“He may have tried,” I tell them, recalling what Wheaton told me of Jane’s death. “Wheaton said Jane tried to escape and almost succeeded. Hoffman only caught her in the yard, and he—he ended it there. Wheaton finished painting Jane from a photograph.”
“I know that upset you very much.”
John is staring at de Becque with open hostility, but de Becque ignores him. The Frenchman reaches out and takes my hand.
“Prepare yourself, chérie. I have news for you.”
“What?”
“Your sister lives.”
My hand jerks out of his as though of its own accord. “What?”
“Jane Glass is alive.”
“What the hell is this?” asks John. “You’re saying Hoffman didn’t kill her?”
“Oui. Considering what Jordan just told me, I would guess this Hoffman released Jane, then lied to Wheaton to protect himself.”
“If Jane Lacour is alive,” says John, “where has she been for the past eighteen months?”
“Thailand.” De Becque shrugs. “I still have a plantation there.”
“You’re lying. Even you wouldn’t—”
“Save your indignation,” scoffs de Becque. “I found myself in a very difficult position. A woman had been kidnapped. Several women, to be exact. I knew more than I should about those events, in a legal sense. Normally, I would not have interfered. But this woman was special. I had no choice.”
“If this is true, you could have solved the case! You could have saved—”
“I don’t care!” I shout. “I don’t care what he did! All I want to know is if he’s telling the truth.”
De Becque nods. “I am.”
“The phone call?” I say softly. “The phone call from Thailand?”
“That was your sister. She was drinking at the time, a bit confused. She had recently learned the truth about your father, and it upset her.”
“I want to go to Thailand,” I tell him. “Right now.”
The Frenchman stands and claps his hands twice. Li appears in the far doorway like a brown-skinned princess conjured from thin air. De Becque nods once, and she vanishes.
“Will you take me?” I ask. “I won’t believe she’s alive until I see her.”
“There are other things you must know first.”
“Oh God,” I whisper, an image of Thalia Laveau in my mind. “Don’t tell me she’s brain damaged or—”
“No, no. But she endured a traumatic experience at the hands of this Hoffman. He was a man of peculiar tastes.”
Now I understand my precognition of Jane’s death in Sarajevo: perhaps she did not physically die; perhaps what I felt was the death of innocence that is every rape, the murder of part of the spirit.
“She has largely recovered now,” says de Becque, “but she is fragile in some ways. At first she required much care. Later, quite naturally, she desired to return home. I was unable to allow that. For legal reasons, as I mentioned, but also because I did not wish to stop the painter of the Sleeping Women. I make no apologies to anyone but you, but to you I apologize.”
“Please, take me to her!”
“You are on your way, ma chérie.”
“Jordan,” John says in a low voice. “Don’t let this guy get your hopes up. He’s a—”
John comes out of his chair and stands with his mouth open, as if struck dumb.
In the doorway at the far end of the great room stands a mirror image of the woman he claims he loves. Jane is wearing a white robe like Li’s, and the French-Vietnamese woman stands behind her like an attendant. My hands begin to shake, my palms go clammy, and my bladder feels weak. Never in my life have I felt such emotions, and how could I? I have never witnessed a resurrection.
“You son of a bitch,” John says softly to de Becque. “How long would you have kept her?”
Jane is walking toward me, her cheeks red, her eyes glittering with tears. Li follows one step behind, as though ready to catch her if she falls. Jane looks more beautiful than she ever did, thinner perhaps, but with a self-awareness in her face and bearing that wasn’t there before. De Becque’s voice rises in argument with John, but I don’t hear their words—only blood pounding in my ears. When Jane is halfway across the room, I find the strength to take a step—and then to run. As I fly to her, a fleeting image passes through my mind: a tall man with a camera walks down a Mississippi road, a little girl on either side of him; one clings tightly to his hand, the other skips ahead, her eyes on the horizon. That man is gone now, but not the little girls.
