Neither of them cried that night as Tate had packed a suitcase and left. They never spent another night under the same roof.
Despite the presence of a madman now, holding a knife, hovering a few feet from them, Tate's concentration was wholly on the girl. To his surprise her face blossomed not with horror or shock or anger but with sympathy. She touched his leg. "And you're the one that got hurt so bad. I'm sorry, Daddy. I'm sorry."
Tate looked at Matthews. He said, "So that's why your argument doesn't work, Aaron. Taking her away from me won't do what you want."
Matthews didn't speak. His eyes were turned out the window, gazing into the blue dawn.
Tate said, "You know the classic reasons given for punishing crimes, Aaron? To condition away bad behavior--doesn't work. A deterrent--useless. To rehabilitate--that's a joke. To protect society--well, only if we execute the bad guys or keep them locked up forever. No, you know the real reason why we punish? We're ashamed to admit it. But, oh, how we love it. Good old biblical retribution. Bloody revenge is the only honest motive for punishment. Why? Because its purpose is to take away the victim's pain.
"That's what you want, Aaron, but there's only one way you'll have that. By killing me. It's not perfect but it'll have to do."
Megan was sobbing.
Matthews leaned his head against the window. The sun was up now and flashed on and off as strips of liver-colored clouds moved quickly east. He seemed diminished and changed. As if he were beyond disappointment or sorrow.
"Let her go," Tate whispered. "It doesn't even make sense to kill her because she's a witness. They know about you anyway."
Matthews crouched beside Megan. Put the back of his hand against her cheek, lifted it away and looked at the glistening streak left by her tears on his skin. He kissed her hair.
"All right. I agree."
Megan started to protest.
But Tate knew that he'd won. Nothing she could say or do at this point would change his decision.
"I'll call the dogs to the run. I'll be back in five minutes."
Chapter Thirty-one
"Is it true?" she asked, tears glistening on her cheeks.
"Oh, yes, honey, it's true."
"You never said anything."
"Your mother and I decided not to. Until after Susan died. You know how close Bett is to your aunt. She wanted her never to find out about the affair--it would've been too hard for her. The doctors only gave her a year or two to live. We were going to wait to tell you until she'd passed away."
"But . . ." Megan whispered.
He smiled wanly. "That's right. She's still alive."
"Why didn't you tell me last year, or two years ago? I was old enough not to say anything to Aunt Susan."
Tate examined the wounds on her palms. Pressed his hands against them. He couldn't speak at first. Finally he said, "The moment passed."
"All these years," she whispered, "I thought I must've done something." She lowered her head to his shoulder. "What a terrible thing I must have been for you. What a reminder."
"Honey, I wish I could tell you different. But I can't. You were half the person I loved most in the world and half the person I most hated."
"One time I said something to Mom," she said, weeping softly. "I'd been with you for the weekend and Mom asked how it went. I said I'd had an okay time but what could you expect? You were just an adequate father. I thought she was going to whip me. She freaked out totally. She said you were the best man she'd ever met and I was never, ever supposed to say that again."
Tate smiled. "An adequate father for an inconvenient daughter."
"Why didn't you ever try it again, the two of you?"
He echoed, "The moment passed."
"How much you must love her."
Tate laughed sourly to himself at the irony. The child who drove husband and wife apart had now brought them back together--if only for one day.
How scarce love is, he thought. How rarely does it all come together: the pledge, the assurance, the need, the circumstance, the hungry desire to share minutes with someone else. And the dear desperation too. It's miraculous when love actually works.
He looked her over and decided that the two of them, his ex-wife and her daughter, would be fine--now that the truth had been dumped between them. A long time coming but better than never. Oh, yes, they'd do fine.
Gritty footsteps approached.
"Now, listen to me," he said urgently. "When he lets you out find a phone and call Ted Beauridge at Fairfax County Police. Tell him your mother's probably in jail in Luray or Front Royal--"
"What?"
"No time to explain. But she's there. Tell him to get cops out here. She told them you were here but they might not've believed her."
