They gathered around her, one on either side, and for once Holly didn’t mind the physical closeness. She was too absorbed, and too hopeful. I have Holly hope, she told herself.
The stains were there. A faint yellowish spatter on the seat of the chair, where Jeannie’s intruder had sat, and several more – like small drips of paint – on the carpet at the edge of the archway.
‘Holy shit,’ Ralph murmured.
‘Look at this one,’ Holly said. She spread her fingers to enlarge a splotch on the carpet. ‘See how it makes a right angle? That’s from one of the chair legs.’
She went back to the chair and took another flash photo of it, only this time down low. Once more they gathered around the iPhone. Holly spread her fingers again, and one of the chair legs leaped forward. ‘That’s where it dribbled down. You can raise the shades and open the drapes, if you want.’
When the kitchen was once more filled with morning light, Ralph took Holly’s phone and went through the pictures again, swiping from one to the next, then going back. He felt the wall of his disbelief beginning to crumble, and in the end all it had taken was a bunch of photos on a small iPhone screen.
‘What does it mean?’ Jeannie asked. ‘I mean, in practical terms? Was he here, or wasn’t he?’
‘I told you, I haven’t had the chance to do anything like the amount of research I’d need to give an answer I felt sure of. But if I was forced to guess, I’d say … both.’
Jeannie shook her head, as if to clear it. ‘I don’t understand.’
Ralph was thinking about the locked doors and the burglar alarm that hadn’t gone off. ‘Are you saying this guy was a …’ Ghost was the word that first came to mind, but it wasn’t the right one.
‘I’m not saying anything,’ Holly said, and Ralph thought, No, you’re not. Because you want me to say it.
‘That he was a projection? Or an avatar, like in the video games our son plays?’
‘Interesting idea,’ Holly said. Her eyes were sparkling. Ralph had an idea (sort of an infuriating one) that she might be holding back a smile.
‘There’s residue, but the chair didn’t leave marks in the carpet,’ Jeannie said. ‘If he was here in any physical sense, he was … light. Maybe no heavier than a feather pillow. And you say doing this … this projection … exhausts him?’
‘It seems logical – to me, at least,’ Holly said. ‘The one thing we can be sure of is that something was here when you came downstairs yesterday morning. Would you agree with that, Detective Anderson?’
‘Yes. And if you don’t start calling me Ralph, Holly, I’ll have to arrest you.’
‘How did I get back upstairs?’ Jeannie asked. ‘Did he … please tell me he didn’t carry me after I passed out.’
‘I doubt it,’ Holly said.
Ralph said, ‘Maybe some sort of … just guessing here … hypnotic suggestion?’
‘I don’t know. There’s a great deal we may never know. I’d like a quick shower, if that’s all right?’
‘Of course,’ Jeannie said. ‘I’ll scramble us some eggs.’ Then, as Holly started out: ‘Oh my God.’
Holly turned back.
‘The stove light. It was on. The one over the burners. There’s a button.’ When looking at the pictures, Jeannie had seemed excited. Now she only looked scared. ‘You need to push it to turn the light on. There was enough of him here to do that, at least.’
Holly said nothing to this. Neither did Ralph.
5
After breakfast, Holly returned to the guest room, supposedly to pack her things. Ralph suspected she was actually giving him time and privacy to say goodbye to his wife. She had her odd quirks, did Holly Gibney, but stupid she was not.
‘Ramage and Yates will be keeping a close eye out,’ he told Jeannie. ‘They both took personal days.’
‘They did that for you?’
‘And I think for Terry. They feel almost as badly as I do about how that went down.’
‘Have you got your gun?’
‘In my carry-on for now. Once we land, I’ll have it holstered on my belt. And Alec will have his. I want you to get yours out of the gun safe. Keep it close.’
‘Do you really think—’
‘I don’t know what to think, I’m with Holly on that. Just keep it close. And don’t shoot the mailman.’
‘Listen, maybe I should come.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
He didn’t want them in the same place today, but didn’t want to say why and worry her even more. They had a son to think about, one who was currently playing baseball or shooting arrows at targets backed with bales of hay or making beaded belts. Derek, who wasn’t much older than Frank Peterson had been. Derek, who simply assumed, as most kids did, that his parents were immortal.
‘You could be right,’ she said. ‘Somebody ought to be here if D calls, don’t you think?’
He nodded and kissed her. ‘That’s just what I was thinking.’
‘Be careful.’ She was looking up at him, eyes wide, and he had a sudden piercing memory of those eyes looking up at him in that same loving, hopeful, anxious way. That had been at their wedding, as they stood before their friends and relatives, swapping vows.
‘I will. I always am.’
He started to pull away from her. She pulled him back. Her grip on his forearms was strong.
‘Yes, but this isn’t like any other case you’ve ever worked. We both know that now. If you can get him, get him. If you can’t … if you run into something you can’t handle … back off. Back off and come home to me, do you understand?’
‘I hear you.’
‘Don’t say you hear me, say you will.’
‘I will.’ Again he thought of the day they’d made their vows.
‘I hope you mean that.’ Still with that piercing gaze, so full of love and anxiety. The one that said I’ve cast my lot with you, please don’t ever let me regret it. ‘I need to tell you something, and it’s important. Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a good man, Ralph. A good man who made a bad mistake. You’re not the first to do that, and you won’t be the last. You have to live with it, and I’ll help you. Make it better if you can, but please don’t make it worse. Please.’
Holly was coming rather ostentatiously downstairs, making sure they heard her approach. Ralph stood where he was a moment longer, looking down into his wife’s wide eyes – as beautiful now as they had been those years ago. Then he kissed her and stood back. She gave his hands a squeeze, a good hard one, and let him go.
6
Ralph and Holly drove to the airport in Ralph’s car. Holly sat with her shoulder-bag in her lap, back straight, knees primly together. ‘Does your wife have a firearm?’ she asked.
‘Yes. And she’s been to the department qualifying range. Wives and daughters are allowed to do that here. What about you, Holly?’
‘Of course not. I flew down here, and it wasn’t on a charter.’
‘I’m sure we could get you something. We’re going to Texas, after all, not New York.’
She shook her head. ‘I haven’t fired a gun since Bill was alive. That was on the last case we worked together. And I didn’t hit what I was aiming at.’
He didn’t speak again until they had merged with the heavy flow of turnpike traffic headed for the airport and Cap City. Once that dangerous feat was accomplished, he said, ‘Those samples from the barn are at the State Police forensics lab. What do you think they’re going to find when they finally get around to running them through all their fancy equipment? Any ideas?’
‘Based on what showed up on the chair and the carpet, I’d guess it will be mostly water, but with a high pH. I’d guess there would be traces of a mucus-like fluid of the type produced by the bulbourethral glands, also known as Cowper’s glands, named after the anatomist William Cowper who—’
‘So you do think it’s semen.’
‘More like pre-ejaculate.’ A faint tinge of color had come into her cheeks.
‘You know your stuff.’
‘I took a course in forensic pathology after Bill died. I took several courses, in fact. Taking courses … it passed the time.’