29
IT IS DUSK, and the house on St. Charles Avenue looks just as it did the day Jane walked out of it in her jogging suit, eighteen months ago. But the people inside are different. The lights glow warm and yellow through the windows, hinting to passersby of an idyllic life beyond the wrought-iron rail and polished door, but this is a false impression. A woman once told me that good homes have hearts. This house had a heart once. Now it has a great emptiness.
Jane and I mount the steps together, hand in hand. After much discussion, we agreed it would be better this way. Not to call first. Not to try to explain. Why put Marc or the children through an hour or even a minute of confusion? And why let Marc see her first, when it is undoubtedly the children who miss her most terribly?
Behind us, at the curb, John waits in the car. Not my rented Mustang, but an FBI sedan that let us all be comfortable. I look back at him, then raise my hand to knock on the door, but Jane stops me with a touch on my shoulder.
“What is it?” I ask. “Are you all right?”
She’s crying. “I never thought I would stand here again. I can’t believe my babies are inside.”
“They are.” I know this because an FBI agent posted on the street outside notified us when Marc got home. Marc is here, and the children, and Annabelle the maid, too. I take Jane’s hand. “Don’t think too much. Enjoy every second of it. You’re blessed beyond belief.”
I start to say more, but I don’t. To remind her that eleven other women won’t be going back to their homes would only trigger the survivor’s guilt that I know so well. Instead, I hug her to my side and hold her there.
“Here we go.”
I knock loudly on the door and wait.
After a moment, footsteps pad up the cavernous hallway and stop before the door. Then the knob turns and the great door opens, revealing Annabelle in her black-and-white uniform.
The old black woman starts to greet me, then freezes, her mouth open. Her hand flies halfway to her mouth, then stops and begins to shake. “Is it . . . ?”
“It’s me, Annabelle,” Jane says in a quavering voice.
“Lord Jesus. Come here, missy.”
She pulls Jane into her arms and squeezes tight. “Mr. Lacour don’t know anything?”
“No. I thought it would be better if they saw Jordan and me together. Then they would know they could believe it.”
Annabelle nods with exaggerated amazement. “I wouldn’t believe it myself if I wasn’t seeing it right now.”
Jane slowly disengages herself. “Where are the children, Annabelle?”
“In the kitchen, waiting for me to fix supper.”
“How are they doing?”
The old woman starts to reply, but instead shuts her eyes against tears. “Not good. But everything gonna be all right now. Yes, Lord. What you want me to do?”
“Where’s Marc?”
“He’s in his study.”
“Let’s go in the kitchen.”
Annabelle takes Jane by the hand and leads her down the hall. The long, wide corridor throws me back to Wheaton’s killing house, just blocks away, and I quicken my steps to stay up with them. Jane looks back and hurries me along with her hand, knowing the children need to see us both to understand.
At the kitchen door we pause, and Jane whispers something to Annabelle. The maid nods and goes in ahead of us. Henry’s high-pitched voice asks her who was at the door, and Annabelle answers in a voice laced
with excitement.
“You chil’ren close you eyes now.”
“Why?” they ask in unison.
“Your Aunt Jordan brought you a special present.”
“Aunt Jordan’s here?” asks Lyn, the hope in her voice breaking my heart.
“You shut your eyes!” says Annabelle. “You never gonna get a present like this again in your whole life. Neither one of you.”
“They’re shut!” cry the little voices. “Aunt Jordan?”
As Jane takes my hand, I feel hers quivering. I look into her eyes, she nods, and we step through the door.
Henry and Lyn are standing side by side, facing the doorway, their hands pressed hard over their eyes.
“Aunt Jordan?” asks Lyn, parting her fingers in an attempt to see.
“You can look now,” I tell them.
When the hands slip down, the children’s mouths drop, and their eyes flick back and forth between Jane and me. Then their eyes flash with a light I haven’t seen in twenty years of traveling the world. The light of those who witness a resurrection.
“Mama?” Lyn asks in a hollow voice, her eyes on Jane.