The girl looked at him with eyes that reminded him of her mother's. Not the violet shade, of course--those were Bett's and Bett's alone--but the unique mix of the ethereal and the earthy.
Matthews appeared in the doorway.
They turned to look at the gaunt man standing before them, his muscular hand pressed to his bloody belly.
"Okay, get going," Tate said to her. "Run like hell."
"Go on," Matthews said, and reached forward to take her arm.
She spun away from him and hugged Tate hard. He felt her arms around his back. Felt her face against his ear, heard her speaking to him, a torrent of fervid words flowing out, coming from a source other than the heart and mind of a seventeen-year-old high school junior.
"Megan . . ." he began.
But she took his face in both her hands and said, "Shhh, Daddy. Remember, bears can't talk."
Matthews grabbed her again and pulled her away. Took her to the door.
He unlocked it and shoved her outside. The door closed with a snap behind her. Through a dirty, barred window Tate saw her sprint down the driveway and disappear through the gate.
*
"So," Collier said, glancing up at Matthews.
"So," he echoed.
"Outside?" the lawyer asked, looking around at the gloomy place. "Would that be all right? I'd rather."
Matthews hesitated for a moment. But then decided, why not? "Yes. That's all right."
He unlocked the door again and they stepped into the parking area and walked around into the grounds behind the asylum, past the wild rottweilers in their runs.
Matthews was thinking back to the times he'd been committed here. He recalled how beautiful these lawns and gardens had been then. Well, why wouldn't they be? Give five hundred crazy people grounds to tend and, brother, you've got a showplace. He'd sat for hours and hours and hours talking to other patients and--in his imagination--to his dead Peter. Sometimes the boy responded, sometimes not.
The dawn sun was still below the horizon but the sky was bright as they walked side by side through the tall grass and goldenrod and milkweed while dragonflies zipped from their path. Grasshoppers bounced against their legs, leaving dots of brown spit on their clothing. The dogs were in a frenzy behind them, sniffing the ground and bounding at the wire fence of their run, trying to escape and go after the intruder who walked beside their master.
"Look at this place," Matthews said conversationally. He waved his arm. "I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the strange things people would say. The delusional ones, the paranoid ones, the depressed ones. The ones who were simply nuts--you know, Collier, the mind isn't an exact science, whatever the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual says. Some people are just plain crazy and that's all you can ever say about them. But I always listened to them. Why, people give themselves away like free samples at a grocery store. Hand themselves to you on platters. And what do they use? Words. Aren't words the most astonishing thing?"
Collier said, "You bet they are."
There wasn't much time, Matthews reflected. He supposed he had an hour or two until the police arrived. At best it would take Megan two hours to get to the nearest phone. Enough time to finish here, bury Peter, and get to Dulles for a flight to
Los Angeles. Or maybe he should just drive west. Hide in the hills of West Virginia. He took a deep breath. "Stop here."
They were beside a shallow ditch. It would make a fine grave for Collier. And he'd decided that he'd kill the lawyer with a single shot to his head. No pain, no torment. And he wouldn't let the dogs have the body. Out of respect for a worthy adversary.
Then the lawyer stunned him by closing his eyes and whispering, "Our Father, who art in heaven . . ." He slowly completed the Lord's Prayer.
Matthews laughed then asked, "You believe in God?"
Collier nodded. "Why does that surprise you?"
"When I'd see you in court it seemed that only the judge and jury were your gods."
"No, no, I believe He exists. That He's merciful and He's just."
"Just?" Matthews asked skeptically.
"Well, He's the reason I don't send people to death row anymore . . . Do you? Believe in God?"
"I'm not sure," Matthews said.
"You know, I always wanted the chance to prove the existence of God in a debate."
"How would you do that?" Matthews asked, truly curious. "Resolved: God exists. Isn't that how debates start?"
Collier looked up at the purple sky. "You know Voltaire?"
"Not really. No."
"I'd make his argument. He said there had to be a God because he couldn't imagine a watch without a watchmaker."
