstate 5 to westbound I-80. An hour later, they arrived on the outskirts of Napa at 1:40 A.M., Sunday.
A sprawling motor inn displayed a neon sign that promised VACANCY.
To avoid the Gurkha being captured by the motel’s security cameras, Jane parked a block away. Because the sight of Dougal was more likely to alarm the night clerk, he remained with the vehicle while Jane walked back to the office. Using cash and a forged driver’s license, she signed the register as Rachel Harrington, booking two rooms for her, an imaginary husband, and two imaginary children. On the registration form, she identified her vehicle as a Ford Explorer and made up a license-plate number.
The night clerk had a monk’s fringe of white hair. “Any pets?”
“No. None.”
“We allow pets in the north wing.”
“We had a dog, but he passed away not long ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Losing one is always hard on kids.”
“Hard on their dad and me, too,” she said.
“What was it—the dog?”
“A golden retriever. We called him Scootie.”
“Wonderful dogs, golden retrievers.”
“They are,” she agreed. “They’re the best.”
They left the Gurkha a block away and walked to the motel with their luggage. Dougal carried his duffel bag to his door and one suitcase to hers. She carried the second suitcase and the leather tote that held sixty thousand dollars.
He said, “All that back there on the road…”
“Stays back there on the road,” she assured him.
“Good.” He started toward his room, then turned to her again. “I’m going to say something, and you’re going to say nothing.”
“All right.”
“Somebody’s blessed to have you for a daughter.”
He went into his room, and she went into hers.
Later, lying in bed in the dark, with the pistol under the pillow next to hers, she thought about her father and about how he had made her who she was, though not by his example.
For a few hours, she slept deeply, but hers was not the sleep of angels sublime in their innocence.
22
* * *
NATHAN SILVERMAN WOKE with a headache and with a bitterness in his mouth, a taste like vinegar and ashes. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. Then he remembered Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Robert Branwick shot in the head, the hotel.
A brief dizziness overcame him as he sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He wore an undershirt and boxer shorts. A luxurious complimentary robe lay in a heap on the floor, and he sat frowning at it, unable to remember taking it off.
Nathan? Can you hear me, Nathan?
Startled, he surveyed the room, but the voice was internal, remembered from…somewhere.
The night maid had turned down the bed before Silverman had checked in, but he had fallen asleep on the blanket and top sheet rather than slipping under them.
The bedside clock read 8:16 A.M. Morning light at the windows. He must have gone to bed around 10:30 in the evening, after dinner. Nine and a half hours? His best nights of sleep were seven hours, and his norm was six.
The room lights glowed. He’d left them on throughout the night.