Jane falls to her knees and holds out her arms, and Henry and Lyn rush to her breast. She enfolds them in a shuddering embrace, and in seconds her eyes are pouring tears. When the children find their voices, they begin jabbering questions, but Jane can only cradle their faces in her hands and shake her head.
“What’s going on?” comes a deep voice from the hall. “Annabelle? What’s all the racket—”
Marc Lacour, wearing a pretentious seersucker suit, looks from me to the back of the woman holding his children, his face clouded with confusion. He can’t see Jane’s face, but something about her shape and manner has told him much already. She embraces the children once again, then stands and turns to face him.
Marc takes one step backward, unwilling to trust his eyes.
“It’s me,” Jane says. “I’m home.”
Marc steps tentatively forward, then jerks her into his arms and hugs her tight enough to break her back.
“My God,” he whispers. “My God, it’s a miracle.”
“It is,” Jane says, reaching backward with one hand.
I clasp that hand and squeeze it, and then I slip around them and through the kitchen door.
“Where are you going?” Jane asks.
I nod at the door. “I need to talk to someone.”
She reaches out again. When I take her hand, she silently mouths two words.
Thank you.
She lets my hand slip free, and then I’m walking down the long hall alone. For eighteen months Jane has lived in suspended animation, imprisoned by a man who saved her life, a desolate bird in a gilded cage. All that time, I trudged alone through a dark tunnel, burdened by guilt, haunted by loss, feeling hope die. A metaphor for my life, really: a lone woman lost in a tunnel with a camera, bearing witness to what happens in the dark, even as the darkness seeps into her. But today . . .
Today I emerge into the light.
John is leaning against the passenger door of the FBI sedan, watching me for clues to what happened. I walk down the steps, take both his hands in mine, and kiss him lightly on the lips.
“Are we going in?” he asks.
“No. They need time alone.”
“Where are we going?”
“We need time alone, too.”
He takes me in his arms and squeezes me tight.
“It’s time to start living again, John.”
“That it is,” he says, reaching back to open the door. “That it is.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Aaron Priest, Phyllis Grann, David Highfill, and Louise Burke.
Special thanks to Special Agent-in-Charge Charles Matthews, FBI, New Orleans District; Special Agent Sheila Thorne; Special Agent Bob Tucker; Ernie Porter, FBI, Washington, D.C.
Medical expertise: Jerry Iles, M.D.; Donald Barraza, M.D., Michael Bourland, M.D.; and Noah Archer, M.D.
Partners in crime: Ed Stackler, Courtney Aldridge, Michael Henry.
Miscellaneous: Geoff Iles, Carrie Iles, Madeline Iles, Mark Iles, Betty Iles, Rich Hasselberger, Caroline Tref ler, Jim Easterling, Fraser Smith, Christie Iles, Kim Barker.
Many thanks to all the reps from Penguin Putnam who have worked so hard from the beginning.
To anyone omitted through oversight, my sincere apologies. All mistakes are mine.
Please turn the page
for a preview of
Greg Iles’s electrifying novel
SLEEP NO MORE
Available from Signet
EVE SUMNER APPEARED on the first day of fall. Not the official first day—there was nothing official about Eve—but the first day the air turned cool, blowing through John Waters’s shirt as though it weren’t there. It was chilly enough for a jacket but he didn’t want one, because it had been so hot for so damn long, because the air tasted like metal and his blood was up, quickened by the change in temperature and the drop in pressure on his skin, like a change in altitude. His steps were lighter, the wind carrying him forward, and deep within his chest something stirred the way the bucks were stirring in the deep woods and the high leaves were pulling at their branches. Soon those bucks would be stalked through the oaks and shot, and those leaves would be burning in piles, but on that day all remained unresolved, poised in a great ballet of expectation, an in-drawn breath. And borne on the first prescient breeze of exhalation came Eve Sumner.