Matthews nodded. "Yes, I can see that. That's good. That's compelling."
"But, of course, then you run into all of the counterarguments. The con side."
"Such as?"
"Incompatible religious sects, interpretations of holy scriptures proven wrong later, no empirical proof of miracles, the Crusades, ethical and secular self-interest, terrorism . . . That's an uphill battle, all right."
"No answer for that?"
"Oh, sure. I've got an answer."
Matthews was suddenly fascinated. After Peter's death he'd prayed every night for six months. He believed that the boy had answered some of those communiques. It gave him clues, but not proof, that Peter's soul floated nearby. "What is it, what's the answer?" he asked hungrily.
"That a watch," Collier answered slowly, "no matter how well made, can never comprehend its watchmaker. When we claim to understand God, everything breaks down. If God exists then by definition He's unknowable and souls--yours, mine, Megan's, Peter's--are beyond our understanding. When we create human institutions to represent God they're inherently wrong so He has to exist apart from our flawed visions of Him."
"Yes, it makes sense. How simple, how perfect."
"You've thought about questions like this, haven't you? Because of Peter?"
"Yes."
Eyes on Matthews's, Collier said, "You miss him so much, don't you?"
"Yes, I do." Matthews stared down at the ground. For all he knew he'd stood on this very spot two or three years ago, studying slugs or dung beetles or ants, hour upon hour, wondering how, in their wordless world, they communicated their passions and fears.
"You can get help, Aaron. It's not too late. You'll be in jail but you can still be content. You can find a doctor to help you, somebody who's as good as you were."
"Oh, I don't think so. It's too late for that. One thing I learned--you can't talk somebody out of his nature."
"Your character is your fate," Collier said.
Matthews laughed. "Heraclitus."
He'd learned the aphorism from one of Collier's closing statements. He lifted the gun toward the lawyer.
Then Collier's eyes flickered slightly. "You won't turn yourself in?" Collier asked.
"No."
"I'm sorry," the lawyer said.
Matthews frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I'm so sorry."
A snap of brush behind him.
Matthews spun around. There stood Megan, holding the gun Collier had brought with him. Matthews had left it in the lobby of the hospital and had forgotten about it. The girl was ten feet away and was pointing the black muzzle at Matthews's chest.
Matthews laughed to himself. Oh, yes . . . He understood. Remembered her whispering to Tate before she'd walked out of the asylum. They'd planned this together. Collier would stall him--with his talk of theology--and Megan would pretend to run but would return for the gun. He remembered Collier protesting as they'd hugged. But she'd had her way.
Maybe she wasn't his blood kin but at the moment she was her father's daughter.
He glanced at her eyes.
"Drop the gun," she ordered.
But he didn't. He wondered, would she go through with it? She was only seventeen and, yes, she had anger in her heart--enough to attack him with a knife--but not enough to kill, he believed.
Character is fate . . .
He saw compassion, fear and weakness in her eyes. He could stop her, he decided. He could get her to lower the gun long enough to shoot her.
"Megan, listen to me," he began in a soft voice, gazing into her blue eyes, which were so unlike Collier's. "I know what you're thinking. I know what you've been through. But--"
The first bullet tugged at his side, near the knife wound, and he felt a rib snap. He was swinging his gun toward her when another shot struck his shoulder and arm.
Collier dropped to his knees, clear of the line of fire.
Megan stepped closer.
"Peter . . ." Matthews whispered, struggling to hold on to his pistol.
She pushed through the grass until she was only a few feet away.
Matthews squeezed the grip of the pistol. Then he looked up into her eyes.
Always the eyes . . .
Her gun fired again. And for an instant his vision was filled with a thousand suns. And in his ears was a chorus of noise--voices, perhaps.
Peter's among them, perhaps.
And then there was blackness and silence.
Chapter Thirty-two
The beach at San Cristo del Sol in Belize is one of the finest in Latin America.