She stood on the far sideline of the soccer field, too far away for Waters to really see her. He first saw her the way the other fathers did, a silhouette that caught his eye: symmetry and curves and a mane of dark hair that made the mothers on both sides of the soccer field irrationally angry. But he hadn’t time to notice more than that. He was coaching his daughter’s team.
Seven-year-old Annelise raced along the sea of grass with her eye on the ball, throwing herself between eight-year-old boys nearly twice her size. Waters trotted along behind the pack, encouraging the stragglers and reminding the precocious ones which direction to kick the ball. He ran lightly for his age and size—a year past forty, an inch over six feet—and he pivoted quickly enough to ensure soreness in the morning. But it was a soreness that he liked, that reminded him he was still alive and kicking. He felt pride following Annelise down the field; last year his daughter was a shy little girl, afraid to get close to the ball; this year, with her father coaching, she had found new confidence. He sensed that even now, so young, she was learning lessons that would serve her well in the future.
“Out of bounds!” he called. “Blue’s ball.”
As the opposing team put the ball inbounds, Waters felt the pressure of eyes like fingers on his skin. He was being watched, and not only by the kids and their parents. Glancing toward the opposite sideline, he looked directly into the eyes of the dark-haired woman. They were deep and as dark as her hair, serene and supremely focused. He quickly averted his own, but an indelible afterimage floated in his mind: dusky, knowing eyes that saw into the souls of men.
The opposing coach was keeping time for the tied game, and Waters knew there was precious little left. Brandon Davis, his star eight-year-old, had the ball on his toe and was controlling it well, threading it through the mass of opponents. Waters sprinted to catch up. Annelise was close behind Brandon, trying to get into position to receive a pass as they neared the goal. Girls thought more about passing than boys did; the boys just wanted to score. But Annelise did the right thing all the same, flanking out to the right as Brandon took a vicious shot at the net. The ball ricocheted off the goalie’s shins, right back to Brandon. He was about to kick again when he sensed Annelise to his right and scooped the ball into her path, marking himself as that rarest of boys, one who understands deferred gratification. Annelise was almost too surprised by this unselfishness to react, but at the last moment she kicked the ball past the goalie into the net.
A whoop went up from the near sideline, and Wat
ers heard his wife’s voice leading the din. He knew he shouldn’t show favoritism, but he couldn’t help running forward and hugging Annelise to his chest.
“I got one, Daddy!” she cried, her eyes shining with pride and surprise. “I scored!”
“You sure did.”
“Brandon passed it to me!”
“He sure did.”
Sensing Brandon behind him, Waters reached back and grabbed the boy’s hand and lifted it skyward along with Annelise’s, showing everyone that it was a shared effort.
“Okay, de-fense!” he shouted.
His team raced back to get into position, but the opposing coach blew his whistle, ending the game with a flat, half-articulated note.
The parents of Waters’s team streamed onto the field, congratulating the children and their coach, talking happily among themselves. Waters’s wife, Lily, trundled forward with the ice chest containing the postgame treats: Powerade and Oreos. As she planted the Igloo on the ground and removed the lid, a small tornado whirled around her, snatching bottles and blue bags from her hands. Lily smiled up from the chaos, silently conveying her pride in Annelise as male hands slapped Waters’s back. Lily’s eyes were clear and cornflower blue, her hair burnished gold and hanging to her shoulders. In moments like this, she looked as she had in high school, running cross-country and beating all comers. The warmth of real happiness welled in Waters at the center of this collage of flushed faces, grass stains, skinned knees, and little Jimmy O’Brien’s broken tooth, which had been lost during the second quarter and was now being passed around like the artifact of a historic battle.
“Hell of a season, John!” said Brandon Davis’s father. “Only one more game to go.”
“Today was a good day.”
“How about that last pass?”
“Brandon’s got good instincts.”
“You better believe it,” insisted Davis. “Kid’s got a hell of a future. Wait till AYA football starts.”
Waters wasn’t comfortable with this kind of talk. In truth, he didn’t much care if the kids won or lost. The point at this age was fun and teamwork, but it was a point a lot of parents missed.