Even now, in May, the air is torrid but the steady breezes soothe the hordes of tourists during their endless trips from the air-conditioned bars and seafood joints to the pools to the beach and back again. Windsurfing, paragliding, waterskiing and racing Jet Skis keep the surface of the turquoise water perpetually turbulent, and within the bay itself hundreds of snorklers and resort-course scuba divers engage in their elegantly awkward amphibious ballets.
The town is also a well-known staging area for those who wish to see Mayan ruins; there are two beautifully preserved cities within five kilometers of the main drag in San Cristo.
The Caribe Inn is the most luxurious of all the hotels in town, a Spanish colonial hacienda that has four stars from Mobil, and accolades from a number of other sources, proudly displayed behind the registration desk at which Tate Collier now stood, hoping fervently that the clerk spoke English.
The man did, it turned out, and Tate explained that he had reservations, proffering passports and his American Express card.
"That's a party of . . . ?" the clerk queried.
"Party of two."
"Ah," the desk clerk responded. Tate filled out the registration card with ungainly strokes.
"So, you are from Virginia," the clerk said. "Near Washington?"
"Si," Tate responded self-consciously, ready for his pronunciation to throw the conversation off kilter if not insult the clerk personally.
"I have been there several times. I like the Smithsonian especially."
"Si," Tate tried again, forgetting even the words that conveyed some meaningless pleasantry--words he'd practiced on the flight. For a man who'd made his way in the world by speaking, Tate's command of foreign languages was abysmal.
He watched the clerk glance down at the reservation form with a momentarily perplexed frown on his dark, handsome face. Tate knew why. The clerk had taken a good look at the attractive woman who'd entered the hotel on Tate's arm a moment before, and though surely, in this line of work, the clerk had seen just about ever
ything, he couldn't for the life of him figure out why these two would want separate rooms.
A man is, after all, a man . . . And an age difference of twenty years . . . well, that's nothing.
Megan came out of the lobby phone booth and walked to the desk just as the clerk was showing Tate a diagram of the available rooms. Tate pointed to two, first a smaller inside room, then a corner unit with a view of the beach. "I'll take this one. My daughter'll have the corner room."
"No, Dad, you take the nice one."
"Ah, this is your daughter?" the clerk said, his curiosity satisfied. "Of course, I should have known."
"I'm sorry?" Tate asked him.
"I mean, the resemblance. The young lady takes after you."
The man's suspicions crept back when he saw the two guests exchange fast glances and struggle to suppress laughter. Tate thought about pulling out driver's licenses and proving the relationship but then decided: it's none of this guy's business.
Besides, mystery has an appeal that documented fact will always lack.
They settled on the rooms and after Tate's card was imprinted they followed the bellhop through a veranda.
"Josh said his new physical therapist is great," Megan told him.
"Glad to hear it."
"But the way he put it was he said 'she's' great. Think she's old and fat?"
"We'll be back in six days. You can find out for yourself. When do you say de nada again?"
"After somebody thanks you. It means, 'It's nothing.' "
"They say gracias and then I say de nada." Tate repeated the words several times as if he were a walking Berlitz tape.
"Then I called Bett," Megan continued. "She's glad we got in okay. She said to take lots of pictures."
"I'll call her later."
"She, um, was going over to Brad's tonight. But she said it in a funny way. Like there was something going on. Is anything going on?"
"I don't have a clue."
Megan shrugged. "She said she talked to Konnie and he's coming to your office on Tuesday at nine to talk about the case."
The previous week Tate had made his first appearance in a criminal court in nearly five years--Konnie's arraignment. He'd answered the judge's simple query with simpler words. "My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor."
He had a novel defense planned. It was called "induced intoxication," and although he'd promised Megan that they would be spending the week doing nothing but seeing the sights and partying he'd hidden three law books in his suitcase and suspected the last day of the trip would find him with at least a rough draft of his opening statement to the jury--if not a set of deposition questions or two. He knew that as soon as Megan met a handsome young windsurfer--probably at the cocktail party that night--he would have at least a few hours free on most of the evenings.